Sin (Exodus 32:1-14)

It was just a white lie. You needed some extra time off, so you made up a little story that isn’t really true, but your boss doesn’t know that. Your co-workers won’t even miss you. You did good work that morning. What’s one afternoon away? No one is really affected. It’s a small thing. No big deal. Everybody makes up excuses that aren’t entirely true. You did nothing, really. So why do you keep thinking of it, now a week later? Why won’t it leave you alone?

What leads to sin? Frustration? Disappointment? Fear of mystery or fear of the unknown? Seduction? A sense of entitlement? Could we go on and on citing endless examples that lead people to miss the mark, do the opposite of what we know God wants for us and expects of us? Yes.

How quickly does my mouth utter a harsh, unloving word – me sinning against my neighbor? Whoops! The sin – it’s just out there. How easily does it happen, a church made up of good-hearted people, day-by-day, month-by-month, and before you know it years go by. All the while the church ignores the call of God to love the poor in its community, and gradually gets used to ignoring the call of God as if God wasn’t there.

Wait a minute, we say! It’s great if we do works of compassion or wonderful ministries of one kind or another, but it’s not a sin if we don’t! Really? Read Luke 16:19-31. Read Matthew 25:31-46. When we fail to answer the call of God, we commit the sin of omission. Our sin is not murder or theft or idolatry; rather it is failing to do what God clearly wants us to do, and often the sin of omission is committed by a community, not just an individual. The passages I mentioned, Luke 16 and Matthew 25, make it plain that this type of sin, not doing what God wants us to do, has grave consequences.

All sin has grave eternal consequences. Big sin and small sin. Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” There’s more to that verse, but for the moment we focus on the first half. Sin is death, eternal death. Cruelty to friends or peers, lying, cheating, immoral sexual activity, sins of omission as we’ve described, abusive language, haughtiness, and a thousand other sins we commit and sinful attitudes we harbor in our hearts as individuals and as a group lead to our death. We can’t blithely ignore our part in communities (churches, industries, nations) that sin against God. Sin leads to death. Sin, such as the creation of and worship of idols, which Israel found out.

There they were, oblivious to the reality that God saw all they were doing – God always sees us. They thought Moses was long gone. The were not sure of themselves or of God or of anything. In their anxiety, in their uncertainty, and in the waiting, they took matters into their own hands. They decided to take up work that belonged God, and the dictated the terms of worship in a way that was direct violation of the commandments they had pledged to obey.

So there they were with the golden god of their own creation. Ignoring God, forgetting God, tired of waiting on God’s man Moses, they partied with their golden statue, their man-made god. In Egypt, under Pharaoh’s whip, they pathetically cried out, and God responded with deliverance. In the desert, starving and dying of thirst, they complained, and God provided bread and meat and water.

Now, at the foot of the mountain, waiting, they run out patience and lose interest in the God who saved and fed and strengthened.

Moses showed up. His “anger burned hot” (32:19). He smashed the tablets containing the 10 commandments. He ground the golden calf into a fine powder, poured it in water, and made the Israelites drink it. He put swords in the hands of the Levites and had them kill 3000 of their fellow Israelites because loyalty and faithfulness to God is even more important than brotherhood. “Go through the camp … kill your brother, your friend, your neighbor” Moses said.

Reading that, I thought of Jesus who said.

I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:35-37).

He does not say these things because he’s anti-family. Jesus’ words throughout the gospels show that he understands the importance and strength of family bonds, and he kept his own relationship with his mother Mary right to the end. His intent in these harsh words – “I have come to set a man against his father” - is to dictate where our first loyalty must be. What he says only makes sense if he is God.

Moses’ actions, killing and making people drink gold dust, only make sense if he is God’s man and the people have committed sins so heinous that they have offended God. It’s just a golden calf; it’s just a theological error and bad worship practice. Don’t we sometimes make mistakes in worship? Is it that bad?

