The gospel according to ‘Exodus’, chapter 32: 1-9 will allow us to get to know Moses and Aaron a little more. Moses is a type and shadow of the true ministry who are called of God and who hear His voice clearly. To such God reveals His anointed word, His purposes and His methods so that they can lead the people of God into all truth. Moses’ name means ‘drawn out’ and he was certainly separated from his Egyptian upbringing and its influences.

Aaron, on the other hand, is a true brother to Moses and he represents the ‘echo ministry’ who shares the word that he was told to deliver . . . getting nothing for himself. The people of God heard the word of the Lord through Moses . . . a separated ministry taught of the Lord.

The people of God are at Mount Sinai which represents ‘Pentecost’ to them just as ‘Passover’ was their deliverance from Egypt. Thus the people were out of Egypt’s bondages and believed to be progressing towards the Promised Land. The Promised Land is the shadow of the Kingdom of God and His fullness.

This was Moses’ fifth journey up this Mountain to receive the word of the Lord for that time. He pressed into the presence of God . . . mountain climbing is never easy . . . and God was able to communicate to him His desires for His people. Today’s Moses’ will have experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit whereby they will have a new desire for the word of the Lord and an intimacy with the Lord of the word. The baptism of the Holy Spirit begins a new release in understanding God’s Word. One begins to see just what God is teaching with His word. It equates with the Tabernacle of Moses picture; when one comes to the brazen altar to receive salvation and then progresses into the Holy Place on their journey to the mercy-seat (throne). The observations in the Holy Place, by contrast to the Outer Court, are no longer seen in natural light.

It takes time to wait upon God. It takes a dedication seen by discipline of one’s time etc. It is the cry of every believer to hear God’s voice, is it not ? Hearing the voice of the Lord with certainty is an art so few of God’s people have acquired. Most would rather lean upon a word or a doctrine (teaching) from an ‘echo-ministry’ who had been told it at a seminary or conference; perhaps, like Aaron, be swayed by the majority vote of the local membership!

The logical membership of this Mt. Sinai fellowship who only had ‘natural lighting’ thinking, had no faith in what they could not see — they were very practical folk. Moses and the true word were not present, so they called a meeting and invited Pastor Aaron to be present. Aaron was easily influenced by weight of numbers because he had no direct word from God himself.

This whole parable here in Exodus is concerning hearing from God. The pressurized Pastor had a special offering requesting a sacrificial giving of one item . . . golden earings! Those expected to respond were wives, sons and daughters. These three classes of people speak of the natural-minded ‘Eves’ who are ‘reason-able’ folk indeed, but not ones led of the Spirit. EARINGS speak of what has been heard and received as truth and which has become one’s testimony. As GOLD represents the nature of God, then the golden earings would underline that the word received came from Him. There have been countless revelations and insights from God’s word given to saints over the years as they have ‘gone higher’ to wait on the Lord and were rewarded with the hearing of His voice.

Aaron — the religious leadership without an updated word from God — will be found declaring words from ‘yesterday’s manna’, which will rob God’s people of the incentive of hearing God’s voice for themselves and then walking in what they have heard.

Back in the desert of Sinai . . . the assembly unanimously approved the creating of an idol (teaching) to replace God’s word that they had received through Moses. Many of God’s people also have an image of God in their minds — in their IMAGE-ation! It is probably, in their eyes, pure gold of the Divine nature and going along with that image is also what sort of God He is. This image would be influenced by the heathen concepts of God that are still around . . . that of Him being a sort of ogre that is wielding the proverbial ‘2 X 4’ to catch anyone who fails to live up to His requirements in daily living! Such an image is INSTEAD OF CHRIST which is the meaning of the word antichrist. These people of God back in Moses’ day produced out of their imagination a GOLDEN CALF which they worshipped instead of the Living God. It was a ‘majority vote’ in that Church meeting’! By being a democratic group with each member having a vote, one can readily see how a group of naturally orientated ‘vigilantes’ can run the Church. Actions are quickly taken when ‘mob-law’ pressure is on. They were told by the leadership to break off their earings rather than remove them!

So many gold earings of individuals who once witnessed to the true hearing of God’s voice that produced great blessings, were melted down and made of none effect . . . lost in the vote!

An OUTWARD image was formed depicting the self-preservation beast nature that is in man. Whenever this lower nature within man is manifest, it will replace any hearing from God that each individual child of God cries after. Such constitutional or denominational ‘calfs’ are believed to be from God because they are made from gold. All gold has to be tried with fire to declare its origin — later you will read in Exodus 32 that this golden calf was nothing more than an idol whose origin was dust or flesh!

