These Are Our Gods

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, 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.” He [Aaron] took [the jewelry] they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:1, 3–4, NIV 1984).

My Musings – And that’s what became of, “everything the Lord has said we will do.” They were quick to break the first and greatest commandment, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2–3, NIV 1984). And that it how it goes with everyone who tries to do “everything the Lord has said.”

We may not be directly breaking that first commandment, but anytime we neglect to do what the Lord has said, we are in essence, putting another “god” before Him. Reason enough for James to write, “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10, NIV 1984).

While we may “have the desire to do what is good, [we] cannot carry it out. For what [we] do is not the good [we] want to do; no, the evil [we] do not want to do—this [we] keep on doing. Now if [we] do what [we] do not want to do, it is no longer [us] who do it, but it is sin living in [us] that does it.” (Romans 7:18–20, NIV 1984). No wonder the Apostle Paul goes on say, “What a wretched man I am!” (Romans 7:24, NIV 1984).

Wretched because we are incapable of obtaining salvation by keeping the law. Because truly, we would have to do “”everything the Lord has said” and not do anything He said we should not do. So, what’s the answer? “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works.” (Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV 1984).

My Advice – It is “not from ourselves.” We simply cannot do it. It is then purely through God’s grace [the gift] that we are saved. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world [for what they could not do], but to save the world through [the One who could]. (John 3:17, NIV 1984). This is not something He was obliged to do. No, He did it because, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, NIV 1984).

So, again, what’s the answer? Believe in Him. Because “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must [or can] be saved.” (Acts 4:12, NIV 1984).