Exodus 20 – Moses gives the 10 commandments, commandments that declare God’s sovereignty and might and right to rule over these people. Exodus 24 – “The people answered Moses with one voice, and said, ‘All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.’” It’s not just a golden calf or little sin or a simple error in worship practice. It is a people undoing all that God has done on their behalf. God wasn’t enslaved by Pharaoh. God wasn’t hungry in the wilderness. The rugged desert declared his glory. All of creation is “good.” God made it. The salvation of Israel from Egypt was not something God needed. The people needed God, not the other way around. Their exodus was God’s way of again creating – creating a people for himself. This was God’s statement – I am your God, you are my people.

The people’s decision to create their own god for worship was also a statement. They would undo God’s work of salvation. They would reject God’s declaration of authority. They would deny God’s sovereignty over them. God said to wait. They got tired of waiting and weren’t going to wait any more. Every time we sin, small or large, we reject God’s work of creating us as his people; we reject God’s ways, and the redemption Jesus accomplished for us on the cross. Really? Our sins are that significant?

Really! In all arenas of life, every little corner of my life and your life, we either live God’s way – in our attitudes, words, thoughts, actions, and relationships; or we don’t. It is God’s way, or we are living in sin.

The people broke the second commandment – you will have no idols – because they didn’t accept the first commandment where God says, “I am the Lord.” They they wanted to be sovereign. We do it all the time.

We reject God’s authority in our lives, go our own way, and suffer the consequences. Sin with words leads to broken relationships. Sin through violence leads to more violence. When we sin by neglecting of the needy, we perpetuate the brokenness of the world. We drink gold dust and we die because sin has consequences. My sins hurt me and others. The sins of others hurt them and me.

What’s left?

The Bible is God’s story. Sin messes up God’s story. If we stay in sin, God kicks us out of his story. Other than removing sinners like us from the story, does sin impact God in any other way?

⁷The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!< ⁹The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. ¹⁰Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

Exodus 32 presents the resolution for human sin, but to understand and hear the good news in this passage, we need to agree to something. My intent is to hear this as it is written, without appealing and contesting any major theological positions. My belief is that the best news we can hear is this: no matter how awful we are, God hears our prayers and answers our prayers.

Did God know what we would pray before we prayed it? I am not even attempting to answer that question. Did God know in advance that Israel would create a golden calf? Does God know right now that this week, I will sin against my wife with my words, and I will sin against God and my community by neglecting a good work of compassion God calls me to do? I have no problem if you say, “Yes, absolutely, God knows!” I am not calling into question your salvation if you aren’t so sure. I readily admit, I am not certain of what God knows and doesn’t know.

I am confident that Exodus is the word of God and what I read there brings me hope in spite of the fact that I am a sinner. I say not because Exodus is about me. It isn’t. I say that because Exodus is about God and what it says about God is still true about God and is true in relation to all people. God is a responsive God, and God responds to sins and to sinners. We’ve already discussed the response to sin. People drank gold dust and got killed. What about God’s response to sinners? It begins with the sinner right there with Him, Moses.

Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹²Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’“

God listened to Moses. This narrative is not presented as if the golden calf incident was a part of God’s original plan. It reads like the people thwarted what God had in mind. It’s like God made a discovery. “I’ve seen this people, how stiff-necked they are” he said in verse 9. God had plans for a people who be his own, but he discovers that he doesn’t like them, sinners that they are.

That’s easy enough to fix. He’ll wipe them out and start over. He’s done it before. Remember Noah, and the flood. It’s a familiar approach except that there’s no guarantee that the new people, descendants of Moses, would be any better. Not only that; Moses is not interested in being the new Noah.

It’s astounding to speak of God “discovering” what the people are like, stiff-necked. It’s even more unexpected and possible unpalatable to think that Moses had to talk God out of killing the people. But that’s exactly how this reads. Moses appeals to God’s heart, to God’s reputation, and to God’s promises. And God listens. Just stop there. I don’t care if you think God knew what he was going to do all along, or if you think God was surprised by the people’s rebellion and surprised by Moses’ chutzpah. I don’t know what God know. But I trust Exodus, and Exodus says God listened to Moses. This isn’t about Moses; it’s about God.

When the people were slaving under Egyptian overlords and they cried, God listened. When they hunger and cried, God listened and fed them. When Moses begged God not to kill them for their sin, God listened. Throughout the book of Judges, the people fall into enemies after they have sinned, and then they cry out. No matter how grotesquely they sin, when they cry out, God listens. That’s the redemptive part of the story – in Israel and in my life and yours.

