Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Um, I’ll actually be speaking from Exodus 24 and looking not verse by verse or even chapter by chapter, but at the rest of those chapters in Exodus, Leviticus, and the first few chapters in Numbers. But what we’ll actually read is Exodus 32:1-6 having to do with the golden calf. So, please stand and we’re going to read Exodus 32:1-6. And as we continue our series of sermons on the second word, Exodus 32:1-6.

Now when the people saw Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us. For 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. And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.

And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molten calf. Then they said, “This is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.” So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.” Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the wonderful privilege it is to come into your courts with praise to come the way that you have called us to come together to convocate with one another in the formal worship in which you renew covenant with us. In which, Lord God, you give us the wonderful gifts that you offer us—glory, knowledge, and life. In which we live our lives, we learn to live our lives in an antipal response to you in proper dialogue to your sovereignty, our response to it. And this pattern going back and forth in the formal worship of the church. We thank you, Lord God, for commanding our performance of the songs and things that we do today and it is our delight to do so. Bless us now, Lord God, as we attend to this portion of the service to understanding your word. May your spirit teach us things of Christ. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. I guess I’m here to begin with today to speak in praise of no. The no we rejoice in no is important. Remember years ago, John Lennon was first attracted to Yoko Ono because he saw this art exhibit that she had done. There was a ladder and at the top of the ceiling in little tiny letters was the word yes. And you had to climb up the ladder and look at the word yes. And that really has sort of characterized a lot of history over the last 30 or 40 years.

Our last president was elected with the theme, “Yes, we can.” Well, yes is a good thing. There are good things about yeses, but there are also wonderful things about no. And in the second word, as in most of the ten commandments, what we have are a series of nos. From God who is sovereign, from God who is the creator to us, his creatures. He tells us what not to do. Now, that in and of itself is exceedingly significant for human existence and we rejoice in it because in particular in the second word, but of course in all of God’s nos to us, he declares his sovereignty and authority over us and he reminds us of our temptation to desire sovereignty and authority over everyone else and in ourselves.

As Tears for Fears is saying, everybody wants to rule the world. Control is where it’s at. God says you will be happy, you will be blessed, you will rejoice if you attend to my nos. It is not all about yeses. It is about a great deal of nos. And particularly when we consider the formal worship of the church, that’s placed such stress on in the scriptures. We’ll look at that in just a minute here. Particularly the second word tells us no.

Now the reading we did today of the ten commandments is the version from Deuteronomy. You’ll notice some changes to what you have traditionally memorized. We use the King James version so it’ll be a little more familiar to you, but parts of it weren’t because the commandments change and even though we recited them in unison today their application to us today is different than they were in Deuteronomy 5 or in Exodus 20. There is an eternal character of God that’s reflected in the 10 words and they have great significance and they are of command to us, but they are applied differently in different times and this is certainly true of, for instance, the fourth commandment that addresses worship.

We’ll look at the changes that happen there and the change that happens with what we do now in worship being prefigured in Deuteronomy 5 based on the changes from Exodus 20. When we get there in a month or two, we’ll talk about that more. But it’s to be understood that these commands involve a great deal of nos. There’s some positives. “Honor your father and your mother.” “Six days you shall labor.” Okay. But then there’s nos that are primarily that. And in this second word, God says in terms of our worship, no, don’t do it a particular way.

In our Bible study, Bible study on Thursday nights, which we hope to do lots of over the next few years, both in Sunday school class and in homes here at the church, this week we’re employing word studies. We spent a week or two doing literary structural studies, and now we’re doing word studies.

And if you’ve been here as I’ve preached on the second word so far, you’ll know that two very important words are given to us in this first no that God gives us in the second word: “you shall not make for yourself a graven or a carved image.” Carved image—two words in English, it’s one word in Hebrew. And this is the central command. That’s why I’ve laid out the structure the way I have in terms of the grammatical structure of what God is telling us. That’s the central commandment right there. And the idea is that he has used this same word in the verb form earlier in the book of Exodus. It’s not used very much, this particular word—maybe 30 times or so in all the Old Testament.

Its previous use in Exodus from where this particular verse first occurs in Exodus 20. But prior to that it’s used to describe the tablets that God would inscribe his 10 words upon. And so if we’re here listening to this, if we’ve gone through knowing about that word and its relationship to God’s law, as it comes forth from Sinai to us. And we’re sitting there on Sinai and Moses brings back a thing that says, “Don’t replace this 10 words with pictures and images,” we’ll get the connection.

It’s talking here about things that we are prone to want to substitute for God’s word. God’s word is what mediates between us and him. And ultimately, it’s his word, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we want other mediators. We want to paint things and carve things and draw things and we want to somehow get God’s energy in those things and we want to worship through those things.

