Ready-Mix Gods

Ready-mix products can be a wonderful thing, can't they?

We all like those ready-mix products. Just add water.

Just stir up. Just mix them up.

They're made to order for people who have busy schedules. In fact,

that's what fast food restaurants are all about, isn't it?

Those of us that want to come, we come home from work and we just don't want to prepare meals.

And so it's quick and easy to go out to the restaurant, pick up a hamburger

or a pizza or whatever, and that somebody else has made or slapped together.

And it's easy. Ready Mix food items accommodate people like me and you who do not know how to cook.

Cook well you know how to cook i can boil water i can fry eggs i can microwave bacon,

yeah i'm really talented in the kitchen but everybody among us it seems like

we want something quick and easy don't we everything we do wants quick and easy

it's like you know and even even like mowing the lawn we want it to be done

very quickly because we got other things we want to do.

Or if you're like me, it's like, why mow the lawn? It's just going to grow again anyway.

But anyways, but there are also replacements for taking the time to think out

and prepare for whatever we are attempting to do, whether it's a meal,

a job, or a developing relationship.

Remember in the olden days, the golden olden days, when the mother and the household

would prepare all day long for the meal for that evening.

If you're in Italian households in the cities, you would know that mama was

making the pasta sauce, the spaghetti sauce, all day long,

boiling and putting all the ingredients in there, the garlic and the loaves,

or the onions and the leeks and all that.

No, that's what the Israelites had in Egypt, but anyway.

But putting it all all together in simmering it all day long so it was prepared for us when we came home.

That's what it's like to live in the olden days, the golden oldies,

although they aren't so golden anymore as we think about it.

But we want, nowadays, we want what we want right now, even if it means with

little effort on our part.

Isn't that the way of this world? It seems like Like, that's what we want.

We want all of these things right now.

I find a tendency in the human heart.

To do the same thing with our faith. We sometimes try to formulate a God who

will accommodate us with the quick and easy and not cumbersome.

We don't want a God that tells us what to do every moment of the day.

We want a God who just lets us go until we get into trouble,

and then somebody we come to and

put them on a mantle and worship them and pray to them, and then go on.

Two weeks ago, we looked at a time when Moses prayed and God listened.

Last week, we looked at how God seems to be silent sometimes when we are hoping for instant answers.

And today, I want us to look again at this same story in the 32nd chapter of

Exodus and examine what took place and the reason Moses had to pray for the

people of Israel in the first place,

especially for their salvation from total destruction at the hand of the Almighty God.

God was ready to destroy them because of what they did. And this was an occasion

when a group of people created a ready-mix God.

They wanted a God who would accommodate them at their own time for their own

privilege when they wanted something done.

I want us to reread the first part of the passage we read last week as the basis

for this morning's message.

Marty's going to be reading Exodus chapter 32, 1 through 10.

Exodus 32 · chapter mention

When the people saw that Moses was so long 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.

Aaron answered them, Take off the gold earrings that your wives,

your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.

So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a

calf, fashioned it with a tool.

Then they said, These are your gods, Ezra, who brought you up out of Egypt.

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced,

Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.

So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed offerings offerings and

presented fellowship offerings.

Afterward, they sat down to eat and drink and go up to indulge in revelry.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Go down, because your people, whom you brought

up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.

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 have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it, and have said,

these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.

I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, and they are a stiff-necked people.

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.

So verses 9 and 10 contain God's assessment of the situation.

He said, I have seen these people, and they are a stiff-necked people.

It's interesting when you read that about being a stiff-necked people,

I felt a crick in my neck. But anyway, they are a stiff-necked people.

Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy

them. Then I will make you into a great nation.

God's assessment of this episode was not a good one.

I want us to look at three reasons why God is upset when we formulate or take

unto ourselves a ready-mix God or a God other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The first reason God is upset when we worship ready-mix gods is because a ready-mix

God is built on the wrong inspiration.

Moses had left the Israelite people and traveled to the top of Mount Sinai to

receive a word from the Lord.

Moses was slow in coming down from his mountain retreat.

His absence caused the people to struggle.

Their struggle motivated them to do a foolish thing, and that was to build and worship an idol.

What motivated them to do this?

You'll see that they made two common mistakes.

