The God We Cannot Control
A reflection on idols and trying to control the God of the universe.
IDOLSWORSHIPCONTROL
Ryan Egli
8/1/20263 min read
I'm still preaching through Exodus at City Line Church. Last Sunday we made it to one of the saddest and most destructive parts of the book in Exodus 32. The story of the golden calf is so familiar that it has almost lost its ability to surprise us. Most Christians know the basic outline. Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the Law while Israel grows impatient below. Aaron gathers their gold, fashions a calf, and the people celebrate with worship and feasting. It has become one of those biblical stories we assume we already understand.
Yet reading the passage carefully, what stands out is not simply Israel's disobedience but how quickly it happens. Israel has just witnessed the plagues in Egypt. They have walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. They have eaten manna in the wilderness and heard the voice of God from the mountain. They have formally entered into covenant with the Lord, promising together, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do." Before Moses even descends the mountain carrying the covenant tablets, the covenant has already been broken.
It is easy to read this account and wonder how Israel could have fallen so quickly. We often imagine ourselves responding differently if only we had seen what they had seen. But Exodus has never really invited us to stand over Israel in judgment. Instead, it asks us to recognize ourselves in Israel's story. Their failure exposes something about the human heart that remains true today.
One of the striking features of the chapter is that Israel does not completely reject the Lord. Their sin is subtler than outright unbelief. They want a god they can see, predict, and carry with them. They want a version of God that feels accessible and manageable. The tragedy of the golden calf is not simply that they worship another deity but that they attempt to reshape the living God according to their own imagination.
Modern idolatry usually works in much the same way. We are less inclined to cast statues out of gold than we are to reshape God in our thinking. We prefer a God who affirms our priorities, supports our ambitions, and rarely asks us to change. We speak often about God's love while becoming uncomfortable with his holiness. We celebrate his mercy while quietly ignoring his authority. Little by little, we construct an image of God that reflects our preferences more than God's self-revelation.
John Calvin observed this tendency nearly five hundred years ago. In one of the most memorable passages of the Institutes, he writes:
"Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols...The mind begets an idol, and the hand gives it birth. The human mind, stuffed as it is with presumption and rashness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity. As it sluggishly plods—indeed, is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance—it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God. To these evils a new wickedness joins itself: man tries to express in his work the sort of God he has inwardly conceived. The mind conceives the idol, and the hand gives it birth." (Institutes 1.11.8)
Calvin's point is not merely that people worship false gods. It is that the human heart is constantly producing false conceptions of the true God. We fashion him in our imagination before we ever fashion him in wood or stone. The idol is first intellectual and spiritual before it ever becomes physical. That is why the second commandment remains so searching today. It forbids not only bowing before carved images but also reducing the living God to something our minds can comfortably grasp and control. This is something we all tend to do and something we should seek to avoid with all our strength with the help of God’s Spirit.