Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 7, 2021 | Exodus - Five Things You Can Tell God Not To Do

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March 7, 2021 | Exodus - Five Things You Can Tell God Not To Do · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad to be here.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday afternoon, some of us uh guys had taken a vacation to Arizona, some of us were in Tucson.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: We learned our flight wouldn't leave until last night, too late to make our connection in Dallas.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: And I called Alex Wolfe, uh uh Connors on a ski trip.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: And uh so it was between Alex and Doug Will and Teresa and no.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh so anyway, um to his credit, when I said, Alex, you may be on for tomorrow morning unless we can get our flights changed, to his credit, he said, uh, okay, we'll get her done.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: You know.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: When I was in Alex's place, which I was once, a year out of seminary, uh, my lead pastor here at Topeka Bible Church did the same thing to me.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I did not react nearly so well.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Pastor told, I'm sick.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I can, don't think I can do that.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: But we got the flights changed, which is nice.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Got back in Topeka about 2 a.m.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Just glad to be here for one of the most important chapters in the Old Testament.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: And uh, one of the darkest days in Israel's history, but it turned bright because of one person, the great man Moses.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: We're in an Exodus challenge.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: We just have two more weeks after this, reading through the book of Exodus, four chapters a week, until Palm Sunday.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: It's last Sunday this month.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: We'll do Christ in the Passover up here.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: And um this week we're switching to three, since we have two weeks, six chapters, three daily devotionals on chapters 35, 36, and 37 on discovertbc.com.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Hope you're with us.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: If uh if you are you still with us?
1:57
SPEAKER_00: Is anybody still around?
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: That is for great.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: So this morning, five things you can tell God not to do.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Waiting right now for the lightning for the light for the to be turned into cinder.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: But um so, like I said, uh dark day, one of the darkest days, the greatest day of idolatry in Israel's history.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Exodus 32, if you're looking it up on your cell phone or in your Bible.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: But turns bright because of one person, one amazing person named Moses.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: And uh that's why this cartoon meant so much to me.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Dogbert says to Dilbert, I'm going into the sports memorabilia business.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: And Dilbert says, I've heard that most auto, or Dogbert says, I've heard that most autographs are forgeries.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: So my initial investment will be low.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Can I interest you in a baseball signed by Moses?
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Wow, said Dilbert, that's going to be worth something.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: And uh the truth is, if we had anything with Moses' signature or face on it, it would be a big deal.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Michelangelo said that his favorite sculpture, sculpture, of all the sculptures, all the statutes he'd done was the one he made of Moses in Rome.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: And it shows a very noble, very strong figure, and that's how Moses appears in this chapter.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: So let's get into this chapter and uh find out about what Israel did, what Moses did, how God responded.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: This is the famous chapter we find entitled The Golden Calf.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: When the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, they gathered against, and I like uh what the most recent commentary translated this, ganged up on Aaron, because the word is not just simply congregated to or gathered to, it's gathered against, and the other three times that's used in the Old Testament.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: It's uh in a in a situation of hostility.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: So they ganged up on Aaron, that's Moses' older brother by three years, who uh will be the high priest soon, but is his sidekick, and they said to him, get up.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh the translation day is uh not in any Bible, but it's close to all of them, but it's from the Hebrew, get up, make us gods who will go before us, because this guy, Moses, this fellow, Moses, very what's the word I'm looking for here?
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Umpolite, snarky, snarky?
5:02
SPEAKER_00: This guy, Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's at this point that I have a problem with almost every commentary and every sermon I've ever heard in this chapter, because um they don't they don't even go.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how how can we identify with these people?
5:25
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, aren't these the worst people we've ever seen?
