Speaking of Life 5047 | Acknowledging God’s Faithfulness
This week we’re sharing a Speaking of Life message from our archive as a supplemental resource. We encourage you to use this for reflection and preparation, or small group discussion. For your worship gathering, consider how a call to worship from a local voice or contextualized introduction to the theme might serve your congregation well.
Watch video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szInJ4OHMog
Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 5047 | Acknowledging God’s Faithfulness
Cara Garrity
Last year I adopted two golden retriever puppies, Bumi and Zuko. One of the most endearing things they do is greet me with all their excitement when I return home. They’ll run up to me wagging their tails, then run around looking for toys to bring me. Sometimes I’ll even let them be a little naughty and jump on me in their excitement.
On the flip side of their warm welcomes home, they struggled for many months whenever I left. Sometimes they would bark for up to ten minutes after I left the house before they settled down. Bumi would even start whining and barking if I walked into the other room. They became anxious when they couldn’t see me. It took them some time for them to learn that I would always return – I will never abandon them.
There is a story in the book of Exodus where Moses goes up to Mt. Horeb to meet with God. It seems to the Israelites that Moses is taking his sweet time and so they start to grow restless. Perhaps, something has happened to him, they wonder.
In the 106th Psalm, the psalmist writes a song about this, highlighting the failure of the Israelites to trust God, despite all that he had previously done for them.
At Horeb they made a calf and worshipped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. Psalms 106:19-22
Rather than waiting for Moses to return, the Israelites decided to take matters into their own hands. They created a false image of God and his character rather than trusting in God’s unchanging continual care for them.
In times of uncertainty, we can become anxious. We may be tempted to trust in things that we find around us to give us comfort. We look to created things rather than to our Creator for hope and meaning but our true comfort comes from Christ and his continual commitment to us.
Have you possibly fashioned idols in your life while growing impatient in seeing God work in and through you?
Remember when God has shown himself faithful to you. Where you have seen his provision, his grace, and his deliverance from difficult circumstances.
Return to these altars as memorials that the Father sees you, he sees Christ in you, and you in Christ. You never have to fear his return as he has promised to never leave you in the first place, but promises to live with you, and in you, by his Spirit.
Go ahead, feel elated, and jump up on the Master of your soul. Let him know how glad you are to know that you can trust in his continual faithfulness.
I’m Cara Garrity, Speaking of Life.
Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 5047 | Acknowledging God’s Faithfulness
Cara Garrity
Last year I adopted two golden retriever puppies, Bumi and Zuko. One of the most endearing things they do is greet me with all their excitement when I return home. They’ll run up to me wagging their tails, then run around looking for toys to bring me. Sometimes I’ll even let them be a little naughty and jump on me in their excitement.
On the flip side of their warm welcomes home, they struggled for many months whenever I left. Sometimes they would bark for up to ten minutes after I left the house before they settled down. Bumi would even start whining and barking if I walked into the other room. They became anxious when they couldn’t see me. It took them some time for them to learn that I would always return – I will never abandon them.
There is a story in the book of Exodus where Moses goes up to Mt. Horeb to meet with God. It seems to the Israelites that Moses is taking his sweet time and so they start to grow restless. Perhaps, something has happened to him, they wonder.
In the 106th Psalm, the psalmist writes a song about this, highlighting the failure of the Israelites to trust God, despite all that he had previously done for them.
At Horeb they made a calf and worshipped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. Psalms 106:19-22
Rather than waiting for Moses to return, the Israelites decided to take matters into their own hands. They created a false image of God and his character rather than trusting in God’s unchanging continual care for them.
In times of uncertainty, we can become anxious. We may be tempted to trust in things that we find around us to give us comfort. We look to created things rather than to our Creator for hope and meaning but our true comfort comes from Christ and his continual commitment to us.
Have you possibly fashioned idols in your life while growing impatient in seeing God work in and through you?
Remember when God has shown himself faithful to you. Where you have seen his provision, his grace, and his deliverance from difficult circumstances.
Return to these altars as memorials that the Father sees you, he sees Christ in you, and you in Christ. You never have to fear his return as he has promised to never leave you in the first place, but promises to live with you, and in you, by his Spirit.
Go ahead, feel elated, and jump up on the Master of your soul. Let him know how glad you are to know that you can trust in his continual faithfulness.
I’m Cara Garrity, Speaking of Life.
