Four Spiritual Flaws: Flaw #3

Hi everybody.

Good to see you all here today and uh hope you're having a great weekend.

This is uh, you know, St.

Patrick's weekend, St.

Patrick's Day weekend, you know, and I hope you all had a great St.

Patrick's Day yesterday.

I I feel obliged to do that because I I'm Irish.

You know, I get some Irish kidney.

Matter of fact, I uh I have two Irish grandmothers, a German grandmother and a uh uh a Welsh, no grandfather, Welsh grandfather, German grandfather.

And my brother recently did that thing, the uh, you know, the Ancestry.com DNA thing, you know, where you send it away and you get confirmed what you think your background is.

And sure enough, he came back with all those four, you know, thick things in it all real clear.

But also it said that we were 22% Scandinavian, which was really a bit of a surprise for us, you know.

So uh so the other night I watched on the History Channel that uh Viking show, and uh I think I understand.

So uh anyway, you know.

Hey, here you gotta have the obligatory uh, you know, St.

Patrick's Day joke, though, to start with.

And so here it is.

You ready?

Uh uh what's Irish and stays out all night?

Patio furniture.

Yeah, you moan, you use it.

I know you will.

I know you will.

You know, last night I said, you know, what's Irish and stays out all night?

One woman in the back of it, my husband! You know?

A little too much for right here, okay.

So, uh, well, it's good to be here, you know, it's great to be here together.

Hey, we're in a the series, the four spiritual flaws, okay?

And uh we're in the we're in the center of it, and I get the one, the flaw, okay, which in many ways is the easiest and most straightforward to be able to explain, which is good for you because that way it should make sense to you, okay?

And that is this.

Here's the flaw.

Okay, I'm gonna give it to you right straightforward.

Idolatry is bad, all right?

In case you didn't think that or didn't know anything about Christianity or anything about God.

The idolatry is when you make something else to be God, okay?

When you make a representation to be God, that's not a good thing.

God doesn't want you to do that.

All right?

And that's what this uh the central text is about.

We've been looking at the uh book of Exodus, and particularly the 32nd chapter of the book of Exodus.

But, you know, just to give you a little context, let me let me tell you the story in a kind of general way, and I think as I tell the story, you'll get the feel of it and how idolatry plays a central part to this.

Here's what happens.

You know, the people have been down in uh Egypt, the people of God have been down in Egypt for 400 years, and lately in bondage for quite a long time as slaves down there.

And so God comes down through Moses and he tells them, you know, Pharaoh, let my people go.

And Moses, I mean, Pharaoh says no.

But anyway, he says tomorrow, well, you know, we'll do the old ten plagues, we'll do the Passover, you know, all that.

Finally, Pharaoh says, All right, get them out of here.

And so the Bible says it like this God rescued his people out of bondage.

It says, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

That's the way the Bible oftentimes refers to it, the Exodus.

You know what that means?

That means by the sheer sovereign power of God.

And nothing that the people did.

Nothing that they can take credit for, but by the graciousness and faithfulness of God to a promise that he had made to Abraham long before this.

He brought those, he was able to bring those slaves out of their bondage in Egypt.

And of course, you know, they go over the Red Sea and there's all that kind of stuff.

And they end up down to Sinai Peninsula, which is off to the east of Egypt.

And uh, after a few days, a week or two, they end up at the uh at the Mount Sinai, and Moses is gonna get the law.

He's gonna go up onto the mountain, and he he has been designated as, even before this, as the mediator between God and the people.

That is, what God wants to tell the people, something like, get ready, we're gonna do this, or put do this, Passover's tomorrow, whatever.

He tells Moses, Moses tells the people.

If the people want to know something, they tell Moses, Moses goes to God.

He's that mediator, he's that in-between.

All right?

And so what happens is that God says Moses, listen, tomorrow I want you to come up onto the mountain, all right?

And I'm gonna give you the law.

And the law functions in this way.

You should know this.

It functions as a way in which God tells his people, here's who you are.

I'm gonna help you to get an identity.

