Idolatry

We are beginning the end of our sermon series in Exodus. We're going to be concluding with three sermons, not all three today. We'll be looking at chapters 32, 33 and 34 over the next three weeks. Now, these three sermons there are these three passages chapters. They really stand out in the midst of the story. They're different, they're really a disruption in the midst of what Moses is telling us and what God is doing for Israel. Let me give a little bit of context so we can see how disruptive these events are, especially what happens in chapter 32, today's message or today's chapter. Israel's been delivered from Egypt. This was a great and mighty act of God. He chose them. He said, I'm going to care for you. I'm going to take you out of this land. And he does it by stretching out his mighty right arm in a way that everyone saw that he was God, Egypt and their destruction, Israel and their deliverance. He then takes them through the wilderness at first. He takes them across the Red Sea and then he's patient with them. But as they grumble over and over against him, against him, he's patient. He corrects them. He cares for them. And then in chapter 19, chapter 19 through 24, that's what Moses actually calls the book of the covenant. God is calling these people who have been delivered to be his nation. They have a law. They have a king. They have expectations because this king is going to take them to the promised land. And they say, we will obey every word, everything that you have said, we will do. So Moses gets called back up to the mountains after 25 through 31. We can. We looked at a lot of this before Easter, 25 through 31. It's instructions for building the tabernacle. God is telling his people how they will continue to worship, not just in obedience, but where and what kind of structure and how the priest will function. And really after that should come the construction of the tabernacle. But that's not what comes next. 25 through 31, there's a break. 32 through 34. The construction doesn't happen until 35 through 40. What happens between chapters 31 and 35? Israel chooses to forsake the God who's delivered them. God has been patient with them. God who has called them to be his nation, to be their king. They rebelled. They have built a golden calf to worship and they're offering a feast and they're giving offerings to this created God. This is a major disruption. Because God is trying to prepare this people to be his obedient people, to be a light to the nations, to be his people in his place, to live for his glory, to spread the fame of his name. And here they are breaking already the first two commandments. We'll see a theme, the themes of this series. There's Israel's rebellion. There's a mediation necessary because of their rebellion. And then there's God reconciling Israel to himself. Some of the most powerful descriptions of God are actually found in this section. Something to meditate upon for the next three weeks. Exodus 34, 6 through 9. Exodus 34, 6 through 9. When Moses asked to see God's face, he reveals himself as the loving, merciful, steadfast God of Israel. Our message this morning is this. Keep yourself from idols. by keeping your eyes focused on the one true God. Keep yourself from idols by keeping your eyes focused on the one true God. First, it's a fairly long chapter. We'll be looking at Exodus 32. That's found on page 72 in your pew Bible. So if you didn't have a Bible with you or you're having a hard time finding the chapter, use the pew Bible. It's on page 72. Again, we're in Exodus 32. Let me give you a textual outline just so we can kind of get a grasp of the big picture. Verses 1 through 6, Israel sins against God. They're down at the base of the mountain. They're far away from God because they're too sinful to come into his presence. And they get sick of waiting. Moses has been up on the mountain too long. Days he's only been up there. But they get anxious. They start to get fearful. They start to wonder. And so, they decide to take matters into their own hands and they ask Aaron, you need to make us a God who will protect us and care for us and lead us. And Aaron crafts that God. He fashions that God. This is when God interrupts the instructions for his tabernacle and he tells Moses, what have these people done? They are down there worshiping another God. They are down there having a feast. And he declares, if you do not stop mediating for them, if you leave me alone, I will pour out my wrath upon them. I will consume them. I will destroy them. As a righteous God, he does what only a righteous God does, and that is he judges sin. and seeks to destroy it. Verse 11 through 14. Thankfully, Moses chooses to intercede. Moses chooses to be the faithful mediator and he intercedes for Israel and he tells God, it's your name that's at stake. You need to keep them and be patient with them and forgive them for your name's sake. You've delivered this people. And remember, it's not The basis of this covenant is not their obedience, it's your promise to their fathers. Verses 15 through 20, while Moses was a very gracious mediator when speaking to God about Israel, he's very confrontational when he comes down. Verses 15 through 20, Moses confronts Israel. He breaks the tablets, demonstrating the covenant has been broken. Israel broke the covenant. He then crushes and destroys the idol they've made. Verses 21 through 24, Aaron's foolishness. Moses goes straight to Aaron, the one who built the idol, and we'll see that he is rather foolish in the way he answers Moses. Verses 25 through 29, Moses sends judgment on the idolaters. He sends out the Levites. to kill all those who proactively participated in this idolatry, and then in verses 30-35, Moses mediates again for Israel. We'll have four main points in our sermon outline this morning. First, our hearts quickly turn to idols. The first thing we need to see is that our hearts quickly turn to idols. God's righteous wrath is against our sin. God has righteous wrath against our sin. Third, God relents because of his promise and for his glory. God relents because of his promise and for his glory. And then finally, we will see the consequence of our sin, the consequence of our sin. First, and most importantly, the reason we've come together is because we're sinners that need a redeemer. We must realize that our hearts quickly turn to idols. Turn with me to Exodus 32, beginning in verse 1. