The Last Refuge of the Impatient, Intolerant and Immature (Exodus 32:1-14)

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Idolatry is the last refuge of the intolerant, impatient, and spiritually immature. If God isn’t moving how we like, as quickly as we desire, and with whom we approve, we’ll create a God, in our image, who we can worship, a God that will give us what we want when we want it, and however we want it. We don’t need to wait on the God of the mountain top who speaks only to Moses and in thunder and lightning. We’ll create a God who speaks directly to us because this God tells us exactly what we want to hear because this God isn’t a real God; this God is a voice in our head, our voice, our conscience, that we have now made an idol. Our real God is ourselves. We are worshipping us. We are our Golden Calves, delusionally dancing around our own intolerant, impatient, and immature projections of what we want God to be, not who God is. This is the lesson of Exodus 32.

It is one of the oldest and most well-known stories in the Old Testament. Moses is late. He is delayed on the mountain, and God’s people are impatient. Is he alive or dead? Has he forgotten about them and gone to the promised land without the baggage of famished, complaining, wandering, and never able to please Israelites? All of these seemed real possibilities to those who waited with Aaron at the foot of the mountain. What was Aaron to do? They came to him wanting a God. Let us create a God from scratch, they asked. We’ll make up a God with what we’ve got and worship that new, fancier God. Our new God will be better, have fewer rules and hoops to jump through, no trust clause, and stand on the front lines of the culture war. 

Aaron caved into the pressure. He was always a people pleaser. To him, it wasn’t about worshipping a new God. It was about their property. What were they doing running around the desert with gold jewelry, bracelets, and earrings in the middle of the desert? Who were they trying to impress? He didn’t care what God they worshipped; a God was God. People need a God, he guessed. Everybody had one. All God’s children had to have a God. Why not customize their own, in their image, a personal God that suited their needs and lightened their load without all this cumbersome jewelry and personal property? Hence, cow god was born! Cow god wouldn’t take any bull crap from anybody. Cow god was always ready to go and be worshipped, letting you get away with anything. Who needed rules when cow God was around? If you like it, Cow God loved it. If you hated it, Cow God hated it. Cow God was spiritual playdough. Cow God could be anything you wanted him to be. He was your idol. Let’s face it, he was you. You were worshipping yourself. If this was wrong, they didn’t want to be right.

This didn’t go over well with you-know-who. God. The Israelite’s priorities were so out of whack that God was ready to start all over on his “build a great nation project.” God was beyond mad. He was at an 11 on the anger/pain chart. God and Moses would pick a new group of people and begin again. Moses talked God back from the destructive edge. Verse 14 is an excellent summation, “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster he planned to bring on his people.” (Just a side note here: If God can change God’s mind about something as major as wiping out a whole group of people, why can’t God’s people be a little more open minded on a few things?)

Idolatry can get us in trouble. People of faith still have trouble with idolatry today. We worship ourselves as gods. We hear voices in our head and convince ourselves we’re hearing the Holy Spirit when we’re just telling ourselves what we want to hear. We’ve turned the Bible into an idol. Instead of worshiping the God whose story it tells, we worship the book itself. We worship images of the Ten Commandments instead of learning how to relate to our neighbors in healthy relationships. We worship the American flag instead of the democracy it represents. We will come to worship artificial intelligence. Idols surround us. We have convinced ourselves that idolatry is not only a good thing but an integral part of our culture and a means of proving one’s devotion to God and country. We couldn’t be more wrong. Idolatry will kill us.

Moses may be delayed, but that doesn’t mean God has forgotten us. Remember, we are remembered. We must put the idols away.