Let us pray. Father God, as we go before this Word this morning, help us to have eyes that see and ears that hear what this Word instructs us to believe, to live by, to reflect in our world. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. So we return to this passage for a second time, now moving in the text, this moment where the congregation of Israel that had previously stated that they no longer wanted to hear from God directly, that they wanted Moses to go up the mountain, that Moses to be the mediator between them, we find ourselves now with what to do with this people. As we saw last time, they changed the good news of their salvation. They really distorted the gospel. All the gospel means is good news. They had a slavery that had been secured by their one and true God. And at first they started to credit Moses with that salvation. And then later on, as they continued to descend into debauchery and to sin, they began to create a multitude of pagan gods. that they believe in and trust in for their salvation so that their gospel changed, their good news changed. And as we saw last week, they were so proud of what they had done. Aaron really being the instigator of it, he took an offering of gold in order to construct an idol. And then he was so pleased with the idol that he built an altar. and told everybody, tomorrow we're going to have a great feast, a great festival. And they woke up early because they were excited about it, and they started with eating and drinking, and then it broke into offerings, and then it broke into gross, sinful debauchery. All happened in a rather quick moment, and it all started at first with a distortion of the gospel. And the thing is, we often ask when we reach moments like this, how could this have happened? And I was kind of thinking of what would be one word that could kind of sum up how this happened? And the word that really kind of was drawn to was the word professional. These people were not professional. Now that word professional, it is used now, and it's been borrowed by secular society. There's almost an understanding that profession means career. that's not actually the origins of that word. The origins of the word professional and profession actually come out of the Protestant tradition, come out of the Reformed tradition, and it really is a statement of The things that I profess to believe about Christ, I am going to strive to live that out professionally in all that I do and say—in eating and in drinking and in my workplace and in my household. In all of these things, I'm going to seek to be a professional. These people had made a profession 40 days earlier of all these things we shall do, and yet they got a little antsy, and then they got overly clever with the sins of the world, and soon that profession and that desire to live out professionally in the world failed. And we just don't understand this word this way. I even had a daughter this week who was doing an interview with Trinity College. It's a college where Billy Graham hails from. And they were asking her about her profession of faith. And then they asked her, you know, why do you want to go to college? What do you want to do professionally after college? And she gave their plan and they go, oh, shouldn't you do something in ministry? And again, this word's been distorted, but the idea of profession is not that is one that, does my life follow the word of God? What we're discovering in this passage is that this first congregation of Israel, that they are struggling with the professional realities of a lived faith. People, of all these things we will do, when it's found to be bankrupt, what happens then? And we saw that while God would have been just to destroy it all last week, and even in our readings this week, mercy prevails as the gospel is once again reoriented back into the promises of God in verse, I believe it's 13, that all of a sudden, that once again, God relents because the gospel is no longer false. The gospel is true. And we love that. We love when God's mercy breaks forth. We love this, and it becomes so patterned with God for his mercy to shine in moments like this that sometimes we forget that often in these moments also comes the contrast of judgment and or curses. For instance, let's just take Adam. as an example. He was in one sense the first one called to be a man of profession, a professional. He was given instructions, and really he was given a set of three instructions. First, to be fruitful and to multiply, to fill the earth in one sense with his progeny. Also, to expand Eden, to subdue the earth, to go throughout all the earth. one sense and subdue it, what was outside those walls. And then third, one tree in the entire world. You're not eating from that. Those were the three requirements of his professional faith. And we know, of course, he failed, and yet The miracle of Genesis 3 is that the Bible doesn't stop at Genesis 3.6 when he partakes. No, the miracle is that mercy is displayed, the creation of God's abundant saving grace is displayed in 3.15, but along with that mercy, Well, there is also curses. There are also curses. There's also judgment in line. These things happen quite often where we know, for instance, that while there's 8 billion people on the earth, there's 8 billion people where because Adam did not honor his first profession, they have curses still to this day. We, you and I, are failing bodies, bodies that will break down in their mortality. And so we get upset at passages like this because we like that one aspect of God's mercy, but we don't like that other aspect of God's judgment. And the reason we feel that way really can be summed up in one word. It's humanism. We prefer