[Note: The theme for this Lenten series is "stone." I have stones at the church and each week the people are asked to pick up a stone and hold it during the service and then place it at the foot of a wooden cross placed at the front of the sanctuary. Each stone has a meaning. On the Easter, the stones are gone and we do a blooming cross.]
When God liberated the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, He didn’t just dump them in the wilderness, point them towards the Northeast and say, “The Promised Land is that way. Good luck. I hope you make it.” No. He parted the Red Sea and went with them, leading them in a pillar of cloud during the day and column of fire and lightening at night. When they came to Marah, the Lord entered to a covenant with them: “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give heed to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the LORD who heals you” (Exodus 15:26). Heal them Exodus from what? Well, four hundred years of servitude. Plus they had just witnessed God’s power crush the most powerful people in that region, culminating in the death of every Egyptians’ eldest son and God wants to reassure them what they saw Him do to the Egyptians He would never do to them. Having God on their side had to be pretty reassuring but … they saw what God could do if He were, shall we say, displeased or angry with them.
God took advantage of the time that they would spend in the wilderness to begin building a relationship with them. When the people began to run out of food, God rained bread down from Heaven. Each day the people were to go out and gather enough for that day. “In that way,” said God, “I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not” (Exodus 16:4). Sounds a bit scary, doesn’t it? God testing them? But it is important to remember that God doesn’t want to see them fail. He wants them to trust Him, to have faith in Him because they are going to need to trust Him and have faith in Him if they are going to make it to the Promised Land. Plus, a lasting relationship must start on the basis of trust and faith, right? A relationship based on fear and distrust isn’t going to last very long unless it changes, amen? God doesn’t want that kind of relationship. He wants the Israelites to know that they can trust and depend on Him because He loves them. “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God” (Exodus 16:12). We hear it all the time, but let that sink in: “I am the Lord YOUR God” (Exodus 16:12; emphasis added). Whose God? OUR God. YOUR God.
We have to remember that all this was new for the Israelites. For four hundred years they’ve lived in a pagan land that worshipped many gods. For four hundred years it seemed like God had turned His back on them, was ignoring their prayers, or off somewhere in the universe doing God things and was either too busy or too unaware of what was happening to them. What we see in the wilderness is God attempting to build a relationship with the Israelites.
Stay with me now because what I’m about to talk about is, in fact, related to what is happening to the people in the wilderness. When you meet that person who you think might be that “special someone” you date, right? The point of dating is to get to know each other. It may start out with general conversation … favorite food, favorite music, favorite movie. At the same time, you’re seeing how well you get along. Is this person nice? Kind? Funny? Considerate? Punctual? Do they measure up to the standards that you have for a possible husband or wife? Are they for real or just putting up a front to get what they want and then disappear after they get it? As time goes on, you get to know more and more about each other and, eventually, you reach a point where you feel that you can trust this person. You decide that you want to build a future with them, they feel that they can trust you and want to build a future with you, and you both decide to enter into a marriage covenant.
When a couple decides to enter into a marriage covenant, they make certain promises to each other, don’t they? The husband promises to love his wife, to honor her and cherish her, to take care of her until death … and hopefully beyond … and the wife pledges to do the same. These vows are not made so that the husband can control or dominate the wife. Nor are they made so that the wife can control and dominate her husband. The conditions of the marriage are expressions and promises of love. There are certain things that the husband promises to do because he loves his wife and there are certain things that the wife promises to do because she loves her husband … and this is what God is attempting to establish with the Israelites in the wilderness. He makes certain promises to the Israelites and asks them to make certain promises to Him and the goal of the promises is to create an environment where their love and faith and trust of each other can flourish and grow.
Nobody enters into a marriage covenant hoping that it will fail? At least, I hope not. That wouldn’t make any sense, would it? If you’re hoping the marriage will fail, save both yourself and them the trouble and heartache and don’t enter into a covenant with them to begin with, amen? When God promised them bread and meat, He didn’t want them to fail. He wanted them to learn that they could trust Him, that He was true to His word and was going to take care of them. Like dating, it was important for God and the Israelites to establish a foundation of trust before they entered into a more permanent arrangement.