Psalm 106:1–6, 19–23 • Exodus 32:1–14 • Isaiah 25:1–9 • Matthew 22:1–14
This week’s theme is God is bigger than our human limitations. In Psalm 106, the Psalmist praises God and acknowledges the people’s present and past sins against God. In Exodus 32:1–14, the Israelites become restless and make a golden calf to worship as god, exposing their failure to live within their covenant agreement with God. In Isaiah 25, the prophet praised God for his greatness and faithfulness. He speaks of the ways God has been a refuge and the day that he will be victorious in his purposes. And the people will praise him saying this is the God that we have waited for. Matthew 22 includes a parable of a king who invites guests to a wedding banquet, only to have many reject the invitation or try to enter on their own terms. God’s kingdom and invitation cannot be controlled, minimized, or reshaped by human assumptions. God is bigger than our limitations, and we are called to receive him as he reveals himself.
Reminder: This introductory paragraph is intended to show how the four RCL selections for this week are connected and to assist the preacher prepare the sermon. It is not intended to be included in the sermon.
How to use this sermon resource.
God is Bigger than Our Human Limitations
Exodus 32:1–14 NIV
Last week we explored God establishing a covenant with the people of Israel. After God gives the Ten Commandments, Moses is called up the mountain to receive instruction from God about building the tabernacle and instructions for worship. The tabernacle would be the place where the presence of God would dwell with Israel. God provided very specific instructions for how the tabernacle was to be built and how worship at the tabernacle was to be conducted. Moses spent 40 days and nights receiving instruction from God and the people became restless. That is where we find ourselves in today’s passage:
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, 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.”
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and 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, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 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.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. Exodus 32:1–14 NIV
The people became restless. They did not know why Moses had been away for so long. And so, they asked Aaron to make them gods to go before them. Aaron was Moses’ brother and partner in leadership. He had been left to care for the people while Moses was up the mountain receiving instruction from God. The Israelites had just received the Ten Commandments from God not even two months earlier. Yet here they are, asking Aaron to make them images of gods, a clear violation of the second command.
From our perspective, it may seem easy to criticize the people of Israel or Aaron. How could they so quickly disobey God’s command? Hadn’t God proven himself to them enough times to be trusted? Why did Aaron comply with their demands? He was left to lead and care for the people after all. And here he is allowing the people to lead themselves into self-destruction.
Honestly, we can probably understand the people and Aaron to some degree. We would have likely become restless as well. Imagine yourself in their position. There you are, on this difficult journey, led by this God that you are just getting to know and his chosen leader Moses — a man you have no relational history with. Miraculous things have happened to make this journey possible so far, and yet, so much is still unknown. And now, your leader, Moses, has been gone for a long time, and you have no idea what this means. You have never been in a situation like this before.
In that situation, most would look for reassurance and comfort. And we can wonder if that’s what the Israelites attempted to do here. Were they trying to find a way to make sense of their circumstances? They were accustomed to images, to idols, that could be seen, touched, and physically worshipped. They returned to what was familiar to make sense of their situation. The problem was that what was familiar is not what was meant for them any longer.
At first glance, it appears to a modern-day reader that the Israelites were attempting to worship a different deity all together. It looks like they are abandoning this God who had delivered them from Egypt and giving credit to some other false God. However, if we look a little closer, it is likely that they intended for this image to be a physical representation of God, not a creation of a new god.
First, the word translated as “gods” in verse 1 is ‘Elohim’ which in the original language can either mean “gods” plural and general, or God singular, as in this God. Then they ask the question, “who shall go before us” which is used to describe the activity of the messenger of God who has been leading the Israelites in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of cloud by night. It seems like they are asking Aaron to give them something concrete that can be the vessel or representation of God in their midst.
Aaron then declares that a feast to the Lord would be held the following day. It appears that the Israelites are not intending to depart from God. They are not seeking to worship someone else. They are seeking to find a way to engage with God that they can understand. That they can grasp. That feels comfortable in this uncomfortable time.
So, while it is possible that the calf was made as an image of a different deity, it is likely that it was created as a physical representation of God — this God that had brought them out of Egypt. This God that they were slowly learning about. This God that they had just encountered. And this God who they were waiting on — and waiting longer than they anticipated.
We might be inclined to think that this is a less serious offense. The people were at least intending to worship God and not abandon him for another false god. However, what we see is that God has taken deep offense by this action. Remember, we discussed the Ten Commandments as a formational guide on what it means to be God’s people — not a constrictive set of rules. We can then assume that it is not simply the breaking of the command in and of itself. But it is what the breaking of the command means that is significant. The worship of the golden calf as God reveals a significant misunderstanding of God and a disconnect in relationship.
An image, or an idol, cannot be made and worshipped as God because it denies something essential about God’s very being. An idol is lifeless, static, made by human hands. God is living, dynamic, and undefined by humanity. To worship a statue of a golden calf as God is laughable! And to believe that they could is a distorted image of God.
