Slices
Prepare
How do we know what God is like? ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (Psalm 19:1). ‘Your word is truth’ (John 17:17). By observing the natural order and reading God’s Word we are helped to know him.
Bible passage
The golden calf
32 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered round Aaron and said, ‘Come, 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.’
2 Aaron answered them, ‘Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.’ 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, ‘Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.’ 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterwards they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
9 ‘I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.’
11 But Moses sought the favour of the Lord his God. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, “It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance for ever.”’ 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
Explore
This sad story begins with impatience (v 1). Moses was away for almost 6 weeks (Exodus 24:18) and the people wanted action. They wanted to worship gods they could see and touch, made from their most precious things (v 4). It seems likely that the bull-calf image was based on Baal – a fertility cult present in Egypt where the people had lived. It’s easy to worship what we think of as precious to us, rather than God himself.
Aaron was complicit by leading the people to worship God himself, but in a false way (v 5). Unknowingly, both he and the people would break the first two commandments they were about to receive from Moses. Who we worship, and how we worship, matters to God.
When we pray to God ‘if it is your will’, we are seeking to do what Moses did having learned of this disaster. God’s promises are conditional upon human responses, so at this moment the people were in grave danger. But God’s grace was mirrored in Moses’ brave prayer, averting their complete destruction. Sin matters to God.
Respond
Pray: ‘May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer’ (Psalm 19:14).
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Ezekiel 8,9; Psalm 119:121–144
Pray for Scripture Union
Give thanks for the new Shine Films. Ask God to help us find ways to make churches and young Christians across the country aware of them. (This week's prayers relate to this article in Connecting You.)
