I would ask you all please to open up your Bibles with me to Exodus chapter 32. Exodus 32. Exodus 32 in verse 1. Now, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, Come, make us a God that will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. Aaron said to them, Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me. Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf. And they said, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Now, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord. So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play. Now, my guess is that most of you here have read this passage of scripture over a hundred, maybe over a thousand times. But for those of you who haven't, and just in case there's someone here who's not really familiar with this passage of scripture, let me just back up for a little bit. For those of you who aren't familiar, let me just kind of get you caught up to speed. The nation of Israel, God's chosen people, the descendants of Abraham, a people who were meant to know God, a people who were made to glorify God here on this earth, for four centuries had become a nation of slaves to the land of Egypt. But toward the end of that period of time, God, in keeping with his covenant promise to Abraham to bring them to a promised land, raised up a deliverer. He raised up a prophet, the man Moses, to deliver his people from their bondage, from their slavery in Egypt, and to lead them into their own promised land. Now, the deliverance that God brought through Moses in Egypt, it was a radical deliverance. This was not some middle-of-the-night, slip out the back door kind of an exit. God sent plagues upon Egypt. Radical, life-destroying, land-destroying disasters. to such a point that the Egyptians themselves were actually urging Israel to leave. So much so that they were giving them gold, silver, clothing, They were giving them things for their journey so that they would go. You see, what I'm getting to is God made it very, very clear that he brought about this deliverance. God did this. This was not clever political maneuvering on Moses' part. This was not even a change of heart by the Egyptian ruler, really. This was a divine supernatural act engineered by a sovereign God who orders all things after the counsel of his will. And upon leaving Egypt, God's chosen people, Israel, experienced what could really only be described as divine, supernatural, miraculous events. Proving that God was working in and through the man Moses to bring everything that he had promised to pass. So, what were some of the things that Israel experienced as they left Egypt? Well, the first thing they experienced was the Red Sea parting. Red Sea splitting open so that they can make an escape from the pursuing Egyptian army, but then watching that sea close in upon the Egyptian army. They experienced bitter water, undrinkable water being made potable. for them, miraculously. They experienced being fed with a miracle food, manna. They experienced the miracle of fresh water pouring out of a dry rock to quench their thirst in the desert. And they experienced winning an otherwise impossible battle against a hostile army of Amalekites, simply because Moses was raising his hands up to heaven. And then only three months, three months after their deliverance from Egypt, Israel comes now to the foot of Mount Sinai. Look with me if you would at chapter 19, Exodus chapter 19. Exodus chapter 19 starting at verse 3. Exodus 19.3, Moses went up to God and the Lord called to him from the mountains saying, thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words which the Lord had commanded him. Look at verse eight. All the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord. So then God instructs Moses to go and prepare the people because he says in three days, he's going to come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Verse 16. So it came about on the third day when it was morning that there were thunder and lightning flashes and thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. We go on, you know, chapter 20 then records God speaking for the very first time, his Ten Commandments. Of all the nations of the earth, God's law is given only to Israel, because Israel is God's chosen covenant people. Now look at chapter 20, verses 18 and 19. All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking. And when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. And they said to Moses, speak to us yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us or we will die. Verse 21, so the people stood at a distance while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was. Then the Lord said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, You yourselves have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make other gods besides me, gods of silver or gods of gold. You shall not make for yourselves. So Moses is on, he's on Mount Sinai and he's receiving from God the moral, the civil, the ceremonial laws that were to govern Israel, the nation of God's chosen people. And he's up there for how long? 40 days. Now