“Calf Crafting”

(Part 1 in series)

“Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. He said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them. When Moses went up the mountain the cloud covered it, and the glory of God settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called Moses from within the cloud. To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses entered the cloud as he went up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.”

                                                                                                            Exodus 24:13-18

For forty days and forty nights, Moses was on the mountain receiving from the Lord all the words of the Law. While below Aaron and Hur were responsible for keep the people in order. However in Exodus 32:1 we read:

“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what happened to him.”

In less than 40 days the Israelites gravitated from being a people who were actively following the Lord, to a people who were ready to pursue a new god! What caused them to drift so quickly?

1.      They never fully committed to following God! From the moment they left Egypt they were grumbling and complaining about how God had led them into the desert to die.

2.      The never fully submitted to the spiritual leadership placed over them.

3.      They saw “other gods” as being a viable means for direction in life.

4.      They were willing to compromise their faith in order to indulge their flesh.

Because of this, they began to pressure Aaron to make them a “god”!

“Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

                                                                                                Exodus 32:2-4

It says that afterwards, they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. The people took off their gold and actually contributed to crafting a life-less idol! They didn’t want to serve a God of consuming fire; they wanted to craft a god that would allow them to indulge their flesh.

They wanted a god they could manage. They wanted a god that was lifeless, powerless and with no authority. A god they could worship when and if they wanted to. The created themselves a god that would not judge sin, one that would not challenge their lifestyle, one they could craft into their image.

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