Sermon for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity - Ex 32:1-20

 

Trinity 25

                                                                                      Ex 32:1-20

                                                                                      11/17/24

 

          Forty days. We come to expect that things are going to take forty days in the Bible.  Prior to our text we learn that Moses went up on Mt. Sinai for forty days.  When Elijah travelled to Mt. Sinai as Jezebel sought to kill him, he travelled for forty days.  Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted for forty days. The risen Lord was with the disciples for forty days until his ascension.

          Yet what seems obvious to us, was not apparent to the people of Israel. Yahweh had brought them out of slavery in Egypt as he sent ten plagues upon the Egyptians.  The last of these was the Passover as God killed the firstborn of the Egyptians, but spared Israel which was marked with the blood of the Passover lamb.

          He had brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground, as the pursuing Egyptian army was drowned in the water.  Israel had journeyed to Mt. Sinai where God had descended upon the mountain in an awesome display of thunder and lightning, as the mountain trembled and was wrapped in smoke.

          Yahweh had taken Israel into a covenant with himself.  Moses had read the Book of the Covenant to the people and they had said, “All that the Lord had spoken we will do and we will be obedient.” Then Moses took blood from the sacrifices that had been made and them it on the people as he said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” Israel was now God’s covenant people. They were as God had told them, “my treasured possession among all peoples.”

          After these events we are told, “Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.”  Now as readers of Scripture, we know that Moses was going to be gone for forty days.  However, the Israelites did not know this.  They did not know how long he would be gone.  Moses had disappeared up a cloud covered mountain and as week after week passed he had not come back.

          Our text begins with the words: “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 do not know what has become of him.’” 

          The people became impatient.  So they gave up on Moses. And more importantly, they gave up on Yahweh.  They told Aaron to make for them gods who would now go before them.  So Aaron collected gold from the people and made a golden calf – a common religious idol among the cultures of that area. Then he announced, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”  Then he built an altar and the people offered sacrifices to their new gods.

          Like the Israelites, we become impatient.  We know how we want our life to go.  But when setbacks occur, or when illness becomes part of our life and things are not going as we want, we are tempted to doubt God.  Or we become impatient because we don’t know how things should go.  We don’t now what our future should be and we are looking for guidance and direction but none seems to arrive. This too can lead us to doubt God.  We can begin to question whether he really is in charge; whether he really does love and care for us.

          And of course, in the golden calf we see an example of the false gods that always threaten to occupy our lives.  We don’t make golden images.  Instead, we find other things that we value more than God. We find things that give us our real sense of security and worth.  We find other things on which we would rather spend our time.  Money and wealth become our real source of confidence.  Hobbies and sports occupy our time and attention in a way that God and his Means of Grace do not.

          Yahweh announced to Moses what the people had done.  He said, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them.”  Forty days had been too long for the people to remain faithful.  Already, they had ignored and forgotten the awesome demonstrations of power that God had carried out in redeeming Israel from slavery in Egypt.

          Yahweh 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.”  And in this, we see God’s reaction to sin.  God is the holy God.  All sin is sin committed against him.  It evokes his wrath and judgment. We just confessed that we deserve God’s temporal and eternal punishment because of our sin.  Those aren’t just words. Because of our sin we deserve judgment right now, and we deserve the eternal punishment of hell.

          God had said that he would destroy Israel and start over with Moses.  But Moses implored Yahweh and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?”  Moses called God back to the mighty work that he had just accomplished for Israel. Next, he pointed out that the Egyptians would say that God’s purpose in bringing Israel out in the exodus was in order to destroy them. 

And then Moses employed his most powerful argument.  He used God’s own word.  Moses said, “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 have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’”

          Moses held before God his own promise. It was the promise that he had repeated to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  It was the promise that God had sworn by his own self – the ultimate affirmation that it was true. Yahweh had promised to give them numerous descendants.  He had promised to give them the land of Canaan.

          And in speaking this promise, God had said one more thing.  He announced it the first time he spoke the promise to Abraham.  He said, “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

          Repeated in the word spoken to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the promise that through their offspring all nations would be blessed.  God promised that he would send through their descendants the Savior – the answer to sin that had entered into the world in the fall of Adam.

          The Old Testament is the history of how God fulfilled this promise.  He identified that this One would descend from the tribe of Judah.  Then he said it would be through the descendants of David.  And finally, in the fullness of time, he fulfilled this promise as he sent his Son into the world.  Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  Mary’s husband, Joesph, was from the line of David and when he took Jesus to be his own, Jesus became the son of David.  He became the fulfillment of God promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  As St. Paul told the Galatians, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.”

          Jesus Christ was the promised offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God sent him because as sinners we could never have fellowship with God.  We are unable to live according to his law – we cannot keep his will perfectly.  Paul said, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’”

          However, Jesus has freed us from the curse. The apostle went on to say, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” Christ took our place when he died on the cross.  He freed us from the curse – from the wrath and judgment of God. Because of his death we now are forgiven before God.  We are justified through faith in Christ.

          Jesus was buried on Good Friday as the One who had been cursed by God.  He had died in weakness and shame.  He had been killed by the Romans and so it was obvious that he was a false Messiah.  But on Easter, everything changed.  God raised Jesus from the dead.  He vindicated Jesus as the Messiah.  He demonstrated that the curse had been God at work in Christ in order to redeem us from sin.

          For forty days the risen Lord was with his disciples. He ate and drank with them. He was even seen by five hundred disciples at one time.  And then Jesus ascended into heaven.  This was not merely the withdrawal of the Lord’s visible presence.  It was his exaltation, for Peter tells us that he “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.”

          In our text we see that Moses spoke with God on behalf of Israel.  He interceded for them.  We learn, “And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.”  As Moses carried out this role, he pointed forward to what Jesus now does for us.

          St. Paul told the Romans, “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”  The Lord who died for our sins has been raised from the dead.  He has been exalted to the right hand of God.  And now he intercedes for us.  He continues to declare to the Father what he has done for us.  He pronounces us justified – righteous – for that is the verdict he has won for us, and that is the verdict he will declare when we appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

          In our text today we are reminded of how we grow impatient and fail to trust God. In the golden calf we see all the ways we fail to fear, love, and trust in God above all things.  And so we repent and confess our sin.  We turn in faith to Jesus Christ who bore the curse for us on the cross and then rose from the dead.  Because of Christ we are justified – we are innocent before God.

          But forgiveness is not the end.  Instead, it is a new beginning as we struggle against sin.  St. Paul told the Romans, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” 

          As we return to our baptism in faith; as we read and study God’s Word; as we receive the Sacrament of the Altar the Spirit enables us to be patient in faith as we trust God.  He prompts us to recognize those things in our life that act as false gods and to put them in their proper place.  He leads us to make God our true source of worth, security, and value.  For God is the One who has revealed his love in his Son Jesus Christ.