5:27
SPEAKER_00: They're just horrible, and they're not like us at all, and so we can't identify with them, and they're just they're just just throw them in the dust.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, but the problem is for me, up till now, these people have been a whole lot like me.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, they've been complaining in Egypt and they're really glad to get out, and they're wondering, and they're hungry, and so forth, and they just seem, in fact, the New Testament, Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 10 that we ought to identify with the children of Israel.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: So, why all of a sudden would we not ask the question uh why would the Israelites do something so horrific when they're just a month away from having made having sworn their fealty to God and entered into what we compare with a marriage relationship with him?
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Why would they suddenly decide to build an idol?
6:14
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me, and I think I put this in the devotional, that it reminds me of uh one of the first times that I took some students, helped take students, to to downtown New York City, to New York City for a student tour during spring break.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I was in charge of something like 20 students, and and we we were on a uh we were trying to fill out a sheet of paper, and so you know, we went to the Statue of Liberty, and then we went to the Empire State Building, we were gonna walk.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: We just walked all day, 10 miles, whatever.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Went into Chinatown and so forth, and I'm suddenly thinking as I'm thinking about the children of Israel, what if I had done to them what Moses did to the Israelites?
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Moses, God had said to Moses, come up here and stay, but he hadn't said for how long.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: And Moses hadn't said, I'm going to be gone to the Israelites, and he's never even been gone overnight before.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: And I imagine if all of a sudden I said to the students there in Chinatown, listen, I uh uh um my cell phone just went off.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: I've got to go talk to somebody.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: It's really urgent.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: I'll be right.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: I'll be back, I'll be back soon.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so you just stay here, feel free to walk up and down, look in the fish shops and so forth, and enjoy yourself, but I'll be back.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: And they and they did, and they looked and I was gone.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: But then I was gone an hour, and then I was gone two hours, and they began to panic.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: And and then they said, Wow, I think something happened to him.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: There's no way that he wouldn't be back here.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And let's forget the cell phones for a minute, because of course I would call them and tell them what was going on nowadays.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: But the first time I was in New York City, there were no cell phones, so so this whole illustration is just shot.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, but uh let's say I didn't show up and they began to panic, and then and then uh and then somebody, you know, one of those guys who's walking around New York City or all major cities uh looking to make a buck, you know, came up and said, What are you what are you doing?
8:08
SPEAKER_00: And then they expressed their panic.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: He said, Why don't you just let me take you?
8:12
SPEAKER_00: I know the city so well, just follow me.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Each of you gave me 20 bucks and and so forth.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: And I just thought about uh what that would be like, and that's what's happened because Moses has now been gone not just one night, but but 40 days and nights.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, almost that because it's but it's been a month.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: It's been it's been at least 30.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: And they really are thinking, we don't know what's how much happened to him, and they're mad at him, and that's what happens.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: You start getting mad, like a child whose whose parent, whose mother doesn't come to pick him up from school at at 3:30 or even at 4, and is even late.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, you get mad, and they're mad, and they're starting to get snarky, and they're calling him this fellow Moses, and they're saying we don't know.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: And Aaron, you're now the boss, and we need a visible God.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was Moses leading us, and and the pillar of fire, now all this stuff is gone.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: It's all disappeared up on the mountain.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying, I'm not excusing what they did, you understand.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying it helps to understand that sometimes fear, fear and panic make us do things we normally wouldn't do.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: That fear and panic sometimes make us act in horribly ungodly ways, which is exactly what this is.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what the excuse is, the fact is right.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is an incredible betrayal.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible betrayal.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: Because God has said, I'm an invisible God, I don't want commandment number two, I don't want any other idols.