often humanity above and before God. We think often more of humanity before the God who gives us life and meaning and worth. We put, in one sense, humanism up against theism, and when we see God in judgment work out into the world, we often moan and groan and complain. We become conflicted. And yet, if we truly are a professional Christian, a professional believer, who, when we profess things to God, such as, thy will be done, what does that call us to when we read passages like this? It calls us to see the judgment that's going to be poured out, thousands of lives taken into death and say, thy will be done. Praise be the Lord. Thy will be done. Well, yes, we see the mercy of God. It's in, again, in contrast also to the judgment of God. Both are a part of who he is and how he represents himself to us, his people. And so Moses begins to head down the mountain with these tablets of stone in order to see for himself what God has already told him is occurring. He's already been told by God that all the commandments have been broken in word, thought, and deed. And as Moses reaches Joshua, Joshua says, Hey, Moses, it sounds like war is going on in the camp. And the reality is he's half right. There is war going on in the camp. It's spiritual war, spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is breaking out in the congregation. And before we go, and distance ourselves too much from this kind of warfare. Remember that, for instance, in Ephesians chapter 6, we read in the New Testament how God wants us to be covered in armor for the spiritual warfare that we endure in our own day. Wickedness has spread like a virus in this congregation, and it's laying waste to souls in this first congregation. And then Moses responds, and the ESV translates it, but he, Moses, said, it is not the sound of shouting for victory or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing I hear. Now, just a quick word here. ESV and a lot of other translations follow it. It's being peaceable in how it translates this. There are roughly six legitimate ways you can translate that word singing there, and they picked a very mild way to translate it. However, Moses has used this word throughout the Exodus account. For instance, in chapter one, verses 11 and 12, to express the Egyptians abusing the people. He uses it in Exodus 10.3 to talk about how Pharaoh would not humble himself, and he also uses it in Exodus 22.22 to tell the congregation not to abuse widows or orphans in the community. And so throughout the Exodus so far, this word has been translated to talk about wicked abuse. And what Moses is really stating here is telling Joshua, Joshua, you're not hearing war. But what you're actually hearing is the sound of debauchery. That's a PG version to put it. Even the old Greek translation that predates Christ, the Septuagint, actually has a version where it translates this drunken debauchery to kind of explain the kind of debauchery that was going on that we talked about last week. And this translation makes sense because as we saw last week, God's already made clear there is gross debauchery going on in the camp. And as Moses gets closer and closer to the sound of debauchery, Moses finally sees for his own eyes what God had previously told him. And finally, the tablets that were the work of God and the writing of God, they are now broken in front of the people. Think of this moment a little bit like tearing up a contract. Because the reality is, as I said at the start, there are no longer professionals. There are no longer people that have displayed that all these things we shall do. They have not been a people who've honored their vows. This is a moment where we see great sin. And before we really enter into the fullness of some of the judgment here, we want to avoid one of two traps right at the very beginning. The first is falling into the trap of hyper criticizing another sin. This can be easy to do with these Israelites because we get thinking, here they've been actively fed. by God. They've crossed through the Red Sea. They see the presence of God before them. God keeps allowing water and food to miraculously appear, and how quick they are to forget. And when we start talking like that and thinking like that, we're not being honest about how forgetful or entirely blinded we often are about our own sins and how long we can hold on to the sins of another. Also, let's be honest. We have more light in our lives, more of God's goodness and the fullness of revelation has been shown to us. And not only that, we have been given the gift of an indwelling Holy Spirit. We have deeper appreciation and eyes that can see through the power of the Spirit, the glory and grandeur of truth and truth of God's Word. And yet how often do we find our own selves with all of this advantage, often doubting or turning away from God at critical moments. Because in those critical moments, we struggle to ask things like, what is God trying to accomplish in this? What is God trying to teach me in waiting? What is God trying to teach me in this season of want? What is God trying to teach me in this season of sorrow? What is God trying to teach me in this health struggle? What is God trying to teach me in this hardship? What I'm saying is we don't want to approach this text blind to the fact that in our worst moments, we've all struggled spiritually in ways that broke his laws, that were truly wicked. It's not that seasoned believers in Christianity are without sin in this life. No, seasoned believers have discovered how quickly it is to fall into sin, and in response to that, try to walk all the more closely to God, faithfully, being people of our profession, being people who are