Notice two phrases in verse 1. when the people saw, and we don't know what's happened to him.

You and I have the same tendency in our hearts, don't we?

First, we read the phrase, when the people saw. Think of the motivating power of sight.

Sight seems to lend reality to something.

If we don't see something, it's hard to imagine that it's real.

If something is not there right in front of us, it's hard to imagine that it's

real. But if we see something evidently in person and alive and well,

it seems real to us. We can reach out and touch it.

And so the people said when they saw that Moses was long time in coming down,

they saw that he wasn't there.

And then we look at what we see or what we can touch, we can actually achieve.

We can actually get this. what we see causes

us to think about what we see we react

to what we think with some sort of emotion or

desire like these people did they they didn't see moses so they wanted to have

something else they could see and touch that caused them to have a desire and

emotion to lead them into another kind of worship and we take action then based

on that driving desire that is produced we've talked about this before.

Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings produce actions. Actions have consequences.

When we think about something, it drums up an emotion or a desire in our mind, good or bad.

And then we act upon that emotion, good or bad, and the consequences are based

on whether that was a good or bad desire in us.

When Eve was tempted to commit the first sin, we find God's description of the event.

It says, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and

pleasing to the eye, she saw it, when the woman saw that it was good for food and pleasing to the eye,

and also desirable for gaining wisdom,

she took some and she ate it. Thoughts produce feelings.

Feelings produce actions. Actions have consequences.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

So he had some thought and some desire and some actions, but his were much more compressed.

It was not that he looked at the fruit and saw that it was good and pleasing

to the eye, or that it might gain him wisdom or anything like that.

It was, this beautiful woman next to me is eating this and she's offered to

me, so I desire that, I'm going to take it. It was just really quick. That's the way men do.

Most of the time we act before we think, right? We just kind of do things.

Think about all of the weight loss and exercise commercials on television these

days. They always appeal to you through their eyes.

Think of two particular commercials. In one, they show a muscular man who has

bulging muscles all over his body.

In another one, they show this

great-looking 50-year-old grandmother who looks like a swimsuit model.

They advertise a pill that can be taken so that you can lose weight and build

muscle fibers for fitness.

Who in their right mind would not want to look like those two people.

Well, except I don't want to look like a 50-year-old grandmother.

But anyway, but still, we need to be reminded that our eyes will lead us astray.

Our eyes will rob us. Our eyes will cause us to do things that maybe we shouldn't

do because our eyes will cause us to think about things and desire things.

And act on things that maybe we shouldn't. Or it could be the other way.

Our eyes could cause us to do good things as well.

A.W. Tozer, in his book, I Talk Back to the Devil, said you can take two small

10-piece coins, two small dimes, just two dimes, and shut out the view of a panoramic landscape.

All you have to do is go to the mountains and hold those two coins directly

in front of your eyes and the mountains, even though they're still there,

you won't be able to see them because of the dime shutting out the vision of your eyes.

Next, we read the people's responses. We don't know.

This paraphrase or this phrase reflects insecurity in the minds of the people.

William Shakespeare once said, our doubts are traitors and make us lose the

good we often Nothing might win by fearing to attempt.

I read about a three-year-old girl who was frightened by a burst of thunder.

She called out to her mother, Mommy, I'm scared.

Her sleepy mother responded hurt to her by saying, go back to your bed.

God will come there and be there with you. The little girl then got out of bed

and came and stood in her mommy's doorway and said, Mommy, why don't I sleep

in here with Daddy and you could go there and sleep with God? God.

Insecurity often drives people to make foolish decisions.

The athlete that is unsure about his strength or ability may turn to steroids

to try to improve his odds or hers.

An insecure teenager may turn to permissive sex or drugs to please his or her friends.

An unfaithful adult may withhold their tithe and give less than a tithe because

he or she does not think he can afford to give it anyway,

or a lady who is insecure may dress in improper clothing to get men's attention.

We will build ready-mix gods if we are following the wrong inspiration. Why are we doing this?

But there's a second reason God is upset with ready-mix gods,

and that is that ready-mix gods are built around wrong focus.

Notice a couple of phrases that reveal the focus of these people.

In verse 1, it says, we read this, Come, make us gods who will go before us.

Talking to Aaron. They saw that Moses was a long time in coming down,

and they didn't know what to do.