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Tendency is to worship those idols, and that breaks commandment number one, you shall have no other gods before me.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And Aaron, and this now we understand why Aaron wasn't chosen, you know, to lead the children of Israel.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Because the most important single element, uh, you know, uh the most important single quality of a great leader is that he has courage.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: And Aaron lacks courage.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Aaron is what you and I would call passive aggressive.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: That is, he he can't say no.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have the guts to say no.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: He's passive.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: He wants to go along.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: He'll go along in order to get along, but passive aggressives let you know that they don't enjoy, you know, what they're doing.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: And you get this from the interesting Hebrew word used for take off their gold rings.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: It's not take, it's a violent word.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Like yank off.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: And I hope it hurts you when you pull it out of your ear.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh Aaron says to them, Yank off the gold rings that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Notice, by the way, even though the evidence is that men wore earrings as well as their wives and the sons and the daughters.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Aaron's passive aggressive enough not to tell the guys who we're talking to that they have to tear theirs off.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, and bring them to me.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: And the people yanked off their earrings and they brought them to Aaron.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, this is interesting because it's really the first time in world literature that that we have writings about earrings.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: We know uh from the walls of Egypt and the tombs that the Egyptians used earrings, nice big ones like we like, you know, at least like the kind I like Melody to wear, sorry.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, you know, and so we have these, and we know that women and men and children, so forth in Egypt wore earrings.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And we know, remember when the Israelites went out of Egypt, that the Egyptians just showered them with gold and silver and earrings and all that stuff.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: And so Moe, so Aaron is saying, you know, pull off some of that loot that you got from the Egyptians, which you really like, because this is the first time, first month or two in your entire life that you've had anything worth this much.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: But if this is something you really want, pull it off.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: And then it says, and Aaron took the gold from their hand and he shaped it with a tool, and he made it into a young bowl made from poured metal.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: So he put it in and he melted it down, and apparently had a wooden form already, and and he poured the the gold over the top of it, and and and then he placed it up.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: Now, another problem I'll confess that I have is one of the pictures from a children's book about the golden calf.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: And they took that to be literally a golden calf, and those of you like me who've grown up on a farm feeding calves and so forth, think of a calf as not quite an adult.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we used to, you know, feed them with a big nipple and a and a bucket, and you'd hold on for dear life as the calf butted against you, and calf is not an adult, but that's that's a mistranslation, and it certainly is not what happened.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I weeks ago, I read a whole entire sermon based on the fact that the Israelites are so stupid they worshiped a little golden calf, you know, only a little larger than what you might put on your keyring because they didn't have much gold, and and so it was really it's stupid when you worship other things.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And that's it, it is stupid when you worship other things.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: No, this was a young bull.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: This was a young, strong bull.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: This was Apis the bull of Egypt, who was at that very time when when the when the Israelites and Moses were in Egypt, was one of the main gods of Egypt.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: He represented the creator god Pitah, and he was down in Memphis, the capital, uh, south of Goshen.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: And he was actually alive, he was actually, hi Jeff, would you go ahead and close that door that you came in with?
13:39
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: And and and they actually had a live bull that they kept and that they worshipped, and then that bull died and they went crazy and put statues of them all over the land of Egypt.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: So imagine this bull there, but coated with gold, and they're worshiping this bull, and they said, These are your gods, plural, oh Egypt, or I mean, oh Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: So we know that this bull represents a whole bunch of gods to them, and actually they're mixing it with the worship of Yahweh, because we read Aaron saw it and he built an altar before it, and Aaron called out, Tomorrow shall be a feast day to Yahweh.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Say, how does this work?
