I want you to listen. I want you to consider this. What if the enemy's great temptation in your life was not to get you to outright reject God? What if his temptation was for you to supplement your trust in God with something else? Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with Pastor JD Greer.
Have you ever read a Bible story and thought, I would never do that? Only to realize later you kind of already have? The story of the Israelites and the golden calf could feel that way. We wonder how they could turn so quickly. But what they were really guilty of, idolatry, is something that shows up in our lives more often than that.
Here's Pastor J.D. with a medal and humorously titled Calf, which is a tale of spiritual rebellion. Tale of spiritual rebellion. Write that down, John Moe. Goals, okay?
As you are turning there, for the first several years of our marriage, mine and Veronica's marriage, I drove a 2003 Honda Pilot. It was such a great car. It was reliable. It was comfortable. It was sporty.
I loved it. And I bought it. It salvaged and rebuilt.
So it had been a great deal.
Well, one afternoon, just toward the start of spring, I hopped into it. And when the AC kicked on, I heard this awful grinding sound. And the compressor seemed to almost tremble for a minute. But listen, I told you, you know, the car had been wrecked and rebuilt.
So it was always making funny noises. And usually, if I just ignored them long enough, they just went away. I'm not saying that's best car care practice, but it worked on that Honda.
Well, I was out of town for the next couple of days, and so I didn't drive it. And when I got home and drove it again, and the air conditioning compressor kicked on, the most foul smell flooded that car. And y'all, when I say foul, I mean like foul, foul. Like I sprayed air freshener in the car. I rolled the windows down, but nothing helped.
And so I took it eventually to my favorite backyard mechanic who got baptized also here a few years ago. And after about 20 minutes, after about 20 minutes, he comes out and he's like, well, JD, I figured out your problem. He says, she's all fixed now. And he holds up this mangled rodent corpse that he has pulled out of the fan of my air conditioning compressor. That was that grinding sound.
Poor little fellow was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So my mechanic said, hiss and I cleaned her out for you. I used 409 and everything, which apparently I learned. 409 is like redneck miracle potion to cleanse everything. But the problem was, every time I turned on the air conditioner, it still smelled awful. I mean, for weeks, I tried everything to get rid of that smell.
I mean, Rock and I were looking up how to, you know, get rid of a demon of odor out of your car. I sprayed an entire, it's not a joke, I sprayed an entire can of Lysol into the air intake valve under the under the dash while it was running to try and clean the whole system out. Eventually, I called my mechanic and he said, He said, Yeah, JD, I've done all I can do. You're just gonna have to let it work its way out.
So, I bought like four of those little vent air fresheners, and for the next couple of months, my car smelled like a mixture of cheap roses, Lysol, and rat carcass.
Now, Why do I share that heartwarming and edifying story? Because, because, in a way, it reminds me of what we're going to see happen with Israel here in Exodus 32. Even after I'd removed the dead rat from my car central air system, the odors remained.
Well, even after God has delivered Israel out of Egypt, there are still odors of decay, and those odors come out whenever the compressor kicks on, so to speak. As we have said, it is one thing for God to get Israel out of Egypt. In fact, in some ways, that's been the easy part. But it's quite another for God to get Egypt out of Israel. And the same thing I've told you is going to be true for you and me.
It is one thing for God to save us from hell. The much harder journey is getting hell out of us. And so that's what we're seeing in chapter 32, verse 1, when the people saw. That Moses delayed to come down from the mountain. The people gathered themselves together to Aaron.
Aaron was like, you know, Moses' brother-in-law and like the vice president. And they said to him, Up, up, Aaron, make us gods who shall go before us. But as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what's become of him.
So Aaron said to them, Well, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters and bring them to me.
So all the people took off the rings of gold, like Aaron said, that were in their ears, and they brought them to Aaron. And Aaron received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, These are your gods, O Israel. These are your gods who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it.
And Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow shall be a feast. to the Lord. They rose up early the next morning and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. That word play, by the way, has sexual overtones in Hebrew.
In other words, they were engaging in the pagan sexual fertility rites that they had seen practiced in Egypt.
Now, at first, this scene seems almost unbelievable, right? I mean, it's been, what, 90 whole days since they left Egypt? And think about what they had seen in those 90 days. They'd seen the plagues, for example, where God brought the most powerful empire in the world to its knees. Then they had experienced the Red Sea, where God split an ocean in two and brought them safely across and then buried the Egyptian army, the pursuing Egyptian army, when they tried to follow.
