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Exodus 32:4-5

 

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 proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.”

 

            The scene of Israel worshipping the golden calf is one of those moments from the Old Testament that many Christians have been taught since children’s Sunday School. It is familiar. And, we are glad to know that we are not like those people who did all that stuff. We are glad to know that we would never make a golden calf and worship it in place of God.

 

            Of course, you likely also know that many will take this story as an opportunity to talk to Christians about their modern idols. We love self, fame, pleasure, money, reputation, success, leisure, or something else to the point of distraction. If we are not careful, we will bow down to our own little idols. This is almost always applicable teaching for the idols of the heart.

 

            But I want to take this account in one other direction this morning as I think it through. The words of Aaron and the people in the passage above have my attention. They are terrifying. After the people give their gold and the golden calves are fashioned, they declare that these are the gods who brought the people up out of Egypt. That has always really bothered me. But then, Aaron declares something else that totally stuns me. Aaron says that tomorrow, the people are going to celebrate a feast to the Lord.

 

            Do you get what just happened? Aaron is presenting the calves, the idols, the golden statues as the Lord. This is worse than I used to imagine. I used to simply see in this story that the people were taking the credit rightly due to God for leading them out of Egypt and giving it to the statues. Now, however, I see that Aaron is taking the statues and declaring them to be the Lord. This is not the people redistributing the credit for getting them out of Egypt; this is Aaron redefining who God is for the people.

 

            Now, if we grasp that a major part of what is going on here is that Aaron and the people are bowing to a created and falsified picture of who or what God is, we see a much better application for our lives than simply not to let career or sex be idols for us. The application that I am seeing here is that it is a terrible thing to give people a false picture of who the Lord is. Not only is it terrible, it is tempting. However to do so is to dishonor God greatly.

 

            When you depict God for others, how do you picture him? Do you picture him as a strong bull? Do you emphasize his strength, his anger, and his toughness? Do you tell people that God is somebody you had better get to serving and not make excuses? Do you show fellow Christians that they are never pleasing him and are in danger of having him trample them? If so, you may have fashioned a golden calf.

 

            Or, perhaps you depict a God who is very shiny and sleek. Perhaps you are showing people a picture of God as someone who is full of wealth and desperately desirous of giving that wealth to them if they will only have the confidence to claim it. Perhaps your picture of God is one who is truly golden and ready to share if only they will put on a big enough smile or pray with enough conviction or give first so that they can receive in return.

 

            Perhaps the picture that you have painted for others of God is one of the bull’s horns. There is harshness and hardness. You cannot just ask such a God for help, you must beg. You cannot just serve such a God, you must bleed. You cannot love him without doing more and more and more.

 

            You know what the problem is with these pictures, they are neither all wrong or all right. The people chose golden calves likely because those animals made them think of the strength of the deity who led them out of Egypt. They had seen God trample over Pharaoh and his chariots. They knew him to be strong and fierce. Golden calves seemed about right. And, they had a piece of the truth in them.

 

            The problem is, golden calves are not nearly enough to depict God. God is mighty and fierce. He is also the God who is so loving toward sinners that he sent his only Son to die to pay the price for people who would never and could never live up to his standards. This is the God who loved children enough to let them come to him even when the disciples tried to push them away. This is also the God who was calm enough to sleep during a raging storm on the lake. And it is the God who was fierce enough to turn over tables in the temple and who was fiery enough in his stare not to have anyone try to stop him. This is the God who raised the dead son of a widow simply because it was the kind thing to do. This was the god who made extra wine at a wedding feast to keep the family from being shamed. This was the God who destroyed all life except a remnant in a flood. This is the God who will return to earth on a white war horse with a sword in his teeth and blood on his robe. This is the God who also said of Nineveh that he did not wish to destroy so many people who were so ignorant, even though his own prophet hated their guts—and with good reason.

 

            No, a bull or a calf does not do enough to depict God. But you know what, neither do many of our own descriptions of God. If we are not careful, we will paint for others a picture of God that is so flawed as to be no better than a golden calf. Let us be cautioned, especially those of us who preach and teach. Let us tremble at what picture of God we may bring. Let us never depict him apart from holiness and power and wrath and mercy and grace and whatever else the word of God has shown us. Let us be faithful to the text of Scripture as we show the people who hear us a portrait of the Lord we worship.

Exodus 20:25

 

If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it.

