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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Good morning again. Yes. Well, it's an exciting day, an exciting week for me. It's always a exciting opportunity to preach God's word any chance I get.
[00:00:11] It's humbling. But also excited to do so. Also, I'm excited for today. It's a good day so far in God's house and expecting more good things as we go. And I'm also excited because this week, going on a little bit of a camping holiday with my family and. And we're going to be going to God's country. That's Canonaskis. If you've ever been there, maybe you'd agree with me, do some camping there and hopefully make some memories with the family. And so that's kind of what it's all about when you do these little family vacations. Right? That's what you are certainly hoping for. And I was thinking about one of my earliest childhood memories that I have, and I must have been, I don't know, I don't have many memories when I was really, really young, but I was a toddler, maybe 2 or 3 years old, and this memory of being in a large department store, I'm pretty sure it was an old Sears store back in the day and being with my mother, but kind of getting distracted by probably some toys or something, and you kind of wander off and then all of a sudden you don't know where mom is anymore. And then you wander off in a different direction. All of a sudden panic starts kicking in, oh, no, where's Mom?
[00:01:14] Right? And now you're lost. And as a little toddler, that's a terrifying, traumatic experience. Right?
[00:01:20] But guess what? It could be traumatic for the parent too, all of a sudden if they can't find their child who's wandered off. Right. And we know that's true. And of course we've seen this past week the tragedy of this little boy in Calgary who was 11 years old who wandered off. And it was a very, very tragic circumstance. And many of you I know, have been praying as many people across our province, and certainly we need to, I would say, you know, keep praying for that family. That's a very hard thing. Right. Very heartbreaking.
[00:01:47] And I'm saying all this to kind of make the illustration a little bit here today that I don't know if you've ever been lost physically, but spiritually sometimes we have a tendency to wander as human beings. I don't know about you, you know, maybe you're very holy and have never wandered off in a different direction.
[00:02:04] But I would say most of us have a propensity to wander a little from time to time. Spiritually speaking, we get off track a little bit from where we should be.
[00:02:15] Some of us get distracted easily.
[00:02:18] Those of us with add to some, you know, you kind of know this very well, you know, oh, shiny thing, right?
[00:02:24] You're distracted very easily.
[00:02:27] But the reality is, when it comes to our spiritual lives, I think we all have a tendency to get distracted from time to time. I don't know if you agree with me or not.
[00:02:34] I think it's true. I think the pressures and challenges of life, sometimes they're very real and can sometimes feel like it's all consuming. And guess what? That can distract us sometimes from the things that God would have us to focus on, right?
[00:02:49] Sometimes we have ambition and desire for certain things that can all of a sudden become so big and we're working towards this thing we want to accomplish or this thing we want to do. And it can distract us again from perhaps the things that God wants us to focus on.
[00:03:07] You know, I think of the parable of the sower and the seed. You know, we see that all of these things can choke up the seeds that were planted and the growth that wants to come, and it can distract us. It can get us to get off track from the things that God would have us to do. And maybe we started on a good path, maybe even for a good period of time, maybe we've been doing well for a good period and all of a sudden we find ourselves wondering, well, what happened?
[00:03:36] Sometimes it shouldn't be shocking to me at this point.
[00:03:40] I've been serving God now for it was getting close to 30 years, which is crazy because I only look like I'm 32, right? Isn't that true?
[00:03:51] But anyways, so it shouldn't shock me, but sometimes it does. When someone who's been following God, walking with God for a long time, and then all of a sudden in their, you know, 50 years old, 60 years old, all of a sudden they start wandering off. I'm like, what happened? You've been serving God for 30, 40 years. You know what you should know. I mean, hey, but guess what?
[00:04:09] We all have a propensity to wander off, don't we?
[00:04:12] But for the grace of God, there go I, you might say, right? Come on now.
[00:04:17] A key verse in Matthew 24:13 says, those who endure to the end will be saved. Boy, is that ever a sobering verse. That tells me I need to keep going for God.
[00:04:30] I need to keep in line with what revelation calls my first love Return to your first love it says, so I need to keep walking in that way.
[00:04:40] And, you know, this kind of hit me. A couple weeks ago, I heard the old hymn. For some reason. I never heard this hymn a whole lot in my life, just in the last few years, for whatever reason. It's an old hymn.
[00:04:56] Come thou fount of every blessing. And there's a line in it that says, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.
[00:05:02] Prone to leave the God I love.
[00:05:05] Boy, can you identify with that? I'm prone to wander Lord, I feel it I'm prone to leave the God I love but here's my heart oh, take and seal it Seal it for thy courts above Some of you know that song really well.
[00:05:18] Boy, that's a powerful lyric in that song.
[00:05:22] But again, I think all of us could say, if we're being honest, that we're prone to wander to some degree. I remember I was in Bible college. I was a young Christian and one of our New Testament professors, who was a very godly man, and he would be teaching in class and he would be in tears and just talking about the things of Christ, and he's weeping. He's so moved by God's spirit as he's teaching this stuff. I'll never forget, you know, he told us, you know, more godly people than you and I have fallen away from God.
[00:05:48] And that's true. I mean, that's true. We see it. You live long enough, you're going to see it, right? So again, we're prone to. I'm just kind of setting this picture that we're even the most devout among us. And really, why does this happen? Because Satan himself is pulling the strings. He wants all of us to get distracted, right? He wants all of us to wander off. I don't care who you are. And sometimes even if you're a leader, a pastor, a godly, you know, influence, a godly leader, he wants to pull on you even harder than anybody else.
[00:06:16] Because if he can wipe you out, guess what? He might take out more people even with you. Right? That's true.
[00:06:21] Right. That can happen.
[00:06:23] So, hey, by the way, even Jesus himself, Now, he didn't wander, but he wasn't immune to this, right? The Bible says that he was tempted in every way.
[00:06:33] So he understands that pull that we all feel. Okay, that makes sense, right? So what do we do with this wandering heart? I guess that's a good question. How do we reign it in?
[00:06:43] You know, I think there's some pretty simple answers for this. But before we get there. We're going to look at Exodus chapter 32. It's a very difficult scripture. So open your Bibles and turn to Exodus 32.
[00:06:53] All right? And I kind of second guessed myself. Why am I picking like I'm doing a one off service? I'm not preaching through a book. I have the whole Bible.
[00:07:02] I could preach from any text.
[00:07:04] Why am I preaching this one?
[00:07:07] I don't know. But here we are, Exodus 32.