In God’s very own being, he is relationship. He is Trinity — Father, Son, and Spirit in perfect relationship with one another. To diminish God to a simple, lifeless statue and worship that as a legitimate form or representation of God reveals a deep unknowing. In worshiping the golden calf, the people are trying to fit God within their limited range of knowledge, experience, or even comfort. Thank God that he is bigger than human limitations.
While God is busy giving Moses instructions for how to build the tabernacle to house the presence of God and how to conduct worship in the presence of God — the people have taken matters into their own hands. They have created the “presence” of God on their own, using the very materials that God had intended for construction of the tabernacle. They build an altar, have a festival, and present offerings. They decide to relate to and worship God on their own terms. The people have taken what is meant to be received from God and attempted to fashion it themselves.
This reflects a disconnect in the relationship between Israel and God. Israel has not yet been formed to trust God, and they decide to move forward on their own, by their own understanding and strength. God is a living and relational being, so God also experiences the effects of this relational distortion. God describes the people of Israel as “your people” to Moses, reflecting a sentiment of disconnection. Remember, the Ten Commandments center around relationship. The violation of this second commandment is a violation of relationship. It is a distortion of the relationship God intended to have with his people. It imposed human logic and design onto God and their relationship with him.
And even so, God is still determined to see his good purposes through for his people. God is bigger than human limitations. He may just have to start over with people who aren’t so stubborn. But we see that Moses intervenes on behalf of the Israelites and emphasizes to God that they are indeed his people. He appeals to God’s character, promise, and purpose to ask him to continue working with these stubborn people. Moses does not try to make his case by defending what the Israelites are capable of. Moses argues that God should continue working patiently with them because God is faithful. And God agrees.
In God’s apparent willingness to change his mind in this exchange with Moses, he reveals what is unchangeable about him. His plan for restoration and repair, to fulfill the good purposes for his people, is unchangeable. His goodness of character and fidelity to promise is unchangeable. His pathway towards this goal may have been changeable, but we see that the character and purposes of God remain strong.
Maybe you can relate to the Israelites. Do you ever feel like you are waiting on God for a long time, with no answers? Sometimes we don’t understand what is going on, what God wants from us, or how to show up in a particular moment. Sometimes we don’t know the best way to honor and worship him in a situation.
And in these moments, we can become like the people of Israel worshipping a golden calf. We take matters into our own hands. We decide for ourselves how he should show up in our lives. We make decisions about what we need his presence to look like. We worship him according to our own desires rather than his. We diminish him, deny something essential about him, so that he can fit into our little box. We find ourselves making an image of God that is comfortable, that we can wrap our minds around, that feels manageable. We take this big, amazing, living, dynamic God and reduce him to a small image that we can control. But the problem is — an image made by human hands can never reveal to us or even represent who God is.
So, what do we do when we feel lost, confused, waiting with no answers? When we feel like we need God to be present in a more tangible way? When we are desperate to relate to God in a way that is familiar and comfortable? When we want God to be confined within our human limitations?
We look to Jesus. Jesus is the image of God. In Colossians 1:15, an early church leader, the apostle, Paul, writes, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (NIV). [See also John 14:8–10.]
Unlike a golden calf, he is alive, he dwells in relationship with the Godhead, he is dynamic, he is uncontainable. God could not be imaged in something made by human hands. He came to us in the form of our living, breathing humanity. A humanity that he made.
And the difference? The image of God lived among us in relationship with us. Jesus lived the full human experience. He had a human birth, lived a human life, died a human death, was raised to life in a new and glorified human body, and was brought back to the right hand of the Father in his glorified human body to wait for the rest of us. What is more familiar to us than our own humanity? What is more understandable than the human experience? What is more comforting than a God who knows that it’s like to be human? A golden calf doesn’t know what it’s like to be human.
Not only is Jesus fully God and fully human, but he lived his life vicariously, which means on behalf of all humanity. He not only was the perfect image of God to us, but he was the perfect response of humanity back to God. He lives as a human faithful to God. And he does that on behalf of all humanity, fulfilling humanity’s side of the God-human covenant. A golden calf can’t do that.
Jesus as the image of God is the ultimate liberator. He brings all of humanity out of the metaphorical Egypt — out of enslavement to sin and brokenness. He liberates us into a redeemed humanity, restored kingdom community, and robust and dynamic relationship with God. Jesus in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension brings all of humanity out of Egypt. A golden calf can’t do that.
There are many ways God’s people have misunderstood him, tried to place him in a box, been unable to receive from him and be faithful to him. But God is bigger than human limitations. He remains true to who he is and his good purposes.
