WARNING PREACHY - 02/14/2016

The Making of my Golden Calf…

John 5:39-40

³⁹ You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

When God redeemed the Israelites from their Egyptian slavery, He did so with many undeniable miracles.  Then, some 40-days after they were released they gathered gold and created the Golden Calf which they then called God who redeemed them.  [(3/7/2016) NOTE: I have no idea where I got this number of 40 days, it has been something that I have believed for almost 20 years and I am not sure where I got it.  The number is wrong, as I read through it now I count roughly 110 days and I suspect there were more that I did not count.  The funny part is that I have never once been challenged on it. ;-) ]  I remember the first time I read the book of Exodus; I remember thinking to myself, “are they really that stupid?”  Time after time in quick succession they forgot about the God who redeemed them and went headlong into some form of idolatry.  

Now I feel for the Israelites.  

I know my own propensity toward being superstitious and creating my own Golden Calves.  Not that I would ever use my gold to make a graven image (the Lord knows I’m too cheap (ahem) I mean frugal for that) but I do know my own capacity of making God in my own image; I just do it in the construct of my mind.

Someone said: “When God hates all the same people you do, you can be sure that you have created a god in your own image.” 

I am guilty of this.

I don’t believe God hates the people I do.  I realize that the same blood that was shed for me was shed for even my enemy.  But I have certainly created a god in my own image because I have translated His very essence into definition that my limited human brain can make sense of.  Instead of seeking to be led by God through many long and tedious hours of prayer and guidance through the Holy Spirit, I read the words of my denominational literature or the faithful men of Church history, heck; I even read the Scriptures and form grandiose ideas that I can make sense of.  And it is my thoughts, my best reasoning, the images in my limited mind that I hold dear to and say “This is my God.”

When Jesus rose back to life from the dead he appeared to his disciples and he breathed on them the Holy Spirit (John 20:22), at that instant faith in God became forevermore a spiritual concern; never again to be confused with something physical that is created.  The Holy Spirit of God is not to be captured, defined, and then repackaged into a neat comfortable doctrine by the likes of me.  But that is exactly what I do; I recognize the obvious abuses that men have done (and do) in the name of the Holy Spirit and so I reject the pursuit of God though the Holy Spirit for deference to a sound reason.  I cling to doctrines and theologies that are neat and tidy; highly defined.  I throw the Holy Spirit out with the proverbial bath-water and trade it for the popular systematic theology of the Holy Spirit.  And then I stand back with those of my ilk and say “Here, here is our God”.

And when I am silent and still before Him I get a sense of that breath.  As the nephesh (breath of life) was breathed into me at my creation (Genesis 2:7) so also the Holy Spirit has been breathed upon me by my resurrected savior.  I do recognize that I have physical life through Adam and when I recognized my redemption and bent a knee to Jesus, I realized a newly born spiritual life in me (John 3:5-8).  And yet, like a scared Israelite, some 40 days out of Egypt, I always seem to return and seek those definable physical constructs of my own mind. 
 
Because of this I find comfort in the words of the Apostle Paul.

¹And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.   ²For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. ⁴My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, ⁵so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.  (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

As I ponder the above words I am stopped dead in my religious tracks as I see clearly the calf that I have made.