When the time was right, God brought them to the place where He and Moses first spoke … Mount Horeb … now referred to as Mount Sinai. God called Moses to come to him and explained to him that He wanted to enter into a more official covenant with the people:
“Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the people. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:3-6).
There is a lot of preparation before a wedding, right? It’s an important day, amen? The day that the Israelites entered into a covenant with God was a very, very important day, amen? And God asked them to prepare. “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow,” God explained to Moses. “Have them wash their clothes and prepare for the third day, because on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people” (Exodus 19:10-11) … and the people did as they were commanded and prepared themselves to become a priestly and holy nation. “Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do,” they promised (Exodus 19:8).
Once a couple makes their wedding vows before God and the community, they exchange rings. The ring is a visible sign of their pledge to love and honor and cherish each other. After entering into a covenant with God, God calls Moses to come and sit down with Him so that He could give him the conditions of the covenant … written in stone. God and the Israelites had already agreed to the conditions of the covenant. The Bible says that when “Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the ordinances … all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.’ And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. … Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient’” (Exodus 24:3, 7) … and then Moses sealed the covenant by sprinkling the people with the blood of oxen sacrificed “as offerings of well-being to the LORD” (Exodus 24:5).
Carving the covenant in stone makes a pretty significant point, does it not? Stone, as we discussed last week, is permanent … it was the most permanent material they had out in the wilderness and, like their relationship with God, was meant to last not just a lifetime but for hundreds and thousands of generations. It was also a symbol of God’s strength in that He wrote the commandments in stone with His finger.
The Israelites affirmed that they understood the conditions of their relationship with God on more than a few occasions. Remember: “All the people answered with one voice, and said, ‘All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do’” (Exodus 24:3). Their bond was sealed with the blood of oxen and literally carved in stone … and yet … while God was in the process of carving their covenant into stone … while they were still on the honeymoon, so to speak … the people who swore that they would be obedient to all the words that God had spoken cheated on God.
“When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ Aaron said to them, ‘Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.’ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it into a mold, and cast an image of the calf … They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel” (Exodus 32:1-4, 6).
Imagine for just one moment finding out that your spouse, your beloved, the one to whom you have pledged your heart to is cheating on you. You don’t just find out that they’re cheating on you … you actually catch them in the act. It would devastate you … break your heart … shatter it into a thousand pieces, amen? Can we even begin to comprehend the sense of crushing betrayal that God felt. He had freed them from bondage and abuse. Crushed the army of their enemy. Paved the way for them in the wilderness. Provided them with food and water. Protected them. They saw His heart. They saw His intention. They pledged their love and support … and yet, even before the ink has had a chance to dry on the marriage license, so to speak … they lust after another god … one fashioned out of the gold earrings and jewelry that God had had their enemy give them before they fled into the wilderness.
“Go down at once!” God commands Moses. “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely” (Exodus 32:7) … not “my people who I brought up out of Egypt” but “Your people who you, Moses, have brought up out of the land of Egypt” … “they 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 … I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation” (Exodus 62:8-10). He made a great multitude with Abraham and Sarah, He could do the same with Moses and his wife, Zipporah, amen?
Moses pleads for the people. “O LORD, why does your wrath burn so hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” (Exodus 32:11). He reminds God of His great love for the Israelites and God, says the Bible, “changed his mind about the disaster that He planned to bring on His people” (Exodus 32:14) … but then Moses gets to see the infidelity of the Israelites for himself and experiences the hurt and rage that God felt. “Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and the back. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:15-16). A love letter written in stone by the very hand of God. “As soon as [Moses] came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain” (Exodus 32:19).
Now, the reason for writing the covenant in stone was to signify both the durability and the strength of God’s word. If I take this rock, for example, and drop it to the ground [drop stone] … nothing. See … it’s alright. Even if I throw it down as hard as I can … nothing. It would take a lot to break this stone. It took a lot for the Israelites to break the stone tablets. If Moses just dropped them, they probably wouldn’t have broken. Even if he threw them down … but … the visual effect of the stone tables shattering must have had a powerful effect on them … I know it would me. It would have had the same force or impact as a betrayed spouse tossing their wedding ring your face or watching them yank off their wedding ring and throwing it as far as possible in the weeds or a lake … signifying that relationship has been broken … most likely forever.
