At last! Some action!
Unfortunately, they weren’t very good ones by Aaron and the people of Israel.
Only 40 days after Moses went up the mountain to meet with God, only 40 days after they promised to follow God and his ways, the Israelites got impatient waiting for Moses, saying,
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. (Exodus 32:1)
So what does Aaron do?
This high priest of the Lord.
This leader.
This man of God.
What does he say?
“Okay.”
It’s unbelievable.
He had been there with Moses when they confronted Pharaoh. He had seen the miracles. He had been part of them.
You would’ve thought he would’ve stood up to the people and said, “No! This is wrong! Don’t do this evil thing! Just wait! Moses will come.”
But instead, he says “okay.”
He gets the people to collect gold and actually fashions it with a tool, and then has the gall to say, “Okay people. This is your God.”
What justification could he possibly give for all of this?
Perhaps one was that he wasn’t “really” turning his back on God.
In verse 4, it’s translated as Aaron saying “These are your gods that brought you out of Egypt,” but it could also be translated, “This is your God.”
In other words, Aaron was saying, “This is Yahweh, the one you’ve been following all along. I’ve now made a physical representation of him for you to worship.”
That’s why in verse 5, he says, “We will have a festival to the Lord (that is, Yahweh).”
They then had burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, just as they always had, only they were calling the calf, “Yahweh.”
Later when Moses confronts him saying, “What have you done?” Aaron points the blame to the people, and actually says, “I just kind of threw the gold into the fire and out came this calf.” (22-24).
It’s the kind of thing you expect an 8-year old to say, not someone over 80.
But that’s exactly what Aaron did.
It’s easy to criticize Aaron, but how often as God’s priests do we do the same thing? We cave in to peer pressure.
We receive pressure from our boss to cheat on the financial books.
We receive pressure from our family not to get baptized.
We receive pressure from our friends to join in activities that we know are sinful.
And then we make excuses.
Like Aaron, we try to make our sins seem less bad.
“Well, I’m still serving God. Surely he’ll understand. I had to do it.”
Or, “It’s not really my fault. They made me do it.”
And often times, we’ll make excuses that even we know are outrageously stupid.
But as God’s priests, we need to stand up for what’s right. We need to stand up and say “This is wrong, and I will not be a part of it.”
If we don’t, we’ll bring discredit to our witness as Christians, and discredit to God as well.
In Romans 2:24, it says,
God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles [the unbelievers] because of you.
May that never be said of us.
Moment to Moment (Bible blog) 