And Out Came This Calf

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You may recall the account recorded in the Book of Exodus about the day the people of Israel came to Aaron demanding that he make them a god made of gold, while at that very moment Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving the stone tablets from God Himself. The tablets contained the terms of the Covenant between God and His people etched by His own finger. On a day that their attitudes and actions should have conveyed their allegiance to the One True Living God, they were demanding a lifeless imitation of gold.(1)

Aaron not only bowed to the demands of the people and molded their gold into the shape of a calf, he also declared that they gather for a festival to declare their allegiance to the golden calf. But in the midst of their celebration and feasting, they experienced the severe consequences of their sin from the hand of the God they had blasphemed and disobeyed.

Many of the Israelites died due to their disobedience in making and worshipping the golden calf. They were either killed at the hands of the Levites, or suffered or died as a result of a plague. The sin of the parents had consequences that continued to affect the generations that followed. And yet, Scripture is silent regarding the consequences that Aaron and Hur experienced for their sin – or is it? A casual reading might lead us to believe that Aaron got little more than his hand slapped; but let’s look further.

God does not grade on the curve. There is no hierarchy of sin. He tells us that the wages of sin – all sin and any sin – is death.(2) He will not give us a pass if we only sin certain sins and avoid the “biggies”. The fact-of-the-matter is we are all sinners and have all fallen short of the glory of God.(3) We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. Aaron and Hur were sinners just like you and me. Aaron and Hur were sinners that God, by His grace, had elevated to a position of leadership among His people. They did not earn the position, God called them to it. God gave them authority as spiritual leaders over the people, but with that authority came responsibility and accountability.

When confronting Aaron, Moses said, “You have brought a terrible sin upon the people. What did these people do to you to make you do that?”(4) Moses knew that each child of Israel was also a sinner; and each one was responsible for their own sin, but if the tribe turned to worship a golden calf then those leading the tribe – Aaron and Hur – had responsibility not only for their own choice, but also for their role in leading the tribe in this abomination … or for their failure to lead the tribe away from it.

And when confronted by Moses, Aaron gave the two classic excuses, “The people made me do it” and “I threw the gold in the fire – and out came this calf” (in other words, “I didn’t do it, it just happened”).(5) At that point, he denied any responsibility for his sin. He laid the blame at the feet of other people or circumstances “outside of his control.” How often have we done that? How often do we try to justify and deny our sin? We would do well to heed a lesson from this account – God will not be deceived and He will not be mocked!

We also read in Exodus that because Aaron had let the people get completely out of control, they had become a laughing stock to their enemies. They had defamed their own name, but more critically they had dishonored the name of their God. Three thousand died that day as a result of their sin and many more died, or at a minimum suffered, due to the plague that God sent because of the calf Aaron made.

The price of Aaron’s disobedience was not his own death, rather it was living with the knowledge that his sin had led to the death of thousands – not the heroic death of a battle of honor, but a sinner’s death resulting from the sin of dishonor. He also lived with the knowledge that generations to come would bear the scars of his disobedience. Moses writes, “The LORD was so angry with Aaron that He wanted to destroy him. But I prayed for Aaron, and the LORD spared him.”(6) Because of Moses’ intercession on his behalf, and in God’s sovereign plan, God chose to spare Aaron’s physical life, but He did not spare him from the consequence of the grief and anguish that he was forced to endure for forty years.

On the day Moses had gone up on Mount Sinai, he had also left Hur in charge of the people with Aaron.(7)This incident is the last time we read of Hur in Scripture. Hereafter we only see his name in lists of ancestry. We never read that he opposed the making of the calf. If Hur had honored God by opposing this abomination, it would have been recorded in Scripture. No mention is made whether he stood silently by and did not protest, or whether he led in the rebellion, or whether like Aaron, he went along with the people. Regardless of which action he took, the absence of his presence hereafter causes me to think Hur died for his disobedience that day, either by the sword or due to the plague.

Remember, Hur was Moses’ brother-in-law; he was Miriam’s husband. And as Moses instructed the Levites as they strapped on their swords,(8) God is not a respecter of persons when it comes to sin. I would conjecture that God chose not to spare Hur’s physical life. Which one paid the greater price for their disobedience – Aaron enduring forty years of grief and anguish, or Hur experiencing physical death? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

But here’s the thing – as each one of us journey through our lives, we, too, have been entrusted by God with a responsibility to encourage and lead others – our family members, friends, coworkers, students, and the like. With that role comes responsibility and accountability. Not only has He called us to personally obey Him; He has also called us to lead others to obey Him. At the end of the day, it doesn’t much matter if Aaron formed the golden calf or if it “just came out”. The result was the same, and the consequences were great.

Through our lives, we will influence and lead others to either worship and follow the One True Living God or we will lead them to worship a lifeless imitation. Which will we choose?

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This post is adapted from The Journey Begins chapter 52, entitled “And Out Came This Calf.” This first book in the Lessons Learned In The Wilderness series is available through Amazon in print or for your e-reader. Click HERE for more information on how you can obtain your copy of the book.

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(1) Exodus 32:1-14

(2) Romans 6:23

(3) Romans 3:23

(4) Exodus 32:21

(5) Exodus 32:22-24

(6) Deuteronomy 9:20 (NLT)

(7) Exodus 24:14

(8) Exodus 32:27

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