Exodus: Waiting in God's Covenant Care

If you remember the storyline that we've been in for a few months, it's these people, the Israelites, who've been saved and rescued out of Egypt, out of slavery, and now they're in the desert.

And so if you can think about their situation before we get too judgmental toward them and just think about their situation, they're in the desert and they know nothing about where they're going, where even where they are, when they will go, where they're going, they're stuck.

They're just waiting.

And I don't know about you if you've ever felt this, where you are somewhere and you're not sure where you're going or when that might happen, and you're just in this limbo.

You are just absolutely waiting.

And so you have this leader, Moses, who's a bit of a mess himself at times, and he goes back up on the mountain to meet with God, and while he is up there, the people grow impatient.

And in their impatience, uh they go and they melt down a whole bunch of gold and they form a golden calf, and then they basically worship the golden calf, and in that they break three of the Ten Commandments.

Now, we all know patience is a virtue, right?

I mean, I mean that would extend past Christian faith, that would extend in pretty much every faith.

I mean, I think probably any human alive would say patience is better than impatience.

So I mean nobody's sitting around the dinner table saying, I'm so grateful that my father was impatient with me through my childhood, and no parent is saying, you know, sitting around dinner table with friends and going, you know, I'm just really impressed with my uh my 10-year-old.

You know, he is really growing in impatience, and we're proud of him, really hoping to foster that.

I mean, the idea that patience is a good thing is just really, really clear in the human experience.

And yet, in the human experience, we all know that we're not good at it.

And that when we grow impatient, we start to do certain things.

We start to scramble, really.

And so I was thinking about this because I was on a flag football team, my sophomore year of college, and we were defeated.

Our team was defeated.

The entire year we were defeated.

We were a defeated team the whole year.

We didn't win a single game.

We we scored like two touchdowns the whole time.

So we were so bad everybody took a turn at quarterback because nobody was good at it.

We were horrible.

And so I think I had like a four-down career as flag football quarterback, and I was horrible at quarterback, obviously, and we didn't win that game either, but I only had four downs.

And the reason why I was not good was as soon as I felt just a little bit of pressure, just a little bit, just a little bit of pressure, I wouldn't wait.

Right?

I wouldn't stand in the pocket.

I wasn't waiting for my buddy to break open there that last second.

I mean, I you know, as soon as I felt a little bit of pressure, I would scramble.

And probably if I had just waited, if I just waited just another second, you know, my buddy would have broken free, we could have done something, but no, I was gonna scramble and I wasn't that fast, and so I'd always get caught.

Nobody really wants a scrambling quarterback, by the way, even if you're a Cam Newton fan.

It's just true.

Because eventually the knee gets blown out or the shoulder or whatever.

What you want is you want the steady, boring Peyton Manning, right?

I mean, just steady.

It's like just stands there over and over and over, and wins you another Super Bowl, another Super Bowl, another Super Bowl, and get a huge injury, right?

And he just comes back, because all he's gonna do is back up a few steps and stand there and he's patient and waits.

But we know this feeling, right?

Whether you've ever played quarterback in a flag football league or not, you know the feeling of a little bit of pressure and then a scramble.

It's like a feeling rising up inside of you.

And this is what impatience does, is it rises up in us, and we we get impatient, right?

And we feel this need to scramble to not trust God, to not trust Him in the silence or in the waiting.

And we we feel this when uh we feel it when life is just not on our timetable.

When the job does not come, or the job you're in is not the job you thought it would be, or you're never getting the job you want, when the health just never seems to come around, uh, when the healing doesn't come, when the purpose that you really wanted for your life just doesn't seem to be playing out, when the night just keeps going.

This had to be how these people felt.

And you can't help but feel alone, you can't help but feel abandoned on some level.

I mean, you can't help but start to ask questions like, you know, is God in this?

Is he with me?

Is he uh is he for me?

And we we get impatient and we scramble.

So last Sunday uh got home from we got home from church and eventually we we walked up to the square, there were arts festival or something up there, and so we walked up to the square, and uh my mom and Christy they they went down a couple of the aisles and I took uh the two bigger girls and we went over to the playground, the little caboose.

You all know the caboose, the playground.

And so we go over there and they start playing, and I'm sitting on one of the little brick walls.

I'm sitting there about 40 seconds before I can't stand that I am waiting while my children are playing.

Like I'm just sitting here doing nothing like a moron, right?

I mean, we just don't do that, we don't just sit, do doing nothing.

I mean, heaven forbid.

So you know what I did, right?

I reached for my phone, but I didn't have it.

I left it.