professionals. The second thing we have to be careful about, and it's often suggested, especially in the Old Testament, and I think it's a byproduct of America really loving a heretical view of eschatology called dispensationalism, we have to be careful not to make the Old Testament God mean or less mercy-based than the New Testament God. I have heard it many times in pastoral ministry, where people try to set the Old Testament God, the Old Testament Scriptures against the New Testament God, and that does not work. It is not true. It is false. It is a terrible way to read Scripture, and yet is a very common kind of heresy in Christian circles in our day. And I just If there are people who say what Moses did here is sinful, and it is not sinful, and actually the most aghast moment that people often find, Moses makes clear, it's actually through inspiration from the Lord that he does this. But if you believe that, if that temptation of kind of looking at the Bible this way has gotten the better of you, I just want you to consider these words from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, verses 34 to 39 in quiet contemplation, and put yourself in this situation as you hear them, looking at this unfolding of Sinai and what's about to happen with these people. These are the words of Jesus. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What is your profession of faith? What is my profession of faith? Do we really believe the words of Jesus here? Do we really believe those and say of these words, thy will be done, Lord, not mine, thy will be done? Jesus is, yes, the peaceable lamb who takes away the sins of the world, who comes in mercy and tenderness, and even in a little bit of stupidity, Rose, a lamb, but I always had to pick on Rose's lambs, but he's also a lion, and a lion devours enemies. A lion does not flinch to devour enemies. And so with these things in mind, let us begin to look more closely at Moses' response. Now Moses at first, he does something that causes us modern readers to kind of laugh when you think about it all. He takes his calf and he grounds it down into a dust. He puts the dust into their water supply and makes them all drink it. And you think, how did he get there? The reason why he got there is actually Moses spent 40 years living in these communities, living in these Bedouin communities. He's actually been a local. Remember, this was his old sheep grazing territory. He knows what these people believed. And if you were asked to ask, how does it rain? There would be a story you would hear from those Bedouin farmers. There would be a story you would hear from the Canaanites. And the story involved Baal, the writer on the clouds, who was represented with a calf or a bull. It would involve Anat, who was a woman. She was essentially Baal's love interest. And it involved Maat, who is the god of the dead. And unlike my experience now living here, coming up on six years, where rain can kind of happen at any time in Pennsylvania, you don't need sprinkler systems. When you live in a Mediterranean climate or a desert climate, if you want things like grass on your lawn, you need sprinkler systems because there are seasons where there is no rain. This is true of the biblical reality. And so what happens is the world story, the pagan story that Israel has embraced when they worship pagan gods was this at the time. When there's rain, Baal is alive. When the clouds go away, Moth has killed him and brought him to the underworld. After a couple months, usually the dry season on a good year was about five months, Anat misses her man. And she misses her man, and so she goes down into the underworld in order to grab Baal back and to bring her, to bring Baal back. Here's actually a poem about her. I'm going to read it, and it will sort of, you'll see what Moses ends up doing with this calf. There are shades and lines of this connected to the pagan goddess, the false god, Anat. She seizes divine Mott. With a sword, she splits him. With a sieve, she winnows him. With a fire, she burns him. With millstones, she grinds him. In the field, she sows him. The birds eat his flesh. The fowl devour his parts. Flesh to flesh cries out." So she would ground up Mott, and Mott wouldn't come back for another year, or I guess another about six months, ideally, or seven months. So what Moses is doing here is basically saying, you've made your pagan gods. I want you to sit in them. I want you to drink in them. And I want you to realize that this false god of Baal, this false paganism that you've embraced, drink it down. Because the true God judges such things, and the true God will not entertain these false ideas of religion, these false ideas of faith. And so that's an explanation for why Moses goes to the lengths that he does. He's actually doing a polemic against the world's religion of its day. And then he turns to Aaron. The last time God was with his people, including Aaron, God used bridal language as we saw. Basically, language akin to John 14 of, I go to prepare a place for you. Well, Aaron's now led this people into spiritual adultery. And the language in the Hebrew in verse 21, the words of this verse are also found, for instance, in Abimelech reproaching Abraham in Genesis 20, verse 9, and also Joseph's rebuking of Potiphar's wife for adultery in Genesis 39, verse 9. What Moses is basically asking Aaron is, what did this people have to do in order for you to preside and watch over such adultery? And Aaron says in response, let not the Lord burn hot. You know the people, they are setting on evil. Here, Aaron had been given headship in Moses' absence, and he blames the bride of God. He excuses himself entirely from the sin. Similar to