I. Christ the King Sunday 00:01
Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
I just wanted to acknowledge for a moment, before we dive into our story from Exodus today, the wonderful nature of this Sunday as Christ the King Sunday. It’s really summed up for us in the Colossians reading that Thomas read for us this morning: “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1.13–14). If you hear nothing else today, remember this: he has delivered you from all the powers of darkness. Did you know that? There’s nothing in this world, neither death nor life nor sin nor persecution nor suffering, there’s nothing that could separate you from the love of God (Rom 8.38–39). He chose you.
And it’s really fascinating. How cool is it… I mean, cool isn’t the right word. How profound is it that we read about the crucifixion on Christ the King Sunday? Why do we do that? It seems absurd. He was crucified, he was betrayed; it was his lowest point in all of his ministry. Why would we read about that? Because it was simultaneously his coronation, his crowning: crowned with thorns and raised up, that all the world would know that he is the King of kings and Lord of lords. That’s why it’s written in all those languages: “This is the King of the Jews.”
You know that thing they always say: the world’s playing checkers, this guy’s playing chess. He’s playing a different game. That’s exactly the case with God. He’s just playing a different game. We think a coronation should include a heck of a lot of bowing, maybe some incense, some gold, some nice clothes. God thinks it should be the cross. And then he says, “And you get to be co-heirs with me in the kingdom.” Well, where do you think you get inducted into his kingdom? On the cross. This is not even what I’m preaching about today, but it is so good.
II. The Israelites at Sinai 02:41
It does tie in, though, because today we’re talking about the golden calf. How ironic that we’re talking about a people who chose to worship a gold cow instead of their true King. We’ll touch base; all of this ties together, I promise you.
All right, so what’s going on? We all kind of know the story of the golden calf. In fact, it’s probably something that as a child you thought was quite hilarious. Who are these dumb people who would worship a cow? We don’t have an NFL team called the Golden Calves. Nobody would take that seriously. What is going on here?
Well, let me talk about the Israelites. What’s happened? The past couple of weeks we took a break from their being the stubborn, foolish people that we all are as well. We took a break from their stubborn, foolish stories. We’re coming back with a vengeance on this one. They are at Mount Sinai, where God himself is coming on the mountain with thunder and lightning and fire and presence and glory, so much so that they are afraid to go up the mountain. They know something’s there. They know there’s power there.
And in the midst of that situation God has called Moses up, and then he goes down and shares what God says to the people. Then he’s called him up again, and this is the one where God, with his literal finger (I don’t know what that means, but it’s true), writes the Ten Commandments on the tablets of stone (Exod 31.18). That’s pretty impressive. We don’t have a lot of instances of God coming out of heaven and writing something on stone for us. In fact, there’s only one other one, and that one was writing on the wall, telling the whole kingdom that they were going to get destroyed (Dan 5.5).
So it’s a dramatic moment here, and the people of Israel get a little bit antsy, because Moses has been up on the mountain for forty days. That’s a long time. “I wonder what’s happening up on that mountain. Has he abandoned us?” These thoughts are starting to go through their heads: “Where is our leader? He’s been gone a long time.” And their solution is to make a golden image of a calf. It’s a little odd, but let’s read through it, because it makes more sense than you think.
III. Make Us Gods 04:57
Chapter 32, beginning in verse 1:
1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Exod 32.1
So Aaron said to them, “That’s a bad idea.” No, Aaron did not say that. Unfortunately:
2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he 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, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh.” 6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Exod 32.2–6
So what’s going on here? First of all, we like to make fun of the golden calf, as I have alluded to. Why in the world would they bow down to a golden calf? And yet we worship a glowing rectangle. So maybe there are some connections here that we’re missing. Because if you told these people back then, “Oh yeah, there’s a shiny thing that I spend most of my time on, that I’m beholden to. Every time it vibrates I have to make sure I spend my time and do my thing and follow up.” Or “this shiny thing that I hang on my wall and sit in front of in adoration for hours every night.” These glowing rectangles: if we had explained that to these people, they would have been like, “Why didn’t you make a calf? What do you mean, a glowing rectangle? That makes no sense.”