They'd experienced God's presence in a gigantic pillar of cloud by day and fire by night that probably would have been about the size of the empire state building. Then they experienced God's provision in the manna, those magically delicious golden grams that appeared mysteriously on the ground each morning. And then, and then twice, not once, but twice, God provided water for them in a dry desert place, and many, many other things that we have seen. You would think after all that, you would think that God deserved just a little bit of trust, right? And yet, and yet, here in Exodus 32, Moses is a few days late.
And the people are like, well, I guess that's it. God has forgotten us, we need a plan B.
Now, you might be tempted to think this actually borders on the ridiculous. How could anybody possibly be so dull? But before you condemn them, I want you to put yourself in their place, and I want you to ask what you likely would have done in that same situation.
Now, keep in mind, these people had no home. No readily accessible source of food and water. They're literally in a desert with enemies all around them, enemies who would love nothing more than to plunder and to enslave them. These are people with families who worry about their kids just like you worry about your kids. And now Moses, who's their only real connection to God, disappears up into a mountain of fire and smoke for 40 days, and you don't know when he's coming back, and you wonder, in fact, that maybe he's dead.
How long of a leash, honestly, you dads, how long of a leash would you have given Moses in that kind of situation? Before you started hedging your bets with Plan B. Be honest. And by the way, it's important to see that what they're doing is not an outright rejection of God. I want you to notice verse 5 says that in constructing this golden calf, they declared a feast to the Lord.
In other words, they did this in the context of a pseudo-church service. They offered the offerings that God had told them to offer, they're offering them in this moment right now. Verse 4, after Aaron had made the golden calf, he said to them, these are your gods, O Israel. Notice the plural gods. These are the gods that brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Gods, you got one God, that's Jehovah, and now you got this other God, this golden calf. Write this down. The golden calf was not so much a replacement of God. as it was a supplement to God. You say, well, why a calf?
That seems kind of random.
Well, other nations at the time commonly worshipped the calf as a symbol of protection. In Egypt, for example, they worshipped Apis, the bull god. Who was one of their prime deities, and in Canaan, the region through which they're traveling now, one of the principal deities was named El, who was also a Divine Bovine. And so what you're seeing is that in a time of anxiety, Israel adopts the support structures of the culture around them and trusts in what the world around them trusts in.
So let me just ask you to consider. How similar is your source of joy. And your source of peace, how similar is that to that of the culture around you? Can you only feel happy and secure when When you have all that the world around you tells the you that you must have? Or do you have a joy and a peace that is odd, that baffles the world, that people frequently comment on because you seem to have a hope they don't know anything about?
I want you to listen. I want you to consider this. What if the enemy's great temptation in your life was not to get you to outright reject God? What if his temptation was for you to supplement your trust in God with something else? When our enemy comes at us to tempt us, it is not usually, listen to me, it's not usually in the form of God or.
As in, you got to choose this and reject him. It's usually in the form of God. Yeah. Isn't that exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden? The serpent did not slither up to Adam and Eve and say, Hey, there's no God.
You know that, right? You should be an atheist. No, what he said is: in addition to God, you need this tree of knowledge of good and evil in order for you to be complete. Nobody is asking you to give up God altogether. Even Satan is not tempting you to completely give up on God.
But what else is there that you require in addition to God and his will as a necessity for life? Where are you right now saying, God, I want to belong to you? But in order to feel like I've got a full and complete and joy-filled life, I also need. To be married. Or to have a marriage that looks like this.
Or to have kids that turn out well, or to be financially well off, or to look a certain way, or weigh a certain amount, or. to get to this particular place in my career. An idol, a golden calf, is anything you require in addition to God to feel secure and complete in your life. This may not seem like any big thing to you. But this chapter shows us that God considers it an act of supreme betrayal.
In fact, in chapter 34, he's going to compare this to marital betrayal. Such as when an adulterating spouse says to the other, to their marriage partner, in effect. You're not enough for me anymore. I don't want to lose you. I'm not asking to get divorced.
I'm glad you and I are married, but I also need the love of somebody else. in addition to you to satisfy this part of my heart. In fact, the materials they used to construct this golden calf were in and of themselves an insult to God. Do you remember what they made this calf from? Verse 3 says they took their gold jewelry and melted it down, took off their gold jewelry and melted it down to make this calf.
