The Righteous Judgement of Christ

Grace Covenant Reformed Church

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Well, to say the least, the last three weeks in this country have been quite memorable.

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Two weeks ago I stood up here and reflected for a moment on the truth regarding a young man that had been assassinated for his beliefs.

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And today I stand here with a heavy heart because of the loss of our brother in Christ, Bode Backham.

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I never had the opportunity to meet either one of these men, but I am struck that there was one thing that they had in common, one thing that transcended all other realities, one truth that they both held securely, and that is the truth of Christ.

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And while my heart is heavy, because you just do not know how much

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I enjoyed the roaring lion of Bode Backham, it is also filled with joy because I know that these two men stand before their

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Lord and Savior. But even more so, it is filled with hope because that hope is the same hope that these two men shared, the same hope that they both proclaimed, the same hope that is only available by faith in Christ.

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I am also very encouraged. Both of these men set for us an example of the boldness in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Two men from two different generations standing firm for their faith.

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They are now fully healed. They are now in the presence of the

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Almighty. But the bold stance which they took, the call to boldly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ now rests continually on each of us.

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Recently, I mentioned to you that the results from Ligonier's 2025

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State of Theology Survey had been released.

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The results themselves tell quite a tale for us. The 21st statement in that particular survey reads,

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There will be a time when Jesus Christ returns to judge all the people who have lived.

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It may surprise you to know that 62 % of all respondents agreed either somewhat or most strongly with that statement.

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It may even surprise you to know that among evangelicals, those who are defined as evangelicals and for the sake of this study, we would be included in that definition, that 97 % either somewhat or strongly agreed, 95 of those strongly agreeing that there would be a time when

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Christ would return to judge all the people who have and will live.

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So it's plain to see that the majority of the evangelical church proclaims to understand this, to believe that there is this judgment day that is coming.

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However, as you begin to look more broadly at the responses that are given, those same people, 28 % of them agree that Jesus is not

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God. 53 % of those same people believe that people are good by nature.

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43 % disagree that even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation.

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And 64 % believe that everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God.

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So while professing evangelicals claim to believe that there is a day when

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Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, the reality is they don't think it has any teeth.

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Because if they did, these numbers would be entirely different. Even more staggering are the numbers that talk about how

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God loves everyone, the same. In fact, that number is 94 % of responding evangelicals believe that God loves all people in the same way.

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Now I need you to understand what that statement means. You see, there's only two types of people. No matter what the world tells you, there's two types of people.

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There are those who believe, there are those who don't believe. What that statement says is that God loves the unbeliever just as much and in the same way as He loves the believer.

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Brothers and sisters, I'm just going to tell you, from Genesis to Revelation, that is absolutely, unequivocally false.

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That's not what Scripture teaches. That's not what God's Word teaches. But this is what is believed by the people within many of our churches.

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This is the belief that leads people to the questions such as how can a loving

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God send people to hell? Or maybe if God is so loving, how can bad things happen to good people?

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Or how can a loving God do this? Or how can a loving God do that? Or how can a loving God allow this?

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The truth is that we have a bad understanding of who

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God is and of who we are. And there is coming a day when we will, one and all, stand before Christ.

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Jesus describes it. Matthew records it for us in Matthew chapter 25, verses 31 through 33.

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But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then

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He will sit on His glorious throne, and all the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and He will put the sheep on His right and the goats on His left.

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At the end of time, all things boil down to two types of people.

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Those who believe, the sheep. Those who do not, the goats.

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The Apostles' Creed records, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the

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Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.

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On the third day, He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the

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Father. From whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead, the living and the dead. He will come from that place to judge.

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Now over the last two weeks, we have begun looking at what is occurring at the foot of Sinai, as Moses is on the mountaintop.

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This morning, with the reality that there are two types of people, and there is a day of judgment, let us return now to Exodus chapter 32.

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We will pick up our reading in verse 15, and we will read down through verse 29.

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These verses will recall for us what happens when Moses descends and encounters the people.

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So if you have found your place, stand for the reading of God's holy, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete, and certain word.

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Beginning in the 15th verse of the 32nd chapter of the book of Exodus, we read these words.

