Ben: Just to locate you.
Ben: We are going to be finishing up our Exodus series through the season of Advent, so today is the last Sunday before Advent, which begins next Sunday.
Ben: We'll do four weeks.
Ben: In Exodus 34, verses six through seven, this is one of the most important, significant, beautiful self-portraits of God in the entire Bible, and so we're going to spend four weeks on it and that's how we'll close out our series that we've been going through all fall in the book of Exodus.
Ben: But today's text is like the dark, black velvet background that allows the radiance of a diamond to shine.
Ben: In other words, I want to set some expectations.
Ben: Today's going to feel a little bit like the sad news, the bad news, that precedes the glad news, the diagnosis before the treatment, the scalpel cut before the healing intervention.
Ben: That's what it's going to feel like.
Ben: Some of you are like, come on, man, like we listened to Christmas music on the way in this morning.
Ben: Why are you going to do this to us?
Ben: It is the season, here we go, and so the black velvet backdrop that we're going to look at today is idolatry.
Ben: I woke up this morning and my voice was kind of fickle.
Ben: My daughter lost her voice and I think she gave it to me and I woke up this morning feeling this way and thinking you know, not today, satan, I'm going to preach on idolatry today, come on like this is the good stuff, we're going to go into the deep end.
Ben: And so if you engage with the text of Scripture, you'll realize pretty quickly that idolatry is the most frequently cited problem of the human condition throughout the story of Scripture.
Ben: But it breaks onto the scene in its most staggering form right here in our text, in Exodus 32.
Ben: So I have something unique this morning, which is no points.
Ben: We're just going to walk through this story verse by verse.
Ben: So if you have a Bible or a device, get Exodus 32 out in front of you so we can look at it together and get a proper diagnosis and treatment for this fundamental problem of the human heart.
Ben: We're started.
Ben: Exodus 32, verse one.
Ben: It says this 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 God's who shall go before us.
Ben: 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.
Ben: That's important to know, the last words that we heard from the people of Israel were spoken as a pledge of allegiance in Exodus 24, verse seven.
Ben: They said this quote all that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient.
Ben: And the very next words you hear them speak is in our text today, and they say up, make us God's who shall go before us.
Ben: What happened?
Ben: What happened in this gap?
Ben: Well, I want to look at this.
Ben: First, I want to kind of see the sociology of idolatry and second, the psychology of idolatry, just real quick, in this one verse alone.
Ben: First, look again at verse one.
Ben: This is this when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain In the absence of someone to speak on behalf of God, israel fills the vacuum.
Ben: Similarly, we live in the wake of Nietzsche's declaration, his confident declaration that God is dead.
Ben: And so we live in a cultural moment where what's been called the secularization hypothesis has some prominence, but it's also being kind of defeated at the same time.
Ben: This is what that means.
Ben: Some sociologists hypothesize that, as a city, a nation, as they industrialize, as they modernize, religion and spirituality actually die out.
Ben: In other words, as technology advances, we don't need God for the things that we needed God for before, and so, like an island whose water is slowly encroaching on its borders, eventually there will be no more need for God whatsoever and people will become no longer religious or spiritual.
Ben: That's the secularization hypothesis.
Ben: Now there's some legitimacy to this.
Ben: It is true that traditional religions are in a decline in modernizing societies.
Ben: That is true.
Ben: But the question is are people becoming less religious, less spiritual as a result?
Ben: If we just pay close attention to advanced modern world, we'll see that we are simultaneously intensely secular and intensely religious at the same time.
Ben: It's just.
Ben: We don't have the traditional religions to constrain man's religious fervor, quite like we used to before, and so this is what I mean, because we are incurably religious.
Ben: This will become.
Ben: It will take different forms.
Ben: It might take the form of sex or sports teams, or climate change, or social justice, or ambition or nationalism, like just pay attention to 2024, the political scene, and you tell me that humans are not religious anymore.
Ben: There is a fervor, and so what you can do is you can follow the smoke of religious fervor to the fire of idolatry.
Ben: This is the sociological reality is that when there's a gap, moses is no longer around, and so the people of Israel fill that gap by making gods of their own, and we do the same thing in modern America.
