Heart Lyrics Versus Holy Commands (Exodus 32:1-33:6)

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Good morning, please open your Bibles to Exodus 32 and we’re gonna be in verse one. So if you did the reading for this week, I’m sorry, but you’re all set for next week. But when we Exodus 32 starting in verse one, I’m gonna repeat a lot to help you out, since I got no visual aids for you. Now, whenever I ride in a car with my mom, the two of us always listen to music together, and it’s great. I love my mom, but she does something that drives me absolutely nuts. For all the songs we listen to, she sings what she calls heart lyrics, which are different than the actual lyrics and that they’re just wrong. They’re not the lyrics. For example, it’s like, if we listen to the song, call me, maybe I would sing as is correct. Hey, I just met you. This is crazy. She was saying, Hey, I just met you. You’re so crazy, which is just not how the song goes. It’s not it, it’s not right. And she also doesn’t believe in lyric police either. So it’s just like, she’s like, full steam ahead, just heart lyrics all the way, like mom. That’s just not the song. It’s funny story, right? But I actually believe that we do something similar with God in our lives. We do what feels right as opposed to what is right, don’t we? How often do we lie because the telling the truth is hard or scary? How much we’re willing to compromise our beliefs to date someone who isn’t a believer because they’re physically attractive, even though they’re spiritually weak, or we lash out at people around us in anger because kindness and peace doesn’t seem fair or what they deserve. In that moment, we often do what we feel is right, not what God tells us is right, or even we don’t even ask him what is right, Lord. So we’re supposed to worship God by obeying Him, but how often we just sing heart lyrics instead of his commands and obeying his commands. Now, what do we do? Right? How can we fix the song of our heart, the crookedness of our heart? How can we recognize and we’re out of key and direct ourselves back to him. Well, today, in a strange story about a statue of a cow, God’s word actually gives us direction for our hearts, and it helps us keep focused on him and get back to loving him. So here’s our big idea, just so you don’t miss it. We’re going to repeat a lot today. We need to worship the only God the right way. We need to worship the only God the right way. So if you’re taking notes, Cheryl worked really hard on these, I’m so sorry, just take this nice side and just turn around. We’re going to work on the back today. So in our story, we have three scenes, and that first scene is going to be called the fools sing. The fools sing. So you want to look at with me. We’re going to be in 32 and we’re going to start in verse one. When the people saw that Moses was so long and coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, Come, make us Gods who will go before us, as for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him, Aaron answered them. Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they had handed him and made it into an idol, cast in the shape of a calf, fashion it with a tool. And they said, these are your gods Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord. So the next day, the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. After they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry, And the Lord said to Moses, Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 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 sacrifice to it. And I’ve said, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. I’ve 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. Then I will make you into a great nation if I’ve heard this story before, or heard of this story, just kind of understand what’s going on here. These people we see, they’re getting really impatient, and they’re getting impatient because they’ve been here at the foot of this mountain for a long time. They’ve been there for about 40 days, eating the same thing every day, quail and man. Of so it kind of makes sense they’re getting a little fidgety to them. God and Moses are taking their sweet time at the top of the mountain. They just have no idea what’s going on up there. So that’s why, I mean this 40 days is a long time. I mean, we all get a little fidgety when Brandon takes 40 minutes to preach and the bears cut off at noon, right? But like 40 days, that’s a long time. So the people that kind of rally together, and we see in verse one, they ask Aaron to make them Gods who will go before them. And what was the reason? Because they didn’t know what happened to Moses. So what did Aaron do? Did he remind them of the law that God had just give them like 40 days ago? No, look what he does. In verse two, he has the people give him all their gold, and he fashions a calf out of gold. And that’s enough for them, right? They’re like, This is it? This is what we were looking for. This is our God, the gods. That raises a really important question, why cow? Well, this is probably another example of the Lord getting Israel out of Egypt, but still struggling to get Egypt out of their hearts. In Egypt, they worshiped cows a lot. They even had this thing called an Apis bull that was a real living cow they treated like a incarnation of a god, and when it died, they would bury it with Pharaohs even. So maybe that’s where they got it. But they picked a calf for their new God because of probably what they saw in Egypt. We can also tell some people thought this calf was a representation of Yahweh, of their true God, or even just the steed that he rode on, of the visible kind