The second word that’s important is likeness. A likeness of anything. And this is a word used even less—maybe 10 or 12 times in the whole Old Testament. And it’s used most often a number of times in Deuteronomy 4 where God’s likeness is equated with the proclamation of who he is to Moses, not his physical appearance. So with a double witness of two very specific Hebrew terms, we see here that what God is telling us is don’t substitute your ideas for worship for my word and the centrality of my word.

The person and work of Jesus Christ is mediated by the Holy Spirit and his word in worship. That’s the central commandment here. Don’t do it the way you think might be cool and jazzy and interesting. And that’s the purpose of this commandment.

And the commandment, as we’ve said, it’s very important to recognize, and we’re going to see it again today, what God does to people that decide they want to do things their way. They want to replace God’s word with very specifically a golden calf. We’ll look at that in a couple of minutes. God’s curse, the liability for their sins of such people that hate God—that’s what he calls it—will be passed on to their descendants. And we’ll look at that in a couple of minutes. So, the importance of no makes us human. It gives us the ability to be fully human by cutting off our desire to manipulate God and to replace him with our own abilities, our own energies. No is very important. And God tells us in the second word, no.

Now, the second word is very important because the subject addressed is worship. And you know, as I mentioned last week, if we just look at an overview of the Sinai encampment or what the scriptures tell us, we’ll see the importance of worship. On your handouts, I have a couple of relevant portions here for you that do an overview of the Sinai encampment.

The first one is an outline by David Dorsey. You know, we have this Exodus 20. We know that’s where the Ten Commandments are first given. And what we usually forget is right after the giving of the ten commandments in the first half of Exodus 20. The last half of Exodus 20, beginning at verse 22 concerns an altar. Then the Lord called to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, you have seen that I have talked to you from heaven. You shall not make anything to be with me. Gods of silver, gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.” And then he describes the kind of altar he wants. So immediately after the ten commandments, God returns to one of them—the second word—and addresses worship.

Now, that tells us its importance. The ten commandments—they’re all important and God chooses to focus on the second word in the resulting commentary that it’s given to us in the last half of Exodus 20.

So, we have laws of worship and then after this altar stuff is talked about, the application of the second word. Don’t do things your way, do things my way. Then we have the covenant renewed with God and his people. And then there’s a lot more laws. The rest of chapters 21 to 24 had to do with social justice sort of issues, criminal statutes we could say. But then the rest of the book of Exodus—now there’s some narrative stuff in there—but all the rest of Exodus, and it goes on for 40 chapters, all the rest has a bunch of commandments about what they’re to do for worship.

And then all of Leviticus is primarily focused—I mean, not all of it—the big thrust of Leviticus is about what to do with worship, priests, the tabernacle, and then what’s clean and unclean in terms of worship and what you can do and can’t do. So, we’re sort of set up by the very first section after the ten commandments telling us the great importance of worship and then we have three chapters, four chapters of case laws and then a huge set of chapters about worship again.

So, twice there, God tells us that worship and what he wants us to do in worship is of great importance to us. Look at Dorsey’s outline if you will for just a moment. It’s page two on your handouts on your outline. It’s a sevenfold structure. And you know, it’s important that you recognize this. Your kids should know this: that from the middle of Exodus to about a third of the way into Numbers, all of those scriptures are one unit. Okay? Given at Sinai, they all take place at the Sinai encampment. They’ve come out of Egypt. They’ve gone out there. They’ve gone to Sinai. And when they arrive, Exodus 20 begins then their arrival, or what God tells them upon their arrival. And that whole section continues right on into Numbers chapter 10. And David Dorsey here has given us a nice sevenfold outline of what this entire Sinai encampment is about.

So God is setting up his people. He’s redeemed them out of Egypt. He’s telling them how to live as his people in the promised land. So this is very instructive for us, right? He’s brought us out of sin and bondage and he’s telling us how to create Christian culture. And what does he do? Well, he starts with the ten commandments in the A section and he moves on to and at the end of that, as I said, there’s some stuff about altars and then there’s judicial laws in the second section, Exodus 20-24:11.

You see that? And then what happens? Instructions for building the tabernacle and dedication of priests. And this goes on for 11 chapters. And then the fourth section, and by the way, in those 11 chapters that’s where the golden calf incident is that we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. And then they’re actually building the tabernacle happens for seven chapters. So there’s all 11 chapters about how to build it and how to consecrate the priest and all that stuff.

What is it? It’s person, the priest, and place, like we talked about last week. How are you going to get to rejoicing? Well, you’re going to want to focus on person and place the way that God has instructed us. And here it’s all a series of positive commandments. Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. And it goes on for 11 chapters. And then for seven chapters, they do it. And their obedience to God in terms of worship, creating the tabernacle and consecrating the priests, then is talked about in the rest of Exodus through to the end of that book.

