December 13, 2023
Passage Read: Exodus 31-34
Meditation Verses: 32:1-6
Thought
All these people saw the miraculous signs that God did through Moses. They saw the fire and smoke on the mountain where Moses was. Yet in spite of that, they turned away from the Lord so easily! A little silence, a month with no sign of Moses and their first thought is to make a new god to lead them, as if anything their hands made could come alive and instruct them! Why didn't they send Aaron to go looking for Moses? Why was their first thought to give up on him and God and make their own god? Right in front of the mountain that was still burning, burning in the same way that caused them panic at its first appearance? How eager we are to discount all that we know of God when His representative is delayed, when His spokesperson is absent for a time. We don't appoint someone else to seek the Lord and instruct us, we appoint someone else to make us a new god to follow.
Application
There is such a natural opposition to knowing God in truth that our first inclination at our first opportunity is to fashion a god after our own desires. That is why mankind drifts from God rather than toward Him. We don't want to know the truth, we don't want to be under someone else's authority. We want to be our own boss and make God do our bidding. We want our god to let us do our desire, to approve of our thoughts and wants and wishes, rather than to ask us to die to our flesh and live for Him. Even staring God in the face, we deny His presence and construct a god who will approve our every thought and desire! I must not give in to this impulse. What God has recorded for all time, I must submit to and believe and obey. I am not free to make God after whatever image I like, but must accept the likeness He has presented to me through the record of His Word. I must not twist Scripture to suit my desires, but conform myself to Scripture's revelation. And if God seems silent for a time, I should seek Him in His Word rather than go off and find someone who has a more pleasing god than the true God.