That is very good news! Because how tragic for this God to be reduced to a golden calf. Or to be reduced to our small images and interpretations of him. To be restricted by the choices we make. Thank God that he does not allow himself to be defined or contained by human limitations. He is who he is — beyond the fashioning of human hands or imagination.
The Israelites in making the golden calf, and us in a million other forms, were reaching for God. Trying to grasp understanding and create an image of him that made sense to them. In Jesus, God grasps humanity, making himself fully known in self-revelation. In Jesus God shows that he is bigger than human limitations, reaching beyond our limited understanding into our very own humanity. In Jesus, God is bigger than human limitations, making perfect the human response and worship to God that we could not do on our own. And even now, God is bigger than human limitations — having given us his Spirit. He pours out his Holy Spirit upon us who in turn leads us to all understanding of who God is and who we are.
In moments that don’t make sense, in moments that we fail, in moments that we misunderstand and misrepresent God, we can confidently look to Jesus. He is the perfect image of the living God. And we can trust that God is bigger than our human limitations.
Matthew Hester—Year A Proper 23
Listen to audio: https://cloud.gci.org/dl/GReverb/GR080-Hester-YearA-Proper23.mp3
Program Transcript
Matthew Hester—Year A Proper 23
Anthony: All right, let’s transition to the next text of the month. It’s Exodus 32:1–14. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 23 in Ordinary Time, October 11. Matthew, would you read it for us, please?
Matthew: Absolutely.
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.” 2 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.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.” 6 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. 7 The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 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 and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 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.” 11 But 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? 12 Why 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. 13 Remember 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.’” 14 And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
Anthony: So, while Moses is on the mountain receiving God’s covenant instruction, the people grew impatient and asked Aaron to make gods for them. Why are they, and why are we, the modern people, drawn to idolatry? It’s alive and well. Is there a contemporary sacred cow of idolatry that has you concerned?
Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. I want to start before I unpack this a little bit. I’m convinced that the only true idolatry is self-idolatry.
Anthony: Tell me more …
Matthew: Because it’s all… Even this desire to fashion this image, it was born out of a human desire to worship something. And so, if we can’t perceive something to worship, we’re going to create something to worship, and usually it reflects our own misgivings, our own frustrations, our own demands. And for me when I behold an idol in any form, I just see it as it’s itself. It’s a manifestation of something that we’re wrestling with, whether it be a certain people group, a certain nationality, whatever it may be, a certain religious proclivity. That’s what I see.
But I think idolatry actually becomes much more interesting when we stop imagining it as primitive people being foolish enough to worship statues, because that’s usually how we set it up. But idolatry is what happens when we take something finite, when we take something manageable, we take something controllable, and then we ask it to give us what God can only give.
Anthony: Come on.
Matthew: And so, notice what triggers the golden calf. It’s uncertainty, it’s impatience. If the people did not have that in their hearts, the idol wouldn’t be there. But it’s uncertainty, it’s impatience. So, Exodus 32 begins with, “When the people saw that Moses delayed.” So, they lost their sense of control.
Moses is gone. In their minds, God feels inaccessible. The future is uncertain, and so, they essentially say, “Give us something we can see. Give us something we can manage. Give us something that we can point to and say, ‘That’s our God.’” and for me, that’s why idolatry remains incredibly contemporary.
Because we don’t … Today we don’t usually melt our jewelry to make golden calves anymore. We’ll go to trade it in at the pawnshop. Give me some cash for that.
But what do we do? We create systems.
We’ll create ideologies, institutions, personalities, doctrines, political identities, religious structures, and then we assign intimacy to those things.
So, this actually … I might step on some toes here for a minute.
Anthony: Go for it.
Matthew: One contemporary sacred cow that concerns me deeply, is our ability to make an idol out of certainty. And that’s …
Anthony: Come on.
Matthew: … has been one of the biggest things that I believe, especially in the Western church framework, that we are going to have to challenge and unravel. It’s not so much a problem in the Eastern tradition of the faith, but in the Western framework, it is very difficult. And it … because I’m talking about religious certainty. So, we can become so convinced that our understanding of God is God, that we lose the humility to even recognize the difference.
Anthony: Wow.
Matthew: What you believe about God may not be God. And you’ve got to allow God to challenge it. And so, the irony for me of the golden calf is that Israel isn’t actually necessarily saying, “Let’s abandon God and become atheist.” For me that’d be a little more clear-cut.
