If you're a visitor this morning, we have been working through the book of Exodus, and this morning we come to the well-known event of the golden calf. So I invite you in the Bibles, in your Bibles, to turn to the second book of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, and then we come to chapter 32. We are just looking at the first 14 verses this morning. It's one of the major events in the Old Testament to understand the problem of the human heart, and anytime you are, as a pastor, proclaiming a passage like this, which is so searching and so trying, I want you to understand that the goal in this is to lead you to confession and receive from the Lord forgiveness. In other words, as I prayed earlier in the prayer, the Lord is for you. The Lord is not against you. And you need to know that that's the same for your pastor here as he addresses this important subject. He's for every single one of you. He wants you to enjoy forgiveness. He wants you to enjoy what he has provided for you in Christ. That's why a feast is set before you today. But you know there are oftentimes the Lord confronts things in our lives that need to be confronted and that we have to receive that lest we take a stand against him and refused to listen to what he has to say to us this is the golden calf event from exodus chapter 32 the first 14 verses this morning this is the word of the lord when the people saw that moses delayed to come down from the mountain the people gathered themselves together to aaron and said to him up make us gods who shall go before us as for this moses the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him so Aaron said to them take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives your sons and your daughters and bring them to me so all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron and he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, 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. And the next day offered burnt offerings and brought peace offering. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. And the Lord said to Moses, Go down for your people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden 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. And the Lord said to Moses, I've seen this people. Behold, it's a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you. But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, oh Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent did he bring them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people remember abraham isaac and israel your servants to whom you swore by your own self and said to them i will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that i had promised to give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever And the Lord relented from the disaster that He had spoken of bringing on His people. May the Lord bless the hearing of His Word. Well, there was no nation on the face of the earth so blessed as Israel. The Lord had been absolutely wonderful in delivering them from bondage. 430 years they had been in bondage and in slavery in total and complete misery in that bondage under a cruel master a tyrant and pharaoh and the lord had stormed down and the lord had set them free freeing them from all of that awful bondage in egypt bondage to an idolatrous nation an idolatrous nation with all of its darkness and with all of its bondage that suppressed them and held them under the grip of that power and it was powerful but they got to see firsthand the power of Yahweh like nobody else had ever seen before of all the nations of all the peoples on the earth uh they had the privilege israel had the privilege of knowing of knowing the only true and the living god the maker of heaven and earth as we say they were his special people and it was always the lord's purpose to bring them out of egypt to bring them to himself to be a worshiping people we looked at sabbath last time that provides the platform for that to happen well i want you to listen to exodus 7 when moses spoke to pharaoh and told him the great purpose that the lord was bringing the people of of of israel out of the land of egypt i want you to listen to exodus 7 verse 16 uh remembering what was said you shall say to pharaoh the lord god of the hebrews has sent me to you saying, let my people go that they may worship me in the wilderness. Okay. Great intent. Great purpose. They are called out of this to be a worshiping people. Worshiping. The sign to Moses at the burning bush, if you remember this in Exodus chapter three, the Lord said this, and Moses would proclaim this freely everywhere to the people of Israel. this shall be the sign that i've sent you said the lord ready for the sign when you have brought the people out of egypt you will worship god on this mountain over and over worship this is the sign this is the sign worship it's what you created for to enjoy god to glorify him to worship him well here they are they've reached it they're at sinai we've come to the moment signs about to happen right problem is this was no god like the gods of egypt this was no god like the gods of egypt he was giving them great instruction for all these last chapters on how they were to approach him instruction that was detailed instruction that was carefully inspired this is what these chapters have shown us over and over about the tabernacle structure and about his dwelling among them. He was coming down to them and they needed to understand how such a relationship could even work. He was not a dumb idol. They had to know how to approach the holy God of Israel. They had to think about this. It was not whatever they wanted. It was not whatever they willed. Worship was on his terms not theirs hard for