There are painful consequences when we sin. The relationship with God is damaged. But we stay connected, through prayer, confession, & repentance. We stay connected to God and God listens.

Exodus 32:14: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

That’s the New Revised Standard Version. The Holman Standard Christian Bible is virtually the same. If you prefer, here is the Kingdom James Version: “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”

You can wrestle with the disturbing idea that God has to repent or that God might bring evil. I won’t solve those problems this morning. Neither will I pretend they aren’t in the text because they clearly are. For me, struggling with my sins, hope comes in the knowledge that God allows a change, even of his own mind. The story I am living, a story of sin and the failure to overcome it doesn’t have to be the final story. God has an alternative in mind.

The change God proposes, from annihilation to re-creation is ultimately seen in the coming of God in human flesh, Jesus, the bringer of a new covenant, the one who gives new wine. In Him, we are new creations. Before Him, we confess our sins, turn from them, and declare allegiance to Him even as we receive the forgiveness he offers. On the cross, He takes the death for our sins on himself. We die in sin, and with him are raised to new life – new creations in Christ. Because of Jesus, we read not a portion of Romans 6:23, but all of that verse, the Gospel in a single sentence.

²³For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sin is real and has consequences on us and on the relationship with God. But God never stops loving us. When we cry out to him from our sin, he responds in love. As terrible as little white lies and golden calves and mean words and all the others sins the book are, God still hears us, responds to us, and loves us. Due to His grace, we have life.

AMEN

Waiting for God (Exodus 32:1-14)

(I preached this sermon three years ago at my church, and was tempted to preach it again. But then I sat down and thought about who all was present then and is still here now, and I decided, I'll redo this one when this lectionary text rolls back around in 2014.)

Have you every stood in line and watched the rollercoaster as it slowly climbs the big hill before going over into the abyss. The line you’re in while waiting for your turn creeps along as slowly as a steamy, tired July afternoon. First there’s boredom. Time passes. As you get closer; thoughts race through your mind. It seems that the hill is higher than it was at a distance. It takes about a day to get through that line. It’s just long enough for you to realize you want to be anywhere but on that rollercoaster. But you can’t back out – what weenie you would be. So, you face the executioner with much less courage than you’re showing. He fastens your safety bar over you and you and the 13-year-old behind you who is screaming bloody murder even though the ride has barely begun and everyone else gets buckled and begins the ascent. This is when time stops. You creep along, higher, and higher. You see the rest of the amusement park as it gets smaller and smaller below you. Creeping higher and higher, you enter the cloud bank. O when will we get over the summit, crash down to earth, die and be done with it. Higher, … oh … we’ve reached the top. The car up at the front goes over. It disappears. And then the next; only two more to our car. The next one disappears over the great expanse. When will this end. Could this go any slower?

What’s it like to wait for something?

In little baseball, I would look at the batting order taped to the fence. One, two, three … going down … ah nine – Tennant. Forever and day and a number of innings that seemed mathematically impossible went by. It was plenty of time to size up the opposing pitcher. It’s hard to believe a 12-year-old could be 7 ½ feet tall and throw a baseball 150mph. You’d think Sports Illustrated would have discovered him. I was unnerved when they had a ready made hole in the ground to bury the kids he hit in the head with one his frequent wild pitches. Up they go, and down. He seems to be getting faster and bigger. “Tennant you’re on deck.” O S---- (nope, can’t say that in church). Why does this bat feel like it weighs 40 lbs? And what’s that racket – oh, just my knees. Finally, the kid ahead of me strikes out. It seemed like three pitches would take less time. But, now, I am standing there staring at Nolan Ryan and I remember I insulted this kid in science class and he told me I’d get mine on the ball field, right below the chin. Does he recognize me in this helmet? When is he going to throw the ball? I can’t move a muscle. I am petrified.

What’s it like to wait for something?

What’s it like to be in a holding pattern? In basic training, we went to the reception station where we picked up uniforms, shined our boots, marched in formation and heard stories of how bad it was going to be when we went “down range.” They were going to introduce us to new experiences of pain. And we couldn’t wait to get there, and get it over with. But we had to wait. Worse. The hospital waiting room – waiting for the report from the surgeon. Success or failure? Will his face tell? Oh, how longer must we wait?