We saw that he's not here, and we don't know what's going to happen,

so come make us gods who will go before us.

They wanted a God that was convenient, available right now whenever they wanted him.

They wanted a God they could go to in one place at one time and know that they could worship him.

They wanted a God that was comfortable, one they could see, and that didn't

demand too much out of the ordinary or anything that demanded too much of them.

They wanted a God that they could worship as they pleased, when they pleased,

and where they pleased, one with which they could fornicate themselves with their own pleasure.

They wanted a God who wasn't willing and wasn't pushing to change their lives

in the way they act, in the way they live, in the way they respond, in the way they speak.

In Pensacola, Florida, there was a church that advertised a 30-minute worship service.

They promised to get you in and out fast so that you can get about doing the

things that are really priorities to you.

So let's worship God real fast so we can go do the things we really want to do.

They promised convenience in worship.

It's like going to Quick Trip and purchasing a little worship for the week.

We need to be reminded that faithfully following Jesus is not always easy,

convenient, or comfortable.

Worshiping Jesus, following Jesus really means a transformation of who we are

and how we think and how we act.

Occasionally, I've read through the book titled Fox's Book of Martyrs.

I don't know if any of you have read through that. It's not an exciting book.

It's a book that is written. It details many of the countless heroes of the

faith who have surrendered their lives in horrendous ways to be true to their faith in Jesus Christ.

Fox's Book of Martyrs. If you haven't read it, I don't know if there's a copy

in the library, but we'll find one if you would like to. But it's not.

It's not a novel, let me put it that way, but it really tells about the dedication

to Jesus Christ of these people.

All of our needs, all of us needs to do is read that book or other accounts

of people who are physically persecuted for their faith in Christ,

even today around the world, or read the accounts of the book of Revelation

or the history of what happened to the apostles and many of Jesus'

followers and his disciples to realize that truth faith is anything but convenient,

comfortable, and controllable.

If we think faith in God is supposed to be convenient, comfortable,

and something you can control, then God owes those people in the Old Testament

an apology for all the suffering that they experienced.

Bill Hybels, who's pastor of the Willow Creek Church in the Chicago area,

said every single day we make choices that show whether we are courageous or cowardly.

We choose between the right thing and the convenient thing, sticking to conviction

or caving in for the sake of comfort, greed, or approval.

We choose either to take a carefully thought-out risk or to crawl into a shrinking

shell of safety, security, and inactivity.

We choose to either believe in God and trust in him, even when we do not always

understand his ways or to second-guess him and cower in the corner of doubt and fear.

We make our choices. Will we be courageous or will we be cowardly?

J.P. Morgan in his book Apologetic Reasoning in the Christian Mind tells of

an experience that illustrates the importance of this truth.

One afternoon he said, I was sharing the gospel in a student's dorm room at

the University of Vermont.

The student began to espouse ethical relativism. He said, that whatever is true

for you is true for you, and whatever is true for me is true for me.

But no one should force his or her views on another person since everything is relative.

Moreland said, I knew that if I allowed him to get away with ethical relativism,

there could be for him no such thing as real objective sin measured against

the objective moral command of God, and thus there is no need for a Savior.

If he could not convince him of the fact that there was real truth to the idea

of disobedience to God, he wouldn't convince him of anything.

So he thanked the student for his time, and he began to leave his room.

He says this, on the way out, I picked up a small stereo from his room and started out the door with it.

Hey, what are you doing? The student shouted. Oh, I'm leaving your room with

your stereo. You can't do that. He said, that's mine.

Moreland said, I happen to think it is permissible to steal stereos if it will

help a person's religious devotions, and I myself could use a stereo to listen

to Christian music in my morning devotions, so if it's true for me,

then I guess it's mine to to take.

Now, I would never try to force you to accept my moral beliefs in this regard,

because as you said, everything is relative and we shouldn't force our ideas on others.

But surely you aren't going to force on me your belief that it is wrong for

me to take your stereo, are you?

Moreland looked at him and continued, you know what I think?

I think that you espouse relativism in areas of your life where it's convenient,

say in sexual immorality or whatever it might be, or in areas about which you do not care.

But when it comes to someone stealing your stereo or criticizing your own moral

hobby horses or interrupting your own affairs, I suspect that you become a moral

absolutist pretty quickly, don't you?

