Have you ever wondered to yourself or out loud, “What’s taking Jesus so long to return?” After all, it’s been two thousand years! What’s he doing up in heaven? Is he still around? Has he forgotten his promise to come back? Are we left on our own now? Waiting for the Messiah, our Deliverer, to return isn’t easy. There are people that tell us to give up on waiting for him— he’s not coming back. There are others that tell us that, in the absence of Jesus’ return, that we should start to make changes to our faith— to make things more “modern,” less “backwards” and “outdated.” As we wait for Jesus’ return, it’s easy to get discouraged and easy to make edits.
But we’re not the only ones who were waiting for their deliverer to return. After Israel was rescued from their slavery in Egypt by God through the deliverer, Moses, they are led to mount Sinai to receive the terms of God’s covenant. But the people are too afraid to go up the mountain and meet with God, so Moses goes up without them. And then they wait. They wait for their messiah’s return. They wait. And they wait. And this Moses is taking forever to come back.
Then the crowd gets impatient with Moses’ return from being with God at the top of the mountain, they go to Aaron (the one who is still left on the ground) and demand that he make them gods who will go before them (Exodus 32:1). But, contrary to what we might assume, Aaron doesn’t exactly fulfill their request— he modifies it. Aaron makes the golden calf out of their gold jewelry, and they say, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” But Aaron makes a proclamation and says, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.” Do you see what Aaron did? He breaks the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself any graven image.” He says that this golden calf is the Great I AM who led them out of Egypt. But this is reshaping God to fit the people’s own desires. They begin to behave like the animal that they’re worshipping.
Make no mistake: as we patiently await the Messiah to return from being with God the Father, there will be people who approach God’s representatives on earth and demand that we make them a god that is more palatable to what they want.
But we must resist the demand. God must always be allowed to be who he is. And this is not just to protect who God is but also who we as humans are.
Listen to God’s response to what the people and Aaron have done as he says to Moses, “Go down, for your people, who you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves” (v. 7). The word that struck me in this sentence is “corrupted.” But that word (maybe I’m the only one) doesn’t carry with it any meaning outside of images of corrupt politicians and data on your computer that might no longer work. The word in Hebrew very often has the meaning, “destroy.” That, I think, gets at what idolatry does: it destroys you. Turning God into some other version of him that is more palatable to our sinful desires destroys us because God already has an image that he has created. It’s you. You are the image of God (see Genesis 1:27–28). If you make an image for God, or you worship (as the ancient people did) animals, or the sun, or inanimate objects (don’t think that’s too foreign to our experience!), we become like the things we worship. The people in this story start behaving like animals— the image of their god. But they’re not the only ones. People become as hard and cold as the cash they worship. People become like the politicians they worship. The things that you go to in order to cope (both healthy and sinful) can quickly become the idols we worship. The more you worship something, the more like it you become. And if you worship something other than God (in whose image you are made) it will destroy you.
So, as we patiently await the return of our Messiah from God’s throne, let’s refuse to worship anything that isn’t God. Let’s not fool ourselves into worshiping something, calling it Jesus, but it’s really an image of God that is destroying you. Let’s refuse to listen to people who would turn God into whoever they want to turn him into. Not because we don’t love them— we want the message of Jesus to be heard and accepted and remove any stumbling blocks that we can towards that goal! But we refuse to turn God into someone he’s not because doing so will destroy us.
- Where people demand that our God be irrelevant, we show that God’s word is always relevant for every area of life, lovingly guiding us into a life in communion with God (2 Timothy 3:16).
- Where people demand that our God stay out of our personal lives and decisions, we remind all that God’s words are what we depend on for true life (Deuteronomy 8:3, Psalm 119:105, Psalm 1).
- Where people demand that our God hate, we proclaim and show that God is love (1 John 4:16).
As we patiently wait for the return of our Messiah, we must worship. Whenever we or the people around us, because of our sin, demand that God be other than who he is, we must resist the urge to make a golden calf. Not just because we love God, but because we do not want to destroy ourselves.
Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
