The Spoken Word

Exodus 32.30-33.1

In this computer age, we have a wonderful asset known as control-z, or the undo function.  For those of you who aren’t aware of this phenomenon, I would encourage you to check it out and become familiar with this little technological gem.  This function allows you to undo just about anything you’ve done while working on a document, surfing the Internet, or checking your email.  Just this week, I was cleaning out my email inbox and accidentally deleted an email I wanted to keep. No problem.  I just pressed control-z and it instantly reappeared right where I had last seen it.  You don’t get the same promise with paper documents and a shredder.  That is some serious damage right there.

Call it a stretch, but I couldn’t help comparing this idea a little to the story of Moses and the 10 Commandments.  Let’s chronicle the story of Moses for a moment.  Moses was the Hebrew boy who was miraculously saved from mass execution by being sent down the Nile in a reed basket by his mother.  He was the one who spoke to God at the burning bush and then went to Pharaoh and pleaded with him to let the Israelite people go.  He parted the Red Sea and allowed them to walk across the dry land.  Once across the sea, the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years under Moses’ direction and this is where they received the 10 Commandments.

Now, God had spoken to Moses and given him the tablets and all of His commands while up on Mount Sinai.  But God sent him back down the mountain when the people became impatient and began melting their gold in order to form a golden calf they could worship.  Listen to how Moses responded in chapter 32, verses 15-20.

¹⁵ Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. ¹⁶ The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

¹⁷ When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”

¹⁸ Moses replied:
“It is not the sound of victory,
it is not the sound of defeat;
it is the sound of singing that I hear.”

¹⁹ When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. ²⁰ And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

Moses, in his anger toward the Israelites’ idolatry, impatience, and lack of faith in God, broke the stone tablets that held the 10 commandments.  Now, it was not only the sins of the Israelites but also the sin of Moses.  Once Moses destroyed the commandments, it wasn’t like he could hit control z and they would just miraculously reappear.  He had broken them into pieces and had carried out his anger onto the Israelites.  He actually had to go before God, apologize for his anger and the Israelites’ idolatry, admit his faults, and pray that God would make things right between them again.  It was fixable, but it was not easy.

I really struggled in preparing this sermon because I wanted to teach a positive, life changing, uplifting message that talked about how wonderfully forgiving God is and how boundless His love is and what a deep and unconditional love He expresses.  And this is all very true and real.  However, this is not the side of God that we are learning about in this morning’s Scripture passage.  Here, we see a God who keeps His promises and listens to His people.  But we also see a God who is just and quite frankly, frustrated with His people.  In fact, if you keep reading in chapter 33, God tells the people that He won’t be going with them to the land that He has promised them because He might just destroy them.  Instead He will be sending one of His angels.  God’s love and justice aren’t as simple as hitting control z on a computer.  You can’t just forget that it happened and expect things to return to how they were before.  We make mistakes and God forgives us, but there must be recognition of fault and a conscious act of repentance.  God is a God of second chances, but God is also a God of justice, seeking repentant sinners.

And that is precisely what Moses desires to convey to God when he speaks to Him in our Scripture reading today.  Moses recognizes the grave sin made by the people and goes before God as the spokesperson for the Israelites.  He puts himself out there as the representative, willing to sacrifice his standing before God in order to get the people right before God.  Moses understands that reconciliation and forgiveness are a process.  We cannot simply undo our mistakes.

I think sometimes our culture gets wrapped up in this idea of easy, cheap grace.  We think that God will simply forgive us for each of our little sins without us ever having to bow our knees in humbleness and humility before the throne of God.  The Scriptures are filled with instances where God clearly lays out the plan for repentance and forgiveness.  2 Chronicles 7.14 for instance says, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”  You see, we start to get arrogant and think that the world is all about us and God is an all-loving God who never seeks justice for Himself.  God deserves more than our arrogance, more than our self-absorbed ways of living.  He deserves our humbleness and our humility.  He deserves our repentance and our acknowledgment of our sinful and broken ways.  He needs us to understand that there is a difference between the sacred and the secular, that our conversations with Him are both common and holy.

When Moses spoke to God at the burning bush, God commanded Moses to take off his sandals in recognition of the holiness of the place.  Something as common as a mountainside had turned into a holy place of meeting because of God’s presence.  There was a sacredness that existed there.  I imagine Moses felt quite humbled to be in the presence of God and took off his sandals each time he spoke with Him.   He didn’t take for granted the conversations they had, nor the grace and favor that God had found in him.  We too cannot come before God and not admit His holiness, His otherness.  I preach before you this morning barefoot, recognizing the holiness of God and the otherness that is in this space.  Once we decide that a moment is designed for the worship of God, we must recognize that we have moved from the secular to the sacred.

So where does this leave us?  What is God trying to teach us?  Above all, we must first believe that God is a God of second chances.  God is willing to readily accept our apologies and repentance and exchange it for His expansive forgiveness.  There is nothing we can do outside of the love and grace of God to make God stop loving us or to where He won’t forgive us.  This doesn’t mean that we won’t upset or disappoint God, or that we won’t face consequences for our sins.  It just means that God’s overwhelming and unconditional love is inescapable and without limitation.  As you continue reading the story of Moses, you see that God finally chooses to go with the Israelites to the Promised Land and to continue to lead and guide them in all they do.

Secondly, we must accept that our broken natures result in consequences we must face.  In our story this morning, we see immediately that God struck the people with a plague for what they did with the golden calf.  And further on, we read that God had created and inscribed the first set of 10 Commandments, but Moses had to chisel out of stone the second set.  There were consequences to all for their sinfulness.

And thirdly, we must accept and imitate Moses’ example of what repentance looks like.  We must acknowledge the otherness of God and the humble position we are to take when speaking to Him about our shortcomings.  God’s holiness deserves our humility.  Making right our relationship with God is not as easy as simply pushing control-z and expecting things to return to normal. We must acknowledge our brokenness, speak to God about it with honest humbleness, recognize that there may be some consequences we must suffer, and then accept the overwhelming and unconditional love that God provides.

We serve a jealous God.  In a moment of irony, we read in chapter 34 that one of the commandments being given to Moses reads, “You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about His relationship with you.”  God desires to be our only object of affection and just as a lover becomes jealous when the object of his affection strays, so too, to an infinite extent, does God become jealous when we stray from Him.

What do you need to talk to God about today?  Where have you strayed?  What golden calf have you been worshiping instead of the Almighty?  Has your anger, attitude, or outlook gotten in the way of your service to God?  Or have you merely been flippant in your acknowledgment of your shortcomings, ignoring the holiness and sacredness of God?

We, like Moses and the Israelites, have the opportunity to serve the God of second chances.  Let us not weary in our endeavor.