The Blame game

DEVOTION

EXODUS

THE BLAME GAME

Ex 32:15-24

15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. 16 The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. 17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, "There is the sound of war in the camp." 18 Moses replied: "It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear." 19 When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. 20 And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. 21 He said to Aaron, "What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?" 22 "Do not be angry, my lord," Aaron answered. "You know how prone these people are to evil. 23 They said to me, 'Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.' 24 So I told them, 'Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.' Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!"

NIV

It is not that Moses was surprised by the sound in the camp for God had already told him exactly what was going on. He told Moses they had become corrupt and had built that golden calf and were bowing down and worshipping it. However Joshua, who had been waiting for Moses somewhere nearer the mountain than the camp was not privy to the corruption that had taken place. So it would be nature for him to think all the noise was about some kind of war. Moses makes this very profound, if not prophetic statement about it not being the sound of victory, nor the sound of defeat, but singing. He knew it was not war, but rather revelry. Yet knowing all about the golden calf he still became so angry with the people he threw the stone tablets, the ones God wrote with his finger, out of his hands and thus they broke to pieces. Why he did that is explained in his own words in the book of Deuteronomy. It was to show the people how much that had rejected the LORD for their own ways and the making of their own god. How quick they had turned their backs on God. But our lesson is not about them at this time. We have already looked that them before. Now we associate with Aaron. When Moses questions him as to what happened Aaron immediately brings the sinfulness of the people up. He is trying to divert any blame from himself. He also makes it sound like the people were in charge rather than him. Of course given the circumstances of the number of people being in the millions and Aaron being but one man, it would seem he had no other choice then to bow to the demands of that large a crowd. There might just be a lesson in that alone, bowing to the peer pressure of the crowd. He should have taken his stand and told the people, Moses is on the mountain with God and when God is finished talking with him, he will be back and tell us all that God has commanded for us to do. But no, not Aaron, instead he bows to their will and tells them to bring all their gold earrings. The worst of his response to Moses was in the making of the golden Calf. Gee golly wiz brother, I took all that gold and just threw it into the fire and out came this calf. What an excuse! What a lie! That is where we come in. When confronted with our sin, do we make some excuse? Do we even blame others for our sin? We make statements like, “You make me so angry” or I get so impatient with your slowness to answer”, or “Why do you have to be that way?” Somehow we try to shift the blame of our sin on others, just as Aaron was doing. Then if that isn’t bad enough he tries to shift the blame on fate, it just came out of the fire. Do we try that same thing? Do we try to shift the blame of our sin on fate, that’s just what happened, I really had no purpose in doing it, it just appeared, I did not intend for it to happen. This can be especially the case when we are with a large group of people who are bent toward one direction. We might just go along with the crowd, as if we have no choice in the matter. It does not have to be a crowd of people bent against God either. It could be a large group of believers, even a whole church that is involved in the ways of the world. They may have allowed the ways of the world to infiltrate their form of worship. They are in essence worshipping that golden calf instead of God. They may have made their worship their god, their music, their lights, their revelry. And we just go along as if it just came out of the fire and that we had no hand in it, we just went along with the crowd. No, when we sin, when we commit some sinful thought, word or deed we need to face it head on, admit it foremost to God. Yes, he already knows, but we still need to admit it so we know we have forsaken our trust in him. He does not turn his back on us, but we turn our back on him everytime we do not take our stand against sin.

1 John 1:8-10

8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

NIV

But praise God, when we do confess that sin, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Because of Jesus, his anger does not burn against us and we can be clean. We do not need to be at war with God, he is not at war with us, and we can have peace, be at peace with him, secure in him. But we do need to face the facts, it is our own doing when we sin. It is our own choice, our own thoughts, words and deeds. No one else is to blame except ourselves.