The post-modern golden calf

by Mike Ratliff



Those familiar with the Exodus of Israel from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan know that the journey was long and arduous. Only two men from those who left Egypt made it through the journey. The rest died on the way including Moses. Their children were those whom Joshua led to conquer and claim the land flowing with milk and honey. God tested them in the wilderness. They were put in circumstance after circumstance by God to see if they would repent of their stiff-necked resistance to His Lordship, and time after time they proved that they were temporal, fleshly people who did not trust Him. In this post we will look at a parallel between one of those circumstances and the condition of the Church in the early 21st Century.

In Exodus 24-31 Moses gives us his account of God calling him to come up to Mount Horeb to receive the Law. He is on the mountain with God for forty days. Before he departed, the people had promised to remain sanctified to God and obey their oaths. Moses is a man of God and very humble. God uses him mightily in bringing the people from bondage into the wilderness, but most of these people are not on the same page as him or God.


The Israelites either became impatient or panicked. They began to doubt that they would ever see Moses again. Their world view was one of temporal paganism. What has happened very recently to these people? Had they not seen the 10 plagues that God used to win their freedom? Did they not see God part the Red Sea? Didn’t God send them water from a rock as Moses struck it? Didn’t He sweeten the bitter waters by Moses simply throwing a branch of a tree into it? Didn’t God give them manna to eat from the dew which fell on the ground? Now their leader has entered the smoke on the mountain and has been out of their sight for 40 days and they are ready to return to paganism.

They talk Aaron into creating them a golden calf to represent their god. Aaron goes along. He mixes the idol worship with worship of the Lord here. He makes the idol and declares a pagan worship feast to it, but calls it a feast to the Lord.

This section of Exodus has always puzzled me. The fall into idolatry by the Israelites here was very rapid. Their leader tarried on the mountain so they quickly turned to a substitute they could see with their physical eyes. Notice how Moses’ spokesman before Pharaoh, Aaron, leads them into this. Amazing!

Is there a parallel here for the Church? God the Son became a man. He was the Messiah. He lived a perfect life. He had disciples whom He used to minister to His growing Church after He left. Forty days after His resurrection He ascended into Heaven. Ten days later at Pentecost the Holy Spirit came in power to the disciples and so began the Church that still exists today. However, Jesus has not yet returned as He promised. What has happened to the Church over the last 150 years or so? It has become largely apostate, contaminated with liberal theology. The Gospel, instead of being proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit, has been edited and changed and conformed to an image. It has been altered to be “culturally relevant.”

This altered form of the gospel is called “easy-believism.” It is Christless and Crossless. It does not speak of the real Jesus, but another Jesus who never speaks of the cross, the blood atonement, or repentance or Christ as Lord. He loves people just the way they are. Since that is true then repentance is not necessary. However, the Gospel of Jesus Christ does speak of the cross and repentance and Him as Lord.

Some in this “push” to “evangelize” using this “image” of the gospel say they are doing this so they can force Jesus to return by bringing the whole world to Christ. They are expecting Him to return in gratitude for their efforts. However, they have not obeyed our Lord in making disciples, teaching them to observe all He taught. No, they are simply doing church by the numbers. Let’s return to Mount Horeb.

15 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets which were written on both sides; they were written on one side and the other. 16 The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing engraved on the tablets. 17 Now when Joshua heard the sound of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a sound of war in the camp.” 18 But he said,
“It is not the sound of the cry of triumph,
Nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat;
But the sound of singing I hear.”
19 It came about, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. 20 He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it. Exodus 32:7-20 (NASB) 

What is God’s emphasis here? He tells Moses that the people have corrupted themselves and deserve to be wiped out. However, Moses prays for God to relent of this judgement. Then Moses comes down from the mountain and sees the truth. What was the first thing he did? He broke the tablets of the Law that God had given them which showed His standards. Then Moses attacked the idol. He destroyed it and made the people drink the water that contained the powdered gold.

If Jesus came back today do you think He would be pleased with the corruption of the Gospel? They have abandoned the real Gospel because it doesn’t create large numbers of converts all at once, and they want big churches so they corrupt the gospel in order to bring sinners into their congregations. The problem is that these people do not repent and believe and receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Instead, they pray a prayer, sign a card, and join a church. They get baptized and think they have a ticket to heaven. They are not disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. They are simply unregenerate sinners claiming to be Christian based upon their religiosity. What would Jesus do if He returned today to see this?

21 Then Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?” 22 Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. 23 For they said to me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”

Jesus is coming back. He will be pleased with those who have remained “for Him” and have not corrupted themselves with the false gospel of easy-believism. Will He consider those who have corrupted themselves with the Golden Calf of Church Growth as “those who are for the Lord?” You know the answer to that.

Another parallel here is between the Exodus and salvation. The delivery from bondage is God’s work. The Israelites were in bondage to the Egyptians. The sinner is in bondage to sin. God broke the power of the Egyptians and set the captives free by His mighty hand. The same thing applies to our salvation. God broke the power of sin through the Cross of Christ. He brought the Israelites through the Red Sea to be free from Egypt. Sinners are saved when God regenerates them, they repent and believe by His grace through faith.

The Israelites were wanting “gods” to carry before them that they could see and manipulate and proclaim that their freedom was bought by and through them. The easy-believism crowd is wanting a “gospel” they can manipulate and use at their will to proclaim that salvation is by and through them. The Israelites rejected God for a Golden Calf they could control. The easy-believism crowd has rejected the real Gospel which is all about Jesus Christ and have replaced it with one they can control and is about another Jesus.

Are there any who remain who are for the Lord?

Soli Deo Gloria!

4 thoughts on “The post-modern golden calf

  1. I had an online conversation with someone this last weekend that was doubting they were converted. When I responded with a Biblical diagnostic tool to examine ones self with from GTY, I was thought to be harsh. Added to the current golden calf you have established here is an unwillingness to let people feel conviction. We have to be “nice” and affirm their faith even if it may not be so. *sigh*


  2. And just like Aaron, who claimed the gold formed itself into the calves and jumped out of his fire, so the self-directed false teachers will say their doctrines just came up out of the fire and they thought they were from God.

    And, as onehiredlateintheday (LOVE THAT!) observed, being nice is the new gospel. DO NOT have the Lord’s Supper in the morning service because it might make some people uncomfortable! I want to scream!

    Then I remember that my theology has holes in it as well.

    So we must be patient with those who are still on milk but NEVER surrender the PURITY of that milk or they will never move on to meat.

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