Well, do you recall where they had gotten all that gold jewelry? As they were leaving Egypt, God had moved on the hearts of the Egyptians to offer up their gold jewelry to them, which did not make any sense, of course. The Egyptians hated the Israelites at this point. But you tell me now as they're leaving, they're like, yeah, good riddance. Here's my best earrings and my favorite bracelet.
These have been like God's wedding presents to them, and now they're taking them off and melting them down to make another God. It'd be like a wife hocking her wedding ring to pay for an exclusive vacation with a man she's having an affair with. When it comes to how God feels about you and me and our relationship with Him, it's a lot like how my wife feels about me. She does not want to be one lady on a list of romantic interests. She would not even be content to be first on that list.
She wants there to be no list. It's a list of one. And if she's not going to be the only one, she doesn't want to be one at all. See, that's how God feels about his people. And so, in verse 7, the Lord said to Moses, Go down for your people.
Uh-oh. Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt. You catch that? Whose people? God's like, your people, Moses, ain't mine.
God didn't want to claim them anymore. Your people have corrupted themselves. And the Lord said to Moses, I have. Seeing this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. That is a great, even if slightly awkward image of disobedience.
Everybody real quick, okay, everybody, all campuses, stiffen your necks. Do this right here. That's how these people are resisting God. When I first started in ministry, I was at a small-ish leadership conference with a. Famous charismatic church leader.
You would recognize his name, and I had a lot of respect for him at the time.
Well, at the end of one of the sessions, he called down any leaders who wanted more of the Holy Spirit in their lives. And I was like 23 years old, and I was like, Yes, Lord, anything you have for me, I want it. I want all of it. And I still feel like that, by the way.
So, several of us came forward and we formed this little line, and he came along and started to pray for each of us. And that was like eighth or ninth of the line. And I was kind of watching this out of the corner of my eye, you know, over here. And I noticed that at the end of him praying for them, each of them was falling backwards. But as I'm watching this, I couldn't tell because I didn't want to stare.
But it looked to me like at the end, he was kind of pushing them down.
So I said to the Lord, no joke, this is exactly what I said. I said, Lord. I want absolutely everything you have for me. Everything. If you want to knock me flat on my back and tattoo John 3.16 on my chest in bubble letters, I'm here for it.
But I am not going to let that man push me down.
So it finally came my turn, and he started to pray. And as he prayed, he was getting louder. And I could feel toward the end of his prayer, I could feel him starting to push. And I was like, Lord, I'm almost positive that's him, not you.
So I kind of pushed back. I stiffened my neck like this. And this little mini-war went on for a few seconds, and finally, he moved on to pray for the next person.
Now, I am sure he thought as he was moving on, I'm sure he thought, what a stiff-necked guy. And I guess I was toward him, but see, that's what these people are doing with God. They're resisting him. He's pushing them towards something and they don't want to go there.
So they're resisting. I'm not going to do it your way, God. I'm not content with just your promises. I Mm-hmm. More.
Now therefore, let me alone, God says. That my wrath may burn hot against them, that I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation, not a you. God's ready just to wipe them out and start over. He'd already done that once, by the way, with Noah. He destroyed the whole human race with a flood, and then he started over with just Noah's family.
Maybe he should do that again now. Just with Moses. Verse 11, but Moses implored the Lord his God and said, No, Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people? Whom you Have brought out of the land of Egypt. He's almost correcting God.
With a mighty hand. Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent, did he bring them out to kill them in the mountains and just to consume them from the face of the earth? God, that would give you a terrible reputation. To turn from your burning anger and relent against this disaster that you've intended against your people. Verse 13, remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self.
You said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I've promised, I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever. By the way, if you want to know an example of how to pray, there it is, right there. Moses is like, God, you started this. You started this, and you're the one who made all those promises to those people, and it's your reputation that's on the line here, so you better finish this. You need to do what you said you intended to do.
Verse 14 and the Lord Relented. If some translations say repented or changed his mind from the disaster. That he had spoken about bringing on his people now class question Did Moses really change God's mind? Was God like You're right, Moses. I'm wrong.
I just let my emotions get the best of me for a minute, and I forgot what I promised. I should probably listen to my better angels, which in this case is you, Moses, and be compassionate, just like you said. Is that really what happened? Of course not. That would be unworthy of God.