Like I left it at the house, so I didn't have it, so I have to sit, I have to sit there.

I mean, heaven forbid, I have to sit there, just sit, watching my children play, right?

Revolutionary idea what might happen in those minute those minutes.

But so I started to also look around, right?

And there's about 14 other parents around, and about eight of them, nine of them are all on their phones.

And I'm not in judgment because I've I tried to be on my phone, right?

Like I attempted.

I assumed the other like six that aren't on the phones, we like left our phones somewhere and we're like regretting it the whole time.

Right?

I mean, it's just this feeling of scrambling.

I read this this week.

Um, this was the New York Times article.

It's in your handout.

It was six years ago, mind you.

I mean, this is sort of like prophetic.

It's called an ugly toll of technology.

Um do you sometimes think about reaching for the fast forward button only to realize that life does not come with a remote control?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, she had a bunch of other questions as well.

Exposure to technology may be slowly reshaping your personality.

Some experts believe excessive use of the internet, cell phones, and other technologies can cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful, and even more narcissistic.

I mean, anybody like, okay, yeah, me, me, me, all of us, we we know it, we know it.

And and we're not in judge, I'm not I'm not in judgment, because I'm I'm a I'm along with it.

And the reason why I think this is interesting is it's a revealer, right?

Like our phones and how we react, they're a revealer of our nature that we scramble as soon as we get impatient.

Like I can't control this moment that I'm having to wait in, but uh so I can control a few text messages.

I can't control this moment I'm having to wait, so I can control some Instagram, I can't control the, and I don't like the feeling of not being able to control, right?

I mean that's what waiting is, is the fact that you aren't in control.

We hate that.

I hate that.

I hate to wait.

I'll do anything not to wait.

All right, here's a couple sentences I worked really hard on to entertain me because I actually just want to read them because I worked really hard.

This was my week, these three sentences.

Waiting reveals we don't have as much power as we thought.

We are actually creatures with the creator, and this we say is good, but the waiting reveals we actually hate it.

So in rebellion to surrender, we reach for control.

And so we scramble with our phones, or we scramble for some control addiction, or we scramble with some escape.

Right?

I mean, just we know this feeling um when you get the thing you want and it doesn't deliver, you'll scramble then.

Or when you still you just still feel exhausted or unlovable, you scramble.

When you're hearing nothing, you keep crying out to God, like I want to hear something, I want to hear something, I want to hear something, you're just hearing nothing.

It's just like a silent period, we scramble.

And it's this waiting room of passivity that's such an offense to our pride.

How dare he offend my pride by leaving me in a waiting room where I am forced to be passive?

See, we're actually creatures with the Creator, and we say that's good, but we actually hate it when it happens.

So we scramble.

So a few points to to guide us through.

The first one is I've sort of said it already.

Point number one, we tend to scramble when we are forced to wait.

So that that's what they're that's what's going on with the golden calf.

I mean, literally, the you know, I can't control this God, I can't control this moment, so we'll just melt some gold down.

I mean, this is this is insanity.

Like we're gonna worship just a literally a golden statue, I mean, a material.

We will worship a material because we are so uncomfortable in this moment.

I mean, this idea of idolatry, of giving our hearts to things other than God, it's not always, it is, money, sex, and power.

Those are some pretty big ones.

Uh materialism, pretty big one.

I mean, there's those are some pretty big ones.

But but you know what also is just like the control addictions, uh, the addiction of like religious activity?

Like the need to always be religious over and over again.

And we can form that out of impatience, and for all practical purposes, uh, a religious action that we're addicted to, we can call the action God.

Rather than the action serve us knowing God.

What we also see in the story is we see that his character and his intent toward us never alter.

So while all of that is just the bad news of our nature, that we tend to scramble when we wait.

The good news is this point number two, his character never alters.

So, first we see this as the conversation begins with Moses and God, and next week Brad's preaching, which is fantastic.

I'm gonna sit right there, and Brad's gonna preach, it's gonna be so good.

And Brad's a good preacher, actually, he doesn't like to say he is, but he is.

And he's gonna preach and he's gonna talk more about this conversation with Moses and God that's going up on the mountain while these people down in the valley are they're they're melting gold and they're they're just reaching for control.

But what we see a little bit this morning is that Moses pleads for mercy because God is angry.

He is angry toward this behavior, toward this sin, towards this heart position that they refuse to surrender.

And here's what we read in Exodus 32, 8 through 10.

They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them.

They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshipped 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 have seen this people, and behold, it is 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.

So he doesn't dismiss right and wrong.

He's fully righteous.

