Exodus 32 can be used to help us look quite starkly at our world today. Almost immediately the Jews are asking for a new God to worship, something tangible, something they can see and touch and feel led by. Aaron gives them what they want, although verse 22 always amuses me. He tries to pass the blame off on someone else. It’s quite a childish response. I’m sure we can all think of examples of how society has formed their own Gods. Footballers, shops, brands even types of computers can form into their idols or their Gods, to be worshiped, to be coveted and to be attained.
Again I wonder if there is something we can learn from this, if we’re too quick to look outward and see where ‘others’ go wrong. Are there things or even people in our own lives that we’ve allowed to take Gods place? We sing ‘You’re King and you reign over all things’ – but does he really? In the words of DA Carson “Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
(lay member of staff)