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Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the testimony were in his hand.

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Tablets which were written on both sides. They were written on one side and the other.

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Now these tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

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Then Joshua heard the sound of the people as they shouted, and he said to Moses, There is a sound of war in the camp.

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But he, Moses, said it is not the sound of the cry of triumph, nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.

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Now it happened, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger burned.

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And he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf, which they had made, and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water, and made the sons of Israel drink it.

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Then Moses said to Aaron, What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?

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And Aaron said, Do not let the anger of my Lord burn. You know the people yourself that they are prone to evil.

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Indeed, they said to me, Make gods for us who will go before us, for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

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And I said to them, Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.

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So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.

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Now Moses saw that the people were out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies.

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So Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, Whoever is for Yahweh, come to me.

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And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him, and he said to them, Thus says

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Yahweh the God of Israel, Every man among you, put on his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor, or his kin.

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So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and about 3 ,000 men of the people fell that day.

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Then Moses said, Be ordained today to Yahweh, for every man has been against his son and against his brother, in order that he may bestow a blessing upon you today.

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Our most holy and heavenly father, as we come now to the study of your word, we simply ask that your spirit would guide us into truth, that we would heed that which you teach us in your word, that we would know that it is the very sustenance which we crave, that your word testifies to us of Christ.

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We ask simply that you would give us the strength to cling to its truth, to obey its commands, to submit to you in all things.

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Father, even now, even now as we gather and study your word, expose any sin in us, make it known to us that we may confess that sin before you, that we may repent and find your grace.

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Lord, we are thankful for Christ, thankful that because of his work on the cross of Calvary, because he defeated sin and death, because he rose victorious, and because he now reigns on high, that we may, by grace through faith, receive his righteousness and stand before you on his merit alone.

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Lord, guide our thoughts, guard our hearts, that we may glorify you in all things.

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All of this we ask in the precious name of Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

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Amen. You may be seated. As we come to our text this morning, there is in the center of this text a question that is the framework by which the rest of this text is draped.

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And we're going to deal with the question as we come to it, but understand that this particular question is the same question on which everything in this text hinges, and it's the same question on which everything in our lives hinges.

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The question that I'm referring to is the one that Moses asks as he stands in the gate.

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Other versions translate the question as who is on the Lord's side, with that question being the hinge.

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It is absolutely fitting that this passage begins with a very definitive statement regarding the word of the living

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God. You may recall a few weeks ago when we studied the final verse of chapter 31, we actually jumped down and read verses 15 and 16 as sort of a help to verse 31.

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And when we did so, we talked about how these tablets of testimony were a perpetual symbol, a reminder of God's covenant with his people.

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That these were the very commands of God, engraved by the very finger of God, that the people of God had agreed to obey as their portion of the covenant.

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The description within the passage makes it very clear to us that these tablets are unique.

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It should stand out that there is effort made to help us recognize that there is writing not on just one side of these tablets, but on both.

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This was uncommon in the ancient world. Most tablets were inscribed on one side, the back side was left clear.

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Secondly, that these were done by God himself.

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In verse 16, the statement, the first phrase here, the tablets were the work of God.

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Kurid writes this regarding these tablets. One ought to consider the main thrust of the description, which is to highlight the fact that the law inscribed on the tablets is the very word of God.

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It is a series of divine imperatives that originated with Yahweh.

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The construction of the phrase in the tablets were the work of God emphasizes that point.

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Literally translated, it reads, and the tablets, they were the work of God, double emphasizing whose tablets and who did the work.

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That is, the law on these tablets is the work of God and of God alone.

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And so as Moses, responding to God's command to go down from the mountain, carries with him these tablets of testimony, these perpetual statutes that are to stand as a reminder to the people of Israel of the covenant that they have made with the living

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God. We see in verse 17 that he encounters

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Joshua. And you may remember earlier in the text, Moses and Joshua proceed up the mountain.

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Joshua is left short of the summit. Moses is on the summit of Lom.

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During this entire 40 -day period, it appears from the text that Joshua has sat patiently and waited.

