Exodus 29-32: Somewhere Between Victory and Defeat

When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”
Moses replied:
   “It is not the sound of victory,
   it is not the sound of defeat;
   it is the sound of singing that I hear.”  - Ex. 32:17-18 NIV

This is the place where a lot of us spend our Christian lives...living in a war zone, where we experience neither victory nor total defeat.  There is singing and rejoicing.  It's a great party.  We acknowledge that we're following God, that we're his chosen people and now we're heading for the land he's promised.  We're following God, or at least a god.  The problem is we have seized the first god we could find, a golden calf, but that golden calf that we're following doesn't have the power to save.   But it's much more pleasant to worship an inanimate object rather than an all powerful God that demands total surrender in all aspects of our lives.  One for whom obedience is better than sacrifice.  One who sets up rules that we don't really want to follow like not having any other gods, keeping the Sabbath holy, not coveting what we don't have. 

The sound of war is the sound of our hollow worship when it's really other gods we're chasing after.

2010 Post - Exodus 29-32:  Any God will Do