On Sunday in Kindergarten Bible school, we gave out the 2025 Golden Calf Award. It was a close contest as the children and teachers voted on what they really, really, really would love to have. The entries ranged from all the candy you could eat for a year to your favorite sports team throwing you a birthday party to the pet of your choice and you didn’t have to clean up its business to one million dollars. The two finalists were the pet and the money. I was rooting for the pet.

But when the votes were counted, the clear winner of the 2025 Gold Calf Award? One million dollars. The kids went wild, shouting the chant, “Money, money, money!”

Wil calmed them down with a missionary story about Martin Luther, which turned out to be a providential choice considering the winner of the Golden Calf Award. Luther had no tolerance for using money to gain standing with God. I am certain that Martin Luther was not the winner of the 1517 Golden Calf Award.

As we made the transition to the actual golden calf in Exodus 32, we explained to the kids that loving money or anything or anyone else more than God was just wrong, a sin. In making and worshiping an object, God’s people had just broken the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” and the reason why they broke it? They had grown impatient. Moses wasn't rushing down the mountain, so let's make other gods. Makes sense to me.

The whole story would be funny, if it weren't still true for us today, I can become a bit obsessed with personal nominees for my very own Golden Calf award. Some days my idols of choice are elevated to a finalist through my association with the right people in the right places, as I am careful to avoid the poor in spirit, the meek and those who mourn. Then there are days when the glitter of my stash of talents and treasures distract me from the true treasure and the true prize.

Whether we chalk up our idols to impatience or another excuse, loving anyone or anything more than God is dangerous business. Just ask the children of Israel who drank the gold dust from their now shattered calf.

Instead of drinking the gold dust, Jesus invites us to come and drink of living water, to feast on living bread and be satisfied. Whatever we love in life can't hold a candle to one we love beyond life.

Wrote Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ: “Whoever find Jesus finds a great treasure, yea, a good above all good; and he who loses Jesus loses much yea, more than the world. Poorest of all is the one who lives without Jesus, and richest of all is the one who is close to Jesus.”

Once we grasp Jesus as our greatest treasure, our greatest good—our very life—then everything else is worthless because we have all that matters in life and death, forever.