Category: Exodus

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.

Shortly after my wife and I got married, her grandfather passed away, and we went to attend his wake and funeral. 

He was a Buddhist, so of course, they were both Buddhist ceremonies. 

During the wake, the Buddhist priest said some interesting things.  Namely that it was through the love and grace of Amida Buddha that people could go to heaven. 

It sounded so similar to the Christian message that my wife remarked on it later.

I remember thinking the same thing when I was attending university, and I heard my religion professor speak about the worship of Amida Buddha. 

He said it was through Amida Buddha’s love and mercy that people would go to heaven. 

It was the first time I’d ever heard of a religion say something so similar to Christianity, and I started wondering how Christianity differed then from Amida Buddhism. 

The answer came fairly quickly. 

The problem of sin is never dealt with in Amida Buddhism.

It’s forgiven, but justice is never truly done.  Sin is never really punished. 

Christianity is different. 

Yes, there is forgiveness. 

But there was a price that had to be paid in order for justice to be done.

And so in the Old Testament, God required that sacrifices be made for sin. 

When a person walked into the courtyard of the tabernacle, the first thing that a person would see was the altar for making sacrifices. 

There was only one doorway to the courtyard, and only one altar, again pointing out there is only one way to God and only one way for our sin to be dealt with. 

Bulls or goats would be brought to the altar and sacrificed there. 

It was a reminder of two things. 

First, all of us sin, and that sin is so serious, that the result is always death. 

Second, it pointed to the day when a more perfect sacrifice would be made for the sins of the whole world. 

What made the sacrifice of Jesus more perfect?

For one, it was never the bull’s choice to die.  It was led to slaughter. 

For another, a bull has no concept of sin or righteousness.  Its sinlessness is due to ignorance, not to choice. 

Finally, no matter how perfect an animal is, the life of an animal is not the equal to the life of a man or woman.

But when Jesus came to his earth, he came as a man. 

Not only was he equal to us as a man, but as God, he was much greater.  And he offered his greater life for our lesser one. 

Not only that, he knew what sin and righteousness were and always chose the path of righteousness.  His sinlessness was due to choice, not ignorance. 

And finally, his sacrifice was his choice.  He didn’t have to die.  But he chose to out of his love for us.

In all these ways, his was a more perfect sacrifice, and when he died, he took the punishment for our sin once for all. 

As Hebrews 10:14 says,

For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

The altar in the court of the tabernacle was a reminder of the problem of sin. 

Amida Buddhism never deals with it.  Other religions try to deal with it by requiring people to do good deeds. 

But just as there was only one way into the courtyard of God and only one altar to deal with sin, there is only one way for our sin to be dealt with, and that’s through Jesus Christ. 

Only through him can our sins be forgiven.

How about your sin?  Has it been dealt with?  As it says in Romans 6:23,

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As I look through these laws, they seem to be a running commentary on the ten commandments, namely, “Do not murder,” and “Do not steal,” and “Honor your father and mother.” 

You get the idea from reading through these laws, that they came from actual cases that Moses (along with the other judges that Moses appointed) ran into on a daily basis. 

And so while all this may seem a bit dry to us, it was very practical for them.

One thing that strikes me is how seriously God takes sin. 

The sin of dishonoring your mother and father, for example, was taken a lot more seriously then, than it is now. 

Nowadays, you have kids striking or cursing their parents, I wouldn’t say all the time, but often enough.   And in Moses’ day, that meant death. 

I kind of think age was taken into consideration here.  I can’t see a 5-year old kid being put to death for this. 

In the Jewish culture, you were (and still are) considered an adult at age 13, and it is at that time that you are held responsible for your actions. 

It was probably from that age that people would be punished for striking or cursing their parents. 

Even so, the penalty is still very harsh, and it shows how seriously God takes the command to honor your father and mother.

Murder also was a capital crime. 

And while the punishment for theft was not death, it still was pretty strong, with apparent punitive penalties to go along with paying restitution for the crime.

So the question we need to ask ourselves is, “Do we take sin as seriously as God does?” 

Many times we don’t. 

Sometimes people make excuses for their sins. 

Or they say, “It was really that bad.  It was just a small thing.”

But to God, sin was so serious, that he sent Jesus to die on the cross to pay for the penalty of our sin. 

Since he did that, how can we look at our sin and treat it lightly?

I kind of debated writing about this passage or not.  It’s one of those “uncomfortable” passages in the Bible, as well as being a passage that seems to come out of nowhere.

One moment Moses is being told to go to Egypt.  The next, God is trying to kill him.  Why?

Apparently, Moses had disobeyed God and didn’t circumcise his son. 

And it wasn’t something that God took lightly.  He was ready to kill Moses for not doing so. 

Why?  Was it really such a big thing?

Actually obedience always is. 

So many times when temptation comes, the thought comes, “It’s such a small sin.  It doesn’t really matter does it?  God won’t really get so upset about it will he?”

And so we give in to the temptation.

But what we forget is that no sin is really small. 

The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death.”  (Romans 6:23) 

It doesn’t say that the wages of big sins is death.  It says the wages of all sin is death, whether we think they’re big or small.

When we think about the very first sin that was committed, the eating of forbidden fruit, surely that’s much smaller than the sin of say, murder or rape or something else like that. 

But it led to death and separation from God. 

It was so serious, that Jesus had to come down to this earth to die to take the punishment for our sin.

By saying our sin is “small,” we’re actually minimalizing the necessity of the death of Christ. 

If any sin was such a small matter, then Christ would never have had to die.  But as it is, without his death on the cross, all of us would be separated from God forever.

Moses had to learn that no sin is too small.  All sin needs to be dealt with. 

God had probably warned him that his son needed to be circumcised.  It was part of the covenant God had made with Abraham. 

But for whatever reason, Moses had ignored the warning. 

Maybe he thought it was a minor detail that God wouldn’t be too concerned about. 

Maybe his wife was against the idea.  She certainly seemed unhappy that she had to circumcise her son. 

But whatever the reason, Moses sinned, and God took it seriously.

Are we ever like Moses and ignore the things God has told us. 

Do we ever trivialize sin in our lives and say, “Surely God won’t mind too much?” 

Remember that God considers no sin too small to be ignored.  All sin needs to be dealt with. 

To trivialize sin in our lives would be to trample Jesus underfoot, to treat as an unholy thing the blood he shed to cleanse us, and to insult his Spirit of grace.  (Hebrews 10:29)

It is no small thing to tolerate sin in our lives.  Let us never do so.