Today's Reading: Exodus 32:1-20
Daily Lectionary: Jeremiah 23:1-20; Matthew 25:14-30
And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. " (Exodus 32:7)
Moses is up on the mountain of the Lord for 40 days and 40 nights. The Israelites begin to think that God has deserted them. They call on Aaron to help them make for a god that would be able to lead them as they wanted to be led. Aaron, giving in to the people, tells them to take off their gold rings and other jewelry and bring them to him. When he received these items he melted them down and made an idol, a golden calf and he said to the people, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!"
What is the first commandment? Oh yeah, “You shall have no other gods.” And what commandment do they break first? The first commandment! Isn't that ironic? Or is it? After all, that was the commandment first broken by our parents Adam and Eve. They, like the Israelites, made a god, themselves, that would come before the true God.
Now, before you think you’d never make an idol, you need to understand something. When we sin, whatever the sin may be, we are putting something before the true God. We are showing what we truly are, sinful beings who sin in thought, word and deed....sinners who don't “trust in God above all things.”
The question is, why wasn't Israel destroyed for their idolatry? Moses pleaded with the Lord, “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.” He reminded the Lord of the promise of a Savior. This is the same reason you don’t face the wrath of God....Jesus.
Now don't get me wrong, the wrath of God still needed to be displayed, but it fell on His Son. Jesus, on the cross, was forsaken by the Father as he experienced the very hatred that God has for sin and the sinner. Jesus was sent to hell for us as punishment for our sins that He bore in his body. And so God keeps His promise.
Chief of sinners though I be,
Jesus shed His blood for me;
Died that I might live on high,
Died that I might never die;
As the branch is to the vine,
I am His, and He is mine. (LSB 611:1)