Good morning, friends. How are you doing today? Wow. That’s some different energy over there. One of these things is not like the other. Let’s try that again. How are you guys doing today?

If you’re visiting. It’s not always this weird. Who am I kidding? It’s always this weird. We’re in a series that we just started. My name’s Alex, by the way. You guys have thrown me way off. I’m way off to the left now. I’m gonna have to recover. Gonna have to turn this around. We began a series last week on community.

Built around this kind of premise here. That really, community is the centerpiece of life. We are built for relationships with people. God himself exists in the unity of Trinity, three in one, in this beautiful, continual existence of three facing each other. And we are invited into that as followers of Jesus.

And so where we began last week was this idea that really community, Without unity is not community at all. The premise I left you with was unity is not the absence of disagreement. It’s community in spite of disagreement. In actual fact, the moment that there’s no disagreement at all, what you have Is uniformity, and there’s enough people in this room for us to know that the likelihood of all of us being exactly the same in our feelings and opinions about everything, that would be a rare thing indeed.

The scriptures beautifully invite us into this place of unity as part of our Christian community together. So this week, the movement that I’d like us to make is I’d love to, for us to begin to ponder how it is that we might enter into community, both corporately and personally. As we think about all that’s going on in the foyer this morning, we’re inviting each of us to contemplate next steps, to ask what is our personal role to play in that.

That means as a community of followers of Jesus, what we’re doing is this. We’re saying, how are we called to express ourselves as a community in this specific place and time? During this time, we’ve said three things about living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. We’ve said we’d love to be a community that provides an environment that feels like coming home.

We just spent some time in that beautiful story of the prodigal son where the father opens out his arms and welcomes his children home. And we’d love to do that for people, whether they’re followers of Jesus or not, to bring them into this space of community. That’s one of those things. A second one is we’d love to have, for people to have more than just an intellectual knowledge of what it is to know Jesus.

We don’t just want environments that work, experiences that happen each and every week. We hope and dream that somewhere there might be this moment where everything gets real small. And it’s as if the God of the universe starts speaking to you personally. Taking you on this journey of next steps.

Me on a journey of next steps. And then finally there’s this idea that we’d love to be a community of people. That if we just said this week, you know we’re done with this. Just gonna shut the doors, sell the building. That this community would miss us if we were gone. That today, friends, is a rare type of church.

Churches are closing all over this country, and the community says something like, I didn’t really know they were here. We long to be a church that is not that type of church. Now here’s the thing. Within that dream corporately, there is a part for each of us to play. So the question I’d love you to hold open handed today is this.

very much. God, in the midst of that dream, what is mine to do? What are you asking of me? Together we’re going to surrender our time, surrender our stuff, surrender our purpose and say, God, would you speak? And so I’d love you to enter into this prayer with me with open hands, because this is not a posture of demand.

This is a posture of rest. O Lord Jesus Christ, who art as a shadow of a great rock in a weary land, who beholds thy weak creatures, weary of labor, weary of pleasure, weary of hope deferred, weary of self, in thine abundant compassion and fellow feeling with us, and unutterable tenderness, bring us, we pray thee, into thy rest.

That’s the invite. God is the God of rest who welcomes us in. About four years ago, or exactly as it happens four years ago, My wife and family and I had been praying through what we felt was a shift in where our family were going to do life in the future. It was exactly this time, four years ago, that we said goodbye to the church, that we got to pastor in New York, and we began this trek over towards Colorado.

That journey was one that took a long time, both in that moment and then over the year before that. But eventually, we got to make that step. I came here with something of a dream. Something of a dream that might be expressed in the words of Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. I want to see mountains again, Gandalf.

Mountains. And then find somewhere I can rest. I didn’t find the rest, but I did find the mountains, which is halfway there. But when I first arrived, that first moment of coming out to Colorado to see what it was like was actually one of the biggest disappointments I’ve experienced. There was this moment where we were about to land and I got to look across the landscape of this new place that had been sold by my wife largely, as been this place of mountains, this place of beauty, and I experienced this.

