Pentecost 17
Exodus 32:7-14
Bread and butter. Salt and pepper. Ketchup and mustard. Peanut butter and jelly. Some things seem to just naturally go together. Some things don’t. Vanilla pudding and pork. Strawberries and butter. Cornflakes and salt. Some people have made a living by putting together two things dissimilar. Think of the singer Madonna. Named after the original Madonna, the Virgin Mary. When Madonna first came to fame in the mid – 1980’s, her “trademark” was the cross. But is there any similarity between Madonna and the Virgin Mary? How well do the themes and subjects that Madonna preaches mirror the message of the cross? Not a whole lot. She has taken two very different things, the way of the world, and Christianity, and tried to sandwich them together, with I think we all can agree not very good results.
That’s exactly what Moses’ brother Aaron tried to do. He tried to take the Lord, the only God (the very Jealous God) and sandwich him together with a golden calf. It didn’t work out too well. You see, God doesn’t mix well with some things. You can’t join a jealous God to an idol. But God does mix very well with intercession: fervent, selfless prayer.
Part I
Aaron wasn’t trying to make up a new god when he made the golden calf. The Israelites simply wanted a god like everyone else had. A god they could see. The most they could see of the Lord was through Moses, and he had been on that mountain forever, and who knows if he was ever coming back. “So Aaron, make us a god!” Moses’ brother reasoned that he if would make this bull, and call it the god that had taken them out of Egypt, then all sides would be happy! The people who wanted a god they could see and touch would have one! The ones who still wanted to worship the Lord, well, they were worshipping the Lord as they worshipped this calf. And God, well, he was a winner too! Not even Moses could have worked such a spiritual reawakening in Israel.
Just a little problem: God wasn’t too thrilled about sharing his glory with a grass-eating animal. And listen how he distances himself from the sinful Israelites as he speaks to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.” You can sense God’s anger rising as he lays out his argument. “[They] have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.’” They didn’t give God their gold, but they gladly gave it to make a lifeless statue. They didn’t bow down to their Maker, but happily bowed down to something they had made. They didn’t sacrifice their lives to the Lord who would give his Son’s life for them, but they merrily indulged any sinful pleasure in “worship” to their new god, a god who understood that there shouldn’t be so many rules because they needed to have some fun in life. Finally, they refused to give credit to the Lord for the 10 Plagues that sprung them from being Egyptian slaves. They wouldn’t admit that the Lord had delivered them through the waters of the Red Sea. They didn’t want to accept that the Lord gave them manna in the morning and quail at night, and water from the rock. Instead, they chose to give all this credit to a dumb statue. Is there any surprise that God said to Moses, “now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
God came this close to wiping out the Israelites because they tried to connect him to an idol. Watch out for the times we do the very same thing. I don’t think that any of you have made a statue and danced around it. But there are plenty of things out there that we dance around and act as if they are our gods. These hurricanes have a way of exposing what is so important to us and what can become our gods. Imagine going without power for a whole week –hell! Go without TV and internet for a week –awful! Go without hot water and air conditioning for a week –unpleasant! Go without church for a week –no big deal. Always next week or the week after that if I miss. Some things are so hard to live without. Sometimes we make God easy to live without. Like Israel, we make trivial things so important and necessary, and we complain when we don’t have them, while God, the most important and most necessary thing, becomes an afterthought, something we might even enjoy a little break from. A job is a blessing that can turn into a false god. It isn’t that uncommon for any of us to put in a few extra hours at work. We do it all the time. But if the Lord is more important to you than your profession, how often do you give God a few extra hours each week? Or doesn’t he always seem to get only the “left-over” time (that is, little or no time). After I put in all my time at work, and after I do the things for the family, and after I take care of the house, and after I rest, and after I watch the game I’ve been waiting all week to see, then I’ll see how much time I have for the Lord. We dance around idols and serve the false gods of vacations, money, little teeny-weeny pet sins that are no big deal, houses, cars, and we would like to believe that God is ok with us splitting our reverence for him with these things. And we so easily forget that God is the owner of all our time. He is the owner of all our money and things. And it should all be used to his glory. But there’s that little part in each of us that wants to be like Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), and keep back a little of that for ourselves. God just doesn’t mix very well with any false god – even the 2004 models.
Part II
During the first years of the Civil War, the North didn’t have many victories. President Abraham Lincoln kept replacing general after general, hoping to find one who could give him a win. After the Battle of Chancellorsville (which as you might guess, the North lost), someone asked him if he was going to replace his brand-new general, who was now 0-1. Lincoln’s response still survives, “I’m not going to throw away a gun just because it misfires once.”
