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(1) And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, then the people gathered themselves to Aaron, and they said to him, "Up! Make us gods which shall go before us, 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) And Aaron said to them, "Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them to me." (3) And all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. (4) And he took them from their hand, and fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molten calf. And they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." (5) And when Aaron saw the calf, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD." (6) And they rose up early on the next morning, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. (7) And the LORD said to Moses, "Go! Get you down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. (8) They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made them a molten calf, and have worshiped it, and have sacrificed to it, and said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who have brought you up out of the land of Egypt.' ”
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They did this in their ignorance and their impatience to get things moving. Even though most of the people wanted it, and a renowned religious figure proclaimed it "a feast to the LORD," it did not make it so. God was definitely not positively impressed, nor was Moses. In one of the gravest acts of presumption shown in God's Word, and one of the largest in terms of the number involved, they took it on themselves to add this to the worship of God. What they did was very seriously disrespectful to God; they attempted to configure the nature of God according to their own desires.
Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." People say they keep Christmas and Easter to worship Christ, but they are also defining the nature of God according to their own ideas. Just as surely as the ancient Israelites blended paganism with what God truly revealed, so people do today. This is the basic principle of acts of presumption, and each of us has done this, not once, but sadly, repeatedly, even though we may know better.
Jesus says in John 4:24, "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth," meaning we must worship to the fullest of God's intent as revealed in His Word, with every act guided and determined by His revealed truth. Yet, how many corners do we cut when we feel it serves us better at the time?
— John W. Ritenbaugh