I actually believed in a flat earth until I landed in Colorado. It’s you can see where it curves. It’s so flat, it’s curved, if you like. It took a while to get to that point of seeing the mountains as they opened up as we came from the airport in to the valley and see the beauty that is here.

Mountains are this beautiful, compelling thing that, to me at least, invite me to make this upward journey. movement. This is the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland. If you’re going to go to one place in Europe, Go to England. If you’re going to go to two places, go and see the Louderbrunnen Valley. It’s this valley, valley that’s formed over time by this glacier, and it in the bottom, it’s green, and the rocks just lead you upward.

They just gather your attention and send you In some ways they work like that moment that you may have seen in a movie. In a movie the cameraman will sometimes do this thing called upward tilt where slowly he’ll lift the camera and the bigger perspective behind you will suddenly become into focus.

Maybe the moment that you see the alien spaceship or the moment that you see the scenery that you’re supposed to see in a movie. There’s this beauty to mountains that capture us. Mountains move our orientation upwards. Today, we’re going to spend time in a story, centered around a mountain. So if you have a text in front of you, I’m going to invite you to turn to Exodus chapter 19.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Bible, then turn to the left and find where it says Genesis. Then keep going until it says somewhere, something else. Exodus chapter 19 is the passage I’m going to read to you. And it’s a passage we’re just going to spend some time focusing on. The reason I recommend a, like a paper copy of the scriptures is you get to write all over it.

I’m going to suggest a couple of things that you might write next to parts of the text as we continue. But here’s verse one. On the first day of the third month, after the Israelites left Egypt, on that very day they came to the desert of Sinai. After they had set out from Rephidim, they entered the desert of Sinai and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.

Then Moses went to God, and the Lord called him from the mountain and said, This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob, and what you are to tell the people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles wings, and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession.

Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you were to speak to the Israelites. So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together, we will do everything the Lord has said.

So Moses brought their answer back to the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, I am going to come to you in a dense cloud so that the people will hear me speaking with you and you will always put their trust in, and will always put their trust in you. Then Moses said to the Lord what the people had said. And the Lord said to Moses, go to the people and consecrate them tomorrow.

Today, sorry, today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day. Because on the day, on that day, the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, be careful that you do not approach the mountain or touch the foot of it.

Whoever touches the mountain is to be put to death. They are to be stoned or shot with an arrow. Not a hand is to be laid on them. No person or animal should be permitted to live. Only when the ram’s horn sounds a long blast may they approach the mountain. After Moses had gone down from the mountain to the people, he consecrated them and they washed their clothes.

Then he said to the people, prepare yourselves for the third day. Abstain from sexual relations. On the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God.

And they stood at the foot. of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.

The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up and the Lord said to him, go down and warn the people so that they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. Even the priests who approach the Lord must consecrate themselves or the Lord will break out against them.

Moses said to the Lord, the people cannot come up to Mount Sinai because you yourself warned us, put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy. The Lord replied, go down and bring Aaron up with you. But the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the Lord, or he will break out against them.

So Moses went down to the people and told them. Jesus, as we open this text, help us to ask questions of how it might speak to us of you, to lead us into following you in grace and truth. We are your people, the sheep of your pasture.

Lead us deeper into your presence, transform us into your image. Amen So this is a text that, it’s wow, right? You read it the first time and you’re like, what is this saying? It’s got all sorts of movements to it. We may at times need something like this arrow I built with my own fair hands. This is the best I can do in terms of craftsmanship.

But I built it because I wanted you to be able to track with me over this chapter and the chapters we’ll touch on afterwards where the movement is. is, where the action is in the text. Sometimes in these texts the action is where? It’s down, it’s on the ground. Sometimes the action on these texts is upwards.

