Day 8

In Exodus 32:1-20, we read about how God’s people abandoned their faith in barely a month away from their spiritual leader, Moses. I’ve read the passage before and heard many times from the pulpit of the children of Israel calling to Aaron that he must build for them a god to worship, which begat the golden calf. Wouldn’t they have remembered all God had done for them? It is all the more disgusting when you take into consideration all the great things they had “just” witnessed God doing on their behalf: The plagues in Egypt; Passover, where their firstborn sons had been spared; the Red Sea parting for them, and then collapsing again on their pursuing enemies; manna and quail in the desert when they were without food; the very presence of God in the tabernacle and visible in the form of both a daytime cloud and a nighttime pillar if flame. And now in such a short time away from the presence of God, they were so weak that they sought something else. They turned from God. “How could they do it?”
What a perfect time to ask myself that question. “How can I do it?” Haven’t I also experienced fellowship with the Lord? Haven’t I seen Him do great things in my life, and experienced firsthand His forgiveness and mercy? Don’t I have the perspective looking “back” in time (as opposed to the prophesies of the Old Testament pointing to a future event) to the fact of the Messiah’s arrival, and ultimate sacrifice on my behalf? Have I not experienced the richness of God’s blessings in my own life? Yet I continue to disobey God. We have to look at the story of the Israelites and the golden calf, as the opportunity to see ourselves in the mirror. What is it in my life that lets me so callously turn away from God? – and often in far less than the 30 days since I last spent time with Him.
It seems that reminders of the depth of our own sinfulness are necessary to more fully appreciate the depth and breadth of God’s love for us. We need to repent of our sin, but at the same time give up the notion that in doing so we have made ourselves acceptable to God. It is only because of His grace and mercy, and not because of anything we have done.
“One of the most fundamental battles of the spiritual life is to face the horror of sin but then, with no illusions about our own goodness, to marvel all the more at the richness of God’s mercy that is ours through Jesus.” (Stephen Smallman, Forty Days on the Mountain, pg. 50)