gods of gold

I was listening to a teaching, and the minister made reference to a passage in Exodus. The passage was in the 32rd Chapter, my attention was arrested by a verse that was sitting quietly, unobtrusively.

The verse was:

Exod.32.31 – And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.

This was a problem statement. It was stating in very clear times, the error that the children of Israel had committed. He had previously called this a great sin. There are not many collective sins of Israel that Moses, in commenting on, calls great sins.

To truly understand problem, we have to dig around it. Let’s consider a few things:

Exod.32.1 – And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. (emphasis mine)

Moses had gone up to God, and it seemed as though, the whole process, waiting on and for God was taking time. So they called on Aaron, to go up, similarly as Moses went up, but in this case, he should make gods for them, which shall go before them. So notice that they wanted progress, and it seemed that the true God was taking time, and they opted for the option of gods, to lead them going forward as soon as possible.

Exodus 32:2
[2]And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

Next, we see, the response of Aaron. They requested for gods, he required their gold. Why? If idolatry was their desire, they could just have easily gotten trees to worship, or make sacrifices to the sun or moon or what not. But, remember, they desired immediate progress, so Aaron turned to what they immediately had available to them: Gold. I will come back to this later.

Exodus 32:4
[4]And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

Now, Aaron fashions a molten calf, yet when the people would refer to the same thing, they said, ‘these be thy gods, O Israel’. This is plural form. Why? I think the answer is found in the way Moses phrased his reference to the molten calf.

He said ‘gods of gold‘. From this, I am going to attempt an inference. I perceive that though Moses was looking at the golden calf and rightfully appalled by it, he was also having in mind the rest of the gold still in their possession, unmelted. It seems that, though externally there was a molten calf, inwardly, gold had become a god in their hearts, such that the calf was an aggregate expression of the gods each of them now possessed. The gold left in their custody. They now perceived gold as a ready alternative, to be converted into ‘live’ gods if and when the situation called for it. Gold was now stuff of the gods.

Is it not typical of us, as believers, that one of the quick substitutes we have for waiting on God are our resources? It seems in the days wherein God seems to have us in a holding pattern, the presence of wealth, this world’s goods, material resources become ready alternatives to allow us make progress, move on from where the Lord kept us.

Could it be possible that the progress we seem to have made have been driven by gods of gold? Could it be possible that the impatience in our hearts, and the haste in our souls in our waiting period is because we have gold, and it is occurring to us that a faster route would be to turn the gold into gods?

We can see why it is a great sin, it is the substitution of God, the multi-breasted One, for the resources he has rightfully given us to become the gods we will now subscribe to. It is serving as god, the very things that God gave us to resources to help us follow and worship him.

It translates clearly even into the modern day. What gods of gold have we made for ourselves? What gods of gold are currently leading us? Have we departed from the place, our Redeemer told us to wait for him? It is a great sim. May God have mercy on us.