the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 1 of 5
Exodus 32:1-10
One would like to be able to pass straightaway from the description of the tabernacle in ch. 31 to its construction in ch. 35. Alas! between the two there is interposed a sombre episode in the history of this poor people. Just when, on the mountain, God was giving the law to Moses, down below the people were already transgressing the first two commandments. And while the LORD was giving His servant instructions as to the worship of Himself, Israel was setting up an idolatrous worship. How great is man’s perversity and his ingratitude, his readiness to forget the goodness of God! (Psalms 78:11 and Psalms 106:19-23). "Idolatry" is not solely the sin of Israel and of the heathen. In recalling this scene, the apostle Paul is constrained to put Christians on their guard (1 Corinthians 10:7; ; 1 Corinthians 10:14). An idol is anything and everything which takes the place in our hearts which belongs to Jesus alone. It may be like the golden calf,
(1) in the likeness of the gods of this world (the Egyptians worshipped the bull Apis),
(2) cast in the mould of, (or in other words, bear the imprint of) the imagination of the human mind,
(3) fashioned with a graving tool: the fruit of our own efforts (Isaiah 44:10; ; Isaiah 44:12).
All that can happen when we have lost sight of the return of our Mediator, Christ, at present absent in heaven as Moses was on the mountain.