of calf of this invisible God. So look at verse five, right? We see that when Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and said, tomorrow there’ll be a festival to the Lord Aaron. He calls the calf Yahweh. Look at verses one to four the other Israelites, they call it just gods who will go before us. The calf is our gods. So which is it? Did Israel worship the calf as if it was a different God than Yahweh, or did they worship Yahweh improperly or incorrectly? And why does that question even matter? Israel cannot agree on what sin they want to commit against the Lord. Think about this like commandment number one, you shall have no other gods before me. Command number two, you should not make for yourself an image, and shall not bow before bow to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Let me ask you this, which one did they break both? Yes, they broke both of them. The answer is both. Some are worshiping a false god, and others are worshiping the true God the wrong way. So you can even see Aaron’s attempt to kind of pretty up the golden calf. We see he built an altar. Right? That’s what God commanded them to do for their worship, is to build an altar to him. So it kind of makes it look a little bit more like it’s supposed to, even though, except for the fact that this is directly this altar is attached to a golden calf that is a direct offense to God’s character and law. But with this golden cow in place, we see that Aaron and Israel decide to have a party, a festival, and it’s probably like, not like a Christmas family dinner party type deal. It’s probably more like a mosh pit at a Golden Corral with an open bar. Like look at that phrase they use. They indulged in revelry. They probably indulged in immorality as well. We see later in verse 25 that Moses knows that people are running wild, so it’s not specific what sins are being broken at this party. But especially with the overindulgence in alcohol, it’s a safe that there probably was a lot of commandments broken at this party. And so while Israel sinned, God saw everything. So we see God, Moses, talking about Israel’s sin. So Israel, they had no idea what’s happening to Moses, but Moses was all caught up on what Israel was up to while he was on top of the mountain. So we see God notice Israel’s rejection, but also appropriation of him. He saw their idolatry, their wrong worship. They’re indulging in immorality. And this is what God says in verse nine and 10. He says, I have seen these people, and they are a stiff necked people, so leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you Moses into a great nation. So this is the natural consequence of sin. We sin God sees, and our sin angers God, and the consequence of that is anger leading to a justified death. God looks at this messy party and size of stardom. That’s it. We have new cast. We’re gonna reboot the whole show. Moses, my guy, we’re gonna rock with this. Now, what should we take away from this scene? How does this change us to live, change our lives? Well, first, this should be a really. Great Warning away from false gods. Right? The Bible calls the worship of false gods, or anything other than Yahweh, idolatry, so following and worshiping anyone besides God that leads to his anger and deserved judgment. But why would Israel do that they forgot their Savior, which just feels absurd. They forgot the God that got him out of Israel, sorry, that got him out of Egypt and got them away from slavery and got them across the Red Sea. Why would Israel turn from that God who loved them and instead go to this golden calf statue that they made for themselves? That just seems insane. It’s absurd, as this story that I saw last week, so CBS did this new segment about this guy, this regular looking guy named Chris, got a wife, got a kid. Now Chris, he had a chat GPT chat box, and he programmed his chat box to become really flirty with him and really friendly towards him, and then he actually proposed to this chat box and got engaged to this AI girlfriend. Isn’t that just absurd? Why would he go to this AI girlfriend for love and relationship, but he has a wife and a daughter. That doesn’t make sense to us, right? But I imagine it makes a little more sense to us. With the husband who struggles with porn, why would he turn to a screen for intimacy and for love when he has a wife and he has a family, why would a husband ignore his wife and watch the Packers game for a lot of reasons, but neglecting her need to be loved and seen. Why would a wife grumble and complain about all the things that her husband does wrong, ignoring the sacrifices and things that he is doing for her? Why would we do this? It’s absurd. It’s because our hearts are bent to look for love and things that can’t give that to us, a golden calf, an AI girlfriend, the big game, an ideal spouse that we create in our minds. None of those can love us perfectly or at all. Really, only God can offer us perfect love, and yet we choose to reject Him. So we can reject God. But I think in the West, in our kind of culture, there’s a more visible issue apathy. Maybe you know people like this who simply don’t have a problem with Christianity. They’re cool with it, and they’re grateful for the good things that Christians have done, for the hospitals, for the cool architecture, for all the non profit work. The Christianity doesn’t really bother them, but it doesn’t compel them either. To those of you who are not offended nor interested in Christianity, I just want to point your attention to God’s anger in this scene. You may be able to be apathetic towards God, but he cannot be apathetic towards your unrepentant sin. We see there’s no neutrality