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And now Moses, coming down the mountain, encounters

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Joshua. And as they continue to descend, they hear sounds which

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Joshua mistakes for being sounds of battle. Now Moses, having been forewarned by God, having already been told by God of what is occurring at the base of the mountain, understands and discerns the sound for what the sound really is.

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The sound of singing. Now verse 18 in the original language is structured such that it contains parallelism.

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So we have three statements that run in parallel with each other. The first two emphasizing the fact that the last statement, the third statement, highlights the contrast between the two.

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And so what we see here is this statement by Moses that it is not the sound of the cry of triumph.

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It is not the sound of the cry of defeat. It is the sound of singing that I hear.

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As sound occurs in a valley, the noise is actually amplified up the hill.

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Now I don't know how many of you know a whole lot about sound, but as sound is amplified, it reaches a point where it begins to distort.

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And so as Moses and Joshua are coming down the mountain, it is almost as if Joshua is helping to teach,

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I mean Moses is helping to teach Joshua good discernment. Joshua hears the sounds.

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He thinks that they are the sound of victory and defeat. Moses having the true knowledge, having spent time with God, having heard the word of God, having the voice of God still ringing in his ear, can tell the difference.

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And so for us, this should guide us to understand that experience with the word, study in the word, time in the word, spending more time in the presence of God through the word, in prayer, helps us to better have the ability to discern truth.

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Listen, the world outside is a cacophony of noises.

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And it can become quite easy to mistake the sounds of false worship for the sounds of something else.

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Moses is able to discern that these are songs of false worship.

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The singing, the word that is used here is in reference to the type of singing that would happen around pagan idols and in pagan worship.

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Moses knows that it's not a good thing that is happening. The cacophony that we experience exists, created by the enemy for the purpose of distracting us from truth.

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Consider the prophet Elijah. After the defeat of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah flees

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Jezebel. And as he flees Jezebel, he comes to a cave.

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And in 1 Kings chapter 19 verses 9 through 12, we read these words.

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And he came there to a cave and lodged there. And behold, the word of Yahweh came to him.

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And he said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? And he said,

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I have been very zealous for Yahweh, the God of hosts. For the sons of Israel have forsaken your covenant, pulled down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.

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And I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away. Now first of all, if you know anything about what's going on in Elijah's world at that time,

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Elijah is not alone. God has maintained a remnant. But even if there wasn't another remnant, the reality is

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Elijah is not alone because God is with him. Notice the next verse.

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So he, being God, said to Elijah, Go forth and stand on the mountain before Yahweh.

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So get out of the cave, go stand on the mountain. And as he did, behold,

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Yahweh was passing by. And a great and strong wind was tearing up the mountains and breaking into pieces the rocks before Yahweh.

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But Yahweh was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake.

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But Yahweh was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire.

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But Yahweh was not in the fire. And after the fire, a sound of a thin, gentle whisper.

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Had Elijah not been listening, how often do we see and hear rumble that may look like God?

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That may look like someone who is proclaiming God. But God's word is not there.

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You need to take care and use discernment. In our world, we have hundreds of thousands of people proclaiming their truth.

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Listen. Cut the phone off. Cut the

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TV off. Cut the computer off. Open the word of God.

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Spend time in the word of God. What you will find is as you spend time in the word of God and spend time in prayer with God, in communion with God, that the ability to cut through the distracting noise with discernment will grow.

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And you will hear God's truth proclaimed by God's people according to God's word.

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And so as they continue to make their way down the mountain,

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Moses and Aaron reach the people of Israel, or at least reach a point where they can see the people of Israel.

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And as Moses lays his eyes on the people, as he witnesses for himself that which

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God has already told him is happening, he becomes enraged. The text here literally uses the same description for the anger of Moses as it did for the anger of God a few verses earlier.

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Moses' anger burns against the people. And in that burning anger,

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Moses casts the tablets down at the foot of the mountain, breaking them, shattering them into pieces.

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Now there are two things we want to deal with here. First briefly, the anger of Moses himself.

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I cannot tell you how many times I have been told or I have heard others be told that anger is a sin.

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Brothers, anger is not always a sin. There is a such thing as righteous anger.

