HIStory: the story of a God who ... rejects competitors
Exodus 32.1 - 33.17
Milford Baptist Church, 21 July 2002

Do you like history? Here are some exam bloopers committed by a number of young history students:

The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies and they lived in the Sarah dessert.

The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation.

The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures.

Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night.

Jacob's son Isaac stole his brother's birthmark.

Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread without any ingredients.

The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert.  Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten amendments.

The first commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple. The seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery.

Here's a test for you. Can anyone recite the Ten Commandments? What's the first commandment? "You shall have no other gods before me" (Ex 20:3). And the second? "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them" (Ex 20.4-5).

What's the difference between these two commands? The first commandment concerns who we are to worship. We are to worship God only. The second commandment concerns how we are to worship him. We are to worship God directly without using any idols to represent him. But why?

Have you ever watched a pirated movie, an illegal copy of a film? People can make them by attending the original film with a home video camera under their shirt. But often the picture on an illicit copy is grainy and the sound rough. Basically, a copy is never as good as the real thing, never as clear and accurate as the original. And a copy or a picture of God could never accurately convey what he's really like in all his love and power and wisdom. Creating a copy would lead you astray. It would be like asking a painter like Geraldine to reproduce the Mona Lisa in one brushstroke, or asking a musician like Graham to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with a referee's whistle. It can't be done. And it shouldn't be attempted. But turn with me to Exodus 32:1-14.

Moses, the Israelites' leader, has disappeared up Mt Sinai. Like a tramper lost for six weeks on Mt Cook, the people give him up for dead. And they panic, because without him it looks like they've lost their connection with God. He was their primary point of contact with God. And so they make an idol in the form of a calf. Why a calf? It was commonly thought that a calf like this could function as a pedestal, a throne, for a god. So the people of Israel simply intended that, in Moses' absence, this idol would be a visible, physical assurance of God's presence with them. They haven't replaced God with some other deity. They still worship God - they hold a festival for him (32:5), offer sacrifices to him (32:6). They've just represented him with an idol. In other words, they've broken the second commandment.

But before we condemn the people of Israel for their behaviour, let me ask you a question. Do you think we ever commit idolatry? What illegal, invalid copies or images of God do we use? I remember a story about a large battleship sailing in the North Sea. One dark night the officer on watch spots another vessel heading straight towards it. So the captain flashes a signal, "Turn aside." But the message comes straight back, "No, you turn aside." Again, the captain frantically signals "Turn aside. Now." Again, the message comes, "No, you turn aside." Once more, desperate and angry, the captain signals "Turn aside. I am a battleship." The message comes back: "I am lighthouse." We make false assumptions about God that affect - and can shipwreck - our lives. It is possible to make idols out of physical things - a church building, a pulpit, a cross. But for most of us today, if we have idols, they're not on a wall, they're in the mind. This morning let's look briefly at three ways in which we commit idolatry in our minds.

We commit idolatry whenever we let materialism shape our understanding of God.

What do I mean? I was talking to a friend recently. We were reflecting on all the painful struggles that he has had to endure lately. His question is probably, "Why? Why does God let me suffer like this?" Implicit in that complaint is the popular assumption that God promises us health, wealth and prosperity. But I wonder if a God that promises us freedom from pain and suffering really exists at all, other than in our minds? Isn't that God more the product of our world than God's word? Jesus never promised that God would deliver us from all suffering. He promises us, instead, that God can deliver us through our suffering. That he will always be with us, working our trials for our good, to refine our faith and purify our character - if we will trust him.