[00:07:12] Okay, it's a difficult scripture, but before we get into the text, a little summary here, okay? Moses had gone up into the mountain to meet with God, and it was up there that he was getting instructions on how to govern his people. Now he was gone for a long time, in fact, a lot longer than what the people, the Israelites are at the base of the mountain. They're waiting for him to come back and they're getting impatient. He was gone for 40 days on this mountain, right? Some of you guys know this story. And the people got impatient, they started grumbling. And then they corner Aaron and said, make us some gods that we can worship. So Aaron goes, okay, and he says, give me all your gold rings and gold jewelry, throws it into the fire, makes this golden calf. And they started worshiping this calf and having this whole religious experience around this calf, going completely in the face of what God had commanded them not to do. So you guys follow this, right?
[00:08:08] A lot of you know this scripture. And then Moses comes down from the mountain, he's very upset.
[00:08:12] Going to explain all of this, what happens in a little bit. But there's just the summary as, as we, as we go into this. But really I'm kind of looking at this in the context of spiritual drift.
[00:08:24] How do the Israelites go from, from, you know, seeing God's miraculous hand parting the Red Sea, the miraculous hand of God. Not that long later, all of a sudden, they're worshiping this idol, which God explicitly told them not to do.
[00:08:39] It seems like it happened really fast, right? I mean, in some ways it did, but in some ways I would suggest that there's always more under the surface.
[00:08:47] Just like the person. All of a sudden, just like I described it, like they're 50, 60 years old, they've been walking with God for 40 years, and all of a sudden they're not walking with God anymore. Guess what? That didn't happen overnight, did it?
[00:08:56] There was likely a slow fade, a slow process to get them there, maybe a little compromise here, a little doubt there, and, and then not reined in the right way. And Then all of a sudden, it's never all of a sudden.
[00:09:11] So a few lessons From Exodus chapter 32 before we get in there. I'm going to pray before we go any further. Okay. So, Father God, I thank you today for your presence that's with us, Lord, without you, we would be lost.
[00:09:24] Without your mercy and your grace, God, none of us could come before you. But Lord, thank you. Because of your mercy and grace, Lord, we can approach your throne with confidence, knowing, Lord, that you hear us and you love us, God, and thank you. Your word tells us that your mercy begins new every morning.
[00:09:40] Help us to walk in that mercy and grace today. And help us, Lord, to live for you in such a way that honors you. Help us, Lord. Now in this message, God, that we would learn what we need to learn. But also, Lord, we would remember how gracious and merciful you are towards us. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:09:57] So the first lesson in Exodus chapter 32 I'd like to talk about is simply that impatience can lead to idolatry.
[00:10:05] Now, well, I'll explain that in just a moment here.
[00:10:08] But many of us struggle with patience to some degree.
[00:10:12] To some degree. I'm sure all of us would agree with that. Some of us more than others.
[00:10:19] You know, I include myself in this. In fact, I think for leaders sometimes patience can be harder. For leaders sometimes. Why do I say that? It's just my hypothesis. I don't know.
[00:10:29] Pastor Paul can straighten me out later if this is not true. But I'm thinking, because leaders are typically the kind of people that want to get things done right? They want to see things move forward. They want to see change happen. They want to see the organization grow or the church grow or this thing flourish or that thing happens. Because leaders are kind of predisposed to thinking that way, that sometimes we just want to get things done. That can lead to impatience sometimes, right? I think this is generally that's true. So when you have a godly leader who's also patient, boy, that's a really good thing. That's a godly thing. But here's the other observation.
[00:11:03] The Bible in Galatians 5 says that patience is a fruit of the Spirit.
[00:11:08] So that tells me that if I'm going to have patience in my life to the way that God wants me to have patience, I'm gonna have to be full of the Holy Spirit, right?
[00:11:17] Isn't that true? Come on, now. All y' all are struggling with patience. You just need a dose of the Holy Ghost in your life, all right?
[00:11:25] I think it's true. We need God's spirit to be patient.
[00:11:31] You know, in our impatience to get things done, what happens?
[00:11:36] Shortcuts can be made.
[00:11:38] Compromises can happen.
[00:11:41] Poor financial decisions get made.
[00:11:45] Has that ever happened to anybody else you've made out of impatience, Made a poor decision?
[00:11:49] Other than me?
[00:11:51] Anybody here? Come on now, all you impatient people, you've made a decision out of impatience. Maybe it cost you a little bit.
[00:12:01] Now, it's not going to take us long to think up other biblical examples where God's people were impatient and created a mess, right? I think you can think of some. Abraham, right? God gives him the promise. You see all the stars in the sky? Count them. If you can guess what, you're going to be the father of many nations. God gives this promise to Abraham. And guess what? It happened right away.
[00:12:19] No, it did not.
[00:12:22] It took 25 years from the time of the. Imagine someone came to you and said, I'm going to do this great, wonderful thing for you. And you're like, oh, man. All right, let's have it. You're going to have to wait 25 years.
[00:12:32] Well, that's a bummer, right? Like, that's just.
[00:12:35] That kind of stinks. But Abraham had to wait for 25 years, and in his impatience, he took matters into his own hands, slept with his wife's servant, had a son with her, created a real mess, not only within his family, but, you know, still reverberates around the world to this day because of impatience. Wow.
[00:12:52] You know, another biblical example I was reading recently, King Saul, he was in 1st Samuel 13.
[00:13:01] He's seen an enemy army coming at him, and he was told to wait for the prophet Samuel to come to offer sacrifices unto God, to seek the Lord in that way. But he sees the enemies coming and he's like, well, skip that. You know what? I'm just going to do sacrifices myself. Even though he was explicitly told not to do it, he was forbidden to do it, decided to do it himself. And then if you read the story, he says, you know what? Because you disobeyed God in this, your throne for you and your family will be removed from the throne. Wow.
[00:13:28] Interesting, right? So guess what our impatience sometimes causes. You know, we see a thing that needs to happen, but we're unwilling to wait. When we know better, this happens. Now, I'm going to make a statement that says this. Our lack of patience in something we're waiting for can cause the thing we want to have happen to become an idolatrous trap for us.
[00:13:56] Now, what's an idol? Well, I will define it this way. There's a few ways you can define an idol. Anything that you put your hope, meaning or identity in, other than God, in your life.
[00:14:05] Now, we'd say an idol is anything that you worship that's not God, which is true. Because if you're worshiping something, guess what? You're getting your meaning, your purpose, your identity in that thing that you're worshiping. Okay? Now, now, Pastor Paul said last week that, hey, we're all wired to worship. That is true. We're all created. Every human being worships something or someone.