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Psalm 4 .4 says, Be angry and do not sin. The actual translation in the

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LSB uses the word tremble instead of the word anger, but a anger so deep that you're mad.

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But it's not an anger at something other than what God has commanded, and the opposite is being done.

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Paul later uses the verse from Psalm 4 .4 in his letter to the church at Ephesus, dealing with those who enter the church under false pretenses.

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Later in the book of Revelation, as Jesus writes his letter to the church at Ephesus, in chapter 2, verse 2, he says,

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I know your deeds and your toil and your perseverance, and that you cannot bear with those who are evil, and you put those to the test, those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.

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This is the thing that they were being angry at, these false prophets. Because Jesus himself enters the temple in anger, chases the money changers out, flips the tables, follows them with a whip, all because they had turned the house of God from a house of prayer to a den of thieves.

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You see, righteous anger is a reality. There is a time and there is a place for righteous anger.

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Now, anger that is not righteous, absolutely, that's a whole different conversation. But in order for anger to be righteous, then there has to be a willful, deliberate disobedience to the commands of God.

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Consider what the people have done here at the foot of Sinai. They have literally destroyed and disobeyed the first two commandments they were given.

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The first two things. Never mind the remaining eight. They couldn't even get the first two right.

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How often do we fall just as short? Moses' anger burned, but look at what caused the anger.

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Notice what Moses saw. As soon as Moses came near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing.

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Now, before we go all Baptist on people, and we say, oh, wait, wait, right there.

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See, dancing is bad. You need to understand what he's talking about. This is worship.

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This is dancing in the sense that they are worshiping this idol.

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What caused Moses' anger was the fact that they had broken those first two commands.

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You remember them. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven or above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

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You shall not worship them or serve them for I, Yahweh, your God, am a jealous

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God. Moses was angry because of the sin that he saw in the lives of the people who were supposed to be the people of God.

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I wonder how often we get angry with a righteous anger about the sin we see in the world.

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Have we become so hardened that we no longer notice this sin?

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How often do we truly speak up and speak out about the sin? How often do we speak up and speak out about the sin that we see in the lives of our brothers and sisters within the church?

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Now we're getting really close to home, aren't we? How about the sin in the life of our spouses?

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The responsibility of every believer is to address first our own sin, but also to address the sin that we see in our brothers and sisters in Christ, and then address the sin that's in the world.

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Because you see, there are only two types of people. Those who believe and those who do not. And if we do not call out the sin, then we are not fulfilling what we are called to do.

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Just this week I saw a video clip of a young man standing in a pulpit, proclaiming a message.

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And this was his message. The problem with the church is that the church is too worried about the world.

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That we aren't worried about ourselves. I agree to a certain extent. But we cannot stay within the walls of the church and simply correct each other without proclaiming the gospel.

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And in order to proclaim the gospel, we must call sin, sin. Because if you don't call sin, sin, if there's no bad news, there's certainly no good.

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Secondly, the destruction of the tablets themselves.

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I can remember hearing teaching regarding this event that went something along these lines.

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Moses was so mad, he threw the tablets down in sin and broke them. Brothers and sisters,

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I'm just going to tell you, there's nowhere in scripture that supports that Moses sinned when he destroyed the tablets.

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In fact, I can recall being told that Moses not only broke the tablets and sinned doing so, but in punishment, he had to not only cut new tablets, but he had to carve the words.

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That's directly contradictory to what God's word said. In fact, God's word tells him a little bit later, go cut two new tablets so that I, God, can write these words for you again.

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Later, when Moses is talking about these events, in Deuteronomy chapter 9, verses 15 through 17, there is nothing in this passage that says that Moses sees a need to have any regret.

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Listen to these words. So I turned and came down from the mountain, while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.

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And I saw that you had indeed sinned against Yahweh, your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf.

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You had turned aside quickly from the way which Yahweh had commanded you. And I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and shattered them before your eyes.

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The purpose of the destruction of these two tablets at the foot of the mountain is extremely symbolic.

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It is a real event that really happened, but it happened for a purpose.

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First of all, it happened to demonstrate that these people had broken the covenant.

