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In the Torah reading כי תשא Ki Tisa (“when you take,” Ex. 30:11–34:35), we learn that God expects His people to live to a higher standard than the world.
- God expects His people to be “stiff-necked” by living differently than the nations around them.
- God expects His people to treat people equally, not playing favorites with the rich or the poor.
- God expects His people to be self-disciplined and self-controlled, not drunken and negligent.
- God wants His people to intercede in prayer for others, not by complaining about the actions of others, but by calling on God to extend mercy and kindness to others.
- God expects His people to be faithful to Him and not to worship other gods or to worship Him in the ways that others worship false gods.
- God comes down hard on the children of Israel when they act like heathens.
‘You are a stiff-necked people’
Although God frequently calls ancient Israel “stiff-necked,” and it didn’t seem like a complement. We should be grateful that they were “stiff-necked” enough to scrupulously copy the text of the TaNaK1Hebrew acronym for Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings), i.e., the Hebrew Bible. very accurately from generation to generation, over the course of 3,000-plus years, which has been a blessing to all the generations since Moses to now. This mission of spreading the sanctity of Torah has united Jews through all the generations.
God told Abraham that the reason He chose Abraham is that it was in his character to teach his children all of God’s ways. Abraham was “stiff-necked” in his insistence on teaching his children how to follow God. Abraham was stiff-necked in his refusal to live his life the way the people around him lived. He was also “stiff-necked” when he asked God repeatedly if He would kill the inhabitants of Sodom if there were 10 righteous people living in the city. His descendants inherited this tenacity.
However, when ancient Israel became “stiff-necked” against God rather than in relation to the nations around them, God rightly called them out and punished them when they backslid away from Him and their calling.
All people are created equal (Exodus 30)
The census was set up in such a way that the people themselves were not directly counted. Each Israelite man, who was 20 or older, was called upon to bring a half-shekel to the Tabernacle for counting. By counting the coins rather than the people, it equalizes the population in the census.
The rich and the poor are counted equally. That is why each man had to bring the same value coin. It teaches us that rich and poor are equal in the eyes of God and should be equal in the eyes of their leadership. The leadership of the country should listen equally to the opinions and the needs of the wealthy citizens and poor citizens.
All human beings have the same value before God. Our actions have the same value. We can’t use our status as wealthy or poor as an excuse to sin, or as a justification as to why our righteous deeds are better than those of another. Actions are much more important than intentions. Humans judge each other by wealth, power, status, but God does not judge humans that way. After all, we can be wealthy one minute and poor the next. That is a natural cycle of things.
Do your prayers smell pleasant like perfume or unpleasant like death?
When Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) washed His disciples’ feet, He was not only cleaning their feet physically. He was washing their feet as the priests were required to wash their feet before going into the Temple to serve God. Yeshua was showing the 11 righteous disciples that He was now appointing them as “priests” of His people.
The altar of incense represents the prayers of His people and the incense that was burned on was a mixture of many different pleasant smelling spices and resins. Now thing about the nature of your prayers. We know that God does not like complainers. So, ask yourself if your prayers smell sweet to God like incense or do they smell foul like skunk oil because we do more complaining and accusing than blessing and praise?
I don’t want God to complain about me so we shouldn’t complain to God about others.
Everything that God has made is a work of art, yet He leads by example and rested from His work, from making His art on the seventh day, called Saturday in modern English. When the Jews kept the Sabbath, God kept the Jews together. This is why the Jewish people are still a distinct people while all the nations they contended with from the Phoenicians to the Philistines were absorbed by other nations and lost their super power status and even their original identity.
Lack of self-control leads to sin: Lessons from the golden calf
When the children of Israel built and worshipped the golden calf, that was obviously a grievous transgression against God. They had already agreed to follow the 10 commandments which included a prohibition against idolatry, yet just because Moses was gone for 40 days up on the mountain speaking with God directly, which they had asked him to do, they ignored their previous vow of loyalty to God and made themselves a new god. They danced before this golden calf and even presented animal sacrifices to this idol.
So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” …
Then Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?” Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. “For they said to me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ “I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”
Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control — for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies.
Exodus 32:6, 21–25 NASB
Aaron, by capitulating to their demands for an idol to worship, allowed the children of Israel to lose all sense of discipline and self-control. They were unrestrained by basic morality or conscience. The children of Israel were engaging in revelry and mayhem and based on the Hebrew word used here to describe their lack of inhibition and self-control, I’m believe that some people died during the course of this drunken idolatrous “festival.”
God had to spend so much time teaching the children of Israel the basics of monotheism and proper worship. Over the course of 40 years, He had to teach and re-teach them the purpose of Shabbat. That’s why God sent the manna in the way He did. The children of Israel had lost much of their connection with the heritage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph over the generations in back-breaking slavery.
