golden calf

in exodus 32, aaron makes for the people of israel a golden calf and sets it up for them to worship, saying that it is the god that delivered them from the egyptians.
there is the overview. now then, what is wrong with this? aaron didn't set up for them false gods but made something and claimed that it was the image of the real God. so the problem is not false religion. the problem is that aaron tried to set up something from earth as looking like God. first off, if aaron were to make an image of God, he should have made it in the form of a man for we were made in the image of God. however, the second commandment says to not make any graven image to bow down to. so, it doesn't matter what the image is depicting, even if it is supposed to be God, we are not to bow down to it, for we worship and serve an invisible God, one whose very face will kill any man who sees it, even moses, the only man to ever see God with his human eyes, is only allowed to see the back of God. the problem here is that there is an image, it doesn't matter what the image is, for whatever image we set is less than the glory and magnificent of God which would then make it unworthy of worship. only God is worthy of praise.

the israelites try to do the right thing in that they just want an image to put to the name, even though it is also completely wrong, but how much worst are we who put other things in front of God. anything that we put more time, thought, or money into we are setting above God in our hearts. we should make God our focus and not anything else. this is and will be a constant struggle in the life of all believers but it is a good struggle for we should want to please our God, Creator, and Savior. we will fail at this but we must not give up. this is the human life, one of failure, but also one of growth. we will fail again but pray that when we fail that it is not the same as the last time that we failed. we must strive to be better than what we were yesterday. we must strive to know God better. spurgeon said something along the lines of "better theology makes better christians for the better we know our God, the better we can follow him" (that is a terrible paraphrase but oh well, sorry spurgeon). in order to serve someone, we must know who they are and want they like and what they want. so, to serve God better, we must know Him, know His standard, and then do it. this is why spurgeon read, on average, 6 substantial theology books a week. while no one else can basically do that cuz spurgeon was a stud and a genius, we can take that idea and alter it for our lives, even if that means that it is one theology book a decade, something is better than nothing.