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of them. So Aaron said to them, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool, made a golden calf. And they said, These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. First thing we see here is Israel. They're continuing in their rebellious ways. Their hearts are still bent towards idolatry. They declare to Aaron up. It's a very powerful command. It's the same word. The only other time this this this declaration, this imperative is used is when Pharaoh tells Moses up, get out of Egypt. I've had enough. Your God has conquered us. You've won up. It's a great strong declaration. And here the Israelites, after only a few days of having to wait on the Lord, they're giving Aaron the same imperative, the same command up. We need new gods to go before us. They're looking for military protection. They know they're weak. They know they're small. They know that without a God, they're defenseless. So they're asking him to make a God who's going to go before them and provide military protection. And look how they speak of Moses. Now, they at least give him credit for giving bringing them out of Egypt, but it's this Moses. This is derogatory there. They're speaking down with derision upon Moses. I remember a few years ago in a political debate, McCain says to Obama, this one. The news people caught on it was it was derogatory, it was derision there. This is the same thing they're speaking of Moses, this Moses. We do not know what has come of them. They get tired of waiting only a few days after God has been so patient with them for years in the rebellion. They wait a few days and then they have to have a new God. They're quick to worry. They're quick to fear. Then they go to Aaron. And Aaron leads them to sin. When lacking leadership, Aaron leads them to sin. Now, as we see this, we need to look at a big picture here. God, Israel, Moses. There's God on the mountain, there's Israel at the foot of the mountain, and God has said, Moses, you're the mediator. You are the instrument by which I will lead my people. You are the one who connects us. As you lead the people, they will go. And he had been gone well too long for their own hearts to wait and to trust. Moses is the Christ figure. Here we see a mature Moses. He's the Christ figure who connects God and God's people. Aaron listens to the rebellious request. He asks them for the gold that they plundered from Egypt. God lets Israel plunder the Egyptians of all their wealth and now to form this God He asked for that gold that God had blessed them with. He received the gold from their hand and he fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. Now, notice there how clearly Moses puts all this on Aaron in terms of what he did. This is going to be very contrary to what Aaron says later. I just put the gold in and puff, the fire created a calf. No, here Aaron, or Moses, is very clear. He took the gold, he fashioned it with a graving tool, and he made it. Aaron created a god for them to worship. Now, the sin of the golden calf, this is a monumental mistake. This is a monumental mistake. This is a major problem. This is the definition of idolatry for Israel for the years to come. This gold was meant for the tabernacle that Moses just got instruction for. The gold that they're using to build a calf that they worship was meant for Yahweh's worship. They have taken what God gave them for his worship and they're rebelling against God. They're committing treason against God. The people were supposed to construct a tabernacle after the instructions, but now they're building a calf. Friends, to put this in a little bit of a, actually a biblical perspective, this is like a wife who's planning a romantic evening and she comes down and she finds her husband looking at pornography. She's planning to have an intimate time with her husband and she finds him being an adulterer. Or it's a husband who's planning to go take his wife out on a date and he finds her committing adultery. This is what's taking place. The God who said, I love you, Israel, be faithful to me. They have gone and they played the whore. This is a gross and pathetic choice. They have exchanged the glory of God for this idol. They worship the calf. They declared these are our gods. They built an altar, they ate, drank and rose to play. Now, this already sounds very similar to Exodus 24. We looked at Exodus 24 a couple of weeks ago. Exodus 24 was the culmination of the book of the covenant. When God gave them the commands, Israel said, we're going to do all that you say. They built an altar, they have a feast. They're mimicking that feast. The difference is they rose up to play. This isn't monopoly, this isn't kickball. Gods were typically connected to fertility. You can look at 1 Corinthians 10 to see what Rose of the Play meant. Sexual immorality was taking place. It actually gets somewhat more gross here. Aaron makes a carved image and he calls it Yahweh. He says the carved image is deliberate. Now we're going to name this God after The one true God. Clearly breaking