Please take your rock and hold it in your hand [show stone]. Imagine that you were there that day, dancing and singing around the golden calf. Imagine seeing the look on Moses’ face when he sees what you are doing. Imagine his rage as he throws the tablets against the rocks and it shatters into a thousand pieces. Imagine that that stone in your hand is a piece of one of the tablets … maybe even try to picture some of God’s handwriting on it. How much shame and grief would you feel knowing that it wasn’t God who broke the covenant but you … that your sin, your broken promise broke God’s heart? That, my brothers and sisters, is something that I can’t imagine.
God describes the Israelites as “a stiff-necked people” (Exodus 32:9). A “stiff-necked” person is someone who is prideful, haughty, stuck-up, stubborn. The image of begin “stiff-necked” is that of a person who is “stiff” … inflexible … unwilling to bend or change. A “hard heart” … a heart of stone … likewise describes a person whose heart is hard, inflexible, impenetrable, incapable of change. The Bible uses these terms interchangeably. For example, it describes King Zedekiah as someone who “stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD” (2nd Chronicles 36:13).
When we think of a person whose heart has been hardened, we think of a heart that does not obey God. What kind of person do you picture with a hard heart? Cold? Unforgiving? Mean? A hard heart could cause a person to be like that. Jesus warned His Disciples that what comes out of the mouth comes out of the heart: “… what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:18-19). On another occasion, Jesus tells them: “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speak” (Luke 6:45).
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure,” says God. “Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Well … God can. "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17:10). Lent is a time to remember that … a time to invite God to come into our hearts and reveal the areas of our hearts where we refuse to obey … refuse to surrender to God’s will. And here’s why we need God’s help. As God said, when it comes to the human heart, “Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
Do you realize that our defiance can take many forms? We tend to think of a hard heart, a defiant heart as hostile to God … like Jonah, who refused to go to Nineveh … until he spent three days in the belly of a whale, amen? Like Samson, who drank wine and flirted with Delilah … until he revealed the secret of his strength … which wasn’t his hair, by the way, but his relationship with God. There was the prophet Balaam, who advised Balak, the king of the Moabites, to entice the young men of Israel with their beautiful women. Jonah knew it was wrong … but he was scared. Samson knew it was wrong … but he was arrogant. Balaam knew it was wrong … but he did it for the money.
And then there’s David … a man after God’s own heart. When he sent for Bathsheba and seduced her, he knew it was wrong. When he had her husband sent to the front to be killed in battle, he knew that it was wrong. And yet, the Lord forgave him. Samson got his strength back when he confessed his sin and restored his relationship with the God. Nineveh was spared because Jonah literally changed direction and answered God’s call to go and preach there.
The title to Psalm 81 is “God’s Appeal to Stubborn Israel.” In it, God bemoans the fact Israel did not listen to His voice; “Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels. O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes. Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him, and their doom would last forever. I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you” (Psalm 81:11-16).
When a person is insistent on their own way, the Lord may allow them to do what they want but they will always reap the consequences. “God’s government is a government of free moral choice; the Lord does not force the human will. He instructs man that disobedience brings destruction but does not stop man’s wrong choices” (bibleask.org/what-is-the-story-of-balaam-and-the-talking-donkey).
God re-carved the Ten Commandments in stone and the Israelites reaffirmed their commitment to God and God kept His promise and led them to the Promised Land but their fear kept them from doing what they knew was right, what God wanted, and they suffered the consequences for their disobedience by wandering in the wilderness for 40 years instead of 40 days.