Ben: Second, the psychology of idolatry is it says that Israel said we will obey, but they could not handle.
Ben: When Moses delayed, they didn't know what to do with themselves.
Ben: Again, look at verse one.
Ben: It says when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain.
Ben: So the question for you is how are you tempted when the Lord doesn't abide by your timetable?
Ben: Like some of you this morning, you long, like you have these romantic desires, you long to be married, but you're waiting in a season of delay right now.
Ben: Some of you are in a job that you feel the thorns and thistles and you just are waiting in the delay for a promotion or a job transfer or something.
Ben: Some of you are aching.
Ben: You're wondering God, why won't you let us have a baby?
Ben: And you're waiting in the delay right now.
Ben: Others of you find yourself in this situation where you have health problems that are inexplicable and you're waiting for a diagnosis, let alone a treatment, and you find yourself waiting in the delay right now.
Ben: And if you know this experience, you know that waiting on God is not like scrolling through your phone at an airport gate or something like that.
Ben: Waiting on God is like doing wall sits in basketball practice, where your weak knees are wobbling and you can't wait just to stand up.
Ben: That's what it feels like to wait in the delay, and so when God delays, it ends up in us being dismayed, and in our dismay there's a heightened temptation to turn to idols that will provide for us either comfort or control, something that we don't have when we're waiting in the delay for God to show up.
Ben: And that's exactly what they do.
Ben: Look at verse two.
Ben: 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.
Ben: So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.
Ben: I'm just going to quick sidebar here.
Ben: There's some really important cultural theology analysis things going on in this text.
Ben: Last fall I preached a sermon on October 4th called plundering the Egyptians on what's going on right here.
Ben: So I'm just going to say we're going to put it in the show notes in the podcast so you can find it there, but I'm not going to spend much time on it.
Ben: Now Look at verse four with me.
Ben: And Aaron received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.
Ben: And they said these are your gods, o Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Ben: Now, on the surface, it seems like they are flagrantly breaking the first two commandments you shall have no other gods and you don't make idols.
Ben: It seems like that's what they're doing here, and they are in a way, but they're doing something more subtle and sinister.
Ben: They're doing something that has come to be known as syncretism Like.
Ben: If you just look closely at the text in verse five, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it.
Ben: And Aaron made a proclamation and said tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh, to the Lord, do you see this?
Ben: So they think they're properly worshiping their God, the one true and living God, by doing this act of idolatry.
Ben: This isn't just a rank departure from biblical religion.
Ben: It's actually the blending, the mixing of culture and Bible, which is even more insidious, even more dangerous.
Ben: In Acts seven, stephen has this fantastic sermon and he says it like this in their hearts, they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron make for us gods who will go before us.
Ben: This is where the idea of idolatry of the heart comes from.
Ben: It was in their hearts that they turned back to Egypt.
Ben: They wanted to mix the biblical God with their cultural gods, syncretism.
Ben: And so where are we tempted to syncretism?
Ben: Where in our hearts do we turn towards America, towards our culture?
Ben: Well, again, in 2024, my question will be will your social media feed look more partisan than Christian?
Ben: Or do you invest more in honoring Black Friday than Good Friday?
Ben: Am I meddling?
Ben: Some of y'all are like listen, that was just a couple days ago, bro, all right.
Ben: But maybe the most tempting thing we have to deal with here is in verse six in our cultural moment.
Ben: Verse six says this and they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings.
Ben: This is important.
Ben: And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.
Ben: There's reason to believe that that language of rose up to play.
Ben: It includes sexual immorality.
Ben: Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, six through eight, interprets it that way.
Ben: He says this Do not be idolaters, as some of them were.
Ben: As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.
Ben: We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did.
Ben: So the divinely inspired apostolic interpretation of this text is that idolatry leads to immorality, particularly sexual immorality.
Ben: You got to ask yourself this question Will we mix Jesus with sexual immorality and call it liberty?
Ben: I mean, love, is love right?
Ben: That's the challenge in this moment.
Ben: You read Romans one and you see that idolatry leads to sexual immorality, and you got to ask the question what is the connection between worship and sex?
Ben: Why is this so inextricably linked here?
