American Idols - Ex. 29-33 & Matt. 21b & 22

It always amazes me to think of how powerfully and miraculously God answered the prayers of the Israelite slaves and rescued them from slavery in Egypt - only to have them constantly complaining and lacking in faith throughout their departure! In chapter 32 of Exodus Moses has been up on the mountain talking with God for 40 days (which is a long time when you're anxiously awaiting something) and the Israelites get impatient. So they tell Aaron to do something. So he tells them to give him all of their gold (necklaces, nose rings, etc) so he can....make a golden calf for them to worship!!! What?! What was he thinking?! But sure enough he goes through with it and the people worship a golden cow. People are so stupid sometimes aren't they? As you can imagine, Moses (who has just been face to face with God for forty days) comes down and goes ballistic smashing the newly carved Ten Commandment slabs against the mountain.

Likewise, in the NT stories for today we see the religious leaders challenging Jesus' authority and Jesus telling a couple of parable to help them understand just who He was and just how pathetic (and in trouble) they were. Again I ask, why are people so stupid sometimes?!

I understand that it's been two thousand long years since Jesus walked the earth, but we still confess to believing it. Yet we have golden cows and challenges for Jesus in our lives too don't we? It's not hard to spot our stupidity, just watch TV for a few hours. We celebrated people who have lots of money, regardless of their intelligence or morals. We worship people who play sports regardless of their actions of lifestyle. And we want to be like people on TV, no matter how stupid they are. What is our deal? On top of that, we worship ourselves and money (or stuff) most of all. Our society is so wrapped up with "me." We talk on cell phones while standing right beside another living, breathing human being. We buy things with plastic and pay double or triple for them over many years so we can have more stuff. We worship ipods, and video game systems, and plasma TV's and PDA's rather than time "on the mountain" with the Creator of our world. Then when things don't go perfectly for us we challenge God's goodness or love...

May we grow sick of ourselves as we read about the always complaining and never satisfied Israelites and decide for ourselves to worship and serve with joy our Savior and Redeemer.