And then in the fifth section, the E section on Dorsey’s outline, sacrificial laws and dedication of the priest, Leviticus 1-10. So you’ve got building of the tabernacle and the priests instructions, then building the tabernacle and the priests. Then you’ve got dedication of the offerings and the priests themselves. So the whole big middle section of the Sinai encampment is all about worship and God sets up his people to go into the land.

Yeah, he gives them judicial laws and we talk a lot about that. But what he primarily gives them is how to worship. That’s what he primarily gives them. This establishes its priority to us, the significance of it, the importance of it. The sixth section are purity laws, Leviticus 11-18, and then holiness laws into Numbers chapter 9. But so a brief overview shows you that the tremendous bulk of material in the Sinai encampment is about worship, specifically about worship.

I’ve also given you an outline for Leviticus on the next page if you want to turn to that. The way this works is according to a liturgical model—that is one way to look at the Lord’s supper where we grab a hold of things, we break it apart, we distribute our work, it’s evaluated and tested, then we go into the future. And the way to think about it is this: you’ve got these five books up here in Leviticus, the middle one. You know, if you draw a line from Leviticus out to this next section, this next row of material, this is an overview of Leviticus which is the center of this structure. The center of Leviticus of these laws and that’s expanded out to the next level. And then the last section on this particular handout is an expansion of the last few chapters of Leviticus. So it’s just something that you might want to keep in your Bibles or in your notebook that keeps you with a knowledge of the scriptures.

But the important thing here is that Leviticus is sort of like if we look at the whole Torah—the whole five books, the Pentateuch—the middle of that is Leviticus and Leviticus is kind of the beating heart of the center of the Pentateuch. And it’s primarily again about worship. It tells us what the offerings are like in 1-9 and it ends in Leviticus 9:22 which is honoring orders of worship every Lord’s day. We think that’s the pattern by which we’re supposed to move our New Testament worship in the same way. It goes on to talk about the consecration of the priests.

And then after the consecration of the priests, which is sort of like a new creation almost with Aaron and his sons, we have the fall of Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron. And so you can see where that goes. Aaron does the golden calf. Aaron’s sons bring false worship before God. They bring their own fire to God rather than letting his fire that came down from heaven start things up. They make their own. They’ve got their safety matches, whatever it is they use or little torches and they light their own little incense up and they’re going to do their own thing. They’ve got their own way of approaching God. God kills them. They’re repeating the—they’re telling us that what Exodus, what the second word says in terms of punishments—this is how it works out. Aaron was idolatrous, made the golden calf and two of his sons then end up offering false worship and get killed because of it.

So whether it’s the overall Sinai encampment or the overall Pentateuch, or if we just took the number of verses that describe worship in the Pentateuch—all these things show us the tremendous importance and significance of worship. It’s really important. So no here—telling us not to do things—is really important in the second word as well as then what, well how should we do things as well, what can we do? That’s a good question. What can we do? What do we do with worship in the New Testament? What do we do this side of the cross?

Are all those sections of scripture somewhat irrelevant to how we format our worship? I don’t think so. Just as we’ve said before, if you want to know what proverb, what wisdom is about, you look at the life of Christ. But then you also will study the book of wisdom, Proverbs. If you want to know what worship is like, yeah, you’ve got to read about it in the New Testament. But you also want to look at the books of worship, the primary book, Leviticus. The New Testament is filled with language that equates what we do in Lord’s Day worship to the Passover of Christ. For instance, he’s made peace sacrifices. Our reasonable liturgy is to present our bodies before him.

There’s all kinds of language in the New Testament that ties back what we do in New Testament worship to the sacrificial system. There’s not a detailed description of worship in the New Testament, though. What is it? Some people look at 1 Corinthians 14:26. Here’s what it says:

“How is it then, brethren, whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.”

And they say, well, there it is. The only thing we really have in the New Testament about how we’re supposed to worship is Paul’s description of New Testament worship here in 1 Corinthians. Well, the problem with that is couple of fold. One, you know, we don’t really know if this is actual formal worship or not. But even if it is, Paul isn’t necessarily commending them.

If you look at this opening phrase, “How is it then?”—throughout the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “Well, what are you doing then? What about this? How about this?” He asks these questions. And when he does this, apart from this particular text, if this is the exception, the rest of them he’s going to criticize them for something. He’s saying what they’re doing isn’t good. He’s not commending them for something.

So, what we have here is a description of how a church that’s goofed up, that wasn’t worshiping correctly, was doing it. And we don’t have any kind of confirmation from Paul that this is any kind of structure for New Testament worship. So we have an absence. Some people say, “Well, that’s it.” Some people say there’s no relationship between the Sabbath and Lord’s Day. Lord’s Day activities in the New Testament completely different old covenant stuff.