So what’s going on here? Just like us, the Israelites are influenced by their culture and the surrounding ideas in their age. What does the calf represent? It represents life. To a people who are in the desert eating birds and bread all the time, a piece of steak becomes really important. Why do you think they made a golden calf? It represented abundance, life, the thing God hadn’t given them. God gave them fowl. He gave them birds to eat. He gave them food and manna and water. But he didn’t give them steak. They were trying to create out of their imaginations that which they thought was the best thing.
Moreover, they said this would represent Yahweh. That’s odd. Aaron said, “Tomorrow will be a feast to Yahweh,” and they’re looking at this golden calf. You’ve got to realize that they’re still trying to figure out who God is, and this is just their latest mistake in a series of mistakes about who God is. Remember the earlier mistakes, where they said, “Why didn’t he just leave us in Egypt? Has he brought us to the desert to kill us?” That was a mistake about who they thought God was, and this is just another mistake about who they think God is.
It’s kind of like when we get pretty confident that it’s our money that bought us the house, confident that it’s that savings account that’s going to last us through our retirement and make sure we don’t have any wants or needs. It’s kind of like when we go out and buy that lottery ticket, because it’s the biggest winnings ever, and if I won it my whole life would be perfect, would be better, and so I’ve got to go spend my money on these impossible odds, because maybe then I would be saved. It’s kind of like when we confuse that which God gives us with God. They were confusing the prosperity represented by a golden calf with God.
And so maybe they aren’t as, let’s say, primitive as we might think, or so backwards. Maybe they’re just like us, struggling to figure out who God is to them in the absence of the one guy who’s been telling them what God is saying.
Then we get to the end of this, and we get another hint: “And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We can use our imagination here. In fact, the word for eat here is actually more like cattle being fed in abundance, like at a trough. It’s not the normal “they sat down and had a nice meal.” They gorged themselves. They ate and they drank and they played. And that word play gets brought back in the New Testament (1 Cor 10.7), and we get hints that we’re talking sexual immorality. We’re talking about doing the things they have just been told not to do, basically.
And it teaches us two things. First of all, idolatry of any kind leads to all the other sins. As soon as you replace God with that which is not God, in your mind and in your heart, you’re tempted by the entire gamut. There’s no end to where our depravity might lead us if we don’t have God at the highest in our life. And the other thing it teaches us is that we have an inborn tendency to make God in an image that will allow us to do whatever we want. Because that golden calf didn’t have a problem with them eating, drinking and playing.
IV. Your People, Whom You Brought Up 10:46
So Moses was up on the mountain, and Yahweh, the guy who literally created all that is, who is the Lord of all creation, who knows everything, is very aware of this people’s sin. And so he starts talking to Moses. Oh, I love this:
7 And Yahweh said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” Exod 32.7–8
It’s kind of like when your wife calls you and says, “You’re going to have to deal with your son.” God’s telling Moses, “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt.” And he’s paralleling what the Israelites said: “We don’t know where Moses is, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.” They said that just a second ago. So the problem is that they started to think of Moses as their savior. And that only works when you start to think of Jesus as your Savior. There’s no other man you can confuse for God.
It’s the same thing we see in these cults of personality that come up. You get these celebrity pastors or celebrity Christians, or in the secular world you get somebody like a Beyoncé, who becomes “the queen.” That’s what she’s called a lot of the time online. You get these people you put all of your expectations on. I’m not really focusing on the secular, because I think maybe we can see that for what it is. Maybe Kim Kardashian isn’t the person who should order your life. Maybe.
But in the church, how often do we look toward someone and start putting all of our expectations on them? That famous prophet or leader or teacher: “Oh, well, I’m just doing what they said I should do, and I don’t need God, because I’ve got this person.” Now, we may not consciously think this, but you know this tendency can develop, and it’s so dangerous, because the minute the pastor is delayed on the mountain, we can make ourselves a golden calf. We can panic.
V. Let Me Alone 12:57
So we get hints as to what’s going on in these people’s lives from these little back-and-forths. But then we get Yahweh following up. He’s getting Moses’ attention: they’re messing up. So what’s going on here?
