Have you heard of Moses? We first read about him in the Bible as the baby who was found floating in a basket in the Nile River. He had a three-year-old brother named Aaron.
When Moses was older, God chose him as the leader of the children of Israel. At the time of this story, Moses and Aaron were in their eighties and strong and healthy.
God had a wonderful plan to explain to Moses, and so He called him up to the top of Mount Sinai where Moses could listen undisturbed. God chose Aaron to be the high priest, and he waited down in the desert with the thousands of people of Israel while God gave Moses the ten commandments and the pattern of His beautiful place of worship. This took a long time - more than a month - and God wrote the ten commandments with His finger on tablets of stone.
Here is the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:33Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)).
It was not a long month for Moses, but it was a very long month for the people who were waiting for him below the mountain. They said that Moses was the man who brought them out of Egypt, and they didn’t know what had happened to him. What a huge mistake! It was God, not Moses, who opened the Red Sea and brought them through! And one bad mistake often leads to a worse one.
Are you making a bad mistake like that? Are you thinking that some person has put you where you are? Are you forgetting that it is God’s power and God’s love that have planned the details of your life? How you handle the details is often where the mistakes are made. Remember, one bad mistake can lead to a worse one, and the people of Israel were about to do just that.
“Let us make gods to go before us,” said the people.
Do you really need other gods? Isn’t our God enough? If you say, “No, He is not enough,” then you don’t know Him. He is the God who loves you and gave His only Son to die for you. Is He not enough?
Aaron told the people to break off their golden earrings, and with the melted-down metal, he shaped a golden calf. The people were delighted and said, “These [are] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:44And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 32:4)). And since the next day was a feast to the Lord, they made it a day of sacrifices and celebrations and games, and they had a great songfest. But, they had broken the first commandment.
The people of Israel did not turn away from the worship of the Lord, but they changed it to suit their own pleasure. The God who had saved them was not who they were thinking about on that feast day. Aaron was a good man, but he led them in the wrong direction just to please them.
Moses came down from Mount Sinai with those wonderful hand-written tablets in his hand. But when he heard and saw the party, he became angry and shattered the stone tablets on the mountainside. He saw that the people had already broken the first commandment.
Now, we know that the wages of sin is death, and we would expect God to destroy those wicked people who broke His law. Well, if God destroyed lawbreakers, why are you and I still alive? God had a plan to save those people, and He has a plan to save us too. Yes, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)), but JESUS DIED FOR ME so that I could go free!
Isn’t that a wonderful plan? It was God’s own Son who took my place and died for me. God knew that I was a sinner, and He was glad when I understood this too and said “Yes” to Him and to His great plan of salvation. But there comes a moment when it will be too late to say “Yes.” It is important to say “Yes” to Him right now!
If you read this story in Exodus 32, you will find that God did not just overlook this great sin. It brought sorrow to the whole nation. They all deserved to be destroyed, but God patiently brought them through.
God wants to save you right now. If His patience waits for you a little longer, you will only build up sorrow for yourself in the meantime, and you may find that when you need Him, it is too late. God says, “Today if [you] will hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Hebrews 3:1515While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. (Hebrews 3:15)). And the message of that verse is so important that He says it again in Hebrews 4:77Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. (Hebrews 4:7).
ML-08/11/2002