I'm gonna help you to realize what who the best you could possibly be.

I sound like Joel Olstein all of a sudden.

But anyway, this this is who you, this is who you are meant to be.

This is how you can figure out what you're all about.

I'm gonna give you the law.

All right?

And so Moses is gonna, and God, God says to Moses, now look, he goes, Um, uh, you and I got something.

I'm I'm paraphrasing, this is not what the Bible actually says.

But you say, you know, uh, you and I got a thing going on here.

We you know, we got a relationship, we have some intimacy, you understand what I'm like, and so forth.

These people are new to this.

All those people out there that you brought out, they're new to this.

They're uh they I if they get too close to me, I will be so overwhelming to them, it'll kill them.

So I'll tell you what, when you come up on a mountain, tell the people to stay back.

All right?

Tell the people to be down there at the bottom of the mountain.

Don't come up on the mountain with you.

Don't try to push forward to see if they get meet me or something like that.

Yeah, because they're not ready for it yet.

It would kill them.

Matter of fact, tell them so much so don't even go looking for a lost sheep up on a mountain, because if you didn't, even if you wandered in there by mistake, you'd die.

Alright?

So Moses tells the people, look, God says, Stay back here.

I'm gonna go up on the media, I'll get the stuff, I'll come back, tell you what you need to know.

And so people are like, okay, you know.

Well, by the way, another reason why they didn't go up, and they said, okay, was this.

As Moses begins to go up on the mountain, here's what happens at the mountain lightning begins to strike all over the mountain.

Giant clouds form around the mountain.

It says it was like the smoke from a furnace all over the entire mountain.

The sound of a trumpet starts to blare, and it gets louder and louder, and the entire mountain shakes.

And the people you know who were down at the bottom who got told, you stay here, I'll go up, they were like this.

Yeah, you you go up.

As a matter of fact, here's what they did.

Hey, because here's the deal: God can be scary.

You know, isn't that true?

God can be scary.

Who knows what he's up to?

His ways are inscrutable, you know.

He says it himself.

You know.

By the way, don't you want a little distance in a sense between you and God?

Haven't you backed up a little bit?

Keep him at it, keep him at arm's length.

It's a little sa seems safer that way.

You get too close, who knows what kind of craziness we might be into.

I remember when I was in college that uh, and I like it because Kurt tells these stories about when he was in college.

That's when he had electricity when he was in college, but anyway, that's beside the point.

Uh I remember that people started telling me about sharing my faith and everything.

I'd never done any of that.

I'd I hadn't talked to people about Christianity.

They said, We're going out, we're gonna share our faith.

You know, I was like, well, I had no idea what that meant exactly.

Okay, but this is what I thought in my mind.

I thought to myself, I see myself on the back of a truck in a Kmart parking lot with a megaphone.

Hey, you're going to hell, buddy.

And I thought to myself, yeah, I'm backing them off from that.

Yeah, when you don't know what God might require of you, it's good to get a little distance, you might think.

And so the people backed off.

They put up, they put camp back from the mountain.

Not that they couldn't see it, and not that it stopped, it just kept going on.

They just got themselves a little distance.

All right?

So what happens is that Moses goes up to get the law.

And then the scene changes in chapter 32, and you go back to the camp now, and back into camp, after Moses has been up there for 40 days and 40 nights.

Apparently, people in the camp wonder what was going on.

And so they come to Aaron, who had been designated as kind of the priest for the camp, and they say to Aaron, hey, listen, you know that guy, Moses, he uh who knows where he is, he's been gone so long, we don't even know if he's coming back or whatever.

You know, uh, we heard this some talk about some promised land filled with good, that would be good for us.

Why don't you do this?

Let's not wait on him and whatever he's up to if he ever's gonna show up.

Why don't you make us a God for us?

Make us a God that we can use to get up to get what we want.

And for some reason, Moses or Aaron says, okay.

Doesn't tell you why, I don't know why.

But anyway, he says, So, and Aaron says, All right, bring some gold stuff.