9 And Yahweh said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” Exod 32.9–10
I love that line. God’s like, “I’ve looked at them, and I have realized that they are a stubborn people.” You’d have to be blind not to see it. “Now therefore” (he’s talking to Moses) “let me alone.”
This is a testing point for Moses, because God’s saying, “Let me alone.” What does that imply? It implies that if Moses doesn’t let him alone, then something else can be done besides God consuming all the people with fire. “Let me alone so that I can go destroy them.” And Moses, who even in earlier chapters we’ve seen can be a little bit frustrated with the stiff-necked Israelites, has his moment here. Because not only will God destroy the people (he’s giving Moses this: “Hey, if you let me alone, I’m going to go do this”), but God will make Moses a great nation. Wouldn’t you like to be the father of the nations?
Another interesting thing is that even though these Israelites are abandoning the covenant God made with them, God is remaining faithful to his promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He’s still going to make the Israelites a great nation. The question is: are they going to be in that great nation, or are they going to be dead?
In fact, that might be the question we have for each of us today in the church. God will always be faithful to his promises. Christ came to save the world. The question for us today is: are you going to be in that kingdom, or are you going to be dead? You have life and death before you. Choose to live in the kingdom (Deut 30.19). Christ the King Sunday: let’s choose to submit ourselves to him.
VI. Moses Intercedes 15:16
So let’s look here. What does Moses say?
11 But Moses implored Yahweh his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” Exod 32.11
So first of all, he pushes it back on God: “Hey, don’t pretend like this isn’t your people, God. Don’t pretend like you didn’t do all of this. I know I didn’t do all of this.” Imagine if Moses heard God saying, “Your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, Moses, and I’ll make you a great nation,” and something in him said, “Ooh, I did all of this, and so God wants me to be the king.” This is why we like Moses. That’s why they call him the meekest man who ever lived, in the Old Testament (Num 12.3): because of decisions like this, where instead of that he argues for the Israelites. He intercedes for them. “O Lord, you brought these people out of the land of Egypt with great power.”
12 “Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” 14 And Yahweh relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. Exod 32.12–14
That reveals who God is. If God was “the Old Testament God,” as we sometimes refer to him in our conversation (I’ve heard people say, “Well, the Old Testament God just killed everybody”), then why didn’t he kill these people? If you think that’s who God was in the Old Testament, you’re not looking closely enough. You’re not reading in the light of the entirety of what God’s doing.
God, even though he had every right to smite those people from the face of the earth (he had every right; there wouldn’t be anything unjust about it), instead chose, out of his compassion, mercy. It’s not like Moses made a legal argument here. He just said, “Hey, remember your kindness to them. Remember your promises to them. And don’t do it, please. Plus the Egyptians might make fun of us, so don’t do it, God.” But God in his mercy relented from the disaster.
VII. The Tablets Broken 17:25
And so Moses gets to go back down the mountain and see what’s going on. In verse 15:
15 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. 16 The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. Exod 32.15–16
As we’re jumping through here: that word engraved, about God engraving on a tablet, matches the word for Aaron engraving the golden calf. There’s a link here. What humans come up with is a golden calf. What God comes up with is the Ten Commandments. A little bit of a different way of thinking about the world.
17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18 But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” 19 And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. 20 He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it. Exod 32.17–20
This is that merciful Moses who just pleaded with God, “Don’t destroy your people.” But then he sees it with his own eyes, and he goes, “Oh no, they did not just do this.” And he throws the testimony on the ground, symbolizing the breaking of the covenant God wanted to make with his people, that he would be their God if they just followed his ways.
And then he burns the calf down to powder, and in a parody of the Eucharist, where we get God’s freely given body and blood, they have to drink the idol they have made, the poisonous god they crafted for themselves. This is what happens when you worship that which is not God: you have to deal with the consequences. You’ve brewed the poison; now you’ve got to drink it.