Ben: Because in the biblical imagination, idolatry is considered sexual infidelity.
Ben: This is what this means.
Ben: The prophets equated idolatry with harlotry.
Ben: Why?
Ben: Because sex is either a window or a mirror.
Ben: It's either a window through which we glimpse the intimacy and the pleasure of union with God, or it's a mirror that reflects back our selfish desires for self-gratification.
Ben: That's how it functions, and so Tim Keller says it like this if your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.
Ben: That's a good description of the sexual ethics of our cultural moment, because idolatry, in Exodus 32, could be portrayed as the people cheating on God on the wedding night, no less.
Ben: And so how does the Lord respond?
Ben: Look with me at verse seven.
Ben: Some of you are like man.
Ben: I warned you.
Ben: I said this at the beginning.
Ben: I set expectations right the bad news before the glad news.
Ben: All right, verse seven.
Ben: And the Lord said to Moses go down For your people.
Ben: This is significant.
Ben: Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.
Ben: They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them.
Ben: They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said these are your gods, o Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Ben: And the Lord said to Moses I have seen this people and behold, it is a stiff necked people.
Ben: That's an interesting metaphor Stiff necked people.
Ben: It comes from.
Ben: It comes from farm animals that you put a yoke on their shoulders or you put reins in their mouth and you try to steer them left or right with the reins, but their neck is stiff.
Ben: It won't turn as you pull the reins.
Ben: What is the Lord saying here?
Ben: He's highlighting something that is a pattern throughout Scripture, which is we become what we worship.
Ben: If you worship a cow, you're going to become like a cow, which is a stiff necked animal, and this is true for all of the various idols that we make.
Ben: Psalm 115, verse 8, puts it like this those who make idols become like them, so do all who trust in them.
Ben: You worship a metal cow.
Ben: You're going to be stiff necked like a metal cow.
Ben: It's really straightforward and simple.
Ben: And for those of us who are like good thing, I don't have actual idols set up on an altar at home that I bow down to.
Ben: This is true for anything that we entrust ourselves to in order to give us power and comfort and approval and control.
Ben: We become like the things that we worship.
Ben: There's a warning inherent in this.
Ben: Look with me again at verse nine.
Ben: And the Lord said to Moses I've seen this people and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.
Ben: Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make it a great nation of you.
Ben: Somehow, moses doesn't take this offer and, if you know, the story of Exodus, like Israel, has been nothing but a pain in his neck the entire time.
Ben: Like he's a reluctant prophet, he didn't want the job in the first place.
Ben: Like he just he's kind of shoehorned into this and now here's his big break and he doesn't take it.
Ben: Instead, he counter offers with a master class in intercession.
Ben: And I want to look closely at this, because to intercede just means to come between or to stand in the gap.
Ben: That's all the word intercede means, and if you're a Christian, you are called to this all important ministry of concerned participation in the fate of others.
Ben: As one author put it, intercession is maybe the most profound work we get to do on earth it's to stand in between.
Ben: And so Moses' framework for intercession is this he first highlights your people, your name and your promise.
Ben: Look at this with me.
Ben: He looks at God's past redemption, his present reputation and his future promises.
Ben: Look at verse 11.
Ben: But Moses implored the Lord, his God, and said oh Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against?
Ben: Look at this, what happens here?
Ben: Your people, whom you have brought out out of the land of Egypt with your great power and with a mighty hand.
Ben: Do you remember, in verse seven, what the Lord said?
Ben: He said go down for your people, moses, who you brought up.
Ben: They're kind of playing like nose goes for a moment here.
Ben: It's like not, it Like I'm not responsible for that mess that's going on down there.
Ben: And so not only does he say your people, but he's saying hey, lord, but your name is at stake here too.
Ben: Look at verse 12.
Ben: He goes 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?
Ben: You see, moses knew that it was for the sake of the nations that Yahweh's name would be revered Over and over.
Ben: The first half of the book of Exodus has this refrain, which is so that you may know that the Lord is God, so that you may know over and over.
Ben: It's this refrain in the first part of the book of Exodus.
Ben: Moses remembers that, and so he's saying hey, if you destroy Israel, what are the Egyptians gonna say?