What’s it like to wait for something? What’s it like to go from childhood to old age in slavery, waiting for God to send a deliverer? The descendants of Jacob’s 12 sons whom we meet in the book of Genesis, the 1^st book in the Bible, settled in Egypt. Those 12 families multiplied the way families do and prospered economically in Egypt. A couple of generations passed and the large family grew to be a small, rich nation. There was no waiting.

When all is good, we don’t wait for things. We’re caught up in success, joy, and prosperity. But, the new Pharaoh was not caught up in anything. He was Egyptian and he had no thought for Hebrew opulence. He took the small country, the people descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God’s chosen people. Pharaoh took their riches, and enslaved them and worked them in brutal conditions. All they could do was cry out to God and wait. How long oh Lord? This is the anguished cry of faith.

They found out how long, when God sent a deliverer – Moses. This stuttering, second brother performed mighty works of God including the parting of the ocean, and they weren’t waiting any more. They were moving. They followed him through the Red Sea. They followed him into the Sinai wilderness. They were on the go, headed to the Promised Land!

But you know what? Even when we’re moving, we can find ourselves waiting. After the thrilling victories, the bizarre wonders of the plagues and the spectacle of God’s parting of the sea, what came next was a whole lot of walking. Put down the left foot and then the right. Repeat. Haven’t we done this 10,000 times? Is today any different than yesterday? Nope. More walking. The nation of God’s chosen people became an eight-year-old on a long car trip. “Are we there yet?” What’s worse than slowly plodding along with countless miles ahead? Coming to a full stop with countless miles ahead. The interstate becomes a parking lot.

Moses said, “OK everybody, you wait here. I am going up on the mountain to talk to God, and I’ll come back down and tell you what he said.” Moses went up on the mountain. There were flashes of lightning and bellowing thunder. Nobody in Israel’s camp was bored. Nobody was waiting. Everyone was terrified. Then Moses came back, his face aglow, and there were important ceremonies. Some of the other leaders got to get closer to God. Everyone heard as Moses read the 10 commandments and everyone pledged to obey all the Lord had said. Then Moses went back up to get more instruction from the Lord. The cloud of the Lord’s presence covered the mountain. It was like a devouring fire. Oh no, no one was bored. No one felt the monotony of waiting. This was awesome and spectacular. How many people in history have seen something like this? They would be happy to stay down and wait and hear what Moses had to say. And that’s what they did. They sat at the foot of the mountain and waited. And waited. And Moses was gone for 40 days. Over a month, they waited.

What’s it like to wait for something?

Let’s leave Israel there at the foot of the mountain for a moment. They’re not doing anything anyway. They’re just waiting. They’ve done that before. We all have. Let’s talk about God.

When he put Adam in the Garden, he did so out of creative love. God was creating and admiring what he made. He made the ocean and saw that it was good. He made the plants and animals – oh, it was good! Then God said, “Let’s make human kind in our image.” That, my friends, was described by God as very good. Creative Love!

Then God invited the man he had made to join him in creation. God created the animals, and had Adam name them. Adam could make no claims about anything. He was a created being. Yet God invited him into a partnership. This was collaborative love. God includes people in His plan.

God also considers our needs. He saw that Adam was lonely. Adam had animals under his leadership. He had untainted fellowship with God. But he needed more, so God took his rib, and gave a partner. God, out his compassionate love for the man, created woman. Creative Love; collaborative love; compassionate love. Even after Adam and Eve sinned, God made a way for them. Even after their son Cain killed their son Abel, God protected him. Even after every human being turned away, except Noah and his family, God preserved the human race. Can God be defined, contained, captured, or summed up with a few words? I don’t know. Can love be defined, contained, captured, or summed up? Any love story will include some bumps and some pain. Any story of God is a love story because God is love. In his relationship with us, we ignore Him, reject Him, and turn from Him. He hurts because he loves us and sees how our sins bring us suffering.

