A little boy was sitting sadly on the curb beside his lawn mower, when along came a preacher riding a bicycle. The preacher noticed the sad little boy and decided he would try to help.
“Hello there!” said the preacher. “How would you like to trade your lawn mower for this bicycle?
“Sure, mister,” the boy responded, and went on his merry way.
A few days later, the boy and the preacher saw each other again. The preacher said, “I think you tricked me on our trade. I keep crankin' that old lawn mower, but it won't start.”
“You gotta cuss it,” said the boy.
“Well I can't do that,” said the preacher. “I'm a minister. I forgot about cussin' a long time ago.”
The boy answered, “Just keep on crankin', preacher; it'll come back to ya.” (Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentucky; www.PreachingToday.com)
We get angry about so many things, and most of the time it’s inappropriate. But there are some things we should be angry about. We’re studying the life of Moses, and very rarely do we see him angry. So when he does get angry, it grabs our attention and make us think about the appropriateness of our own anger.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Exodus 32, Exodus 32, where we see one of those rare occasions when Moses got really angry. He had just spent 40 days and 40 nights with the Lord on Mt. Sinai (Deuteronomy 9:11). There, God gave Moses His holy law inscribed on two tablets of stone, but the people down below were already breaking that law.
Exodus 32:15-20 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.” Moses replied: “It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.” When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. (NIV)
Moses was extremely angry, and rightfully so. The people had broken God’s first two commandments: You shall have no other gods before me; and You shall not make for yourselves an idol. Then on top of that they were breaking the 7th commandment: You shall not commit adultery – they were involved in a drunken orgy and called it “worship.”
They were breaking God’s law, so Moses broke the tablets of stone on which God’s law was inscribed. Then he took the gold-plated calf idol, burned the wood, ground the gold into powder, and made the people drink the ashes and powder, which he had thrown into their drinking water. It showed them the worthlessness of their idol, and it no doubt made them sick to their stomachs, demonstrating that their sin had terrible and sickening consequences for the entire nation (cf. Numbers 5:18-22).
This was no trite matter. This was a severe breach of God’s law, which could destroy the entire nation in its infancy. That’s why Moses got mad – not because HE was hurt, no. Moses got mad, because he saw God’s people destroying themselves by their own willful disobedience.
And sin should make us angry too. When people deliberately disobey God, it should make us extremely angry, because their actions hurt not only themselves, it hurts their families and the people around them. The problem is too many of us stand idly by, saying, “Who am I to judge?” Then we wonder why immorality is now running rampant and destroying our country, our churches, and our families. No! If we want to deal with the sin problem that is wreaking havoc in our society, we must…
BE ANGRY.
Sin should make us mad. Willful disobedience should tick us off like it did Moses.
The problem is: we get angry over the wrong stuff. We get angry when OUR feelings are hurt, or when WE are inconvenienced, not when people’s sin hurt themselves and those around them.
In 1988, William Finnegan spent two months in Mozambique talking with victims of that terrible war and the famine it had caused. A year later, he wrote about his experiences in The New Yorker, saying, “By far the most emotional voices I heard were in the capital city, Maputo, where great bellows of rage and grief often woke me in the mornings. The sufferers were always the same South African and Portuguese businessmen, playing tennis on the courts below my hotel room window.” (William Finnegan, in The New Yorker, May 29, 1989; www.PreachingToday.com)
They were mad at misplaced shots and perceived infractions, not about the slaughter of thousands of innocent people.
Dr. Stephen L. Anderson, a professor in Ontario, Canada, had what he called a moment of “startling clarity” while teaching a section on ethics in his senior philosophy class. He needed an “attention-getter” – something to shock his students and force them to take an ethical stand. He hoped to form a “baseline” from which they could evaluate other ethical decisions.
So he decided to open the class by simply displaying, without comment, the photo of Bibi Aisha. Aisha was an Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who abused her and kept her with his animals. When she tried to run away, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains…
People at a nearby American hospital had rescued her, but the picture was horrific (show picture). Aisha's beautiful eyes stared hauntingly back above the mangled hole that was once her nose. Some of Dr. Anderson’s students could not even raise their eyes to look at it. He could see that they were experiencing deep emotions, and he felt quite sure that his students, seeing the suffering of this poor girl their own age, would have a clear ethical reaction, but that's not what he got.
Instead, his students became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture. They said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it's okay.” Another said, “It's just wrong to judge other cultures.”
Dr. Anderson wondered, “How can kids who have been so thoroughly basted in the language of minority rights be so numb to a clear moral offense?” And no matter how he prodded, they did not leave their nonjudgmental position. Dr. Anderson said, “I left that class shaking my head. It seemed clear to me that for some students… the lesson of character education initiatives is acceptance of all things at all costs… For them, the overriding message is ‘never judge, never criticize, never take a position.’” (Dr. Stephen L. Anderson, “Moments of Startling Clarity,” Education Forum, Fall 2011; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s what we’ve come to in the North American continent. There is no moral outrage over any kind of sin, even the most heinous of sins. Then we wonder why rampant immorality and idolatry is destroying our nation and its families.