And some people say, well, all that old covenant worship is irrelevant. It’s no significance. And what we’re given in the New Testament is complete freedom to do whatever we want to do. Well, we think differently. We think that all the sacrificial language in the New Testament are pointers back to what Leviticus showed us would be the coming of the sacrifice of Christ. And as I’ve mentioned before, this kind of isms out for us the implication of who Jesus was.

We believe there’s one word from God and the reason we don’t have detailed instructions about New Testament worship is because it’s the fulfillment of Old Testament worship and finds its basic pattern and component elements within that form of worship. That’s what we do here. Now, other people, you know, say no, we can do whatever we want in worship. But it seems like if that’s true, then we’re being led into doing just what Nadab and Abihu, who weren’t supposed to do, just what the second word says we’re not supposed to do. And pretty soon you end up with no relationship between the second word and our formal worship at all. And eventually you get rid of the second word. You get rid of the fourth word and pretty soon the whole ten commandments is out the window.

So, you know, we believe here at Reformation Covenant Church that our New Testament worship is informed by this tremendous set of materials in the Old Testament on what worship is.

So worship is important. 1 Corinthians 11 doesn’t give us any kind of formalized pattern of New Testament worship. Paul doesn’t commend it that way. What we have to do is look at worship from the beginning of the Bible through to the end of the Bible. And we see continuity in terms of basic patterns. What Christ will accomplish, what he’s intended to accomplish by his sacrifice, what we commemorate on the fourth day, as we get into the fourth commandment rather, on the Lord’s day. All the Bible has to inform what we do. So we have to be careful students of the word of God in terms of how we build worship. It’s important. And remember, no is important. We don’t just do whatever we think is a cool idea because the second word tells us explicitly that’s not what we’re to do.

What do we see in the Old Testament? We see lots of things. We see in Exodus that the covenant is renewed in the context of the giving of the law and worship. Most—Jesus takes blood, he splatters the people, the covenant’s renewed. Psalms says that God renews his covenant by the sacrificial meal, a meal with him. That’s what we engage in. The New Testament verifies that same truth. So worship is covenant renewal. Worship is also command performance, right? God says, “This is the way I want you to do it.” And it’s a command performance where we come before him and we recognize we’re in the presence of God and he delights in our praise and we give it to him and we give it to him in an antipal manner.

In other words, he calls you, you respond by singing his praises. He tells you, you need to confess your sins, you respond by confessing your sins. He says you’re forgiven and you say, “Great. Praise God for that gift of forgiveness and new glory and respect of life.” The whole worship service is a dialogue back and forth. That’s a pattern. Earlier, we heard the first few verses of Psalm 149 read. And we’re going to—I’m going to read it as the commissioning scripture at the end of the service as well. And it’s very interesting what it says about worship as an example of many texts that tell us about worship.

In verse 5: “Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let them sing aloud on their beds. And it’s been talking here about worship as well. And then it says, ‘Let the holy praises of God be in their mouth. And two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with feathers of iron to execute on them the written judgment. This honor have all his saints praise the Lord.’”

So worship there is warfare, spiritual warfare. And what God’s people do in worship is characterized in Psalm 149 as exercising the two-edged sword. Now, in none of this stuff is it magical. I was asked a question last week after the sermon. If somebody worships but then looks at pornography all six days a week, will they be transformed by that worship increasingly into a mature Christian? No. That’s the whole point of the second word. There’s nothing magical about what we do. We can follow all the right steps. We can do everything correctly and then if we walk away not remembering what God just taught for two hours, we’re like that foolish man in the book of James and we walk away and do what we want. It’s not magic.

Now, if you worship improperly and yet have a good attitude during the week and try to obey God, you’ll do better than somebody worshiping improperly and who the rest of the week just blows God off. So I’m saying worship is important, but don’t, you know, don’t take from that we can somehow come up with the right formula and the process and as a result automatically mature the people who attend such worship. Israel had all the right formulas. They generally followed them but their hearts weren’t with Yahweh and he brought judgments upon them. So I’m not saying that, but I am saying that worship is exceedingly significant.

In the reformed world this has been understood. There’s a thing called the regulated principle of worship. And they look at things like the second word that warn us no, don’t worship the way you want to worship. They look at Nadab and Abihu deciding they wanted to worship in a particular way and God judging them. We look at Jeroboam, which we’ll look at in a couple of minutes, and we see that he tries to jazz up the worship of Israel and as a result God judges him and kills his son and yada yada.

And so the reformed people look at this and they say, well, look, you know, God doesn’t just leave it up to our imaginations and in fact he explicitly tells us don’t let your imagination determine how you are going to worship. So reformed people in the last century in America have come up with this phrase, the regulated principle of worship. And what it means is that you can do whatever you want to do in a lot of things in life. What kind of house you build is up to you. But what kind of worship you create is not up to you. So there’s something different about worship. In worship, we’re supposed to do what God has told us.

