DON’T HAVE A COW! ALL THAT GLITTERS IS JUST GOLD, NOT GOD ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ PART 14

 

Demoralized by bondage in slavery and entrenched in a heathen society for centuries, it would not be hard to imagine how unfathomable to the children of Israel ten precepts from God would be to fully appreciate. Yesterday, I asked you to think about the children of Israel going from bondage as slaves in Egypt to having the Law given to them by God. I so want to go down a rabbit trail right now, but I will resist. I will simply say that to go from prison to freedom is not as easy as one might imagine. In fact, it is so difficult, many choose to return to their prisons rather than flourish in freedom. And I will leave you with that to think about.

 

After the national law was given, along with the ten commandments, Moses recorded it all as the condition of the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. The people, with one voice, agreed: “All the words which the Lord hath said we will do.” (We will see that it is far easier to make a profession of faith than to live according to the faith that is required.) Sacrifices were offered to God when the covenant was ratified. Moses took the blood of the sacrifices and sprinkled it on the people as the blood of the covenant which the Lord had made with them. (Exodus 24)

 

It is directly after this that Moses is called to meet with God again to give him the stone tablets with the law and the commandments which God had written for the people’s instruction. While there for 40 days and 40 nights Moses is given explicit instructions for building a sanctuary in which God would dwell amongst His people. There is instruction regarding observance of the Sabbath. God’s purpose in setting apart this people is seen in Exodus 29:45-46—"I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God. They shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God.”

 

This is what we would call a rags-to-riches story. One would think…A race of slaves miraculously delivered from bondage exalted above all the nations of the world as a peculiar treasure of the King of kings. They were separated by God for God so that He might commit to them a sacred trust. They were His depositories of His Law to preserve among all men the knowledge of Himself. They were to be His light and His voice in a dark world so that all would turn from their idolatry to serve the living God. In their obedience to Him, He would not only be their defense against all nations, but He would see that they were exalted above all other nations as well. Under God’s most holy and wise rule, the children of Israel would be the example of the superiority of His worship over every form of idolatry.

 

And they lived happily ever after…NOT SO FAST! We want to believe this is true for this life, but we grow up and understand happily ever after in this life only happens in fairy tales, as they say. Enter the bull.

 

The Egyptians and other nations in that day were religious people who worshipped many pagan gods. In fact, all the ten plagues God brought upon the Egyptians were judgments against ten certain gods they worshipped. This proved that the one true and living God was mightier than all other gods. One of the Ten Commandments deals with this idol worship: Exodus 20:2-5—“I AM THE LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.”

 

As Christians, we sometimes tend to think of idolatry as simply the worship of idols. This evokes in our minds pictures of certain images created by man such as statues, relics, etc. While idolatry is worshipping something other than God, it is much more than that. Idolatry can include false worship of the true God. In past blogposts we looked at the false worship of the Israelites in Jeremiah’s day. Why did worshiping God in the “high places” evolve into worshiping Baal and Asherah poles? Why was Cain’s offering wrong? This is very important to remember when thinking about false religion:

 

False worship is unauthorized worship which leads to more false worship. Worship of false gods, and false worship of the true God, are both false worship.  Gospel Coalition Golden Calf

I know many will kick up their heels at that statement. Why? Because we think, much like Cain, that God should accept us for who we are, that we should be able to come to Him any way we like, according to our preferences and desires. But God is not like us. He is holy! He is in heaven, and we are on earth. Many think to dabble in different religions to get a more rounded view of ‘religion’ is okay, even as a Christian. But we are not to intentionally expose ourselves to false religion sitting under false teachers. Sadly, most professing Christians think discernment is only for some who take the Bible “far too seriously”.  The precept of 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, speaking of the days when Antichrist takes the world’s stage, can be applied to every age: …that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness.

 

According to Wikipedia, “In the practice of religion, a cult image or devotional image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshiped for the deity, person, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and modern Hinduism, cult images in a temple may undergo a daily routine of being washed, dressed, and having food left for them. The term idol is often synonymous with worship cult image. Cult images were a common presence in ancient Egypt, and still are in modern-day Kemetism. The term is often confined to the relatively small images, typically in gold, that lived in the naos in the inner sanctuary of Egyptian temples dedicated to that god.”