Ben: Okay, yahweh, is this great and powerful God, but he destroys his own people.
Ben: Doesn't your name matter to you, lord?
Ben: So I love this, because intercession is not only fueled by concern for people, but it's also concerned for the fame of God's name.
Ben: Just personally, practically whenever I see another significant Christian who fails morally in the media, I pray along these lines Lord, the New York Times is like blood and like sharks with blood in the water when an evangelical pastor falls.
Ben: Is this really bringing honor to the name of Jesus?
Ben: Do something about this, father.
Ben: I step in and I take concern for his name very seriously in that moment.
Ben: And so what we do when we pray is we ask God to remember his people, to remember his name.
Ben: But look at what Moses does here.
Ben: He does the unthinkable.
Ben: He commands Yahweh to repent.
Ben: Look at verse 12.
Ben: It says turn.
Ben: Now that word is translated repent elsewhere in the Old Testament Turn, and it's an imperative, by the way, it's a command Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.
Ben: How does Moses have the audacity to tell Yahweh to repent and to relent?
Ben: Where does that even come from?
Ben: Well, in psychology there's something called attachment theory, and within attachment theory there's this concept called containment.
Ben: And what containment is is it's really like?
Ben: Think of a container which is a defined space that's meant to hold certain contents right.
Ben: And so in securely attached relationships, there's this relational ability to hold in a space whatever the contents might show up in that relationship.
Ben: And listen, you don't need containment if the contents are lovely and pleasant.
Ben: You need containment when the contents, the emotional contents in a relationship are really hard and heavy.
Ben: This is like your teenager storming down the hallway, slamming the door and saying I hate you, mom and dad.
Ben: Containment looks like you.
Ben: Don't yell back at them.
Ben: Now.
Ben: This is actually amazing, because I genuinely believe that the God of covenantal, secure attachment is creating space.
Ben: He's creating a container in which Moses can pour out the contents of what's going on in his own heart, and he does that for you and me.
Ben: It's worth noting.
Ben: Allah does not create the same container for his followers.
Ben: Only the true and living God allows us to contend with his sovereignty.
Ben: Why?
Ben: Because he's profoundly secure.
Ben: He can allow it, he can invite it.
Ben: Read the lament Psalms.
Ben: And so Moses appeals to your people, your name, but also, finally, your promises.
Ben: Look with me at verse 13.
Ben: 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 heaven and all this land that I promised I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever.
Ben: You see, like a child with his father, moses calls the Lord to account, saying you said, but you said.
Ben: There's a book called the leadership challenge.
Ben: It's a couple of researchers, moses and Postner, wrote it and they said this the foundation of leadership is.
Ben: Wonder how you'd feel in that blank.
Ben: The foundation of leadership is credibility Credibility.
Ben: Can I believe you, can I trust you, can I have confidence in you and your leadership?
Ben: Moses is calling Yahweh's credibility into account if he does what he's threatening to do.
Ben: Here the authors of the leadership challenge define credibility in action like this doing what you say you will do.
Ben: Moses said you said you said Lord.
Ben: Now you have to do what you said you will do.
Ben: Can you, with boldness, go before the throne of God and take His promises back to Him and say you said it brings delight to your Father's ears?
Ben: This is how we intercede.
Ben: This is what this looks like, and since, as Martin Luther taught us, prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of His willingness.
Ben: The Lord relents.
Ben: Look at verse 14.
Ben: The Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on His people.
Ben: Now notice this His people.
Ben: He's claimed them as His own.
Ben: It worked.
Ben: Yahweh says these are my people.
Ben: Why?
Ben: Because of the prayers of Moses.
Ben: They were effective.
Ben: That's so important.
Ben: But we have to ask a really thorny theological question right now how can God relent?
Ben: Hold your breath, we're going to dive in deep.
Ben: It's going to go quick, but we're going to dive in deep here for a moment and talk about the immutability of God.
Ben: I know it's a big word.
Ben: We're going to go for it, though.
Ben: Herman Bovenk, one of the most important theologians, says this God lives the life of His creatures and participates in all their changing states Interesting.
Ben: He goes on to say that, in Scripture, god is a co-participant in the life of the world, and especially of His people, israel.