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not the only time in the Old Testament that you find a syncretism, a mixture of pagan worship with true worship.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, we often tend to do the same thing, and sometimes when you turn on religious TV, you get the feeling that what they're really worshiping is the Almighty Dollar, but they use the name God a whole lot, and so the whole thing gets mixed together.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: But it is a horrendous idolatry.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And early the next morning, this is going to be the day of Yahweh worship, but yeah, now because Moses and the invisible God are gone, we have something better.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: We have a God that we can carry around with us, a God that we can see.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: It'll cost you, says Aaron.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: Those kind of gods always cost you, but you know we're willing to pay for a visible God that we can see and carry around.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: So they offer burnt offerings, that's for sin, and present fellowship offerings.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Those are the ones where you actually get to have a feast.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: And the people sat down to eat and drink, and they got up to indulge in revelry.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting word, chazak.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: It means actually they got up to laugh, but it seems from other ancient literature that this is sort of a wild, orgiastic, you know, uh ecstatic, uh, just a crazy wild kind of a worship.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: We're not sure what it was, but they indulged in revelry.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we really need to jump to the New Testament and listen to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 when he says, Israel's like you and you're like Israel, and we need to take warnings from Israel's history.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: These things in Israel's history occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Do not be idolaters.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what they were.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Israel's besetting sin throughout their entire history until they came back from Babylon, 500 BC, was idolatry.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: That's when they stopped being idolaters, and they've never been idolaters since, but they were idolaters for a thousand years.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: They always had this addiction.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: You know what addictions are like.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: You know what habitual sins are like.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: You and I all know these things.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Theirs happen to be idolatry.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: Yours probably has a more specific name than idolatry, but you struggle with it as they did, and that's the warning we're supposed to get from them.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Don't be idolaters, as some of them were, as it is written.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: The people sat down to eat and drink, quoting verse 6, chapter 32, and they got up to indulge in revelry.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And just for a moment, because God wants me to, I'm stopping here to allow us to ask ourselves the all-important question: what is it that I tend to put in the place of God?
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And we can ask, you can ask yourself questions like, what would my pocketbook, what would my bill fold reveal that I tend to worship in the place of God?
17:51
SPEAKER_00: What would the time I spend, my my expenditure of time indicate about what I prefer over God?
18:01
SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of things that it could be, of course.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: I was struck a little bit by uh one of my favorite Jewish writers, Michael Medved, is uh uh uh well known for being a movie commentator.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: And while he's not a Christian, he's he's uh wonderfully biblical and conservative.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: And he writes, uh I covered the Academy Awards show.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I was really, I was disturbed.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: I I thought it was horrific.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Every film clip that they showed violence or sexuality.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing appropriate, he said, for families to see the entire night of the Oscars.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: And there was a musical number in which actresses and dancers were dancing and chanting around this large gold statuette of Oscar.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: And Michael says, and what could be a more clear message about the golden calf, about idol worship almost in the classical biblical sense?
18:59
SPEAKER_00: People have to recognize that movies and movie stars are not God's.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: That's one example of the kind of thing that our modern world worships, idolizes in the place of God.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: So we go on to verse 7, and Yahweh spoke to Moses, go down for your people.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: The Lord, even though he's been for 40 days dictating the terms of the how to worship him and what the relationship between him and Israel is supposed to be like, it's gonna involve a tabernacle, a tent of meeting, etc., etc.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: And he stops because he's omniscient and he can see what's happening down there.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Go down for your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, whom notice that, check that?
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God's God says, whom you you you brought up from the land of Egypt behaved corruptly.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: They've quickly turned off from the way that I commanded them.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: They made for themselves a young bull made from poured metal, and they worshipped it and sacrificed to it.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: And they said, These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: He he gets it word for word correct.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: He's heard them from thousands of feet uh higher in a mountain uh inside a cloud.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: And Yahweh said to Moses, I've seen this people, and and then I think this is the best translation, and face it.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Literally, it's Hine, it's behold, but it means and face it.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: This is a stiff-necked people.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: And now let me alone.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this interesting?
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this an interesting like, and let me alone, like, but please don't, but and let me alone, so that my anger may burn against them, and I can destroy them, and I will make a great nation out of you.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Now, on the one hand, we have to stop there because Moses so quickly and totally rejects this offer that it never comes up again.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Moses acts as though he didn't even make the offer.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: But but you know, if it was you or me, you might go, wow, these people drive me crazy too.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: They're always whining about lack of food or lack of water and so forth.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't mind being the Abraham, being the stud, you know, being the one you build around.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: But Moses, to his eternal credit, doesn't even dignify that offer.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And and now we move to the point of my message, and that is Moses' intercessory prayer, actually in chapters 32, 33, and 34.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Moses makes four intercessory prayers.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Put them all together, and it s shows us you know how to pray.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm only gonna do the first one, which is the most involved, and that's the one here in chapter 32.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Um But I would like it if you would.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, my goal this morning would be for you to ad so admire this prayer.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, we copy what we admire, right?
22:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we copy, we copy, you know, the way we decorate our homes is often because we've seen something we admire.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes the clothes we wear, the food we eat, certainly children, sometimes they use language that their parents don't like, and that's because someone they admire uses that language, right?
22:19
SPEAKER_00: And so I would love to bring you to the place at the end of this morning where you go, wow, what what a prayer that is.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Because what you admire, you tend to copy, and you and I need to pray more like Moses prays here.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: All right?
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want you to notice that there's there's not going to be any comment from here on in about Moses excusing their sin or minimizing their sin or saying, Well, you know, I never told them I was gonna be gone this long, those poor children.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, give them a break, because that's what we would do.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: We might minimize the behavior, might, you know, let's cut them some slack.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: But Moses never does that.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: And yet that doesn't stop him from interceding for the sinners.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: So, how does he challenge God?
23:01
SPEAKER_00: How does he get God, you know, to back off?
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's read what he says here in 11 through 13.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: And Moses softened the anger.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: That's my translation.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Literally, he weakened the face of Yahweh his God.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, the translation will say he uh he implored the favor and so forth, but but isn't this a look at this, weakened the face.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: God's face, sometimes people's faces just set against you, they're determined, they're angry.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: And God's clearly angry, but he softens the anger, the face of Yahweh his God.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: He said, Why, Yahweh, does your anger burn against your people whom you no, no, no, no, no, don't put that on me.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: It's you.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: You know you're the one who brought it out.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: I was just beside, you know, I was just on the sidelines.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: It was you.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: You brought them out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and eliminate them from the face of the earth?
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Turn away from your furious anger and relent about the calamity in store for your people.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Listen, there are five things Moses shows here in these two verses that you can tell God not to do.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: And the first one is this: Lord, you mustn't let your anger get the best of you.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I know you're angry, I know you deserve to be angry, but you you you can't let your anger get the best of you.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Notice all the times uh Moses, you know, the Lord says, the Lord admits that he's angry, and so Moses jumps on that and he says, he softens the anger.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: He says, Why does your anger burn against your people?
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Why do you do that?
24:37
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is that he he softens the anger of God, and it's legitimate for you and I to tell God if if someone has done a horrible thing, if you have a friend who's done a horrible thing, you you can say, listen, God, all those other pagan gods, they they get angry, and that's their sort of shtick, and they have to be manipulated.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: They have to, you know, they have to be stroked, Moses is implying, so that their worshipers are constantly, they're constantly scared that they're not making enough sacrifices, or that they're or that they're not saying the precisely magic words in the precise way that they need to.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: God, do you want them, do you want people to think of you like that?
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Is that kind of a bad-tempered, bad-haired type of a God?
25:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you want them to say he he broke his people out of Egypt.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Wow, but they didn't stroke him enough, and so he went ballistic on them.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: They crossed him, and the real Yahweh came out, a God with a bad temper, like sort of like Uncle George, as long as you butter him up, he's fine, but if you cross him, he'll fly off the handle and ruin Family Christmas.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you really want people to think of you as a bad-tempered God?