Peter is the perfect example of why we need to ask God to search our hearts. Peter was a man of faith and passion. When Jesus called him to become a disciple, he dropped his nets, his livelihood and followed Jesus. I can’t imagine how much it must have pained Peter’s heart to hear Jesus talking about His upcoming trials and execution. Imagine how your heart would feel to hear a loved one with cancer talking about their death. Some of you know how that feels. I remember how it made me feel when my great-grandmother would talk about “going home” soon and I would beg her to stop saying that because it broke my heart and I didn’t want to feel like that. It pained me to hear her talk like that just as it no doubt pained Peter to hear Jesus talk like that. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22). His anger, his “rebuke” as Matthew records it, came from his love for Jesus. Jesus’ painful words came from Jesus’ love for His Disciples as He prepared them for what was to come and what was going to happen to Him … and Jesus’ stinging rebuke of Peter also came from His love for Peter because Peter was being blinded by his love and affection for Jesus. God had a purpose, a plan … as sad and gruesome as it seemed at the time … and Jesus needed for all His Disciples to be ready for what was about to happen. “You are a stumbling block to me” … meaning that Peter’s pain could cause Him to stumble because of the love that He felt for Peter … just as Mary and Martha’s pain caused Jesus to weep outside of the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus calls Peter “Satan” and a “stumbling block” because his mind was set on human things, like his feelings, and not on divine things … like God’s plan for our salvation … and it is that love that can blind us and make us disobedient because it may cause people that we love to suffer. We hold on to sick loved ones because we love them so much and losing them would cause us to suffer … and so we pray for their healing … refusing to let them go … refusing to accept that this is part of God’s plan … a plan that would end their suffering for all time and bring them eternal peace with God, our Father, in Heaven. We know they have to go. We know that this is all a part of God’s plan for them … but we don’t want to let them go so our hearts blind us and we don’t see what we’re doing as disobedience or hindering God’s plans. When Jesus spoke Mary’s name outside the empty tomb and she recognized Him, Jesus told her not to hold on to Him “because I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17).
When Jesus knew that His hour to depart had come, He told the Disciples: “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’” (John 13:33). This time, Peter’s love moves him to make a promise that he can’t keep: “I will lay down my life for You” (John 13:37) … but Jesus knows that Peter’s mouth is writing a check that his heart can’t cash. “Will you lay down your life for me?” He asks Peter. “Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times” (John 13:38). And, as we know, Peter does deny Jesus three times before the cock crows … and when that happens, Peter is absolutely devastated … as would any of us here would be, I suspect, amen?
There are several places in the Bible where God promised to give us new hearts … hearts for Him alone … but in order for Him to give us new hearts, hearts of flesh, hearts for Him alone, He has to break our hearts of stone. Peter’s heart was broken. Just as God gave Moses a new set of stone tablets and renewed His covenant with the Israelites, Jesus came back and renewed Peter’s call. “Do you love me, Peter?” “Yes, Lord … you know that I care for you very much.” Peter is afraid to make another rash promise that he can’t keep. “Then feed my lambs,” says Jesus. “Let me ask you again, do you love me, Peter?” “You know that I care for you very much.” “Then tend my sheep.” “Okay, Peter, if you’re not willing or you’re afraid to admit that you love me, do you at least care for me?” Hurt, fearful that Jesus is asking him to make a commitment that he probably can’t keep, he just can’t face the pain of letting Jesus down … again … and so he answers: “Lord, you know everything. I made a promise I couldn’t keep last time and You knew I couldn’t keep it … why make another promise that You and I know I probably won’t be able to keep. You know my heart and You know much I hate to let you down.” “I understand, Peter, and I do know your heart and I know that you will go and feed my lambs and tend my sheep and even give your life for them.”
You see, the same God who put flesh on dry, dead bones and gave them a new heart could give the people of Israel a new heart and put a new spirit within them … and the same God who could put a new heart and new spirit in the people of Israel could also put a new heart and a new spirit in His Disciples … and if He could put a new heart and a new spirit in His Disciples He can also put a new heart and a spirit in us, amen?
“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt – a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
And we see the truth of this and we see the heart of love that God has for us every time we look at the cross, amen?
Before you leave today, please leave your stone ... representing your heart of stone ... at the foot of the cross.