Ben: He goes on to say there is change around, about and outside of God, and there is change in people's relationship to Him, but and this is a big but but there is no change in God Himself.
Ben: In fact, he goes on to say if God were not immutable, he would not be God.
Ben: That's really important.
Ben: If God were not unchangeable, he would not be God.
Ben: Why?
Ben: If God were to change for the better, it means that he was not perfect before.
Ben: If God were to change for the worse, it means that he is not perfect now.
Ben: So for God to be the one who declares Himself to be Yahweh I am perfect being there can be no change in God.
Ben: So why does this matter?
Ben: It matters because I want you to pray with boldness and confidence.
Ben: That's what I want for you, like Moses, I want you to pray with boldness and confidence.
Ben: Boldness that God is involved and so you can ask for His intervention, but confidence that, because God is immutable, you can rest in His character.
Ben: Both of those things really matter.
Ben: You have to hold them in proper tension.
Ben: And so, counterintuitively, it's actually the unchanging character of God that Moses appeals to God for Him to relent.
Ben: You notice how kind of backward that almost seems.
Ben: Look at verse 13,.
Ben: Remember Abraham, isaac and Israel, your servants here.
Ben: It is to whom you swore by your own self.
Ben: There's nothing higher God could have sworn by than His own self, the only thing that's unchanging in this chaotic and tumultuous world.
Ben: So God swore by His own self that he would fulfill His promises, and you can bank on it, because God's character is immutable and unchanging.
Ben: That's a really significant point for us who try to pray.
Ben: For the nerds in here, what I'm saying is pray, because God ordains the ends and the means, particularly prayer.
Ben: Look with me at verse 15.
Ben: Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides, on the front and on the back, they were written.
Ben: The tablets were the work of God.
Ben: This is important, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.
Ben: Notice this God is the first Bible publisher.
Ben: Like writing down God's words was God's idea.
Ben: The idea that His people would be ruled by a book comes from Him, not from Crossway or Sondervan.
Ben: This is a really big deal.
Ben: God publishes His words with His very own finger.
Ben: That's how he intends to rule over His people.
Ben: This is through the words of a book.
Ben: It's a uniqueness of biblical religion.
Ben: It goes on in verse 19.
Ben: And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf in the dancing, moses' anger burned hot and he threw the tablets out of His hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.
Ben: I think that that was symbolically showing them what had happened.
Ben: You just broke your wedding boughs on the night.
Ben: You just broke this covenant, just like these tablets are broken here and now.
Ben: But there's something important that happened here.
Ben: Moses' anger burned hot.
Ben: There's a man named Johannes Kepler.
Ben: He was a famous German astronomer and mathematician.
Ben: He described all of his science like this.
Ben: He said I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him.
Ben: Love that phrase, those of us who are head.
Ben: He really loved that phrase.
Ben: But notice what was happening here.
Ben: Moses is doing something a little different.
Ben: In verse 10, it says Yahweh burned with anger.
Ben: In verse 19, it says Moses burned with anger.
Ben: Moses was feeling God's feelings after him.
Ben: That's really important.
Ben: Do you know that discipleship to Jesus involves education of your emotions?
Ben: To yearn for what he yearns for is a really important part.
Ben: Like in Acts 17, paul goes and he's in a pagan city, and it says that Paul's spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
Ben: This is what sanctification looks like.
Ben: You feel God's feelings after him.
Ben: Moses was burning with anger because the Lord was burning with anger.
Ben: And so another way to say that is love for God makes you jealous and zealous for the fame of God's name.
Ben: Another, to inversely say that apathy towards idolatry is treachery.
Ben: It's not a small thing if you find yourself lukewarm, it's a very dangerous place to be.
Ben: And so we turn to God and we say God, I want to feel your feelings after you, I want to love your loves after you, I want to hate what you hate.
Ben: After you, I want to desire what you desire after you.
Ben: I want to delight in what you delight in.
Ben: I want to will what you will.
Ben: This is discipleship.
Ben: This is so important because intimacy with God is the antidote to idolatry, and that's the invitation here being such an intimacy with God psychologists call this a mutual mind state where the things that are going on in God go on in you.