Watch how I can do this. Look at that. You may just fall because of gravity. Sometimes the action is up. And then sometimes like this text it’s where if you were to say in Exodus 19 Where is most of the action or where is the action full stop? It’s everywhere, right? They arrive at the mountain and it says Moses goes up the mountain and then God sends him down the mountain And then he goes back up the mountain to talk to God again, and then down the mountain, and it’s up, and it’s down, and it’s up, and it’s down, and it finishes with this moment where it says people, Moses comes down to tell the people the Ten Commandments, which will follow in Exodus 20.

These passages have tons of movement, and we can be unaware of what is exactly going on in these. And if we don’t know where the action is, then actually figuring out what God might be trying to say to us in this. is a challenge. So let’s head back up to the top of Exodus 19 and we’re going to move through this fairly slowly to try and catch some of the points around it.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story of Exodus, this group of people that are known in this text as the people of Israel have left a land called Egypt. They’ve been slaves there for about 300 years, probably 10 to 25, 10 to 15 generations of people have lived through this time. It means that they don’t know who they are anymore.

How many of you have a family that immigrated to this country at some point? Just throw a hand up. How many of it was a generation ago? How many of you a generation keep your hand in the air? How many five generations ago? Or less than five generations ago? How many of you were like ten generations ago?

You don’t even know how far back you are. For those of you who got a hand in the air. If I were to ask you how much you knew about your family history of ten generations ago, how much you knew of the culture that they moved from, the honest answer would probably be, I don’t really know anything about it.

It’s just so detached. This is who these people are. They have no identity, no sense of self. And they come out of Egypt and they camp in front of this mountain. They camped in the desert in front of the mountain. This is a picture of Mount Sinai, this is St. Catherine’s Monastery that is there now, of course wasn’t there at the time.

This is a mountain just like any other in the region. Mount Sinai is not a special mountain. There’s others near to it that are bigger, that stand out as more significant. There’s certainly mountains all over the world that are more significant, but it is a mountain that has history. The mountain is not significant and that’s why God sits on the mountain for a moment in this text.

The mountain becomes significant because this God does something on this mountain. In Exodus chapter 3 we read that Moses had been at the mountain of Sinai where he’d had his first experience of God. And God says to Moses, you will go to Egypt, you will bring the people out, and you will worship together on this mountain at some point in the future.

This is the culmination of that promise. As they land on the mountain, Moses goes up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain. Throughout this text, what you’ll see is Moses act as what’s called a mediator. He’ll sit in a position between God and Moses. And the people of Israel, and he’ll go back and forth, hence the movement up and down the mountain.

He’ll represent God to the people, and he’ll represent the people to God. This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob, and what you are to tell the people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. The language there has some importance to it, the eagle was the king’s bird, it represents this sense of majesty and God has brought them through his power, through his majesty to this place.

Brought him not just to a mountain, that is any old mountain, but to a mountain where his presence sits in this time. And this place. Now, here’s the offer. God is going to make them an offer that is essentially something like a marriage proposal. Now, if you obey me fully, and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession.

Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. After bringing them to the mountain, God will send Moses with these words, I’m going to make you an offer. If you would like to stay attached to me as a special group of people, that offer is open to you.

But the people are the ones that have to decide on whether to live into this or not. So Moses, as is his role, comes down to the mountain to make that offer. Moses went back, so the arrow moves down, and summoned the elders of the people and set them before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak.

The people all responded together, we will do everything the Lord has said. So Moses brought their answer back to the Lord. The arrow moves upwards again. The offer is made, the marriage is accepted. So people writing in the rabbinic style years ago will say, on Sinai, God married the people of Israel. Next verse 9.

The Lord said to Moses, I’m going to come to you in a dense cloud so the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you. Then Moses told the Lord what the people had said. And the Lord said to Moses, go to the people, consecrate them today and tomorrow, have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day, because on the third day the Lord will come down on Sinai in the sight of all the people.