two commands now. They've made an image that God has said you shall not make. And they've denied monotheism. These are our gods. They've denied the one true God. They've denied the way He's supposed to be worshipped. They have rejected God at the most central and most basic truths of what God has said He is and how He is supposed to be worshipped. They've exchanged the living God who sees them, who hears their cry, who stretches out his mighty right arm to deliver them. And they've exchanged that God for a God who's deaf, a God who's mute, a God who's blind, a God who's stationary. As Paul says in Romans, claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Now, if you look at this, we can, I hope, easily see this is a monumental mistake by Israel. But if we were to take this seriously, and our own sin seriously, we must look at it as Paul tells us to look at it. This is a warning for us. We are not that different from the Israelites. In the issue of redemptive history, the Israelites, they have been given a covenant. They were promised a promised land. They were promised a new place to live. They're there in that in-between state. They've been given a new identity. They're waiting for the new place. Well, that's where we are. We have a new covenant with Jesus Christ as believers. He's given us a new identity. We're forgiven. We're sons and daughters. We're children of the kingdom. We're waiting for glory. We're in the in-between state where we are still plagued by the sin that resides in our hearts and we must resist it and long for the heaven where that sin no longer plagues us and remain faithful. Waiting is so hard. Waiting upon the Lord is difficult. While we can look and say, how could you not wait a few days while Moses is on the mountain? How hard is it for us to wait? How hard is it for us to sit at the foot of Christ with his word and wait for him to speak? How long do we get our phones out and see if someone's emailed us? How long do we sit and wait for the Lord to speak? How long before we get bored and seek to find worldly pleasure? We must remember, we must be reminded of who we are and who God has called us to be. As soon as someone suggested the idol, everyone else in the camp should have said, that's absurd. They should have dragged him out of the camp and said, you are no longer welcome here. You are going to lead us to break the covenant. The community of Israel, the nation of Israel, they should have been on guard for one another. So this is the role of the church today. When we see one another veering towards idolatry, when we see one another in danger, we are called to warn one another. Now, out of fear of being nerdy, I am going to go ahead and introduce a word, I think, to many of us. It's syncretism. Syncretism. S-Y-N-C-H-R-E-T-I-S-M. Syncretism. Now, syncretism is when you take two things that should stand alone and you link them together. Religious syncretism is when you take two different religions and you try to pull them together somehow. So you could have Buddhistic Christianity or you could have Hindu Christianity. You take whatever religion you like and you take a piece of what you like about it and you take another religion and what you like about it and then you just, you kind of make your own God. You make your own way, your own religion. An example of this, most Americans borrow at least one thing from Christianity. Thou shalt not judge. Everybody loves that teaching of Jesus. Now, they may not want to respect anything else that he says, but they at least want to say, I like Jesus because he says, do not judge. And I really don't like to be judged. Christians, we're all syncretists. We all have a tendency towards this idolatry of taking what we like from something else in this culture, this world, and trying to pretend that it's part of our Christianity. Worse, we may even say, look, here's the Bible, here's all it says, but I don't actually like this particular part. And so we ignore it. But here we're looking at the addition and the reason I'm getting the syncretism is that's exactly what Aaron has done. By building a calf and naming it Yahweh, he's trying to keep something of the true religion, but he's remaining an Egyptian. He's trying to keep something of the true religion that is for Yahweh, the one true God. But he's still loving Egypt. Stephen, in his speech in Acts 7-9, our fathers refused to obey him, thrusting him aside. And in their hearts, they turned to Egypt. They still long for those Egyptian ways of worship. So how do we syncretize? our idols with our true worship of Yahweh. Well, here's some hopes of hitting some idols that I think are pretty prevalent. First, the idols of wealth and health. The idols of health and wealth. Now, this is us taking capitalism and pretending that it somehow is related to Christianity. Us taking what we think is prominence and wealth and care and God's promise of well-being and pretending that that is Christian. We must be blessed the way I want to be blessed. Financially, well-being. What I really think this comes down to is we think God has promised us comfort when really what he's promised Christians is suffering in the name of Christ. See, our idols take the form of a lazy boy. or a beach chair, or whatever else you think of when you think, this is where I would like to be and what I would like to be doing. We like comfort. We like care. We like ease. We want to be blessed with perfect health and with great wealth. The Bible never commits these things to us, but we like to pretend that they come along. The other thing that we like to add to our Christianity is an idol of success. an idol of success. We strive for success. We strive for more power, more money, more significance. We prioritize our success