them hard for them remember he had been teaching them a lot about the need for the shedding of blood that was what came out already at the fall when the lord had shed blood to cover and adam tried to do it himself with fig leaves but it had always been the case that without the shedding of blood there's no remission so the reverence and the holiness of God and the need for the shedding of blood had to be first and foremost in worship. They could not do anymore what they did in Egypt. They couldn't do it with this God. He had delivered them to be a people set apart, sanctified in their worship, different in every way, their music, their approach, everything from what they had learned in Egypt, radically different. Everything they'd seen with their eyes in Egypt, everything they had been used to in Egypt. So as they arrived at Mount Sinai, God gave them great instruction about how this relationship and their worship of him was to be different from all that experience. Well, that leads us to where we are today. They've reached what Moses said, the time of the great worship service at the mountain, the great worship moment. Forty days now, Moses has been up on this mountain. If they only knew what was being planned for them, God, of course, was handing them building plans for a glorious kingdom. He was coming to be with them. Planning a kingdom for them, building a kingdom for them. Oh, it's going to be glorious. And one day they'd get to see it all in fullness with their eyes when they entered the land. They were told to wait. Be patient. Be patient. God had them right where he wanted, at the foot of the mountain. God had them right where he wanted them, waiting upon him, waiting upon the Lord. Be of good cheer, wait upon the Lord, all over the place in the Bible. As the Lord was speaking in the last scene and instructing Moses about Sabbath and taking seriously worship and taking serious about resting, because the goal was that, to enter into that rest, and we know is Jesus. Meanwhile, back at the foot of the mountain is the sort of sense we have now. The scene changes. It's a great way of writing. You switch the scene. All of a sudden, here we are now back at the foot. What was going on with Israel? Verse 1. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together, the entire nation, to Aaron and said to him, up make us gods who shall go before us as for this moses the man who brought us up out of the land of egypt we don't know what has become of him you know outside of the um the fall that's got to be one of the saddest events and saddest things i've ever read in the bible are you serious how my initial response in in reading that as i reflected upon this well-known event and i hope we haven't heard it so much it loses its effect when we read these things. My initial response, how in the world could you say that? Exodus has been a book of showing us the awful problem of a complaining life, right? A murmuring, bitter, complaining, never satisfied life among God's people. something. They complained at Mara about the water, complained about the bread in the wilderness, complaining, complaining, complaining. But if you were to summarize the greatest complaint we get in the Old Testament, you've come to it. The greatest complaint exactly that Paul would look at this event in 1 Corinthians 10 to talk about idolatry. Complaining. They have been at the foot of Mount Sinai for at least a month now. Getting very close to the end of the 40-day period, Moses is up on that mountain. I don't think that could have been a very pleasant experience to you. A couple of million people at the foot of a mountain for over a month. Imagine. We're picking up here as we look at this, the feeling of what? We're going nowhere. We are absolutely going nowhere. Sinai is not very far from Egypt, by the way. In what should have been a two-month journey to get to the promised land, here they are stuck. Stuck. Stuck at the beginning of the journey, going nowhere. Tensions are short. Anger begins to build. One week passes. Another week. Another week. Another week. Starts to surface in the camp is pastoral dissatisfaction, doesn't it? Where's Moses? What in the world's going on here? We don't even know what's happened to this guy. He's not leading us. The real shocking statement, and there's so much to this text. It's hard to preach in a time when you're always pressured for time. The shock about this is, and it's easy to pass over, is what they say of Moses. We don't know what's happened to him. The man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt. Oh, stop that. There's an entire play on this section of who did the bringing out. Did you catch it when we read it? And the Lord says, they don't want me. You brought him out then. we'll come back to that fact is it wasn't moses who brought them out it was the lord who brought them out the lord had done all the the mighty display he had said that at the at the foot of the red sea you watch moses said stand still and see him work the lord had been visually going before them the lord had been leading them in the pillar in the cloud so the first thing happening here in Exodus chapter 23 as we see that the hearts of the people have turned away quickly against the Lord. And now they've turned their wrath upon the servant. Here they are 40 days at the foot of the mountain. Moses is gone. Nothing's happening. There is no action. He's supposed to be leading us forward. We're supposed to be going somewhere. This is not what we signed up for. This is not what we expected. This is all over the story of the Exodus and their attitudes. We didn't come out of Egypt to sit at the foot of this stupid mountain, is the attitude. He's not helping us with our journey. Stagnant. Totally