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And I want you to just imagine for a moment, if you will. You're an

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Israelite. You're at the base of Sinai. You're in the midst of a party to end all parties.

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When all at once you hear something that maybe sounds like a loud roar. I can imagine

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Moses standing wherever he was standing as he tossed the tablets down. Scripture doesn't tell us this,

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I'm completely guessing. But, rawr! And slamming the tablets down on the ground.

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Destroying them. Imagine this happening in your presence.

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You're witnessing these events. You see this stone strike and explode into pieces.

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You look up at Moses. Not only do you see the righteous anger on the face of Moses, it is likely that you also see the glory of God still being reflected in the face of Moses.

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Can you imagine? Because now what you're looking at is not Moses, but the holy wrath of a holy

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God. There would have been shame, embarrassment, repentance, or there would have been nothing.

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The party ended. You didn't want it to end. You're not really sure why

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Moses flipped his lid. There was really no reason for him to blow it all out of proportion like that.

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We're just having a good time. To us, it should stand as a reminder that the breaking of one command is the breaking of all.

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See, God's covenant with the people of Israel was not, if you keep at least one of my commands, then

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I'll be your God and you'll be my people. The covenant was, if you keep all of my commands.

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Now we stand this side of Christ, and we understand that by the law, through the law, that there is no way for us to obtain righteousness because there is no way for us to keep all of the commands that only by Christ's righteousness imputed to us, by faith, can we stand in the presence of the

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Almighty. But beyond that, what we see are two sides clearly being drawn.

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Those who believe and those who do not. Immediately after destroying the tablets,

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Moses proceeds to destroy the idol. In the destruction of the idol, we see that he not only burned it, melted it down, but that he ground it into powder and then he scattered it into the waters.

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He didn't take the jewelry and say, well let me recycle this, we may need this gold later. He utterly destroyed the idol, lest there be any part remaining.

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The fact that this is done by the hand of man rather than the hand of God emphasizes that which

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Paul wrote to the Romans. We have chosen to worship the created rather than the creator.

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The God was nothing more than a construct of human hands, a construct that was just as easily destroyed as it was fabricated.

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Then we have a very fascinating little ending to this verse, where it says that he made the sons of Israel drink it, verse 20.

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Now I will be honest, theologians have postulated for years on exactly what this means.

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Some have suggested that it was to increase their shame. There have been other explanations given.

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The only thing that we come close to this in Scripture occurs in Numbers 5, verses 11 through 31.

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In that passage, we get the instructions regarding how a woman who is accused of adultery is handled.

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And so in that, the woman is given a test, part of which included drinking water that was contaminated with dust from the floor of the temple.

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And if she underwent a certain reaction, then it meant that she was guilty. If not, she was seen as not guilty.

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Casuado puts forth this idea that the reaction of the people who drank the water would indicate whether they were guilty or not guilty.

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The problem here, again, is that we have the entirety of the people of Israel involved in this situation.

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And if you'll notice a little further down, only approximately 3 ,000 were killed as a result.

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Now the 3 ,000 may have been the ringleaders, and they may have had a different reaction. We simply don't know.

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But something was important here. After this,

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Moses then turns to Aaron. His communication with Aaron is somewhat comical, because we, sitting here now, reading this, have the absolute truth.

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We know what already happened. Moses comes to Aaron, and he calls him into account with the words that we read in verse 21.

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He says, then Moses said to Aaron, What did these people do to you that you have brought such great sin upon them?

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Now Moses is very familiar with this group of people. They have already traipsed through the wilderness from Egypt to Sinai.

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And every single time that they didn't get what they wanted, something began to happen.

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They began to cry out. They began to complain. They began to grumble. But even more importantly than asking why they did this,

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Moses wants to understand from Aaron why he allowed it, why he failed as a leader and brought great sin, not just upon himself, but all of the people.

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Why didn't he stand up? Why didn't he call the people to account?

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It's funny. Lisa and I were watching the events unfold out in the

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Atlantic with two hurricanes playing tango or whatever they're doing out there. And the weatherman was describing it, and there was a front here and a front here and a front here and a front here, and he had

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Humberto here and the soon -to -be whatever her name is down here.

