The Calf

 2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods,[a] Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” Exodus 32:2-4......"The golden calf was a preferred image of God to the Israelites. How often do we come up with our own preferred images?" Henry Blackaby

We commonly misunderstand this passage of Scripture concerning the making of the golden calf. We think the Israelites are rejecting God completely and choosing instead a golden idol, much as the surrounding nations did. We think that they were choosing a completely different and false God. They weren't, at least not in their own thinking. They couldn't grasp the kind of God that was being revealed to them through Moses. They wanted a God they could understand, and in some sense, control. John Bevere said that "Moses knew God's ways, but the people only knew His acts." Moses had an intimacy with Him that the people didn't, and sadly, didn't desire. They had been living amongst the idolatrous Egyptians for 400 years. The Egyptians had a host of images for their gods. The Israelites couldn't accept God as He was revealing Himself. So, they wanted to create a God that they could relate to. They wanted their preferred image of Him. Where are we doing the same with Him today?

As we read and study His Word, there are so many aspects of His character that we love, particularly those that we see through His Son, Jesus Christ. His love, compassion, mercy, complete willingness to forgive, and the abundant life He offers us through Christ. We love the gentleness of His nature, His kindness, patience, and long suffering towards us. We stumble at His wrath, His sense of justice, His demand for holiness of life. We embrace His grace, but we don't like the thought that He will not have it abused. We love the Father revealed in Christ, but we have major problems with the God of the Old Testament. Indeed, there are many who choose to act as if God as revealed in the OT no longer exists, and that in the coming of Christ, He's undergone a transformation. He has not. All that He was and is before the coming of Christ He continues to be since His coming. For many in the church, this is something that boggles our minds and disturbs them. So, like the Israelites, we come up with an image of Him that we prefer. One that fits our concepts of what He should be instead of who He truly is. And, like Israel, we do so because we don't possess the intimacy He wishes us to have. We know Him by His acts. We don't really know Him by His ways.

The Father is a mystery. Even in Christ, He remains covered in it. The key though is that He is a mystery that He wants us to discover. He invites us to discover Him in ever deeper ways, but too few of us respond to the invitation. For that reason, we don't come to understand and know Him. Never completely because He is infinite and we are not, but we can know Him to the fullest extent we are capable of. When we do come to know Him, we begin to have an understanding as to how His justice and love are not opposites, but that His justice flows out of His perfect love. We may not understand all that He has done, or that He is doing, but we have reached a level of knowing Him, knowing His love, goodness, and mercy, and yes, holiness, to know that these are the core elements of who He is, and that we can trust Him, cling to Him, in any place where we don't know everything else. As we go deeper into our knowledge of Him, we realize that nothing in His acts takes away from or is contrary to who He is. We realize that the "preferred God," the "preferred Jesus" we have created is inadequate to who He really is. The Isaraelites were afraid to find this out. Moses was not. Who are we more like?

I think our greatest problem is that we think God should act and do like we would. We forget that He has said, "My ways are not your ways." We think that they should be. He also said His ways are infinitely above ours. This offends our pride, and opens the door to unbelief. Not unbelief that results in rejection of Him as God, just a rejection of Him as He's revealed Himself. So, we make a "calf" that better fits what we want. We may call it "God," or "Jesus," but it is still a calf. It isn't Him. Can we each dare to look for the "calves" that we've created for ourselves that aren't Him, but we worship as though they are? All of our calves have to go. Are we willing that they should?

Blessings,
Pastor O