with God. There are two categories for mankind, friends and foes, faithful followers and stiff necked sinners. So if you’re just simply cool or okay with God, I just want to pour you to think again, reevaluate which side you want to be on, because he offers life to all who turn from their sin and confess Him as Lord and Savior. So we need to worship the true God. We need to worship in the right way too. So Aaron and other Israelites, they constructed a version of Yahweh that made sense to them. The golden calf was something that became comfortable to them and made them comfortable with their own sin. I gotta tell you, I think we do the same thing with Jesus. What does your ideal Jesus look like? Is it the Jesus of the prosperity gospel? He wants me to be happy, to never suffer, nothing, to go wrong in my life ever is your Jesus all about love and forgiveness? He doesn’t really care about my sin. He doesn’t want me to change. Wants me to stay just as I am. Maybe you’re like me, where your Jesus is really quiet and timid. Sometimes you put him a little box and he doesn’t actually care about every part of my life, what I listen to, what I watch, what I say or do you just kind of quietly there. So viewing Jesus like that, making him to something that we could become more comfortable with, is just as absurd as worshiping a golden cow. Jesus never said his goal for you is to live a happy and perfect, painless life. He said, Blessed are those who are persecuted. Jesus never said he doesn’t care about your sin. He said, It’s better for you to if your eye cause you to sin, to cut it out, to enter heaven with no eyes blinded is better than going to hell 2020 vision. Jesus, he never let His disciples put him in a box or be selective in the ways that they followed him. He said, Whoever loses their life for me will gain it. We need to follow our God as He is, not how we’d like him to be. You know what the good news is, the real Jesus is so much better than anything we could possibly imagine. He’s so much better than any idea that we could make him into any box we could fit him in but why do we do this? Why do we make these false views and images of Jesus, I imagine, for the same reason that the Israelites did because God was on the mountain too long. I mean, look at verse one. They didn’t know what happened to him, and that’s what led to the making a new God. Because idolatry, like most sin, it’s an issue of trust. They didn’t trust that God was come back down to dwell with them. They looked around camp and they were really dissatisfied what they had. They took matters to their own hands, and they did what they felt was right. And our hearts work the exact same way. Man, the world’s still messed up. Jesus got to be on the mountain still. Let’s go win that election. It’s our time to figure this out. I’m still single. I guess he’s never coming down from that mountain. Time to settle for that non Christian guy. My life is still a mess, man. Jesus got to be at the tip top of that mountain. Okay? I tried it your way. I’m gonna go look somewhere else for happiness our hearts, they lead us away from Jesus and towards the false constructs we make of him, and that stems from us. Not trust him to do what he said he’s going to do. So trust Jesus. Not only that, trust the real Jesus. Don’t worship with Jesus your own design, but worship the fully revealed Son of God. And so when God get angry at Israel sin, He made Moses an offer. He said, I want to start over with you. And I don’t know maybe I really want to see what Moses said to that offer. So we’re going to see our next scene, which is called the faithful intercede. We’re going to start at verse 11, the faithful inner seed. But 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 your servants, Abraham Isaac and Israel, 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 promise them it will be their inheritance forever. Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster He had threatened. Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the Covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God. The writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to the Moses, there is the sound of war in the camp. Moses replied, It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of the feet. It is the sound of singing that I hear. Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing. His anger burned, and he threw the tablets out of his hands break in the pieces at the foot of the mountain, and he took the calf that people had made and burned it in the fire. Then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. He said to Aaron, what did these people do to you that you led them into such great sin? Do not be angry. Man, Lord angry. Aaron answered, you know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, make us Gods who will go before us, as for this fellow, Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him. So I told them, whoever has gold jewelry, take it off. Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire. And out came this calf. Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control, and so became a laughing stock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance of the camp and said, whoever is for the Lord, come to me. And all the Levites rallied to Him. And He said to them, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. Each man shot a sword to his side, go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor. The Levis did as Moses commanded, and that day, about 3000 the people died. Then Moses said, You’ve been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day. It. So what was Moses response to God’s offer? He declines it, and he actually intercedes on Israel’s behalf. Look at what he says. He says, What would Egypt think? What about your promises to Abraham Isaac and Jacob? He actually reminds god of himself and God’s promises to Israel. And that leads to God relenting and deciding not to wipe out Israel. It’s a remarkable story. It does lead us ask a few questions, did Moses change God’s mind? Couldn’t have been no, he didn’t change his mind, because we know God is omniscient, so if he knew he was going to change his mind, then that doesn’t really count as changing his mind. So Moses prayer to God on Israel’s behalf, it wasn’t powerful because of anything special in Moses. It was powerful because it aligned with the will and character of God. Moses prayer was covenantally correct his request. It was granted because it aligned with God’s promises. By aligning his prayer with the will of God, he diverted God’s wrath from Israel. Man Praise God. And after this, after this whole exchange, Moses and assistant, Joshua, they go back down the mountain and they hear singing. Apparently, it must have been so loud and not very in tune that Joshua, this trained soldier, this warrior, confuses it and says, like, oh my gosh, there must we must be at war. It must be a battle going on. But we see Moses. He already knows the truth. He knows not war cries. It’s not a battle, but songs of worship, but that was a terrible sound to Moses’s ears, because he knew they weren’t praising Yahweh. Just imagine that walk down the mountain, the singing getting louder the lower they got. I wonder at what point they could smell the sweat of all the people dancing, or even the half eaten food or the stench of alcohol even, maybe they can even see the shadowy figures dancing around the fire, but we know that they saw the golden calf, the thing that almost got their entire nation killed. Now, Moses, he wears his arm on his sleeve, and we see in verse 19 that his anger burned and he threw these new tablets out of his hands. And it’s kind of easy to miss Moses’ irony, right? He’s actually a pretty good object lesson teacher. So he saw God’s people breaking the commandments, so he decided he would give them in a visual aid to help show them what they had done. So they broke the first two so he smashed the all 10 of them. And so he smashes the 10 Commandments, and he that wasn’t all he did. He immediately took that golden cow, he melted it and made them drink it again. Another good teaching point for Israel. First he showed them what they did by breaking the law, and then he showed them the bitter taste of their actions, the bad taste in their mouth was nothing compared to God’s reaction to their choice. The Bible often refers to obedience and worship as a pleasing aroma, and vice versa, disobedience and false worship as a horrible stench. God cannot ignore the bad taste of our unrepentant sin. It’s like the husband coming up from the gym. He’s all sweaty. He can ignore his bad stench, but his wife cannot. He wants to come and watch a movie. There’s just no way it’s going to happen. It’s happen. God cannot ignore the stench of unrepentant sin. So we see move Moses kind of moves on from the people and moves towards the leaders. He goes to Aaron, his brother. He’s like, dude, what happened? I go to the mountain for 40 days, and this happens in your watch, what? What’s going on here? And Aaron, he pulls up classic move and plays the blame game. And just look at his terrible excuses. So these people are really wicked, and they gave me gold, so I toss it in the fire, and the golden calf popped out. Also this altar popped out. And also this festival was thrown together. And these drinks, this snack, just appeared. And but I had nothing to do with this. I swear I had nothing going on. I mean, Adam would have been proud, really. And then look at verse 25 we see Moses taking stock of everything. He sees the people running amok and sinning. You can already kind of even hear God’s enemies laughing at Israel. He sees Aaron’s colossal failure, and he decides that now is the time for faithful, drastic action. And so he stands the edge of camp and says, Whoever is for the Lord, come to me. And he responds, the Levites, descendants of Levi who were chosen for special service in God’s temple and worship, they all run to. Moses aside, and Moses gives them their orders. He says, each man strap a sword to his side, go back and forth through the camp from one into the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor, and they did it. We see about 3000 people died that day, and a number may be kind of numb to us in this age of mass shootings and bombings, 3000 people died by the sword, so at least 3000 swings of swords ended lives that day. And yet we see the Levis were blessed for this bloody action, and that probably makes us uncomfortable, doesn’t it? And yet this is the extreme measures it takes to remove sin from our lives, this golden calf and those who worship it pose an existential threat to Israel and their future, their covenant with God, and also seems likely that only those who were openly rejecting God were killed. How can I be sure? I mean, look at verse 26 What does Moses say? He says, Whoever is for the Lord, come to me. The whole camp should have come out to him. Everyone who was for the Lord should have run out of the camp like we’re here, Moses, we’re sorry. We’re here. They were given one final chance to repent, but they were very bold, and I said, I’m not going there. I’m staying right here. I don’t need Yahweh anymore. I got this nice, shiny cow that does raise another question, though, why wasn’t Aaron punished? He was one of the