 

            We really do not get how significant is the holiness of God. We assume that God is like us. We assume that, if a person does his or her best, that’s all God wants. We assume that a person who gives a good solid try gets a pass from God and whatever they were trying to do would be acceptable.

 

            But look at the verse above from Exodus 20. God let Israel know, in no uncertain terms, that their best efforts were not things that made things acceptable to him. God said that, if the people of Israel wanted to build an altar for them out of stone, they could not use tools on the stone. Why? If they were to touch the stone with their tools, shaping the stone with their best efforts, they would actually profane the stone and the altar.

 

            What am I taking from this? I’m not saying that you should not put forth effort in worship or try to please God. Not at all. What I am saying is that we see here that our best efforts, on their own, do not make a thing acceptable. Sincerity is not the measure of holiness. God is clear that his law, his word, his holiness is the measure. We need to do things that please him as he has commanded.

 

            This understanding has an impact on how we worship and how we live in general. When we worship God, we need to be careful to do so “in response to God’s gracious revelation of himself and in accordance with his will” as Dr. Daniel Block used to tell me in seminary. Remember, the 2 sons of Aaron who tried to get creative in worship found their best, most sincere efforts met with fire from the altar and not with acceptance from God. God has the right to determine what he will accept in worship. We do not have the right to tell him what he should accept.

 

            Similarly, in daily life, our obedience to God must be obedience based on his word and not on our own ideas. Often people have very sincere, very thoughtful, very emotional opinions about what God should or should not accept as proper human behavior. But I think that the verse above in Exodus reminds us that we do not get to set what ought to be right and wrong behavior. Right behavior is revealed to us in Scripture, not the result of our best reasoning. Yes, sometimes we will have to use prayer, the guidance of the Spirit, the Scripture, and our best reasoning to try to rightly apply first century principles to 21^st century technology and situations, but this is not the same thing as being creative about what should be right and wrong.

 

            Now, if I were to leave things with only Exodus 20, we would find ourselves in a very difficult place. None of us live up to this perfect standard. Isn’t this the whole point of why we love the gospel so? God made a way for us to please him. He did not make a way for us to please him by us creatively applying our best efforts. Instead, the way to please God is to admit that we do not please him on our own. The way to please God is to fall on our knees and come to Jesus for mercy. Then God will apply Jesus’ perfection, his pleasing of the Father, to our account so that when God looks at our lives, he sees us as just as pleasing to him as Jesus. Then, under the grace of Christ, the authority of Scripture and the filling of the Spirit, we can obey God in a way that pleases him for his glory and our joy.

Exodus 9:16

 

But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

 

            Every once-in-a-while it is fun to see something in Scripture that you have known, but which is pointed out with dramatic clarity. For example, I have known for a while that God does the things that he does for the sake of his name, his honor, his glory. Understanding that has been a  major point of strengthening my Christian walk. It has certainly helped me in understanding and even in leading worship. It is also a major factor in my preaching.

 

            So, when I read the verse above in the cycle of plagues on Egypt in Exodus, I was not surprised. But, it was very neat to see it spelled out in such clarity to Pharaoh himself. What was God’s message, not to Moses and his people but to Pharaoh himself? God tells Pharaoh that he could have wiped the Egyptians off the map long ago. HE still could. But that is not his plan. No, God intends to use the plagues and Pharaoh’s hard heart to demonstrate his power. God intends that Pharaoh’s attempts to thwart God’s plan would lead to the entire world proclaiming God’s glory. And God accomplished his plan.

 

            Pharaoh did all he could to withstand God. He did it with the might of a nation that God had built through his revelation to Joseph. Yet, when Pharaoh made it appear that he was the supreme, when he allowed himself to be worshipped as a god, the real God demonstrated before the eyes of all Egypt and the watching world that there is one true God over all, and it is not Pharaoh. God showed that he has the power to accomplish his will in any way he pleases.

Exodus 8:15

 

But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.

 

            Reading this about Pharaoh today reminds me of some of my most sorrowful, most shameful, most lost-looking behavior. Pharaoh was lost. He hated the God he refused to believe in. But, on occasion the plagues made Pharaoh realize that he was in trouble and on the wrong side of God’s commands. Pharaoh would then plead for mercy. But, when Pharaoh received that mercy, he would harden his heart and go back to acting exactly as he had before.

 

            I get it. I get Pharaoh. I’ve been there. I’ve had times in my life, even my Christian life, when I would plead with God for some favor. I would ask God to get me out of a mess of my own making. I would declare my intent to follow God and to not put myself in such a foolish place ever again. And, when things would work out, I would often find myself right back where I started.