In fact, Moses himself, same guy who records this story in Exodus 32, Moses in Numbers 23, 19 says, God is not a man that he should change his mind. God did not change his mind in the sense that he learned some new information or he calmed down and began to act rationally. What you're seeing here is an insight into the mystery of how prayer works. God puts his people in places sovereignly. He directs them to places like he does Moses in this chapter, where he wants them to pray his promises back to him.
Did you notice in verse 7 that God was the one who directed Moses to go down to see all this in the first place? God say Moses go down and look Before God pointed it out, Moses didn't even know what was happening. God put Moses sovereignly, put him into a place where Moses would see what was going on, so Moses could pray God's promises back to him. That's what God wanted with Moses, and it's what he wants with you too. He puts you into places to see need and brokenness.
Where on one side, you got some need, you got some broken person, and on the other side, you got God's character and his promises, and he puts you right there in the middle to pray those promises back to him and thereby release his power into the situation. What if you use that filter on your life? for the situations you're in right now. Where has God directed your attention to a place of need? What do you keep thinking about?
What do you keep seeing? Hey, maybe God has sovereignly put you there so that you can pray His healing and His kindness and His promises into the situation. One of my favorite scenes in Back to the Future is that moment where they're trying to get power to the DeLorean when it's going exactly 88 miles an hour, and there's nothing in 1955 that can supply that kind of power except for lightning. But they happen to know exactly when lightning is going to strike.
So they rig up a power cord to harness the power from the lightning strike. But at the last possible minute, it comes unplugged.
So Doc Brown climbs up on the tower and connects the two wires by means of his body so that the power of the strike can flood into the flux capacitor and take Marty McFly back to the future. And I see that scene and I think that's prayer. We have the lightning strike of God's power expressed in his word, but our prayers are the bridge that connects that power to the place that needs it.
Now that's a whole nother sermon for another day. But it's what's going on here. Verse 15, then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets, the testimony in his hand. And as soon as he came near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. Moses' anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the The mountain, then he took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it into the water and made all the people of Israel drink it.
I can't imagine that was good for ye old digestive tract. I told you last week that some of the health gurus I follow recommend some pretty weird supplements, like lion's mane mushrooms. ground up tree bark, and even black ant extract, which I do not take. But I have never once seen a dietician that recommended liquefied gold. Moses made them drink this, and many of them got sick and died.
Which is going to be a really important lesson about idolatry. We'll come back to anything you trust in for safety or fulfillment except for God ultimately becomes bitter in your mouth. and kills you. We're going to come back to that in just a minute, but verse 21 might be the best part of this whole story, so we can't skip it. Let's finish the story.
21: Moses said to Aaron, What did this people do to you that you had brought such a great sin upon them? Moses puts the blame squarely on Aaron since he's the leader. But Aaron said, No, let not the anger of my Lord burn hot against me. You know the people. You know the people that they are evil.
So first, who does he blame? He blames the people. You know the people, Moses. Verse 23, for they said to me, Make us gods, who shall go up before us, as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt. We don't know what's become of him.
Now who is Aaron blaming? You know what the word passive-aggressive means? Aaron's blame on Moses. He's like, you were gone so long. You didn't call, you didn't text, you didn't update your status on Facebook, nothing.
The only person that Aaron doesn't blame here is himself. Yeah. Before we get back to today's teaching, I want to share about an upcoming event that might be for you or for the leaders God has placed in your church. This spring, our partners at the Summit Collaborative are hosting a Multiply Intensive, a two-day experience designed for pastors, planters, and church leaders who are ready to take the gospel further through intentional, scalable multiplication. But here's why I'm telling you about it.
Movements don't start in isolation. They start when everyday believers invite their leaders to dream bigger. The Multiply Intensive brings together those who are planting churches, raising up disciples, and equipping teams to make kingdom impact at scale. Through main sessions with Pastor J.D. Greer, Summit Collaborative leaders, and trusted practitioners, as well as focused workshops for church teams, participants will gain the vision, tools, and next steps needed to move from maintenance to movement.
The event takes place on Tuesday, March 24th through Wednesday, March 25th in Raleigh, North Carolina at the Summit Church Capitol Hills campus. Don't just grow your church. Multiply your impact. Learn more or invite a leader from your church today at summitcollaborative.org. Reverse 24, so I said to them, let anyone go and take it off.