[00:14:24] We're all wired for it. We're created to worship. Okay? The question is, are we going to worship God or are we going to worship someone else or something else?
[00:14:34] Where are we getting our hope from?
[00:14:37] Where are we getting our meaning and purpose from? Because if it's, you know, I mean, some people get it in family.
[00:14:42] Family's wonderful. God bless, you know, family is from God, right? I love. I should. I should be loving my family and doing good for. Absolutely.
[00:14:50] You know, my wife and my kids and other family relationships, careers. Some people put that ahead of God in their lives. Isn't that true? That's where they put their hope and their meaning and their purpose, their money.
[00:15:01] It could be other material things. You know, the list can go on and on and on.
[00:15:07] So with all that context, let's get into verse one of Exodus 32.
[00:15:11] We're going to go into it right away here.
[00:15:14] Now, it says this. When the people saw that Moses was long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron. Pause. Okay, Who's Aaron?
[00:15:22] Moses, brother, the high priest.
[00:15:25] He's a high priest, okay?
[00:15:28] They gathered around Aaron and said, now he's in charge while Moses is gone. By the way, come, make us gods who will go before us as this fellow Moses. As for this fellow Moses, hear the disdain in their voice. As for this fellow Moses, who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him. Okay?
[00:15:45] You can see the impatience, a little bit of annoyance with their leader, maybe a little disdain.
[00:15:51] This fellow Moses, he's supposed to be here, he's the leader, but he's nowhere to be found. What do we do? Right.
[00:15:58] Of course they made the decision, give us some gods to worship. Right?
[00:16:03] And now, of course, in this case, Moses wasn't just their leader, governmental wise. He was, okay, because ancient Israel, Right, they were.
[00:16:13] Moses was kind of the leader of their government, but he was also God's representation to the people. He was God's messenger to the people. He was the voice of God to the people. You follow me? Okay, so they weren't just rejecting Moses the leader. They were rejecting God himself by rejecting Moses in this instance. Okay, now, that doesn't mean that anytime you have a problem with the leader means you have a problem with God himself. Okay, let me just put that out there. In this case, they were. Moses was the one communicating God's voice, his commands to the people of Israel. And we're going to see that as we unfold this message a little bit here. So they, you know, it's very important to understand.
[00:16:56] Now, in their desire, again, I think everybody's wired to worship.
[00:17:00] And in their desire to place their worship somewhere to someone, Moses ain't there anymore. Guess what? They're going to concoct an idea of worshiping this calf.
[00:17:10] Now, I'll say it this way.
[00:17:12] Impatience with God's timing often becomes the doorway to idolatry because it tempts us to seek a substitute for God's presence, his promises or provision.
[00:17:24] Again, we are going to get this thing, no matter what the cost, because I don't want to wait on God and his timing for my life. And then you can put all of these focuses into that. We got to be careful on patience in our life, all of us impatient people. I'm preaching to myself, too, friends. Okay?
[00:17:43] All right. Second lesson we can learn From Exodus chapter 32 is about following the cultural ethic.
[00:17:50] Now, we're going to continue to read on here in verse two, and I'll explain what this means in a moment.
[00:17:56] Aaron answered them, take off your gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing. Bring them to me.
[00:18:03] So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. And he, Aaron, took what they had handed him and made them into an idol cast into the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. And then they brought. Then they said, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.
[00:18:19] When Aaron saw this, he built. Okay, so they built the calf, or they fashioned the calf in the fire with the gold, right? Aaron saw this, and then he built an altar, taking another step here, building an altar in front of the calf and announced, tomorrow there will be a festival, right? To the Lord. To what Lord? He's talking about this calf.
[00:18:39] This is still the context here. And so the next day, the people rose early, sacrifice burnt offerings, presented fellowship offerings. Afterwards, they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
[00:18:52] Okay?
[00:18:53] Some very serious stuff happening here, as you can see.
[00:18:58] So we'll talk about this in just a moment. We'll kind of unfold this. But this might seem a little bit weird to us in 2026. Like, why would they do this? Right? Why would they make a calf?
[00:19:08] What's behind this? Right.
[00:19:11] I didn't know this until this past week, studying this, but in the ancient near east, that the symbol and idol of a calf was actually a very common pagan thing to worship. It was very common in the ancient world that pagan people, pagan nations would worship a calf, whether it was made out of wood or metal or gold or silver, whatever.
[00:19:36] This was a very common thing. And so I'm kind of looking at this going, I wonder if this is kind of where this comes from.
[00:19:43] Were these people so just kind of entrenched in the cultural worldview? Did they just have a worldview embedded in the culture that it was so common, that this calf was so common that everybody just worships a calf? What's the big deal that all of a sudden they just adopted that? Hey, where's our leader? I don't know. What should we do? Hey, let's just make a calf. Everybody else is doing it. It's common, right? No problem.
[00:20:05] In fact, it was so common that the Israelites not only went along with it. Aaron, the high priest, how many think he should have known better?
[00:20:12] They all should have known better, by the way. But certainly the high priest, it was so common that they went along with it. They followed the cultural norms of the day and got themselves in a real mess when God explicitly said not to do this, right?
[00:20:31] Says in Exodus, chapter 20, we've read this, probably some of us, you must not have any other God but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I mean, it can't get more clear than this, right?
[00:20:52] So they were clearly going against God's standard by making the idol. But it gets even worse if you look a little closer.
[00:21:01] Walter Kaiser, biblical scholar, he says, Talking about verse 25, it's really about the whole thing. But specifically in verse 25, which we'll get to in a moment, he says that there was singing and dancing around this idol. Remember, they made an altar and there was singing and dancing and that they were running wild and out of control. That's what it says in verse 25. We're going to read it in a bit. And the exact word used twice in this verse is found in the warning of Proverbs 29:18. Where there is no revelation, the people cast off all moral restraints.
[00:21:32] And the idea of the verb to cast off all restraints is that there's a loosening or an uncovering. And it appeared that there was a type of religious prostitution connected with the people's worship of the Golden Calf.
[00:21:45] It's interesting to me that, that anytime cultures get away from biblical morality, biblical principles, that there is a sexual element in the culture that just gets unstrained, it gets twisted, it gets perverted. It's not. It's today, isn't it true? It's all throughout history.
[00:22:04] Every cultural group you can look at in history, you start to see gods removed out of the picture and stuff starts getting really weird.
[00:22:11] All right?
