When Left to Our Own Devices
Exodus: Join The Journey • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 16 viewsHow God restores us to a right path after we fail
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Good morning guests, Chapelwood family, as well as our internet audience. He is here. God is both with us and for us and we tend to forget. This morning we pray know God is present in your life. We want to pray that your life would be changed by Jesus. We pray that He removes the hindrances in your life and sets you free to truly live. We know you need a relationship with Him like we do. But what you need is for Him to give you life and an abundant life. Let me pray for you this morning.
Pray - Great and glorious God who love us, as Your creation, we pray that upon the reading of Your word, You would cause our hearts to boldly love You, to diligently listen Your word, to completely accept what we hear, and then passionately live out Your word. We gratefully ask this in Jesus’ life changing name. Amen.
U
As we turn at the 32nd Chapter of Exodus and see how When we are left to our own Devices we can make some major mistakes. The kind that we can’t fix. I’m talking about mistakes that affect us and those in our lives. And they can not only shape this life, but direct the destination of our eternity. Lets look at verses 1-6 as we see as we do we will see what happens When Left to our own Devices.
What happens when we are left to our own devices? Does it always work out?
Are you getting the results you desired when you concoct you own plans? Do you find more success when you ditch God’s divine for your life?
If you are honest your answer will be like mine. And that answer is no. No. My life runs of the track when I don’t follow God’s path for my life.
We Lose our Way
We Lose our Way
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 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.” And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.
With Moses gone, the people were lacking leadership and vision. Now there were people in place that should have provided direction and structure, but other people filled that momentary vacuum with ideas from their imaginations and the world’s suggestions. Both were bad ideas and contrary to God’s directions. They were so invested in false worship set it took off their jewelry to make icons of worship. This contrasted the use of gold and silver in the creation of the tabernacle. Instead they were given precious items from Egypt as they let the country for this. Now they are personally sacrificing for false worship. Now they created false celebrations that they claim are for the Lord, but really it is just so they can party and play.
Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint,
but blessed is he who keeps the law.
Just like them our flesh wants to pursue pleasure. And since our sinful hearts wander already, it is easy for us to set up false god and craft self-serving ideas. We will create whatever we can to justify our sins and to feed our flesh. Sometimes what we worship is an idea, sometimes what we worship is an outright false deity. Other times it is an emotion. We never find a lack of things to falsely worship. We’ve never have that problem. Our problem is that when we happy moments lapse, we tend to fall into loving in pursuing the wrong things.
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
We have a serious problem of loving the wrong things and investing in bad relationship. We put effort and energy in things that break us down instead of build us up.
The most serious crime we have is giving our heart to anything or anyone other than God. He have an issue of give the love and attention that He deserves to others.
Part of the reason we do this is we find ways to disconnect our hearts from God. We untether ourselves from the Word of God. And when we loosen ourselves from the truth we buy Satan’s lies. We soak up every false philosophy the world has. As we get lost along the way. We stray from the truth We zigged and we zagged when we should have stayed true and on course with Christ. God knew this would be a issue for us.
Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint,
but blessed is he who keeps the law.
For our rebellion against God ----
When we lose sight of God, when we take our eyes off of Christ, when we ignore the Holy Spirit, and deny the guidance of the Bible we find ourselves committing sin. I know I sin. Don’t say your don’t.
yWhen we lose sight of God, when we take our eyes off of Christ, when we ignore the Holy Spirit, and deny the guidance of the Bible we find ourselves committing sin. I know I sin. Don’t say your don’t.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint,
but blessed is he who keeps the law.
Our sin breaks the our fellowship with God. It damns our soul. It makes us eternally guilty before God. I creates a wide chasm between God and us that we cannot fix. It makes us at odds with God as His enemy. For our rebellion against God ----
For our rebellion against God ----
For our rebellion against God ----
We Deserve God’s Wrath
We Deserve God’s Wrath
And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.
The sin that came into Israel’s life was by choice. The defiled themselves not only be demanding a deity to worship but they further corrupted themselves through worshiping it and sacrificing to it. They created something to worship because their faith lacked. They could not see God so they built one.
