Today’s Devotion: Exodus 32

Exodus 32:22 “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil.

This verse jumped off the page. Aaron is making excuses to justify the sin of the Israelite people. Are you kidding me? Since they are prone to sin, Abraham, and ultimately God, are supposed to not be angry and forgive them automatically?

They can’t get off that easily. I don’t know if I can say this, but the worst thing is that Aaron (the leader while Abraham was gone) should have been keeping them in line, but instead he jumps right in and recruits them to supply their gold to build and idol, and he goes right along and worships the golden calf right along with them!

Sadly, I can relate. I am the oldest of three, I have two younger brothers. I remember when my parents would tell me to watch my brothers because they had a quick errand to run. It wouldn’t be long before their car pulled out of the driveway that we started down the path of mischief. When my parents got back home they would look at me and with a stern and disappointed tone, “Sarah! What did you do?!” Oh I can still remember how it felt to hear those words. That face on the kitty from Puss-n-Boots at the top of this blog post, Yah… that was me. Guilty! Caught! Busted!

Of course, I didn’t know what came over me. I was given a little piece of responsibility and I blew it! I not only DIDN’T stop my brothers from doing wrong, I participated in it and sometimes even came up with the idea. Yes, my parents punished them, but I carried the guilt afterwords knowing that I undermined their trust.

This seems to parallel what happened when Moses when up on the Mountain to meet with God. “The cats away the mice shall play right?” Well, God was mad first and Moses persuaded Him not to punish them, but when Moses witnessed the mess for himself, even he got angry and acted on his anger.

We have to be aware of when we are given an opportunity to standup against the crowd, the temptation of fun, the festivals of idolatry, and the golden calves of our day. Yes, people are prone to sin, but that doesn’t mean that is our excuse for not living righteously and standing firm to keep people from participating in wrongdoing. God has entrusted us with the opportunity to know better. Not only do we need to take responsibility for ourselves, but we have to be especially careful what we lead others to do.