February 11, 2024
Read Exodus 32-34, Psalm 42
Today is the super bowl. I read a story last week about three men who have made it to all 57 Super Bowls. The men will sit together and cheer on their teams. Thousands of other people will gather around the stadium and millions more will watch the super bowl on TV tonight. Sports fans are devoted to a game they love. So are the “Swifties” who enjoy Taylor Swift. The things that most people care about or are devoted to can change over time. Sometimes rather quickly.
In Exodus 32-34 we read a little about devotion. Moses was at the top of the mountain talking with God and receiving the 10 Commandments on stone tablets. During the forty days he was up on the mountain the rest of Israel got bored and worried that something might have happened to him. Their solution, they go to Aaron and ask him “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” v.1. Aaron without question decides to collect gold from the people and then he fashions a gold calf image that they will worship. “Then they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt’” v. 4. Moses and God had become silent for a short time and the people had to find something to worship. God informs Moses of what they have done and tells Moses to go down and take care of the incident. God calls them, “stiff-necked people” v. 9. In other words, they are stubborn or slow to learn. We might be tempted to scoff at their actions. “What! Don’t the Israelites know who God is? Don’t they realize what He just did to help them escape from Egypt?” But remember to us, it is just a few short pages in the Bible, but much more time had passed. And if we are honest, we might see a little bit of ourselves in this passage. We are all “prone to wander, prone to leave the God I love” as the great hymn describes it. It is very easy to get out of the habit of spending time with God. There are always distractions and temptations that want to steal away our devotion to the Lord.
Psalm 42 is one of my favorite psalms. The popular song in the late twentieth century “As the Deer” comes from this psalm. The author desires to be in the house of the Lord and cannot go. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” vv. 1-2. Here you have the opposite effect occurring. Being cut off from God’s people, being alone and away from the Lord. If brings a strong desire for the authors to desire to back at a place where they were before. “These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng” v. 5.
What else do you see in these chapters? What words, phrases, or themes stand out to you?
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