if you would, go back to chapter 32 with me, right where we left off. Chapter 32 and verse 7. Chapter 32, verse 7, Then the Lord spoke to Moses, Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed to it, and said, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Look at verse 19. It came about as soon as Moses came near the camp that he saw the calf and the dancing and Moses' anger burned and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. Now, for those of you who have read this passage perhaps a thousand times, let me ask you, hasn't it always hit you with almost a sense of incredulity? Like, how could they do this? How can they allow this to happen? I can't believe that Israel is doing this after everything they've experienced. The plagues on Egypt, right? The Red Sea opening up, God's presence with them. in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. They were miraculously delivered. And now they're being miraculously maintained in a desert wilderness. And we're talking over a million people being maintained in a wilderness. They heard God's voice thundering from the mountain, right? They heard God's moral law spoken. They heard God specifically say, you shall not make for yourselves gods of gold. And yet here they are, exhibiting what you can only call a spiritual amnesia. What are they doing? Have you ever asked yourself that? I mean, what's going on here? Well, as you can see, Israel gets tired of waiting. They get tired of waiting. Chapter 32 in verse one, again, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, come, make us a God who will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. Yeah, see, Moses was their mediator. Moses was the liaison between God and them. They knew that Moses went up on that mountain in order to commune with God on their behalf. They knew that. They said, speak to us yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us or we'll die, right? So now they just figure Moses is up on that mountain and he's either lost on that mountain or perhaps he's dead. It just seems like all the dramatic impressions made upon the people at the foot of Sinai have just kind of evaporated. They've just dissipated. there doesn't seem to be much in the way of concern for Moses, their mediator. I mean, if there was concern, it was certainly trumped by Israel's impatience. because they assemble around Aaron and they come up with plan B, right? They say, come on, Aaron, we need to take matters into our own hands now. You're second in command. We got to do something here. Moses is gone. We'll probably never see him again. Come on, Aaron, make us a God that will go before us. Now, the irony of this God was that it was going to be made from the gold that was provided through their deliverance out of Egypt. In other words, God himself provided the gold by which Israel would now sculpt and make this idol. You know, you talk about adding insult to injury here, right? And why a calf? You ever wonder why a calf? Some commentators believe that it was because one of the gods of Egypt was in the form of a bull. The god Apis from Egypt was in the form of a bull. And this, to Israel, would have been an image of strength and vitality, and it would have been very familiar to them. According to the prophet Ezekiel, Israel was way too familiar with Egypt's idols. In Ezekiel 20 and verse 7, we're told they did not cast away the detestable things of their eyes, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. I think it may, however, be important to note that Israel was not necessarily, at least verbally, renouncing the worship of Jehovah. I mean, I find it almost impossible to believe that they could actually sculpt an image of gold with their own hands and then attribute their redemption out of Egypt to that chunk of gold that they just set up, right? Let alone to be looking to that chunk of gold to lead them into a promised land. It's almost impossible to believe that they could actually do that. I think it's rather possible that what Israel wanted was a familiar, visible sign of divine presence. The pillar of cloud was no longer there. The pillar of fire no longer there. I would liken what Israel did here to Dumbo's feather. You remember Dumbo? Classic Disney cartoon Dumbo. You know, elephant had big ears and those ears enabled the elephant to fly. But he didn't have the confidence to fly until someone convinced him he held a magic feather. Right? Israel's lack of faith in the God that could no longer be seen, the God that was now missing in action, that lack of faith needed to be supplanted with something that could be seen. A golden idol, a golden idol that could neither talk nor hear nor walk nor steer, right? This was going to replace the true and living God who spoke and heard and led. This was going to be their object of worship and devotion. And this idol, as all idols do, is going to lead Israel astray. After this thing is fashioned, they begin to chant. And what do they say? This is your God, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Moses' brother Aaron, who is a very complicit player in all of