Moses has led the Israelites out of Egypt, and taken them to a holy mountain in Sinai. God has done wonders to break his people out of slavery, but they still don't feel altogether at ease with Him. The mountain is rumbling and shaking and throwing big rocks about, and the people tell Moses, "All right, we'll just stay back here, if that's all right. You can talk to Him for us." Moses agrees, and while he's up on the mountain talking with God, the people are melting down their liberated jewelry and making themselves images to worship, "These are the gods who brought you out of Egypt!" Now if you think this behavior is peculiar to the Jews, you really haven't gotten it! Confronted unexpectedly with the sacred, we don't know which foot to dance on and we freak! So we try to do something we already know, set up something to worship we think we've got down. Whatever was on that first set of tablets Moses brought down, he broke them when he saw what the people were doing. University lessons for a kindergarten class! The next time he went up, he brought back a rulebook.And people interpreted the rulebook, and broke the rules, and continued to do things their own way. "Is this all right, God? This is what You want, right?" Because understanding one thing can be a tremendous barrier to understanding anything else.Jesus came along; his message will have to be a whole new subject. But for now, I'll just say that we've learned many good things from him, and are still, most all of us, far from knowing the best part of that message.