Our materialistic culture tells us that self-fulfilment, self-actualisation, self-discovery is the goal. But let's look at Jesus, because Jesus is the exact "image of the invisible God" (Hebrews 1:3). He shows us what God is really like. And Jesus says that self-denial is the way to live: "Those who would come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me" (Matt 16:24). He himself died a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name, to save you and me. In America, warrant of fitness stickers used to have printed on the back the words: "Drive carefully: the life you save may be your own." But Jesus says: "The life you try to save is the life you lose." The life you clutch and hoard and guard is, in the end, a life worth little to anybody, including yourself. Only a life given away for love's sake, for Jesus' sake, is a life worth living. If we follow Jesus and worship God we will suffer. But suffering for the sake of others, "downward mobility," is the way up to heaven.

We also commit idolatry when we let emotionalism shape our understanding of God.

C.S. Lewis, in his book The Screwtape Letters records the fictional advice that Screwtape, an experienced devil, gives to his young nephew to help him destroy the faith of a young Christian. Screwtape says, "Whenever [Christians] are attending to the Enemy Himself [God] we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills ...Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment."

Have you ever fallen into that trap? One of the greatest mistakes I have made on my journey with Jesus has been to focus on my shifting feelings rather than on the rock solid fact of God's word, the fact that Jesus lived and died and rose again, the fact that he offers us life with God as a free gift, the fact that he receives everyone who comes to him. I'm reminded of that story about the three men walking along a wall. Three men called Faith, Fact and Feeling. If Faith looks forward to Fact, he'll stay on the wall. But if he turn and looks back towards Feelings, he'll fall. If we don't want to fall and commit idolatry in our minds, we need to focus on Jesus, the unchanging Word of God.

Finally, we commit idolatry whenever we let pluralism shape our understanding of God.

There's lots of discussion at the moment about New Zealand's generous immigration policy. Immigration is certainly shaping the religious landscape of our city. We now have Muslim mosques, Hindu temples, Buddhist centres. We live in a religious food hall, surrounded by a smorgasbord of different religious options.

This sort of exposure to different views is having a profound impact on our society. For many people now, truth is just a matter of personal opinion. We have a music album at home by the band, Manic Street Preachers. The album is called, "This is my truth. You tell me yours." For many people, Christianity is just one of many different roads up the same mountain to God. And for some Christians even, God is just a composite of every religion, like the impersonal "force" in Star Wars. But Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Although we will be called narrow-minded or bigoted, we need to winsomely witness to the fact that while there may be many roads up the mountain, only one road gets you to God: Jesus.

You probably know of someone who once believed in Jesus but has wandered from the Truth, or someone who has never believed that Jesus is the Truth. Maybe you've been praying for them for years, and they haven't come round ... yet. They haven't repented. One of the fascinating elements of this story in Exodus is how Moses intercedes for his people, prays for his people, and God responds - he literally "repents" (32:14). Somehow, our prayers make a difference. Somehow they change lives. Let's keep praying. Paul says, "I urge you ... to pray for all people ... As you make your requests, plead for God's mercy upon them, and give thanks ... This is good and pleases God our Saviour who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth" (1 Tim 2:1-4).

There was an interesting news report on the radio a little while back. A little twelve-year old Columbian boy contracted terminal cancer and his health deteriorated. The tragedy was that his father was at that time being held hostage by Columbian rebels. As the emaciated little boy became gravely ill, there were public appeals urging the rebels to release their hostage so that the father might be reunited with his little boy before he died. And incredibly, members of the public even offered to take the father's place, and maybe die at the hands of the rebels, just so that father and son might be reunited.

The truth is that Jesus took the place of every single one of us and died to make us right with God, to bring us back to God. So let's throw out our golden calves. Why focus on a poor, distorted copy of God, when we can have the original? Why worship something less than God, when we can have the real thing? We can have a relationship through Jesus Christ with the one true God.

Let's worship him. A God who is bigger than the entire universe, but who can live inside us. A God who is with us in every difficulty, and who can use every trial to renovate our lives from the inside out. A God who does not change like our shifting emotions, but who is rock-solid in his faithfulness and promises. A God who revealed himself in Jesus and gave everything that we might be united with him. Only this God is worthy of our love, our trust, our worship.