This text and the one after it, chapter 20, are significant, partly because sociologists will tell us this is the only time. in human history when a whole nation of people claims to have heard God speak together. There’s nothing like this in any of the writings. Verse 12. Put limits for the people around the mountain.

So this is the preparation work. They’re all about to experience this moment where God will descend on the mountain and God gives some rules to keep everybody safe. Be careful you do not approach the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain is to be put to death. Remember the mountain itself, not sacred, but God’s presence in this text that makes it sacred.

They are to be stoned or shot with arrows. Not a hand is to be laid on them. No person or animal should be permitted to live. Now, this text seems super archaic to us. We look back at it now, we’re like, wait, what? And yet, we are unfamiliar with holiness in the way that scripture talks about holiness. Only when the ram’s horn, and this is the part I want you to put a little asterisk next to if you’ve got a paper text in front of you.

This text has caught people’s attention for centuries. Only when the ram’s horn sounds, a long blast, may they approach the mountain. There’s an offer of marriage to the people of Israel. They accept it, and God says, I’m going to bring my presence that has never been experienced by a group of people to this mountain, and you are invited.

Or are they? Maybe you have a different version than the NIV, which I tend to read from. But this verse has caught people’s attention because in Hebrew, that’s not what it says. In Hebrew, it says something more they may come on the mountain. In the NIV it says they may approach the mountain. I gave you a couple of different versions here.

This is the NIV version that we read. They may approach the mountain. Some people translated it a little bit different. This is the message. It’s safe to climb the mountain when the ram’s horn. But it blows very different, right? New Living Translation, Dan Elliot’s favorite version. However, when the ram’s horn sounds, a long blast, then the people may go up on the mountain.

New Revised Standard Version, when the trumpet sounds, a long blast, they may go up on the mountain. Which is it? Are they invited to come on the mountain, and they won’t, as we see in the text afterwards? Are they not invited to come up on the mountain and they make the smart choice? Is this a test where they’re invited and they fail the test because they don’t have the courage to go on the mountain?

Is it a test that they pass because they know that this mountain is now holy and they’re not allowed on there? It just catches us in this sense of, wait, where are they invited? Who are these people? Are they included in this? Now this is a theological conundrum that we won’t have time to fully unpack today.

So we have a podcast, Aaron and I, on Thursday we’ll get to lean into some of this conversation a little bit because it is just a fascinating element of the text. Something is happening here. That has not happened since. Genesis chapter one and chapter two, one of the rabbinic writers in the eighth century eighth century.

Rabbi Azar says this, on the sixth day of Si, the Holy one, blessed be he was revealed unto Israel and Sinai, and from his place was revealed on Mount Sinai. And the heavens were opened, and the summit of the mountain entered into the heavens. Thick darkness covered the mountain, and the Holy One, blessed be He, sat upon His throne, and His feet stood in the thick darkness.

As it is said, He bowed the heavens also and came down, and thick darkness was under his feet. To some people reading this over the centuries, they sense that this is a moment when literally the heavens, that eternal realm, not just the sky, but that eternal thing, is lowered. That there’s a hole in that firmament for just a moment.

And that this one particular mountain, in all of space and time, puts its top through that hole. And there’s a moment when people are invited to experience God. as he is. They have a moment in which to decide. Some people say they could never go up the mountain but the text seems to say that they’re invited and yet they don’t.

And yet they don’t. In verse 14 we read, After Moses had gone down the mountain to the people he consecrated them and they washed their clothes he said to the people, prepare yourselves for the third day, abstain from sexual relations, and then this is the moment, watch it. On the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain.

A very loud trumpet blast, as we were told would happen. Everyone in the camp trembled, as we would expect them to. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God. And they what? They stayed at the foot of the mountain. They were invited upwards, and they stayed down. They stayed down. Whether you believe they’re invited up or invited down, this moment, or invited to stay down, or supposed to stay down, this moment is central to the Exodus story.