this, what does he do? Not satisfied with just the image itself, now he builds an altar to place before it. He builds an altar before the golden calf and he proclaims that the next day is going to be an official day of feasting and celebration. He says, tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord, he says, which I think maybe confirms the fact that at least in Aaron's mind, God is Somehow some way still going to be represented by this new golden abomination that's been set up. Now Psalm 106 records the very indignation of it. Psalm 106 says they exchanged Israel exchanged their glory for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God their Savior who had done great things in Egypt. But you see this was just the start. Because on the following day, the chaos begins to break out as Israel starts gathering at this altar. They offer burnt offerings and peace offerings to this man-made symbol of deity, and then they proceed to eat and drink and play. They're gonna start to party. See, they've given up on their mediator. They've given up on the mediator that God provided for them and the God who spoke through that mediator. And what went on that day was probably more akin to what they would have witnessed going on in some of the Egyptian religious festivals, rather than a feast of the Lord. Proverbs 29, 18 says, where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained. And how true this is. Now verse six of our text says this, the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play. And this is an interesting phrase here, rose up to play. The word play, the original word in the language play, it's only found about a dozen times in the Old Testament. Half of those times it's translated as laughed. Once it's entertained, it's translated as entertained. In another place, Genesis 21.9, it's translated as mocking, as in Hagar mocking the childless Sarah. It's translated twice to mean make sport of. Do you remember Potiphar's wife and her accusation to her husband against Joseph, right? That Hebrew slave that you brought here. Well, he came into me to make sport of me. That's our word for play. It's used in Genesis 19.14 to mean jesting, joking. But when Lot told his sons-in-laws to get out of the city because the Lord was going to destroy it, they thought he was jesting. They thought he was playing. They thought he was joking. But then we see it translated once in Genesis 26, eight as the word caressing. Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out through a window and saw Isaac was caressing his wife, Rebekah. So you see this phrase rose up to play. What is it pointing us to? It's pointing to laughter, entertainment, mockery, jesting, and probably sexual activity. And this paints a picture for us, doesn't it? Of what was going on before the altar of this golden calf. What was happening here was more like a heathen orgy than it was a celebration of God, a celebratory feast of the Lord. Exodus 32, 25 tells us that Moses saw that the people were out of control. I think if you have a King James version, it might even say naked. But my New American Standard says, Moses saw that the people were out of control because Aaron let them get out of control. So what we got here is we've got a large enough portion of Israel to be intimidating. And they've gone into full swing, into a godless, lewd frenzy of blatant idolatry. See, what lies dormant in the heart of many, it's now being poured out with reckless abandon. Now, our tendency is to read this passage of scripture and say, how can they do this, right? I mean, it wasn't even six weeks earlier they were crying out, what the Lord has spoken, this we will do, what the Lord has spoken, this we will do, right? It almost takes your breath away. But maybe we need to throttle back a little bit on our incredulity and stop and think. Are we really any different than Old Testament Israel? Are we really any different? Aren't we cut from the same cloth? I think we have a lot more in common with Old Testament Israel than we like to think. I mean, if we didn't, 1 Corinthians 10 wouldn't have told us that these things were written for our instruction. They're written for us to learn from, right? Turn there, turn to 1 Corinthians 10 for a minute. Look at 1 Corinthians 10, verse 7. What Paul says in verse 7, here's our warning. He says, do not be idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and to drink and stood up to play. Look at verse 11. Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction. Verse 12, therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. Verse 14, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. Run away. from idolatry, right? Run away from anything that competes with your affections over God, that competes with God for your affections. Idolatry is when you love anything more than you love God. Idolatry is when you look to anything more than you look to God. It's when you love anything more than you love God. And as we've seen, You don't necessarily have to consciously renounce the worship of God to become an idolater, do you? If there's no guarding of the heart, when there's no guarding of the heart, any one of us can fall into the sin of idolatry, just like Old Testament Israel. Now, obviously, not all descendants of Abraham are of the faith of Abraham, right? But all of us, every single one of us present, we all have at least four things in common with Old Testament Israel. And they're big things. They're major things. So in the time that we have remaining, I want to look at these four things. I want to look at the four things we have in common with Old Testament Israel. First of all, number one, none of us likes to wait. Right? None of us likes to wait. Impatience just seems to be built into the fabric of these fallen hearts. We want what we want when we want it. Now, this tendency in us, admittedly, it's not in accord with the spirit of Christ, is it? Galatians 5 tells us that the fruit of the spirit is what? Love, joy, peace. Patience, right? Our level of patience, or how we wait, or how we forbear, it actually has a lot to do with our view of God, doesn't it? How big is your God? Is He in control of some things? Is He in control of most things? Or is He the complete and total Sovereign in control of absolutely everything? Well, you say, of course, He's in control of everything. Well, if we know this, why do we hate waiting so much? Why do we hate to wait? Probably because our practice doesn't always line up with our theology, does it, brethren? There are times when God has us waiting. isn't there? There are times when God has us just waiting, waiting upon Him, waiting for Him to act, waiting for Him to speak, waiting for a word from Him. He has us waiting. And we got to remember that those times that we have to wait, they're not so that God can scramble around behind the scenes, try to get things together for us, right? God already has everything together. The times for waiting, those are always for our benefit. When we have to wait, it's not because God has to pull things together. It's because he's doing it for us. We're waiting. And it's for our benefit that we're waiting. Psalm 40 in verse 1, I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined to me and heard my cry. And what did He do for the psalmist? He set my feet upon a rock and He put a new song in my mouth. See, the key in waiting is to wait for the Lord and to wait always within the boundary of His will. You stay within the boundaries of God's will. You see, Israel left the boundaries. They stepped over the boundary line. You know, when you read this, you say, well, they gather around Aaron, they put the pressure on. Why didn't Aaron call a prayer meeting? Well, you know, why didn't he just say, all right, you want me to act? Get all the elders of Israel, gather everyone to the middle of the camp, we're gonna have a prayer meeting. Oh, Lord, how long? How long will Moses be up there on the mountain? Oh, Lord, we trust you, but how long are we gonna have to wait? We'll wait, Lord, but how long? They didn't do that, though, right? Instead, they went outside of the circle of safety. I used to tell my girls when they were younger, I used to say, when you disobey God, you are going outside of the circle of safety. You're going over the boundaries." I said, don't do that. Don't overstep the boundaries. You stay within the circle of safety. This is exactly what Israel did. They went outside of the bounds of God's will. They came up with plan B all by themselves, right? Now, there's nothing wrong with plan B's. Plan B's can be very helpful and very good provided you are staying within the bounds of God's will. Israel stepped over the line in their impatience. Now there's no doubt waiting can be a very difficult thing, right? Whatever it is you're waiting for, you know, waiting for an under shepherd to come and pastor a fledgling church. That's hard. Waiting for a spouse. Waiting for relief from a trial that's been upon you. Waiting for comfort from pain, from physical pain. Waiting for just a sense of peace in the midst of turmoil. Waiting for deliverance to or from whatever it is you've been praying for. You know, but God encourages us over and over again to always wait for Him and to stay within the boundaries of His will. Isaiah 40 and verse 31, those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength, right? So whatever it is you're waiting for, wait for Him. Stay in the circle of safety. Stay within the boundaries of God's will. Rest patiently upon the Lord. But there's a second thing we all have in common with Old Testament Israel, and that is this. Every one of us has a deceitful heart. We all have deceitful hearts. The classic text, right? Jeremiah 17, nine. The heart is deceitful above all else and desperately sick, right? See, above all else means that it's at the top of the list. It's at the top of the chart. So whatever heart you may think you have, you might have a warm heart, you might have a cold heart, you might have an indifferent heart, you might have a generous heart, you might have a good heart, a bad heart, you might even have a broken heart. But at the top of the list, you have a deceitful heart. This is what