You Will Drink
What You Worship

Verse 20 records the strangest punishment in this whole account. Moses took the calf, burned it in the fire, ground it to powder, scattered the powder over the face of the water, and forced the Israelites to drink it. The judgment did not stop at destroying the idol. The people who had worshiped the calf now had to swallow it.

Let's consider why Moses handled it this way. He could have buried the gold dust somewhere in the desert and let the people forget the whole episode. Instead, the destroyed idol went into the water, and the water went into the worshipers. The lesson could not have been more physical: what we worship does not stay outside of us. We take it in, and it becomes part of us.

This pattern repeats far beyond Sinai. The career that someone serves as an ultimate thing for thirty years eventually gets swallowed, often as regret over the family dinners it consumed. The image we polish online eventually gets swallowed too, perhaps as the anxiety we feel each time we check how it is performing. Sooner or later, every idol becomes something its worshiper has to drink, and Scripture wants us to know the bitterness in advance.

However, the Scriptures also speak of a very different drink. Earlier in this same journey, when the people were dying of thirst, God told Moses to strike the rock, and water came out for everyone to drink (Exodus 17:6). Centuries later, Jesus stood up at a feast and made the offer personal: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink" (John 7:37). Both cups are real. We will end up drinking either the ground-up remains of what we worshiped, or the living water that God Himself offers.

There is also protection in remembering the taste. Most of us have already had to drink an idol or two, such as the ambition that finally turned sour or the relationship we asked to carry more weight than it could hold. Recalling honestly how those actually tasted guards us against pouring a new cup. God's mercy meets us here as well, because the bitter drink at Sinai was not the end of the story; the same people went on to build His dwelling place.

Today's question is one of foresight: am I worshiping anything right now that I will eventually have to drink?