Don’t miss the fact that in His love, God gets very angry. He did send the flood that wiped out life on earth. Following the story through Genesis and Exodus, we see numerous examples of how severe God’s punishment can be. God is harsh enough that we would fear Him and judge Him to be cruel. We must though remember that His anger is connected to and related to His love. From Eden to the flood to the tower of Babel to the Sinai wilderness and the traveling, waiting Israelites, God displays passionate love for people.

Speaking of those Israelites, let’s get back to them because they got tired of waiting. Moses must have gotten too close to God and died. Something happened. It had been 40 days. They were not going to wait anymore. Their impatience awakened in them just enough boldness to confront Moses’ weak-willed second in command, Aaron. He had no defense against the rush of the mob action. “We don’t know what’s happened to Moses. So, you make a god for us.”

Does that make any sense to you? The people did not have the educational framework to interpret their situation in scientific or logical terms. I don’t know that we do today. Our best and brightest logicians and physicists will be hard pressed to explain the whole Red Sea miracle. So, rational thought was not a resource. They had been slaves. They were led out of bondage by a poorly-spoken miracle worker. They walked through an ocean that conveniently parted for them and then swallowed their pursuers. Now, they were at a standstill in the desert waiting for the aforementioned mumbling Moses on whom they were completely dependant. And he had been gone for over a month.

If logic wouldn’t work – and it wouldn’t – they would turn to religion. But it had to be a religion of their own making. They had tried faith. In faith they followed Moses. In faith they committed to obey all the word he said God had given him up on the mountain. In faith, they were now here waiting. Just waiting. No more! They didn’t know about reason or scientific advancements, and faith had failed them. So, they’d create religion based on whatever god Aaron created for them.

His wellspring of creativity was dry and shallow. He collected everyone’s gold and fashioned a calf that looked remarkably like Egypt’s sacred bull and Canaan’s fertility gods. Thick as he was Aaron provided ample confirmations of his dimwittedness. Later on when Moses would confront him about being the point man in this direct violation of the first two of the Ten Commandments, his well-crafted excuse was “I dropped the gold in the fire and this calf popped out.” The people wrested control of their fate away from God and set up Aaron to be their fall guy because it was so obvious that he was a nincompoop.

Then the people partied!

Do you remember what we said about God? God is a passionately devoted lover of His people. When he gave the 10 commandments and led Moses to share them with the leaders and the people, food was also provided.[i] There is similar language used to describe this golden calf party. The people didn’t have a golden statue. They had the word of God. And they were invited to look at God. They were invited have dinner with God. It’s right there in Exodus 24. “They saw God. Under his feet was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. God did not lay his hands on the chief men of the people of Israel. They [saw] God and they ate and drank.”[ii] Fast forward ahead to the motley crew intimidating poor Aaron; they too ate and drank, but the verbs indicate a self-indulgent party. Previously, they ate and looked upon the face God. The meal was a holy experience; an act of worship. This time, staring at their statue of a baby cow, they were partying and celebrating their own ingenuity. No science; no faith; they would live with a religion of their own making that they could fully control.

Every love story includes some heartbreak. God was giving this law as a gift of his love, so His people whom he cherished would have peace, order, and prosperity. At the same time he was raging with righteous anger because he saw everything they did. God loves us too much to ignore us. He doesn’t always intercede the way we want Him to or when we want Him to. But, he always sees us. He’s always aware of our lives and interested in our lives. God broke off his dictation to Moses. His fury was piqued.

“Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt![iii]

Analysts make much of God’s pronouns. He calls Israel “your” people indicating that Moses is their leader. Why would God be so wishy-washy? When he recruited Moses for this job, he called Israel “My people.” Now, they’ve messed up, and they are Moses’ people. It’s like when a mom is fed up with her rambunctious, head-strong boy, she says to her husband, “Do you know what your son did today?” It’s not ‘our’ son; when he’s naughty, he’s ‘yours;’ when he’s adorable, he’s ‘ours,’ or maybe even ‘mine.’ God called Israel Moses’ people. He said, ‘I have seen how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation” (32:9-10).

Moses didn’t like that plan. It was a repeat of how God re-created when his people were mired in sin in the days of Noah. He started over with Noah’s family. Moses did not want to be this generation’s progenitor. He, if I may say it plainly, sets God straight.

