In Exodus
32:1-14 another picture of God’s great love for us is shown.
"Moses had been up on the mountain with God for a very long time and the people grew tired of waiting, so they asked Aaron “come make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
"Moses had been up on the mountain with God for a very long time and the people grew tired of waiting, so they asked Aaron “come make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
So Aaron
without thinking tells them to collect all their gold earrings and bring them
to him and he uses the gold to make an idol in the shape of a calf. Then the
people declare “these are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of Egypt!”
Then Aaron
builds an alter in front of the calf and tells everyone there will be a big
festival to the Lord the following day. Early the next day they all gather and
sacrifice burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. They then sat
down to eat and drink and turned things into a wild revelry. God sees this and
says to Moses “Go down, because your people,
whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been
quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol
cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it
and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’”
“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now
leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy
them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God saying “why should your
anger burn against the people you brought out of Egypt by your great power and
mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say that you brought us out for evil
intent, only to kill us in the mountains and wipe us off the face of the earth?
Turn your fierce anger aside and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember
your promise to your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by
your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the
sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will
be their inheritance forever.’” Then the Lord relented
and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
This is just another example from the Old Testament of the love God shows
his people by sparing them time and again from the judgment that they deserve.
His most perfect act of love was sending His son, Jesus, to earth, to live and
die once and for all the sins of the past, present and future. Jesus now sits
on the throne next to God his Father and intercedes for us whenever things get
too hard for us to handle on our own. God only desires to have an intimate
relationship with His people, a one on one relationship with each of us. He wants us to
take advantage of all He has to offer and this can only be done with the help
of Christ. If we truly seek Him through prayer and time spent in the word, He
will answer and be our guide to the perfect future. As much as we anger Him, He
still does not want us to parish but have everlasting Life through the gift of
Jesus Christ, His son!