the scriptures tell us about ourselves. We have deceitful hearts. Deceitful to others, yes, but perhaps more importantly to realize, deceitful to ourselves. Isn't this what Jesus was pointing to when he said, why do you take the splinter out of your brother's eye when you got a log sticking out of your own eye? He's basically saying, you're deceiving yourself. You've got a deceitful heart. But this is why we need God's Word. This is why we need God's Word, why we have to absorb it, why we have to see it, hear it, listen to it, read it, meditate upon it. This is why we need God's Word to govern. The decisions we make, the directions that our lives are going. God's word has to govern our future. God's word has to govern our lives because God's word is truth and it's in this truth Jesus says that these deceitful hearts are going to be sanctified. Sanctification in the spirit of God by the word of God. It's the only way to combat the lies that our hearts are going to be otherwise dictating to us. Listen, you can't trust God enough, but you can trust yourself way too much. Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Right. God said to Israel, don't make gods of gold. Israel basically said, don't worry, we got this. Don't worry. We're going to somehow keep this all connected to the worship of Jehovah. So don't worry about it. We got it. They trusted in their own hearts and they paid a price. Never doubt God. But be willing to doubt yourself. Because God will be found true, though every other man be found a liar. A third thing that we have in common with Old Testament Israel is this. Worship. Something we all have in common with Israel is that we are all worshipers, every single one of us. You see, Israel needed an object to worship, even if it was Dumbo's feather, right? Now, we might not be bowing down to totem poles or golden idols, but everyone here, we're all worshipers. We all worship. Because this is how God made us to be. We are created by God, and we are created for God. We are created to image God, and we are created to worship God. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, they knew God. And because they knew God, they worshiped God, right? It was probably for them as natural as breathing to worship God, because he's the only being worthy of worship. But you see what happened when they listened to the serpent, when they were led to believe that they could be worthy of worship, when they took the bait that was offered to them, it changed part of their identity. And in that moment, they went from being God worshipers to being other than God worshipers. And you see that change of identity, it's trickled down. through the centuries right down to us. Romans 1 25 tells us that mankind, all of us, we've exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. Right. So man's built in propensity for worship has made a shift. It's shifted. It's really not a matter of if you will worship. It's really just a matter of what or maybe more specifically who. you will worship. So let me ask you, what occupies the bulk of your heart? What occupies the major part of your heart? You know, where your treasure is, that's where your heart is. Sin has made man's natural bent to be other than God worshipers. Now, on the other hand, grace calls us back. It calls us back to being God worshipers, right? When a man or a woman or a boy or a girl come to know God savingly through faith in Christ, they become God worshipers again, right? They become true God worshipers. See, if you truly know God, you will worship Him. It's not like someone can come to know God savingly and then choose whether or not they're going to want to worship Him. If you know God, you will be a God worshipper. And probably the better you know Him, the more you'll worship Him. But you see, even the Christian, even the child of God has been so deeply affected by sin by the fall that we're affected, our hearts have been affected with our ability to worship only God, just God. There's still a part of us that's bent toward being other than God worshipers, right? How's the old hymn go? Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love, right? And there are so many prospects. There are so many false substitutes that vie for our hearts out there, right? I was amazed at the way our brother began worship this morning, speaking about images, right? I thought to myself, all right, now I'm starting to understand why God gave me this message to bring. You know, I shouldn't be surprised. There are so many false gods out there calling to us. They're calling for our worship. So many competitors. I mean, Paul, think about it. Paul had to warn the Christians in Colossae. He had to warn them not to get involved with angel worship, right? Idols abound. And fallen man can make an idol of almost anything. What are some of the idols that surround us? What are some of the idols that call to us today? What are some of the common idols that take up the heart of man today? I mean, how many are there? Hundreds? Thousands? I don't know how many there are. I want to name just seven. Seven, let's call them the