Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): Does God have you in the waiting room? It's easy to grow impatient at such times, but consider this from Pastor Ed.

Pastor Ed Taylor: It is a difficult thing, but waiting is the only course. I don't want pressure to cloud my judgment. I don't want impatience to cause me to make a big mistake. I don't want to throw the word of God aside because of the pressure of people or the pressure of situations. The Bible says that those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. It's a place of strength, not weakness.

Guest (Male): Have you ever grown impatient and then took matters into your own hands? How'd that go for you? Yeah, I think we've all been there. Today on Abounding Grace, that's where we find the children of Israel. They're getting impatient as they've been waiting for a while, and that leads to compromise. There are some lessons we can glean from this experience. Here is Pastor Ed Taylor to point them out from Exodus Chapter 32.

Pastor Ed Taylor: They turn to Aaron, Moses' assistant, and say, "Hey, let's sin against the Lord." When we start using biblical language, then we begin to see the situation for what it is. So here's the biblical language if you wanted to translate what they just asked Aaron: "Hey Aaron, we're impatient. We can't wait anymore. So would you help us break the first, second, and seventh commandment? The one we just got. Can we break these three commandments? Will you help us? We know you're Moses' assistant."

And Aaron says, "No way!" No, he caves under the fear of man for whatever reason. He doesn't tell them, "No, let's keep waiting. I know Moses. I trust him. Maybe I thought he'd be back sooner, but he's not. I can trust him." No, instead he says, "Go, let's do it." Let's do it. Notice, verse three says all the people broke off the golden earrings that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molded calf.

Can I just ask you a question in light of our study last time? Because we're building on studies as we go verse by verse. Do you remember Bezalel? How he was made, he was born to build the tabernacle. You remember him? He was gifted. This is what God made him. That's why God put him on the planet. We spent a lot of time looking at that in our study last time. So let's step back for a second and just ask the question. Was Aaron's hands made to build an idol? No. His hands were not made. And you might just want to write in your Bibles, "This is not from the Lord." I know idolatry's not.

But before you ever jump into idolatry, before you ever go full headlong into sin, God warns you. Can I get an amen on that? God warns us. And one of the warning signs would be watching His hand take a tool. Even going back, hearing His mouth, saying, "Oh, bring your stuff." And then collecting the stuff. And then taking a tool and setting it up however you do, and begin to work on the melting of the gold. This didn't just poof. It was a process.

It's very similar in sin. I sent a note to our pastoral team, just to the men this week, of a situation I'm involved in that's just a real bad, sorry, sad situation with a friend who made some really, really bad decisions. And because of those bad decisions, this brother has literally lost it all. I mean, in an instant, he's lost it all. He's lost his integrity. He's lost his ministry. He's lost so much. Even though today he's a repentant man, even though today he is a son of the Most High King.

But because of past decisions that have caught up with him, I reminded the men in our pastor's meeting today, the Bible says this: Be sure your sin will find you out. But you don't ever want to get to that place. You don't want to be found out. You don't want to be in a position to be found out. As we've learned through Exodus, we want to be men and women of integrity, of honesty, of fidelity, where you don't need to examine your life to find out if there is sin here, sin here, sin here.

That's not how you do. What you do is you give yourself to the Lord and you pray, "Lord, search me and know me and reveal to me if there's any unclean thing." Because there's warnings. I'm telling you right now, there are warnings on the path of disobedience all along the way. There are people God sends into your life. There are convictions of the Holy Spirit that God sends into your life. There are obvious things where you start to see your hands that once held the Bible, but now what's in your hands?

Maybe you use your phone or your tablet when you're doing your devotions, and you used to be open to your devotions, but what's it open to now? There's warnings. God said, "No, daughter, that's the wrong way. No, son, don't, it doesn't end well. It doesn't end well." And in our study today, we're reminded that impatience is often the key. Often the key in our lives. Being impatient with God and being impatient with circumstances, being impatient to the point of discontentment.

And God warns. Now you may be on the other side of a similar decision where you've lost it all or your whole life has taken in a new direction. And here's the word of the Lord to you: Though a man falls seven times, he'll rise again. There's mercy and grace even for great failure. There's also great pain and consequences that don't necessarily go away very quickly. But okay, we now take them with us.

And we now deal with the situation with all the decisions. We start making wise decisions again. Right now, Aaron is making a very unwise decision, which tells me that probably he's caving into the pressure of the people, but he was probably impatient too and just caught up in the emotion of it all. Notice with me as he made this molded calf, verse four, they said to him, "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." And then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat, to drink, and rose up to play. As Aaron caves in and asks for the earrings, there is a historian that wrote that it was not an Egyptian custom for men to wear earrings, which leads us to the next ingredient to their fall, which is infection. So you have impatience and infection.

Now remember, the Bible tells us there's a mixed multitude that came out of Egypt. Back in Exodus 12:38, remember, the mixed multitude went up with them also, and the flocks and the herds, a great deal of livestock. They influenced them earlier in Numbers 11. The mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving. So the children of Israel also wept, and "Who will give us meat to eat?" later on.