This moment where the people experience God. Catch for a second the holiness within these words, Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and the voice of God answered him.

To the Jewish people before us and to us, this text is a compelling text where God visits with his people. The Lord descended on the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up and the Lord said to him, go down and warn the people so they did not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish.

Even the priests who approach the Lord must consecrate themselves or the Lord will break out against them. Moses said to the Lord, The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai because you yourself warned us, put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy. The Lord replied, Go down. He’s come up and he’s going down again.

Bring Aaron up with you, but the priests and the people must not force their way through to come to the Lord or he will break out against them. So Moses went down to the people and told them. Throughout this text, whether Moses is at the top or Moses is at the bottom, whether you believe that the people are invited up or not really invited up, I would suggest that the whole of this action throughout this text is supposed to tell us that the main thing that’s happening is at the top of the mountain.

When the people are down at the bottom, even though their feet are off the mountain, Their attention is, and is supposed to be, on the mountain. They know, and we are supposed to know, that something compelling is happening up there. Something transformative is happening in the middle of them. They get this kind of front row seat.

to watching it. When we look at what happens in Exodus chapter 24, there’s a chunk of time in between this. So you’ve got Exodus 19 we’ve just read. This passage we’ll read in a second is from Exodus 24. There’s a whole list of commandments, including the well known Ten Commandments. All of that is happening at the top of the mountain.

The action there is always upwards. And the people get this front row seat. They are observing from the ground. In Exodus 24, verse 15, we read this when Moses went up on the mountain again, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai for six days. The cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud.

To the Israelites, the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain. Then Moses entered into the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. And the people are left at the bottom watching what’s happening up on the top of the mountain as God and Moses spend time together.

They’re at the bottom, But all of the action is at the top. This section of scripture from Exodus 19 all the way through to Exodus 40 is a whole chunk of scripture that is what you might call divinely directed. God has a plan that he has put into place. He has offered marriage to this particular group of people.

of people. And they have responded with a yes. And now he’s given them a layout of how that marriage will work. All the action is at the top, they are at the bottom. Exodus 19 through 40, every scene is divinely directed. Except one. Except one. In amongst all these chapters, there’s one chapter that is a disaster.

One chapter that rabbis have said for history is the low point for the people of Israel. This one moment that we’re about to read is a moment that they say has reverberated across history, that every generation has felt some element of this text ever since. Exodus 19 through 40, while the position of Moses may be up or down, and all the action.

is up there. This scene we’re about to read is the only one that is an entirely earthly reaction, entirely earthly centerpiece. So turn if you’d like to Exodus 32 verse 1. When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, come make us gods who will go He’s been up there for 40 days.

There’s something going on they can see, but they don’t know what. They’re not hearing anything. It’s just a visual. And all through that time, as they sit there, questions begin to be asked. People start to grumble just a little bit. And they gathered around Aaron and said, Come, make us gods who will go before us.

Make us something we can see. There’s something happening up there, sure. It’s But we don’t really know what it is. Give us a God that’s in front of us. A God that we’ll be able to touch. A God that’s always visible, not just visible when He chooses. A God that will always be with us, not just with us when He chooses.

Give us something practical. Give us something we can see. As for this fellow Moses, they say, this is a totally derogatory term in Hebrew. It’s got this sense of as this idiot that brought us in all of this journey, I’m just giving you like the practical sense of the language who brought us out of Egypt.

We don’t even know what happened to him. He’s somewhere, but he’s not here, right? So he’s not here, we have to make different plans. We have to flex, we have to go with the way that the situation has changed. Give us something for us now. We’re going to ignore the mountain and we’re going to focus on what is here, what is present.

There’s this moment in the text where all of their attention that throughout these chapters has been on these incredible events happening right before them, on this sociological wonder where God meets with a group of people and invites them particularly to be his, and suddenly, in the text at least, there’s this moment where all of their attention lands With a thud on the ground, the here, the now give us something Aaron that we can touch, that we can see their attention comes down from the mountain.