You got earrings and rings and necklaces and so forth.

Bring it all up here and we'll make a we'll make an idol.

You know, and so he they bring it up and he makes it into fire.

Here's what it says it says that after they did it, Aaron he formed the idol with a tool.

He made it to look a certain way, that's the point.

All right?

And by the way, the way he did it was he took a thing of wood and he made it to look like a calf, you know, like a big bull, and then he covered it, leafed it with gold as he had melted there, made it into this golden calf.

Now, here's the deal.

The people didn't think that the calf was actually God.

Okay?

Matter of fact, in ancient, we know this from other ancient Middle Eastern pagan religions, that oftentimes the calf would be a symbol of the throne of a god.

They still thought the God was kind of an invisible, all-powerful, you know, but this was sort of his throne.

This is where he would come and sit on the back of this beast.

And from there he would, you know, legislate things.

And the thing was, is that the notion of these gods of these days was that if you could, you made one and you could control them in a certain way by ritual and magic and all kinds of things like this.

If you did the same, right incantations or whatever, you could make that God do what you wanted.

Now, by the way, this is why God doesn't like it, because it's the exact opposite of the way it should be.

Instead of God making us and him determining who we ought to be, this is us making God and then determining who he ought to be for our own personal benefit.

And so Moses, so Aaron makes the makes the uh God, and then Aaron says this go prepare yourself tomorrow, we're gonna have a festival.

It's a f he says, here's what he even says, if you can believe this.

He says, it's gonna be a festival unto the Lord.

And he uses the name Lord, the covenant name of God, that God had called himself by.

How deluded can you get?

This is like saying, This is, you know, that God that led us out of the, that God, that Lord, that Yahweh who led us out of Egypt by the mighty hand, outstretched arm?

This is now him.

Or a version of him.

Matter of fact, it's a safer version of him.

That God, you can you can't even get close to you.

It's too scary to get it.

This one you can get right up on top of.

Matter of fact, this one has always has your best interest at heart.

You can, and you can make him do whatever it is you want him to do.

And so Aaron says, Come for the set festival tomorrow.

And sure enough, the people show up and they have a they have offerings that they give, meat offerings and thank offerings.

The same thing you would have done if you'd have gone to the tabernacle.

It was not any different than that in many ways.

By the way, the the actual calf itself, a wooden structure that was the throne of the God with gold over it, that's what the Ark of the Covenant was going to be.

The Ark of the Covenant was gonna be a wooden thing with gold.

It was just a replacement for the real God.

It was a version of them, sort of.

Hey, by the way, wouldn't you rather have a version of God who was simply at your beck and call?

Rather than you having to do what he says, him having to do what you say?

You see the appeal of this.

And so as a result, you know, the people come out, and here's what it says they did.

They gave their offerings, they had a meal, and then it says they began to participate in, and this is what the NIV, the New International Version of the Bible says, they began to participate in revelry.

Revelry.

That's a kind way of saying some kind of sexual ritual began to take place.

A giant orgy in front of the golden calf.

Now, I'm pretty sure at this point, God is thinking, yeah, that is not what I had in mind.

I'm pretty sure that is not what I had in mind.

That kind of revelry.

Now you might say, Why?

Well, again, in ancient, many ancient pagan Near Eastern religions and so forth, there used to be this idea that if you could arouse the gods, if you could get their attention, if you could do something that would make them look at you and sort of envy you, then you could get them to do whatever you wanted.

This is a way to manipulate the gods.

This was basically, hey, we'll put on a show for you, and if you like it, give us something.

You know?

This was the this was the ancient version of the strip club.

You know?

Here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna try to, we're gonna get what we want from you by manipulating you through this ritual of sexual activity.

Well, that's what's going on down in the camp while Moses is up on the mountain getting the law.

Now, Moses, the story goes back to the later part of chapter 32 to Moses being up on a mountain, and here's what happens.

God, who knows what's going on, because he's God.

Okay, he says this.

He says, You know what's happening down in the camp right now?

He says to Moses.