The writer of Hebrews reminds us that faith is trusting in the unseen.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Trusting in what we can see is hard because we want to be in control. Having faith can be hard. It can been difficult if we are putting our trust in flawed humans, people created programs, or our plans and not God’s. Real faith is a constant outlook of trust and dependance on God. Faith is us putting everything, fully in to God hands as we turn to Him.
We tend to have a faith problem. And it because is simply a matter of in what or whom your faith rests. Who are you trusting
Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 383 Billy Graham and God’s Word
Billy Graham said: “In August of 1949, I was so filled with doubts about everything that when I stood to preach and made a statement, I would say to myself: I wonder if that is the truth. I wonder if I can really say that sincerely. My ministry had gone.
“I then took the Bible up into the high Sierra Nevada mountains in California. I opened it and got on my knees. I pled, ‘Father I cannot understand many things in this Book. I cannot come intellectually all the way, but I accept it by faith to be authoritative, the inspired Word of the living God!”
Have you come to the place where you have placed yourself under God’s authority? Have you come to the place where you have trusted your life and soul to Him? Are you finding your security in life bu having faith in what our Sovereign God can do as Almighty Lord? Or are you trying to hold on to reigns of life like you are on Mr. Toad’s wild ride because life and all its doubts is taking for a ride.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith is a constant outlook of trust as dependance on God.
Our faith in God will bring us peace. It will silence the worry in your life. It will quell the anxieties that roar in your mind. In Christ you will find the peace that truly can not be comprehend by the world. Listen to what a fellow believer wrote.
Listen to what a fellow believer wrote.
Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
(ESV) — 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Praying and asking God for forgiveness can bring you peace like you have never known.
We Need the God’s Direction
We Need the God’s Direction
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.
And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?”
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.
Without God’s direction, without strong leadership, without strong His Word Israel went wild. He lost their minds. They created God and wildly partied. They danced for the devil and drank to dairy cow.
We have a tendency to wander from God. Our hearts are apt ot love the wrong things. You and I can even feel purposeless and without direction. When that happens here is what we need to do.
Recognize Him
Recognize Him
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Realize God is superior, sovereign, almighty and in control. Place yourself under His authority in the guidance of His hands.
Listen to Him
Listen to Him
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
God will give you the path to follow but you need to listen to His directions. Hear His Spirit and heed His Word.
Trust Him
Trust Him
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
God has better things in store for you that what you and I have planned. And He has bold plans. He declares them. There are good places that are of hope. That have a divinely designed and designated future for you?The World wants to bring you down. Satan want to destroy you. Your Ex wants you dead. Your rival wants you shamed, but God says, “ When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out - plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.” God does love you. That is why part of His plans included Jesus dying in your place, for your sins, and took on your shame. That is why this next part is sooooo important.
I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.
Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005), .mply a matter of in what or whom your faith rests.
Herschel H. Hobbs, My Favorite Illustrations (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1990), 260.
We Earn Consequences for our Actions
We Earn Consequences for our Actions
And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”
And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to the derision of their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.’ ” And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell. And Moses said, “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day.”
Ex 32:2
We Need to Pray
We Need to Pray
The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.”
Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made.
Ex 32:2
As the worship team comes please hear this next part
Moses’ words to Israel are words to us as well. You have sinned a great sin. But Moses was not sure that our sins could be fixed. And He is right. We can fix out sin issue, but we can pray to God. We can asked Him for salvation. For redemption and forgiveness.
Moses’ words to Israel are words to us as well. You have sinned a great sin. But Moses was not sure that our sins could be fixed. And He is right. They can’t. We cannot fix our sin issue, but we can pray to God. We can asked Him for salvation. For redemption and forgiveness.
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
God restores us to a right path after we fail. All we need to do is call upon Him.
Will you be that one? Will you call upon the name of the Lord? Will you be saved? Will you have peace? Will you accept His plans for you? His Future here on Earth for you? And His future in Heaven for you?