8.25.2026 - Nate Triemstra

Exodus 32:1

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him."

If you have time, read all of Exodus 32.

We establish the habit of self-control when we establish the habit of trusting in God. In our verse today, we hear the beginning of a story that many of us know well. While Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the ten commandments, the Israelites sit at the base of the mountain getting antsy.

We need to be reminded that they have just been saved from the Egyptians, freed from slavery in a miraculous way by God, who calls them his people. They have crossed through the Red Sea, they have been provided with manna and quail to eat, and they have defeated the Amalekite army as Moses held his hands to the sky. God has demonstrated his faithfulness in powerful ways to these people, and not just in stories about their ancestors, but in their actual lives. But Moses takes a while on the mountain, and their minds wander. They either forget God's faithfulness, or they decide his protection is temporary, and they move on to new gods, symbolized by the golden calf. Later in chapter 32, as they worship the new idol, they "[sit] down to eat and drink" and "indulge in revelry." In other words, they lose all self-control.

What leads to a loss of self-control? In this instance, it's clear that a lack of trust led to a loss of self-control. God had made his faithfulness, his trustworthiness, clear to his people, and yet they lost trust in him. Because Moses was on Mount Sinai, they did not feel as though God was present. they lost sight of him. When they lost sight of God, their trust in him collapsed, and they went searching for other things to trust in, and once that trust was misplaced, they saw no reason for self-control anymore. Their lives became defined by their own pleasure in the moment rather than by a deeply felt understanding of God's eternal presence.

How many times do we lose sight of God in a given day, week, or year? How many times, when life becomes difficult, do we choose to rely on other sources of comfort rather than on an abiding trust in God? When we lose sight of God, it is easy to disregard the self-control he has given us and justify thoughts and actions we would usually avoid. Life is hard, and we've earned a break, our thinking often goes. But the reality is that when we lose self-control, we are handing control over to those thoughts and actions. We seek them to feel fulfilled, rather than finding our fulfillment in a God who is always faithful, even when we think we haven't seen him in a while.

Trust in God. Remember his faithfulness in your life. When you make it a habit of doing these things, God gives you the self-control to remain in him, and to avoid being controlled by harmful things that only bring death.