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And it all depended on what these other forces would do as to how they would be guided.

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And I remember looking at Lisa and said, yeah, it all comes down to prayer pressure, doesn't it? And this is the same thing that happened with Aaron.

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He gave in. He compromised the word of God for the sake of popularity.

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But Aaron's response, because just like Adam, Aaron bore the ultimate responsibility in this situation.

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But his response, just like Adam, was to point fingers at everyone but himself.

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But look at his response in verse 22. The first response he gives is much the same as Moses tells

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God earlier about not letting his anger burn. He's asking him, why does his anger burn against your people?

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Aaron says to Moses, don't let the anger of my Lord burn. He's talking about Moses, not talking about God.

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He says, don't let your anger burn. And his response here actually places the blame on Moses.

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Notice he says here. He says, they came to me.

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You knew that they were prone to evil. They came to me, said to us, make God for us who will go before us.

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For this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. The language that is characterized there shifts the blame to Moses, calling it his fault because the calf was to represent

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Moses and to lead them. Now we know that's not what we read earlier.

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We know that that's not what really happened. The other thing that he made, the other comment that he made regarding the people in an effort to shift blame, again it's the same comment that has been made, same reason that has been being given since Adam, to shift the blame.

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And here he looks at Moses and says to him, are you surprised after all these people are inclined to evil?

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Now the words that we have here in the LSB is that they are prone to evil, the last part of verse 22.

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The literal translation is that they are in evil. The word is used as an adjective to describe a quality of the people.

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The word evil here is used as an adjective to describe a quality of the people.

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Again, the very definition of the reality that we are totally incapable, setting the tone for the biblical doctrine of total inability, that we are by nature sinners.

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Adam's response is to blame it on the nature of the people. That they couldn't possibly keep the commands that they were given because they were by nature sinners.

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The problem with that is what scripture teaches us over and over and over again is that although it is true that we have a sin nature, we also have a personal responsibility.

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We also have knowledge of God's laws written on our hearts. We have a responsibility to keep them, to diligently seek, to be obedient.

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But there's a bigger issue here.

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The issue here is who are these people following?

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Are they following the man, Moses, or are they following Yahweh?

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Because if they're following Yahweh, even if you remove Moses, their eyes should still be fixed, right?

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But if they're following a man and you remove the man, now we've got to find something else to follow.

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This is one of the issues that the modern day church faces because we have turned pastors into celebrities.

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And when we turn pastors into celebrities, then people tend to follow the celebrity until the celebrity falls.

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And you see their focus has now been taken off of God. And oftentimes it's not a fault of the individual that has been turned into the celebrity, it's the fault of the people.

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The individual may have no desire but to do anything but point to God. But the people are prone to build idols.

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Listen, God has set up the church to be served by undershepherds, to guide and direct, but the head of the church is

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Christ and Christ alone. It's not the pope, it's not the pastor, it's not the elders, it's not the bishop, it's not any of those things.

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It is Christ. Christ is the head of the church. Christ is who we follow.

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When we keep our focus on Him, when we follow Him, then even when the men that are in the leadership roles fall away or pass away or go away for whatever reason, it doesn't change what we're doing.

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It doesn't change who we follow because they're but a person filling a spot, proclaiming a word that is not theirs.

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It's His. I didn't write one jot and tittle of this book.

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The truths in it are not my truths. They are God's truths. The last thought on the issue here with Aaron is this interesting outright lie he tells

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Moses regarding the way in which the calf was made.

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If you read Aaron's response, he is literally saying what it sounds like he's saying.

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I threw all the gold in there and out popped the calf. Now this is actually seen in some pagan religions as being a reality, that there's this manifestation of these idols coming out of, or these gods coming out of flames.

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But for Aaron to try and shift the blame when we know based on what we've seen earlier that he spends time and care and crafts this idol.

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Later in Deuteronomy chapter 9, as Moses is recounting the events of this day, one of the things that he tells us is that God was exceedingly angry with Aaron and Moses interceded on his behalf.

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Verse 25 is an interesting verse. I actually prefer the

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King James translation of this verse. Not that it is better in any way, it is just more descriptive.