So what’s going on here? Well, there’s a lot of different commentary. They talk about how the people who drank it, who worshiped the idol, would somehow be exposed through this, and the people who didn’t worship the idol wouldn’t be exposed; that this is some sort of test. I’m just taking this symbolic thing: that which you worship will come into you. So if you worship anything less than God, who would reside in you if you let him, then you will become less and less until you become the people who are deserving of, and would freely choose, hell. That’s the transformation that happens. If you don’t choose God, then you’re just choosing the other way. There’s no middle ground for us.
VIII. Aaron's Excuse 20:34
So how are they going to fix this problem? Well, Moses first goes to Aaron, and he goes, “I left you in charge, dude.” This is his brother, so I have a feeling there was some familiarity in this.
21 And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” Exod 32.21
Reread the text. They didn’t have to do much to get Aaron involved.
22 And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” Exod 32.22–24
Like, what? Aaron unfortunately reminds me a lot of my younger self, and maybe my current self: a desire deep in each of us to say, “It’s not my fault.” I mean, Adam, our father in natural terms, did the exact same thing: “This woman you gave me made me eat this” (Gen 3.12). Aaron: “You know how evil those Israelites are. They made me do it. And I threw all that gold in the fire, and poof, out came the calf.” When we’re told earlier he hand-sculpted this thing.
It’s a great opposition between Aaron, who leads the people into evil and blames the people for it, and Moses, who tries to lead them to righteousness and defends the people before Yahweh. Who do you want to be? I want to be like Moses. I want to be for all the people. The spirit that says, “Look at that person, look at how bad they are,” is the same spirit that says, “It’s not my fault.” So watch yourself when you want to put the blame outside of you for the evil in this world.
IX. No Image but Jesus 23:10
So basically Aaron says the reason he called the feast was because of this miracle: the powder went into the fire and out came a golden calf, so “I said, ‘Feast to Yahweh; that must be his blessing.’” And we know that’s all not true, but he’s trying to justify himself.
But here’s a question. Why did God, even before they made the golden calf, which we found out was a bad idea, say, “Don’t make any image of me, ever,” in the commandment: “Do not make a graven image”? Why didn’t God just give them another image to worship, something to look to, so that when Moses was gone they could still look to God through this image? The reason is that there’s only one image of God, period, and it is Jesus. Nothing else is an image of God. And if we try to make an image, we will not make God. We won’t even make a true representation of him. We will always make something false if we try to make something that represents God.
The only way we get to know this God who is unknowable is by relating to him. Period. You can’t read a book about God and then know him. You can’t memorize a list of propositions. In fact, Jesus says even the demons know who God is. They probably know more than we do when it comes to theology. But they don’t know him. In fact, the way we get to know God, we’re told, is the way a spouse gets to know their spouse, a husband his wife, a wife her husband: through intimate knowledge and communion forever.
Have you ever met somebody you had a particular idea of, whether they were mean or arrogant or whatever, and you just didn’t like them for whatever reason? They just struck you the wrong way. And then a few months down the road you get an opportunity to talk with them, to get to know them, and all of a sudden you’re like, “Wow, this person’s great.” That’s what it means to make an image of God before you get to know him.
Or this happens when we know somebody really well. I see this happen with me and my wife. When we haven’t connected because of the busyness of life, we start to build up an image of the other person that is not true. We’ll start bickering over the littlest things, and then when we finally get a chance to reconnect, we have to wade through it, and all of a sudden we’re like, “Oh, you mean you didn’t park the car that way to annoy me?” “No, it was just something that happened.” And what happened is that those little things got under my skin, and I started to build an image of Haley that was not Haley.
And in the same way, when we don’t connect with God we start thinking, “Oh, the reason my car broke down is because God’s mad at me,” or “The reason I haven’t been successful in business is because I did this sinful thing and God’s holding it against me.” That’s not God. That is your own golden calf in your head that you worship. Because when you look at the golden calf story, it’s not like they were making Baal (that happens later). They weren’t making a different god. They were trying to make God, and they just did it wrong, because you can’t know God without relating to him.
X. The Report Card and the Cross 26:35
So how do we avoid the golden calf problem? There’s no external thing we’re tempted to do when it comes to idolatry. None of us are going home and sketching up our own idol to build in our garage. That’s not our temptation. Our temptation is all up here: who do you think God is, in your mind? We avoid this by knowing who God is.