seven deadly idols. And I just want to breeze through them really quickly, okay? These are things that call to us as idols, right? And note, just like Israel's gold, these are things that God provides for us. Number one, I'll lump two things together here. Number one, money and possessions. Money and possessions call to us, they say, worship me, right? The lie that money buys freedom and happiness and that it's worthy of our worship, it's a false god. People, Often place a higher premium on their money and their possessions, their houses, their cars, their lawns, their clothes, their furnishings. They place a higher premium on these things than they do their own souls. And like Israel, they pay the price. Another idol that calls to us food. Food has become an idol. Now, nobody bows down to a bowl of pasta, right? But in their hearts, people can really worship food. It's a very sad sight, but it's not uncommon to find very obese people at the all-you-can-eat buffet, worshiping at the altar of this God, right? Another idol that calls to us is sex. Sex. It's a God-given pleasure, and it's taken center stage in the culture that we live in. It's like front and center for many people. You want to sell something? You want to sell a product? Just link it to sex. It's all you got to do. It doesn't matter what that product is. It really doesn't matter. You want to sell a car? Link it to sex. You want to sell clothing? Link it to sex. You want to sell eyeglasses? Link it to sex. There was a billboard not far from our church in New Jersey that for a long time, right on a major highway, using sex to sell hair replacement. You want to sell something? All you have to do is link it to sex because sex has taken center stage in the culture that we now live in. But there's a fourth, a fourth false god and that is leisure. Leisure time, time away from work. That's the ultimate thing to give your heart to. People worship their leisure time, their vacation time. Everybody's working for the weekend was a song that came out some years ago. Work is the necessary evil that we live to escape, right? Now, on the other hand, another idol is, contrary to that, some people make gods of their careers. Right? People make gods of their work, their success. One should identify with their work, but work should never be one's identity. It's been said, man worships his work, works at his play, and plays at his worship. Another big one, entertainment. We love our entertainment, don't we? We love our entertainment in our culture. Now, entertainment does what for us? It provides an alternate reality that we can escape to, right? And that can be very appealing, given the world that we live in. But it can be so appealing, so much so that you want to go there all the time. You want to live there. So whether it's, you know, movies, or TV, or you mentioned sports this morning, music, theme parks, or your computer. We love our entertainment, but these things can enslave us, and they can become idols. How's the saying go? Even a good thing becomes a bad thing when it becomes a ruling thing, right? But then finally, number seven, anybody want to take a guess at number seven? What was that? People. People. People make horrible idols. Terrible idols. Because people always, inevitably, are going to disappoint. Right? It doesn't matter who it is. Celebrities, musicians, athletes, authors, politicians, pastors, theologians, conference speakers, boyfriends, girlfriends, spouse, parent, children, grandchildren. It doesn't matter. People should never be worshipped because people make lousy idols. People should never be feared. I mean, so much could be said about Aaron's fear of man in this passage, right? And really, doesn't every idol really boil down to the ultimate kind of people worship? I'm talking about the idol of self, right? The seven deadly idols are all meant to flow into the what? Happiness, satisfaction, and pleasure of me. Right? Self. We tend to worship the things that make us happiest. Because we want to be happy. Where did Israel's golden calf take them? It took them to self-pleasing self-worship. They were partying, right? Isn't man's greatest problem that he doesn't love his neighbor or his creator as much as he loves himself? Isn't that our problem? It is. You ever hear somebody say, I hate myself? I just hate myself. Well, there's some self-deception going on there, because Scripture says no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. See, we love what we worship, and we worship what we love, and we love ourselves way too much. So what do we do? We bow down to the God of my, don't we? We bow to the God of my, my physical appearance, my beauty, my acceptance, my approval by others, my self-esteem, my feeling important, my success, my time, my money, my rights, my entitlements, my happiness, my ultimate pleasure. Well, what is this other than high-handed idolatry? It's self-worship. Now before we leave this subject, let's answer a few questions. Upon which altar do we sacrifice our time, money, thoughts, and affections? In other words, where is your worship being directed? What activities do you look forward to most? What do you really look forward to doing, to being engaged in, to being involved in? What do you look forward to most in your life? Is it time with God or is it something else? Take a minute. Compare the amount of time you spend reading your Bible and praying with the amount of time you spend in front of a screen. whether it's a TV screen or a computer screen. I know some of us have to work in front of a screen. Some of us work in front of a screen all day long. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about elective time, free time, okay? When you wake up in the morning, what stirs your heart more? What excites you more, reaching out for your electronic device or reaching out to God? What I'm asking is, who really has your heart? Where is your heart? And maybe the $64,000 question here is, are we willing to amputate whatever causes us to stumble? Are we willing to pluck it out, to amputate it, whether it's hands, eyes, televisions, laptops, or iPhones? Well, there's a fourth thing, a fourth and final thing that we have in common with Old Testament Israel and that's this. Every single one of us needs a mediator. We all need a mediator. Turn quickly with me back to Exodus 32 again where we left off. Exodus 32. I think we left off at verse 9. Exodus 32 and verse nine. The Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then, let me alone that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them and I'll make a great nation and I'll make of you a great nation. See, God's people have broken their covenant. He has every reason to punish Israel. And he offers Moses the same deal he offered Abraham. God is basically saying to Moses, I'll scrap the whole lot of them, Moses, and I'll start fresh with you. I'll just trash all of them, and we'll start fresh with you, Moses. He says, I'll start all over. But Moses, what does he do? He intercedes. Moses mediates. He wiggles his way in between the angry God and the obstinate people. He gets in between them. He steps in and he deflects God's wrath. He mediates on Israel's behalf. And yet Moses, I mean who was Moses? He was a weak foreshadowing. He was just a little dim picture of the great mediator that was yet to come, right? 1 Timothy 2.5 says there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, right? Jesus is the mediator that all of us need. Without exception, every one of us here needs a mediator. He's the mediator that we need because we are all in our hearts obstinate people. Our sin has left us separated from God. We have deceitful hearts. We have deceitful hearts that lead us into idolatry, right? That worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. We're naturally drawn to idols. We love God replacements. We love God substitutes because we're sinners. Scripture says God is angry with sin every single day. And none of us can approach God. We are like Israel at the foot of Sinai. Don't let God speak to us. We cannot approach him. Right. We can't approach him. We can't have a relationship with our creator. We're all under condemnation without a mediator. Jesus did what Moses could have never done. You see, Moses deflected God's wrath. Jesus didn't just deflect God's wrath. Jesus absorbed God's wrath. Jesus took the wrath of God upon himself. Now, he was the sinless son of God. He was without sin. On the cross, Jesus suffered a punishment that we deserve. so that He could mediate, so that He could bring us to God. Because He is God and because He's perfect in every way, He's the only acceptable sacrifice we have. He's the only acceptable mediator. There ain't no other sacrifice that can atone for man's sin. Jesus is the Lamb slain to redeem us from our slavery to sin. He did what Moses could never do. You see, Christ is the divine liaison. that every one of us needs. Listen to Hebrews 7.25. Jesus is able to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. You see, unlike Moses, whose mediatorial office ended the moment he died, Jesus is a living mediator. He's a live living mediator for all who will turn from their sin and trust him to bring them to God. And a day is coming, folks, when every single knee is going to bow before Jesus Christ. Some knees are going to be bowing gladly and voluntarily. But some knees are going to be bowing as they're being sentenced. Do you know Jesus? Is he your mediator? Are you trusting in his sacrifice to save you? Well, my time is up. I would ask that nobody leave here today without coming up with an honest answer to this question. Is Jesus really my mediator? Because this is what we need. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have written these things for our instruction, Lord, that these things teach us that we are cut from the same cloth. We are no different. than the obstinate, hard-hearted, deceitful people that we see in Old Testament Israel. Oh Lord, please help us to look to our Mediator. Help us to look to the only one you've provided to atone for our unrighteousness. We pray that you would give us grace to believe and to trust in Christ as our Mediator. We pray this in His name. Amen.