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The King James version of this verse reads this. And when Moses saw that the people were naked, for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies.

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Now the reason that I particularly like the way that the King James translates this is because the word naked immediately draws my mind back to the garden.

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It immediately draws my mind back to that same situation where Adam and Eve, as they took the bite of the forbidden fruit that's recorded for us in Genesis 3 verse 7, and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

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It's not that they were physically naked. That's not the point. The point is that they now see their sin and they stand in shame.

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And so we get some picture, some small amount of shame from at least some of the people within the camp of Israel.

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Literally the words say that the people were out of control, that they were loose. Aaron had let them loose to be a derision among their enemies, to be a shame.

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And these people stand here naked. And it is this point, it's here where Aaron, I mean

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Moses, goes to the gate, to the main gate of the camp.

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Now you need to understand that the gate of the camp is where everything happened. For us today, the closest thing that we would have would be to have a town hall or a city hall where important meetings and things like that are held.

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In that time, it was the gate. And so Moses went to the gate, and he stood in the gate, and it's here that he asks the question.

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Now what I love about the translation in the LSB is it still contains the question, but it also changes it into a command.

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So overall, we have a question combined with a command here. The question is, whoever is for Yahweh.

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In other words, do you follow God? Whoever among you, whoever among the people of Israel will stand for God.

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The command then is to come here, to come to Moses.

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We see the Levites respond. And in their response, they are told by Moses, commanded by Moses, using the language of this is the word of the

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Lord. When he says to them in verse 27, every man among you, put his sword upon his thigh.

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In other words, arm yourself. Take your sword. Go back and forth between the gates of the camp.

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And as you do so, kill every man his brother and every man his friend and every man his neighbor.

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Now this is not a command to kill every man, every brother, every neighbor. That much is obvious from the number that were killed.

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We have no idea how the 3 ,000 were identified. Maybe it goes back up to those who drank and the reaction that they had.

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What we do know is that there is a line that is drawn here.

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Because you see, a question has been asked and answered. The question is, are you for God?

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The command is, if you're for God, then go and you're gonna stand against anybody and anything that is against God.

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Brother, sister, father, mother, niece, nephew, aunt, even the one that makes that awesome lemonade or that best dessert.

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Because they stand opposed to God. There has been a line of loyalty that has been challenged.

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In Luke's Gospel, Luke records the words of Jesus in chapter 14, verse 26, in this way, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

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Now, that is a hard text. Because you see, what is so hard about this text is it calls us past human relations.

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It calls us to understand that the singular most important thing in all of our lives is

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Christ. That nothing can come between us and Christ.

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The words that Jesus used create a boundary.

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And it's a boundary that cannot be straddled. This is not a tide that we can ride and just kind of flow wherever we think is the best situation for us to be.

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We hear these words and we're shaken. We hear the word hate.

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And we think, how in the world could a loving God expect me to hate my brother, my sister, my father, my mother, or even myself?

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Especially since we live in a world that spends so much time and so much energy telling me how much

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I ought to love myself, how much I am okay, how much I am enough, when in fact

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I am none of these things. The message here is that Christ is first and all other things last.

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And we have the audacity to stand and go, how could God demand everything of me?

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Do you not understand that he gave everything for you? He laid down his life for you.

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It's not that we hate. It's that in comparison to our love for Christ, in comparison to our dedication to Christ, in comparison to every other thing, there is no mistaking where we stand.

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Because what you see happening is as you love Christ, as you stand for Christ, as you are proclaiming to be on the side of God, that you will greatly love your wife, or husband, or mother, or father, or sister, or brother, so much so that you are willing to stand firm and proclaim truth even when it's not what they want to hear.

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And brothers and sisters, I'm just going to tell you, the hardest people to proclaim truth to are your family, right? But you're willing to make that effort.

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Christ gave all, but how many of us are truly willing to give all for him? How many of us are willing to sacrifice every earthly thing that we hold dear for the sake of Christ?

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How many of us are willing to lay aside creaturely comforts for his sake? Which of us, which of us would be like Isaiah and cry out if God called, here am

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I, send me? Which of us are going to respond to the gate?