“O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹²Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’“

What’s more out of bounds, arguing with God, or winning the argument? First, Moses reminds God that these are God’s people. They do not belong to Moses. Once he’s got the pronouns straight, Moses reminds God of Egypt. Because of course, God is terribly concerned about what the Egyptians think of him. His divine reputation is at stake and Moses doesn’t want to hear any Egyptian gloating and he knows God doesn’t want that either. Third, Moses reminds God that he made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He’s got to keep his word. He is after all, God! How could God forget all of this? It’s a good thing Moses was there. He functioned as God’s personal assistant.

This all sounds inane, but it has been the fodder of Bible commentators for ages on end. Some think God was testing Moses to see if he would stand in the gap. God all along knew what he was going to do, but he wanted to see if Moses would speak on behalf of the people. Other scholars paint a picture of a capricious, diabolical God who intended evil until the real hero of the story, Moses interceded. There are theories beyond that.

This is a troubling narrative. If God is all-knowing, why did he need Moses to remind him of things? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever – immutable as the theologians say – why does it say in Exodus 32:14 that he repented and changed his plans based on Moses’ impassioned argument? I hope you won’t be too frustrated when I state that I do not know those answers. Often, I read the Bible, pause, think, wonder, pray, and close it unsure of the answers to all my questions. This story would be for me one of those cases.

Even with that confession that I can’t answer all of the questions of the Golden Calf narrative, I do walk away with some conclusions. First, a big part of our faith is waiting. What we do while we wait, reveals what kind of faith we have. God’s people had been through a number of disorienting ordeals. But, they had also seen the evidence of God like few people in history. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was in control, that God heard their prayers, and that God loved them. They knew it, but it wasn’t enough. They wanted to dictate the terms of the relationship. Fed up with waiting, they broke the very first two rules God gave. If they were trying to force God’s hand, it worked. He did not destroy them as he said he wanted to do. But, he punished them severely. Many did die. The rest had to eat the golden calf. It was ground into dust and they were forced to consume it.

One of the lesser known figures in the New Testament is an old, righteous man named Simeon. His story is told in Luke 2:25-25. The Holy Spirit revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he saw the Messiah with his own eyes. When Mary and Joseph brought their little boy Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be blessed, the Spirit nudged old Simeon and said now is the time. He never questioned that the salvation of Israel was this little baby he held in his arms. Through tear-filled eyes, he said, “Master now you are dismissing your servant in peace … for my eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:29-30a). After Jesus rose from the grave, and ascended to Heaven, the disciples huddled together in Jerusalem and waited. For 40 days, they waited – the same amount time the Israelites waited at the foot of the mountain. However, the disciples didn’t create a golden calf, they prayed. And after 40 days, at Pentecost, they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

A second conclusion I walk away with after reading of Moses and God and the golden calf is that God cannot be contained, explained, or controlled. God is real dynamic, unpredictable, relational, passionate, and interested in us. God knows what’s going on in our lives. Just as we are waiting for Him to step in, He’s waiting for us to invite him. He wants us to turn our attention off ourselves and toward Him.

Look at the two activities that took place in periods of waiting. Those who followed Moses saw more miracles and more spectacle than anyone before or since. It didn’t produce faith. Instead of trusting God they, decided to displace God. God responded with harsh punishment because His loving heart for them had been rejected. The disciples in the same period of waiting prayed and worshipped. God responded with a violent rush of wind that filled them with the Holy Spirit and empowered them to share the gospel and establish the first churches in history. God loves us and responds to us. That’s the kind of God He is.

This leads to a third conclusion. What we do, how we spend our waiting time, has an impact on the life we have with God. Those who grow in faith through prayer and worship in times of uncertainty will be filled with the love God. Those who dismiss God and turn away and reject Him fall are punished. I think most of the time he simply lets us suffer the consequence of his absence and our own mistakes. What if God had done nothing with the Israelites when they made that calf? They would have been overrun by Egypt or enslaved by one of the other powerful nomadic that dominated Sinai. As rough as their discipline seems, when it ended, they were still God’s people headed to the Promised Land. I believe the reason it went that way is as angry as God was, he still loved them.