[00:22:13] Sexual ethic, sexual perversion, sexual promiscuity, you name it. And you know, Ephesians 4:19, a very familiar. Well, I shouldn't say I'm familiar. Some of us having all. Having lost all sensitivity to whom? To God.
[00:22:27] They have given themselves over to sensuality as to indulge in every kind of impurity.
[00:22:32] So when you lose that sensitivity to God, inevitably this is what happens. Right. So why am I saying all of this?
[00:22:40] I think we need to be careful. We can look at the example of the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf. Again, spiritual drift doesn't happen usually like this. It seems like it's fast, but there was an element. I'm just gonna. I'm just thinking it through here. I think there was an element to them that had a cultural worldview that they just didn't adhere to the words of God, but they just kind of looked around and going, everybody's doing it. It's not so bad. We need to be careful of those things, friends. Right. We need to be careful of it. We need to know the word of God, what his standards are, what he says to be true, what he says to be righteous.
[00:23:13] Right. And let's not compromise on that. Amen.
[00:23:16] Amen. That doesn't mean that you are, you know, beating people over the head or you're ungracious or unkind to people who think differently. Especially people. No.
[00:23:25] Right. You could be loving and gracious towards people who think differently, who are. Maybe they're living it. Sure.
[00:23:30] But guess what? We still need to stand for the truth of God's word and his principles. Amen.
[00:23:35] Come on now. And don't allow things of this world, our worldview, to get tainted. We need to view the world through the lens of the Scriptures as we read through them continually and be with him in prayer and in fellowship.
[00:23:49] So just because something is.
[00:23:52] Just because something is culturally acceptable or even celebrated doesn't mean that God is okay with it or condones it. I think it's very true.
[00:24:02] So let's not be. Again, so let's be careful not to endorse or participate in things that Scripture clearly states are sinful acts. So Peter ends, he goes on to say this about this golden calf scenario. By constructing a calf of gold and claiming that this pagan symbol can in any way be remotely associated with their deliverance from Egypt, the Israelites are in effect turning the Exodus experience on its head. They are going back.
[00:24:31] Sorry, where are we going? Back to the first words God spoke on the mountain, the heart of the law in Exodus, and saying, no, we see things differently.
[00:24:39] What?
[00:24:41] Basically what he's saying is the Israelites are saying to God, no, God, we see our way is right. We do not agree with you. Our way is better. We've got it figured out. Sorry, your ways are. They're old fashioned or they're not good enough. We got our own.
[00:24:56] See what's going on. Isn't that a bold thing to do?
[00:24:58] It's a very bold thing to do.
[00:25:02] It's hard to imagine, he says, a worse thing they could have done. And he goes on to say, to put it another way, by building the calf and reciting what was earlier said in Exodus 22, Israel is fashioning.
[00:25:15] Check this out. A new false religion according to the pattern of what God revealed.
[00:25:20] Excuse me, to them earlier.
[00:25:22] This continues in the following verses. In verse five, Aaron builds an altar parallel to the altar that will be built in the tabernacle.
[00:25:31] He proclaims that there will be a festival. Basically, look, they made the idol. That's bad enough, but then they made an altar. It's getting worse now. They're gonna have a festival.
[00:25:41] Now what do you see? They're actually, they're forming a whole new religion based on this thing. You see what's going on here getting worse as you go along. But is that any different today?
[00:25:53] I don't think so.
[00:25:55] I don't think so.
[00:25:57] Pastor Paul, a few weeks back, he talked a little bit about this idea of progressive Christianity.
[00:26:03] It's kind of a weird word, kind of a buzzword a little bit. I'm not going to get into the particulars of this, but I'll just say this God's revelation is set. It's the word of God. It's the Bible. We have it.
[00:26:16] Right? It's not progressing any further than what it is. Its meaning is already there.
[00:26:21] Okay. It's already settled.
[00:26:23] We don't have any new illumination or any new, you know, major doctrine. No, it's already written there. But yet there's all kinds of people in churches and, you know, and people outside the church who are looking at the word of God and they're either dismissing it, twisting it.
[00:26:45] Right.
[00:26:47] Or just, you know, ignoring it altogether. Why?
[00:26:51] Well, to be inclusive.
[00:26:55] We already know God's the most inclusive person out there. Right.
[00:26:59] God's the most inclusive.
[00:27:01] Bible says. Right.
[00:27:04] All have sinned, fallen short of the glory of God. That's true. We're all in the same boat because of our sin. And what does it say as well, John 3:16. We all know this, right?
[00:27:13] Whoever believes in him, God so loved the world that whoever is every tribe, nation, tongue, gender, race, culture, it doesn't matter. We're all equal before God. Right?
[00:27:22] God's very, very inclusive.
[00:27:25] He loves everybody. He loves everybody. It doesn't matter who you are. You are welcome to come to him. Amen.
[00:27:34] You're welcome to come to him. Doesn't matter who you are. By the way, that's why things like racism are so evil. Okay.
[00:27:41] You believe that? I do. I think racism is from the pit of hell.
[00:27:46] I do.
[00:27:48] Because God doesn't see things that way. God doesn't see people that way. Right.
[00:27:53] So in this.
[00:27:56] I'll just try to stick to my notes here. Okay.
[00:28:01] Our culture does this today, essentially forming new religious practices to accommodate what's acceptable in the culture, whether it's churches twisting or ignoring God's word to seem inclusive. God's already very inclusive. Or the secular atheistic side of culture adopting worldviews that one must adhere to lest you be canceled from polite society.
[00:28:19] The reality is, a large percentage of our culture is in disagreement with God. How many think that's true?
[00:28:24] And when.
[00:28:26] And when we do that, when we're in disagreement with God, we end up creating a new. But it's not actually new, new religious practices.
[00:28:35] You know, it's interesting to me that people who are far away from God, they say, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God yet. They're actually more religious than a lot of good Christians.
[00:28:44] They're more dogmatic in their beliefs and their lifestyle than a lot of other people. You know what I'm saying? Does this make any sense to anybody?
[00:28:51] You can be very religious about the wrong things.
[00:28:56] You can be very dogmatic about things that are just not true, that are false, that are, you know, not good.
[00:29:02] A very important scripture. I'm sorry, I don't have it on the screen. Colossians 2, verse 8. And I've preached from it many times and I think it's really appropriate here. Says, don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and, and from the spiritual powers of this world rather than from Christ.
[00:29:22] I think a lot of people are captured by human thinking, right?
[00:29:29] Empty philosophies that come from spiritual. What's the spiritual powers? Are talking from demonic satanic spirit by basically from the, you know, that's really what it's talking about. So what am I saying in all of this?
