OTC - Exodus (Finished)
I finished the rest of Exodus last night. (Yep I'm finally caught up) I found the last half of exodus rather dry and hard to get anything out of, but upon further reflection, its actually pretty interesting. Hope this helps.
Observation
The last half of exodus was a LOT of directions on how to do things. Very detailed, almost too detailed. I'm sure you dosed off too at some points. Or skimmed a ton. Another obs is the whole part about Moses and the Golden Calf. Children of Israel are without their "fearless" leader for 40 days and construct this idol made out of gold and such.
Extended Observation and Insight
Israel just came from oppression in Egypt. Egypt is known historically for their ability to build massive structures and architecture. Hence one of the "7 wonders of the world* are in Egypt. They were a bunch of engineers in other words. So being enslaved by engineers, one can only imagine the attention to detail that the directions the Israelites were given. Perhaps thats why God gave them such detailed instructions and proceedures (algorithms). I read it and saw it like a series of if-else's. (sorry geek comment). Anyways, this might just be the way that Israel knew how to follow directions and understand. You can see that God speaks to his people the way they need to be spoken to.
The whole golden calf thing often times makes the Israelites seems like faithless idiots. But there's more here than meets the eye. Moses just sorta left them alone for a while, and they didn't really know what was going on. Its not like Moses told them when he'd return. At this point, the way people see God and worship God goes through Moses. They don't exactly know how to worship God without Moses. So Moses leaves. After 40 days of sitting around, think about how restless you'd be? So they wanted to worship God, but didn't know how. HIstorically false God's were displayed as statues, but they're usually riding on something like a horse or something. Up to this point they have no idea what God actually looks like. So what do they do? Make a calf with God riding on it. Just so happends that God doesn't have a graven image so it just looks like a calf. So well intentioned but they just couldn't follow orders or sit still.
Application
Knowing God speaks to us the way we need to be spoken to, that doesn't mean God speaks to us the way we WANT Him to. Sometimes what we need the most is silence. It's times of silence that we are truly put to the test. Do we sit still and wait on God? Or Do we go make a golden calf? The world, and even the church to some degree tells us that we always need to be working and doing something. But sometimes God just wants us to sit still and wait.