The Church and the Golden Calf

The Golden Calf

Idolatry is not always so obvious as men and women bowing down to figurines or totem poles. While the 2nd commandment specifically addresses making images and bowing down to them, at the root of all of the ten commandments is idolatry. From the 1st commandment, "Thou shalt have no other God's before me," to the 10th, "Thou shalt not covet," the 10 commandments are all about idolatry. What will be your desire? What will satisfy you? Will you be satisfied in me above all else? And from the beginning, God's people have had a difficult time shedding their idols.

When Moses was on the mountain receiving the law, the people grew restless, and they decided to come up with religion on their own. They had lost patience with Moses, so they took matters into their own hands. They made a god. They appointed a new leader, Aaron, and they fashioned a god like the ones that they were familiar with in Egypt.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, "Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."
So Aaron said to them, "Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me."
So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.
And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!"
When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD." (Exo 32:1-5 ESV)

It's striking how this idolatry came upon them. I don't think they even realized that they were making an idol. I mean, they called the golden calf the God who brought them out of Egypt, and Aaron proclaimed a feast to Yahweh. They had completely succumbed to idolatry, but they didn't even realize it.

Today

We Christians today are not tempted to physically bow down to images of animals; however, we are tempted to idolatry. The reformers said that our hearts were idol factories. We make idols out of almost anything. It is more subtle, but no less worthy of condemnation. 

We make idols out of sentimentality, of our comforts and preferences. Idols can be anything we put before God. However, they can be difficult to diagnose. The problem is that we are often like the Israelites at the bottom of Sinai. We erect an idol to fit our comforts, and then we call it Jesus. We have and image in our mind of what we think Jesus should be, and we warp our understanding of the Bible to fit our pleasures. 

We determine how we think we should worship God, and we expect him to accept our worship on our terms instead of his. We don't even ponder the idea that God may have revealed how he is to be worshipped--we just expect him to like anything we do because we like it. We erect a golden calf and proclaim a feast to Yahweh. 

If we want to really worship Jesus in the way that is acceptable to him, we must pay close attention to how he has revealed his design for worship. We must study the Bible to see how he desires our  church to be ordered, and for us to live our lives.