over the worship of God. Do you make life decisions based upon how you can progress in your career or how and where you will worship God? Next, related to both the previous idols, The idol of consumerism. What is the church doing for me? What is everything happening? How is it? How does it help me? How should everything be revolving around me? Whereas what we're called to do is serve the Lord and serve one another. What you're called to do is find a church that is teaching God's word and where you're growing and then sink your plow and see where you can serve and how you can serve. I've wondered if someone's thinking this. Well, Pastor, you choose your vocation and where you go to church. There's a little-known secret. I wanted to come to Jefferson Park regardless if you called me to be your pastor. I had plans to move here regardless because I saw this body. God had already given me a heart for this body. God is doing something special here and I wanted to be part of it. Most of all, I wanted my daughter to be raised here. If you hadn't have called me, you could have gotten another pastor and me. I didn't let the search committee know that. But it's clear, God is doing something special. Choose where you can worship, where you grow and your family grows, and sink your plow as deeply as you can to work and serve in that body. Another point of application I think we can take away is, as Israel took the gold God had given them and they worshiped in their castles, what gifts has God given you? And how are you using those gifts to serve everything other than God? As I think of this, I hate tragic stories of athletes. An athlete who had such a promising career, but got so hooked on drugs, he never made the team, never made the promising career of his life that he could have. We look at this and we see God gave him so much gift. God gave him so many talents, but then he wasted away. Do we actually look and see how has God blessed me and how can I use all that he has given me for his glory? How can I worship him with every minute, with every resource and every talent? Now, I wanted to emphasize sin. That was a larger, longer point in the rest of the sermon. Now let's look to God's wrath and then we will look to God's mercy. Our second main point, God's righteous wrath against our sin. Verses 7 through 10, the Lord said to Moses, go down for your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it and said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I've seen this people and behold, it is a stiff necked people. Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them. And I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you." The people said to Aaron, up! God says to Moses, go down. As the father sends his son, God sends down Moses. And this is where it gets really discouraging if you're Israel. Go down for your people. Up until this point, One of the most precious, intimate declarations God has given to Israel is that you're my people. This is a loss of identity here, because they've broken the covenant. It goes from my people to your people. They haven't even declared, you're my firstborn, and now God is Rejecting them because they have rejected him. This is a scary place to be if you're Israel. There's a complete loss of identity with God in that declaration. Notice how he continues to explain their sin. They have corrupted themselves. They corrupted themselves by turning away from God and his commandments. They have caused their own self-destruction and corruption. This is where we have to see a proper view of God's law. God's law is good and perfect and right. It should not be burdensome because as we see it, God tells us who he is, who we are and how we can actually live a good and righteous and perfect life he's meant for us to live. True happiness is found in the law. When we reject the law, we are denying ourselves that true happiness. We're corrupting ourselves. We're destroying ourselves. When we disobey the law, we corrupt ourselves. We reject God and we reject proper worship. We're also rejecting ourselves, the life that's meant to be. God continues, they're stiff-necked, they're slow to learn. The heart was bent upon idols. Now, they had the law, but their heart was still bent. Now, we're like them in this way, only the law is written in our hearts, but we still have that treason lingering. So many are discouraged because of that proneness to sin that we all experience. We have to realize that it takes a long time to retrain the mind and the heart to worship God faithfully. It begins with faith and repentance. Look at verse 10. God says he's going to do three things. My wrath will burn hot against them. I will consume them. And then Moses, I'll make a great nation out of you. I will pour my wrath upon them. I will consume them. He will start over, just like he actually started over in Genesis. The main point that we need to see here is that God hates sin. God, a righteous judge, will judge sin. We need to praise him for that. We must learn to praise God for being a righteous judge who will punish every sin. If you're not a Christian this morning, there should be a proper. It is good for you to fear God. It is good for you to fear this judgment. And this fear has to take you to the cross, because only there will the wrath of God be removed from you. Only when you believe in Jesus Christ, who died in your place for you, so that the wrath of God comes down upon him instead of you, are you free from the wrath that we all deserve. Christian, we tend to fear judgment and think that there's something we need to improve in our lives. It's always faith in Christ and repentance according to His grace. Recognize that God loves us and disciplines us, but He never forsakes us. Let's move