 

            Here is what is so scary about that. To sin, plead with God, receive mercy from God, and then return to the very same sin is behavior that looks like Pharaoh—behavior that looks like a lost person. And, if we are honest, all of us, yes, even growing believers, have moments or seasons of life that look lost.

 

            What should we do when we see ourselves looking lost? Off the top of my head, I would advocate for the following:

• Repent – Of course this is right. It’s not always as easy as we would wish, but it is the ultimate answer.
• Pray – This goes with repent, but should not be ignored.
• Examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith. I think it can be dangerous for a person to question his or her salvation with every failure. At the same time, Scripture is clear that it is very dangerous to assume you are OK with God solely based on some event or declaration you made in the past that is not changing your present.
• Rest in the gospel. Oh, I know, this looks like I’m contradicting the last bullet point. Well, I’m not, at least not really. The truth is, if your entire hope for your eternity, your forgiveness, and your righteousness is in the person and work of Christ alone you are in the family of God. If you have committed yourself to follow Christ under his grace, allowing him to be your Lord and to claim you as his child, you are in the family of God. And if you are in the family of God, you should not allow your failure, even a season of failure, to make you assume that you are totally out of the family.
• Be honest. Don’t play games with God. Don’t try to convince yourself of something that is not really there. Don’t lie to your friends. Don’t fake it at church (don’t skip church either). Don’t be a hypocrite in front of your lost friends, but openly admit that you are a sinner who is only forgiven by grace and not because of your own goodness.
• Work with a friend to grow. Perhaps a pastor, prayer partner, or mentor could help you shake off the pattern of failure that you have in your life.

 

Pharaoh looked lost, and he was. I have, at moments, looked lost, and I was not. Still today, I am a sinner in need of grace. Still today, I trust in the person and work of Christ alone for my salvation. Still today, I declare that Jesus is my Lord and I owe him total allegiance. Still today, I do not live up to my commitment. Still today, I do not live up to the righteousness that God has declared that I have in Christ. Still today, I press on and give God praise for his astounding grace.

 

            What about you? What do you do when you look lost? To whom do you go for counsel and support? Are you honest about your failures? Are you fighting to get past them? Are you resting in Christ? Are you examining your own faith?

Psalm 37:39-40

 

39 The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord;

he is their stronghold in the time of trouble.

40 The Lord helps them and delivers them;

he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,

because they take refuge in him.

 

            There is a telling phrase in these two verses that we do not want to miss as we look over this psalm. In verse 39, we see that the Lord brings salvation to the righteous. This concept, of course, sounds like all the world religions that exist. Most people grow up believing that their salvation or at least their reward from their deity will come to them based upon their own righteousness.

 

            But how do we deal with this concept? Christianity is not a religion in which we are granted salvation because of our own righteousness. It is an alien righteousness, a foreign righteousness, an imputed righteousness that saves us. We are saved by God, not because of our righteousness, but because God has granted us his righteousness in Christ. In an amazing exchange, God places our guilt on Jesus and Jesus’ righteousness on us (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21).

 

            Is Psalm 37:39 contradicting New Testament Christianity? Of course it is not. Nor do we need to look far to find the answer. Peek at verse 40. What is the reason that God saves the righteous? Salvation does not come to them because of their righteousness. Instead, we see that salvation comes to those who have taken refuge in the Lord.

 

            Now, let’s not misconstrue any of this. The salvation being spoken of in this psalm is salvation from physical harm and death. We understand that, in a thoroughly biblical picture of eternal salvation, we only take refuge in God if he first moves us to do so. Salvation is a gift of God and the work of God from start to finish. Yet, it is also true that we are saved by God by grace through faith in Christ. Faith in Christ, in a very simple sense, is to take refuge in him. Faith is to run to Jesus, to plead for his mercy, and to hide under the shelter of his life, death, and resurrection.

 

            Does the picture in Psalm 37 look like the gospel? Of course it does. We need to be rescued. Only the righteous are rescued—however, it is the righteousness of Christ that is applied to the rescued. Nobody is rescued because of his or her own righteousness. How do we receive salvation? How do we have the righteousness of Christ applied to us? We take refuge in him. We do not earn anything. We do not bring anything favorable to the table. We simply run to Jesus and hide in him.

Luke 19:29-30 (ESV)

29 When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here.

 

            The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem as he rode on the colt on Palm Sunday is a story that we tend to know well. But one thing stands out to me this morning.

