[00:00:00] Thank you for listening to the Calvary Monterey Podcast.
[00:00:08] Please visit calvary.com to learn more about our church.
[00:00:12] And visit nateholderage.com for additional Bible teaching for our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge.
[00:00:20] Teaching today is our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge.
[00:00:24] All right, good morning church.
[00:00:26] Great to see you here from him. Then we'll finish Exodus the Sunday after mission Sunday. And then after that, we're going to get into the book of Micah together. A little seven chapter prophecy in the Old Testament. It might be the first time for some of you that you've gone from the first verse to the last verse of one of the Old Testament prophets. So it's going to be an honor to be able to go through that book together.
[00:01:44] Before we get into the text today, I just want group if that describes you. Okay, today we're looking at Exodus 32 to 34. It would take us about 20 minutes to just read through that entire passage. So I have selected two portions, the first 10 verses,
[00:03:02] or 11 verses, excuse me, a chapter 32
[00:03:04] and the first 10 of chapter 34.
[00:03:06] We'll put them on the screen, These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.
[00:04:23] In verse 7, the Lord said to Moses, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. Be ready in the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai to present yourself there to me on top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.
[00:05:41] So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first and he rose early in the morning and
[00:05:46] went up on Mount Sinai as the work of the Lord.
[00:07:04] For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you." had seen Yahweh had rescued his people. And just as he had promised Moses at the burning bush, they had come to God's mountain to hear God's voice. And that's what we've been thinking about over the past few chapters in Exodus. There at that mountain,
[00:08:20] God invited these descendants of Abraham and Isaac
[00:08:24] and Jacob to enter into a marriage-like covenant this marriage with God with a blood sacrifice. Then Moses, as we saw a few weeks ago, went up to the top of the mountain to be alone in God's presence for 40 days. During that time, God gave Moses the plans for the tabernacle system that he would use
[00:09:41] as a way to dwell among his people.
[00:09:44] And he also wrote the 10 commandments special people gathered at his tent to commune with him a holy nation and a kingdom of priests centered upon Yahweh. It was beautiful, like I said, it couldn't have been going any better. to consider this morning. But I'm going to drive this episode all the way through to chapter 34, beyond the cliffhanger of God's wrath revealed in chapter 32,
[00:12:20] lest I fail to give the entire picture of who God is.
[00:13:25] and his pain at the self-destructive choices they are making. Though Israel broke their covenant with God down in that valley,
[00:13:27] God restored that covenant at the end of this story
[00:13:31] and brought them right back into his plans.
[00:13:35] So though there's a ton we could draw from these three chapters,
[00:13:38] what we're going to do today is restrain ourselves to three questions.
[00:13:43] First, what's the God of the Old Testament escape pod. Okay, but there's a couple of reasons you can't do that.
[00:15:00] First of all, the Old Testament is our Bible too, yo.
[00:15:03] You know, it took a long time for the New Testament
[00:15:07] to get developed.
[00:15:07] How do you think the early church got launched? deep care, warm feelings and snuggle time. I can't tell you that. And I hesitate to obfuscate with a five dollar word like anthropomorphism. You know, this is just human language describing the feelings or the actions of the divine. Now, the simple and straightforward answer is best. God some reason, God has decided that it's worth his time to invest himself in rescuing his people and fighting for a restoration of all that was lost in the God was explaining a tabernacle system that would create a point of contact between him and his people. They were creating a competing point of contact with a false idol.
[00:19:01] Well, God was detailing to Moses an altar angers him is when his people go into self-destroy mode to rage against the that had cheerleaders at it. And so she came home and she's kind of, she tells us what's going on. And so she mentioned the cheerleaders and I asked her, I'm like, oh, what do you think about the cheerleaders? What was that like for you? And she's like, they were really cool. But they sure spell out a lot of things. That was her comment. B-I-C-T-R-O-Y, kind of deal.
[00:22:42] That's what anger is God. Okay, the second question that I want to ask today,
[00:22:44] and we've already been thinking about it to a degree,
[00:22:46] but is the question, what is God like?
[00:22:49] According to this passage, what is God like?
[00:22:55] This question is the reason I wanted to drive all the way
[00:22:59] to chapter 34 in one sitting.
[00:23:03] Because if we only focused on God's response in chapter 32 you and I will give you rest." So God says, I'm going to go with you. But Moses wanted confirmation of that, so he said a second prayer. He said, if your presence in 3315, he said, if your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. I don't want to go into the promised land if you're not going to go with us. I love you. I love
[00:24:22] the commandments, the law, the covenant, Sinai, butow of his glory and declare his name to his man. So in the morning, Moses cuts two replacement tablets of stone. We haven't thought about it yet, but when he came down the mountain and saw the people doing what they were doing, he threw the stones down the Ten Commandments down.
[00:25:41] They broke.
[00:25:42] These are replacements for that.
[00:25:43] He goes up to Mount Sinai for the seventh time to the word womb. It's like God felt like a mother relating to her rebellious teenager as they did what they were doing in the valley below. Who is God merciful towards? Who does God feel compassion toward? Who does God care for?
[00:27:00] Good people?
[00:27:01] No, the context is God is merciful to faithfulness. This speaks of his authenticity, his integrity, his dependability. Who is he faithful to? Golden calf worshipers. God keeps, he says, his steadfast love for thousands, forgiving, iniquity, and sin. It's his loyalty that extends to thousands of generations.
[00:28:24] Yahweh is going to but radical grace towards golden calf worshipers who want it. He is forgiving. He is loving, but his grace is not a sloppy dish of cheap or spineless love.
[00:29:40] He says he visits sin to the third and fourth generations,
[00:29:43] but that he is prone to dispense grace
[00:29:45] to thousands of generations, far covering the generations It was covenant time. He was ready to move forward with these golden calf worshipers. Just as he is ready to move forward with us in our forms of idolatry today, if we will come to the well that is Yahweh and drink in his grace and forgiveness and mercy.
[00:31:01] So what is God like? That's His description of Himself. out God, your reputation, your character. He's reminding God, he's appealing to God's nature and character and promises. Now I believe that Moses was merely drawing out God's truest nature with his prayers. Speaking and interceding in a way that provided God and avenue to beautifully declare his wonderful character
[00:32:22] over these golden calf worshipers,
[00:32:25] and for Israel to experience that character. has seen what you have done. He reminded them of God. He ground the golden calf into powder, it says, in the text. Put it on water, sprinkled it on water, and made the people drink it. It's like his way of saying, you're going to have to deal with some consequences to your actions.
[00:35:01] God will forgive you. God will give you grace and I'll make a new nation. I'll fulfill all my Abrahamic promises through you, Moses. And Moses goes back up the next day. He's like, I don't want that offer. The offer I want the one who knows the Father so well that he represents the Father with perfection. You need to find the one who fully and totally deals with sin. You need to find the one who invites you into the renewal of repentance.
[00:36:23] You need to find the one who has familial closeness with God. your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen." And when Jesus came around, John seems to have alluded to that when he said in John 1 16, from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace
[00:37:42] for the law was given through Moses,