You know what's happening?

He says, You know what your here's what he says to them, too.

You know what your people are doing?

By the way, prior to this, in all the book of Exodus, when he talks about the Israelites, he calls them my people.

God calls them my people.

And now when they're doing this, he says, You know what your people are doing?

You know what that's like.

If you're a parent, you know, you see your kid doing something, you say to your wife, you see what your kid is doing?

You know?

You a little distance.

Anyway, so uh he says, You see what they're doing?

And God says to him, I can't I can't believe this is this is treason, this is treachery.

This is the exact opposite of what I have in mind for them, who they are, of who I am and what I'm about.

And by the way, he goes, There's there's nothing to this.

It's the lie.

You know, we hear other places in the Bible about what this lie is like and uh of idolatry.

Here's one of them.

This is in a very famous passage about idolatry.

It's in uh Psalm 5015, 115.

It says this Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to you and your name be the glory, because of your love and your faithfulness.

Why do the nations cry, Where is your God?

Our God's in heaven, and they get this.

And he does whatever pleases him.

But the but they're idols, they're silver and gold, they're made by the hands of men.

They have mouths, but they can't speak.

They have eyes, but they can't see.

They have ears, but they can't hear.

They have noses, but they can't smell, they have hands, but they can't feel, they have feet, but they can't walk, nor can they utter a sound from their throats, and those who make them will be like them.

No, there's the hope that somehow you can make a you can make a God out of a created thing.

That really, you have to know it isn't God.

But then you think you treat it like God and you begin to manipulate it.

You try to manipulate it, and you think you can get what you want out of it, and then it begins to shape you into the same deadening thing that it is.

And so in uh Isaiah chapter 44, it says this about the idols, about the guy who makes an idol.

Isaiah 44 · chapter mention

It said, he cuts, he cuts down a cedar, or perhaps he took a cypress or an oak, and he lets it grow first in the trees of the forest, or he plants a pine someplace and lets the rain grow on it and it grows.

By the way, people who bought these trees, they know that they didn't make them.

It wasn't something they did, it was something that came up by some other means.

You know, the very creation itself gives witness to the fact that you're not in control of things, you're not the center of it, but God is.

But anyway, it says this.

It says, and then a man, it says that man uses the tree for fuel for burning, and he takes some of it and he warms himself and he kindles the fire and he breaks bread.

But he also fashions a god out of it and he worships it.

He makes an idol and he bows down to it.

Half of the wood he burns in a fire over it, he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and he eats his fill.

He warms himself and he says, Ah, I'm warm, I see the fire.

For the rest of it, he makes a god his idol.

He bows down to it and he worships it.

He prays to it and he says, Save me, you're my God.

You know, you can almost hear God saying something like this.

How stupid can you be?

You get the picture here?

Here's what's happened.

A guy goes out in the woods, he cuts a tree down that he knows he didn't have any any control over how it actually got there.

He knows there's something else in control.

But he takes that tree, he cuts it down, he starts to form it into an idol, something he's going to replace God with that he thinks he can manipulate to get what he wants.

And as he shapes it, he gets tired.

So what he does is he pushes it over on his side, he takes some of the wood chips that he cut as he was making that idol, he puts them down, he starts a little fire, warms themselves, bakes some bread, has a little something to eat, you know.

After he's satisfied, he gets back up, he picks the thing he's been sitting on as his chair while he was doing it.

He picks it back up, he puts a few finishing touches on it, then he bows down to it and says, You're my God.

You know, and God's watching and saying, You are stupid.

How could you think that?

You know what?

You're gonna turn out to be just like that thing.

Eyes can't see, obviously.

Ears can't hear, hands can't do anything.

You're gonna be working your whole life and it's gonna come to nothing.

Just like that guy in the video.

It's gonna seem endless to you.

You're always gonna be wanting and never gonna be fine.

That's what happens when you trust that idol.

So, anyway, here's what happens.

God says to Moses, see what they're doing?

You know what God calls them?

He calls them stiff-necked.