Aaron actually declares a festival to Yahweh. If you go back and look at it, he declared, “Okay, this will be a festival day to Yahweh.” So, they’re attempting to make this invisible God tangible. That’s what they’re trying to do. It’s not … we think idolatry, false gods. I don’t think that’s what was in their hearts. In their hearts it was, we can’t approach it, we can’t see it, but we can at least see this. So we want to see if there can be a connection between the unseeable and the unknowable, and now we can see and behold something that’s knowable.
They’re trying to manage something on their terms. And I think Christians do the exact same thing. I know I’ve been guilty of the exact same thing. You can even turn your theology into a golden calf.
Anthony: Sure you can.
Matthew: We certainly have seen what it’s done to turn the Bible into a golden calf. We can use the Scripture to … we can weaponize it against people we don’t like, people we don’t agree with. We can turn political power into a golden calf. There’s so many things: church growth, platforms, celebrity leaders, nationalism. Your denomination is the only right one.
And before we know it, we’re surrounded by golden calves, doing all these things in the name of God. But we’re actually trying to worship a God that we fashioned in an image that allows us to relate to him on our terms.
And so, actually, I don’t even think the question is, do I have idols? I think it’s more of what have I made ultimate that Jesus might actually challenge? How many things in your life have you said, “This is a non-negotiable,” and in that moment you’ve actually disinvited Jesus from the ability to challenge that paradigm.
And a lot of it, sadly, brother, it’s in the name of God, but it looks nothing like the nature of God. So yeah, yeah, that gets pretty intense. Maybe we’ll back off of that a little bit, but …
Anthony: No. I really do like this conversation because I just think there is, there can be a sin of certitude that you just, you’re so certain about what you believe, and you hold so tightly to that.
But I’m finding, brother, as I get older, I’m releasing my grip on that stuff more and more. I feel like at the age of 55 I know a little less now than I did before.
Matthew: Yes.
Anthony: And just trusting, because relationship, there’s no certainty in any relationship. It’s always about learning the other, growing in love, growing up into Christ, knowing that he’s a certain one, but my belief about him, my understanding … that’s why I really lean on what Barth says about: we just apprehend God. None of us are experts when it comes to God. We’re learning. We’re growing and growing in love. And so, I really appreciate what you said there.
Verses 7–14 ― the Scripture tells us that God announces judgment. Yet Moses intercedes on behalf of the people. And it seems to be that he’s appealing to God’s character and his covenant. The Lord was merciful because the Lord is merciful. That’s who he is. It reveals the heart of the blessed Trinity. So, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to riff on the richness of God’s mercy. Tell us about it, preacher.
Matthew: Yes. Honestly, that’s what I love about this passage. It’s, mercy is not Moses trying to talk an unwilling God into becoming a better God.
Anthony: That’s right.
Matthew: And for me, that is an incredibly important distinction to make. Because if we read it superficially, it can sound like God is furious, ready to annihilate everybody, and it actually looks like Moses is the compassionate one who’s trying to calm God down.
But when we read this story through the fullest revelation, so through a Christological lens, and then we discover Jesus tells us something about his Father, God is not less merciful than Moses. Jesus literally says it that way. God is not less merciful than Moses.
Moses’ intercession is itself participating in something that originates in the heart of God.
See, this becomes even clearer as that story unfolds. God repeatedly describes himself as merciful and gracious, slow to anger abounding in steadfast love. And then the prophets return to that confession over and over again, and then Jesus arrives and embodies that confession. And so, Jesus doesn’t come to convince an angry Father to love humanity. Jesus comes because the Father loves humanity.
John, probably the first verse most of us ever heard, “For God so loved the world that he gave.” And not just loved your favorites. No, he loved the world that he gave.
And so, the incarnation begins in love. The cross reveals love. The resurrection vindicates love. And then the gospel announces that nothing, not even sin and death, get the final word over God’s creation. I mean …
You can definitely preach yourself happy. Paul says it beautifully in Ephesians 2, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us.”
Man, I love those words, rich in mercy. Not occasionally merciful. He’s not reluctant about it. He’s not merciful after someone says the right prayer. No, it just says rich in mercy. So, mercy isn’t something you extract from God through your performance.
It actually flows from who God eternally is, and that is where Trinity becomes so beautiful to me. The Father is not the angry member of the Trinity.
And this is actually what we do. A lot of times we’ll go to the Trinity and we try to compartmentalize it, and we’ll say, “Okay the Father’s the angry side. Jesus is the nice one. Holy Spirit is trying to negotiate between them.”
Literally that’s what a lot of us have believed. But Father, Son, and Spirit eternally exist in that communion of self-giving love, and salvation flows from that communion. And oh, I love this, the Son doesn’t rescue us from the Father. The Father, through the Son in the Spirit, rescues us from everything destroying us.
