During my undergraduate days at Covenant College, whenever I would need to get anywhere worthwhile off-campus, I would have to drive down Lookout Mountain to get to the city of Chattanooga. During the initial descents and returning ascents I’d make in my Mazda B2200 pickup, I was somewhat cautious going around hairpin turns and stout curves. After further traverses, though, the drive became second-nature. I instinctively knew where every dicey turn and swerve might be. I could make the drive in my sleep, it seemed. Why? Because I’d practiced the drive so often. Therefore, I could make it without fail.
We can often transfer that principle—that exposure to something can result in positive action—to so many other areas in life, including spiritual growth. Need to grow closer to Jesus or become more Christ-like? Give yourself over to Scripture reading and meditation, worship, prayer, confession, and service. Do X, and you’ll get Y. Sounds simple. But is it?
Don’t hear what I’m not saying. Spiritual disciplines are opportunities where followers of Jesus might meet with our Lord and Savior. And if one consistently commits to these paths, then all the better. Desiring to do this myself, I planned to read Scripture daily this year according to the schedule of Morning Prayer in my denomination Book of Common Prayer. Usually consisting of one chapter from the Old Testament, about a chapter from the New Testament, and one or two Psalms, it has become an enclave of my daily time I cherish.
And yet…I get reminders that I can have all this wonderful access to God and disaster can still come.
In God’s Presence
I discovered it in my St. Patrick’s Day reading which took me to Exodus 24. There, by the slopes of Mt. Sinai, after God spoke the Ten Commandments to the Hebrews, Moses reads the Book of the Covenant to the entire national assembly, leads the people in the offering of sacrifices with his brother Aaron and Aaron’s sons—all priests—and then we find these words in verses 9-11:
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11 And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.
Along with Moses, seventy-three people go up and “saw the God of Israel.” They saw a pavement of sapphire beneath God’s presence and they sat in God’s presence as they had a meal.
Think about that. It’s huge! Of all the unforgettable moments in one’s life, anything else is a distant number two at best. How could anyone be anything less than fully devoted to God once they had been in His presence? Surely that would make an impact and bring about obedience!
Eight Chapters Later…
And all I could think about was what would happen eight chapters later (Exodus 32:1-4) . There it is, in black and white on the pages of Scripture!
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
Aaron, the high priest of God’s people, had been in the indescribable and lofty presence of the Creator of the universe eight chapters before. And now he—with apparently no pushback from his sons or any of the other leaders who had dwelt with God alongside Moses—was creating a shiny mute bovine and allowed the people to proclaim, “These are your gods!”
I don’t care where you’re from or how often you’ve read those passages. That scares me.
Four Reasons That Scares Me
It scares me that someone could have that sort of clear and undeniable proof of God’s presence and greatness and yet cave to the masses and make something else to be a cheap representation of that same God.
It scares me that it wasn’t limited to one person, but many.
It scares me that I’ve never had that mountaintop experience as Aaron and the others, and they failed as well. What chance do I have, then?
It scares me that it didn’t take long for Aaron and the others to forget who God was, for His very presence to become something tucked away in the back of their minds and shoved from the center of their collective will.
Because to disdain God brings desecration of who we are. Forgetfulness escalates fallen nature. Or as my dad has said before, amnesia produces apostasy.
And maybe that’s what God is trying to teach me, to teach us, through Exodus 24 when placed alongside the golden calf episode (Exodus 32). Our well-meaning disciplines, though good and needed, are not enough. We need to cry out to God to keep us tethered to Him, lest we be, as the hymn goes,
“prone to wander, Lord, I feel it…prone to leave the God I love.”
Maybe God intends to give me holy fear, as long as my heart remains bound to Him in the long run. And if so, I’m willing to have passages like this one scare me in the best sense of the word.
For more from Rev. Luke Davis, check out his latest book Tough Issues, True Hope: A Concise Journey through Christian Ethics
If God rescues us to be his people, then how can our lives demonstrate our love for him? Luke Davis takes us on a journey through some of the big questions in the arena of Christian ethics, highlighting why our ideas matter. He helps us to have a firm grasp of what the issue is, what God’s Word has to say about it, and what practical impact that has on our lives.
