Day 29 or January 29. There's no substitute for the living God.
Our thoughts today are rooted in Exodus chapter 32, verses 23 and 24.
They said to me, Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought
us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him. So I told them, Whoever has
any gold jewellery, take it off. Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the
fire, and out came this calf.
Now the big picture surrounding these verses. Moses had been away at Sinai for a long time,
and the people were beginning to wonder if he was ever coming back. They get Aaron, his
brother, to make a golden calf for them, so that they had a god to worship, even if it
was just an idol. As Moses descended Mount Sinai, he could hear a loud noise that made
him suspicious. He got closer, and then saw the golden calf. In a blinding fury, he threw
the Ten Commandments to the ground, breaking both of the stone tablets. Thoughts of anger,
disappointment, murder, and much more, must have run through his mind, as he sought out
his brother. God reassuringly tells Moses that he can write the Ten Commandments again
if Moses prepares two tablets of stone and takes them up the mountain. We can only imagine
the thoughts going through Moses' mind as he struggled to the top of the mountain carrying
two freshly prepared stone tablets, and all because of his brother's poor leadership,
rather than any fault that could be laid at his own feet.
And now today's action step. Have you noticed we don't have road accidents now, we have
incidents instead? No one is to blame for an accident, but an incident is invariably
someone else's fault, and usually the other person's. Nothing's changed since Aaron's
time. It wasn't his fault either. The golden calf just jumped out. Until we are ready to
accept that our sin is our fault, and confess it before our Father in heaven, we can never
be purified and cleansed from all unrighteousness, as John reminds us in 1 John chapter 1 verse
9.