He wouldn’t have spent, you know, dozens of chapters describing in Leviticus and Exodus and in 1 Kings. He wouldn’t describe all this detail about how worship happened in that particular place in time without it having a significance for us in what we do today. So we have to have our worship informed by that worship. It’s not different. I mean it’s different, but it’s not completely discontinuous. Jesus has come as the fulfillment of all those offerings. Right? He’s purified us. He’s caused the ascension and transformation of who we are. He accepts our tribute. He makes that man can bring stuff into worship that’s pleasing to God. He has a meal with us. We have the Lord’s Supper. All that stuff.

So the reformed, the regulated principle of worship says we can only do what God wants us to do in worship. Now how do you apply that? Well, it’s all over the map how people apply it. And we don’t want to say that only what God has commanded can we do. Example: next week we’ll have a baptism in the worship service. Where are there baptisms in the worship service? Where are their circumcisions in the worship service? They’re not. Now, you can by implication say, “Well, we think it’s okay to do it there. We don’t have to do it there.” And so, we think it’s legitimate to have it in the context of worship. But even people that are strict regulated principle people—stricter than us—that says you can’t use instruments, for instance, because in the New Testament there’s no instruments, even though there were—even those people would go ahead and have baptisms in worship.

Even the sermon: you can make a stronger case from the New Testament that Lord’s Day worship included communion than you can that it always included a sermon. And yet, reformed people who claim to have their worship regulated by the word of God are more insistent on having a sermon than they are about having the Lord’s Supper. And so, it’s generally absent more often than not. So, the way you apply it is different.

But our church believes that it’s basically correct that our worship has to be informed positively by what God says. And so we look at the importance of worship and then we try to structure that worship on the basis of what God says. Westminster Shorter Catechism, longer catechism and its questions and answers on commandment number two state this very thing—that we can only do in worship what God commands or gives us examples or precepts to do. And so that’s what that’s what we do. We think that worship is important and that we don’t want to approach worship with what seems cool and good to us. We want to approach God in worship with what he says we should do.

Now the next statement on the outline is missional churches. So as we go about considering, praying about and making plans to start churches including missional churches, what does it mean? What it means is that those churches cannot biblically, properly, beneficially decide that we want to have a church service that will be jazzed up and fun so that we can get more people to come in and be missional in that way. We’re saying no in worship. The point is not to say what we’d like to do. The point is to ask what would God want us to do? And our response to that will be that we will learn to like it.

God says no to us and it’s important. We can’t just decide what we want to do. I could get a lot of people here next week for Lord’s Day worship. I could have, you know, Dolly Parton come and sing. Very missional. Get a lot of people in. Then I could give the gospel message afterwards. That’s not biblical worship. Biblical worship says there’s a particular pattern of what worship involves. There’s particular people involved in the worship to represent God. You can’t just do it any way you want.

And now let’s talk about the golden calf. And this is the example of this from this large section of scripture, the golden calf. What was this golden calf? Some people think that the golden calf is a return to Egypt. Okay. So the golden calf is like—there was an Apis bull and this was like a bull, cow that was like honored as deity. And so they say, well, what this cow was an Apis bull statue. And so what they really were doing was rejecting Yahweh and going back to Egyptian gods.

But it seems like the text doesn’t really tell us that necessarily. First of all, the Apis bull was a living bull. You know, Egypt—they actually had a live bull. And when that bull would die, they’d have to go find the next Apis bull and then he’d be worshiped as god. It’s kind of like the Tibetan monk, right? I mean, or the Dalai Lama rather. You know, when one Dalai Lama dies, the spirit goes into another person. So you’ve got to find that person. The old Dalai Lama isn’t important anymore. So the Apis bull was a living thing, not a statue, which is what they did here.

What does the text tell us about what they were doing with this golden calf? Now, it’s kind of important, as I mentioned. Aaron’s involved in this, and then later, God splits North Israel into north and south, right? Into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. After Solomon’s reign, his son Rehoboam is foolish. God splits the kingdom and he gives the northern tribes to Jeroboam. Jeroboam was God’s guy. The text tells us very explicitly that God chose Jeroboam to be king over Israel. We forget this, but he was God’s guy. Okay? He had spent, by the way, a number of years in Egypt like Aaron had done. And like Aaron, he ends up creating golden calves.

He’s up there in the north. He says, “Well, I want to be missional. I want to get a lot of people coming here, and I’m afraid that they’re not going to want to be part of the north anymore. Their allegiances are going to go down there to Jerusalem because they always have got to go down there to worship. So, I’m going to set up a different kind of worship up here. And not just Yahweh worship. That’s good, but I want to jazz it up a bit. I want to add these golden calves.”

