As we continue to ponder "The Great Idolatry in the Desert" as described in Exodus 32 we must not forget where those recently released slaves had gotten all their gold. It came from Egypt ... yes, that same Egypt that had held them captive for over 400 years. As God was slaying the firstborn sons of Egypt, He told the children of Israel to ask for silver and gold from their captors. Now perhaps you are thinking, "If I were an Egyptian and these very slaves had caused me so much misery over the past few months, the very last thing I would do is GIVE them my valuables to take with them!" Well, that's what I would have been thinking ... but maybe that's just me. Exodus 11:3, however, explains that God made the Egyptians favorably disposed to their soon-to-be liberated slaves. The gold they took with them into the wilderness was thus directly imparted to them by the hand of God. So consider with me carefully just what this means .... the very valuable metals that were meant to visibly testify to God's covenantal commitment were then used to build the very idol that was to serve as a replacement to the One who had provided the treasure to them in the first place!
This is an incredibly important spiritual concept not to be missed. We all use the things that God has provided to build our own personal golden calves ... there I said it. In mid-life, we are faced with this fact again and again .... the very things that God has provided to us so generously for our welfare we end up using to functionally replace Him. Those very things that were supposed to serve as functional reminders of His faithful presence in our lives end up becoming replacement glories that woo us away from Him. For example, He provided us with the gold of friendship, and we came to crave the acceptance of people more than the love of God. He provided us with the gold of marriage and family, but marital bliss became more important to us than pleasing Him. He provided us with the gold of work, and we let this means of provision become the very thing that controlled us [or at least some of us :)]. He gave us the gold of material ease, and we began to live more for things than we did for Him. Much of the bitter harvest of mid-life is both directly attached to the fact and proportional to the amount that we have failed to keep things in their rightful places.
Lastly, but also related to this, is the fact that God is jealous for our worship and will do whatever it takes to get it. This is often hard to accept [especially for the post-modern mind], but three thousand people died because of the construction and worship of that golden calf. There are at least two ways to think about this. One would be to see this as sure proof that God is not loving, merciful or kind. The other way is more biblical. If God really loved Israel, there was no way that He could accept their giving the love that belonged to Him to an inanimate object! Wouldn't you agree that true love is always appropriately jealous??? What if I sat down on the love seat in my man cave [and don't ask what kind of man cave has a love seat in it? I have to let Janna think it is at least somewhat her room too.] with Janna and whispered into her ear that she was one of many women that I loved very much? What do you think she would do? Well if you know Janna then watch out. Sparks are bound to fly. And that is true for all of us ... if the woman [or in the reverse case, the man] had any love for their husband [or wife] at all, she [he] would be both jealous and outraged. The only way this wouldn't be true is if she had no real love for me at all. In similar manner, God finds Israel's idolatry just as unacceptable. It cannot fit within His plan. It has no place in the kind of relationship that He has covenanted with us as His people.
There is also something else very important here. God is willing to sacrifice what is important to us in order to reclaim our hearts. God loved Israel so much that He was willing to lose 3,000 Israelites in order to turn the hearts of the whole nation back to Him. And this is always the ONE thing God is unwilling to share ... OUR HEARTS! So He will use everything at His disposal to reclaim our affection, adoration and worship. And God's reclamation actions can often be devastating while still being sure signs of the depth and faithfulness of His love. He will not stop fighting for our hearts. He will not share us with another. He will battle to be the center of our personal universes until we are with Him in eternity.
Much of our losses in this life, and especially the losses that tend to take our breaths away, have to do with the jealousy of God's love. He is willing to have our dreams crumble, our plans fail, and our hopes erode in order to win back the love of our hearts. He could not truly love us and allow our jobs, homes, friends, spouses, children, or position in life replace Him. His love is just this beautifully intolerant. He is willing to be severe in order not to lose us [those of you who remember by "accident" in July 2003 may know a little of which I speak ... those who don't may consider reading my blog entitled "My Miracle of Brokenness" posted on August 21, 2011 [funny I should mention this tonight as I just gave that story out to one of my patients today who had never heard that story, and its probably been two years since I last shared it at the office, and then I mention in my blog tonight]. And then I shared with her the tip of the iceberg of all I knew God did through that whole ordeal [I will never know the full extent of just who all was reached with it on this side of glory but 100,000 people worldwide is a conservative number I think]. Yes, our God is willing to do drastic things in order to free us from slavery to things that were never meant to rule us. We must not permit the losses of mid-life to allow us to question His presence and love. They actually prove the opposite. God has been battling for our hearts for years and will continue to do so, even if it means taking away the things that have become overly precious to us.
So we must ask God to reveal to us our golden calves. Perhaps we should figuratively watch a "video" of our lives for the next week and see just what it is that we are living for. One of the saddest things I know of is to see people going through their crises, be it at mid-life or other times, and yet failing to learn their lessons. It is just too sad when God is battling for our hearts for years and yet we still fight to hang on to our idols. We must each ask ourselves this series of questions on almost a weekly or even a daily basis. Are we aware of our calf-construction tendencies? Are we learning our lessons? Are we fighting for our golden calves while God is fighting for our hearts? What in our lives right now tends to too easily get out of their rightful places? Are we still melting down our silver and gold because we don't know what God is doing in our lives and we feel we just can't wait any longer?
It is very liberating when we finally realize that we are all born with the propensity to worship and serve the creation more than the Creator, and our early life experiences often simply establish the tracks on which our idolatry will run. It can all be so very humbling yet also very liberating to realize that our greatest problems in life lie inside us rather than outside us. And finally, it is both very encouraging and liberating to realize that Jesus has come so that we may no longer live for ourselves but instead be freed to live for Him [2 Corinthians 2:14-15].
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