 

Apis was the most important bull deity of ancient Egypt. Worship of the Apis bull is documented as early as the First Dynasty. Veneration of the bull in Egypt precedes this time, so it is possible that Apis may have been the first god of Egypt, or at least the first animal associated with divinity and eternity. There were many other bovine deities in ancient Egypt. Apis is depicted throughout Egypt’s history as a striding bull, usually with a solar disc and uraeus (the sacred serpent which symbolized the king’s power) between its horns. During different eras of Egypt’s history various gods assumed supremacy in different regions, or even nationally, such as Osiris, Isis, Amun, Atum, Ra, but the worship of Apis never dramatically changed.  Apis

When we think of the golden calf of Exodus 32, we may automatically think it is a clear-cut case of idolatry in the form of an image the people worshiped, or an image set up as a false god. But is that the case?

 

Exodus 32:1—Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we do not know what happened to him.”

 

In Egypt, there were plenty of images that represented a multitude of deities. Once they were delivered from Egypt, they shifted their trust and faith to Moses as the one who was leading them to the Promised Land. This one verse should be a warning to all those who put their faith and trust in any man to deliver or lead them in their walk with God! They could see Moses. This God Moses had led them to was an invisible God. Even with all the evidence of His almighty power He had shown them, the strength of their own sinful flesh is seen in the ability to rationalize their sinful thinking and desires. Anxiety and a sense of fear and panic must have set in when Moses did not return day after day, then week after week. How many lose the faith they proclaim to possess when they get weary in waiting on God? The lesson to walk by faith and not by sight is a hard one we must all learn.

 

When my husband was first being investigated, even before he was indicted and my son and I were later indicted, I believed God’s promises of deliverance and sovereignty in the trial. As the trial went on year after year, I held on…even until everything I believed would not happen DID, in fact, happen. Often, when we bring our fears and anxieties alongside God’s promises, we read into those promises how we want to see our story unfold before us. And that is not treating God as God. We say we will wait upon God for His timing, and we think we are doing so even while we are playing God by interpreting His Word accord to our own will. The deepest, darkest recesses of our hearts are often manifested in the delays of life.

 

Even if Moses, their leader and deliverer, had died, God was not dead. If He provided Moses, a human leader to lead them, He would provide another. Their faith needed to be re-directed. Sadly, it was, but not to the one true God who was to be their all in all. Before we judge the Israelites too harshly, we must remember what happened to the disciples after Jesus died (and what often happens with us in any given disappointment). Without their Master physically in their presence, we see Peter and several others go back to fishing.

 

While they children waited in the wilderness on God, they should have meditated on what they had heard of His law, preparing their hearts to receive further revelation from Him. The pillar of cloud and of fire, God’s Shekinah glory, was still a very visible manifestation of His presence with them. Staying focused on God during this time would have kept them from temptation. Instead of meditating on God’s law, however, they chose to act lawlessly. While physically in Sinai, they turned back in their hearts to Egypt’s idolatry and religious superstitions. In the case of the children of Israel, having been exposed to paganism and false religion for so long, it was easier to physically take them out of Egypt than to take Egypt out of them.

 

They were impatient to get to this Promised Land of milk and honey. So often, we focus on the ultimate blessings of the promises to be fulfilled in eternity instead of the abundant life and its blessings along the way. Apparently, this glory cloud was not going to lead them, so they needed another. Some commentators have suggested, and it is a possibility that the thought had crossed their minds, if they ended up deciding to go back to Egypt, at least the Egyptians would accept them if they bore this image acknowledging it as their god. People want to be able to weigh their options. However, they had only one that was viable: Wait on God! Instead, they made their own demands. “Aaron, make us a god who will go before us.”

 

And Aaron rebuked them! Oh, how we wish that is what the text read. This is why we need strong leaders, men who hold fiercely to their convictions, who will not compromise the Word of God, who will lead fearlessly like Jeremiah, who through a holy fear of God cannot be intimidated by the people! Aaron did not rebuke; instead, he laid down his sword.

 

2—Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”

 

This is the type of leader followed by most of Christendom today. Aaron immediately caves to giving the people what they want. And they quickly respond to his wrong leadership. The contrast here is glaring. They are not quick to honor and obey God when they perceive God is not working according to their own timetable. They are not quick to obediently wait. They are quick to obey only when their fleshly desires are being met.

 

3—So all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.

 

The word play here is interesting. This word for tear off and tore off in verses 2 and 3 can mean to break or tear off from oneself, rent, rend in pieces, redeem, deliver, to snatch, to rescue. It has this idea of violent or forceful deliverance, just as God delivered the children of Israel from their captors in Egypt.

 

Lamentations 5:8—Slaves rule over us; there is no one to deliver us from their hand.

Psalm 136:24—And has rescued us from our adversaries, for His lovingkindness is everlasting. (In both passages, it means to break away or liberate.)