Oh Brother!

Do you Christian, think yourself as such that you could never sin, disobey God in any way? Do you Christian, think of yourself as being like the saints of both the Old & New Testaments?

John in his first Epistle, (letter) wrote that “if we say we have not sinned, we make Him [God] a liar, and His word is not in us.” (1 John 1: 9-10) - So be careful how you answer.

I asked earlier if you think yourself as being like the saints of both the Old & New Testament. Let me add to this in that many would interject some false humility and sanctimoniously answer, “oh no, never.”

Paul in his letter to the Galatians said, “if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.” (6:3-5)- when we focus on what people are doing, we start to think better of ourselves, of what we’re doing than we should.

In case you may think that you are one who would never equate yourself with “those other people”, I want to look briefly at Moses’ brother Aaron, the first High Priest of God, in fact, named/appointed by the Lord Himself to the position.

The incident you can find in Exodus chapter 32. Moses is about to come down from the mountain after receiving the Ten Commandments and on the way, God tells Moses what is happening and the worshipping of the Golden Calf.

Aaron relates his side of the story and it is of course opposite of what God had told Moses. If it weren’t such a serious thing that had occurred, it would be very humorous. We have ‘blame shifting’, ‘minimising’, ‘deniel,’

You can read in verses 1 to 6 that Aaron was complicit. He told them to bring him their jewelry and gold rings and then he, (Aaron), fashioned the Golden Calf.

Blame shifting-He says that the people brought him the gold as if he never asked for it. They are set on doing evil, bad things. They told him to make a Golden Calf so they could worship it.

Denial- The people made me do it.

Minimizing- To hear Aaron talk, it’s like he played a minor role in all of this. To top it off, he makes it sound like some mysterious miracle; he threw the gold into the fire and “holy cow!” out pops this Golden Calf. He says geez Moses, I don’t know how it got here, I mean it was really something. The people took their jewelry threw it all in and the next thing, out pops this cow and the people start worshiping it. Aaron makes it out to be a self-made, self-produced cow. That’s the kind of story you get from a five-year-old. Even some forty-year-old kids. Geez, how did that post just jump out into the street causing my car to hit it?