stagnant. The whole thing is overrun with impatience, isn't it? You can't miss that. The dissatisfaction continues to grow and it continues to grow until it got so bad that they demanded action. So they bring a proposal now, their own kind of proposal. The Lord had a building proposal for them. They bring their own kind of proposal to Pastor Aaron, the assistant pastor. They say to Aaron, come Aaron, make us gods that shall go before us. For as for this Moses, We don't know what's become of him. The man who brought us out of the land of Egypt. We don't know what's become of him. Make us God. This God's not moving us forward. We're not happy with where he has us. This God's not really helping us. Now at this point we should remember that the very first thing they promised when the Sinai covenant happened, the very first thing that the Lord said is, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me. We haven't even got moving on from the mountain and they're breaking number one, right? This is an amazing moment because for 400 years, remember, they had lived in a land that in every single home, we studied this when we looked at all the figurines and all the gods of Egypt, in every single home they were used to handling and touching and seeing gods. Everywhere. They had decorated their homes. They could touch, they could handle, they could see. So what they perceived to be was an alive God were those things. Touch, handle, see. The Lord had said no idols. First commandment, no seeing. Think about it, no touching. Don't you touch this mountain. So verse two, make us gods. When we read that, that was a direct rejection of the covenant that had been given here where blood was sprinkled from chapters 20 to 24. A very unique moment. The very covenant that they had promised all the words of this covenant, we will do. Remember? We're going to keep all of it. They kept saying it. So Aaron hears all of this. And notice what happened. Aaron says, well, break off your golden earrings in your wife's ears and your sons and your daughters and bring them to me. So all the people broke off their golden earrings, which were in their ears, and they bring them to Aaron. And so he's handed all this gold and he pulls out an engraving tool and he makes a molded calf out of gold. The striking thing here is that the gold itself was the gold that the Lord had plundered Egypt with, remember. It had all been a gift from the Lord to them. He had plundered the land of Egypt and given them all this blessing. They take all this blessing and they hand it back to Aaron and in exchange, Aaron hammers out. There's an exchange emphasis here. They exchange gods. Aaron hands out, hammers out a state-of-the-art Egyptian, molded, golden, calf. There's been a lot of debate as to exactly what this is. I think it's right. Some disagree, but I think it's right that this was most likely the ISIS bowl of fertility in Egypt. We studied all that. So Aaron presents the bowl. After all the work in crafting this bowl, he grabs the bowl and he lays hold of it and then he sets it right in front of the people and they're back. They're back to Egypt. They could see it. They could handle it. They could touch it imagine and then comes this this is your god oh israel who brought you out of the land of egypt here he is here he is i i stood back from this this week and i thought how in the world did pastor aaron get caught up in all this you know i mean aaron knew this was wrong but you can't get away from the fact that the pressure of the people the pressure the pressure the constant pressure that he's feeling finally snapped him. He couldn't deal with it. There's a reason Paul is constantly telling Timothy, listen, Timothy, you have to man up in the ministry. You need to be firm in the ministry about what's right and what's wrong. Pastor Aaron caved. You know what later on he says? We'll look at this next time. He says, you know these people, Moses? You know what they're like? They're always pushing. They're always pushing. They're never satisfied. They're always complaining. They keep pushing. And they want to go back to Egypt constantly. Pastoral pressure and pastoral purchase has always gone on in the history of the church. You understand. It started right here. And you have a whole history of pastoral compromise beginning right here in the line of pastors beginning with Pastor Aaron. as the people desperately tried to control him notice that i want you to notice what he did aaron knew this was wrong so here's here's what aaron does they were proclaiming this is your god here's the bull this is your god who brought you out of the land of egypt out of the house of bondage this is him this is him aaron remembered the law of the altar back in chapter 21 aaron remembered that aaron remembered the specific details of the instructions of the lord's worship back in chapter 21, and gave it specific instructions on how to build the altar. And then there were instructions on the burnt offerings and the peace offerings. You'll remember all that. We went through all that. Notice what Aaron does in verse 5. So in verse 5, Aaron, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. He knows what he's doing. And Aaron made a proclamation, ready? and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to the holy name, Lord. See what just happened? What just happened was Aaron didn't want to exclude the Lord. He knew that was wrong. So he desperately, in a plan of action, said, I'm going to make this right the best way I can. I'm going to bring the Lord back into this. We're going to build the altar just like he said. We're going to have the golden calf, the idol, and we're going to make it the worship of Yahweh and bring these things together. Get that? He takes