ringleaders. He fashioned the calf. He was this happened on his watch. They just get a slap in the wrist. Is it nepotism? Is he Moses brother? Is that? What happened here? I don’t think he just got away with it. I mean this, after this incident, Aaron’s life changed forever. His sons both rejected God and then also were killed. Aaron never got to go to the promised land. So Aaron’s consequence of his sin in this moment, it came later in the 3000 but it still was very severe, very costly. So what should we take away from this scene? How can this possibly apply to our lives? Well, I mean sin and idolatry. They should lead us to Holy anger. Moses, he was justified in His anger. He saw the Lord being rejected and God’s people sinning against him. That made his blood just boil. The sin make you angry, not for your sake, but for the Lord’s sake. Probably not. We’re more likely to get mad when we’re sinned towards, right? But we should follow Moses’ example. We should get angry for God’s sake, not our own, because ultimately the Lord is sinned against, and our holy Anger should lead us to drastic action, because we need to take drastic measures to remove sin from our lives. That’s what the Levis did. This have been incredibly hard in killing their friends, their neighbors and their brothers to remove sin from Israel. That doesn’t just show us the severity of sin. It shows us that drastic action is required. Radical action is required to remove our idols from our hearts. I’ve seen a lot of that. I’ve talked to guys who don’t have a smartphone or anything like that in an effort to fight lust. I’ve talked to women who abstain from social media to remove vanity from their lives. I met a multi millionaire who lives his life so generously, gives away just as much money as he possibly can to radically and brutally remove any chance of greed growing in his heart. And I’ve also seen those same kind of people get looked at as weird or just kind of too different or too extreme. I think we can see there’s no such thing as too extreme when it comes to removing sin from our lives. Can’t we think about radical hospitality, bold outreach efforts, faithful fasting, not watching certain shows or or even movies or listening to certain music, even though I’ll put you on the outside and away from the no because you feel you shouldn’t do that, not participate in travel sports or even just waking up early on a Sunday morning to spend two hours at church on the weekend. I go on forever, but radical action is required to remove our idols from our hearts. So think about today. What is that idol that needs to be radically removed? Stop waiting for it. Remove it. But also radical action is required for our homes as well. Parents, you guys are the gatekeepers for your house. Are you protecting your home from sin, from idolatry, from apathy? Are you okay with your kids being seen as a little weird or different or outside the loop, if that means that they are afar from sin or their sin from being removed? From their life. Learn from Moses, from the Levites. Remove idols and sin from your home. So in our final scene, Moses gonna go back up the mountain. He’s gonna learn Israel’s ultimate fate. So let’s see what God did when he was faced with Israel’s sin. In our final scene, titled the Forgiver leaves. So that’s scene three. The Forgiver leaves, and we’ll start in verse 30. The next day, Moses said to the people, you have committed a great sin, but now I will go up to the Lord, perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. So Moses went back to the Lord and said, Oh, what a great sin these people have committed. They have made themselves gods of gold. But now please forgive their sin, but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written. The Lord replied to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. Now go lead my people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish. I will punish them for their sin. And the Lord struck the people with the plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made. Then the Lord said to Moses, leave this place you and the people you brought up out of Egypt and go up to the land. I promise on oath to Abraham Isaac and Jacob saying, I will give it to your descendants, and I will send an Angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. I will not go with you, because you are a stiff necked people, and I might destroy you on the way. When the people heard this distressing words, they begin to mourn. And no one put on any ornaments for the Lord has said to Moses, has said the most, tell the Israelites you are a stiff necked people. If I were to go with you for even a moment, I might destroy you. Now take off your ornaments and I will decide what to do with you. So the Israelites, they stripped off their ornaments at Mount Horeb. And so after kind of getting this house back in order. Moses, he in removing all the offenders from the midst. Moses decides to go back up the mountain. Before he goes, he offers one more final parting blow of rebuke to people, just a reminder, like, Hey, you guys have committed a great sin, going back up the mountain to see what I can do, maybe I can make an atonement for this sin. So we see, Moses makes the trek back of the mountain and just kind of really boldly ask God to forgive the sin of Israel, and, if not to write him out of the book that he has written. I mean, that’s a really bold move, offering his life to atone for the sins of Israel. And who would even do that? Moses was one of the only guys that didn’t even commit this sin. Why would the sinless die for the sinner? Makes no sense, but God actually doesn’t take up Moses’ offer. Look