 

            As we know, this event fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah. Zechariah 9:9 declares, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Then, just before his crucifixion, Jesus enters Jerusalem just as this prophecy predicts.

 

            What grabs my attention is that Jesus did this very much on purpose. He fulfilled this prophecy on purpose. He wanted people to understand, when they reflected on this event, that this was Jesus very intentionally declaring him to be the promised King of Israel. This was Jesus claiming to be the Messiah in about as clear and public a way possible.

 

            Sometimes there are those who do not know the Bible or Jesus who try to claim that Jesus never claimed to be what his disciples later said about him. Such a claim will not work. If Jesus intentionally put himself on a colt to enter Jerusalem as he did here, especially at the time of year he did so and in the manner he did so, he knew he was the Messiah. Jesus could not have been clearer had he put a crown on his head and said, “I’m the King!”

            So, today, as I think over this passage, I am reminded that our Savior did not do anything accidentally. He is God who came to earth. HE is the Promised One from centuries past. Jesus is the Messiah, and he is worthy of my homage and allegiance.  

Psalm 24:3-5

 

3 Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?

And who shall stand in his holy place?

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,

who does not lift up his soul to what is false

and does not swear deceitfully.

5 He will receive blessing from the Lord

and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

 

            Psalm 24 asks an interesting question. Who is going to be allowed into God’s presence? Who can approach the Lord over all?

 

            The answer is not encouraging. A person with clean hands and a pure heart is who may approach God. A person who is always honest, that is a person who can approach God. Basically, a person whose purity matches that of God is the one who may expect to be allowed in the presence of God. This is not encouraging, because it is not any of us.

 

            If we left things here, with only verses 3-4, it might seem as though the way to God is right living, works-based righteousness. It would also seem to me to be impossible for me, as I am certainly not good enough on my own. But then we read verse 5, which describes gifts that the one who comes to God will receive: “He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.”

 

            Look at that verse carefully, and notice that one of the gifts given to the one who approaches God is righteousness. Righteousness comes to the person as a gift. The person who is allowed into the presence of God is not there because he has earned it with a perfect life after all. No, there is something strange going on here. Yes, God’s standard is perfection. Yet, the one who is granted access to God is given righteousness.

 

            How sweet it is to see the gospel here in Psalm 24. God’s standard is perfect righteousness. None of us meets that standard. Jesus pointed out that God alone is good in Luke 18:19. However, in Christ, God grants to us the righteousness of Christ as a gift. Even though our lives do not look like it completely, the righteousness of Jesus is counted to our account if we have come to Jesus in faith. This doctrine is the doctrine of imputation, and it is a marvelous and necessary doctrine for believers. We must grasp that we, apart from the gracious gift of Jesus would never be good enough to come to God. Yet, in Christ, we are given the righteousness we need to ascend the hill of the Lord. We can even see our lives change so that our hands are cleaner and our hearts are purer than ever before. Eventually, when we finally arrive in glory, our lives will be perfected by God, matching the righteousness that he has already granted us in Christ.

Genesis 27:23-25, 33, 41

 

23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands. So he blessed him. 24 He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.” 25 Then he said, “Bring it near to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.” So he brought it near to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank.

33 Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, “Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed.”

41 Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

 

            The account of Jacob and Esau along with Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac is one of those stories that many Christians have heard since children’s Sunday School. Isaac was blind. Rebekah preferred Jacob while Isaac preferred Esau. Rebekah aided Jacob in deceiving his dad, tricking the poor, blind, dying Isaac into transferring the blessing to Jacob instead of Esau, his firstborn. Esau is upset and plots to kill Jacob once Isaac is dead.

 

            What are we to do with a passage like this? If we treat it the way that it is most commonly handled—at least in my experience—we will make it into a morality tale. How mean Jacob was. How wrong Rebekah was. How sad for poor Esau, though we should not feel too bad for him; he did sell his birthright for some beans after all. So, the obvious sermon points should be:

• Wives, be honest with your husbands.
• Sons, don’t lie to your dads.
• Older brothers, take your younger brothers hunting with you if you think they might be scheming against you.
• Older brothers, it’s not OK to plan to kill your younger brothers.

Now, I’m being a little silly with that third point, but the first two (and maybe the last) actually sound like sermon points that would be preached from this passage. I’m not sure that I haven’t heard them preached from this passage.