the idol the people created, what they knew from Egypt, and he worked that back into the instructions that the Lord gave, somehow, some way, back into it, essentially mingling the calf and Yahweh into one so that they could call it the holy name. Making the whole problem immensely worse. So the calf now called Yahweh. Think about that for a minute. The calf called Yahweh got the altar of chapter 21 along with the peace offerings and the burnt offerings that were commanded and they had the what? The sacred feast. Did you notice that? That was promised. That was held out. Remember what Moses said to Pharaoh? He proclaimed, let my people go that they may hold the feast to me in the wilderness. Here it is. You got it. The feast has happened. The worship of the true God mixed with all the pagan practices that they had learned in Egypt, the idolatry of their hearts. And I say this morning, you now have the essence of idolatry. Hopefully you're getting to this. Always been hard for us a little bit, hasn't it? Because we don't hold up a molded calf. You read that the people sat down to eat and drink and they rose up to play. There's all kinds of sexual morality hinted at here. The whole mountain became an idolatrous party at the foot, all with the name of Yahweh and the calf together. You know what just happened? Israel had their first grand worship service. This was wow worship. The first real worship service at the foot of the mountain. Finally, they got some action. Finally, they got something alive. They were done with feeling like they were going nowhere. Done with that which felt powerless. Finally, we're getting something spirit-filled. We're getting nowhere with this God. We've come out. We've followed Him. We can't even see them. Are you kidding? I can't even see them. What is this? Wilderness life stinks, you know? Stinks. Egypt was way better. At least we had good meat in Egypt. Live a little. Didn't feel so constricted this way. Have to go through all this? Come on. Well, they began to think a lot about what they had experienced and what they knew. They knew what would work. They knew what would work. They knew the power of Egypt. They knew what held sway over them in Egypt. It was in them. It was in them. A God upon a mountain that hides Himself? Come on. This is pathetic. I really can't capture it better than Sproul. I was looking for maybe somebody who, and everyone says it better than me, but I thought this was really good. The cow gave no law. It demanded no obedience. It had no wrath or justice or holiness to be feared. It was deaf, dumb, and impotent. This was a religion designed by men, practiced by men, and ultimately useless for men. Amen. And that just nails it. Get that? They stripped God of all his attributes, held out the things that they wanted to form. The things that they hated of God were gone, and they made something totally powerless over their life. And it was relevant, let me tell you. it was a god they could control cut down to a manageable size for them listen israel had just created a whole new kind of church and a whole new kind of worship a god created in their image as it's been commonly said if god created us in his image they create uh redid the favor in creating him into theirs now i stop and say do you think there are any parallels to this today Are we going to throw up the common line, the compromise line and say, well, you can't criticize anything? Are we really going to do that? You think we're any different? We've seen that Israel's entire experience in the wilderness parallels ours. Isn't this just the picture of life? I mean, think about it. We are in the wilderness. We're just like them, sitting between the cross and glory, Red Sea and promised land. Stinks out here. And you get preached to the saving work of Jesus on the cross, and it's so victorious. Think about it. They are singing by the seaside after they saw the deliverance. They are singing by the seaside that inspired song. Think about it. It's victorious. It's conquering. Christ has defeated all your enemies. You've heard the gospel. You've known deliverance. You get all this gold from Egypt. What do I mean? Well, you do. You really do. He flourishes his people with all kinds of blessings in this life. Flourishes you. Look at your lives. Your homes are beautiful. You've got beautiful homes in the wilderness. You've got money. He loads you with all kinds of benefits and family. All this blessing heaped on you constantly. Blessing and blessing and blessing. Here you are, 40-day period. Church life's not that great, is it? 40-day period becomes a symbol of testing in the Bible. It's the wilderness testing time. Symbolic of testing, we're tested with a simple test. If you were to boil down the test simply, it has to do with what we talked about last time with Sabbath. The simple test is, will we live by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord? Live by faith? Will we trust Him? Will we believe Him? But you feel like you're going nowhere. I know it. I feel like that too. Maybe you don't like where he has you today. My guess is if we're a little bit like Israel and I had everyone show up a hand, do you like where he has you today? This place would have all the hands go up. Maybe some of you would say, no, I'm very happy with where I am today. It's wonderful. But it's forward moving, isn't it? Maybe you don't like the circumstances you're in and this is not what you expected. Listen, nothing ever turns out as you expect with life and family and kids. I'm learning that. Nothing. Nothing really turns out in church life as I expected. I can tell you that too. So what do we do? Murmur. Complain. Now, if this passage hits the pastors first, who do you think you're going to hit? I didn't