Our Golden Calves

“We’re all worshipers, and most of our worship doesn’t happen through song. It happens in the way we live—in our actions and our priorities. It’s innate to who we are to bow down. Our hearts were created to exalt something.”

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. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” (Exodus 32:7-8 ESV)

I love to worship. I love to be in God’s presence and exalt Him for who He is. I’ve always felt drawn to worship—leading it and participating in it. It’s an honor I don’t take lightly. But here’s the deal: we’re all worshipers, and most of our worship doesn’t happen through song. It happens in the way we live—in our actions and our priorities. It’s innate to who we are to bow down. Our hearts were created to exalt something.

Bless Moses. He just couldn’t keep the Israelites in line. He goes up Mount Sinai to meet with the Lord, and it was there he received the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone. Scripture tells us that these tablets were “inscribed by the finger of God,” and I think that’s just so cool (see Ex. 31:18). But while Moses was busy, you know, getting the Ten Commandments and all, the people grew tired of waiting for him to return. They got antsy. They grew insecure. And then in their haste, they turned to a golden calf fashioned by human hands. They bowed before it. They exalted it. They felt an insatiable need to bow to something.

Why? Just weeks after the parting of the Red Sea and vowing unrivaled commitment to the Lord, how could the people settle for a lifeless idol? Well, the answer isn’t simple, but it’s timeless: they attempted to meet their own needs. They chose to bow to something they could see rather than Someone who called them to belief. It was engrained in them from their bondage—this Egyptian idolatry. And while their feet were no longer on Egyptian soil, their hearts were still very much divided.

How often do we also crave something tangible—something we can see—more than the very God who calls us to faith?

Now, there is so much to unpack in Exodus 32. For one, the people approach Aaron, Moses’s spokesman, and demand that he make them something to worship. And he does it! The man who would become the High Priest of Israel constructs an idol due to pressure from the masses. How often do we do the same?

Here’s another important detail: Aaron builds an altar before the calf (probably more like a bull, which was associated with Egyptian idol worship) and declares there would be a festival to the Lord on the next day. Don’t miss this: the people attempted to weave idol worship with a festival to the Lord. Then when Moses returns from Mt. Sinai, Aaron lies to him about how the calf appeared. Aaron did in fact make the idol with his own hands, but he tells Moses that he simply threw the gold into the fire and out popped this golden calf. I. just. can’t.

Except, I have.

Haven’t we all? Haven’t we fashioned our own idols when we’ve grown weary in waiting for the Lord to move or act, when we’ve become impatient in waiting for Him to bless us or answer us or make His presence known? Haven’t we turned from the living God who alone delivers us and reached for substitutes to bring us a false sense of peace? Things like finding our identity in money, in our jobs, in our social media image, in our spouse or children, in our body image. What else? Maybe even finding our identity in service to our churches and ministries—in being “good.” Do we lift these things up and exalt them above God Himself?

Here's how I know I have: when I look at what has consumed my time and attention, when I examine what my heart adores, sometimes it becomes painfully apparent that my worship is centered on idols. They may not be made of gold. In fact, they are so often made of flesh. They are so often good things.

One of the biggest traps we fall for is weaving the worship of idols into worship of the Lord. We thread it in and do it in the name of the Lord. What we worship in place of God often looks so much like the things of God that we get away with it in the eyes of others. Because on the outside, it looks holy. Reverent. It looks like a festival to the Lord. But at the center, it’s a golden calf.

I used to read this passage and think these people were the silliest fools on the planet. How could they experience what they had experienced—the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna—and then turn and worship a golden calf?

But we all have our own golden calves.

God has something so much better for us. Our hearts were created to worship Him. No one else is worthy. No one else is deserving. Nothing else will satisfy this need built deep within us. And when we settle for exalting anything less than the Lord—even good things—we rob Him of the glory He deserves.