You see what those stiff-necked people of yours are doing?

He says, Yeah, unbelievable.

And then God says this, that's it, I'm done.

I'm gonna kill them all.

That kind of treachery?

The righteous judgment upon them is the death penalty for that kind of treason.

And calling the idol back by my name, too.

When they know it's not death, seriously.

You know, that's it, I'm done.

And Moses, he's the mediator, remember?

He's getting a sense of what his job is.

He decides to mediate for the people.

He says to God, oh no, no, no, no, God, don't do that.

Don't do that.

And he gives them two reasons why he shouldn't do it.

He says, God, here's the first thing.

He says, you know, if you kill all those people, what's that gonna be like for those Egyptians that you took them from?

You know what they're gonna do?

They're gonna start saying, Oh, I knew he was no real God.

All he did was take them out in the desert so they'd all die.

You know?

Don't give the Egyptians the satisfaction of thinking that they were right and you were wrong, that they had the true God and you weren't the true God.

Don't let that happen.

That's what'll happen.

You get a bad name for this.

A bad mouth everywhere.

And then Moses says this, and here's the second reason he says, Don't forget this.

You told their ancestors, you promised their ancestors that you'd make them into a great nation.

You promised them that you would give them a land to live in, filled with milk and honey, and that you would take them there and give it to them.

You promised that from them was gonna come a person who's gonna be a blessing to all the nations.

You can't go back on your word.

You promised it.

Oh, you granted, you can do whatever you want, but you said you wanted to do this, and you put your name on it, your reputation on it.

You gotta do it.

And so God says, now you're right.

In one of the strange passages in the Bible, it says this God changed his mind.

I think that might just simply be to help us understand how difficult it might be in a human way, for God to see the brokenness of life that we've created, and for him not to wreak total, utter annihilation upon it the way it deserves.

He decides to be loving and gracious, not because people deserve it, but he decides to continue to be their God.

He says to Moses, okay, all right, we'll he says, but I'll tell you what, this is what God says.

This is kind of funny, I think.

He says, But I'll tell you what, as they go up towards the promised land, we're gonna have an angel out in front of them.

I know I used to go out in front of him, I'd be there right there.

So at this point, I don't want to get too close to him right now.

I'm afraid if I get too close and I look at him in the face, I'll kill him.

So I'm gonna lay back a little bit, give him some room, and I'll have the angel take him up that way and so forth.

You can be with him.

And Moses is like, yeah, whatever, okay.

And so Moses says, I'll go down and tell the people.

So Moses goes down, he's got the tablets with all the things that people identify, what their identity is about, how they're supposed to live, you know, blah, blah, blah.

This is gonna lead them into a beautiful life, full, meaningful life, because the creator of the universe is sharing with them what life's about.

He takes them back, he gets down to the bottom of the mountain.

There's a guy named Joshua who is the aide of of uh Moses.

This is a Joshua in the Battle of Jericho, Joshua guy, you know, and he's down there.

Joshua says, Hey, hey, Moses, I don't know what's going on over in the camp.

He says, but you can hear it.

You know, he says, Is it a battle?

Is it a is that the sound of us winning or losing?

Or what is that?

And you know what Moses says?

Uh that's the sound of dancing and singing.

There's some revelry going on over.

Can you imagine how loud that had to be?

How you know the south side last night was pretty loud, I suspect.

St.

Patrick stayed down there, but I'm I'm guessing you couldn't hear it on the other side of the river necessarily.

This was this was so wild.

This part, this revelry, this outrageousness had gotten such a great that you could hear it from the mountain.

And so Moses goes down, and the closer he gets, finally he gets up and he sees the golden calf, and he's appalled by it.

He sees what they're what people have become.

How they've made themselves into the image of this thing in an attempt to manipulate it to get out their own selfish desires.

And he can't believe it.

He throws the tablets down and he breaks them.

In essence, symbolically saying this, you've blown it.

You've broken it all.

You don't understand any of it.

You know what you are?

You're blind, you're deaf.

You got hands you can't feel.

