Real Lesson of the making of the Golden Calf

"ISRAEL’S making of the sun-god, or golden calf, is an emphatic lesson of man’s natural depravity. They had promised, but in their own strength, that they would obey 

God’s voice: 

Exodus 19 

8 

And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do. 

And they were no doubt honest in this; but their hearts were unregenerate,and deceived themselves. 

A deceived heart turned them aside.

Isaiah 44

20  

He feeds on ashes: a deceived heart has turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? 

The only way by which we can do God’s will is to be regenerated—born again—the heart of enmity to God’s law taken away, and the new heart given. The only means by which we can keep God’s commandments is by His strength, put on through faith in Christ. Every other way, every covenant in our own strength, will, like that of Israel at Horeb, gender to bondage. 

Galatians 4 

24

Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which genders to bondage, which is Hagar. 

All departure from God’s word means idolatry, and the farther one strays from the letter of His warning or His command, the more flagrant becomes his idolatry." E.J.  Waggoner