I have heard sermons on testing God, and they come in one of two varieties.  Either we preach on the Old Testament story of Gideon who tested God with a wet fleece (“God answers our tests to help our faith, our trust in Him”), or we preach the New Testament text of Jesus tempted in the wilderness telling Satan we shouldn’t test God (“God will not be tested because He’s in control, not us.”)  Today, we find more passages about people testing God.

First, it’s the Sadducees, known for their denial of the spiritual realm including angels, demons, and the resurrection of the dead.  They think they have a stumper for Jesus so they ask Him about marriage after the resurrection.  Last night watching a television show, one character was belittling another for believing in angels.  This modern day Sadducee didn’t use argument but mockery to disprove what he refused to believe.  The argument was typical of our modern age – let her believe what she wants and don’t mock her for it.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Next come the Pharisees, known for their obedience to and knowledge of the Old Testament law and surrounding laws they’d created around it.  They challenged not Jesus’ belief in the spiritual, but His knowledge and interpretation of the Law.  In our current discussions around the LGBTQ+ community, this same line of questioning keeps coming at us: which is the greatest commandment, or how do you interpret the commands of the bible.

Regardless of who is testing us, its important that they are not testing God, just our belief and interpretation of God’s word.  Whether people ask us how we can believe in the spiritual world or how we interpret the bible, like Jesus we must turn for answers to the Word itself.  Any other answer that comes from any other source must be suspect and superseded by scripture.

We love our golden calves.  As soon as Moses leaves his people for some alone time with God, the people turn away to other gods.  Yahweh, who freed them from generations of slavery, who performed miracle after miracle in their sight, who passed over their houses yet struck dead the firstborn of their enemies, who guided them with a pillar of fire and cloud, who parted the Red Sea, was forgotten after a month.  And Moses, who had led these people to plunder one of the greatest empires of the world is abandoned along with the God he served.  In Moses’ place, they placed Aaron, the spokesman.  In Yahweh’s place, they formed yet another golden calf.  Made of the gold they had plundered from Egypt, this idol was now declared to be the god who led them to freedom.

We love our golden calves.  When we begin to doubt God, to forget the miracles He has performed, to close our eyes to the leaders He has placed before us, we quickly turn to other sources of comfort and authority.  Maybe our golden calves take the form of political parties, or world governments, or philosophical systems, or wealth and power.  Whatever idol we turn to when we turn away from God, we can be sure they didn’t just pop out of the fire fully formed.  We have taken time to form these gods ourselves.

We love our golden calves.  But God doesn’t.  God declares to Moses His intention to wipe the people away and begin again with Moses (remember Noah?) as the father of the Jews.  But with Moses standing for his people, God relents and simply refuses to go with them.  “I’ll go ahead and prepare the way but I won’t travel with you or I might just wipe you out anyway,” God declares.

If we want God walking with us, if we want to be spared His wrath or at least His absence, we need to follow Him and only Him.  Follow another idol and you might just find yourself alone.  God will never leave us nor forsake us, but He will allow us to walk away from Him.  That’s called free will.  Use it wisely.