And that’s why Paul can pen beautifully 2 Corinthians 5, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” That is the gospel.
And you know what? I think Moses, even if he even … I don’t even think he had any awareness of it really, consciously any awareness, but he’s getting these glimpses into that type of intercession, that type of movement. Because he’s standing in the breach and he’s saying, “Remember your covenant. Remember your promise. Remember who you are.”
But ultimately Jesus doesn’t merely stand there between humanity and God. Jesus reveals that God has always been for humanity. That is such good news. Nothing in the landscape of human history has had to change God’s heart to be for us.
He had to change our hearts, because we didn’t know how to receive him as a father.
Anthony: Yeah. And isn’t it liberating to know that we don’t have to condition God to be good because he is good?
There’s no bound on his mercy. And as Romans 11:32 tells us, he was merciful to all. He didn’t pick and choose. Israel was just his beloved people to show us that all tribes and nations would be included in this good news of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don’t have to condition God to be good, and I love what you said, that Moses is just participating in something he probably doesn’t even, he’s not even aware of in this moment, right?
Matthew: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but that doesn’t stop God ― which I love. And I think about how often, how many times have I been swept up in the momentum, the inertia of the divine dance. And then you’re able to look back and say, “Man, God you knew what you were doing. And I’m glad you did, because I certainly didn’t know what was going on. But thank you for allowing me to participate.”
It’s just beautiful to think about. And just again, just the whole mercy component. You know our sin doesn’t exhaust his mercy.
Our violence doesn’t exhaust it. In this moment our idolatry doesn’t exhaust his mercy. Failure doesn’t even exhaust it.
Because we realize mercy isn’t merely something God does. Mercy … I penned it this way and I’m going to have to give myself a pat on the back for this, and you can steal this too if you want to. But this is what I was, as I was pondering this thought, this is what came up in my heart was, mercy is what love looks like when love encounters misery.
So, you have the God who is love: 1 John 4, right? God is love. Love is not something that God decides to do. If God can decide to love, he can also decide to withhold. 1 John 4 says that God is love, so you can’t have an authentic encounter with God if you don’t have an authentic encounter with love.
And the vice versa is true. You can’t have an authentic encounter with love if you don’t have an authentic encounter with God. So, I say, love is the God stuff. So, in this moment, what does a God rich in mercy look like? It looks like embodied love having a head-on, face-to-face encounter with misery, and we call it mercy.
Anthony: Thank you.
Matthew: That is such, such an amazing thought.
Anthony: Amazing that he meets us where we’re at. And with his ongoing, unfailing, persistent love, which existed before in a part of our decision to even trust in it.
I mean, isn’t that amazing? He wasn’t waiting for us to believe it. It is who he is. Wow. Hallelujah. Praise God.
Program Transcript
Matthew Hester—Year A Proper 23
Anthony: All right, let’s transition to the next text of the month. It’s Exodus 32:1–14. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 23 in Ordinary Time, October 11. Matthew, would you read it for us, please?
Matthew: Absolutely.
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.” 2 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.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.” 6 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. 7 The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 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 and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 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.” 11 But 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? 12 Why 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. 13 Remember 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.’” 14 And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
Anthony: So, while Moses is on the mountain receiving God’s covenant instruction, the people grew impatient and asked Aaron to make gods for them. Why are they, and why are we, the modern people, drawn to idolatry? It’s alive and well. Is there a contemporary sacred cow of idolatry that has you concerned?
Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. I want to start before I unpack this a little bit. I’m convinced that the only true idolatry is self-idolatry.
Anthony: Tell me more …
Matthew: Because it’s all… Even this desire to fashion this image, it was born out of a human desire to worship something. And so, if we can’t perceive something to worship, we’re going to create something to worship, and usually it reflects our own misgivings, our own frustrations, our own demands. And for me when I behold an idol in any form, I just see it as it’s itself. It’s a manifestation of something that we’re wrestling with, whether it be a certain people group, a certain nationality, whatever it may be, a certain religious proclivity. That’s what I see.
But I think idolatry actually becomes much more interesting when we stop imagining it as primitive people being foolish enough to worship statues, because that’s usually how we set it up. But idolatry is what happens when we take something finite, when we take something manageable, we take something controllable, and then we ask it to give us what God can only give.
Anthony: Come on.
Matthew: And so, notice what triggers the golden calf. It’s uncertainty, it’s impatience. If the people did not have that in their hearts, the idol wouldn’t be there. But it’s uncertainty, it’s impatience. So, Exodus 32 begins with, “When the people saw that Moses delayed.” So, they lost their sense of control.