Wrong is wrong, and he's calling it wrong, and as he is fully righteous, he cannot allow wrong to go undealt with.

But thankfully, there's more to the story.

Because if we just end the story there, we end up with like that policeman, angry God, who's waiting to get you.

But fortunately, there's a sacrificial system in place, and unfortunately, that leads us to Christ.

And we get Moses comes back and he pleads for mercy for the people.

Like, there's got to be more, God.

We need more than just your wrath.

We we're asking for mercy.

And here's what how Moses responds in 34, 8 through 10.

And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped and said, If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin.

Jesus, full honesty, and take us for your inheritance.

And he said, Behold, this is God speaking, Behold, I am making a covenant before all your people, I will do marvels, such as I such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation, and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

And so here's the good news, the relieving news to all of this, and it's point number three.

God keeps his always and forever love toward you.

And where we see this is in this chapter 34, is that he makes the covenant.

He communicates that again.

He doesn't say, hey, like, here's five more things, and then I'll then we'll then the relationship can continue.

He says, Okay, I heard your honesty, I heard your confession, and I'm coming toward you.

I'm not gonna make you work your way out of that hole that you dug.

Uh I'll come toward you.

Now we're told Christ is our satisfaction.

If we can kind of go back and think about this impatience and the the way these people had to be feeling.

Now, what we're told in the New Testament, Christ is our satisfaction.

What we read in the Psalms at times, you know, people totally just just in anguish and questioning God, and at other times, uh, totally in love and satisfied with God.

Now, the idea that Christ is our satisfaction is completely true.

Completely true for me to say to you, Jesus should be and is your satisfaction.

Very true, completely true.

It's just not easy because we hate the moments in life when they're silent and we have to wait.

So the problem's not in his ability to give us satisfaction, the problem's us and how we react to moments in our lives and what we know we can do in any given moment where we're feeling like we know we can go build a golden calf.

We know it will give us a little hit of satisfaction.

Just a little hit.

Now it doesn't really fulfill, it doesn't relieve, and actually what it does over time, it demands more and more and more of you.

But we know we can do it.

And so we can go back to that thing of control or that thing of escape or that thing of pride because it makes you feel like you are in control, even when you're not.

I think I've just always read this passage with some judgment toward these people.

And this week I just started to read it.

I just read it thinking, get your act together.

Like you couldn't hold out for just a little bit.

I mean, I just I've always read it that way, just hold on a little bit.

I mean, I mean, this is ridiculous.

How quickly you ran to that melting that gold and forming a golden calf.

And I think I always had a little bit of judgment, but but then once you start to see yourself in this text, you're like, yeah, I do that.

Like when I'm in that waiting, I'm in that questioning, when I don't know where I'm going or what's going on or when something's gonna play out.

I I hate that.

I hate when I'm not in control or I don't have the sense of feeling like I'm in control.

And these people, that's where they're at.

I mean, they're in the middle of the desert, they don't know where they're going and when they're going, and they're just stuck.

Have you have you ever felt, have you ever, have you ever felt the anxiety of not knowing where you're going?

The greatest place for us to know even in that moment that he hasn't left us, it might not be that moment.

See, if you're trying to conjure it up in that moment, it might just be emotionalism.

But the greatest place for us to know, in a given moment of waiting, the greatest place for us to know that he hasn't left us is the cross.

Because that's the moment where it seemed like there's no way God could be in this.

And it's actually in that moment he's doing the greatest work.

He's taking on all of our impatience and our idolatry and all of our tendencies to not surrender and to scramble, prone to wander, like we sang.

All of that he's taking on himself that he might give to us his righteousness, that the relationship would be restored.

That's the covenant that he is sealing, that we are secure.

And what that means is it means that true satisfaction in God's love towards you, known in Jesus, true satisfaction is not forever felt in every moment.

If you're looking for that or somebody promised that for you, that's disillusionment.

It won't happen, it won't be forever felt.

I mean, life just has too, we have too many emotions, there's too much suffering, there's too much complications and complexities.

We're way too imperfect for it to be forever felt.

But we can know it.

We can know it.

And that's the great thing about the cross.

In history, in physical form, God showed it to us that there is a covenant of love toward us, even when we feel like there's not.

I read this this week by Henry Nowen, who's a great contemplative writer in his book, Life of the Beloved.

Becoming the beloved means letting the truth of our belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do.

It entails a long and painful process of appropriation or better incarnation.

As long as being the beloved is little more than a beautiful thought or lofty idea that hangs above my life to keep me from becoming depressed, nothing really changes.

What is required is to become the beloved in the commonplaces of my daily existence.