just make this up. You might blame me. You might blame Pastor Donovan. You might blame your elders. A grumbling turns to dissatisfaction and anger over time. Hardening of a heart. And what all begins to be expressed and exposed is a certain idolatry that's there. All this blessing and you're still not satisfied. Still not. And with what area are you most dissatisfied? Worship. About rocket science. Still one area you're most dissatisfied. Look at verse 25, what Moses observes about the people. When Moses saw that the people had broken loose, for Pastor Aaron had let them break loose. Break loose from what? God. The greatest way they broke loose was to get away from him and get to what they wanted in worship. Because you see, you're all created to do it. It's all in you. And they brought what was powerful from Egypt and it all exposes how prevalent the world is still living and dwelling in our hearts. We say this about our three sworn enemies, but it's the same mentality as Israel. We're here. We're struggling in the wilderness. We're not going anywhere. Give us glory. Give us something to see. Come on. Why do you think we fight against the second commandment and the fourth the most? No images. Oh, come on. That's goofy. really that can't be it can it meet israel the return of the bitter complaining spirit just like sabbath as we looked at last time with disgruntled hearts our hearts turn away from the lord and we break free from that which fits now this i hope i capture this well we break free with that which fits the extraordinary experience of all the sensual and all the material stuff that we love about living in Egypt. Let me say that again. We break free from God, introducing all the extraordinary experience and all of the sensual and material stuff that we love about Egypt. The idol was made from that gold. Worship in spirit and in truth is for the birds. You know the struggle. If people are prone to make idols out of everything else in their life, Homes, family, children, money. If you're all prone to make idols out of that, which I am, what is the greatest threat to that life when you've had everything? What is the one area you know you just can't control? God. His transcendence, His greatness. So we buy into the assumption that if we could create something we're all happy with, here's the false assumption. if we could create something that fits that life we've known, all the sensual, all the stuff, all the blessing, if we could bring that back and create something we're all happy with that gives us the kind of sensual experience we know about all the other problems of idolatry in our life, we don't really admit those things, but they're there, we'll really be satisfied. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. No, you won't. Idolatry never satisfied. That's why the church is constantly changing. Everyone has something new they're always doing. It never satisfies. It always takes another step. That's why worship becomes an event. And we become spectators. And every time, the pressure is to have something greater than the last experience. That's why worship is such a touchy subject, by the way. You don't think I was nervous preaching this today? The greatest place idolatry shows itself is in worship. That's what this proves. It's the one area of most frustration with people. And you think worship wars began in the 80s and 90s. You're all wrong. It began on Sinai. Haven't you figured out why? Haven't you figured out why it's never been easy? Haven't you figured out yet why it's always been struggle? Because worship is on His terms, and you're idolaters. There are wonderful things held out for you when you reach the land. eye has not seen nor ear heard or things entered in the heart of man the things that god has prepared for those who love him but wilderness life is just that it's hard it's a life of faith and because you're not there yet as long as sin remains worship and drawing near to god has to carefully follow his word. Has to. Or else we will, in pretense, claim that we're worshiping God, but what we're really doing has nothing to do with God. We've pushed him out. It's all about us. That's the truth. We've said it's for God, but we've used him and done what we want to do and fashioned in that regard your calf. What is idolatry today? I mean, just be practical. All forms of entertainment borrowed from the world and brought into the church functions just as much as a golden calf as the literal thing that they held up. You know, in the next section, Joshua can't distinguish their church music from the noise of war. Look at it. You can see it there in verse 17. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted and said to Moses, there's the noise of war in the camp, but he said, this must have been a roaring wow worship service he said it's not the sound of shouting for victory or the sound of the cry of defeat but it's the sound of singing how do you confuse those things they are all out and it is spirit-filled according to them well look at that worship is it has to be about living by faith and not by sight to demonstrate what we've always believed about denying ourselves. I've got to get to grace here because we have to come to the supper. Can the Lord give grace in this mess? Well, verse seven. And the Lord said to Moses, go down for your people whom you have, notice this, brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They've turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They've made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, these are your gods, O Israel, brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I've seen this people. It's a stiff-necked people. Let me alone now, therefore, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you. Did