March 7

Exodus 32:21-24 (NIV)
21 He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” 22 “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. 23 They said to me, ‘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 has happened to him.’ 24 So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

Besides being one of the funniest lines in the Bible, “I threw it in the fire and out came this calf,” we see here that there was a question of accountability and fault, and Aaron deflected it like a master and threw it back on all the people. Then he deflected it towards some sort of spiritual power that made the calf. In other words, he lied his face off to get away from any responsibility of his own multiple sins. The problem with that is he didn’t get away from it far enough, in fact, 3,000 people died that day and a plague was to kill many more. There were far reaching actions of Aaron’s sin and the people’s sin before the Lord. We may think that we would never cast an idol like that or that we would have waited, but let’s humbly remember that Moses was gone for over a month and gold, stone and wood idols were the gods of that day. We have different gods and should keep our pride in check. Think about it.

The final point today is this:

Exodus 32:20 (NIV)
20 And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

We have got to understand that this is the norm. When we worship other gods, we take them into ourselves. We don’t hold the fire and not get burned, we get burned on the inside! Church – stay as far away as possible from the idols of our society, (our labor, effort and wisdom, beauty, money, fame, power and control, sex, inebriants, etc…), or else that will corrupt you from the inside, because you will drink them. Instead, serve the Living God who loves you so and gave everything for you and gives everything to you!