So they gave it to me and I threw it into the fire. And how can this calf? What is Airdon Middle School? I seriously have no idea how it happened, Dad. I don't know how the phone got into my bed.
Maybe a demon carried it out and put it there to tempt me to text my friends and watch YouTube shorts at night. You know how tricky the devil could be, don't you, Dad? Not thinking of a real situation here, but what we're seeing here. is a recapitulation of the Garden of Eden. Did you notice that?
The original sin of the Garden of Eden went in three stages. Advocation of spiritual leadership. I dial a tree. Blame shifting. Adam, the first man, abdicated his role as spiritual leader.
Adam should have led his wife to resist the temptation to trust God, but instead he stood right there by her and let her lead. Then you have idolatry that's stage two. Adam and Eve attempted to supplement God's plan with something else. God and His will and His provision were not enough. They needed this other thing, this forbidden fruit.
in order to feel full and complete. In stage three, blame shifting. When God confronts Adam, Adam's response was... The woman that you gave me. She made me do it.
So God turns to her and she's like Snake made me do it. The snake didn't have any fingers or hands, so he couldn't point at anybody.
So I guess the blame stopped with him. The point is, everybody blames somebody else. Aaron here in Exodus 32 is repeating that cycle. He abdicates his role as a leader, creates an idol to supplement God, then, when confronted, blames other people and circumstances. and Moses and whoever's standing there.
See, it's just the Garden of Eden all over again. Moses recorded this way because he's trying to show you this is the recurring cycle of sin for all time. Verse 25, when Moses saw that the people had broken loose, for Aaron had let them break loose. Again, Moses is not letting Aaron off the hook. By the way, broken loose there.
is the root Hebrew word for naked. Remember how in the Garden of Eden after they Sin, they felt naked. This whole account is written in parallel with the Garden of Eden story. When he saw that they were naked, then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and he said, Who was on the Lord's side? Come to me.
And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. Moses said to them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, strap on your sword, each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion. And his neighbor, you. Oh, imagine this. The sons of Levi accorded it according to the word of Moses, and that day about 3,000 men of the people fell.
I want you to imagine. How awful that was for those priests. They'd been appointed to serve and bless and take care of the people and now They lead in this rather severe discipline. And I know, by the way, some of you ask why or how a God of love could ever order something like this. Let me just say first that 3,000 represents one-half of 1% of the total number of men in Israel, even though it was the entire nation who sent.
So we're talking about a relatively small percentage.
Some commentators suggest, by the way, that the way it's written in Hebrew, that these were the men who refused to stop the sexual orgy stuff even after they had been commanded. But the biggest point here that is being made, don't miss this one. is that idolatry is no joke. God considers it to be wickedness of the highest order, and it goes relatively unnoticed in the church and in your life.
Some of the most fervent Christians have never learned to identify their idols. And so that's what I want to focus on today: the danger of idolatry in your life. How this Garden of Eden scene recreates itself in your life over and over and over again.
So, let me make four relatively brief points. Number one, The sin behind all of the sins in your life, your root sin is almost always idolatry. And maybe that confuses you because you're like, JD. Listen, I got a lot of problems. But I don't have a golden calf in my basement that I bow down to each night.
Yeah, I get it. But gold statues are not the essence of idolatry. An idol, Martin Luther said, an idol is simply whatever your heart clings to and confides in. That's your God. That's your golden calf.
Whatever you look to for happiness or completeness or security or comfort, Tim Keller. In his book, Counterfeit God says it this way: What is an idol? An idol is anything more important to you than God. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give you, what only God can give to you.
A counterfeit God is anything so central and essential to your life that should you lose it, Your life would feel hardly worth living. Idols are not usually inherently bad things. They're not Ouija boards. They're usually a good thing. You make into an ultimate thing, a God thing.
I've told you one of the Hebrew words for worship is kabbod. And it means weight, literally weight. An idol is anything you give weight to, so much weight to in your life that you couldn't imagine being happy without it. Nothing wrong with it, but it's so much weight that it now controls your entire outlook on life. Over the years, I've given you a few diagnostic questions to help you figure out what your idols might be.