So, he sets up two sanctuaries, one at Bethel and one at Dan, and the whole purpose of it is to, you know, create something that’s real cool and jazzed up. And so Jeroboam does this and then God of course doesn’t like it and God brings judgment against him. You know who Jeroboam named his son? His son was Nadab. Aaron’s son is Nadab. Nadab and Abihu are two of Aaron’s four sons and they’re the ones who, following after their father’s sin—the golden calf incident, his approach to worship, not God’s—did the same thing when they approach worship with their own fire as opposed to using God’s sacrificial fire from heaven that had already been there. They approached God on their own initiative in their own way in a way that pleases them and God destroys them.

Jeroboam sets up a system of a golden calf. He spent time in Egypt. In fact, he says the very same thing to them that Aaron—that the people here tell Aaron. This is the gods that brought us out of Egypt. And then he has this son Nadab who becomes king after him and he’s killed then too. And it says he does evil the two years that he reigned. The sins of the fathers, the iniquity of the fathers is passed on to the third and fourth generation. In this case directly we can see it. They’re parallel stories. So it’s important that we get them right. Number one, and we can interpret this golden calf incident in relationship to Jeroboam and Jeroboam in relationship to this.

The scriptures have given us a twofold witness here to golden calf worship involving a guy who sets up something he shouldn’t set up and who has a son named Nadab and who spent years in Egypt. It’s quite instructive.

Now, okay, so let’s look carefully at Exodus 32. Turn there, please. Exodus 32. Exodus 32:1.

“Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron and said to him, ‘Come make us gods that shall go before us.’ Okay, so we’re given information here. Why do they ask Aaron to set up these powers? The word gods here, it’s that word Elohim again. It doesn’t mean there are no other gods. There should be no god above God. They’re not claiming a god above God necessarily. They’re saying the powers that be is one way to phrase what they’re talking about here. Make us powers that be.

And in the construction of this golden calf. But the people do this. The scriptures tell us why they do it. It’s because there are—they’re waiting for Moses. Moses has delayed coming back down the mountain. He’s up there 40 days and 40 nights. So, it’s that delay that we’re told is their motivation for what occurs here.

And it says, it says here that, okay, so: “Come make us gods that shall go before us. For as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what’s become of him.”

So once more, we’ve got the request for the idol in the middle. On either side, we’ve got references by the people. They don’t know where Moses is. They don’t know what’s become of him. There’s no reason to assume here that they’re turning their backs on Yahweh. What they’re doing is giving up on Moses, right? Aaron says to them, “Break off every man’s ears.” So earrings rather. So they take out the earrings.

“All the people broke off their earrings and he then uses an engraving tool and makes a molded calf. And then they said, ‘There is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.’”

So what they’re looking at, they’re not looking at going back to Egypt. They’re declaring that this thing brought them out of Egypt. They’re acknowledging the Passover. They’re acknowledging their exodus from Egypt. And this is the same words that Jeroboam uses when he sets his golden calves up. He says the same thing. “Here’s the God that brought you out of Egypt.” They’re not saying, “Let’s go back to Egypt.” They’re not saying, “Let’s worship Egyptian gods.” They’re saying that the God that brought us out of Egypt, which is Yahweh, can be worshiped with this golden calf.

And why a calf? Well, they already knew sacrifices had been going on. They knew there were five sacrificial animals. They knew the biggest of these, the best, was the cow or the bull. And if a god is going to lead them forward as a representation of Yahweh, a man-made representation of Yahweh is going to lead them into the promised land—Yahweh’s led them out of Egypt. What they’re looking for now is a leader who will go before them into the promised land. Why not a bull, right? That’s the best sacrificial animal. Somehow it represents the coming, you know, of the second person. It’s going to be God himself who pays for our sins. I don’t know how much they knew. But the point is there’s no reason to assume here that they’re setting up an Egyptian god. What they’re doing is they’re setting up a representation of Yahweh that is forbidden to them to set up according to the second word.

That’s what they’re doing. They’re going about worship in a way that pleases them. And what they’re doing, of course, ultimately is rejecting Moses, right? Who’s the mediator between them and God? Moses. He’s representing who? Jesus. What’s the other mediator? What leads them forward? Well, it’s the cloud and the fire, right? The cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. It’s Yahweh’s Shekinah glory that represents him leading his people forward. They don’t want the mediation that God has set up. They want a different way of mediation to get God to lead them into what they want. So, they’re setting up controls over mediation. They’re rejecting the one mediator and they’re setting up another way to mediate between them and Yahweh. They’re doing—they’re worshiping their own wills as it were and rejecting the mediation of God.

Now, what are they doing? Well, they reject the mediation of a man who yells at them, right? Moses yells over things. He gets upset. He says, “No.” And they replace it with this cow that will never open its mouth. All they’re going to hear from the cow is what they want to hear, is what they feed into it with their own thoughts. That’s what they’ll receive back. That’s all they want to feed receive back. What do people do? What did Jeroboam do?