He loves us. Sometimes in our walk, we have to wait upon the Lord. The period of waiting is our opportunity to worship, pray, and grow. When we take that opportunity we are ready for whatever God has next. Even as we wait, He sees, He loves, and He plans grand things for us. Together, in faith and trust, let us wait upon the Lord.

AMEN

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[i] This is found in Exodus 24.

[ii] Exodus 24:10-11.

[iii] Exodus 32:7-8.

In the End - God

Filled with anxiety and loneliness, Moses had reached his wits’ end. After leading the people of Israel out of Egypt, he climbed the mountain to receive the law and while he was up there, the people at the foot of the mountain forgot about him and about God. In his rage their idolatry and ingratitude, God thundered and threatened to wipe out Israel. Moses spoke out on Israel’s behalf and convinced God to withhold his punishing hand. “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster he planned to bring on his people” (Exodus 32:14).

Leading the people, receiving the law, contending with God – it all took a toll and Moses was worn out. So he appealed to God, and what exactly did Moses ask for? “Show me your glory, I pray” (Exodus 33:18). More than anything, Moses wanted to see God with his eyes. God granted that request – he allowed Moses to see his backside glory.

And what of Jacob, the man whose name would be changed to Israel? His brother Esau, a much mightier man, had threatened to kill him. That had been several years, 2 wives, 2 concubines, and 11 children earlier. Now, he was fearfully figuring out how to face the confrontation he had dodged for so long. The night before the meeting, an enigmatic, angelic figure wrestled with Jacob until daybreak. The contest ended with Jacob’s hip being permanently knocked out of socket. The assailant then blessed Jacob and Jacob concluded, “I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30). After that the reunion with Esau was peaceful and anticlimactic. The key event for Jacob was to see God.

Job presses God for many things. He asks that God relieve his suffering by taking his life (Job 6:8-10). Job asks God for pardon (even though Job never admitted sin) (Job 7:21). Job wants God to promise no rod of punishment because without that specter hanging over him he could speak and justify himself (Job 9:34-35; 13:20-23). Job declares his desire to speak directly to God and thus justify himself (13:3, 13-19; 14:15). He also asks why God hides his face (13:24).

Job also accuses God, “he has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom people spit” (17:6). “Know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me. Even when I cry out, ‘violence!’ I am not answered; I call aloud but there is no justice (19:6-7).

Furthermore, Job talks a lot about what he would do. “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might even come to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mough with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could and I should be acquitted forever by my judge” (23:3-7).

Job reasons, argues, accuses, makes claims, and makes assumptions. His own innocence is as clear as it can be in his eyes. I have cited a sample of the ways Job expresses his desire to go one-on-one with God. Job thinks he knows how this will turn out; he’s just not sure the opportunity will ever come. Job expresses both hope and despair, faith and faithlessness.

In the end, Job gets what he desired – a hearing with the Almighty. God shows up. And God does not answer any of Job’s complaints. God does not give Job opportunity to ask any of his questions. Those questions seemed huge to Job when he laid there wallowing in his own (very real and very sharp) pain. But the largess of Job’s issues shrink to nothingness when God speaks from the whirlwind. In the end, Job only gets exactly what Moses got; exactly what Jacob got. Job gets the physical presence/manifestation of God.

Swiss theologian Loenhard Ragaz states concisely the divine response to the problem of suffering in Job. “God does not involve himself with arguments for and against his dominion, but lets himself be seen. His answer consists in His manifesting His greatness in powerful speech and creative deeds. This rather than arguments of God’s defenders [Elihu and the three friends] causes Job to go silent and beg God’s forgiveness. He has been afforded no incite into the enigmas that have tormented him, but he has seen God himself” (from The Dimensions of Job, edited by Nahum Glatzer, p.130).

The end of the book of Job is God – Job meets God. In chapter 42, there is a denouement, and what is said there is very important theologically. But, the big issues of justice and suffering are not resolved by book’s end. The only place the reader of Job, attentive to Job’s pain as well as his own, can land is in God. The sum of God’s testimony is to simply show up and be seen. That enough was overwhelming to Job as it would be to anyone.