You got feet you don't know where to go.

Seriously, you are lost.

And then Moses says this let's get that calf down here, and he takes it down, he burns it, he grinds it into dirt and so forth, puts it in water, and then he tells people, take it around and make the people drink it.

By the way, that'll leave a bad taste in your mouth, you know.

And some commentators of the Bible think that perhaps what he was doing was, in some way, it by who drank it and what happened, so it helped identify who the major players were in this idolatry movement.

And then Moses says, Here's what the Lord wants.

I want people who are to say they're with him.

And all of a sudden all these Levites show up, the priestly class, and he says to them, You'll be in this thing with me?

He goes, I'll tell you what, get a sword, start from one end of the camp, go to the other of the camp, and the people who are guilty of this kill them.

Sounds harsh for God, doesn't it?

You don't think God has a reason to be to reek out judgment?

Oh, by the way, it doesn't mean that he annihilates them in the sense of he eliminates them from the future of having a life with him in another world.

But for this, they have to pay the penalty.

Hey, by the way, there's there are consequences for your sin.

I mean, you can be forgiven, but there's still consequences for the way that you live.

The brokenness that you put yourself in by your choices.

We all have that.

Your neck gets stiff sometimes because you overdid it.

Sometimes your neck gets stiff because you only looked in one direction.

Matter of fact, after this, Moses is talking about these people.

He calls them what God had called them, he calls them stiff-necked people three or four times in the next chapter or so.

I think it's interesting to note that that term stiff-necked is actually in regard to animals.

It's used about horses and oxen, who in those days, when they were, you know, doing your bidding, whether they were carrying stuff or plowing or whatever, what happened is they would have a uh a rein on them, you know, a leather rein or a yoke, a wooden yoke of some kind with a leather thing on it.

And what would happen is that you had to train them so that if you wanted them to move, you pulled it and the rope or the yoke would touch the side of their neck.

And what they had to do is they had to become sensitive to the control that you had over them to get them to where they needed to go.

And so what would happen is if they had a sensitive neck, you wouldn't you touched it, you didn't have to yank them, you just had to touch it and they would go in that direction.

You know what stiff-necked people are?

Stiff-necked people got no sensitivity in their neck whatsoever.

You can yank that thing on them, and they'll just look straight forward to where they want to go.

Moses says, that's what, hey, by the way, you ever been stiff-necked?

We all have, haven't we?

We all have been so focused on that thing that we think is so important that we need to get and we can do for ourselves, and so that no matter how hard God tugs, our necks are so stiff that we we don't turn.

We don't go in that direction.

And Moses realizes these people are in bad shape.

And then he goes, you know, so that God doesn't kill them all.

I'm gonna go back up on a mountain.

He says, and beg for God to have some kind of atonement, a sacrifice for their sin to overlook you know to do it.

Hey, by the way, this is where he points forward to him being the there being a mediator like him, but better than him, namely in Jesus.

Moses goes back up on the mountain.

He says, he says to God, Listen, uh, there needs to be atonement for all the people, sin, not just those ones who who bit it because they were at the heart of it.

He goes, but I'll tell you what, rather than put it on them, put it on me, God.

And God says, No, no, not yet.

Not you.

You know, because usually God knows the rest of the story.

We're only in the book of Exodus, for heaven's sake.

He knows there's a lot more to come in this story.

He's got a mediator in mind that's going to provide this kind of atonement later on.

So you see what's happening in this story?

Here's what's happening.

Idolatry's taking place.

The main problem between us and God.

In the book of Romans, it explains it really, did not capsulize it with this story.

This is this is as plain as you can make it.

It's like this there's God, there's people who are made in his image, called to reflect and represent him in the world, and then there's the creation.

And what God does, he says, one, trust me, stand in a right relationship with me, be righteous, so that you, the way I've made you is to be my image, bearing representative, you can develop the world and cultivate the world to make it my kingdom where my rule is seen and all the things that happen, in which case you'll live a life that's fantastic for you.

That's the way I've created things to be.