Aaron was actually quite surprised at what he had produced . . . this came out when he reported the happenings to Moses. He said, ‘It just happened sort of supernaturally!’ Back to our particular scene with Aaron and membership. Aaron, our responsible leader, now acted quite spiritually! He built an altar to this image and declared that the revival (feast day) would start on the morrow. It was obviously for the Lord seeing that they were God’s people, wasn’t it?

They were all enthused for they once again had a vision and an expectation. It appears that ‘a vision’ was their unifying force rather than God Himself. They then got up early and went through the religious ceremonies of ‘Burnt Offerings’ of full consecration and ‘Peace Offerings’ to show their joyful union with their idea of the covenant of God.

These religious rites produced an amazing effect upon the people. They ‘sat down to eat and to drink’ — they became entirely self-centred, self-satisfied with THEIR conclusions as to what God desired. They now expected that all of God’s blessings would automatically be their’s and therefore improve their status in life because they had so sacrificially given themselves and their gold to the program. Even today some of the people of God indulge in religious ceremonies as ‘fire insurance’! Doing and ‘playing at things’ in order to gain God’s favor and attention.

They rose up to play! What did they play at? We are not told. What we do know is that any form of playing IS NOT REALITY. . . it is make-belief and a giving of oneself to something that is in place of truth and it simply hinders one receiving revelation. These people of God back in Exodus 32 gave God’s glory to an idol — the fruit of their imagination. They stripped themselves of truth and were showing an awful lot of flesh! (Bible says that they were naked!).

God was very displeased and revealed the situation to Moses. God gave them the opportunity to repent (i.e. to be sorry for drawing their thinking from the wrong source . . . man instead of God) and just one small group, a remnant, a little flock came and stood by Moses, the man with the thinking from God, the word of Life. The remainder failed to qualify as ‘firstfruits’ or God’s ‘Firstborn (corporate) Son’.

There are many ‘golden calfs’ today in our lives and in the Church at large. If they are revealed or exposed as such, are we willing to let those beliefs go? Very many of them are just like the Exodus account showed. There is a priesthood today who will stand up, as Moses did, and declare what is truth and be positioned by Jesus as a witness that He is Lord in ALL of their thinking. (Read Exodus 32).

John rejoiced greatly that he found certain disciples walking in truth (III John). As we desire to also be found walking in truth with the Spirit of truth, anything or any area that is not truth, we can be sure that the Spirit of truth is not present therein. We are to walk in the Spirit all the time, right? We are either running our lives by the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil or we are allowing the Spirit to be Lord in us which equates with eating of the Tree of Life.

For most of our lives, we have done things because we thought that they were good. We have shunned things that we thought were evil. We have also increased in the knowledge of the things that are good. . . believing that the doing of such pleased God; likewise the abstaining of doing evil things also pleased God. We want to DO these things because we really want to please the Lord. We aim for such pleasing of the Lord in order to be in a place where He can bless us. Such actions are described in Hebrews 6:1-3 as the very first thing we are to be delivered from! This foundational step of being delivered from DEAD WORKS, is absolutely necessary if you want to obey the word about going on unto perfection. A ‘dead work’ is anything that you do or say in order to gain God’s attention or approval.

Did you notice when reading those three verse in Hebrews that God will only permit some to go on unto perfection? This part of ‘His will’ is for those who are fully sold out to truth as made real to them by the Spirit of truth. If we cannot walk in the little things, how can we expect Him to help us walk in the deeper things? Not moving in the little things is like a chink in the armor that was the cause of Ahab’s death when a stray arrow entered therein.

To have an answer to give to any man concerning the hope that is in you — I Peter 3:15. How much of that which the Spirit of truth has made real to you, do you hide? We certainly do not hide the fact that we are born again! Do we hide the testimony of the Lord as to having received the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Do we hide the truth that there is no any-minute rapture?

Do we still celebrate the worldly timings of ‘Easter’?

Do we still celebrate ‘Christmas’ of which there is no specific instructions in the word?

Are you free to share the truth that ‘heaven’ isn’t a geographical place that one can travel to after death? . . . and so on!

If any of us compromise on any revelation that the Lord has given, we are no better than those ‘church members’ under Pastor Aaron at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

Let the summary simply be this . . . ‘Lord Jesus, keep me in truth’. Let us cry out from deep within that ‘I might know Him and the power of His resurrection . . .’ Let me too know when You are grieved that I may be grieved also and thus enter into what you suffered. (Philipp. 3:10). I desire to attain unto the resurrection which is the fullness of Christ Jesus in me.§