My dear friends, if we want to bring healing to our land, then 1st of all, we must get mad over the sin that is destroying us. There must be a moral outrage. If we want to deal with the sin problem, we must be angry. Then 2nd, we must…
BE HONEST.
We must take responsibility for your own sin. We must be truthful about what we did without trying to blame it on someone else. After Moses displays his anger, he demands an account.
Exodus 32:21-24 He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” (NIV)
Aaron says, “It wasn’t my fault. The people made me do it. I threw their gold into the fire and out popped this calf!” How ludicrous! Aaron had actually fashioned the calf himself (Exodus 32:4), but he refuses to take responsibility for his own actions. Moses demands an account, but all Aaron can do is pass the blame.
My friends, that’s no way to deal with sin. Rather, we need to be open and honest about our sin, frankly admitting our own fault in the matter without casting blame.
1 John 1 says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us (lit., loose us from) our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
If we want to be set free from our sins and clean again on the inside, we must first of all be honest about our sin. We must confess it before God and those we have wronged if we are going to be set free from its destructive influence in our lives.
Now, an open and honest confession has no “if’s,” “and’s,” our “but’s.” “I’m sorry IF I offended you” just doesn’t cut it. Neither does, “I’m sorry, BUT such-and-such happened, AND I couldn’t help myself.” No! These are not true, open and honest confessions.
A person who is truly honest will simply say, “I’m sorry I did such-and-such. I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?” This is the kind of confession that promotes a true healing of relationships and deliverance from the destructive influence of sin in our lives.
James 5 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16).
The “you” is plural there. James is talking to a whole church, struggling with sin, which threatens to divide and destroy them (see James 4:1ff). And he says to that church: if you want healing in your relationships, if you want deliverance from the attitudes and actions that are tearing you apart, then you must start by confessing your own sins to one another.
The journalist, Sebastian Junger, released his book, entitled War, just a couple of years ago (2010). And in that book, he talks about his experience in Afghanistan following a single platoon of U.S. soldiers for 15 months in one of the most dangerous parts of that country. That experience made Junger realize how much the soldiers had to rely on each other living and working in a warzone. What you do or don't do as a soldier affects everyone else in your platoon. Junger writes:
“Margins were so small and errors potentially so catastrophic that every soldier had a kind of de facto authority to reprimand others—in some cases even officers. And because combat can hinge on [small] details, there was nothing in a soldier's daily routine that fell outside the group's purview. Whether you tied your shoes or cleaned your weapon or drank enough water or secured your night vision gear were all matters of public concern and so were open to public scrutiny.
“Once I watched a private accost another private whose bootlaces were trailing on the ground. Not that he cared what it looked like, but if something happened out there – and out there, everything happened suddenly – the guy with the loose laces couldn't be counted on to keep his feet at a crucial moment. It was the other man's life he was risking, not just his own… There was no such thing as personal safety out there; what happened to you happened to everyone.” (Sebastian Junger, War, Twelve, 2010, p. 160; www.PreachingToday.com)
Sin is bad enough if it just affects one person, but it doesn’t. It affects everyone; it affects the entire church. So we must deal with it forthrightly and honestly before it destroys us as a church.
Let me tell you: we are involved in a war that is far more dangerous than anything that happens in Afghanistan. We are involved in a battle for the hearts and minds of people, a battle not against flesh and blood, but against demonic forces which will stop at nothing to destroy us if they can.
So we cannot afford to ignore the sin issues in our midst. We cannot afford to excuse them or pretend they aren’t important. No! If we want to bring healing to our land, to our churches and to our families, we must be angry about the sin in our lives; we must be honest; and 3rd, we must…
BE RUTHLESS.
We must be extreme. We must be radical in our dealings with unrepentant sin.
After Moses displays his anger and demands an account, he requires action; he calls for a severe response to those who refuse to turn from their sins.
Exodus 32:25-29 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ ” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.” (NIV)
Evidently, there were still some people who refused to stop worshipping the golden calf even after Moses ground it into powder and made them drink it. They were unrepentant, so Moses calls for their execution.
Now, you have to remember that this is the role of government. Moses is not acting as an individual seeking personal revenge. He is acting as the ruler of the nation, along with the Levites, who are government officials in this theocracy.
The law required capital punishment for idolatry. Exodus 22:20 says, “Whoever sacrifices to any other god than the LORD must be destroyed.” It was a serious offense, because such idolatry would lead to horrendous practices like child sacrifice and gross immorality, which actually happened later in Israel’s history.