And bit by bit to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless specific realities of everyday life.

Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am.

In fact, thinking of, talking about, and doing hour to hour.

This is about appropriating what has already been deemed to you.

And so we get into the moments of silence, waiting, where we usually run to impatience and learning to appropriate what's already been deemed to you even when you're emotionally unable.

Even when you're emotionally you're not feeling something.

We love when we feel it.

I love when I feel it.

I love when you feel it.

But freedom is when we can live and appropriate the gospel to ourselves even when we don't feel it.

See, there's a danger when we when we refuse this way forward and instead move forward and addicted to some uh some form of positive spiritual experiences, when that's what we're looking for over and over and over again, and we need it over and over and over again, there's a danger in that because when the negative moment comes, when Moses is gone too long, when the weight is too much, and we've formed some warp view of the Christian faith where God can only be in the positive experience, but He it means He's deserted the negative experience.

And it puts us in a cycle.

It puts us in a cycle of always needing the next positive spiritual hit.

And that's not freedom, that's religious addiction.

Rather, what we should want is a spirituality that is that is beyond time and beyond emotion, and so often speaks into it, and that we love, we celebrate, we cry out for it, we celebrate, we love that.

But freedom is that when even when that is gone, we can learn to appropriate that there is a covenant of care over us that is beyond time.

And beyond emotion and even beyond suffering.

And this we should want for ourselves because that is even a greater freedom.

We are free from gauging what God might be in and what he might not be in.

Free from us needing the next experience and the next better experience, and even the better experience.

More smoke out of the smoke machines, you know.

I mean, all sorts of just more religious activity and addiction.

Here, in this sort of, we can just simply live.

We can live in honesty and the grace of God as faithfully as we can.

And when we screw up, we can come back to him and say, here I am, here's what I'm like, and in the grace of God we can move forward again.

And that's the kind of freedom and security that comes when you're appropriating a covenantal God to you.

So just to review this, to review this, God doesn't live up to their expectations of him.

And they feel like they're abandoned.

They grow impatient, they go melt some gold, form a golden calf, they break three of the Ten Commandments.

They try to self-save.

That's what sin is, self-saving.

They try to self-save.

God communicates his anger to Moses about them, and then God communicates five things for the people to do in order for right standing.

No, no, no, he doesn't.

And you know what he said?

He says, I'll I'm making a covenant with them.

I will make a covenant, I will move toward the people.

There's your relief.

Not in you doing something, but in the fact that he did something for you.

That's where you have the cross.

He doesn't abandon them, he won't abandon you.

We absolutely live in given moments and reactions to those moments.

That's where we live.

You know that.

But we can rest in a covenantal care that is even beyond that, which has the power to rescue us from our emotions and our doubt and our impatience and our idolatrous hearts.

So, my brothers and sisters, in the waiting, in that waiting that is so difficult, maybe it's right now, or maybe it's going to be in a few months.

In the waiting, may you rest deeper in the thing that is more profound than the waiting.

And that is his covenant care for you.

And if you if you can't find it in that moment, we can find it in the cross.

That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

May you grow weary of the scrambling that preoccupies so much of our lives, and may you rest deeper in his covenantal care for you.

Let's pray together.

God, we freely confess this morning that we do not like to wait.

That we find it an offense to our pride, an offense for our love, for control.

And we confess we don't like it, we confess that this is uh this is our self-saving.

This is not good for us, but we do it.

And in that we wander and we scramble and we form other gods.

We form gods of religiosity, we form gods of morality, we form gods of escapism, we form gods of the world we say are great things, and some that are horrible things, and God, we we do all of this because we we're frustrated with you in the waiting.

And we confess that it is our pride, it is our sin, it is our refusal to live with open hands and live as creatures before a creator.

And God, this morning we are so thankful that you do not burn us in your wrath, but your wrath was fully satisfied in your own sacrifice and the work of Jesus for us, and that you have mercy toward us.

God, for many of us here, we are waiting.

We are waiting on a doctor's call.

We're waiting on a healing emotionally, we're waiting on a job to work out, we're waiting on some purpose in our lives that we're so frustrated.

We're waiting on you to stop being silent.

And God, I pray for just a measure of rest and freedom this morning, of knowing you care for them even when they don't feel it.

Would you help us with our faith to embrace some measure, some measure of trust and even mystery of what you might be doing for us?

God, we thank you for the work of Jesus.

We thank you that we are forever yours.

Help us to learn to appropriate this great righteousness that has been deemed to us.

Help us to appropriate it into the ordinariness of this day and this hour.

In Jesus' name we pray all things.

Amen.