[00:29:42] The point was, the lesson from this Exodus 32 is, is be be aware and be on guard to not follow just the cultural ethic today. Know God's word, okay? If you want to guard against spiritual drift, know the word of God.
[00:29:57] Know what the world believes and where it comes from. But know what you believe and why you believe it, okay? Because then you're going to be able to take a stand. Does that sound good? Amen. It's going to really help us when all of a sudden you see people doing things that are contrary to the word. You know what it is, because you know God's word, right?
[00:30:12] So let's make sure we're in agreement with God and his standards. And I think that'll lead to actually an abundant life for his people.
[00:30:20] Okay? The next lesson we're going to learn here today is that of poor leadership. All right? Now this is all about the person of Aaron, who we've already established is Moses, brother. He's the high priest, he's the one in charge while Moses is up on the mountain. And he's the one who essentially said, hey, you want a God to worship? Well, give me your jewelry.
[00:30:38] I got you, you know, and he, like, I'm your guy, right? Like, and then he made this calf and we seen what happened there and we see that we're gonna read in verse 21 in just a moment. Moses comes down from the mountain. He sees God's people singing and dancing, actually says they were out of control and he got so angry he smashed the tablets. But then he addresses his brother Aaron and this is what he says. He says to Aaron, what did these people do to you, right, that you led them into such great sin?
[00:31:12] Aaron responds, do not be angry, my Lord. Aaron answered, you know how prone these people are to evil.
[00:31:19] He blames the people like he's shifting blame right away.
[00:31:23] They said to me, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses, who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him. And so I told them, whoever has any gold and jewelry, take it off. And they gave me the gold and I threw it into the fire and out came this calf.
[00:31:38] It's like poof magic, right? Not my fault. Sounds like something one of my kids would say. It's not my fault. It just happened.
[00:31:44] None of your kids ever do that to you? I know they're not here to defend. Oh, one's here. So being a pastor's kid, you get dragged into an illustration. It's just going to happen anyways.
[00:31:59] But you can hear the lack of accountability. Right?
[00:32:02] Right.
[00:32:04] How many know the godly thing is to take responsibility, not deflect.
[00:32:09] You know, there's blame shifting again. I think there's a compromise of the culture here from even Aaron wasn't just the people. Leaders can be compromised from the culture too.
[00:32:20] Godly leaders can.
[00:32:24] And he made a very poor leadership decision.
[00:32:26] And I'll say this.
[00:32:28] You know, Aaron could have stopped all of this.
[00:32:31] Right? The people came to him. He had the ability, the power, the authority to stop it, but he didn't.
[00:32:38] And in fact, he didn't just let it happen. He didn't just abdicate.
[00:32:42] He joined in and helped make it happen.
[00:32:44] So it's even worse, right?
[00:32:48] I mean, it's one thing to just allow something to happen that's bad enough, but now to go and help make it happen and to participate in it. And I think this is why good godly leadership is very important, by the way, in every sphere of society, good leaders will stop bad things from happening.
[00:33:06] Come on now.
[00:33:09] Bad leaders will simply allow things to happen.
[00:33:13] Terrible leaders will join in and make the terrible thing happen.
[00:33:18] Good God. Leadership is very important. So what does that mean for you and I now? Okay, hey, yeah, I'm a pastor, I'm a leader. But let's put that on the shelf for a minute. I'm a parent. I'm a leader in my home. If you're a parent or a grandparent or you're a boss at your workplace, or you're a manager at your workplace, almost every one of us here in some degree is a leader to some degree, because we have influence over people.
[00:33:40] True.
[00:33:42] We have influence in someone's life. Now think of it just a moment. As a parent, this is very easy to understand for most of us, I think, okay, think about it. If you had a son or a daughter, you're a parent and they start to get involved in some bad behavior, that's not just unwise, but it's sinful, right? Sinful behavior. You, you know, this is not going to end up in a good place for them. You know, this is not good at all. But instead of speaking to them, instead of trying to stop them from doing this behavior, making these poor decisions, not only do you just let it happen, but you join in and help make them happen.
[00:34:25] Help. Help them to do it.
[00:34:28] Now, many of us go, that sounds preposterous, right? You know how many people do that?
[00:34:33] You know how many Christian people do that?
[00:34:35] I've seen it. You're allowing your kids to do what? Oh, yeah, it's no big deal. In fact, I brought them over there to do it anyways.
[00:34:44] You know, why would you do that?
[00:34:48] Again, like kids are going to make, you know, people are going to make their decisions and we can't stop everybody from how many know. I'm not directly responsible for the decisions that everybody else makes, but I am responsible to speak the truth in love.
[00:35:01] Right? To correct.
[00:35:03] Right to correct. Speak the truth in love in my own home. That's very.
[00:35:08] That responsibility is elevated.
[00:35:11] I can't control people's behavior, but I'm still, as a leader, you see the point, I think, right? Aaron didn't do any of those things. Right.
[00:35:20] Again, this is why leadership is so important.
[00:35:24] And we need to be careful that we don't adopt a cultural worldview so much to then just allow ungodliness to just never be corrected.
[00:35:33] We wonder why our society is in the mess that it's in sometimes. And because I think a lot of this happens like this and it happens in the church as well. Walter Kaiser says, proper visible leadership or sorry, without proper visible leadership. So you're not abdicating your leadership is out there. Without proper visible leadership, people fail. No kidding. Sometimes even the most holiest of men as Aaron can be persuaded to do the things that contrary to their belief or to their testimony. And I think that's true. Okay, so the next point we're going to talk about here today, the next lesson is that prayer moves the hand of God. How many believe that's true?
[00:36:05] God responds to our prayers, right?
[00:36:08] And he did in the case of Moses. Now we're going to move on here. How did God respond to these people? Now, if you've ever read Exodus, chapter 32. You're going to see this is going to get very harsh here very quick. Okay. I'm very grateful today that I don't live in the time of this, you know, old covenant times, you know, thousands. I'm grateful to live in this new covenant with grace under in Christ. Amen. Is anybody glad about that? That, that God does not treat me as my sins deserve? Amen. Because if he did, I'd be dead a long time ago. He would have wiped me out long ago. He would have wiped you out a long time ago too, FYI.
[00:36:45] Okay.
[00:36:46] I'm grateful that God doesn't deal with all like this. God, what does the Bible say? That the wrath of God was satisfied on the cross of Christ. Amen.