how Adam tried to excuse himself from his sin by blaming Eve. And even though it was Aaron's idea to make a golden idol, even though it was Aaron who presided over creating an altar, even though it was Aaron's idea to have a feast day the following morning, and it was really Aaron who got the ball rolling, in this we see an abject lesson in wisdom. Aaron was quick to judge the sins of others while absolving himself of sin. And he excused himself, making a way out of his sins by the actions of others. At an interpersonal level, we need to be careful to remember it's a whole lot easier for us as individuals to blame cast on others than it is for us to look in the mirror and blame and start with ourselves. It's at this moment of this lie from Aaron where Moses takes up his position at the gate. Now, it's interesting. I tend to think there would have been a gate at this camp. Remember, they've already experienced warfare, so it would not have been odd to protect yourselves and to basically have a singular entrance into the camp. But that idea of being the watchman at the gate is really the one of authority in the camp. the one of power. And so here Moses has seen this power void of Aaron, which allowed spiritual adultery within the congregation of the Lord. And he's basically assuming the con, so to speak. He's assuming command, so to speak. He's returning to his leadership role and filling in this leadership gap. And Moses cries out at this moment, who is on the Lord's side? Come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. Now for the original Levi, along with Simeon, these sons of Jacob, they had done great evil back in Genesis. They had attacked the people of Canaan 300 years roughly early from when God wanted the fullness of his judgment on the land to be poured out. And they were rebuked by the Lord and by their father for essentially being sons who lashed out in violence. Notice here that the first thing, the first camp attacked in this moment will not be the Levites attacking the Canaanites. It will not be that. It will actually be the Levites purging their own camp. Downstairs, we were covering the Nashville Statement and the fortified Nashville Statement, and the fortified version does such a better job of acknowledging the broader church's guilt in the foolishness and wicked debauchery we see approved of in Christianity today and supposed Christianity, but also throughout our nation. And here is a moment of cleansing. These Levites, of course, are the pastoral priests of this society. They are the clergy, and they are called not to be like Aaron in this moment, not to easily conform yourselves to what the congregation wants, but rather stand alongside the mediator, who is a true watchman over the congregation of the Lord, and at times dispense and render judgments, even judgments that might upset the people. And while, of course, this is not licensed for us in our own day to pick up an actual sword to do this, as we've covered throughout this series, again, the New Testament is clear that in spiritual judgments and spiritual pronunciations of the church, we are still called to purge people from us who delight in wickedness, delight in sin, a little bit of leaven. destroys the lobe, and we have an enemy that desires to divide us and to go the way of the world and to be ruled by feelings and humanism, and he wants us to forsake our professions. He wants us not to be professionals. He does not want us to be people who follow our profession of faith. And so we are called to be faithful followers, starting with the poor pastorate down through the congregation of the Lord, unflinching loyalty to righteousness and truth, even a willingness to confront our own loved ones who have fallen astray, seeking those blinded by empty pleasures, lost in the wilderness, in fleeting idolatry. Yet we remember that final judgment, of course, belongs to our gracious Lord. He presides. He is the head of this body, the church, this congregation. And so we are to do it with firmness, but not wrath. We are to seek to guide the misled from the wilderness through word and deed. We armor ourselves not with vengeance, but with truth, forbearance, and love. Standing our ground, we are to model a path where we hope they rejoin, not with might or violent show, but serving to reflect the light of the one who shines within us in faithful spiritual profession. These men were willing to count the cost in this moment. And in the aftermath, 3,000 men of households would fall. A total number, as Paul covers in the New Testament, that is of greater number will die in total. But in its aftermath, this hard judgment of God makes clear through his prophet Moses that he honors these men who stood their ground because it cost them something to stand on the side of God and to stand on the side of Moses. They lost family members and friends in the aftermath. And yet, as again, just to remind us, we worship a God who later states in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 10, do not think that I've come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set man against his father and daughter against her mother and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own households. God was honored. We continue to see so much of our own day where it's not that we're called to love people who are in sins of gross debauchery, but you'll find, for instance, a pastor who all of a sudden has immediate family member or someone they dearly love who is struggling with gross and debased sins in their broader life, and all of a sudden they have a new revelation. Their previous professions of faith, their previous statements of what they believe, they're not true