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If the call goes out, whoever is for Yahweh, come to me. You say, preacher, this is all well and good, but I don't really understand.

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You started off talking about judgment. How did you get here? Let me help you. Where you stand has everything to do with what you can expect come judgment day.

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Christ is going to judge and judge righteously according to his word. I don't know how many of you believe that you could stand upright before God based on your merit, but you can't.

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No matter how good you think you are, you're not. But the good news is,

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Christ is. His righteousness is sufficient.

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He went to the cross. He lived a perfect life. Born of a virgin.

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Breaking the chain so that he could be perfect.

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The perfect sacrifice. The final. Forever. And it is by faith that we receive grace when we have faith in Christ alone.

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Notice the last line of this passage. The last verse. After calling the men out, after the destruction and the hard time of pitting brother against brother and son against father,

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Moses makes this statement. It says, verse 29, that Moses said,

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Be ordained today to Yahweh. For every man has been against his son and against his brother in order that he may bestow a blessing upon you today.

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We've already dealt some with that word ordained. It literally means to fill your hand.

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It has to do with the work of God filling the hand of the people of God. It is the call.

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It is the gospel cry. Be ordained today to Yahweh.

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The gospel cry, have faith in Christ today for salvation.

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Because faith in him alone is what is necessary. And so the question becomes, where is your faith?

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And I know we kind of talked through some different things in the passage, but it all boils down to this.

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Your faith is either in Christ or it's not. It doesn't matter what the not looks like.

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It doesn't matter if it's your parents, the pastor, some whack job on TV, whatever.

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It's not Christ. And if it's not Christ, then you have nothing.

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Do you serve the living God or do you serve the world?

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Are you Christ's or are you not? So often we want to have our cake and eat it too, especially in the church.

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We want to proclaim Christ while we hold on to the world. We can't do that.

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The question that rang out from the gate still echoes. Who is on the

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Lord's side? The Israelites in that day stood just like we stand in our natural state, exposed before a holy

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God. They had a golden calf.

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I wonder what we have. Phone.

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Job. Money. Identity. Fame. Fortune.

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Church. What are we substituting in the place of God?

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The shattered tablets at the foot of Sinai testified to the broken covenant.

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Moses' righteous anger, the destruction of the idol, the call to choose sides were not impulsive violence, but they were reminders that God alone is worthy of our allegiance and that sin casts a deadly lot.

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The scene here holds a mirror up to our very souls because we live in a world of competing voices, of competing noises, of clamor.

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That each claim to speak truth, each demand loyalty, but we are called to stand forth and openly and rightly and truthfully declare

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Christ is Lord regardless of the cost. The line is not drawn between families or by family ties, by culture, by the amount of melanin in our skin.

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The line is drawn by do you believe in Christ or not?

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That's the line. Are you the Lord's? The same

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Christ. The same Christ will judge all. He will sit upon His glorious throne and He will judge.

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He will separate us out. So the question stands when the call is sounded, when the

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King returns, when the world tempts you to stay in the camp of compromise, will you be found on the

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Lord's side? Let's pray. Gracious and heavenly

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Father, Lord, we come before You humbled by the truth of Your Word.

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We confess that like Israel, we are prone to wonder. Lord, that we are quick to exchange

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Your glory for the empty idols of our own making. Lord, we pray that You forgive us.

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Forgive us that our hearts have drifted and our minds grow dull to Your majesty. Father, thank

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You for the righteous anger that reveals the seriousness of our sin. Thank You even more for the mercy that calls sinners to repentance through faith in the blood of Christ.

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Father, strengthen us by Your Spirit that we may discern truth in a world of noise.

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Grant us courage to stand boldly, to stand firm for Christ even if it costs us relationships or comfort or reputation.

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Teach us to hate sin, to love righteousness, and to long for the day when our

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Savior returns in glory. Father, seal in us the resolve of those who step forward at Moses' call.

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May our lives proclaim with clarity and conviction that we belong to the Lord and may we be found faithful when the

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Son of Man comes to judge the living and the dead. We pray this in the matchless name of Jesus Christ, our