This week, we continue our Lenten journey toward Easter by following the Israelites' journey through the wilderness toward the Promised Land. In the past couple of weeks, we have focused on how Moses helped the Hebrew people to organize themselves into a nation of laws and of faith, both following God's instructions given in Torah. For the next two weeks, we will consider a couple of significant detours that the Hebrews made in the wilderness.
The first is the mirror image of last Sunday's sermon on the design of the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle. In "And Moses Saw the People Running Wild," we will consider worship run amok through the story of the golden calf. While waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain of God, the impatient Hebrews determine that they will worship in their own way. Knowing that they cannot approach God's home on the mountaintop, they ask Aaron to craft an idol of a golden calf so that they may worship in the valley below the mountain.
Needless to say, when Moses brings the stone tablets inscribed with the law down from Mt. Sinai, he witnesses a horrible spectacle. With a loud voice (imagine Charlton Heston, who actually has this line in "The Ten Commandments"), Moses cries out, "Who is on the Lord's side?" The Levites respond to Moses' call, and then follow his instructions to violently bring order to the chaotic rabble.
On Sunday, we will consider some of our own misdirected worship, which is a polite way of saying, we will consider some of our own idolatry.
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