MONDAY, JUNE 11
Scripture: Deuteronomy 9:16-21

Deuteronomy 9:16-21 is the parallel passage that immediately follows after Moses is confronted with the idolatry of the calf and what his response is. This is quite a picture of what is available to us. This passage says, “And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the LORD your God—had made for yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way which the LORD had commanded you. Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was angry with you, to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me at that time also. And the LORD was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. Then I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it and ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that descended from the mountain.” For forty days this cost Moses fasting and praying before the Lord in order to deliver Aaron and the whole nation from their just due. The people of Israel were nearly lost. But Moses interceded for them and the amazing thing is how God gave him the wisdom in that process to take the sin of that calf and to turn it into a merciful, healing, delivering agent. What a picture we see in this process as it develops.