The Three-Hundred-Second (Ownership)
- Rob
- Jun 13
- 8 min read
In general, one of the things each person desires in this world is autonomy. No one really wants someone else to be telling them what to do, how to live, what they can eat or drink, etc. A person wants to feel like they control their life and how they live it.
The amount of autonomy a person desires varies based on the society they live in. In one, they accept that they can never enjoy certain benefits, certain aspects of freedom, in their lives simply because of what group of people they were born into. In another, they accept that a governmental authority controls certain aspects of their lives, but beyond those aspects they push back on any control that government tries to impose. In the United States, we claim “the land of the free,” but if you haven’t figured it out already, that just means the way we’re controlled is different and more sneaky than in other countries.
What we’re talking about this week though, is not societal or governmental controls, but those are related to the topic at hand at their deepest level. The topic is who or what a person is really owned by, whether they’re aware of it or not. And let me tell you, the options are not as complicated as you might think.
Through a number of previous studies, we’re well aware of how slavery is recorded in scripture with historical events and its use as a representation for sin. The Israelites lived in Egypt for hundreds of years and ended up becoming slaves to the people there (Genesis 15:13). In every way, that experience was a test of their ability to remain faithful to YHWH and follow His commandments.
Regardless of their inability to do so, YHWH had mercy on them and delivered them despite not following His commandments (Exodus 14:30). He re-established His Law at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20-31) to give them another opportunity to follow His commandments. Unfortunately, they had been so influenced by and ingrained in the Egyptian pagan culture, they failed to follow those commandments immediately after they were given (Exodus 32), despite the fact that they had just agreed to do everything YHWH commanded (Exodus 19:7-8).
There’s a couple things to point out here. First, having the full benefit of knowing the end of the story and being able to read the whole story, all of scripture from beginning to end, we take for granted that we can clearly identify that what Israel did was wrong. If you put yourselves in their shoes though, it’s not that cut and dry.
In that time, the gods and serving them was all about their name. In today’s society, we pretty much gloss over the fact that Moses asked YHWH’s name for a specific purpose (Exodus 3:13-16). We think, what’s the big deal? Why is it so important that Moses uses His specific name? Why isn’t it sufficient to simply tell the Israelites that the God above all gods is the one sending Moses?
The reason is because in Egypt they had multiple gods, each with their own power above the others. In the case of the golden calf that the Israelites made in the wilderness, which was made by Aaron, Moses’ right-hand man in going to Pharaoh to free the Israelites, there was actually an Egyptian god associated with that animal. It was the god named Hathor, who appeared as a cow or a woman with cow ears.
How could a man as integrated into the process of freeing the Israelites as Aaron was, literally one person removed from YHWH Himself in terms of communication and getting direction from Him, think that this cow-god was YHWH? What would make him associate their deliverance from Egypt, what they just went through, with this god he knew from the Egyptians?
Well, as it turns out, this god called Hathor was the one associated with guiding souls to the afterlife. Another Egyptian god, called Isis, was depicted with cow horns and invoked for safe travels and personal salvation, so it’s possible Aaron was thinking of that god when creating the golden calf as well. The reason I lean towards Hathor though, is because Israel had just passed through the sea, which represented death in that culture (as you can see with imagery in scripture), and that matches perfectly with a god that guides souls through death to the afterlife.
As the Israelites lived in Egypt, the pagan gods, what they stood for, and how to worship them became ingrained in the Israelites thinking. They had all but forgotten the true God of their ancestors, YHWH. Naturally, when the people asked him to make gods for them to follow, Aaron went with what he grew up learning and knowing his whole life (Exodus 32:1).
The second thing to point out in this whole situation, from the Israelites settling in Egypt to their deliverance, is that while we typically point specifically to the deliverance and their time in the wilderness as a test of their faith, settling and living in Egypt was perhaps even more of a test than the wilderness. In the wilderness, the Israelites were alone, just them and YHWH. In Egypt, there were other people, Egyptians, with their own traditions, views, and beliefs, that the Israelites lived and worked beside.