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know some of you are thinking, well, hold it, I think God had a temper at all.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And and the reason, let's be honest, that it seems weird and a little bit blasphemous, even to talk about anger in the same sentence as the word God, is that for years and decades and centuries, the Church of Jesus Christ has at times acted like God is some sort of an impassive monarch sitting on a heavenly throne or an abstract entity in a seminary textbook.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: But God is not an idea and he's not a theological principle.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: He's a real person with real feelings and compassions.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: He's someone who feels love far higher, far deeper, far broader, more passionately, more painfully than you or I have ever loved.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: At least that's what he tells us in his word.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: So the bottom line is listen, God gets angry because he's a real person.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Real persons have feelings.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Feelings like anger and compassion, but Moses just says, Don't let your anger get the best of you.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Now his um Wow, went backwards.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: So his second challenge to God, I'm still going backwards.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: Second challenge to God is Lord, you must you mustn't quit before the job's done.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: You mustn't, basically, here is you mustn't you're in a process with us.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: You can't give up on us before the process is done.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: Moses often is anger, and he said, Why, Lord, is your anger burned against your people whom you brought out from the land of Egypt.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, Lord, listen, you've let us know that you're in a you're in this is a process that you bring out of this land of Egypt.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: You told us you're gonna bring us to the promised land and you're gonna give us the promised land.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: You said you're gonna you wanted to enter into a relationship with us.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: You said you wanted to provide the entire world in front of everybody with a model of how you can save people and then how you can redeem them.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: You can't quit on your project when you're only half done.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I wear, I wear a mask saying, please be patient, God isn't finished with me yet.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Or I have that bumper sticker on my car.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Is that true or is that not true?
28:07
SPEAKER_00: That you're not finished with me yet?
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Am I a person in process or not?
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Hank, how we always use that in youth work.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: You go to a youth convention, persons in process.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's what we all are.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: We're pips.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: And and the thing is, God, so we're not pips, we're not people in process.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: The moment you get upset at us, you know, you can give up on us.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna quit on your projects early?
28:31
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna give up when the job's only half done.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And the third thing that Moses says to God here, and the third thing that you and I can tell God not to do, his challenge is, Lord, you mustn't ruin your good name.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is probably the most significant and the most common basis of intercessory prayer in all of the Bible.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: Moses is appealing for God's reputation, God's glory.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: He's afraid.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Moses is legitimately afraid of what people will think and say, the Egyptians and the Canaanites.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, first of all, I mean, if his fears that if God proves strong enough to save his people from physical dangers, but not strong or attractive enough to capture their hearts, Moses is implying, won't the pagans say, oh yeah, God might be one great big giant up there strong enough to conquer their enemies and open up a dead sea and knock the wheels off their chariots, but when it comes to capturing the hearts of the people, quite frankly, the gods of the nations are far more attractive.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: And Moses is raising the specter of God losing face and losing glory.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Why should the Egyptians say, with evil intent?
29:44
SPEAKER_00: And here, and this is really good.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: With evil intent, he brought them out to kill them in the mountains.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, this this whole thing is, listen, listen, God, it's one thing to be powerful, to split a sea and to and to drown Egyptians.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: But the real question the world also has is this powerful God also a good God?
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Or does he have bad motives?
30:06
SPEAKER_00: You want people to say it was with evil intent that he he brought them out, he set them up for failure, he snookered them, he suckered them, all along was just playing with them like a mean boy plays with his toys.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: He he sets all the all the all of them up, and then he gets them and kicks them all against the wall and pulls the arms off of some of them.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is that that that's what you want them to say of you?
30:27
SPEAKER_00: That you're strong God, but you're not a good God at all?
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And this is just such a wonderful way to appeal to God, to tell God, listen, God, you mustn't ruin your good name.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: And fourth, he says, Lord, you mustn't be inflexible.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: You see that when he says, turn away from your furious anger and relent about the calamity in store for your people.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Lord, proud people are inflexible people.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Politicians are inflexible people.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: For the sake of principle and for the sake of, you know, you know, showing that they're tough, they refuse to ever change their mind.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: They're obstinate.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: You can't sway them, they're stubborn.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: They act like, they act like changing what they're about to do is a weakness instead of a strength.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: But God, you're clearly not a humble, a power, you're not a proud God, you're a humble God because you chose, you chose us.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you chose those who who aren't rich, but poor, you chose those who aren't smart, but but dumb.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: You chose those who aren't success, but you chose failures.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Paul picks that up in Corinthians.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: And you're so humble you keep asking us to praise you.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what proud God does that?
