Mandarin Presbyterian Church

But the story of the old testament is often fraught with not just kind of turning away from God to other deities, but this idea of syncretism, where we will worship Yahweh, but we're also going to do it our way as well. We're gonna we're gonna bring in other deities that suit our purposes. What the Israelites were doing with the golden calf was they were saying, Yahweh, thank you for bringing us out of Egypt. Thank you for bringing us into covenant relationship with you, but we'll take it from here. They sought to bring God's presence in their midst, but they sought to do it on their own terms.