you catch that? Fine. They don't want me. They don't get me. Let them go do what they want to do, but I'm going to consume them. They've broken the covenant. They've turned aside quickly of what they promised at Sinai. They are stiff-necked people. That's like an animal who's just too stubborn to put on the yoke and wear it. They refuse to bow. They refuse to listen. They're never satisfied. They always complain. They're always hating. They're always never growing. They keep doing the same old stupid things. They never change. And they don't want to realize this life is not about them. Sum it up. You know who that is? Me. It's me. It's you. God says, let me alone. My wrath will burn hot and I'm consuming them. Moses, here's the new offer. They want them to have that proposal. Here's my proposal. I'll make you a new people. They're done. I said at the beginning of this sermon, it's God's intention to show grace to you. This is an act of real what we call condescension so that you understand something. This leads you this morning to one of the most beautiful gospel declarations in the whole Bible. Listen to Moses. Then Moses implored the Lord as God, verse 11 and said, Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you've brought up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Your people. No, no, no. Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent that he bring them out to kill them in the mountains? Did you do all this just to come out and consume us? Turn from your burning anger and relent from the disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own selves and said to them I'll multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I promised I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever no excuses made by Moses Moses doesn't say oh come on you're being a little ridiculous here I know there's none righteous I'm not coming like Sodom and asking Lord if there's 10 righteous no no there's none There's none. But remember what you said to Abraham in the covenant of grace? These are his people. And you made an oath and you swore and you passed between those pieces, remember? It's Genesis 15. That you'd give them the land. This is a covenant of grace. You can't renege on this. I know they've broken the Sinai covenant, it, but that before, it can't annul that, can it? No, Paul says. You have to save your people. You can't ditch them in the wilderness. You can't, so you feel the test? How often do you feel like you're going to be ditched in the wilderness? You can't ditch them. You can't fail. You got to save them. The Lord hears that. In verse 14, you can just cling to. So the Lord relented from the harm He said He would do to His people. I want you to live your life this way, beloved. He knew every idolatry you'd ever commit. Every time you pleasure yourself apart from His will and you run to something and you all do it in personal life and we do it in worship, you're running to an idol every time you pleasure yourself. Every time you go do something that's against His will. And what has the Father done? Notice, God said to Moses, why tell Moses to go down if he wasn't going to show grace? Get down there, Moses. Well, that's the whole message of the Bible. Dear son, get down there. Get down to earth and save them. They've turned aside quickly. They're full of idolatry and I would consume them. And now doesn't this make all the sense? When the son came down to earth and then lifted up his hands, I'm assuming, in prayer in John 17, and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You. And as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. He's crying out, save them. And He came to do it. You know what He wants from you this morning? A line's going to be drawn in the sand over this issue. What are the lines in the sand? Here it is. This is a big line in the sand. There are those who are going to get angry at what happened and dig their heels in and scoff at it and run off and do the same kind of bitter complaining thing and the Lord's going to consume 3,000 of them to teach a very basic lesson. Lines in the sand. Come to Jesus. Because we're all incredibly stiff-necked and our prayer should be forgive me Lord that I've tried my whole life to break away from you that's the story of my life I have tried my whole life to break away from you and it shows in my attitude toward your worship most let me be satisfied with your word until I'm there and my eyes see the reward let me be satisfied by living by faith and and not by sight I don't need an image let me be satisfied with your son have mercy on me according to the righteousness of your son and God says for I so love the world that I gave my only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life Moses said let my people go that they may hold a what to me in the wilderness a feast what's before you today? A feast in the wilderness. That's the supper. It's a feast for all who confess that they are idolaters in need of saving grace. Amen. Heavenly Father, forgive us for being idolaters. And we confess that what we've read on the pages of Scripture is us. Never satisfied, often unhappy with where you have us. Give us faith to live and to believe your promises. And take away the bitterness and replace it with joy of the Holy Spirit so that we may come and feast with the kind of hearts that please you, that believe, that have turned away from themselves and understand the misery that we bring when we disregard you. And to realize you called us out of Egypt to be a worshiping people separate who worship in spirit and in truth. Give us satisfaction, divine satisfaction in your word and sacrament, which we are about to enjoy. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.