[00:36:54] Okay, so Christ bore the punishment for our sin. But this has gone back. This is the time. So God, he was very, very upset with these people. So we're gonna read it. In verse 9 and 10, God says to Moses, I've seen these people and they are a stiff necked people. Now leave me alone. That my anger may burn against them, that I may destroy them. That I will make you, that I'll make you talking to Moses into a great nation.
[00:37:17] Wow.
[00:37:18] Now before we get into the harshness of this, I, I kind of, I kind of, I kind of find it a little funny. I chuckled to myself. I'm like, how much time was Moses spending with God that God had to say to him, leave me alone, Moses, so that I can go and do this thing that I want to do, Right.
[00:37:31] Get out of my way. Right?
[00:37:34] Maybe Moses was spending so much time with God that when he decided to pray and to mediate on behalf of the Israelites, that God heard his prayer and relented.
[00:37:45] Whoa. Maybe God was. Moses was so close to God, he's walking with God. He just spent 40 days on the mountain with them. He's getting a download from God the whole time. Yeah, he's pretty close to God at this point, I think.
[00:37:55] And so this is what he begins to do. And the next verse we're going to see here. Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. Lord, he said, why should your anger burn against your people whom you brought out of Egypt with a great power and mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth. Turn from your fierce anger. Relent and do not bring this disaster among the people.
[00:38:21] Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac and Israel. To whom you swore by your own self, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever. Verse 14. Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he threatened.
[00:38:43] So this is. Yeah. So Moses moved the hand of God by his prayers. We could just see. It's pretty, pretty clear there right now. Peter ends comments on this and he's saying this is talking about, you know, God wanted to wipe out the people. It's not where the story ends. Moses comes through. Rebellion is followed by mediation. Hey, friends, this tells me that, guess what if we have people in our lives that are living a little bit rebellious, because people do. Again, we are all prone to wandering. Some people wander a little more than others. And in that, maybe extreme wandering can kind of cross that line into, oh, they're. They're flat out rebellious here now. Right?
[00:39:16] That's true.
[00:39:18] A lot of we don't like to admit it. We're rebellious by nature, sometimes a lot of us.
[00:39:23] But this tells me, guess what if we have people in our lives, Maybe they're our kids or grandkids or anyone else, and they're living in rebellion. We need to mediate before God with them, for them. Amen.
[00:39:32] Keep praying for them.
[00:39:34] God's will is for them to repent.
[00:39:37] God wants them to come to him. Right. God's great pleasure, God's great desire is for people to repent and come to him and find life.
[00:39:45] So God wants to answer that prayer, I think. Right. So he says rebellion is followed by mediation. Earlier in Exodus, Moses argued with God out of his own selfish interests, almost petty motives. Now, however, he argues with God on behalf of the people. He has learned to put their interests first. He does this by reminding God that rejecting Israel at this point will have widespread implications.
[00:40:07] This is where. Yeah. He reminds the Lord, perhaps gently, that Israel is your people. God, they're your people, man. You deal with them. Right?
[00:40:17] Not my people. Yours, whom you brought out of Egypt. He reminds God of the very things that God himself regularly enjoins the Israelites to remember that God delivered Israel with great, great power and a mighty hand. He also reminds the Lord of his own honor is at stake.
[00:40:30] Had he not just finished dismantling the Egyptian army and their gods? God, didn't you just do this? Will you now turn around and give these very same enemies a reason to rejoice in Yahweh's defeat? Never.
[00:40:41] Right?
[00:40:44] It's a Powerful thing when. When we quote the word of God. God, you said, you ever do that in your prayers? I have. I'm praying. God, you said in your word, you so, Lord, I'm coming to you.
[00:40:55] I'm going to hold you. Can I be so bold to say, lord, just do what you said you would.
[00:41:01] It's very powerful.
[00:41:05] Now, this scripture has been debated for some time.
[00:41:12] And because we read this and we say, wow, did God go from wanting to destroy the whole nation of Israel to all of a sudden he just changed his mind. Because Moses prayed, I thought scripture says God doesn't change his mind like man does.
[00:41:27] Well, so there's a lot of debate here. What's going on here? Right.
[00:41:33] So in answering that. Well, let's go back here.
[00:41:38] Yeah, actually, this will work.
[00:41:41] Okay, so first of all, to try again. This has been debated for a long time. And one of the ways we can help understand this, number one, is, and I just said it, that it's God's will for people to repent.
[00:41:51] Okay, we know that's God's will. What does one John, chapter five says? This is the confidence in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him.
[00:42:05] Okay, so it's God's will for people to repent. It's God's will for people to, okay, I'm gonna pray according to your will. So I think God is actually happy to hear that prayer.
[00:42:14] And in this case, perhaps again, this is why maybe God relented. Now we know that James 5:16 says the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Right. Moses was certainly that kind of person. Again, he was very close with God.
[00:42:32] Now this is one way to understand it. But another thing, this is weird. I don't know what happened to this. So that's my, that's my mistake. So don't even try to read that.
[00:42:41] Anyways, Walter Kaiser, he says this, that the, this relenting in the scripture. Now actually, some translations say that God repented and then didn't wipe them out.
[00:42:53] What? That's a weird word. Or most of them nowadays say relent. It not repented. Okay, well, either way, it's still kind of like what's going on here, right? Did God change his mind? So Walter Kaiser says, and you're never gonna be able to read this says God's repentance or relenting is an anthropomorphism. That's a fancy Word anthropomorphism, which is essentially trying to describe God who's indescribable with mere human traits, okay? Because we have human terms, okay, Terminologies, things that we understand from our human experience. But it's very limited to try to describe an almighty God who's not like us, right?
[00:43:35] And this is kind of one of those things. All right? So he says that it's God's repentance of relenting. Or is an anthropomorphism a description of God in human forms that aims at showing us that.
[00:43:47] That he can and does change his actions and emotions to men when given proper grounds for doing so, and therefore thereby he does not change in his basic integrity or character.
[00:43:59] Goes on to say, how could God relent and not change his mind?
[00:44:04] Sorry, how could God relent? God did not change his mind in the same way a parent decides not to discipline a child.
[00:44:10] Instead, God changed his behavior to remain consistent with his nature.
[00:44:15] When God wanted to destroy the people, he was acting consistently with his justice. When Moses interceded for the people, God relented in order to act consistently with his mercy.
[00:44:27] Now, I already established that. Guess what? We are in this new covenant with Christ. Amen. Bible says that when Jesus came, he came full of grace and truth, right?
