PASSOVER Part 2: Into the Desert

We placed the blood on the doorposts of our hearts, were spared death, delivered from our slavery to sin and our captors were washed away.  (See PASSOVER Part 1: Doorposts of Our Hearts)

We've left all we've ever known and find ourselves in the wilderness.  What's next?  Well, the purpose for leaving Egypt was to have a Festival to the Almighty in the desert:

Later, Moses and Aaron went in and said to Pharaoh, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let My people go, so that they may hold a festival for Me in the wilderness."   Exodus 5:1

So naturally a festival to the Most High is what the children of Israel were expecting.

After their salvation from Egypt, the deliverer ascended to the Most High God to receive His instructions.  The Israelites didn't wait to hear the word via this mediator, Moses.  Instead, they took it upon themselves to have a festival to the Almighty, not in the way He would prescribe, but instead in a way they had learned from the pagans in Egypt.

When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, "Come, make us a god who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt-we don't know what has happened to him!"    Exodus 32:1

I know we've been taught that the Israelites were so stiff-necked that they were worshiping some foreign deity.   Let the scriptures explain who they were worshiping albeit in a pagan way.

He took [the gold] from their hands, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into an image of a calf. Then they said, "Israel, this is your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!"        When Aaron saw [this], he built an altar before it; then he made an announcement: "There will be a festival to the LORD tomorrow."   Exodus 32:4-5

We see that the calf was to represent the God that led them from Egypt.   With this image, they were planning to have a festival to the LORD.  This is because that was the whole reason for leaving Egypt from the beginning.  We know that this ended poorly for them.   

So, what does this mean for those of us who have been saved from our captivity to sin via the blood of the Passover Lamb?  

Unfortunately we have learned little from this example.  We did not receive our worship instruction from our mediator as to how to have festivals in His name.  Very little of our Christian festivals are the result of instruction from the Creator or His Messiah.  The biggest days on the Christian calendar (Christmas, Easter, Sundays) did not originate from any instruction from God.  Each one was used in pagan worship long before Messiah walked the earth.  You will find no instructions in the Bible to follow these practices. 

The golden calf is a foreshadow of these pagan Christian practices. 

I know it's hard to imagine a golden bovine statue being used to represent the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Please consider this which I hope isn't over-simplified.  You've probably heard the title of Elohim, which means God in Hebrew.  It is sometimes used in the shortened form, El.   In ancient Hebrew the word El was represented by the head of an ox.  In other words, the word that represented the Creator was actually an ox. Its not hard to see how they might make a golden ox calf statue to represent our Almighty Father. 

On to to the Promised Land (PASSOVER Part 3: Into the Promised Land)