He wanted a worship system not using the mediators—the Levites and the priests and the place Jerusalem. Remember, we saw this in Moses’ sermon. That’s exactly how Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy applies the second word: place and person. And the end result is what? It was joy at the center. So the no is intended to bring us to joy at the center. No. No to our place and person. Yes to God’s place and person. No to imaginations of our minds and the work of our hands being mediators. Yes to God’s mediatoral presence at his place. And the end result of that is joy.

Jeroboam doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want his people. He’s too politically astute to worry about his people or to let his people be lured back to allegiances with Judah through the required worship that transpires there. So he sets up a worship system that will make them happy to stay with him. That’s the danger. That’s the danger when we worship. It is a primary significance in our lives. It’s not the only thing that’s important. It’s not magical. That’s exactly the reverse of what actually is going on. This text tells us it’s not magical.

That’s the whole point. We’ve got a personal mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit. And God sets up, you know, representations of him to officiate in worship who talk back right? Who talk to you who correct you. And you can correct him too when he’s out of line, right? That’s the sort of thing that God sets up in the context of worship, not our own mediation.

What does it say? Well, we know they must have been really bad, not really following Yahweh, because then it says: “They rose early on the next day, they offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings.”

Huh? They’re doing the same offerings, ascension and peace offerings. That’s one summation, right? Leviticus 9:22 throws sin or purification in there too. But, you know, burnt offerings and peace offerings, that’s the gig. That’s what God’s offerings are. They’re doing the same offerings. They’re just using a visible mediator that their hands have made that won’t talk to them the way Jesus will.

“And then the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”

God then says to Moses, “Go get down for your people. People whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt have done this thing.” So the text immediately reminds us that they want—they’re thinking these gods are going to take them into the promised land. But God has sent a man, a mediator, a man representing Christ—Moses. And what the people are doing is rejecting that kind of mediation through the establishment of the work of their hands in worship.

And so the text tells us in multiple places that’s what they’re doing. And what they’re doing really isn’t wrong. The rest of it—they’re doing the right offerings. They’ve not changed the system of offerings. And they sit down to eat and drink. Well, that’s not wrong either. That’s what we do. We come together to worship God with ascension and peace offering, right? We sit down to eat and drink. And they rose up to play.

Now, this word play is interesting. It can be negative connotation, can have positive connotations. It just means like laughter, play, have a good time. Well, what do we find at the center of Moses’ sermon on the second word last week? Rejoicing, playing, having a good time. We’re supposed to come together and when we do things the way God wants us to do them, we’re supposed to have a good time on the Lord’s day. We’re supposed to sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play. Right?

This is what Isaiah says. Isaiah 65:13: “Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, my servant shall eat, but you shall be hungry. Behold, my servants shall drink. But you shall be thirsty. Behold, my servant shall rejoice, but you shall be ashamed.”

Now, their play probably was sinful. That’s probably correct. You’ve seen probably some visual depictions of that. Yeah, it probably leads to sin because false worship produces bad ethics as well. But the problem is not that they’re trying to have worship that ends up with them smiling and laughing. That’s the way our day is supposed to culminate at the Lord’s Supper and then in our meal afterwards.

So, all of what’s given to us in the incident of the golden calf is stuff that we would want to do. We want to do. We want to we want some God to lead us forward into the future. We want to have ascension offerings and peace offerings. We want to sit down to eat and drink and rise up in joy because of what the Lord God has given to us. And God says the thing that will destroy you is when you try to achieve that—those honorable goals—by insisting on your own mechanism for how you’re going to go about worshiping God.

This, as I said, is exactly what Jeroboam did. Jeroboam does the same thing. He gets to the place where he wants to set up his own mediation between Yahweh supposedly and his people. And so, he sets up his own guys and as a result of that, he sins. Let me read you the account. Turn to 1 Kings 12 verse 25. Let’s look at it. And it’s parallel. It’s parallel. 1 Kings 12:25.

Okay. And now before this you—God’s made Jeroboam king. Okay. So:

“Jeroboam built Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim and dwelt there. Also he went out from there and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, ‘Now the kingdom may return to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn back to their Lord Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and go back to Rehoboam, king of Judah.’”

Now, see, this is so ridiculous because God has established Jeroboam. And he knew that. God had made that clear. But when men turn from God, they go nuts. They get conspiratorial. That’s what we see throughout the world increasingly these days—are people that are imagining conspiracies and this is what Jeroboam does. They’re going to kill me and go back to Rehoboam, king of Judah.

“Therefore, the king asked advice. So, he’s not like Rehoboam. He got advice and he made two calves of gold and said to the people, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.’”

Oh, that’s a long drive. That’s a long hike. Don’t do that.

“Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.”