Ben: Intimacy with God is the antidote to idolatry.
Ben: Look with me at verse 20.
Ben: Moses 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.
Ben: I don't even know what's going on.
Ben: That's so punk rock that he did that.
Ben: And Moses said to Aaron what did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?
Ben: And Aaron said let not the anger of my Lord burn hot.
Ben: You know the people that they're set on evil For.
Ben: They said to me make us gods who shall go before us.
Ben: And 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.
Ben: Notice Aaron's really accurate about the sin of the people.
Ben: Notice.
Ben: You know, the Bible's got jokes.
Ben: Look at how inaccurate he is about his own sin.
Ben: So they gave it to me and I threw it into the fire and out came this calf.
Ben: What even happened in this moment?
Ben: The great philosophical minds of Key and Peele would say you done, messed up, aa Ron.
Ben: That's really what just happened in this moment and, amazingly miraculously, even Aaron didn't even need a therapist to tell him that all of his problems were because of the people around him.
Ben: Some of you are like shots fired.
Ben: I'm a therapist, y'all can get away with it.
Ben: Isn't that amazing?
Ben: You know the people, moses.
Ben: They're toxic.
Ben: I should have had better boundaries.
Ben: That was the problem.
Ben: Aaron was socially pressured, that's true, but he's personally responsible for what he did.
Ben: That's also true.
Ben: Hold those intention, because Aaron signals the danger when we bow to the whims of popular opinion rather than living in the fear of the Lord.
Ben: That's what he stands here as a symbol of.
Ben: Verse 26 says this.
Ben: Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said quote who is on the Lord's side?
Ben: Come to me.
Ben: And all the sons of Levi gathered around him.
Ben: Some scholars would say this is the center of the story, a call to repentance.
Ben: So the way that Hebrew narrative works is what you center actually has really a lot of significance in the whole storyline, and so the fact that verse 26 might be the center of the story is important.
Ben: When he says who is on the Lord's side, come to me.
Ben: Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it like this discipleship is always a decision either for or against Jesus Christ.
Ben: Repentance is simply saying no to what Jesus says no to and yes to what Jesus says yes to, and then maintaining that, enduring that and correcting that when you go astray.
Ben: Verses 27 through 29 show us that idolatry is actually a capital crime in theocratic Israel.
Ben: This is a big deal.
Ben: 3,000 people died because they refused to repent, but they persisted in their stubbornness.
Ben: That should give us a little bit of fear and trembling, like all of the things that they had seen.
Ben: And they still persist in their stubbornness when they were given this free offer of repentance.
Ben: You might think, hey, 3,000 people dying, that doesn't seem.
Ben: That seems extreme.
Ben: Is that unfair?
Ben: They freely consented and they could have freely repented, but they persisted in their stiff neckness.
Ben: As the Lord called them.
Ben: Judgment is just.
Ben: Mercy is unfair.
Ben: That's really important.
Ben: In fact, in Acts 2, like 1500 years later, or something like that.
Ben: In Acts 2, people were given a similar choice to repent, and it says 3,000 people were saved on that day.
Ben: I think it's harkening back to this moment here.
Ben: In other words, you can choose to repent and as you do it, look what happened.
Ben: Salvation, not judgment.
Ben: That's the mercy of God, and so why this is so important is because the gospel heightens human guilt in order to highlight divine grace.
Ben: This is so important because God's left hand of justice chases us into his right hand of mercy.
Ben: Look with me at verse 30.
Ben: The next day, moses said to the people you have sinned a great sin and now I will go up to the Lord.
Ben: Perhaps I can make atonement.
Ben: In English, this means at one meant bringing together two that were apart.
Ben: In Hebrew.
Ben: This is a covering.
Ben: Maybe I can cover your sin, verse 31,.
Ben: So Moses returned to the Lord and said alas, this people has sinned a great sin.
Ben: They made for themselves gods of gold.
Ben: But now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.
Ben: Some of you find yourself in a situation where, if you could just turn down your care for Jesus or your care for a person that you love, life would be a lot easier.
Ben: Moses knows that tension.
Ben: Moses loves the Lord, and so he knows because they have sinned a great sin, they deserve punishment.
