And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:
They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?
And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.

COMMENTARY

They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them
Thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief
We have previously examined that God tests His people with afflictions, but also with blessings. This is not all, though. Of all the ways that we are tested, perhaps the most prominent method is that of being tested by our own nature. Each one of us has our predisposition for sin. Some of us are drawn towards the bottle. Others are firm teetotalers, but then are drawn towards pride. Others are well able to remain humble, but fall prey to their lust. Doesn’t matter what it is, we all have our Achilles’ heel.
Throughout the scriptures we see people that are called to become something more than what they were, but are then tempted to slip back into their old nature. As we see in these passages from Exodus 32, the newly-freed Israelites struggled to cleave to God. Many times they turned back to their idols. In Numbers 22-24 Balaam was convinced by God to pronounce a blessing upon the Israelites, but then in Numbers 31 we learn that he went back and taught the Midianites how to corrupt the Israelites. In John 21 Peter returned to the provincial life of fishing, rather than answer the call to lead the church.
Yes we do have extraneous forces that tempt and try us, but by and large the old adage is true: we are our own worst enemy. The path to exaltation is attained less by powering through intense moments of adversity and blessing, and more by consistently looking ourselves in the mirror and choosing the better part.