So let's just start with that one that Tim Keller gives us. What can I not imagine? Life being complete without. What thing is there right now that if you did not have this one thing, you would feel like life is hardly not even worth living? You say, for example, I can't be happy until I'm financially well off, or at least until we're making $15,000 more than we are right now.
Or maybe you're the kind of person who has to win all the time. You can't be happy if you're not first. Losing or being bested in anything drives you crazy. Here's another one. What do I obsess about obtaining?
What are you obsessed about? Maybe it's romantic love. Many of us think, well, this is the one thing. I absolutely need if my life is going to be happy. You think this about yourself?
Maybe even worse parents, you're thinking about your kids.
Well, if they don't get married. You can't imagine it's possible for them to be happy unless they're married.
So, you're putting all kinds of pressure on them and you're worried about them because if they don't get married, they're never going to be happy. And that's because you bought into an idol. You buy into the idolatry that the one essential ingredient for a happy life is finding true love. This is like the theme of every Hallmark movie we've ever seen, right? I was a highly paid corporate lawyer on Wall Street and realized on my trip back to my parents' house that my life was empty without love.
So I gave up my career to get married to my high school sweetheart and now we run a cattle ranch together. and an Etsy store. I saw a comedian who said this, I love this. Over Christmas, I watched a Hallmark movie Backwards. A woman in an ugly Christmas sweater dumped her loser small-town boyfriend to pursue a law career in New York City, where she lived happily ever after in pencil skirts and amazing shoes.
Romance is an idol for a lot of people. Here's another question. What am I most terrified? about losing. What's your greatest nightmare?
Your family falling apart. Your spouse leaving you? Your kids turning out poorly? For me, I've told you one of the things for me that's a nightmare is failure. Right, that's that one weekend.
I'm going to show up here to preach, and the only people here are going to be the ones that I pay. And they're all listening to a Jobie Martin sermon on their headphones because they think he's a lot funnier than me, anyway. The reason I feel that way is because I've made an idol out of success and accomplishment. I can't imagine life being worth living if I don't have it. Where do I turn?
Where do you turn for comfort or assurance when things go wrong? What I mean is when the chips are down, what do you retreat back into to tell yourself, I'm going to be okay? And I still got my family. I still got my savings. I'm still a good person.
I've always got my brain and my ingenuity. I can make it work. Those things that you retreat back into, that you confide in, likely are idols. The question you see is not if you worship, it's simply what you worship. The human heart will always make something ultimate.
It'll always end up assigning godlike weight to something. It's like John Calvin said: the fallen human heart is an idol factory. The human heart finds something to give ultimate value to, and you cling to it, and you confide in it, and you trust in it. Those are our golden calves. Which leads me to number two.
Our idols corrupt us. The words that Moses uses to describe Israel's behavior after they start worshiping the golden calf, especially if you read this in Hebrew. But you can still see it even in English. The words Moses uses make them seem like they're dumb animals, like a towel. They basically do nothing but eat and then get up to satisfy their urges.
They become spiritually dull and stiff-necked like a stubborn mule. This is a theme that's going to show up over and over again throughout your Bible. Write it down. You become like what you worship. When Israel worshiped the cow, they became like the cow.
The same thing is true with you, which is bad news, right? When you worship money, you become greedy and anxious. You want to know if somebody worships money? Those are the warning signs. Those are the indicator lights.
When they're greedy and anxious, they worship money. When you worship power, you become controlling and manipulative. When you worship pleasure, you become compulsive. You develop addictive behaviors. You become lazy and irresponsible.
When you worship attention, you become boastful and jealous. When you worship family, you become domineering and controlling. When you worship looks, then you become jealous and constantly spending money on yourself. When you worship romance, you become lustful and never quite satisfied, or you become anxious and high pressure about your kids. When you worship winning, you become obnoxiously competitive and vengeful when you lose.
Worship of an idol always corrupts you. There's an old movie, a great movie. Called Cool Runnits. I mean you're seeing that. You mean you're seeing that?
Raise your hand. It's the unlikely, it's a Disney movie, the unlikely story of a Jamaican bobsled team that competes for the first time ever in the Winter Olympics. There's this great scene in it where DeRees, who's the captain, the Jamaican captain, finds out that years before their coach. who was not from Jamaica, but he got caught cheating in the Olympics.
So DeReese asked him about the situation and he's like, why did you do that, coach? And the coach says, well, it's quite simple, really. I had to win. You see, Darrees, I've made winning my whole life. And when you make winning your whole life, you have to keep on winning.
