Golden Calf (Exodus 32)

Ok, so I know we took a little detour from Moses on Mt. Sinai. Let’s not forget where we left off with him. God had just given Moses the Ten Commandments written on two stone tablets. Moses was on the mountain for 40 days with God! Joshua, Moses’ right hand man, was camped about halfway up the mountain. He was waiting for Moses. Aaron, Moses’ brother, and about 70 other men were waiting for Moses at the base of the mountain. The other one million Hebrews were back at their camp a little ways from the mountain. I just want to follow up a little more on what we talked about last time, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

 If you prayed that prayer last time and meant it from your heart, you are what the Bible calls “saved”. You have a home waiting for you in heaven! But until we get there, we are living on this earth as followers of Jesus. When you were saved, God sealed you with His Holy Spirit. (2 Cor 1:22) That is God’s guarantee! Wow! No one or nothing can snatch you from His hands! (John 10:29) He has placed His Spirit inside you. The Holy Spirit is now living in you. He is a part of you.
 We are born with a body and a mind. The bible says that our bodies are sinful and desire to please ourselves instead of God. Our mind, (thoughts, emotions and will) decides what to do. Now we have another part of us. Our spirit, which is holy. Here’s is our situation as we live our lives: Our spirit wants to do only good. Our bodies want to do wrong. So our mind is the tiebreaker! That is why we should “renew” our minds. (Romans 12:2) If we play violent video games more than we read the bible, our minds will lean more toward the sinful stuff that our body wants. If we pray and talk to God more than we watch some of the bad stuff on television or our computer, the our minds will lean more toward pleasing God which is what our spirit wants.
 Television, computers,video games, hanging with the wrong crowd, or reading the wrong stuff can pull us in the wrong direction, but God has given us the Bible, the privilege of talking to Him, good TV shows and movies and loving people to hang out with to help us in the right direction. His direction.

 Ok back to Moses. He was on top of Mt. Sinai for 40 days. I’m sure everyone was wondering what happened to him. He was never gone for more than a couple of days before. Joshua waited patiently half way up the mountain. But the Hebrews were getting restless. They marched to the base of the mountain where Aaron and the 70 leaders were camped out.




“Moses has been gone way too long.” The people said to Aaron. “Something has happened to him.
He brought us out of Egypt, but now where is he? Make us a god that we can see and worship.”
“OK,"Aaron said.”Take off your gold earrings and bring them to me.”

So the people did as Aaron asked. Aaron took all the gold earrings, melted them down and molded them into a golden calf.

 The Hebrews got all excited and shouted. “Oh Israel! These are the gods that brought you out from slavery in Egypt!” We can think to ourselves how stupid the Israelites (Hebrews) were, but we do the same thing. If we are trusting God for something, and He takes too long, we lie, cheat or steal to make it happen. Part of trusting God is waiting on Him. God is never too late. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

 When Aaron saw how happy the people were with their new god, he built and altar in front of the Golden calf. “Tomorrow is Golden Calf God day! Let’s party! (Mr. BibleHead translation)
So the next day the Israelites party like their was no tomorrow. They were getting rowdy, dancing like sinners and getting drunk.
Then God said to Moses. “You better go back down the mountain. The people that you led out of Egypt are out of control. They have made a new god out of gold.
 Don’t we do that sometimes too. We think more about money or things than about God.  When we trust in our money or things to meet our needs, we are making a god out of gold. So we learned a couple things today.
(1) We have the Holy Spirit living inside us. (If we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior)
(2) Waiting on God is trusting in Him.  (Don’t sin to get what we want.)   (Isaiah 40:31)
(3) We can’t make money and things our god. (Keep God first, He’ll take care of us) (Mt 6:24)