quickly to the mediation while we're under the judgment. God relents because of his promise and for his glory, Moses' mediation, verses 11 through 14. But Moses implored the Lord, his God, and said, O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent, did he bring them out? To kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of the heavens and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever. And the Lord relented. from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. Moses makes three appeals. Why nullify the demonstration of your divine power? Why give the Egyptians the delight? Why deny the promise of the fathers? Now, this all goes back to the previous section. Verse 10. Now, therefore, let me alone. God promises that he will exercise his wrath and his judgment on Israel if Moses leaves him alone. If Moses quits being the leader of Israel, if Moses chooses to stop mediating for them as the Christ figure, then he will pour out his wrath upon them. It's very important for us to see if the, if you do not leave me alone, Moses is the mediator that God has commissioned to be the protector of his people. Let's look at Moses, because in chapters 3 of Exodus, if you were here then and you could look back, Moses was kind of irritating back then. God says, I'm going to lead my people out. I want you to come. And Moses keeps saying, but God, I just don't know. They're not going to listen to me. What if they reject me? Who do I say you are? He's constantly worried about himself and his reputation of being rejected. Here he was afraid of Israel and concerned with himself. But here he's concerned with the glory of God. What about your name, O God? What about your people? What about your reputation? This is a beautiful change in Moses. He goes from worrying only about himself and being beaten and persecuted by people to worrying about the glory and the fame of God in his name. He points out to the foundation of the promise that he's made is is is a promise to the fathers. It's for your glory. Now, what is going on here? Has God changed his mind? Again, I don't think so. I think this is what God intended all along because he gave the clause. If you leave me alone, he's their leader. He's a representative. If he continues to mediate, God will relent. God will show mercy. God will continue with them. The main point we need to realize from this particular section is that we need a mediator. We have sinned against God. His wrath is against us. We need a mediator to keep us from the wrath of God. to keep us in the proper relationship we have with him as his sons, as his daughters, as his children. I think this happened for our sake because Moses is a mediator like Christ, only Christ is better. Moses reminds God of his promise. Jesus is the promise. He's the one who died and rose again as the fulfillment of everything God ever said. Not only that, Moses talks to God. Jesus is God himself, one with the Father. We go back to the pre-sermon from Hebrews. He's the one who has given a testimony better than the blood of Abel because his blood was shed for us. One last application from this section. God hears our prayers. That's something we take for granted. God hears our prayers. This is a great mystery of the faith to me. That God of the universe, the creator of all the universe, He actually bends His ear down to us. We live in constant refusal to listen to Him. We would rather talk to God than listen to Him, but yet He is constantly bending down His ear to His children Does he like what he hears coming out of our mouth? Does he like what he sees coming out of our hearts? The beauty of God hearing us, bending his ear to us, is that our prayers are heard in the name of Jesus Christ. Our prayers matter. They make a difference. Now, I've got a confession to make. I don't know how it works. This bothered me for a long time and then God said, I don't care if you know how it works, pray. It doesn't matter if we can figure out how does it work with the eternal God who's omniscient and we speak to him and it makes a difference. We don't have to figure everything out. We're called to obedience. We're called to make a request and we're called to go into his presence boldly and faithfully in the name of Christ. Now, part of prayer is listening. Part of prayer is having our wills aligned with his will so that we pray according to his will. The beauty of it is the Creator, he's bending his ear towards us. Let me quickly finish our last point. The consequences of our sin. The consequences of our sin. Let me go ahead and read this entire section and then I'll hit some of the high points of what we would discuss. Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and with the two tablets of testimony in his hand, tablets were written on both sides, on the front and the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, there is a noise of war in the camp. But he said, it is not the sound of shouting for joy, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear. And as soon as he came near the camp, they saw the calf and the dancing. Moses' anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it on the water, and made the people of Israel drink it. And Moses said to Aaron, What did these people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them? And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my Lord burn hot, You know the people that they are set on evil. For they said to me, make us God who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. So I said to them, let me have let any who have gold take it off. So they gave it to me and I threw in the fire and out came this calf. It is supposed to be humorous in terms of Aaron's this foolish. Sorry. And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose, for