[00:44:35] Jesus is the embodiment, the personification of grace. So I'm grateful that we live in this covenant of grace today, that God does not treat us as our sins deserve. Now, so the next point we're going to talk about here. I think we're ready for the next one. Yes, last one here today, some lessons from Exodus 32. So just in summary, we have this impatience, okay? We all deal with this impatience. But be careful, because your impatience can actually lead you towards an idolatrous trap if you're not careful when you're trying to obtain or do something and you're putting that thing before God. Okay? We've already established that following the cultural ethic, we're going to be careful. The worldviews that we adopt, sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it. The issues of leadership, okay?
[00:45:20] We all have the ability to make decisions as leaders, even in our homes, perhaps in our workplaces and otherwise, prayer moves God's hand. We need to be praying for people who are in rebellion, praying for people who are going in the wrong direction. They've gotten off track with God. Okay? We need to make sure we're praying for people like that, because I think God wants to answer that prayer. All right? And Then lastly, of course, repentance is key. Is a very, very profound points here. I know that's a joke. They're not that profound. We all know that repentance is key. Okay, but what happens here in verse 19, Moses approached the camp, saw the calf in dancing, his anger burned, and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf the people had made and burned it into the fire, ground it into powder, scattered it in the water, and made the Israelites drink it. Yuck.
[00:46:09] Everybody say, yikes. Moses, chill out. No, he was very upset again, Moses was representing God.
[00:46:19] How upset was God at this? How serious is sin?
[00:46:24] I kind of joked in the first service. This is kind of like the, you know, is this like an ancient washing your mouth out with soap kind of thing? Here, drink this. You know, this is your. This is. You made it and you've got to drink it. Okay?
[00:46:37] It's intense, right?
[00:46:39] Verse 25 says, Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so became a laughingstock to their enemies.
[00:46:47] And so he stood at the entrance of the camp and said, now we're going to pause it. This is actually. This is kind of one of the more important parts of the sermon here, okay? Very simple.
[00:46:56] That's what he said. This Moses addressing the people. Now, after their rebellion, after them worshiping this idol, this golden calf, after he had prayed to God and God relented, he now approaches the people and says, whoever's for the Lord, come to me.
[00:47:11] And this is their opportunity to now repent and to show their act of repentance, their act of faith by taking a step towards Moses, who was representing God in this instance. Okay?
[00:47:24] Now, you would have hoped that everybody would have taken a step towards Moses at this point, but that's not what happened.
[00:47:31] It says that the Levites rallied to him.
[00:47:34] Only a section of people. That's it. The rest did not.
[00:47:38] And by the way, we've already established that these people were essentially, for lack of a better way, kind of spitting on God's word, on just my words, by declaring that God, no, we don't think your ways are right. Our ways are better. We know better than you, God. And then they formed his own religious practice going on already very serious. And now God and Moses has given them an opportunity to repent. And a bunch of people just sitting there going, nope.
[00:48:02] Now the Levites did, you know, praise God for that. Remember, God was going to wipe them all out Right. God said, I'm going to wipe them all out, Moses, I'm going to start with you.
[00:48:12] Moses prays and God relented. But now this is what Moses instructed them. After this, he gave them the opportunity to repent.
[00:48:19] The Levites rallied to him and verse 27 says, and he said to them, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. If each man strap a sword to his side, go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor. And the Levites did as Moses commanded. And that day about 3,000 people died. Woo.
[00:48:37] That's tough.
[00:48:39] That's very tough right now. I've already said it before, I wanted to say it again.
[00:48:47] I'm grateful that God does not treat us as our sins. Deserve that he's very patient with us. Because guess what? I could have been one of those people who. One of the 3,000 that died that day.
[00:48:58] Hello.
[00:49:00] Right.
[00:49:01] What does the Bible say in Romans? The wages of sin is death.
[00:49:06] Right? We all deserve death because of the sin that's in our lives.
[00:49:10] But thank God that God dealt with it once and for all on the cross of Jesus Christ. Amen.
[00:49:15] That's where the sin issue was dealt with. Come on now.
[00:49:18] Right, So I don't want anyone leaving this place today feeling condemned. If you feel a little convicted today, that's good. But let me tell you right now, you need to come. If you feel convicted over sin or spiritual drift in your life, you just need to come to the cross of Christ and say, jesus, I repent. Lord, I am yours. I accept your forgiveness. Help me to walk in your ways. And you know what the Bible says He's faithful and just to forgive us of all of our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
[00:49:43] Right? But, but let's not toy with sin. Let's not just continue to allow spiritual drift in our lives. Let's get right with God. Let's get on the right path with him. Amen.
[00:49:52] God wants us to live in that way again. I think it's God's will for us to walk in repentance, to come to him.
[00:50:01] And in telling the people, Moses, that day, in telling the people, if you are for the Lord, come to me. It was a declaration of faith and an agreement with God on the sinfulness of their behavior and on the solution to going forward.
[00:50:19] Jesus says, draw near to me and what?
[00:50:25] I'll draw near to you.
[00:50:27] Sometimes we wonder why God seems so absent.
[00:50:30] And we all have those moments.
[00:50:32] Sometimes he can Feel absent. And we're spending a lot of time, but sometimes he feels distance because we're just not spending that time with them. Right.
[00:50:40] Need to be in his word, need to be prayed up, need to come to church. A lot of you guys are all doing that.
[00:50:47] And these are some of the very simple things, of course, that help keep us from that spiritual drift.
[00:50:53] So we're going to finish up here now. So Andrea knows this is her cue to come and play something spiritual to create a mood here. So this is what we're going to do. She's lurking behind a curtain. Oh, it's Edsel. All right, all right. Oh, Andrea had my back the first time.
[00:51:06] Thank you both. Thank you, brother.
[00:51:09] They never know when I'm ending. So this is.
[00:51:12] They're used to Pastor Paul preaching, right? They don't. Where's this Darren guy going? I have no idea. Right.
[00:51:18] So, yeah, we're getting ready to finish here now. And, you know, the other day our family went out for a hike at Crescent Falls, and I'd never been out there before. It's a beautiful place.
[00:51:27] And so we were going. You know, we pulled up there and I realized, oh, man, no cell service out here. All right, well, this thing's useless, I guess. Throw that aside.
[00:51:35] Cell phone doesn't work. And of course, we have these Apple watches that are connected to our cell phones because we're so fancy.
[00:51:42] But they're not going to work either, really, to do a whole lot because there's no cell service. Right.
[00:51:46] But as we're walking, my wife's watch.
[00:51:49] We're going on this hike again. Cell phones don't work. But all of a sudden, this compass appeared on our watch as if to say, you seem lost.