Moses is gone. In their minds, God feels inaccessible. The future is uncertain, and so, they essentially say, “Give us something we can see. Give us something we can manage. Give us something that we can point to and say, ‘That’s our God.’” and for me, that’s why idolatry remains incredibly contemporary.
Because we don’t … Today we don’t usually melt our jewelry to make golden calves anymore. We’ll go to trade it in at the pawnshop. Give me some cash for that.
But what do we do? We create systems.
We’ll create ideologies, institutions, personalities, doctrines, political identities, religious structures, and then we assign intimacy to those things.
So, this actually … I might step on some toes here for a minute.
Anthony: Go for it.
Matthew: One contemporary sacred cow that concerns me deeply, is our ability to make an idol out of certainty. And that’s …
Anthony: Come on.
Matthew: … has been one of the biggest things that I believe, especially in the Western church framework, that we are going to have to challenge and unravel. It’s not so much a problem in the Eastern tradition of the faith, but in the Western framework, it is very difficult. And it … because I’m talking about religious certainty. So, we can become so convinced that our understanding of God is God, that we lose the humility to even recognize the difference.
Anthony: Wow.
Matthew: What you believe about God may not be God. And you’ve got to allow God to challenge it. And so, the irony for me of the golden calf is that Israel isn’t actually necessarily saying, “Let’s abandon God and become atheist.” For me that’d be a little more clear-cut.
Aaron actually declares a festival to Yahweh. If you go back and look at it, he declared, “Okay, this will be a festival day to Yahweh.” So, they’re attempting to make this invisible God tangible. That’s what they’re trying to do. It’s not … we think idolatry, false gods. I don’t think that’s what was in their hearts. In their hearts it was, we can’t approach it, we can’t see it, but we can at least see this. So we want to see if there can be a connection between the unseeable and the unknowable, and now we can see and behold something that’s knowable.
They’re trying to manage something on their terms. And I think Christians do the exact same thing. I know I’ve been guilty of the exact same thing. You can even turn your theology into a golden calf.
Anthony: Sure you can.
Matthew: We certainly have seen what it’s done to turn the Bible into a golden calf. We can use the Scripture to … we can weaponize it against people we don’t like, people we don’t agree with. We can turn political power into a golden calf. There’s so many things: church growth, platforms, celebrity leaders, nationalism. Your denomination is the only right one.
And before we know it, we’re surrounded by golden calves, doing all these things in the name of God. But we’re actually trying to worship a God that we fashioned in an image that allows us to relate to him on our terms.
And so, actually, I don’t even think the question is, do I have idols? I think it’s more of what have I made ultimate that Jesus might actually challenge? How many things in your life have you said, “This is a non-negotiable,” and in that moment you’ve actually disinvited Jesus from the ability to challenge that paradigm.
And a lot of it, sadly, brother, it’s in the name of God, but it looks nothing like the nature of God. So yeah, yeah, that gets pretty intense. Maybe we’ll back off of that a little bit, but …
Anthony: No. I really do like this conversation because I just think there is, there can be a sin of certitude that you just, you’re so certain about what you believe, and you hold so tightly to that.
But I’m finding, brother, as I get older, I’m releasing my grip on that stuff more and more. I feel like at the age of 55 I know a little less now than I did before.
Matthew: Yes.
Anthony: And just trusting, because relationship, there’s no certainty in any relationship. It’s always about learning the other, growing in love, growing up into Christ, knowing that he’s a certain one, but my belief about him, my understanding … that’s why I really lean on what Barth says about: we just apprehend God. None of us are experts when it comes to God. We’re learning. We’re growing and growing in love. And so, I really appreciate what you said there.
Verses 7–14 ― the Scripture tells us that God announces judgment. Yet Moses intercedes on behalf of the people. And it seems to be that he’s appealing to God’s character and his covenant. The Lord was merciful because the Lord is merciful. That’s who he is. It reveals the heart of the blessed Trinity. So, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to riff on the richness of God’s mercy. Tell us about it, preacher.
Matthew: Yes. Honestly, that’s what I love about this passage. It’s, mercy is not Moses trying to talk an unwilling God into becoming a better God.
Anthony: That’s right.
Matthew: And for me, that is an incredibly important distinction to make. Because if we read it superficially, it can sound like God is furious, ready to annihilate everybody, and it actually looks like Moses is the compassionate one who’s trying to calm God down.
But when we read this story through the fullest revelation, so through a Christological lens, and then we discover Jesus tells us something about his Father, God is not less merciful than Moses. Jesus literally says it that way. God is not less merciful than Moses.
Moses’ intercession is itself participating in something that originates in the heart of God.