Aaron had let them break loose to the derision of their enemies, then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered around them. And he said to them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Put your sword on your side of each of you and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp. And each of you kill his neighbor and his companion and his neighbor. And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell. And Moses said, Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day. The next day, Moses said to the people, You have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up to the Lord, perhaps, and I can make atonement for your sin. So Moses returned to the Lord and said, Alas, these people have sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written. But the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you. Behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them. and the Lord sent a plague on the people because they made the calf the one Aaron made. Notice how it ends there. Moses started by making it very clear Aaron crafted and formed this calf. Aaron tries to pretend, oh the fire made it, but Moses wants us to remember Aaron will always be remembered as the one who made the calf and caused Israel to sin. A couple of things here, there's a great emphasis in this passage on the Ten Commandments. There are two tablets, front and back. The Ten Commandments are written first half, second half on each tablet. It's a two-party covenant. So each tablet represents a party. Well, Moses comes down with these tablets that have been written by the very finger of God and he destroys them. Now, it's important where Moses is standing. He's at the foot of the mountain. This is where God said Israel could come. This is the meeting place at the foot of the mountain. He destroys two things. First, it's the tablets, because they represent the covenant. The Ten Commandments are the centerpiece of the covenant. By breaking these, he is demonstrating to them, you've broken the covenant. You've lost the favor that God had given you. Here, they see the consequence of their sin. The second thing he destroys This is a golden calf. He crushes it, he grinds it into powder, and then he makes them drink it. There's a lot of theory as to why he makes them drink it. My favorite one is this. When they drank the gold, they then had to digest it, and it came out filthy. This meant that these items, this gold that was used to build an idol, they are now impure and unclean. It can never be used in the same way again. He's crushed it, he's destroyed it. Now it's filthy, it's corrupted, it's defiled. He's trying to make sure they never build a calf out of this material again. Something challenging we should see. Our sin will be found out and our sin will make us look foolish. That's what Aaron's going through here. He has been confronted with a sin and he tries to blame the fire. He tries to figure out a way to make himself look less guilty. We need to be bold in confessing our sin and clear in confessing our sin so that we can find assurance. The last thing I want to point out from this text, we are not the nation of Israel. It's a very important thing to remember with this judgment taking place. We're not the nation of Israel. Israel was by nature a mixed body. There were those who were true Israel in the nation of Israel, but then there are also the other Israelites. We are not the nation of Israel. We're true Israel. Everyone who believes in Christ is a true son who will never suffer the judgment and wrath of God. We're the holy nation. We are set apart. So there's things that are very similar to us as Israel. But we're not exactly like Israel. That's important because, as a church, we're meant to be a pure body. We're meant to be a body made up of believers, true believers, true children of the covenant. That's our goal. That's why we practice and exercise church discipline. But I want the challenge to be this. It's possible that you've lived and served in a church your entire life. And you're not truly a believer in Jesus Christ. It's possible to have been involved in a church every Sunday. You could have the Sunday school pens. You could have you could have all the credentials of being a believer. But if you truly haven't looked at yourself and said, I'm a sinner in need of grace under the wrath of God, Jesus Christ is my only hope. You're not truly a believer, even a very religious person, but you're not truly connected to the head, the only one who can save you. This is a very dangerous place because you can look to your works and pretend, look at what I've done. I must be one of God's children. It's not about your works. It's about the work of Christ and us repenting of our sin. That's what we do. And believing in him, the one who can forgive us. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you for this warning against the idolatry that resides in our hearts. Lord, if someone here is not a Christian, don't let them leave the premises until they have spoken to someone about the gospel. Convict. Help them, Lord, to experience and know the judgment that is upon their sin. And I pray that they today would hear the gospel and they would fulfill the peace that comes. from the forgiveness you provide in Jesus Christ. But I pray that we would be a body purified. I pray that we would be a body committed to your Word. Help us, Lord, to repent of our idolatry. Help us, Lord, to commit ourselves to your Word and trusting it, to believe in the forgiveness of sins, and to believe that your Word is good and worthy of our obedience. Help us, O God, to worship you alone. the one true God. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.