Idolatry and the Quest to Return to Bondage

Idolatry and the Quest to Return to Bondage

They made a calf in Horeb
    and worshiped a metal image.
They exchanged the glory of God
    for the image of an ox that eats grass.
They forgot God, their Savior,
    who had done great things in Egypt,
wondrous works in the land of Ham,
    and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
Therefore he said he would destroy them—
    had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him,
    to turn away his wrath from destroying them.

Psalm 106:19-23

We commit idolatry every day.  It sounds odd, but you and Ipractice a sinful concept almost as old as time on a regular basis.  Let us start with the Golden Calf.  The story of the Exodus is a beautiful story of how God rescues his people from bondage.  He uses the unlikely person of Moses to do this; but this is not met without resistance.  There is resistance from the Egyptian Pharaoh, resistance from Moses, there is even resistance from the very people God is saving.  The story does not end with God delivering the Israelites from slavery; they travel for forty years in a journey that should have taken them a week.  They complain, want to go back to oppression, they fail to see what God is doing for them.  And the specific recollection described in the psalm above tells us that while the prophet Moses was meeting God on Mount Sinai, the Israelites grew tired of waiting and decided to make a god of their own (please notice the lower-case g here).  It makes me think of Romans 1 in which Paul states, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

It can be easy for us who live in western culture, who have experienced regeneration, who are being sanctified, who live thousands of years later to see how foolish this is.  It is easy for us to practice this chronological snobbery because we know the end of this story.  But what we fail to see is that not only is the Exodus a narrative of what has already happened, it is also an allegory.  You can easily apply this concept to your own life. Think about how you came to know Jesus.  Regardless how “good” you were before becoming a Christian, God saved you from bondage.  And if you are reading this right now, I can guarantee that you haven’t reached the Promised Land.  How many times while we were in our sin; willingly, not searching for a Savior; did we feel trapped?  How many times did we feel that the weight of oppression that would never lighten, but always would get heavier and heavier?  But God, who loved us first, saved us from our slavery which was a course to eternal suffering caused by our own desires.  We are now free, on the path to the Promised Land; but our story is not over yet because we still have air in our lungs.  How many times do we look back?  How many times do we yearn for the very things that were killing us?  Although our spirit is now alive, and our mind is being renewed; our flesh is still tainted surrounded by a tainted world.  And the very things that were crushing us now appeal to us.  We inexplicably crave our old bondage.

Our natural desire is to worship, it is what we were created to do.  But when sin came into the world, our desire became skewed.  Our flesh is still prone to this skewed behavior.  How many times when we get impatient with God do we resort to our own devices.  Instead of trusting God, we trust ourselves and the things that our in our lives to help us serve God become gods themselves.  We rely on own wisdom and we start worshipping money, career, status, and any other imaginable thing.  And the worst part of this is that these things that are not necessarily bad and their worship is celebrated by our society.  We must not sacrifice our identity in Christ for things that will pass.

The sad part of the Exodus story is that the generation that was freed from slavery did not make it to the Promised Land, but their children did.  God was very angry with His people, but He preserved them.  He made a covenant with Abraham that his descendants will bless the nations, this is Jesus; had Israel been destroyed, there would be no salvation for us.  But God being constant, while we are fickle, saw that He promised Jesus would come out of the lineage of Abraham.  Even more importantly, He made a covenant before time began ensuring redemption.  If you are in Christ, your salvation was secure before time began.  Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.  He loves us even though we long for our bondage in which we have been set free from.  He loves us despite our spiritual amnesia.