I’m not taking you back to Egypt. Yeah, God brought up. Here are the gods. Here’s the representations of Yahweh. These two calves. Yahweh’s like a bull. He’s got the powerful horns. The bull was an offering that they knew by this time, by the time of Jeroboam, represented whole nations. There were 70 bulls slaughtered for the 70 nations. The bull’s a representation of all the earth and Yahweh’s control. Yahweh is a great bull, so to speak. So, he’s just using—he’s disobeying the second word. But other than that, he’s trying to do everything right. He’s trying to mediate God’s presence to the people through something that his hand put together that he thought would be cool and neat. Maybe not as good as down there in Jerusalem, but at least cool enough and neat enough.

And with the added benefit of not having to travel very far, they would stay with their hearts to him.

“He set them up in Bethel and the other he put in Dan.”

Pretty smart guy. Bethel, old established place. He’s conservative, right? He’s added one innovation, one innovation on family. Although actually, of course, he’s changing the place, but he’s changing it to a place Bethel that has long history with God’s people.

“Now, this thing became a sin for the pro for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan. He made shrines on the high places and made priests from every class of people who were not of the sons of Levi. Jeroboam ordained a feast on the 15th day of the 8th month, like the feast that was in Judah. and offered sacrifices on the altar.”

So he did at Bethel sacrificing to the calves that he had made. And at Bethel he installed the priests of the high places which he had made. So he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bethel on the 15th day of the eighth month in the month which he had devised in his own heart. And he ordained a feast for the children of Israel and offered sacrifices on his altar and burned incense.

So that’s the description of Jeroboam’s sin. And it says there he changes the method of mediation. He uses a calf. He changes the place. Remember Moses said that place is central. He changes the persons—the representatives of Yahweh—from Levites to people of his own choosing. And it says and then he changes the times. He changes the date on which the high holy feast would happen. And the culmination of this is this verse that says “which he has devised in his own heart.”

What happens? Well, he’s got a son. He names his son Nadab. Just like Aaron, his son ends up dead. And his son ends up doing just what dad did. You know, I know a lot, not a lot, but I know quite a few people who for a long time weren’t faithful in any particular church, moved about here and there, and then they finally get steady in their older years, and then they wonder why their kids don’t have much commitment to the idea of worship and church.

The sins of the fathers in this particular area, okay? They’re visited upon their kids. Kids watch parents in the relationship to worship. And if you try to make it whatever you devise your own heart, your kid’s going to see that and he’s going to do the same thing in spades. And if you think it’s generally unimportant, you’re going to have a hard time with your kids then ever getting them to see that regular attendance at Lord’s day worship is important and more than that is the source of eternal joy to them. They’re not going to see it.

Jeroboam, Aaron, golden calf—as we look forward, you know, to planting more churches and to maturing in this church—may the Lord God keep us from looking at worship in a way that we can jazz it up according to our hearts, the devisings of our own intellects, the way we want it to be.

Now, we can be way wrong in what we’re doing here. I’m not making a case for conservatism in worship. We’re a reformed church, always reforming. I want to see a lot more instruments of a lot different sorts, for instance. But I’m saying that as we go about doing that stuff, we have to understand how important the worship, the formal worship of the church is according to these texts we’ve looked at. And we have to see the great danger that would lie to us, that would be ours, that we would pass on to multiple generations, if we decide to initiate worship services using other styles, other forms just because they’re cool and resonate with people. That is not the idea of worship.

So, two ditches in the road. One: we found the right way to do it and we’re never going to change. That’s ridiculous. It’s baloney. It’s horrible. We’ve done whatever we can. It’s like a little crude painting a little three-year-old would make for his parents of what his dad looks like. The dad loves it. God loves our worship. It’s crude. It can go through a lot of transformation. We’re not—we don’t believe that the only kind of music that can ever be sung in worship came out of Geneva. No, we don’t believe that. But on the other hand, you know, so that’s one ditch to take our traditions and make them laws. But the other hand is to then say, well, all that stuff’s unimportant. We’re going to do whatever we want to do in worship that will attract people and really get them jazzed up.

And we’re not going to pay much attention to how God says we should worship. God says we are most human when we listen to his no about certain aspects of how we would like to approach him in worship. And as we listen and say yes to his yeses, to his patterns, to what he says worship should look like, then we’re going to say yes to the very thing that at the heart of it gives us the most joy.

Let’s pray. Father, we desire to worship you in beauty and truth and in spirit. We thank you, Lord God, for Jesus Christ fulfilling all these things we’ve talked about today. We thank you for the worship this side of the cross. Help us to mature here at Reformation Covenant. Help us to set up other churches, Lord God, that would worship you in ways that are different and yet also that are determined, regulated as it were, ordered by the truths of your scriptures.

Help us to avoid here at RCC and in the plants that were associated with and in the people whose lives we affect worship that would somehow be oriented toward our own imagination, the devising of our hearts. Bless us, Father, as we seek to bless your holy name and honor you in our worship. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.