The just Lord could throw us sinners away into hell the first time we misfire, and he’d be perfectly correct to do it. But he hasn’t. There isn’t a lot of good news in the first half of our text, but we can sense a little of it: God lets Moses know about his plans before he carries them out. The Lord wants Moses to speak up on behalf of Israel. And God places before Moses a huge test, “Leave me alone…that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
What would you have done if God had offerred to make a great nation out of you? My sinful nature would have jumped at the chance. Moses could have said, “good plan, God. You’re right, those people are all bad, not worth saving. Even my stupid brother is leading them in their sin. And that part about making a new nation out of me? Sounds like a great plan, Lord.” But Moses doesn’t. He pleads for these sinners. One of the Psalms (106) paints a picture of what Moses did, “so [God] said he would destroy them – had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.” A breach was when an enemy made a hole in a walled city. Then all the enemy army could pour through that breach and capture the city. The picture in the Psalm is the evil Israelites are in the city. God is outside, wanting to destroy them. God has made a hole in their wall and is just about to go in, and then Moses jumps in front of God and stops him. And how on earth does Moses “fight off” an angry God? He doesn’t make God go away by excusing Israel’s sin. He can’t fight off God by saying that Israel deserves another chance, or that they could make it up to God. So he appeals to his love, forgiveness, and grace. Remember how God had called Israel “your people, Moses”? Moses turns that around and says, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt?” Moses wants the Lord not to look at them as rotten, stinking sinners, but as God’s own children, who need love and guidance from their very Father. Moses recalls God’s promises to faithful Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In short, Moses intercedes for Israel. And that is one word that naturally goes together with the Lord. God sure doesn’t mind one bit when people intercede on behalf of others. Think of all the people who have interceded for you, people who stood in the breach between you and an angry God and prayed, “Lord do not hold their sins against them.” When you were baptized as a baby, a congregation of believers interceded for you that the Lord would wash away your sins, and keep you his child forever. That wasn’t just a nice-sounding prayer at your baptism, it was intercession. If you came to faith later in life, I can tell you that your spiritual leaders prayed for you often. How many family members, Christian friends, and people here in your church family have interceded on behalf of you during your lifetime?
And someone is interceding for you right now. He intercedes for you every time you sin. St. John wrote about this intercessor, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Sometimes we people forget to pray for others. We aren’t the most faithful intercessors for each other. And so we have Jesus, who never fails you. Christ sees all your sins, but then immediately reminds his Father that he took care of them. John talked about an “atoning sacrifice.” “To atone” means to make two things one. When Jesus paid for our sins on the cross, he atoned for them: he made us one with God. And now he is at God’s right hand, constantly reminding his Father that, “no, you cannot rightfully punish them, because I took that sentence for them.”
We stand before God today, knowing that we haven’t kept even the first commandment – having no other gods. We’ve made gods out of many things in our life, and oftentimes we have forgotten that our entire life is to be one of worship. But Jesus, asks his Father not to hold these sins against us. And then he wishes us to understand that whatever we are doing, be it working, going on vacation, working on the house, or whatever, we worship God when we do these things to his glory. For example, work can become a god when it takes over our life, but it can be worship when we pray, “Lord, thank you for my job. Help me to be diligent. Make me a Christian example today in all I do. Give me chances today to open my mouth and tell someone about Jesus.” You see how a day at work can be worship as we use that time to not just make money, but look out for the spiritual needs of others? It works for whatever we do. Intercession mixes very well with God. The Lord wants you to pray for that server who brings you your food at the restaurant. You can intercede by striking up a conversation with the person fixing a hole in your roof about where they go to church, and if they haven’t been there in a while, you can bring them along with you. Think of the few dozen people you talk to each day, fellow students, neighbors, people at work, people at the store, relatives on the phone, wherever. Each one of those people gives you chances to be a Moses: to pray to the Lord that he won’t hold their sins against them, that somehow (maybe through you) they will hear about Christ and learn about God’s free forgiveness, and God’s free heaven.
Conclusion
That’s really why we are here, aren’t we? If we had no spiritual work to do, we’d all be in heaven right now. May God help us to remember that idols sure don’t mix very well with him or the Christian life, but intercession fits right in with what God and what he wants us to do. God give you the strength to fight against the world’s gods, to make the Lord the only God in your life, and to daily, hourly serve that Lord by praying for and witnessing to others, others who desperately need you to stand in the breach for them. Amen.
sdg