Or the problem is that what we've done is we've God's a little too scary.

Or we decide we'd rather get what we want rather than what he wants.

And so what we do is we take God out of the picture.

Now, the problem is we're still image bearers.

You don't become something, you don't become an ashtray, you know, when you push God out of the way or a tire or something like that.

You're still an image bearer.

And an image bearer has to reflect God in the way that he organizes life in the world.

So the problem is you've gotten rid of the real God, but you need something up there to give you direction for it.

So what you do is, and you think this is the way it is, this is the way I think, you take, it's gonna be easier for me.

This will get me what I want.

I take some aspect of the creation, that's the only place there else there is to go, God, me, the creation.

I take some created thing and I put it up there and treat it as if it is God.

And then I shape myself in the image of it, and then I organize life, and I think that's the way life's supposed to be.

Well, in fact, this God couldn't give me direction to figure out what life was really about it, because it can't.

It's not God.

It's a piece of wood, it's a golden calf, it's some fantasy that it doesn't, it can't speak, it can't walk, it can't touch, it can't feel.

It's just that it's made up, it's not real.

That's what when the Romans passage says this their thinking became futile, their foolish hearts were darkened, and here's what they did: they exchanged the glory of God and they worshiped created things rather than the creator.

That's what idolatry is.

And it's here's the point.

That's why God doesn't care about atheists.

There's no thing in the Bible that says thou shalt not be an atheist.

Because in reality, there are no practical atheists because people are image bearers and they have to have something that they treat like God.

Here's the point: God's concerned about idolatry because he knows that's the alternative to the real deal, to what he's about.

The real religion, the real faith, is about reflecting who God is, trusting him, being defined by him, having a sensitive neck, to know how he leads you to become the person that he wants you to be so that you can develop the world the way he to his glory and to the blessing of other people.

But no, this is what we are.

It's just a question of which thing we decide to put up there.

It's not a question of whether we're gonna be idolaters to some point, it's just a question of what kind of idolater are we gonna be.

And that's the central problem is here in Exodus 32.

All right, here's my last thing.

All right.

I um I was watching TV the other day, and the American Film Institute had a show on, and uh they were they were talking about the greatest movies ever made.

And one of the movies, they said the greatest movie ever made was a movie called Um To Kill a Mockingbird.

I don't know if you've ever seen this movie or not.

It's a great it is a great movie.

It's a great book.

Uh it's a very heroic story and uh very inspiring, and it's it's the drama is great in it.

It is very, very well done.

If you haven't seen it, you should pull it up sometime, take a look at it.

To kill mocking Gregory Peck is the star of it, you know.

It is really, really good.

Um but it made me start thinking about great movies, and I went online, I was looking at lists of great movies, and I saw this one I remembered.

It was a movie called Wall Street.

I don't know if you remember, it's an older movie.

This movie, Wall Street, and it starred uh Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen.

All right, and it's about a guy named Gordon Gecko, who's an inside trader on Wall Street, and he's infamous.

He's he does all kinds of illegal stuff to get information, to rip companies and people's lives apart in order to make money, and he becomes fabulously wealth, has everything the American dream could ever want or promise to give you, and so forth.

And he is this just icon or image of what is perfect.

And you know what?

Charlie Sheen is a new kind of a, you know, he's a new stock trader, and he sees that guy and he wants to be like him.

He elevates that guy to the position of God, and then he realizes as image bearer, I had to reflect some God.

I want this God because that's what I want.

I want what he represents, I want what he has, I want that to be in my life.

So he go, he actually goes to the guy and he says to him, he says, Hey, listen, I want to be like you, I want to participate.

He says, Well, what have you done for me lately?

He says, Okay, I'll show you I can do it, I'll go and get some information.

He goes out and through illegal means he gets some info and he brings it back and he gives it to him, and sure enough, he uses it.

The Gordon Gecko guy uses it to break up this company and sell it off, and all kinds of people's lives are ruined, but he makes lots and lots of money.

And then he says, Kid, I like you.