How hard is it to follow a set of commandments when you’re all alone compared to when you’re living and working next to other people that don’t believe in those commandments? They’re people, just like you, and most of the time they have reasoning as to why they believe what they do. It makes sense to them, and when they explain it to you it might even make sense to you.
You see them living and working day-to-day, seemingly experiencing the same successes and struggles that you do in the same way you do, and slowly but surely, if you let them, their beliefs and views start to integrate into your thinking. You feel closer to them and they feel closer to you because you all think more alike day by day, you incorporate more and more, bit by bit, until eventually it’s second nature that you believe what they believe and you’ve even forgotten how you ended up there. It takes conscious effort and constant grounding in your original beliefs in order to prevent this from happening.
If you were to look at this experience from the outside, completely independently, what would you say about the ownership of these thought processes? Who or what owned Aaron’s thinking? Who or what owned the thinking of the Israelites as they incorporated more and more pagan beliefs and rituals into their lives?
You might think Aaron was in complete control of choosing to create a golden calf to worship, meaning he completely owned deciding on that action and following through with it. To make it a little closer to home, you might think that you’re in complete control of all your choices and actions. We like to believe in our own autonomy at the most basic level, our thoughts and actions, but that’s not actually what’s written in scripture, if you can believe it.
Before we get too much further though, let’s be clear. That is not to say that we have absolutely no ability to choose what we do or decide what or how to think. That is not true. What we’re saying here is that on a normal, no conscious thinking, day-to-day basis, our thoughts and choices on “auto-pilot” are owned by something or someone.
Obviously, at any point, with any given situation, you can certainly own your choice to do or think a certain way. However, I’m sure you, just like me, encounter some situations where the choice of which way to think or what to do is a struggle. It’s a challenge to pick the righteous way as we weigh the circumstances of the situation, what the world would say is right, and what we believe scripture says is right. What’s really happening is a struggle of ownership. It’s a struggle of who we’re going to allow to own our choice or our belief.
In Romans 6, Paul talks about slavery, and the word he uses is doulos (Strong’s G1401) (Romans 6:16-23). According to Strong’s, this word means slave and it doesn’t distinguish between a slave that becomes that way voluntarily or involuntarily. In Paul’s writing to the believers in Rome, he talks about both ways that someone is a slave in their thoughts and actions.
Paul wrote of offering yourself up as an obedient slave, indicating a choice to be made by us. He also wrote about the reader once being a slave to sin. Do you think the believers in Rome felt like they made a choice to be a slave to sin? If you were once a non-believer, or even if you believed but still sinned, do you feel like you made that choice? Have you ever felt like you made a choice to give sin ownership over your thoughts or actions?
I don’t know anyone that would admit that they have ever felt that way, but Paul only gives two options for ownership: owned by sin or owned by YHWH. Whether you feel like you made the choice or not, at one point in your life or even still today on some occasions, your thoughts and actions have been owned by sin. Your day-to-day, “auto-pilot” thoughts and actions were driven by sin just like the Israelites were driven by their taskmasters in Egypt.
The good news is that not only are you now aware of that fact, if you’re reading this you have made at least one choice to give ownership of your thoughts and actions over to YHWH! The most important thing to know at this point for you is that it isn’t just one choice. It’s constant choices, both for your thoughts and for your actions, in every situation you encounter.
It's constant choices and it’s constant grounding in YHWH and His definition of righteousness. Otherwise, slowly but surely, we will end up the same as the Israelites in Egypt. More and more of our thoughts and actions will be owned by sin.
The only thing that we have to keep us grounded in YHWH and His definition of righteousness is scripture. Therefore, the only way that we can get grounded and stay that way constantly is by constantly reading and studying scripture. To bring it full circle, this grounding is the only way we can keep our thoughts and our actions under the ownership of YHWH, our day-to-day, “auto-pilot” thoughts and actions, the ones we don’t even think twice about. Just as when we didn’t realize that sin owned our actions and thoughts, in this way we give ourselves the opportunity to not even realize that YHWH owns our actions and thoughts.
Make the choice this week to give YHWH ownership over every one of your thoughts and actions by choosing to constantly read and study His word, and keep making that choice, moment after moment and week after week.
Have a great week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
The Gospel
We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)
The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)
Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)
His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death
He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)
Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life
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