Tag Archives: golden calf

  
My son is getting to the point where he says he’s scared. I remind him of Joshua 1:9, “Do not be afraid. God is with you.” He then asks, “Where is a God?” I tell him, “Right there with you.” He retorts, “But I can’t see Him.” I say, “You can’t see whatever it is that you’re afraid of either.” That’s the way most of us are. We are most afraid of things we can’t see, including God. He frightens us because we can’t see Him, and we can’t control, what we don’t see.

In Exodus 32, the Israelites were camped at the base of Mount Sinai. Moses had been up on the mountain for over a month. The cloud that represented God’s presence still covered it, but the people were afraid Moses wouldn’t come back. They decided they needed a God they could see, so they took their gold earrings off, melted them, and made a calf. Verse 5 says, “Aaron saw how excited the people were, so he built an altar in front of the calf. Then he announced, “Tomorrow will be a festival to the LORD” (NLT).

They thought they could make God into something they could create and still worship Him by worshiping the idol. God is not pleased when we try to confine Him into an image, a symbol, or something we can create. You cannot take an unlimited God and put limited confines on Him. You cannot take an omnipresent God and confine Him to one place. We would like to do that because there are places we go that we don’t want God to know about. There are areas of our lives that we don’t want to give Him power over. Confining Him helps us to justify our actions.

Having an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God is scary to many of us. It means we can’t go anywhere or do anything without Him knowing. We can’t have secret lives or secret parts of our life without Him seeing it. We can’t hide our sins from Him. We can’t hide who we really are from Him. That’s a scary thought for some people. The good news is that He sees those parts of our lives, and He loves us still. He knows about our secret sins, and offers forgiveness for them too.

When we no longer try to confine God, we unleash Him into our lives. We give Him the authority to come into every area, even the hidden ones, and clean house. In Psalm 139:7, David asked, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” (NKJV) He recognized God’s omniscience and His omnipresence. He then concluded in verses 23 and 24 by unleashing God in his life. He prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.” Don’t be afraid to trust what you can’t see. God will forgive you and lead you into everlasting life.