anymore. They conform to what the world wants and what the world seeks. They fall into the trap of Aaron in this passage, and we cannot do that. We cannot do that and be faithful people of our profession of faith. We cannot do that and be people who are truly honoring this word given by God. And after all of this is poured out, Moses, starting in verse 31, he seeks to go to God to pray and to offer himself in place of the people who sinned. And the reality of this moment is Moses does not qualify. He has his own failures, as we've already seen in Exodus, and we will continue to see throughout the narrative, his own failures of profession, his own failures of being what God has called him to be. He has struggled, and yet, it's not as if that's a bad idea. He just was not the man who could go up the mountain and be a full profession of what God has called us to be, and yet also be a living sacrifice for the sins of those down the mountain. Now that is a role only to Christ himself. And so God makes clear to Moses, while this offer will not stand, his larger plan of redemption will still go forward. He remembers his promises. And as God here winds down our passage today, notice both in chapter 32 verse 34 and 33 verse 2, God brings up this angel that we keep talking about as a representative of him. that this angel is still gonna go with them. And yet God in verse three says, I will not go up among you lest I consume you, but something about this angel will still go. And the people who violated their profession are closing our passage, basically saying to God, please come to us. And God's saying, no, it will kill you. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna send a mediator. I'm gonna send an angel of the Lord, an angelic host. And the irony here is the people see this angelic host who speaks with the full power and authority of the Word of God, as we learned earlier in Exodus, they see it as a consolation prize. And yet, as the book of Jude makes clear in the New Testament, and as theologians who look at this angel, this angel is a pre-incarnate Christ. This angel is the fullness of God. He's the mediator. He's the link between a people who God will bring to this promised land, a place that he has prepared for them, and yet also overlooked their many sins along the way while doing so. And yet everyone on that day will still see the consequences of their sin. They all will, in one sense, see they failed God in their profession, because God will have them remove their adornments. Because God adorns us with beautiful things in the image he's created us in, because it's his image. And yet when we struggle with sin, it's like we're removing those beautiful things that God has adorned us with. There are consequences for our sin. Notice that this mountain is called Mount Horeb. If you ever wonder why Sinai and Horeb are both used interchangeably, you can take this or leave this, but I've read a couple Jewish commentaries that Horeb comes from the Hebrew word of removal. basically being stripped of the endorsements, in one sense. It has less of that mountain of God feeling, and it's an acknowledgment of the reality of this mountain that we come to in order to meet God. It strips us of our own endorsements and makes us to realize that in ourselves we fail, in one sense, to be people of our profession. And yet little did these people know that while they're lamenting about no longer being adorned with God and what God had blessed them with, And I'm not speaking about jewelry in this moment, but I'm speaking about the law of God. Little did they know that this unique angel, the Lord, who speaks with the full authority and word of God, as we saw earlier, that one day he would go up another mountain so that we, the Lord's people, who have failed to be a people of our profession, a professional kind of living, could be adorned in his righteousness. That is the hope that we have in the gospel. That is the hope that we have in Christ. Or as Jude would put this moment and allude to this moment in the New Testament in verses four and five of his book, for certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want to remind you that although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. Destroyed those who did not believe. And so, As we wrestle with this passage, are we people who are truly people, that we profess to believe in faith? When we say to the Lord, thy will be done, are we people that truly say, whatever that leads to, Lord, your will be done? We need more of that within the congregation. We need more of that within this world, this community, and we need more people who understand that God has gone up a mountain in order to forgive us of those times we failed in our profession. but in order also so that we might be adorned with the beauty of reflecting His image in this world, the image that He desires us to have, not the world's idea of what we should be. Amen? Amen. Let us pray. Father God, we confess before you the sorrow that we go outside of this place and we often want to put on the world. We want to embrace its philosophies, its ideas, And we fail to be people of a profession of faith. And even in that, Lord, we can be excuse makers and blame shifters. Help us to continue to deal with the logs, the many logs that are found in our own eyes, Lord. Help us to come to you, our Savior, who became the mediator for our salvation. and yet also help us to understand, Lord, that we're called to be a people who follow our profession of faith. This is a good thing for us to strive towards. We are supposed to run this race in this life, and so help us to run, Lord, in faith towards Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.