He says, But if you're gonna hang out with me, you can't be wearing those suits off the rack for pennies.

You know, here, here's my tailor.

Go up and get my$2,000 suit, you know.

He says, Where do you live?

I live in this apartment.

Oh no, no.

I got a place up uh up on the upper east side, you gotta live up there, it's a beautiful place, and so forth.

I'll tell you what, I'll get my designer to go and help you figure out how you should set up.

And so it turns out the designer was a previous mistress of this Gordon Gecko guy, and he she becomes the mistress of uh Charlie Sheen.

And so you see what's happening here.

He's beginning to shape himself in the image of the thing that he said is God.

That's what that's what you do.

That is that's what life's about.

You are an image bearer, you're always going to shape yourself.

It's either the true God or it's an idol of some kind.

What happens is eventually at the end of the movie, uh Charlie Sheen finds out from his dad, who, interestingly enough, in the movie, Martin Sheen, who's his real dad, plays his dad in the movie.

Okay?

And uh he finds out from his dad, who works for an airline company, that their company's in trouble and there's some finance, and he gets some inside information about them.

And his dad realizes he's been given this information, this kind of information about other companies and destroying them, and he says to him, Hey, look, Charlie, don't do, don't do this, don't give him this information.

If you do this, you'll ruin our company.

He says, You ruined the lives of people that you know and love.

You'll ruin our family if you give them this in.

But here's the deal: his neck is so stiff, he can only see one way.

He's this this is what I want, this is what I want out of this.

This is, I got a matter of fact, that's why I made this God, because I made this God to be about what I wanted.

I wanted to figure out how to live in such a way to manipulate this God to get out of him what I wanted.

He is one direction.

And so, Charlie Sheen, sure enough, does he give him the information?

Yeah.

He gives him the information, and the company is destroyed, and so on.

And at that time in the movie, his dad has a heart attack.

You know why?

Here's why.

Because it breaks the heart of the father when one who his son, who's made in his image, portrays in the truth of who he really is for a lie and worships and serves the creature rather than the creator.

That's the heart of idolatry, and that's what we're caught in.

Now you might ask yourself, what can we do?

Well, in the last couple weeks, you've heard a couple of different things that you could do.

Last week I think uh Kurt said this.

He said, We have a kind of a model for what we think the process is, for how you grow to be more responsive, to get that looser neck, to become more sensitive.

You show up, you grow up, and you step up.

You commit yourself to being part of these kind of things with people who are like-minded, you begin to have a become part of a community and to learn, then you start to grow in understanding of what it is God wants you, those things that God that Moses threw on the ground and said, you know, you've broken every one of them.

This was supposed to be our you try to figure out who your identity is.

Not one that's defined by some idol, but one that's defined by the true God.

What who am I as his image bearer?

What does that mean?

What does that mean uh uh uh what life ought to look like?

And as you figure that out, then you commit yourself to trust that and to live that out in your life.

And I got some bad news about that.

Who knows where it might take you?

It might cost you your life to do that.

Because you know what?

That God, the real God, He does whatever He likes.

It's good, but it may not be what you want, but He does whatever He likes.

Let's pray, I'll tell you, as we pray, I'll pray for all of our necks that they loosen up, alright?

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this word that's a light to our feet and a lamp to our path.

We we recognize how stiff our necks are so often so often, how so many times we've taken aspects of creation like wealth or money or other nationalism, whatever, and we've made these things idols, and then we've allowed them to shape us and to distort the world in which we live.

And so here's what we're looking for, Lord.

We're looking for your mercy.

We're looking for that mighty hand, an outstretched arm.

We're looking for that graciousness on your part, not to punish us for this, but instead to come and to straighten us out from the inside, change us from the inside, bring us from death to life, make us into the people that you want us to be.

Lord, here's what we want.

Together as a group of people, teach us how to grow up, teach us how to get flexible, teach us how to sense the slightest touch on our neck of your will so that we can step up and be the people that you want us to be.

And we pray this in Jesus' name and for His Kingdom's sake.

Amen.