The Golden Calf

Posted by Scott Rohter on Thursday, December 12, 2019

 

The Golden Calf

By Scott Michael Rohter – December 2019

 

Throughout history there have always been people who worship idols, the work of their own hands.  All of the great civilizations before us: the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans all worshipped idols. The people who lived in the Holy Land before the Jews arrived worshipped idols. They erected images to Baal, Molech, and Dagan. There were even Jews who worshiped idols, like the ones who worshiped the Golden Calf mentioned in the Book of Exodus… It says that while Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments the people murmured against Aaron and against God. They told Aaron to make them an idol to proceed them through the wilderness. As a result of their unbelief they would wander through the wilderness forty years until every last member of that faithless generation died except for Joshua and Caleb… Only then were they fit for God’s purpose and ready to enter the Promised Land. So it is nothing new that people still worship idols today.

Whether it is a golden calf or some other invention of mankind that denies the existence of God and His plan of salvation, the three modern branches of rabbinical Judaism which all arose after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70AD are all forms of idolatry. They all deny the essential truth that the Messiah has already come. They all ignore the obvious fact that God provided a new way forward before He allowed all of the old ways to be completely destroyed with the final destruction of the Jewish Temple.

I don’t know how it is possible for any serious minded seeker of the truth, Jew and non Jew alike, to miss this very important fact. Who else besides Jesus could possibly be the light to the Gentiles mentioned in the Book of Isaiah chapter 42 verse 6 ? In who else are all the nations of the earth blessed ?  That was the promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 22 verse 18. What kind of God would have allowed the Jewish Temple and its entire Old Testament system of blood sacrifices to make atonement for sin to be completely and utterly eradicated without first providing a way forward in His Son Jesus ?

Rabbinical Judaism cannot rescue a single person from sin nor render its followers acceptable in God’s sight because of one simple basic truth…. There is no atonement for sin without the shedding of blood. There never has been and there never will be. (Leviticus 17:11) Only faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and only faith in His perfect faith can make atonement for sin.  Yom Kippur is a lie. There is no day of atonement. Jesus is our atonement. Every religious doctrine which denies that fact is religious heresy just like the golden calf in the desert. It is a form of idolatry, just another invention of mankind that either ignores or denies the work of God. No good deed you will ever do can ever replace what Jesus has already done for you on the Cross over two thousand years ago and no amount of human invention or ingenuity can ever explain it away.

Why does the Bible say that all of our good deeds are like filthy rags? Simply because every good deed you will ever do, if it is meant to earn God’s favor …  rejects what Jesus has already done for you on the Cross. Furthermore it denies the fact that there is no atonement without the shedding of blood, and it fails to acknowledge that everything we give to God must be perfect without any fault. Can you ever do anything that is 100% perfect, without fault? Of course not, and that is precisely why you can never earn your own salvation or save anyone else by the work of your own hands. It is why we can never satisfy our highest aspiration of being accepted by God without accepting what Jesus has already done for us on the Cross over two thousand years ago.

 

Any form of religious heresy or work of mankind which denies the existence of God or God’s plan for your life is an idol.

 

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