Aaron sighed loudly as he looked up the mountainside to see the same rocks and scattered foliage as the day before. No sign of Moses. Not for weeks. He could hear the more vocal dissenters approaching, but he didn’t turn around. They wanted the same thing as yesterday: a new symbol, a new direction. And with Moses gone, maybe they had a point…

The story of Exodus 32 is familiar and sad. God’s chosen people decided to abandon Him even as He was giving Moses plans for the tabernacle to hold His glory. But there is a very curious detail of this story that’s worth mentioning: let’s examine the excuses that are used. The people caused Aaron to make the golden calf, saying “as for this Moses, the man that brought us out of Egypt, we wot not [Ed: know not] what is become of him.”

Wait a minute. The man that brought us out of Egypt? Go back to chapter 20, verse 2: “I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt…” Had they already forgotten after only forty days? God made it very clear that He expected them to recognize that He was responsible for their deliverance. But it’s easier to ignore a man than to ignore God, so we humans tend to “decide” that it wasn’t God. It was convenient to believe that Moses was the one they followed because, hey, Moses wasn’t there anymore.

What about Aaron? Surely he knew, right? Surely he was faithful, or at least he owned up to what he’d done? Well, no. “And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.” As far as excuses go, “the fire made me do it” is right up there with “the dog ate my homework” on the lameness scale. Less subtle, but just as useless as the peoples’ argument that Moses had gone missing again.

God judged the congregation of Israel that night: many lost their lives for the sake of a god they had invented for themselves. The calf could not save them or provide for them. It had no bearing on current events except in what they ascribed to it — and they even attributed their miraculous deliverance from Egypt to the calf Aaron had just made. It didn’t have to make sense; it just had to be comfortably docile so the people could enjoy themselves.

God was not mocked. He didn’t buy their excuses, and He didn’t play their little game. If not for Moses’ intercession, the entire nation of Israel would have been destroyed. God did not (does not!) tolerate idolatry. You can’t mask that with stupidity, either.

We would do well to remember that while people like pastors, group leaders, and mentors are humans that can be fooled or ignored, the God who placed them in our lives cannot be fooled. He didn’t buy excuses at Sinai, and the odds haven’t improved since then. (Excuses are cheap anyway; supply exceeds demand.) The Living God does not make excuses for Himself, doesn’t need to, and He won’t accept them from you and me. It’s not always easy to do, but I want to look past the things that trip me up and see His glory. I want to live for the God of no excuses — with no excuses.