[00:52:01] You might want to use this if you're lost to get back to where you started, right? I said, Andrew said, hey, look at this. A compass popped up. I'm like, cool. It's not working on mine. I don't know why, you know, doesn't care about me. But anyways, hers. The thing came up, and so we were kind of amused by that.
[00:52:16] But I don't know if you've ever had to rely on a compass for navigation in your life.
[00:52:21] Has anybody ever had to do that some point in your life? A few of you. Okay.
[00:52:26] I don't think I ever had to do that, to be honest with you. I've been intrigued, but I've had them.
[00:52:30] I don't know if I've ever had to rely on them.
[00:52:32] But one thing I do know about a compass Is that if I had a compass here and I kind of set it and I'm, okay, I need to go, you know, wherever, 2 degrees east or whatever, okay, well, I can line that thing up and I can go there.
[00:52:49] If it's off by a tiny bit on the compass, if it's not that far, just a little bit that way, a kilometer that way, probably not. So not a big deal. Off by one degree. Not a big deal, short distance.
[00:53:02] But guess what?
[00:53:04] If you're off by one degree after 10 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles, you're going to end up in a complete different destination.
[00:53:15] Does that make sense? That one degree all of a sudden is.
[00:53:19] And you ended up in a place that you'd never planned on going.
[00:53:23] And it's the same kind of idea. When it comes to spiritual drift in our lives, friends, none of us are perfect.
[00:53:31] We're going to mess it up. We're going to get off.
[00:53:33] That compass is not always completely set to true north. All the time in our lives, we drift a little bit. But friends, it's so important that when we do drift a little bit that we recalibrate that compass, right? We get that thing back in line.
[00:53:50] Because we all have a destination we want to get to, right?
[00:53:53] We don't want to end up, like I said earlier at the beginning of the sermon, like the person who's been walking with God for 40, 50 years, and all of a sudden, in their senior years, they're drifted right away from God. I don't want to be that person.
[00:54:05] I don't want to be that guy.
[00:54:08] I want when. You know, it's a weird thing, but when I was in Bible school, one of our assignments is, you got to write an obituary for yourself.
[00:54:15] What do you want to be remembered for?
[00:54:17] And I had to write that thing out. I'm 20 something years old. I died way too young. Because when you're 22 years old, 60 something seems old, right?
[00:54:26] Lord, help me to live longer than that.
[00:54:30] But you start thinking about the end in mind. Lord, I want to leave a legacy.
[00:54:34] I want to be remembered for my faithfulness to you, right?
[00:54:40] What are we living for today?
[00:54:43] God knows that we're prone to wandering.
[00:54:45] And that's, I think, why one of the reasons why scripture calls us sheep.
[00:54:51] Sheep are prone to wandering, are they not?
[00:54:53] They are.
[00:54:56] And they need a shepherd to kind of corral them in, to guide them, to lead them, to protect them.
[00:55:05] And friends, you know what our Jesus is called in the scripture, right?
[00:55:08] He's the good shepherd.
[00:55:11] And we are like sheep, sometimes we tend to wander.
[00:55:14] Would you stand with me? And we're going to just finish this up here today.
[00:55:20] Thank you for your attention.
[00:55:24] And maybe you're here today and you know what you would say, man, my life has gone off a little bit.
[00:55:29] I've drifted a little bit, I've wandered a little bit. And right now I would just want to say to God, lord, forgive me.
[00:55:39] Help me, Lord, to get back on track with you. Help me, Lord, recalibrate my compass that has pointed straight to you.
[00:55:46] Maybe that's where you're at today. Maybe, you know, there's been some compromise. Maybe it's small, maybe it's big, I don't know.
[00:55:55] But even small things over a period of time, we know that's not going to end up in a good place. So, Lord, help us, right? Maybe you're here today and you've never actually accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior. And we're given this example of worship and people worship all kinds of different things. And you realize today you're not been worshiping the true God.
[00:56:12] Maybe this is an opportunity for you to come to repentance as well and say, jesus, I repent of my sins.
[00:56:20] I want to worship you.
[00:56:23] Help me to follow you and not the ways of this world. The ways of this world doesn't work, my friends.
[00:56:29] It doesn't work.
[00:56:31] God's ways, Amen.
[00:56:34] God's ways are the best ways, and it'll lead us to an eternal life with him. Let's pray.
[00:56:41] Father. God, I thank you today for every person who's here.
[00:56:44] And Lord, I don't know who this message is for today, but, Lord, I pray and believe and trust God. That is for someone, Lord, that you would challenge us, convict us, and encourage us, Lord, that we would live for you and God, for any of us here. Maybe in your heart right now that you said, I've drifted a little bit.
[00:57:08] Would you just say, lord, I'm sorry, forgive me. Go ahead. You can just go and do that right now.
[00:57:12] God, would you forgive me, Lord, I repent.
[00:57:17] Help me, Lord, to align my life back in line with you.
[00:57:22] Give me the focus, the determination that I need to walk in your ways.
[00:57:31] Help me, Lord, to not just accept the worldview of the culture. Help me to know your word and what it says and to walk in your ways.
[00:57:42] Lord, if there's anyone here who doesn't know you as Savior and you want to ask Christ into your life, this is your opportunity. Just say, just pray right now to the Lord, forgive me of my sins. I'm a sinner.
[00:57:54] And I want to invite you to be my Lord and savior.
[00:57:58] Jesus, come into my heart and make me new.
[00:58:02] I want to worship you and you alone.
[00:58:05] And if you pray that prayer today, God's gonna make you into a new creation.
[00:58:11] And you are now on path with him.
[00:58:13] And if you prayed that prayer today, I would love if you come and talk with me or another leader or find someone in the building today. I'd love to chat with you, but find someone and tell them that you've prayed that prayer.
[00:58:25] But Lord, I pray now for all of our brothers and sisters in the place. As we leave this place, Lord, strengthen us, Lord, to live for you, God. May your light shine brightly in us, God. Help us, Lord, to walk in such a way that when people see us, they see you, Jesus.
[00:58:40] They see you shining through us, Lord. And that, Lord, we would be that salt, that light in the world, God. That we would just stand for you, God. And we would know, Lord, that you go before us.
[00:58:53] That Lord, as we take a stand, even for the things of God. That you are for us and not against us, God. That you, Lord, will look after us. You take care of your own.
[00:59:03] So, God, I thank you now for all of this. And pray it in Jesus mighty name.
[00:59:07] Amen. Amen. God bless you as you leave today.
