Thoughts on Hebrews: God's Rest, Part 14

No discussion of God’s rest would be complete without addressing the golden calf. First, the crisis:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

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!’” And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”

But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

An immediate crisis was averted through God’s grace and Moses’ intercession. They did not die. God relented; but not unlike the Garden something did die. In the Garden, union with God was broken when the man rebelled. At Sinai, a proposed union at Sinai, proposed by God, was broken off by Israel, much like an engagement. Israel committed adultery with another. Adultery would mark the character of Israel. Take a look at Jeremiah 3 for example, and Ezekiel 23, and Hosea.

Remember Israel, after hearing all the words God conveyed to them through Moses in Exodus 19-23, said with one voice, “I do.”

Then God said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.” Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

But Moses went up to the mountain at the command of the Lord, and was on the mountain with God for 40 days and 40 nights. This delay of not even a month and a half was too much for Israel. Or was it? Let’s be serious. The delay had nothing to do with their desire for the golden calf.

Here is what they said to Aaron: “Up, make us gods who shall go before us . . . .” And here is what they did: “And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings [to the golden calf Aaron had made]. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”

Israel left her heart in Egypt. God was too terrible for them as a result:

Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. (Exodus 20:19-21)

Do you remember someone who stood afar off? We’ve seen this attitude towards God before:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of th,e garden.

In this exchange with Moses, we hear an echo of man’s great debacle—a fleeing from the presence of God. Like Adam, the commandment was not seen as God’s great benefit to them and to their instruction in righteousness, as His specially elected people. The commandments and the flaming, thundering mountain offered a theology they were not prepared to accept. Rather, they were more inclined to tread the well-worn path of the builders of the Tower of Babel. They would create God, control God, and meet God on their own terms—which would not be God at all of course, but a suitable substitute for Him—and thus the physical creation of a golden calf reflected the idol already formed in their heart.

One other thing should be noted. The gold for the golden calf came from the gold the Egyptians had given to Israel:

The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

In other words, they took the gifts of God as the material for their idolatry from God:

So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.

What does this have to do with God’s rest? Pretty much everything.

If you, as a believer in Christ, worship created things, rather than the Creator, if you worship the work of your hands, taking the gifts of God, and using them as the material for the idols of your heart, you will never enter His rest. I cannot state this strongly enough.

Ananias and Sapphira confirm this truth. As you may recall from Acts 4, “Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite and a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.” Ananias and Sapphira sold a possession. (the Greek words for what Barnabas sold and what the couple sold are different. Barnabas sold arable land, agricultural land; and therefore, he may have sold a farm or an estate, which the word sometimes means. The couple sold a possession. That’s the literal meaning, as in what the rich young ruler had, and could not let go of—possessions.)

Ananias and Sapphira lied. They misrepresented the price of the sale and held some back for themselves, which they would have otherwise been permitted to do. They could have said, “We sold our possession for this much and we needed or wanted to keep this much for other things.” And that would have been fine, as Simon Peter points out. They envied the attention and respect Barnabas had. But they wanted the attention and respect he had without giving all. Their possession possessed them actually. And what happened? They were struck dead.

Anyone who would worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, as Jesus said. Their worship was a lie. They put themselves before God, and they paid a terrific price for that spiritual self-aggrandizement.

They stand as a warning, as Israel does: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion . . . “ We do well to take heed of these things:

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Heb. 8:24-29)

Image courtesy of Unsplash and Sharon McCutcheon @sharonmcuthceon