All That the Lord Hath Said

At Mount Sinai the children of Israel covenanted to keep the commandments of the Lord. We read, “And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said will we do…. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.” Moses took the blood of the sacrifices and affirmed the covenant with the people—they were fully committed to following the Lord. It was after this that Moses and “seventy of the elders of Israel” went up into the mountain and “they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness” (Exodus 24:3, 7, 10). Surely their willingness to enter into this covenants was part of why they were given the great privilege of seeing the Lord. As they committed to doing all that the Lord said, they were given great revelations and the people was blessed.

                Given this marvelous experience of these seventy and the commitment of all the people to serve the Lord, it is shocking to see what happened next to the children of Israel. Moses “went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights” (Exodus 24:18). He was apparently gone much longer than the people expected, and this is what they did: “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.” They had just seen God and covenanted to keep His commandments, which included not having any other gods and not making graven images and worshipping them. And yet they participated in this “most strange and unaccountable transaction,” as one scholar put it, having “so soon lost sight of the wonderful manifestations of God upon the mount.” Aaron inexplicably declared to them, after graving their molten calf, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” It was clearly not what the Lord wanted His people to do, and He declared to Moses: “Thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto” (Exodus 32:1, 4, 7-8). They had so quickly turned from their covenant to keep the Lord’s commandments and accepted the very kind of worship Jehovah had forbidden.

                Of course while it is easy today to see the great wickedness of the children of Israel and wonder how they could so quickly reject what they had just received, surely we often have the same problem even if to a lesser degree. The Come, Follow Me lesson comments, “We know from experience that faith and commitment can sometimes be overcome by impatience, fear, or doubt.” We all struggle to keep our lives in harmony with our covenants and commitments. We repent only to do again the thing which we thought we had forsaken. We promise to remember the Lord only to let ourselves be caught up in the things of the world. To one degree of another we at times have the same problem as those described by Joseph Smith who had great zeal for the faith but whose “seemingly good feelings… were more pretended than real” (JSH 1:6). The great challenge is living true to what we know and have experienced, not letting the figurative golden calves creep into our lives after we have promised the Lord that He alone we will serve.