See, this becomes even clearer as that story unfolds. God repeatedly describes himself as merciful and gracious, slow to anger abounding in steadfast love. And then the prophets return to that confession over and over again, and then Jesus arrives and embodies that confession. And so, Jesus doesn’t come to convince an angry Father to love humanity. Jesus comes because the Father loves humanity.
John, probably the first verse most of us ever heard, “For God so loved the world that he gave.” And not just loved your favorites. No, he loved the world that he gave.
And so, the incarnation begins in love. The cross reveals love. The resurrection vindicates love. And then the gospel announces that nothing, not even sin and death, get the final word over God’s creation. I mean …
You can definitely preach yourself happy. Paul says it beautifully in Ephesians 2, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us.”
Man, I love those words, rich in mercy. Not occasionally merciful. He’s not reluctant about it. He’s not merciful after someone says the right prayer. No, it just says rich in mercy. So, mercy isn’t something you extract from God through your performance.
It actually flows from who God eternally is, and that is where Trinity becomes so beautiful to me. The Father is not the angry member of the Trinity.
And this is actually what we do. A lot of times we’ll go to the Trinity and we try to compartmentalize it, and we’ll say, “Okay the Father’s the angry side. Jesus is the nice one. Holy Spirit is trying to negotiate between them.”
Literally that’s what a lot of us have believed. But Father, Son, and Spirit eternally exist in that communion of self-giving love, and salvation flows from that communion. And oh, I love this, the Son doesn’t rescue us from the Father. The Father, through the Son in the Spirit, rescues us from everything destroying us.
And that’s why Paul can pen beautifully 2 Corinthians 5, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” That is the gospel.
And you know what? I think Moses, even if he even … I don’t even think he had any awareness of it really, consciously any awareness, but he’s getting these glimpses into that type of intercession, that type of movement. Because he’s standing in the breach and he’s saying, “Remember your covenant. Remember your promise. Remember who you are.”
But ultimately Jesus doesn’t merely stand there between humanity and God. Jesus reveals that God has always been for humanity. That is such good news. Nothing in the landscape of human history has had to change God’s heart to be for us.
He had to change our hearts, because we didn’t know how to receive him as a father.
Anthony: Yeah. And isn’t it liberating to know that we don’t have to condition God to be good because he is good?
There’s no bound on his mercy. And as Romans 11:32 tells us, he was merciful to all. He didn’t pick and choose. Israel was just his beloved people to show us that all tribes and nations would be included in this good news of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don’t have to condition God to be good, and I love what you said, that Moses is just participating in something he probably doesn’t even, he’s not even aware of in this moment, right?
Matthew: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but that doesn’t stop God ― which I love. And I think about how often, how many times have I been swept up in the momentum, the inertia of the divine dance. And then you’re able to look back and say, “Man, God you knew what you were doing. And I’m glad you did, because I certainly didn’t know what was going on. But thank you for allowing me to participate.”
It’s just beautiful to think about. And just again, just the whole mercy component. You know our sin doesn’t exhaust his mercy.
Our violence doesn’t exhaust it. In this moment our idolatry doesn’t exhaust his mercy. Failure doesn’t even exhaust it.
Because we realize mercy isn’t merely something God does. Mercy … I penned it this way and I’m going to have to give myself a pat on the back for this, and you can steal this too if you want to. But this is what I was, as I was pondering this thought, this is what came up in my heart was, mercy is what love looks like when love encounters misery.
So, you have the God who is love: 1 John 4, right? God is love. Love is not something that God decides to do. If God can decide to love, he can also decide to withhold. 1 John 4 says that God is love, so you can’t have an authentic encounter with God if you don’t have an authentic encounter with love.
And the vice versa is true. You can’t have an authentic encounter with love if you don’t have an authentic encounter with God. So, I say, love is the God stuff. So, in this moment, what does a God rich in mercy look like? It looks like embodied love having a head-on, face-to-face encounter with misery, and we call it mercy.
Anthony: Thank you.
Matthew: That is such, such an amazing thought.
Anthony: Amazing that he meets us where we’re at. And with his ongoing, unfailing, persistent love, which existed before in a part of our decision to even trust in it.
I mean, isn’t that amazing? He wasn’t waiting for us to believe it. It is who he is. Wow. Hallelujah. Praise God.
Small Group Discussion Questions
- Where do you see yourself wanting God to be more understandable, manageable, or predictable?
- What “golden calves” do we create when we try to relate to God on our own terms?
- How does Jesus reveal God in a way our own ideas or images never could?
- What helps you trust God when his presence or timing does not look the way you expected?
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