No matter what, you understand that, DeRees? And Torisa's like, no, coach, I don't understand that. You already had two gold medals, you already had it all. And the coach said, DeReese. A gold medal is a wonderful thing.
But if you're not enough without it You'll never be enough with it. There's not a lot of Disney Quotes that I put on the screen. I'm gonna put that one up there, okay? Whatever you're not enough without. you won't be good enough with.
And that emptiness is going to drive you to manipulate and cheat and steal and become a different kind of person. Jen Wilkin points out that in this chapter, their idolatry led them to break just about every other commandment. They made a graven image, that's commandment two. They dishonored their elders, that's commandment five. They committed adultery, commandment seven.
They stole, commandment eight. They lied, commandment nine. They coveted commandment ten. They were pretty efficient. In one act, they broke like all the ten commandments.
All sin begins with idolatry because you become like what you worship.
Now, there's actually some good news in that, too. Because see when you worship God you end up becoming like him This chapter, in fact, shows you that while Israel is down in the valley worshiping the cow and having an orgy. Moses is up in the mountain spending time in God's presence, and at the end of the chapter. Moses starts acting like God. Right, he pleads for mercy and faithfulness to the promises.
In fact, verse 32, we haven't gotten there yet, but look down at it in your Bible. Moses will even express a willingness to suffer in Israel's place. That's very godlike. You become like what you worship. If you worship money, success, or sex, you're going to become like them.
If you worship God, you're going to become like him. Number three, idolatry begins in fear. Their fear, their lack of trust, that's what drove them to idolatry. Listen, that is always, friend, where it begins. It's always where it's going to begin for you in fear.
Hey, God, I've been praying about this for a long time. My kids aren't changing. I'm still single. Job's not turning out, God. Marriage is not getting better.
My body still hurts. The door's just not opening. The ministry's not growing. And that's when you're like, I need something else. I don't want to leave you, God.
I don't want to divorce you. I just need to supplement you. Listen, if you don't learn to trust God in times of delay, you will never make it. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without faith, it's impossible to go the distance.
And when you feel God's presence and you see all the evidence of His work, faith is not required. Faith is what you have to show when you don't see any of those things. In fact, I've heard it said that the American Christian ideal is to be justified by faith. and then never to have to show it again. But see, if you're going to make it in the Christian life, you got to learn to trust God when you can't see him or feel him.
We walk by faith, not by sight or by feeling or by warm fuzzies or by miracles. Your faith, Peter says, is the most valuable thing in your life. It's more precious than gold and more precious than miracles. And God has arranged this whole wilderness journey for you to produce faith in you. And his key ingredient in that is delay.
Number four, finally. Jesus is our escape from idolatry. Yeah. How can these people ever learn to trust God? I told you at the beginning, they should have known better.
I mean, after all, they'd seen the Exodus, the Passover, the Red Sea, the man of the water, all of it. But see, even all that stuff proves not to be convincing enough for them.
So, God's final argument to our doubt and our fear. The crucifixion and resurrection. of his son. On Good Friday we celebrated that God's own son was crucified by wicked men. And you know what?
On Friday afternoon, it looked like evil had won. But then on Sunday, God resurrected his son, showing that he ultimately transforms all things, even the worst things, for his glory and our good. Honestly, y'all, I think of all the days in the Easter holiday. The one I think is most helpful for me personally is that Saturday. between the Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.
And I know that might seem odd to you because we don't really do anything on that day. I mean, at first it almost seems like a pointless day. Why did God wait an extra day to resurrect Jesus? I mean, I understand if Jesus died on a Friday afternoon. I understand waiting until at least the next morning to resurrect him.
Give it a night to prove that he's dead. Plus the imagery of Jesus rising to sunrise. That's pretty cool. And we need a reason to do sunrise services. But why the extra full day in the middle?
Why the extra full day in the middle? I mean, imagine how awful and sad and confusing that day was for those disciples. Why would God make them wait a full extra day for the resurrection? Is that just being cruel?
Now, see, it's in part, I think, because that time gap is a metaphor. for what our lives feel like now. Where's Moses? I don't know. I don't know.
We got seasons where we're like, where's God? Feel like he's delayed. What's he doing? Has he forgotten me? Is he dead?
