Moses, God, and the Golden Calf — The Darkest Moment Leads to the Greatest Revelation

Bad Habits Die Hard

Parashat Ki Tisa is one of the saddest, and at the same time happiest, texts of the Torah. The Golden Calf was not some strange idol invented by Aaron. The Golden Calf was a representation of Hathor — an ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of joy, feminine love, and motherhood. Hathor was the chief goddess of Egypt for many centuries. She had a female body and a head of a beautiful woman with ears of a calf. The Golden Calf was her representation. So, in a way, Aaron was taking the people of Israel back to Egypt spiritually. It was back to their well-known spiritual turf and comfort zone.

Moses was up there at the top of Mt. Sinai talking to God and receiving the Torah, not eating and not drinking, and they were down eating and drinking, carousing and worshiping an idol. This whole event takes place just a very short time after crossing the Red Sea on dry ground, after leaving Egypt with the wealth of the Egyptians, after experiencing the power of God in the Ten Plagues. From Joshua, in the very last part of his life, we still hear that the Israelites, even after entering the Land of Promise, continued to worship the gods of the Egyptians that they were familiar with before the Exodus:

Bad habits die hard! Aaron, like any good politician, knows that rule number one for a political leader is to please the people and give them what they want. After that, the politician can do with the people whatever he wants. So, Aaron falls on what the people are familiar with.

Notice also, dear brothers and sisters, the exact words that the leaders of the tribes of Israel ask Aaron to do:

The demand of the leadership of Israel from Aaron is not that he will make them "a god," but in the plural, "gods," that will lead them through the wilderness. When people depart from the Word of God, and start having motives and desires that are contrary to God's Word, there are no more limits. Idolatry does not just creep in. Idolatry comes in like a herd of wild buffalo rushing through the plains of the Midwest, and everything that is in their way gets crushed under their feet.

God Says: "These Are Your People" — Moses Says: "No, They Are Yours"

The sin of the golden calf angered the Lord God of Israel so much that He says to Moses:

In simple English — God says to Moses: "Look, these are your people. They don't want to be My people. I will keep My promise to this stiff-necked people, but I will send my messenger (angel) to lead them. I have better things to do!"

Moses responds:

The bottom line of what Moses says to God in this argument is: "No Sir! These are not my people, they are Your people and You've got to take care of them."

The Greatest Revelation of God's Character

Moses and God compromise, and Moses receives one of the most unusual answers by God as an accommodation specially for him. Here is one of the most fascinating conversations between a man and God — and it results in the greatest self-revelation of the Lord's character in the entire Bible:

Don't let any Christian demagogue ever tell you that the Old Testament or the Torah is a book of judgment, and the New Testament is a book of love and grace. There is no greater demonstration of God's love than Yeshua the Messiah. Yeshua is the purpose of the Torah — the end, the goal — and His sacrifice is based on the promises of God to the people of Israel in the Torah and in the prophets.

Three Lessons We Must Learn

There are three things we must learn from these texts from the Torah. First, we sin because of our impatience and insecurity. We want to be small gods ourselves. We want to set the course of our life, and our satisfaction in life, all alone without the help or the instruction from our Creator. We forget that we are created by the Almighty Creator and we have limited independence in this life. Most of the things in our lives are given to us by the Creator: who our father and mother will be, whether we have the "Y" chromosome or the "X" chromosome, how tall we will be, what color skin we will have, and in what country we will come to the light of day. All of these things are given to us and no one asks us what we want.

Second, God, the Creator, gave us a book of instruction for life. Not for living only, but for living according to the manufacturer's instructions so that we can have the best lives and the most satisfactory life in this world, and in the world to come. Third, God loves us so much, even when we sin such grave and serious sins like the making of the golden calf — that was a rejection and a vote of no confidence against the Lord God who created us and loves us so much that He gave His only begotten Son Yeshua as a sacrifice for our sins and as the provision of salvation in this life and eternally.