Easily Forgotten

Psalm 106:13-23

13Yet how quickly they forgot what he had done!

They wouldn’t wait for his counsel!

14In the wilderness, their desires ran wild,

testing God’s patience in that dry land.

15So he gave them what they asked for,

but he sent a plague along with it.

16The people in the camp were jealous of Moses

and envious of Aaron, the LORD’s holy priest.

17Because of this, the earth opened up;

it swallowed Dathan

and buried Abiram and the other rebels.

18Fire fell upon their followers;

a flame consumed the wicked.

19The people made a calf at Mount Sinai;

they bowed before an image made of gold.

20They traded their glorious God

for a statue of a grass-eating ox!

21They forgot God, their savior,

who had done such great things in Egypt—

22such wonderful things in that land,

such awesome deeds at the Red Sea.

23So he declared he would destroy them.

But Moses, his chosen one, stepped between the LORD and the people.

He begged him to turn from his anger and not destroy them.

It had been a month since Moses disappeared on Mount Sinai, and the people were thinking that he was not coming back. No doubt some of them reasoned, “Moses has been up on that mountain for an awfully long time. We’re just not sure about his leadership. He has led us through some amazing things, but now we’re in the desert. Moses keeps talking about a ‘Promised Land,’ but it seems like he hasn’t thought this trip through much.”

Had they been abandoned by Moses and the Lord? What could they do?

They thought back to their days in Egypt. Those Egyptians worshiped some sort of cattle god. Maybe that deity would help the Israelites, too. They went to Aaron with their golden earrings: “Melt these into a cow idol.” And Aaron, who should have known better, did just that.

When the last nostril of the golden calf was hammered into shape, a party began—a drunken, licentious rave. Of course that’s when Moses finally showed up, angrily smashing the stone tablets of God’s commandments. He scolded Aaron, who responded with one of the great excuses of all time: “I threw [the gold earrings] into the fire—and out came this calf!” (Exodus 32:24).

How easy it is for us to forget God. We turn quickly to the idols around us—money, success, pleasure—and rationalize our actions. We must be careful not to follow the example of the Israelites but to learn from their mistakes.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;

Prone to leave the God I love.

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;

Seal it for Thy courts above.

ROBERT ROBINSON

Bible Networking

For other passages on jealousy (verse 16), read Numbers 16:3 and Matthew 27:18.

Notable Quotable

“It is hoped we shall never live to see a time when the miracles of our redemption shall be forgotten; when the return of Jesus Christ from heaven shall be despaired of; and when people shall fabricate a new philosophical deity for them to worship, instead of the God of their ancestors, to whom glory has been ascribed from generation to generation.”

GEORGE HORNE