A Calf Came Out

“I threw it into the fire and out came this calf” – Exodus 32:24
We live in an excuses du jour society.  It seems like so few of us take responsibility for our actions.  It is always someone else’s fault!  That is why we have so many lawyers always ready and willing to put the blame on someone else.  Even when we are caught red-handed do we every acknowledge our own blame.  When one of our girls was young (will keep you guessing), we went to wake her up in the morning and found that her hair had been cut, at a very uneven way I might add.  Since she could not have driven herself to get her hair cut, it was pretty obvious this was an inside job.  When we woke her up and asked her about her hair, she said “I don’t know how those scissors got in my bed and cut my hair”.  Another one of our girls refused to take the blame for cherry picking M&M’s our of the mix of peanuts, dried fruit, and M&M’s.  When she was out at school, this practice seemed to stop yet we never could get her to admit she was cherry picking the M&M’s.  I big crime in our house I might add.

Aaron was caught red-handed.  The people under his control were out of control engaging in licentiousness and  orgies before this hand made idol.  Yet, Aaron could not confess this before the Lord, Moses, and Joshua.  He first blamed the people in v.23 and then pulled this ridiculous excuse out of the mix and said the calf made itself.  Kind of like Adam’s excuse in Genesis 3:12 – blaming the “woman who you gave me”.

God forgives us when we admit our sin.  When we don’t admit our sin, we are subject to further disciplining until we come to and end in ourselves.  God wants us to come clean, He wants us to come before Him in true repentance.  1 John 1:9 says “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins”.  This does not mean a half-hearted remorse particularly if we get caught.  That’s what Judas had.  It is a deep seated repentance that goes beyond the surface.  The kind of repentance we see in David in Psalm 51.  Sin breaks God’s heart and it should break ours as well.