31:39
SPEAKER_00: You ask us to keep knocking on the door like that nagging woman in Luke 18 who knocks on the door of the judge throughout the night until the judge finally gives up.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: That's somehow, that's uh what a humble God was.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: So don't be so proud that you get as obstinate back and you won't go back on your declaration that you're gonna destroy Israel.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: And the fifth way, and the final, uh so Lord, you mustn't be inflexible.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord, and the fifth way, of course, is the one you and I are most familiar with.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you mustn't forget you promised.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: You mustn't forget your word.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you do remember, I mean, your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: You made commitments to them, and I'm not gonna let you off the hook, to whom you swore by yourself and you declared, I'll multiply your offspring, stars of the heavens, give your offspring all this land as I promised, and they will inherit it forever.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you you said I brought Israel out of Egypt, but you know that's not true.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: You brought Israel out of Egypt because you promised people in the past, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that you would bring them out.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna throw them away now?
32:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna allow you to forget those promises.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Five things, I mean, it's a remarkable prayer, and at the end, then by the way, isn't it interesting?
32:55
SPEAKER_00: These are five things that we tell our kids.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Don't let your anger get the best of you.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: Don't quit before the job's done.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Don't ruin your good name.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: Don't be stubborn or inflexible, and don't forget you promised.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And Moses is called the greatest intercessor, apart from Jesus Christ, in the Bible.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he's a picture of Christ in this chapter.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: In the end of the chapter, he will offer basically to go to the cross to save his people, Israel.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: Greatest intercessor in the Bible uses these arguments because he is so interested in God's interest and so uninterested in his own self-interest, that he picks five arguments that actually God will respond to.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is this, what do we make of this?
33:40
SPEAKER_00: Does this mean that whenever uh somebody does something really bad and you can't get worse than building an alternative God, a golden calf, that God explodes in anger and says, I'm done with you, and uh and they better run before he does it.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Is God like a husband who's always losing his temper that way?
34:09
SPEAKER_00: But if his wife comes along and soothes him with just the right words, he'll calm down and the kids won't have to hide in their rooms.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: Is that what the text is telling us?
34:22
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so, because if so, Moses comes out looking better than God himself.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: And yet there are voices today you will hear at major universities who say, Yep, that's the God of the Old Testament, alright, an angry God, God who loses his temper.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: But as we keep reading, even in this story, we find a very different God.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: We find the most amazing tension in this chapters 32 to 34.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: This tension in which, on the one hand, God changes his behavior in response to Moses' intercession, and yet a God who in the next chapter is gonna say, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I'll harden whom whom I want to harden, which Paul picks up in Romans to say this God we have is utterly sovereign.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you get in these discussions, don't you?
35:13
SPEAKER_00: You get in a discussion where you the question comes up in your Bible study or Sunday school class, does prayer change things?
35:19
SPEAKER_00: And one side says, Not really, of course.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, does the God who has decreed everyone's moment of birth and everyone's moment of death and has decreed the fall of every sparrow and every hair that comes off your head, the God who has called some people before the foundation, that God, you're gonna say he changes his mind, the God of the great decrees, the sovereign God?
35:43
SPEAKER_00: And the other side, so so they say, no, what this is, is this just a way of speaking?
35:49
SPEAKER_00: God knew this was gonna happen all along, he ordained it, he really didn't change anything.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: And the other side says, Well, no, no way.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: God changes.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Of course, God changes in response to prayer.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, why pray at all?
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Why not just go, thy will be done, thy will be done, thy will be done?
36:03
SPEAKER_00: If my prayer has absolutely no influence at all, and you have this back and forth between what's called the sovereignty of God and the meaningful human choice.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: And because I have about two minutes, let me just let me just let me just share with you that we miss in this argument the amazing truth about how God's sovereignty includes an interaction with humanity.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: So we read that Yahweh relented about the calamity that he spoke of inflicting upon his people.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: And that makes us ask, does prayer change things?