The story has a happy ending, for Moreland says.

Believe it or not, the student honestly saw the inconsistency of his behavior and belief.

And a few weeks later, he became a follower of Jesus Christ.

Some people want a faith that only requires one hour a week,

or in the case of the church in Florida, half an hour a week.

Some people want a faith that does not require them to give any of their money.

Some people want a faith that does not require them to change their behavior.

Some people want a faith that does not require them to do anything but come

and sing on Sunday, but only if they have donuts and coffee.

Some people want a faith that is only a Sunday faith and not a Monday through Saturday faith.

Some people want a faith, as one CEO of a business that I worked for said,

you have to learn to separate your business from your Christianity.

You have to look, he said, you have to look at separating your Christianity

from what you do every other day of the week, what you say every other day of the week.

Friends, I'm sorry, believe it or not, some people believe and some churches

teach that being a Christian doesn't have to change your behavior.

They preach and teach that it doesn't matter how we live.

To them, being a Christian doesn't mean you have to quit getting drunk at parties

or high on drugs. It doesn't mean

that you can't engage in premarital or extramarital or homosexual sin.

To them, being a Christian doesn't mean that we're supposed to do like the song

said, I want to be like Jesus.

All that means to them is you attend a church, you profess a statement,

and you can live the life that you want to live, however you want it to live,

but you know that you're still a Christian.

Well, I'm not going to tell you that's right, because it's not.

If we are followers of Jesus Christ, if we are Christians, it means there will

be a drastic change in our life and in the way we act and the way we look and

the way we talk and the way we work and the way we communicate with people.

But we believe that to be called a Christian, you must be a true follower of

Christ, and that includes in our behavior.

The word Christian was first used for the followers of Jesus in Antioch,

and the word Christian means little Christ.

It meant that the people around them saw that they were followers of the way,

saw how their lives were drastically changed,

how their lives looked like the life of Christ, and so they called them,

the non-Christians, non-believers, called them Christians because they looked

like Christ. They were little Christs.

Notice the use of the plural personal pronoun us in the passage that we read earlier.

Notice what the people said, make us gods who will go before us.

This fellow Moses who brought us, these are our gods.

They're talking about themselves. They want themselves selves to be pleased.

These people wanted a comfortable, convenient God that they could control because

they were self-focused.

Many people want a faith that caters to them. They want a faith that's convenient to them.

They want to be called Christian, but they don't want to walk like Christians.

What's interesting about this passage is that Aaron wasn't man enough to stand

up for God and rebuke them, nor was he man enough to refuse to satiate their desire for debauchery.

In fact, it could be understood that the people's request for him to make them

gods even inflated his own eagle.

They came to me and asked me what to do, so we did this, and that they were

now looking to him instead of Moses to be their leader.

Remember what we say, the root of all sin is self, pure and simple.

The root of all sin is self. Two friends were walking in the forest one day

when suddenly they stumbled upon a large grizzly bear who decided that they

looked a little like a good snack.

The two started running away when all of a sudden one of them stopped.

The other said, what are you stopping for? Don't you know the grizzly bear is

right behind us? His friend replied, I'm tying my shoes so I can run faster.

At this, the friend couldn't help but laugh. What? Do you think you can outrun a grizzly bear?

Still tying his shoe, the friend calmly replied, I don't have to outrun the

grizzly. I only have to outrun you.

In our selfish society, how often do we act like this friend?

We're not concerned about our friends and neighbors. We're only concerned about our own neck?

How many times do we exist in this morality where we think that we've got what we've got?

We've got salvation, so that's good enough for us. It doesn't matter what anybody else does.

Friends, if this salvation, if this life of Christ, if this following of Jesus

Christ is good enough for us, it ought to be good for everybody else,

and we ought to be sharing that with others.

Otherwise, we have to ask the question, if my life is not an example of Christ,

if I'm not sharing his love and his life with others, am I really a Christian?

We need to ask that question. As we try to exist in our community,

it's essential that we eliminate the self-centered nature that's all too prevalent in our churches today.

What is the center letter in the word sin?

I. The obvious answer, the root of all sin is self.

Many pastors, many churches, many followers or so-called followers of Jesus

Christ have a serious eye disease.