I’ll tell you one quick story that changed my life, when I had this image of God that I was pretty sure of when I was growing up. I went to college, and I had this opportunity to do a Sozo counseling and healing session. It was really great. I knew the guy really well. He brought me into the office, and he said, “Okay, my form of counseling is this: let’s invite God into the room and see what happens.” Now, I know there are probably plenty of people who abuse this, that or the other thing, but this guy, who I knew and trusted, knew what he was doing.
He said, “Okay, we’re going to do this. You’re going to close your eyes, and you’re going to invite God the Father into the room, and tell me what you see.” So I close my eyes and I invite God. I had to say it out loud. It’s a little uncomfortable, but it’s God, so he supposedly loves us, so I felt comfortable inviting him. But in my head all I saw was myself holding a report card, or a discipline report. It was both at the same time, one of those weird dreamlike things where I was holding a discipline report and a report card, and God was sitting in judgment over me.
So I shared that, and I felt that shame, that burden, that guilt when you’ve done something wrong or you haven’t measured up. It was just sitting in there. It was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be with God the Father. And then he said, “Well, why don’t you invite Jesus into the room?” I closed my eyes and said, “Jesus, would you come into the room?” And he said, “What do you see?”
What happened is I saw Jesus. I don’t think it was some theophany. I know some people have these miraculous things where they see Jesus. But I just saw him come and take that report card, and he turned and nailed it to the cross, that discipline report, that report card. And all of a sudden something in me broke. Because even though I had been at Saint Michael’s for many years (“God loves you, he’s not mad at you”), even though I knew that, I had still crafted an image in my head of a God who was looking for me either to be praised when I did good or to be disciplined when I did bad. And what God wanted me to know is that his affection toward me did not change whether I did good or bad.
Now, we are told that hopefully someday we get to hear God say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt 25.21). And it’s not like God doesn’t care how we live our life. He invites us into life, and life abundantly (John 10.10). But if you think God is a taskmaster who is looking at everything you do right and everything you do wrong and tallying those in his affection toward you (which somewhere deep down inside I did), you’re going to be afraid to go to God the Father, because you’ll never measure up.
And so how do we avoid the golden calf syndrome the Israelites had? Well, you need to pursue an intimate knowledge of who God is, and you can never stop, because he will reveal himself to you. Now, that was a cool situation with that counselor. Maybe there’s another person: your home group leader prays for you, maybe you get a prophetic word. You won’t be doing it alone, is my point. Yes, you need to seek him in your quiet time, but get around people who believe for you, who want to see you succeed, who want to introduce you to who God is. We don’t want to live our life with a bad image of God. It only leads to bad places. We need to know who God is.
Now, we’re not going to go into the fullness; there are a couple of other aspects of this story. But I just want to bring up one thing. What was the consequence for Israel for worshiping the golden calf? Well, Moses took the Levites, and they went out and slew about three thousand people that day (Exod 32.28). What you think about God matters. Now, we are in the New Covenant, so God tends not to just slay three thousand people on a regular basis. But he redeemed even this situation, in the same phrase being used at Pentecost: about three thousand people were added to the church that day (Acts 2.41).
What am I saying here? I’m saying that you have a choice before you, death and life, and God’s always looking for life for you. But you have a choice. So as we think about the golden calf, as we worship Christ the King, I invite every one of us to rededicate our lives to following Christ the King. But that requires more than just saying, “I’ll do whatever Jesus wants me to do.” It requires knowing who Jesus is. Otherwise you’ll be following a golden calf.
Let’s end with a word of prayer.
Lord, I pray that you would open our eyes to see who you really are. I pray that you would teach us, day in and day out, how to relate to you, how to participate in your love and grace toward us, and how to walk in your commands. And Lord, as we celebrate Christ the King Sunday today, we thank you that you are King of kings and Lord of lords, in this place and forever, no matter our stance toward you. And lastly, we pray that you would help us to walk from this day forward into the abundance of your kingdom, knowing that we have been set free. In Jesus’ name, amen.