God Invisible but Real!

Exodus 32:1–5 (HCSB)

When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, "Come, make us a god who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!"

Then Aaron replied to them, "Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring ‹them› to me."

So all the people took off the gold rings that were on their ears and brought ‹them› to Aaron. He took ‹the gold› from their hands, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into an image of a calf.

Then they said, "Israel, this is your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!"

When Aaron saw ‹this›, he built an altar before it; then he made an announcement: "There will be a festival to the LORD tomorrow."

I may be completely wrong about this, but I believe Aaron’s intent was not to make a new God. I believe his intent was to make an image of Jehovah. As long as the people could see Moses, he was like God to them. When Moses disappeared and did not return they were without a god. They had a journey ahead of them and they could not make it without the LORD. So they demanded that Aaron make an image of God.

The tendency of man is always to slide back to worshipping what he can see. Even as Christians we do this. We have our statues of Jesus on the cross and our paintings of Jesus on our walls. Now we even movies of Jesus!

We have to remind ourselves that the images we have are NOT Jesus!

Have you ever wondered why we have no descriptions of Jesus in the Bible? I think it is for just this reason. We are so visually oriented. If we had a description we would paint it and worship that!

The God we worship is real, but He is not a God we can see—leastways, not with these eyes. That is a big hang up, I think, with the atheists and agnostics. They won’t believe in God until they can see Him with their eyes and feel Him with their hands. They will not believe in the God of the Bible, but they will fall head over heels for a golden calf!

God reveals Himself to us personally, but He is not a person like we think. He does not have flesh and bones. He is totally other than anything we have ever seen, felt, or even imagined. This is part of what we mean when we say He is “transcendent.” He transcends our imaginations. We can know Him intimately, but just not visually. Please don’t think this makes Him less real. I cannot see the air I breathe, but it is altogether real. I cannot see the dust that makes me sneeze, but it is real. I cannot see the love I have for my wife and children, but it is real. I actually think this makes Him more real because this God, this invisible God, can come and live in my heart. Oh yes, dear friend, He is real!