MOSES seems to have been joined by Joshua, when coming down the mount with the tables of stone in his hand. As they descended the mountain side together Joshua heard the people shouting. He said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” Moses said, “It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the voice of them that sing do I hear.”
Alas! alas! it was all too true. When they came near to the camp they saw the people dancing about a calf that Aaron had made. They had got tired waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain and had asked Aaron to make them gods to go before them; “for”, said they, “as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.” Oh, how soon they had forgotten the living God who had brought such great deliverance to them! how soon their hearts turned back to dumb idols of which they had been worshippers but a short time before! The first commandment God had given them was “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” and already it was broken, and that by the people who had quickly answered, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” But such is man! His heart is evil, and the grace of God alone can keep him; and these people were strangers to this grace.
When they asked Aaron to make them gods, he told them to break off their golden earrings which were in their ears and bring them to him. When they did this he cast these golden ornaments into the fire and melted them into the image of a calf; when it came out of the fire he took a graving tool and fashioned it. Then they said, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”
Could anything be sadder than such a departure as this? Do some of my young readers say, I would never do such a thing! Be careful! You do not know your own heart. With what pride some of you may have looked upon a bracelet on your arm, or a ring on your finger! May not even such a trifle as this come in to displace God in your heart? and if not this, are there not many other things? You would not bow down to a golden calf. But are you in no danger? “Little children keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John 5:2121Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. (1 John 5:21).)
Do you wonder that Moses was exceedingly angry when he saw the calf, and the people dancing about it? Do you wonder that he cast down the tables of stone and broke them beneath the mount, when the people had thus shamefully disowned the God who had written for them, with His own finger, upon the tables? Or can we wonder that the hot displeasure of the Lord was such as to make Moses afraid; for in His great anger He was ready to destroy Aaron, and to blot out from under heaven the name of the people whom He had chosen to be His own, peculiar people. Well may our hearts sadden at the thought of such dishonor done to the Lord; and well may each of His own inquire, Am I allowing an idol: in my heart? Is there anything permitted there that has a place before Him?
Moses, in the heat of his anger, took the calf they had made, which he called their “sin,” and burnt it in the fire. then stamped it, and ground it to powder, then strewed it upon the water and made the children of Israel drink of it. That would be for them a bitter draught; but so it turns; if we depart from God, or allow things to displace Him in our heart, we will have sorrow to reap.
When Moses saw that the people in their revelings had, to their dreadful shame, made themselves naked, be stood in the gate of the camp and called for those who were on the Lord’s side to come to him, and when the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him, he told them to gird on their swords and go in and out from gate to gate through the camp and kill every man his brother, his companion, and his neighbor. The children of Levi did as Moses commanded them, and there were about three thousand men slain that day.
Sentence against an evil work is not always executed speedily, but sometimes, as in this case, swift judgment descends upon the erring ones.
ML 11/08/1903