What has eyes but can’t see, ears that can’t hear, a mouth that doesn’t speak? Man-made gods!
After one last reminder about the importance of the Sabbath, the Lord “gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony…written with the finger of God” (Ex 31:18). Meanwhile, back at the camp…what was this? Exodus 32 begins with: “the people saw that Moses delayed coming down” (v 1). Imagine composing a nation’s constitution, bill of rights, legal code, holidays, and religious practices with a priesthood to maintain them—not to mention a covenant with God and plans for a magnificent home for Him among His people—all that in less than 40 days, and they thought Moses was behind schedule! The Bible says we are to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7), but our natural tendency is the opposite. The Lord said to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn 20:29). The people were used to seeing Moses as their leader, not the Lord. Now that he was out of sight, what God had told them was out of mind: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” We can do the same, depending on people rather than looking by faith to the Lord. Moses had left Aaron in charge and if we look to men in the place of God, they will always let us down. They said to Aaron, “Make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses,…we do not know what has become of him” (Ex 32:1). The crowd seemed threatening, Aaron buckled under the pressure, asked for a donation of their gold earrings and, amazing as it sounds, made a gold bull which they promptly worshiped. Stephen explained, “In their hearts they turned back to Egypt” (Acts 7:39). Little good Egypt’s idols did for Egypt! An idol is anything that steals my heart from the Lord. Thus John’s warning to us, “Keep yourselves from idols” (1 Jn 5:21).