We will build ready-mix jobs if we have the wrong inspiration.

We will build ready-mix gods if we have the wrong focus.

And the third reason God is upset with ready-mix gods is because they will lead us to wrong outcomes.

Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings produce actions. Actions have consequences.

So the next day, it says in the Scripture, so the next day the people rose early

and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings.

These were offerings that they would have been presenting to God.

But instead, they offered these fellowship offerings and these burnt offerings

on the altar that Aaron built in front of the calf.

They offered these to an object.

Afterwards, they sat down, it says, to eat and drink, and got up to indulge in revelry.

Notice the outcome as recorded in the text. The first wrong outcome is empty worship.

Aaron built an altar in front of the calf. Their worship was cold, dead, and lifeless.

God created you and me to have a meaningful relationship, not just to stand

up here and to sing or to speak or to raise our hands.

God meant for us to have meaningful relationship with him day by day,

all of the time, talking and communing with him.

He wants to be our friend. He wants us to find our fulfillment in him.

Idol worship is an empty ritual.

There's no real meaning. Oftentimes we think, well, I don't worship idols.

A job can be an idol when it takes more thought than we do with God.

Our bank account can be an idol when we We spend more time worrying about that

than we do about souls that need to be saved.

Those who are consumed in a lifestyle idolatry evidenced by pagan music,

drugs, alcohol, sexual permissiveness, workaholism, and other forms of idolatry

all testify to an emptiness when they come down from their highs.

Look at Hollywood and all of the actors and actresses in Hollywood.

Most of them have very miserable lives. They look great on TV,

but how many have died of drug overdoses or suicide?

In an effort to seek to be in control of all they do. They're submitting control

of their lives to drugs, alcohol, and perversion of the mind.

But that can never be true. That can even be true in some Christian circles of worship.

Gordon Dahl said this, Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work,

work at their play, and play at their worship.

The second wrong outcome is an inappropriate lifestyle.

True worship of God should be a life-changing experience, a life-changing,

not just an event, but a life-changing, on and on change, ongoing change in our lives.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, if Socrates would enter this room,

we should rise and do him honor.

But if Jesus Christ came into this room, we should fall down on our knees.

Say like Isaiah, woe on me, I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people

of unclean lips, and yet I have seen the Lord.

That's the kind of light change that real worship evokes in us.

In our text this morning, we are told that the people could hardly wait until

their worship was over, their worship of this idol was over,

so they could start to party.

It's a common theme throughout the

old testament amos faced it he

said this when when will the new moon be over that we

may sell grain and the sabbath be ended that we may market wheat

wheat skimping on the measure boosting the price and cheating with dishonest

scale buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals selling

even the sweepings with the wheat or jeremiah said this will you still will

you steal and murder commit adultery and perjury burn incense to bail and

follow other gobs you have not known, and then come, then come,

and stand before me in this house which bears my name, and say,

we're safe, safe to do all these detestable things.

And God said to Solomon, if my people who are called by my name will humble

themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways,

then will I hear from heaven, and we'll forgive their sin and we'll heal their land.

I wonder how many have been settling for ready-mix gods, even in the church of Jesus Christ.

I wonder how many serve idols that are convenient, comfortable,

and controllable on Monday through Saturday, and then come to the Lord's house

to sing His praises with unclean lips.

We think this is worship. We come on Sunday morning and we do worship. We do worship.

The scriptures tell us that worship, true worship, is being made into the image

of God and being created in him to do good works that glorify the Father in heaven.

And God said this, you shall have no more of the gods, period.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this time of the message,

Father, we pray that you would cause us to really look at our lives,

really look at who we are and who you are and how barren and defiled we are,

except for the blood of Christ.

If not for the blood of Christ, Father, we would be exhausted in sin.

But because of the blood of Christ, we can come to you as children of God.

But even as children of God, we come to you thinking, Father, you have redeemed us.

You have made us your children. Now we want to be like you.

We want to please you in every way we can. Father, we pray that that would be our prayer.

We pray, Father, that you would speak to our heart.

And if there's any wicked way in any of us, that we would confess that and remove

that as far from us as the East is from the West.

Father, we pray that you would forgive us and heal us and bring us back to newness

of life. In Jesus' name, amen.