Ki  Tisa
Exodus 30:11-34:35

     This week’s Torah portion is about a very significant event in Jewish history. When Moses went up on Mt. Sinai , the people were waiting for him to return. When they assumed that he was not returning, they said to Aaron,    “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt , we do not know what has become of him."  Notice carefully that they are not asking for a different God. They are asking for a replacement for Moses!  Did they view Moses as a god? From all previous accounts of Moses’ interaction with the people, they did not view him as a god. However, they may have understood Moses as someone who came from God who had the power to do the work of God and who represented the presence of God.  Now that Moses seemingly was not returning, they needed a replacement. The calf  was to be the replacement representative for the presence of God with them.  Notice Ex. 32:4-5   He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, "This is your god, O Israel , who brought you up from the land of Egypt ."  ⁵ Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD."   Unfortunately, the people could not resist the temptation to take this symbol of the presence of God and treat it as a god itself. Note what God tells Moses in verses 7-8.      Then the LORD spoke to Moses, "Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt , have corrupted themselves.   "They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your god, O Israel , who brought you up from the land of Egypt !'"  In other words the people could not resist both the culture that they knew as well as the tendency of being human to worship something they could see.
    There are several interesting parallels here for believers to understand. Yeshua is in a sense a “second Moses”. He dwelt here on the earth as someone to lead the children of Israel from slavery to freedom, doing the works of God - being in Himself the presence of God. Of course Moses was a human being as you and I, while Yeshua was the incarnation of God (see Jn. 1:17 ).  Yeshua told his disciples before his death and resurrection    "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. (Jn.14:2-3).  Yeshua has been away for a long time! He is coming again - but in the meantime he has given us the Ruach HaKodesh to guide us in all truth as well as the Word of God (Jn. 14:23 -26).  Unfortunately, there are many people who have forgotten that the Lord is returning and have fashioned for themselves gods to lead and guide them. I am not speaking of different “religious systems” but rather either physical or mental images of God which at the beginning served as reminders of God but ultimately serve as replacements for God. According to J. I. Packer in his book Knowing God, the second commandment serves as a deterrent to this practice.  He says that things like pictures and statues of “Jesus” cause the image of the glory of God to be obscured. He says that if we view images of God made with human hands over and over again, that will ultimately become the mental picture that we have in our minds when we pray or think about God. Speaking of mental images, Packer says that we form graven images in our minds when we say things like, “I like to think of God as the great architect” or “I do not think of God as a judge” and other similar statements.   
    Let’s use this week’s Torah portion to think about our own lives and whether we have indeed created “golden calves” in our minds or homes as we wait for the return of the Lord.  Shabbat Shalom!