The fact is that Aaron was the one who made the Golden Calf. In the Mishna, we are told that Aaron made the calf because he feared for his life after the people had first asked Hur to make the Golden Calf and he refused. Hur was martyred by the people because he wouldn’t cooperate with their idolatry.
Later when we read about the ceremony of Yom Kippur, God tells the High Priest that he first has to make atonement for himself by sacrificing a bull. The fact that God chose a bull as the sacrifice of the High Priest is a reminder that the first High Priest was the one who made the Golden Calf and that God covered over and forgave that grievous sin when He appointed Aaron as High Priest anyway.
What can the prayers of a righteous man do?
Then Moses returned to the LORD, and said, “Alas, this people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves. “But now, if You will, forgive their sin — and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!” The LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. “But go now, lead the people where I told you. Behold, My angel shall go before you; nevertheless in the day when I punish, I will punish them for their sin.” Then the LORD smote the people, because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made.
Exodus 32:31–35 NASB
Abraham interceded on behalf of people who did not deserve intercession when he asked God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if there were 10 righteous people living there. Moses did the same, he fervently interceded for the children of Israel after they sinned against God with the Golden Calf.
In a sense, both Abraham and Moses “bound” God, not in the sense of shackling Him with handcuffs and chains but in the sense that they reminded God of His previous promises so that He would be willing to save the lives of the undeserving for the sake of the righteous.
What do we learn by the examples of these righteous men? What is the job of a righteous person? The job assignment is that in prayer, the righteous “bind” God to saving those don’t deserve saving. Now is that easy? No, absolutely not. The self control is tremendous at times.
When we pray for the salvation of others, we are praying for the salvation of people who don’t deserve salvation. Strictly speaking, we didn’t deserve salvation either, yet someone prayed for us and it was through their prayers that we have a relationship with the Messiah.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
Matthew 16:19 NASB
That is the nature of intercession. That’s why we call intercessors “prayer warriors.” We read that God relents and doesn’t wipe the children of Israel off the face of the earth and start again with Moses.
Parallel punishments for golden calf worshippers and adulterous wife
He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it. …
The LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. But go now, lead the people where I told you. Behold, My angel shall go before you; nevertheless in the day when I punish, I will punish them for their sin.” Then the LORD smote the people, because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made.
Exodus 32:20, 33–35 NASB
Moses chose a very particular way to punish the people for their sin with the Golden Calf. He commands them to grind up the gold of the Golden Calf into a powder and made the people all drink it.
This should spark a memory in your mind of similar passage later in the Torah. What Moses did here It is a very similar ritual to the ritual of a jealous husband, as recorded in Numbers 5:11-31. The husband has a suspicion that his wife has committed adultery with another man. He doesn’t know for certain but he knows that God knows the truth so he brings her to the Tabernacle. The priests don’t know whether the woman was guilty of adultery, either so there’s a ritual that the priest performs in which he mixes a powder in water that the wife has to drink to find out whether she had committed adultery or not.
In the same way, Moses doesn’t know which people were absolutely guilty of idolatry with the golden calf, which ones were just complicit or totally innocent, but God knew and Moses makes all of the drink the water mixed with the gold from the golden calf.
Shortly after drinking the gold, a plague came upon the community and I suspect that they died the same way that the adulterous wife would have died after performing the ritual recorded in Numbers 5. This is an example of how God considers idolatry like the sin of adultery.
Repentance leads to restoration
How did the people repent of their sin with the Golden Calf? One thing they did was they took off their fancy clothes and jewelry. We need continual reminders that we need to be mindful of our conduct. This is why when people would fast in the times of Messiah and generations before, people would often wear sackcloth, which is a very uncomfortable cloth. The discomfort was a reminder of the need of repentance and mourning over one’s sin.
Yeshua said that when we fast, we shouldn’t let others know that we are fasting. I think of Jehoram bar Ahab, King of Israel in 2 Kings 6, when he wore his sackcloth under his royal robes so only God knew what was going on in the king’s heart and how he was grieving over what was going on during the siege of Samaria.
We are instructed to intercede to God in prayer for who don’t deserve it, just as Moses and Abraham did. We are called to be persistent in prayer and honest in our repentance, but we also need to remember that it is God’s choice to answer yes or no and to be ok with that. We are also called to separate ourselves from those who would lead us astray.
At the end of this Torah portion, God does forgive the people and expresses a willingness to live with the people again.
Key lessons from Ki Tisa
- Money + power: Rich and poor are equal in God’s eyes.
- Wash your hands and feet: You must be cleaned to approach God.
- Prayers are incense: The outpouring of your heart must be “sweet,” not “stinky” complaining.
- Rest on Shabbat: Remember Who is the Creator, and we aren’t that.
- Have no other gods: Have self-control. It’s not about being perfect.
- Intercede for others: The way Heaven intercedes for you and others.
- Repentance must be honest.
- God decides what forgiveness is.
- Stay separate from the non-God realm: If one lives deep in it, watch yourself!
- Yearn to live with God.
Summary: Tammy