The people of Israel had been waiting for a long time.  Moses had gone up on the mountain to talk with God, but had been gone so long they were worried about him.

"Maybe he got sick," some of them thought.  Others said, "Maybe he died.  He was a very old man. Maybe he won’t come back.  Who is going to lead us if Moses is gone?"  Moses had told them that God was their leader, but none of them had actually ever seen God.

Someone cried, "I know what we should do!  We should build a god we can see.  There were lots of gods in Egypt.  Why shouldn’t we have a god we can see and worship it?"

"Aaron," they said, "you know how to work with gold and other metals.  Make us a god we can worship, one that will lead us.  Because we don’t know if Moses is coming back."

Aaron, who was Moses brother, replied "No, we shouldn’t do a thing like that.  Moses will be back.  He’s just talking with God and isn’t ready to come back yet, but he will be back when he is finished."

But the people cried even louder.  "Make us a god we can see! We want a God we can see and worship".  Aaron saw that they weren’t listening to him, so he finally said, "If that is really what you want, bring me the gold earrings that all of you are wearing."

So Aaron took the gold and made it into the shape of a calf and gave it to them.  They were very happy and said, "This is the god that brought us out of Egypt!" and they worshiped it.

When Aaron saw this, he also made a golden alter and put it in front of the calf.  "Tomorrow we will have a great celebration to the Lord."

Up on the mountain, God said to Moses, "Get back to the people. They are doing something very bad."  When Moses came back down, he saw the people were worshipping the calf, just as they said they would.  They were getting drunk, laughing and dancing in terrible ways and doing all kinds of bad things.  When he saw what the people were doing he was so sad, so disappointed, so ANGRY. He threw down the stone tablets with God’s laws written on them.

"What made you do such a terrible thing?" he cried. "There is only one God you should worship.  Now, all who are on the Lord’s side, come and stand by me!"  

The entire family of Levi rushed to stand with him.  "Take your swords," he told the men firmly.  "Go into the group who are not on the Lord’s side and begin killing them, even if they are your friend, your neighbor, or even your brother."

That day 3,000 people died because they had not worshiped the true God.  They had worshiped an idol they thought was a god.

The true God wants us to worship Him because there is no other God but Him.

HE IS GOD!!!

Copyright Ó 1998 Larry Platt - Used by permission

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Page updated 11/03/00.