His Glory Blog

The story of the Golden Calf from Exodus 32 is a familiar one to most Christians. There was another story about two golden calves found in 1 Kings 12 that is a little less familiar, but both are lessons that some tend to forget or ignore. Christians serve an unfathomable God. The longing that God places in every heart comes with tendencies that a relationship with the Creator are meant to be used in sanctification. The longing that draws people to God is soothed with cheap imitation. People seek a tangible representation of God and His divinity. Jehovah is impossible to represent and in doing so the limitations stifle the potential that a genuine relationship offers. If a believer walks in relationship with God, His Spirit is inside them and His Word is written on their hearts for understanding, comfort, and growth toward sanctification. There is no need to bow before images that are insulting in their attempts to quantify the Lord, or create comfort outside of His open arms. When Jesus walked the earth the heart of God was on full display. Christ mended broken hearts, caused poor of spirit to become awakened, cast out demons to free His people, and became the sacrifice for a New Covenant where faith, relationship, and adoption into His Kingdom were offered for the price of a believing heart’s love. It is heart breaking to imagine how hurtful it is to the Father, and a grief to His Spirit that His sacrifice was deemed to be insufficient. People still lean on images and idols to find much less than what God gives freely.

Let us take a look at the instances of golden calves in scripture to see how they shine the light of truth on the themes of faith, leadership, and the replacement of God through idolatry.

Exodus 32:4-5 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.” 

The Israelites were three months removed from the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14). They had manna in the morning and quail in the evenings delivered from God for 30 days in a row up to this moment (Exodus 16). Water was poured out of rock to drink (Exodus 17). The pillars of cloud by day and fire by night guided them continuously (Exodus 13). The presence of God was clear and present. Just as it is today through His Spirit. Yet when Moses was receiving the Commandments of God on Mount Sinai, with the presence of God still around them they instead chose to create an image to worship. The image was a calf common to the bull worshipped by Egypt in their captivity. The pagan idolatry that they had escaped from still lingered in them. Their faith was non-existent. Even standing inside God’s physical provision they looked away at an empty image. Waiting was too much. This issues still exists in the hearts of people surrounded by fallenness, sin, and provisions that are not of God. People give the reverence meant for God to other people, fortune, comfort, and false temporary pleasures. The fallen cultures found on earth detract from the Creator and the relationship He longs for. His love for His creation comes with free will. A free will that can also break His heart as children turn away to nothingness in the darkness of the world. God loves His creation enough to let true love for Him bring joy, rejection to hurt Him and His Spirit to grieve. Not only did the Israelites fail but their leadership did too. Aaron was not the leader the people needed in that moment. A leader who would profess God over them, guide them back to Him, and thwart the turning away from the God that led them out of captivity. Aaron fell short of the divine desires of God and instead looked to appease a people who showed clearly their inability to be satisfied in God’s provision. They were a people bent on infidelity in regard to God’s love, mercy and grace. If God is not good enough, then there is not relationship because what He has available is not being received. In no way will a life lived in the arms of God find anything in this world to compete.

1 Kings 12:27-32a If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.” So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. Then this thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one.He also made temples on high places and appointed priests from among all the people, who were not of the Levites. And Jeroboam appointed a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar.

Allow the same themes of the sinful hearts from Exodus to stay in the picture but see the way an evil leadership takes advantage of that quality and creates idols to keep power and make certain that the people cannot find God. Jeroboam represents leaders that want to hold power over God’s chosen. They call for the glory meant for God. They deflect the light reflected from God’s children and place themselves in the place of Jehovah. Jeroboam created temples with calves in them to turn the people from going to the temple designed by God. He wanted to keep the people away from the truth. False priests, idols, and rituals took the place of the true God. Glory is not given to God through relationships with false leaders. The relationship is with God. Leaders are meant to nurture growth and lead followers to God through Jesus, not teach them to focus on the leaders themselves. The leaders have made themselves idols if they believe their standing in the eyes of God is any greater than the believer. No part of the body is any greater than another. 1 Corinthians 12:13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

The reliance on rituals acts as a hollow representation of glorifying God. Unless the emphasis of acts of worship draws believers closer to God and His love, they are rituals of idolatry and are of no value to God. Many religions lean on rituals, images, and empty theology to bend God to their ideal. God finds no pleasure in this. He cares not for images made by man Acts 17:29-30 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

  Rituals that are pure symbolism and have no glory to God in the hearts of the people are dead in the eyes of God. Isaiah 1:12-15 When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

  The empty and false theology found both in deceitfulness and ignorance of leadership must be acknowledged. God’s call to study His Word, not just the scriptures but also knowing Jesus as Lord, keeps deception away from His children. Relationship with God is not only the most rewarding love in existence but also a safeguard from a deceiver who looks to draw God’s creation away through false and empty theology.Romans 16:17-18 Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.

Turn away from the idolatry found in Exodus and 1 Kings. The calves were an example of how the tendency of a heart that does not belong to God can seek Him in ignorance and empty religion. Be aware of the ways idols can exist in your life and the ways they can be used against your sanctification. Religion is man seeking God, Jesus Christ was God seeking man. Accept what God offers in Jesus, a relationship like no other, and reject the things toward which God turns a blind eye. Hear Him say: “well done my good and faithful servant” and not “I never knew you.”