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Because it certainly seems to.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: We read Psalm 106, a summary of this story, at Horeb or Sinai.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: They made a calf and worshipped an idol cast from metal.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: They exchanged their glory.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: For an image of a bull that eats grass, they forgot the God who saved them, who'd done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: So, he said he would destroy them had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: David has no problem in saying that what Moses did was essential, or Israel would have been destroyed.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: And as you go through the Old Testament, you find God Himself saying the same thing.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: And in my favorite verse, this is the only one I'll go to.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: I could go to a number of places, a number of prayers in the Bible.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: The background in Ezekiel chapter 22, 30 is that God's people are in exile, many of them in Babylon.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: And Ezekiel's saying, Jerusalem's gonna fall.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: It falls in about four years after this.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: And so it's gonna fall.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: The people say, no, Jerusalem, that's our home back there.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: It's never gonna fall.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: God's there.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: And back in Jerusalem, you have a great prophet named Jeremiah who says Jerusalem's gonna fall.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: And the people say, no, throw them in the cistern.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem camp falls where God, this is the this is the city of his name.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: This is where his temple is, and so forth.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says it's gonna fall, and it does in about four years.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: And then you find God speaking at this point in Babylon and saying, telling Ezekiel to tell the people, I've searched for a man, for a Moses, who would stand in the gap, in the breach, Psalm 106 before me, on behalf of the land, so that I might not destroy it, but I found none.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: God is looking for people in his sovereign plan who will stand in the breach, in the gap, who will intercede, who will block, who will say, Yes, I know my son, I know my daughter, I know my best friend has done a horrible thing.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: It's just terrible.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's ruining lives like crazy, but I'm standing in the gap for them.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: They're not standing there.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: They're too immature, they're too ignorant to stand in the gap, Moses said.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: I want to stand in the breach.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Take me if you want, but I'm begging you, Lord, for your glory, for your honor, for your reputation, for the sake of what you said you wanted to do, I'm begging you do not give up on them.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: You can't give up on them.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: You'd be giving up on them too soon.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: They're people in process.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: Stay true to them because of your promises.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: And God says, those are the kind of people that I'm looking for.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: And the takeaway this morning very quickly is as someone you know sinned greatly.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we all know someone like that.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: And maybe the finger points at yourself and you say, Well, understand it.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: It helps to understand why the Israelites did what they did.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Not to stand in some sort of a fundamentalist judgment over them, but to say, I the same thing could have happened.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: I could have done the same thing exactly.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: So and don't minimize it.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: Even though you understand it, don't minimize it.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: It's a horrible thing they did.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
39:56
SPEAKER_00: But third, intercede for it.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and go to prayer and say, God, would you please work this out?
40:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm standing in a gap and I'm just gonna keep praying until something improves.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: Make this resolution.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: I will be the person God is looking for.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: I will be an intercessor, and I will fill the gap.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the great challenges of Exodus chapter 32.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Moses is a great man because he has the courage to do what his brother Aaron can't do.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: He knows what sin, he doesn't minimize it, but he stands in the gap and says, Lord, I'm I'm asking you, I'm insisting that you be patient and persistent and loving and compassionate.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Next week we'll find out how God responds to that in a most amazing way.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: Next week.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: So let's pray and um uh go right to the Lord's table, shall we?
40:53
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you for um for this passage of scripture and thank you for the reminder that um that in a world that is dark and in a world when even your own children make horrible, horrible decisions, that uh that you're looking for people who will pray, you're looking for your people who will stand there and talk face to face with you and tell you exactly what you should do on the basis of your glory, your honor, and your reputation.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh Lord, we come to your table uh at this point.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: We're just thrilled that we get to uh think of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who not only died in our place and rose again, but now lives to intercede for us constantly in heaven.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: We love this Savior in Jesus' name.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Amen.