Exodus 32: 4-6 (HRV) – “And he received it at their hand,
and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf; and they said:
‘This is your god, O Yisra’el (Israel), which brought you up out of the land of
Egypt.’ And when Aharon (Aaron) saw
this, he built an altar before it; and Aharon made proclamation, and said: ‘To-morrow
shall be a feast to YHWH.’ And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered
burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat
and to drink, and rose up to make merry.”
Most of us are familiar with this story. The children of Yisara’el were at the base of
Mount Sinai waiting for Moshe to return.
He was taking too long and they were worried that he might never
return. Instead of waiting for the word
of YHWH to be brought to them, they created their own image of who they thought
God should be. And when they worshipped at
the feet of the golden calf, they worshipped… who? I was raised with the impression that they
were worshipping a false god, but that’s not entirely accurate. If you would have asked the Yisra’elites, “Who
is it that you’re worshipping?” they would have responded, “Why, we’re
worshipping YHWH, the one true God.”
Their sin was not in worshipping a false god, it was in worshipping God
falsely.
What happened here?
Were they doing anything wrong in worshipping, making offerings, or making merry? Of course not. All of these things were commanded by YHWH for us to do, so what was wrong? The children of Yisra’el grew impatient (always a bad sign) and fell
back on the traditions of men that they learned in Egypt.
Literally they were worshipping a false god
that they had created, but we need to understand that this was not their mindset. The people made the claim that, “This is your
god, O Yisra’el, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” That was YHWH. And if that’s not clear enough, Aharon makes
the proclamation, “To-morrow shall be a feast to YHWH.” They weren’t worshipping Ba’al or any other
false god. They were worshipping
YHWH.
So if their hearts were worshipping YHWH, the one true
God, then why was YHWH God so upset?
Because in their disobedience (Yes, disobedience. Moshe wasn't down from the mountain yet, but YHWH had already shouted down the ten
commandments in Exodus 20) and impatience, they decided not to let YHWH define
Himself, but instead defined who YHWH was according to their own desires. They lifted the one true God up, but
essentially made the proclamation that He was nothing like who He really was. In their minds they were worshipping YHWH,
but by doing it in the way that they had been taught by the Egyptians, the
result was that they were worshipping a false god and they didn’t even know it. They were making a public statement to the rest of the nation and the world that THIS is who God was and what He was like, and it was a lie.
In 3: YHWH and Ba’al, I revealed that the word "ba'al" is an
ancient Hebrew word meaning Lord. With
that in mind, let’s look at Jezebel and the prophets of Ba’al. Were they worshipping the primary Phoenician
false god, or were they worshipping a generic “lord” that they had
created? After researching this for
myself, I can’t be one hundred percent certain either way, but it presents an
interesting scenario if true. And it’s
possible that, to an extent, both were true.
The fact of the matter was that Jezebel very definitely
wanted things done her way. She wanted
to act in a way that was displeasing to YHWH with no repercussions or guilt for doing so. Sound familiar? So she very definitely had the prophets of Ba’al
under her command teaching and preaching her message. It is possible that the prophets of Ba’al
were the Hebrew religious leaders claiming to worship YHWH, the one true God,
and not a blatantly false rip-off god.
They were probably leading the people according to the Torah as much as possible, but simply ignoring or rewriting bits that Jezebel didn't like, or
intentionally mistranslating or misunderstanding scriptures to make them
palatable. They didn’t drop YHWH
altogether. They manipulated what He had
given them to fit their own selfish desires.
Eliyah (Elijah) called them on it. He differentiated between what they were
doing and what YHWH wanted. He knew the
real voice of God and understood the twisted words of god that they were giving
didn’t match. He knew they were
falsely worshipping YHWH by ignoring scriptures they didn’t want and adding scriptures
that they did, and so, essentially, they were really worshipping themselves. Were they doing this in obedience to a false god Ba'al, or were they worshipping a generic ba'al of their own design that was a twisted form of YHWH? Either way, the results would have been the same. Eliyah told them that they were
worshipping a false god, and to prove it, following YHWH’s instructions, he
challenged them to a contest. The
contest, the way we think about it, was, “Which one of our Gods is real?” But could it have really been, “We both claim to
be worshipping the same God. Which one
of us will He acknowledge as truly belonging to Him?”
We’re seeing this happen in the church today. Most of us really are trying to worship the one
true God, but because of deceptions in church doctrine, we’re not worshipping
Him the way He commanded, and so we’re worshipping a god of, if not our own,
then someone else’s design. We’ve taken
on the worship of Istar (Easter), Nimrod and Tammuz and have claimed that the
pictures in that worship represent Jesus.
We’re worshipping a generic, prosperity-message, indistinct, false “Lord”
that doesn’t get us into trouble at the local country club, but also doesn’t
ignite a fire under our offering. And like
the Yisra’elites at the foot of Mount Sinai, if asked if we were worshipping a
false god, we would claim that it’s simply not true. “We’re worshipping Jesus Christ, the one true
God,” we would say. But what we fail to
see is that what we’re truly chasing is not Him at all, at least in part.
The cool thing is that in God’s mercy, we don’t have to
worship Him perfectly in order for Him to continue to woo and to guide us. He knows we can’t. do it perfectly, but He does want us to desire and to continually seek that perfection. We’re
always to seek perfection and when confronted with the fact that we are
currently in a lie, whether we entered that lie willingly or not, YHWH has told
us that we need to turn from that lie and run back to Him. I haven’t written any of this to attack
people who aren't doing things correctly. Believe me, I'm still chasing perfection and have not arrived yet either. I’ve written this to attack the
lie that is keeping people in a bondage of which they are unaware.
Every one of us has lies that need to be stripped away, and I reiterate, please don’t believe that I think I’m above that. We all need to ask ourselves in what ways we’re seeking YHWH, even when we don’t like where that path is headed, and in what ways we’re seeking another ba’al and altering YHWH’s path consciously or subconsciously because we like that pot of gold we find at the end of our own rainbow.
YHWH is personal.
He wants you to know exactly who He is and exactly who He is not. He wants a living, daily relationship with
you. He doesn’t want to hand you a list
of duties and then order you out of His sight.
YHWH is jealous. He loves you and
wants your affection for Himself. He
doesn’t want your affection shared with other ba’als in the same way that you
don’t want your spouse hitting on other people.
YHWH is truth. Our own ba’als are
just that. Our own. If you want YHWH, you’ve got to come to Him
on His own terms and not according to your selfish demands. If you just want a ba’al
to convince your own guilty conscience that you’re ok and I’m ok in whatever
sin we desire to jump into, then do whatever you want because there’s a ba’al
at the end of every path you can possibly take.
My hope for you today is that you’re hungry for the only
ba’al that can offer you true life and true love instead of the deception that
is our own selfishness.
Scott
Edgiscript3@yahoo.com