It is important to also know how God wants to be loved. I've mentioned previously that the world is trying to redefine love, and some of that is creeping into believer's mindsets.

We can't just define love ourselves and think "Oh, I am doing this thing because that is how I love, and this is me loving God."

In Exodus 32, we have the children of Israel, worried about the fact Moses has been gone so long, and that they need someone to speak to God for them. They have the golden calf created. After it was created, they said "These are the gods that took you out of Egypt".

Let's stop a second. First, it says they created one calf. So, why would this be "gods" in plural? In the Hebrew, the word there is elohim (אלהים) which means "gods". However, it also refers to God all over the Bible, including the first verse: Genesis 1:1.

Second, what Aaron says: tomorrow we will have a feast to the LORD The LORD in all caps showing that in Hebrew, it is God's name: YHWH (to replicate the Hebrew letters).

So, with both of these verses, we can see that they didn't create some new god for them to worship. They were trying to worship God in the way the Egyptians did. They were trying to love/worship God in the way THEY knew how, but not in the way HE wanted to be loved/worshipped. Afterward, we all know the story: Moses breaks the tablets, makes everyone drink water with powder grounded from the golden calf, and then 3,000 people died.

Knowing how God wants to be loved is important. He specifies ways He wants to be loved and ways He doesn't want to be in the Bible. Most of these instructions are all given in Exodus-Deuteronomy.

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