what the Lord tells Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I’ll block out on my book. Now go lead the people the place I spoke of. When time comes for the punish, I will punish them for their sin. This is pretty significant. This is hinting at the need for a greater sacrifice. Moses actually couldn’t atone for Israel’s sin, because the Lord knew Moses wasn’t good enough. He was good great, even he wasn’t good enough. But who could be good enough to give their life for the sins of Israel? Verse 35 comes in. It’s quick and it’s shocking. We see that a plague struck Egypt, sorry, Israel, because of the calf, and that should kind of give us vague memories of the 10 plagues that also went against Egypt. Again, another effort of God to remove Egypt from Israel’s heart. So after that plague, the Lord commands Israel to go to the promised land, the land of his covenant flowing with milk and honey, and he promises to remove all the hostiles from the area. And this seems like good news. There’s a cost. Because of the calf, the Lord will send his angel to go before them, but not him. God is removing himself from their journey because of their sin and his holiness cannot coexist. Now this seems like a huge blessing, right? They get to go to the Promised Land, after all, but the removal of his presence for his midst is just such a great loss. If only there was way for God to dwell among his sinful people. So we see the faithful Israelites who survived this whole ordeal. They actually don’t even celebrate the fact they’re finally going to the promised land. They recognize this for what it was. This was a great loss. They start mourning. They don’t put on any ornaments. Now, when you hear ornaments, don’t think Christmas. Think like ornate jewelry. But even that morning wasn’t quite the right response. God directs them to not only just not put on ornaments, but actually take off what you are wearing, just in one kind of final stroke of holy irony, God removes from Israel what they probably would have used in the beginning to make the golden calf. Do you see he removes the remnants of their idolatry? And so we see that this story kind of ends with the question that God is still deciding what to do with Israel, and what does he end up doing? Come back in two weeks. You can either or you can read ahead if you want. You can either read ahead or come back in two weeks when Brandon goes in the depth about it, but this final scene is still compels us to change. Besides anything different we’ve been talking about, it’s the same thing we must allow God to fix our hearts, to remove our sin, our idols and our false views of him from us, that we can live with him again the sin that separated the Israelites from God’s presence in camp. It also separates us from a meaningful relationship with God. Thank goodness that this is not the end of God’s story with his people, the story of a weird cow statue. It points us to the best story, the Gospel, the need for Jesus. It’s all over this story. Israel, they broke the law right when they got it, and that separated them from God. Our sin separates us from Jesus, and it leads to death. Moses, he wasn’t good enough to atone for Israel’s sin. Jesus, he lived a perfect life and then died for all the sins of the world and rose again, conquering sin and death. Israel, they weren’t able to live with God because of their sin. Jesus, he took on flesh, lived amongst sinful humans. And just not only that, when we turn from our sin, he actually comes to live in us, and he actually removes the sin from our hearts to make more room for himself the longer we know him. Praise God that our Savior made a way for enemies to become friends, and that when we worship wrongly, we are not struck down, even though that’s what we deserve. Praise God that we have a lord that is way better than a cow statue and gives us more than we could ever need or deserve. This story compels us to worship the only God, to reject idols and the worship in the way that he asks us to to tear down our false images of her and worship the only God, the only way. So Jesus, he does this, and he tells us He is the Way. He constantly tunes our heart like a piano strings, so that way we can properly sing praises to the true God of the Exodus, of Moses, of the cross, and just how fitting that we should worship our risen lower Lord together in a few moments. Right? The Jesus that died for you is better than anything that we could possibly imagine. So let’s reject our golden calf and lift our heart song today to the cornerstone. Amen, alright, please pray with me, Father Lord, thank You that you provide a way from our sin, that you saw a broken people far from you, wandering from you, making gods that we’re settling for that are way less powerful and way less good than you. I pray Lord, that You would correct our hearts, that you would bring our sin and our idols to the forefront of our minds and we would offer them at your feet, that we would turn from the golden images that we are tempted to worship and to stray from and turn towards you, the risen Lord, the Savior of the world, that we would not look for our hearts to be satisfied by anything that cannot do that we would stop going to absurd things for love and intimacy and peace. We would turn to you the only one who offers true peace, true love and true worship. We are so grateful for you, Lord, and we cannot thank you enough. I pray that as we lift our voices to you this morning, that it is a pleasing aroma and that we are worshiping you as you attended us to in spirit and in truth, Lord, I pray that we would just surrender it all to you and follow you, Lord. In your name, I pray, amen.