Aaron answered them, take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, probably stuff that they got from Egypt when they left, and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fastening it, fashioning it with a tool.

Then they said, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of Egypt. In your text it may have the term God’s there in plural and just with a small g instead of a capital G. In the text sometimes there’s a piece of like a shift to the word that’s used to make it clear it’s not Yahweh, the God of Israel but they take this calf that they’ve made and say, this is God, this is our God.

The God that rescued us, here he is, right here in front of us. I read this text for years and assumed that this group of people said, we no longer want God, Yahweh, to be our God. That’s not actually what the text says. They don’t change their God. They just change what he looks like. They just want to give God A visual in actual fact.

In the next verse is Aaron, who is the, some of the centerpiece for all this. It says he built an altar in front of the calf and announced tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord. But this festival does not look like any of the things that God Yahweh has invited them to before the next people a day were told the people rose early and sacrificed burn offerings and presented fellowship offerings.

Afterwards, they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. They would say that the god is the same, that this god, this calf, is Yahweh, the god that saved them from Egypt. But he doesn’t look like Yahweh, he doesn’t act like Yahweh. They’ve taken who God is and changed him to be something so much more convenient to them.

Beautifully in this text, while this is a chunk that is not divinely directed, that stands out within the chapters of Exodus, God is already providing for his people’s error. Look at the next few verses in the mu, in the mid in the midst of their Ry, in the midst of their way of acting in this situation, we read these words.

Then the Lord said to Moses, go down to the mountain. Go down to the people because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt, notice the change in language in this moment. Not my people. Your people. I do that with my wife all the time. It’s like your kids. They’re yours right now. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them, and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf.

They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it, and have said, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of Egypt. I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, and they are a stiff necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them and then I will make you into a great nation.

Some of the language there is just, is actually just really interesting, that, that sense of leave me alone is actually just let me rest. Give me a break for a second. Just get out of the room. Just leave me to ponder and I’m going to decide what to do with these people and I may well destroy them.

And then Moses, instead of being with them, I’m just going to be with you. It’s just going to be you and me. We’re going to make a great nation and forget these people. That’s the heartbeat of the text. Moses is the one who in this text actually stands up for the people. Moses sought the favor of the Lord, his God.

Lord, he said. Why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth? Turn from your fierce anger, relent, and do not bring disaster on your people.

Remember, says Moses, your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. Didn’t you promise to them, to whom you swore by your own self, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever? Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

Moses is the one who again sits in that role as a mediator and says, God, stay with this people. Don’t give up on them. Keep working with them. Keep hoping. Moses will go down in the next chapter and he’ll be the one that dishes out a punishment on the people. In actual fact, through all of this text that we’ve just read, while this moment stands out as the one moment that is earthly directed, the one moment where the people just do what they want.

It seems that God has been preparing for them already. In the midst of offering something like a covenant of marriage to this group of people, God has been preparing for them to break this covenant. Throughout all of this, it seems that this passage, which is the most quoted passage in Exodus, is central.

In verse, in chapter 34, God says this, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to the thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet, he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

Somewhere, this text maybe wrestles, maybe messes with us just a little bit. We may be a little bit uncomfortable with the last part of it. It’s commentated on all over the Old Testament as other writers will wrestle with this moment. But to start with, I’d like us to focus on the beginning. God describes himself as compassionate and gracious, slow to anger even in our failure, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands.

That means the thousandth generation. and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. In the midst of an invite to a people to whom he has been faithful, to whom he has rescued, in the midst of them preparing to fail in that covenant, even in the very beginning of it, God is already planning graciousness. In the midst of offering himself to a group of people as a particular God.

