Idolatry in Christianity??

A Golden Calf - The Queen of Heaven - I've been reading about the Israelites and the Judahites and how they allowed their worship of Adonai to become tainted with pagan idolatry.

Exodus 32: 1When Moses failed to come back down the mountain right away, the people went to Aaron. "Look," they said, "make us some gods who can lead us. This man Moses, who brought us here from Egypt, has disappeared. We don't know what has happened to him."
2So Aaron said, "Tell your wives and sons and daughters to take off their gold earrings, and then bring them to me."
3All the people obeyed Aaron and brought him their gold earrings. 4Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded and tooled it into the shape of a calf. The people exclaimed, "O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt!"
5When Aaron saw how excited the people were about it, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD!"
So, it's not that the Israelites want to worship another god, they've seen how Adonai has been able to deliver them from Egypt, they're pretty happy about following this God, but Moses, who is the communicator between the people and Adonai - he seems to have gone missing! "DUUUUH Who's gonna lead us now?" they say to themselves. Now in their previous experience, they had a symbol to lead them.. granted pagan idolatrus symbols, but a symbol non theless. So, what they wanted now was a symbol of YHVH to lead them, since Moses wasn't there to lead them. It wasn't that they didn't trust YHVH anymore, or that they were defecting to another god, it's that they wanted to be able to "see" YHVH. So Aaron made the calf out of gold. OH and then Aaron does something unthinkable.. he changes the feast days! The last thing the scriptures say before Moses goes up the mountain is to keep the Sabbath, and there is Aaron telling the people to have a festival to the Lord.

Exodus 32:6 So the people got up early the next morning to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings. After this, they celebrated with feasting and drinking, and indulged themselves in pagan revelry.
7Then the LORD told Moses, "Quick! Go down the mountain! The people you brought from Egypt have defiled themselves. 8They have already turned from the way I commanded them to live. They have made an idol shaped like a calf, and they have worshiped and sacrificed to it. They are saying, `These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.' "

Look, Adonai was in the middle of something with Moses, but the idolatry and worship and sacrifices have interupted Adonai and Moses. God sent Moses back to the people to put a stop to it, and quick!

So here I am reading from our daily Torah portion with the family tonight and we read in Jeremiah 44:

Jeremiah 44:17 We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and sacrifice to her just as much as we like--just as we and our ancestors did before us, and as our kings and princes have always done in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For in those days we had plenty to eat, and we were well off and had no troubles! 18But ever since we quit burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and stopped worshiping her, we have been in great trouble and have suffered the effects of war and famine."
19"And," the women added, "do you suppose that we were worshiping the Queen of Heaven, pouring out drink offerings to her, and making cakes marked with her image, without our husbands knowing it and helping us? Of course not!"

Now look at how rightreous they think they are, "do you suppose we were worshipping....without our husbands knowing it." They worshipped this way in Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. You see, these Judahites are honestly believing they are worshipping YHVH through the making of these cakes in the form of the Queen of Heaven, they think this isdevoutly worshipping YHVH.

We've been taught how to worship and when to worship Adonai, we've been taught that we should make no image, so statue, no cakes, no symbol. YHVH is YHVH, he did tell the Isrealites to make an ark, in which to put the covenant, he did tell them to make a Holy of Holies, he did tell us to make a Tabernacle and then later a Temple. If we don't do it exaclty as he asks us, that's idoaltry. Celebrating, feasting, sacrificing, worshipping differently than he tells us to is missing the mark, it's sin.

So, at what point do we understand that Torah is the mark, and anything that is not according to Torah is missing the mark, which is sin. Before Moses went up the mountain, the Israelites were warned to keep the Sabbath, time and time again the people were told to keep the Sabbath, and the first thing they do is break this.

My first 11 years of worshipping Adonai, I celebrated on Sunday, not the Sabbath. I stood to sing to Yeshua in front of a cross. I've seen countless homes with a cross hanging on the walls, or hospital rooms, the main point being to remind and encourage the observer to remember Yeshua. I know that thos who hold that Sunday is the new sabbath do it with fully believing hearts that they are worshipping righteously, I know that those who stand before a cross, who bow before a cross, those who sing before statues of Jesus and Mary, they fully beileve that they are worshipping God...


... but they're missing the mark.