 

            Recently, I wrote a post called “Preaching Grace is Harder” in which I challenged the cheap and easy way we tend to want to make the teaching of Bible passages about rules rather than about the bigger and more difficult picture of grace. A dear friend of mine said that the post would be strengthened with an example of how a pastor might take a passage that is often made about rules and laws, dos and don’ts, and show how to preach grace from it instead—the grace intended by God, not an inserted grace not found in the passage. Can such grace be found in this odd little passage?

 

            Let me take just one swing at this passage, without real sermon prep time or commentary research, and see if I can’t bring out something of the grace and glory of God in this passage that would be better than a mere moralism. First, context is everything. Where does this event fall in the light of Scripture? Look at the following promise that had been made by God to Rebekah before the boys were born: And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23).

 

            The Book of Genesis is most certainly about the introduction of the promise of God. God created man. Man rebelled against God. God made a promise of one to come who would crush the enemy and eventually bring restoration to mankind. Abraham’s family would carry this promise. Isaac, not Ishmael, would carry this promise. How now would the promise continue? God said that the promise would continue, carried through Jacob and not Esau.

 

            How could Jacob carry the promise of the blessing of God. Jacob was the younger brother, not the older. The right of the firstborn should go to Esau. Besides, Jacob is simply not likeable. He swindles his older brother with food. Now he again swindles his older brother by lying to his dying, blinded, hungry father. Jacob is not right. He does not deserve God’s promise to be upon him.

 

            But therein lies the grace of God. Nobody that God has used so far has been an impressive figure. Noah, the great man of God, got off the ark, got drunk, and passed out naked in his tent. Abraham, the great man of faith, did not trust God enough to claim Sarah as his wife, telling her to pretend to be his sister. Isaac, our pitiable father-figure in this story, followed his dad’s lead, and subjected Rebekah to the same forced fib (I wonder where Rebekah learned to trick people with false identity claims).

 

            So much of the story that we just read in Genesis 27 is about how God would bring to pass his plan of the promised Rescuer. God has chosen to use weak, sinful, frail people. God has chosen to take sinners, real sinners with ugly lives, and to make them carriers of his promise. It is as if God wants to show us our need for the Rescuer, our inability to provide the Rescuer for ourselves, and his gracious willingness to use sinners like us to accomplish his plan.

 

            Later, when Esau decides he wants to carry out his plan to murder his younger brother, a plan that would thwart God’s promise to let the younger carry his blessing, we will watch as Jacob is protected by his mom. Jacob will move away, find a wife, and father the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. The schemer, the liar, the sinner will learn many lessons, will learn to trust God, and will be lied to by his own scheming sons. But, through it all, Jacob will receive God’s grace and be a tool in God’s hand to bring his grace and his promise to others.

 

            Is there grace to be preached from Genesis 27? I think so. We too are sinners. We cannot earn God’s grace. We are tempted to lie and scheme to get ahead in life. But God has a plan and a grace that is bigger than us. He can use sinners like us to accomplish his plan. He can make us instruments through whom he brings his offer of salvation and rescue to others just as he used Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and even Esau to bring his promise of Rescue into the world.

 

            What then is the response to this passage? First, how about worship? God is worthy of it. We could never imagine using sinners like we see in this passage to accomplish the salvation of all of God’s children, but God could and did. Then, how about obedience? If God is that great, we should trust him and offer him our lives. He is better than us and is worthy of all we have to give. This will lead us to change how we live, not because of rules, but simply because we want to please the God who is so great and gracious. How about wonder and joy? God saves sinners. He saves sinners like Rebekah and Jacob, like you and like me. We should be stunned by this love. We should be driven to our knees in gratitude. Maybe we could even say that this kind of passage would lead us to tell others about such a wonderful offer of grace, making us tools in God’s redemptive hands just as Jacob was.

 

            I certainly can’t say that I’ve exhausted the passage above. I won’t even promise I have it all correct. What I will say is that this passage, if preached in context, offers a gorgeous picture of the grace of God working in the lives of sinners, sinners who are even unaware of what God is doing through them. I believe we can benefit far more from looking at this passage with such a picture of grace in mind than we could ever benefit from making this passage about a set of rules on what to do or what to avoid. Obedience that pleases God always is a result of receiving grace, a very natural and reflexive response. I’m not at all saying God does not have rules. God forbids lying. He forbids stealing and cheating. He even forbids tricking blind people (I like that one). But we do not build our lives on those rules. WE build our lives on the God of those rules, and then we will follow his standards as we love him and find joy in pleasing him.