"So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 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.'" (Exodus 32:3-4) In the past it was generally assumed that the calf was carved out of wood or cast in some type of base metal and then plated with gold, but in modern times Bible scholars have moved toward the theory that the calf was made of solid gold. It is estimated that approximately 2,000,000 men, women, and children came out of Egypt. Most of the Israelites, of both sexes, had picked up the Egyptian custom of wearing earrings as we saw in verse 2 yesterday. The amount of gold given to Aaron for the making of the calf was enormous. Some scholars have calculated that it could have weighed as much as 83,333 pounds if you estimate each gold earring weighed about 1/4 of an ounce and that each person had an earring in each ear. It's likely they were piercing their children's ears at a young age (as many parents are still doing in our own times), so we can't discount the notion that even the small infants were wearing solid gold earrings. Aaron would certainly have been presented with enough material to make the idol of solid gold.
It's funny how much money or effort we'll put into the wrong things, isn't it? We've all done it. We've spent money on sinful pursuits. We've spent time chasing after things that will bring us grief. We've spent energy trying to make something happen that isn't God's will for us. In our passage today we find the Israelites giving generously to a sinful project that's only going to bring them grief, but we've all made foolish mistakes. We may never have literally bowed down before an idolatrous image but we've been idolatrous in spirit any time we've put our own wants ahead of God's will for our lives. Any time we deliberately choose to disobey God we're in a spirit of idolatry. We're choosing ourselves over God, or we're choosing a sinful relationship over God, or we're choosing an addictive substance over God, or we're choosing to focus on things other than God to the point that we have no time for Him at all. In the book of Isaiah, during a time when idolatry was so rampant that the Lord was about to allow the land to be invaded and conquered by the Babylonians as discipline for sin, the Lord begged the people to see reason and to turn away from putting their money and energy and time into things that were only going to hurt them, saying: "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to Me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare." (Isaiah 55:2) The Lord is speaking of spiritual food; the people were wasting their money and time and energy on things that could never feed their souls or satisfy them spiritually. He asks, "Why are you doing this? Please listen to Me! Nothing will ever make you feel fulfilled and whole and satisfied apart from a relationship with Me."
When Aaron finished making the calf, he presented it to the people and they declared, "These are our gods who brought us out of Egypt." As we stated yesterday, we aren't certain whether they are saying this calf represents more than one god to them, but they use the Hebrew word "elohim" which is the plural form of "god". Rather than get caught up in on this particular point, we need to take a moment to focus on another point which is that they are giving this image, and whatever deity it stands for, the credit for bringing them out of Egypt! What blasphemy this is! What an utter rejection of the God who lovingly and faithfully and powerfully brought them out of the land of their oppression!
I'm reminded of a celebrity who gave what I considered a very blasphemous and shocking acceptance speech at an awards show some years back. She got on stage and was handed her trophy and then said something like, "Why are so many people getting up here and thanking Jesus Christ for their success? Nobody had less to do with my success than Jesus Christ." I think I gasped out loud, for there's not a single human being on the face of the earth who could even take the next breath unless the Lord gave them the ability to breathe it! If it weren't for the Lord, I wouldn't have the physical strength to be sitting upright on my couch right now, reading the Bible with eyes that can see, with a mind able to read and make sense of the written word, typing this study with the two functioning hands that God gave me. The Lord deserves the credit for the fact that I'm even alive right now. There's nothing I could do unless He allowed me to do it! How dare we not give Him credit that we're still alive and kicking? How dare we not give Him the credit for whatever physical strength, mental intelligence, and gifts and talents we possess? Our Creator gave us everything we have; we didn't create ourselves and we can't take credit for anything we accomplish as if it weren't the Lord who gave us life and any abilities that we have. As the author of Psalm 100 says: "Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His." (Psalm 100:3) Some versions of the Bible render the second part of this verse as: "It is He who made us, and not we ourselves." We didn't create ourselves or give ourselves abilities and talents. God did that and God deserves the praise.
But here in Exodus 32 we find the people making their own gods and, in a sense, making gods of themselves. Because that's what we do when we reject the authority of God: we make gods of ourselves. We go our own way. We serve ourselves, though it may appear on the surface that we're serving a deity or a political party or following a celebrity role model or an ideology or whatever it may be. Rejection of the Lord's authority over our lives is idolatry, and in our passage today we find the people not only rejecting the Lord's authority but blaspheming His name by declaring someone other than Him brought them out of Egypt.
Though Aaron fashioned the image the people demanded, he is not the one who declares the image the god who brought them out of Egypt. I think in tomorrow's passage he tries to tone down the idolatry of the people or deflect their attention away from the image by proposing a feast be held in honor of the Lord. But he's still committing a sin because he didn't say no to the people's demand for an image and now instead of rejecting the image wholeheartedly after hearing their blasphemy he's going to try to mingle idolatry with true religion by building an altar in front of the image and holding a festival to the Lord in front of the image. As the saying goes, he's going to try to straddle the fence with one foot in the church and one foot in the world. No one can set a godly example like this and Aaron won't be an exception. Join us tomorrow as the festival takes place and turns into such a sinful free-for-all that if not for Moses' intervention they would all have perished.
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