No, he hasn't and no, he's not. You're just in a Saturday of waiting, but hang on, Fran, because Sunday always comes. The cross and the resurrection are God's final argument for us to trust Him. You and I self-righteously criticize the children of Israel for not trusting God after all they'd seen, but think about how much more we've seen. And yet you still doubt God?
If you won't trust God after the cross and resurrection, what else could he do to prove his love for you? J.C. Ryle said the ultimate insult you could ever give to God after the cross and resurrection is to doubt his love for you. or his assurance to fulfill every promise that he's made. My faith has found a resting place, not in device or creed.
I trust the ever-living one, his wounds for me shall bleed. The cross and resurrection are God's answer to my doubts, and your faith can rest there too. This chapter shows us that what our faith most needs Is an assurance that we have a substitute that is able to mediate for us who will never leave us for any reason at all.
So fittingly, this chapter ends by giving us a beautiful picture of that substitute. Direct your attention, if you will, one final time to the final verses of chapter 32.
So, Moses, verse 31, returned to the Lord and said, Alas, this people have sinned a great sin. They made for themselves gods of gold, but now If you will, please forgive their sin, but if not, please block me out of your book that you have written. Moses is asking to be the substitute, the mediator. Which is a gracious offer because again, he's become like God. But God says, look at it, verse 33 and 34, no, Moses, you can't do that.
See, Moses is going to have sin of his own that will disqualify him from even going into the promised land. And a person with his own sin can't be a substitute or a mediator for other people with sin. And so in verse 35, the Lord. After rejecting Moses' offer, sends a plague on the people because they made the calf and a bunch of people died. But see, that sets us up for another mediator.
One who would actually be without sin. Because, see, one day another lawgiver, one that was described as greater than Moses, but who was very like Moses, he came. And he taught the law from a mountain just like Moses did. called the Sermon on the Mount. But unlike Moses, that lawgiver would himself be sinless.
And then that lawgiver would himself be blotted out of God's book because of our sin, just like Moses had asked to be. The plague of our sin went into him, and the sword of God's justice dropped on him. Jesus drank the melted-down poisoned cup of our sin, and it killed him. But see, that enabled him to turn to crowds of hungry, thirsty, fearful people and say, the one who eats of me will never be hungry again, and the one who drinks of me will never thirst. Feasting on him won't make you sick, it won't corrupt you, it will make you alive, and then it will heal you and satisfy you.
In fact, one other amazing thing I want to point out in this chapter is Moses is giving them the law. The result is they sin and 3,000 people died. Acts 2 at Pentecost is a scene that's kind of similar to Exodus 32, isn't it? In Exodus 32, it's a mountain of earthquake and thunder and fire. In Acts 2, it's a mighty tornado, a rushing wind, and tongues of fire.
But this time, instead of there being a barrier that they were not allowed to pass, the wind and the fire come into them. And instead of killing them, it fills them with joy in God's presence. And then Peter stands up to preach. And do you remember how many people got saved at Pentecost in Acts 2? 3,000.
Do you think that number is just a coincidence? That's God just showing off. God's like watch this. I'm about to overturn everything that got wrong in Exodus 32. In Exodus 32, at the giving of the law, 3,000 people died.
My people need more than that.
So in Acts 2, at the giving of the Spirit, 3,000 are going to live because they need more than a law. They need a mediator. They need a substitute. And they need the Holy Spirit of God inside of them, enabling them to obey that law. I told you we become like what we worship.
That's an important truth. But Christianity's most important truth is that the one we worship became like us.
so that through his death we can live.
So surely you can see, friend, he should be your only God. He's the one you can trust with everything fully and completely. You got to stop blaming everybody and everything else for your unhappiness. Stop blaming everybody else for your lack of peace. Oh, it's my circumstances.
It's my husband. It's my parents. It's my job. It's my boss. It's my last success.
It's probably you, God. Stop blame shifting and say, God, you're what I need. Before we wrap up today, I want to invite you to stay connected with us throughout the week. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter to get encouragement, resources, and updates delivered straight to your inbox. You can find details on the newsletter and so much more at jdbreer.com.
And if you're a pastor, church leader, or know someone who is, don't forget to check out the upcoming Multiply Intensive, a two-day experience focused on helping churches move from maintenance to movement. Check that out at summitcollaborative.org. Thanks for listening to the Summit Life podcast. We are so glad that you're here, and we'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
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