Ben: Moses loves Israel, and so he's saying let me die in their place, because all love is substitutionary me for you.
Ben: Moses knows that, but God rejects his offer.
Ben: Why?
Ben: A few reasons, but one of them is Moses was not guiltless.
Ben: Only an innocent person can die in the place of a guilty person, and so in verse 33 we see this.
Ben: But the Lord said to Moses whoever sinned against me, I will blot out of my book.
Ben: Then now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you.
Ben: Behold, my angel shall go before you.
Ben: Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.
Ben: Then the Lord sent a plague that should remind you of Egypt, on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made.
Ben: We see here that, in the words of Emil Brunner, idolatry is a fatal exchange.
Ben: It's the exchange of God for the creature, the truth for a lie.
Ben: As Romans 1 would put it, moses was not a sufficient substitute for the people, but we can't help but think in terms of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, because we do have one who is guiltless.
Ben: We do have a sufficient substitute.
Ben: If the essence of idolatry is exchanging ourselves for God, then the essence of salvation is God exchanging himself for us.
Ben: Another way to say that is to our fatal exchange, god offers his one great exchange.
Ben: Only Jesus could make atonement for us on the basis of his blood.
Ben: To take away our quote very great sin.
Ben: Second Corinthians 521 says it like this for our sake, god made Jesus to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Ben: This is what Martin Luther calls the great exchange.
Ben: That happens If all idolatry is substituting ourselves for God.
Ben: All salvation is God substituting himself for me, for you.
Ben: And as we come to this table, we'll see that we will eat and drink a God who was crushed for us so that we might take him inside of ourselves, not for death but for life.
Ben: And so only when we see this, that this God is willing to substitute himself for us, will our hearts be conjured up with the worthiness of him as our object of worship, and only then intimacy with this God will lead us out of idolatry, because intimacy is the antidote to idolatry.
Ben: If we become like what we worship, then it's only worship of this God that rehumanizes us rather than dehumanizes us.
Ben: This is significant for our understanding of how we're formed.
Ben: But the author of Hebrews says it like this that only Jesus could live to make intercession for us.
Ben: In Hebrews 7.25 he says this consequently, jesus is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
Ben: Let's do that now, jesus.
Ben: It's to you that we come, the perfect sacrifice, the only proper substitute, the one who stands even now in the gap, always and forever, our great mediator, fully God and fully man, completely innocent and yet judged for our idolatry, to give us a record of total righteousness.
Ben: We praise you for that, jesus.
Ben: Would that reality be impressed upon our hearts now by your Holy Spirit, so that we might turn to you and seek intimacy with you, and out of that intimacy we would find the antidote to idolatry.
Ben: It's in your matchless name.
Ben: We pray Amen.
Ben: As always, we take time to respond.
Ben: We hear from God and we respond in prayer.
Ben: We're invited into this divine dialogue.
Ben: If you will, I'm going to ask them to put a chart on the screen behind me, because nothing better than idolatry charts.
Ben: This comes from Tim Keller's work, most notably his book Counterfeit Gods, where he essentially boils down the primary idols of the heart as being power, approval, comfort and control.
Ben: This is what I'm going to invite us to do.
Ben: This will stay up here through this time of response.
Ben: We're going to do three things, three Rs, because I didn't have any points earlier, so I have to have three that are alliterated now.
Ben: The first thing is we're going to renounce.
Ben: We're going to name explicitly to God the idols that most tempt us and we're going to renounce them.
Ben: We're going to say we don't want them anymore.
Ben: They're not worthy of our affection and our adoration and our trust.
Ben: The second thing we're going to do is we're going to repent.
Ben: We're going to tell God we are turning away, we are saying no and we're saying yes to you, jesus.
Ben: The final thing is we're going to rejoice.
Ben: We're going to rejoice in Jesus, who is far better as we sang earlier far better than all that any other idol might be able to offer us.
Ben: So I'm going to give you some time now.
Ben: You can do this individually, you can do this together with other people, but we're going to renounce, we're going to repent and we're going to rejoice in light of the idols that are the temptation towards idolatry in our own hearts, and we'll be back up to come to the Lord's table in a moment.
Ben: In Jesus' name amen.