In the midst of giving a list of rules based on which that covenant will work, to a people that have broken the first and the second and the third commandment, almost before they are even given, this is what God is planning. He’s planning graciousness. He’s planning to be slow to anger, to abound in love and faithfulness.

He maintains love to the thousandth generation. forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. This is a God who even before it is repented of, is planning to provide a mechanism to forgive it. And this, remember, is just a shadow of the work of Jesus that is the ultimate fulfilling of this. That this God is constantly working to reconcile, even in moments when humanity is at its absolute worst.

And yet we see in Exodus chapter 32 something, I would say, like a tendency that I see in me and maybe you see in you. Remember, throughout this chapter, these chapters, all the action. is in heaven or is on the top of the mountain. All of our attention is supposed to be there as God gives good gifts. And yet this people in Exodus 32 choose a pathway that seems to be deeply offensive.

There’s somewhere in us a tendency, I would suggest, to build gods in our image. And I suspect it’s still there today for you and for me. We don’t build real golden calves. But we find ways to build things that are to a degree an idol. They are to a degree an idol. We still live into this text. I give Aaron in this text such a hard time, and Aaron throughout this gen this exodus narrative seems to be a character that fails often and regularly.

He becomes a priest, sure, he has a wonderful outfit, but it seems most of his actions lead the people astray. He’s so easy to make fun of because of those constant failures. And yet, here’s the confession. I am far more like Aaron than I am like Moses. Aaron becomes an idol maker. Moses is an idol breaker.

I have a tendency to build idols far more easily, far more regularly, than I have a tendency to pull them down. The other writers of scripture wrestle with what happens in Exodus verse, in Exodus chapter 32. In Psalm 107 it says they made a calf at Mount Horeb and they worshipped the calf’s image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.

They’ve forgotten the God who saved them. I might not build images of oxes that eat grass, but the way I replace who God is with what I sometimes want him to be is just as egregious. Psalm 50 says this, when they did these things, when you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was exactly like you.

That’s what I so often do. I make God more like me to make him more convenient to the way that I want to live my life. John White, the writer, points out one of the ways that we do this, and there are many. He says, we are no longer God’s creatures accepting and distributing the goodness that he pours on us, but we’ve become the feverish and slavish worshipers of abundance itself.

We need the newest model. We need the trendiest stuff, whether it applies to clothes or furniture or vacations or toys like motorcycles and cars and boats. We are devoted to things that are perishable. It may not look like a golden calf, but for me, the love of wealth so often takes the place of a golden calf.

I want more stuff and I want to gather it to me as sufficient as, as completely as I possibly can. We see it in society and our worship of sex. C. S. Lewis once said this. You can get a large audience together for a striptease act. Now suppose you went to a country where you could fill a theater simply by bringing a covered plate onto the stage and slowly lifting the cover so that everyone could see just before the lights went out that it contained a lamb chop or a piece of bacon.

Would you not think that something had gone wrong in that country and their appetite for food? We build idols that look like wealth. We build idols that look like sex. And we build idols that look like success. Lauren Shank says this, More is never enough. The win is never enough. And there are only two scores in the winning and the success game.

Win or lose at any cost. Some of us bow at the altar that we have built success. And we, and in turn we worship other people who have succeeded. You can see it very clearly in the celebrity cult that the world has created. But we do it in the church too. We worship the success stories. We bow our heads and we sacrifice our best to the God of success.

I see myself reflected in all of those quotes. I see myself reflected as someone who longs to build God in his image and has a way of tapping into each of those big three of money, sex, and success, of creating something else that isn’t exactly like God. If you’ve ever asked the question, phrase something like this, why am I not enough?

Why do I not feel like I’m enough? I would suggest gently that’s somewhere an idol that you’re still holding on to. Now I don’t want to come down on that and say, you know what, the only solution there is to do what Moses did here and say, just step away from that idol. Sometimes those things are resolved through counseling, through good conversations, and we have many people in this community that work through those processes.