It was (and is) the role of government to “bear the sword,” Romans 13:4 says, i.e., to execute capital punishment on those who commit capital offenses. That’s all Moses and the Levites were doing here. They were fulfilling their role as government officials, and they didn’t do it indiscriminately.
They only went after the unrepentant, and only 3,000 were executed that day out of 2 to 3 million! A whole lot more should have been executed, according to the Law, but only 1/10th of 1% were actually killed. That’s a very small number in terms of the total population; so even though the punishment was severe, there was a lot of grace and mercy demonstrated that day.
And that’s the only way to deal with unrepentant sin in our midst. In the context of a lot of grace and mercy, we too must be severe in our dealing with sin. Now, we’re not the government, so we’re not going to execute anybody. But the New Testament makes it very clear: when there is willful, deliberate sin in the church, the church has an obligation to expel those who refuse to repent.
1 Corinthians 5 addresses a situation where a man was sleeping with his step-mother. The church ignored it and boasted about how tolerant and loving they were. Well, Paul tells them, “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast… Expel the wicked man from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:6-7,13).
Now, it is NOT the business of the church to judge those OUTSIDE the church. 1 Corinthians 5 makes that very clear, but 1 Corinthians 5 also makes it just as clear (vs.12) that it IS the business of the church to judge those INSIDE the church.
Why? So that we can make people feel miserable. No! We do it so that the unrepentant sinner realizes the seriousness of his or her sin and turns from it before it destroys them. 1 Corinthians 5 says, “Hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 5:5).
You see, we deal ruthlessly with sin not only to protect the church from further contamination; we do it out of love for the sinner. Judgment is NOT antithetical to love; it is actually an expression of love.
That’s what Miroslav Volf learned. He is a Christian theologian from Croatia, who used to reject the concept of God's wrath. He thought that the idea of an angry God was “barbaric, completely unworthy of a God of love,” but then his country experienced a brutal war. Here’s what he says in his book Free of Charge:
“My last resistance to the idea of God's wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. “Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days!
“How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators' basic goodness? Wasn't God fiercely angry with them?
“Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God's wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn't wrathful at the sight of the world's evil. God isn't wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.” (Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, Zondervan, 2006, pp. 138-139; www.PreachingToday.com)
If the sin that destroys people doesn’t make us angry and move us to appropriate action, then we really don’t care. It’s only those who really care that do the hard work of addressing sin when they see it destroying the life of someone they love.
My dear friends, if we want see healing in our land, our churches and our families, we must be angry about the sin in our lives; we must be honest; we must be ruthless; and finally, we must…
BE HUMBLE.
We must throw ourselves upon the mercy and grace of God. We must rely on God’s unfailing love freely given to anyone who acknowledges their sin and depends on Him for deliverance from that sin.
After Moses displays anger, demands an account, and requires action against unrepentant sin, he seeks atonement. He begs for mercy and asks God to forgive their sin.
Exodus 32:30-32 The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”(NIV)
This is God’s census of all the living. In Bible days, rulers kept a book with a list of all their living citizens; but when a citizen died, his or her name was erased from that book. Well, that’s what Moses asks God to do. He is offering his life for theirs. He is saying, “Kill me instead of them. Blot my name out of your book of living citizens, not theirs.”
Exodus 32:33-35 The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.” And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made. (NIV)
Moses’ death could not atone (or cover) for the sins of his people, because Moses himself was a sinner. Instead, everyone had to pay for their own sins, and so many people died that day.
But there was coming a day when the death of Another would atone not only for the sins of the nation of Israel, but for the sins of the whole world. 1500 years later, Jesus died on a cross, so that none of us would ever have to die for our sins again.
1 John 2:2 says, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”
Paul Harvey used to tell a story about Lieutenant Commander Edward Henry “Butch” O'Hare. He was the Navy's number-one ace in the Second World War and the first naval aviator ever to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport is named for him, but none of that would have been possible if someone else hadn’t paid a high price.
That “someone else” was Butch's father, Edward J. O'Hare, a slick lawyer for the gangster Al Capone. “Artful Eddie,” as he was called, had money and power, but one day he gave the authorities all the information they needed to arrest Capone. Why? Well, he wanted to give his son a break, he said. Before long, the mob silenced Artful Eddie with two shotgun blasts.
But because of Eddie's sacrifice, his son Butch was accepted at Annapolis: Eddie's confession and subsequent death satisfied admissions people that the family's mob connections were severed. Artful Eddie paid with his own life for his son's chance to succeed in life. (Steven D. Mathewson, Helena, Montana, Leadership, Vol. 12, no. 1; www.PreachingToday.com)
Do you know: that’s what Jesus did for us on the cross? He paid with his own life to give us an opportunity to experience eternal life. Just put your trust in Him. Wholly lean on Christ. Quit trying to save yourself and depend on Christ to save you from all your sins. For He will indeed give you a new life if you humble yourself before Him. This is really the only way to deal with the sin problem in all our lives.
