I reminded us yesterday that Jesus is our priest, and that’s a good thing because Aaron, the first priest, wasn’t all that great a guy. We’ve already seen that the infamous golden calf episode came right after Aaron had had a personal encounter with God! Now we come to Exodus 32, the golden calf chapter and see that Aaron has real issues.

First, when pressured, he makes the golden calf:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32.1 – 4, ESV)

Then, when challenged by Moses, he refuses to take responsibility:

And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” (Exodus 32.22 – 24, ESV)

Aaron was an incredibly weak leader and man. “Aaron…fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf.” (verse 4) is very different from “I threw it into the fire and out came this calf.” (verse 24) And of course, he blames the whole thing on the people who are “set on evil.”

A people “set on evil” need to be restrained, but Aaron doesn’t restrain them:

Moses saw that the people were simply running wild—Aaron had let them run wild, disgracing themselves before their enemies. (Exodus 32.35, MSG)

But here’s a thought: Aaron becomes the first high priest anyway! (See Leviticus 8 and 9.) Maybe he functioned OK as a priest, just not as a leader. We see this sort of thing all the time. For example, the Denver Broncos football team has hired several men over the past few years who were outstanding assistant coaches but terrible head coaches. The last one, Nathaniel Hackett, was said to be a genius as an offensive coordinator, but he was a miserable failure as head coach. I was at a game when the crowd took to counting down the play clock so the team wouldn’t incur a delay of game penalty because Coach Hackett apparently couldn’t keep up with it. He was fired before the end of the season, and the Broncos have hired Sean Payton who is a former, you guessed it, successful head coach.

In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly. (Romans 12.6 – 8, NLT)