But somewhere what I notice in me every time I get to that point. It’s me saying somewhere I just don’t feel like I have enough, like I am enough. That’s the story for these people in Israel. The God of Israel is no longer enough for them. The God of the mountain is no longer enough because he is distant and demanding and we can build gods on this earth that are far more convenient to us and far more visible to us.

And I do it all the time. I even discovered just in some of my reading that you can even build a golden calf out of the process of building golden calf muscles. Someone actually wrote a book that says this, kick your strength into high gear and crank up your full body athleticism, bulletproof your knees and ankles by carving yourself a pair of golden calves.

But look what they say afterwards. But when it comes to outward displays that your physique is capable of demonstrating raw, real world strength, there are a few telltale physical signs that show any onlooker with a working pair of eyes that your physical prowess is raw and real. What’s the drive there?

It’s the drive to be significant, to be someone visible in this world, to stand out in this world. Friends, there are so many ways it’s easy to take these earthly things and build something like a golden calf out of them. Something that will fill the need that at times the God of the universe perhaps doesn’t feel like he will fill for us.

Sometimes it’s simply us believing that we know better than he does. Marianne L’Engle, Madeline L’Engle says this, refusing to accept God’s love because we’re unworthy. Of course we’re unworthy is another golden calf. Golden calves are built when we say we know better than God knows for us. Golden calves are when we think we need to create something that works for us, when God doesn’t seem like he’s working for us.

Golden calves are something that we take and say, this is going to be the way I live my life, because the God of the universe seems like he’s doing something distant on a mountain. They’re shaped in a moment where our earthly nature looks for earthly gods around us, because God seems unapproachable, not what we want in the moment.

So what do we do, friends? How do we resist the temptation to do what the people of Israel did, in the midst of being invited to a mountain, building something that works for us? I suggest that Colossians 3 has some of the answer to that, and I’m going to invite us to read it devotionally. Since then you have been raised with Christ.

Set your hearts on things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. It seems like the worship of God himself is the antidote for the idols that we build in the moments where we bring all of ourselves to God, where we open ourselves up to him.

It gives him this opportunity to speak, to be revealing in our lives. Now as we come back to a time of worship where we’ve created some more room to sing together, I don’t want you to feel like that means that you have to be super extravagant in worship. I found a meme that for some of you will speak to your hearts.

Oh, there it is. For some of us, worship looks a little bit like this.

And yet what we’re not talking about is the movement. We’re talking about the posture. We’re talking about the sense of bringing all of ourselves to this God, to opening ourselves up to him, to saying, God, in this moment, you know me, you know my tendency to build things that may have your name on them, but they aren’t you.

For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you will appear with him. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil deeds, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

You used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all things such as these. anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self which has been renewed in knowledge of the image, and in the image of its creator.

Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all in all. Therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs of the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Turn your hearts upwards, friends.

Few thousand years ago, a whole group of people were invited to part of God’s story. In the midst of being invited to a mountain where uniquely in that moment in time, the God of the universe made himself known to them, offered himself. They traded the God that was offered for something less. They traded the God that is his own self for a God that was made to look like them.

I traded the God of the universe for an earthly God. A. W. Telzer says this. Has it ever occurred to you that 100 pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to another? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow.

So 100 worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart, nearer to each other. than they could possibly be were they to become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. That’s the heartbeat of this community. Each of us turning our eyes towards the God of the universe, to using him as a tuning fork, to being transformed in his image, into his likeness, that makes us more alike than any forced unity could possibly be.

make us. It makes us like Jesus. Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Jesus, you know us. We are people like your people a few thousand years ago.

In your work, you literally invited us to the mountain, to an experience of you, to knowing you. To living in your way with your heart.

And you know how easily we get lost. We make idols of the things in front of us. We take good things, good gifts that you’ve given and we make them the centerpiece of everything.

Help us to surrender those to you. In this space of worship, would you speak to us? Amen.