And so it's true that Aaron should have said no, but he didn't. But isn't that the issue with all of our lives? This sense of earrings—how did the men begin to wear earrings? Why is that now a custom? Why is that among the people? Because there is a mixed multitude. And when we hang out with the wrong people, we're going to end up doing the wrong things. Let me go back. If we're hanging around with the wrong people, we're going to begin to think the wrong things. And when we think the wrong things, we're going to begin to do the wrong things. Evil company, the Bible says, corrupts good habits.

That's why being in fellowship is so important. Just getting away from the world. We're in the world all day every day. And just coming together. God created the church, the systematic teaching I believe of the word of God, the songs that are sung, the music that's in the room, so that we might remember we're a different people. We are not of this world, even though we're in this world. And here Aaron should have said no, but he chose sin anyway.

I believe a piece of the pressure that Aaron felt has to do with the people and the impatience. Reading it in a silent room, there's not a lot of noise going on, it's just really my voice happening. But you can hear within the environment, there's a lot of people clamoring, a lot of people complaining. This is a loud scene. This isn't like an office visit where you're just talking in the quietness of an office. The people are impatient, and they're voicing it, and more and more voicing it. You know how it is when one person says something negative, another person says, before you know it, it just spreads like wildfire. And they're upset. There's pressure on Aaron.

And it wasn't too long ago in our weekend studies that in Galatians, we were reminded of this importance of standing against the pressure. Turn over to Galatians with me and notice in Galatians, Paul begins to talk about the significance of pleasing God. And in Chapter 1 in verse 10, he says this important statement that should be on all of our desks and be written in the beginning of our Bible so we could find it easy, and be memorized, where he says, "For do I now persuade men or God?"

And that's the choice. Am I wanting to please God, or am I wanting to please men? And he says, "Do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a servant of Christ." We learned in Proverbs 29:25, "The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord will be safe." And this is what gets Aaron in trouble here. Aaron was a mighty man of God too. He too is a giant of the faith, making a grave mistake here.

This is a deep mistake, sinful mistake. He had his flaws. And Moses, being God's choice, was given Aaron as a partner to learn. And Aaron calls for the jewelry, fashions the golden calf. You remember in Egypt, Apis was the bull god that God judged in the plagues. This was a compromise. In reality, he's helping to condemn the people. What power spiritual leaders have to lead. It's God's will. All of us to some degree are spiritual leaders and we're all leading in one way or another. Your influence and my influence may be different. It may be less, maybe more, but we're all leaders as believers.

When I feel as a leader, and I often do, this happens to me far more often than I would prefer, where people want to put pressure on me. When they want to pressure me toward their side or toward their viewpoint or toward their desire for my life. Their desire somehow gets projected onto me. Whenever I feel tremendous pressure in the ministry or when I feel pressure at home or I feel pressure as a dad or as a husband, I've made it a point not to make a decision but to wait.

This would be counterintuitive even to this situation, wouldn't it? Everybody's complaining about delaying, delaying, delaying. It would be very counterintuitive for Aaron to say, "You know what? We need to wait some more. That's the answer. We need to wait more. We don't need to wait less. We need to wait more." "Well, how long? How long?" I don't know. But I know this, we'll know when Moses comes back. "What if it's another 40 years? What if it's—" Hey, I don't know. But the word that would have given the people the answer from God was continue to wait.

And it is a difficult thing, but waiting is the only course. I don't want pressure to cloud my judgment. I don't want impatience to cause me to make a big mistake. I don't want to throw the word of God aside because of the pressure of people or the pressure of situations. The Bible says that those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. It's a place of strength, not weakness. Now maybe this calf would help them visualize God.

Do I believe they're completely abandoning the God of Israel? I don't believe that. I don't believe they're completely abandoning the God of Israel, but they're compromising enough. They want to follow the Lord. We know later they're going to throw a party in worship of one true God, of Yahweh, but they're doing it the wrong way. And they're impatient. "Ah, you know, we'll just use the idols of Egypt. That's what we're used to. That's what we know. That's what we've seen."

It's just a calf. What's the big deal? How many lives have been ruined by that phrase? "It's just a." What do you mean "it's just a"? We want God's perfect will for our lives. Amen? We want God to work. We want to be usable and available so God will do a perfect work in us so that we'll enjoy Him. Christians and preachers and teachers still do that today, caving into the pressure of their peers or of society.

Some big, bad decisions I've made in my life have been because of pressure. I can look back now with 20/20 hindsight and I can see it clear as day, even though in the moment I didn't. In the moment I was too interested in getting the pressure off. Who likes extra pressure? Who likes to be put on the spot? Who likes to have a finger pointed and demand that you agree? No one wants that pressure. And I can see times in my life where I've allowed the pressure of peers or society or people in my life to influence me.

We don't want to bring the idols of the world. We don't want to bring the idolatry in our own hearts of the world and display them in a way to replace the one true God. I was thinking about it today and now I know why. I was just thinking about how important it is to be in a church family that teaches the Bible. And I made a clear distinction in being a church family that teaches the Bible, not just from the Bible. Which you're like, "Well, wait a minute, Ed, aren't they both using the Bible? Isn't it good at least they use the Bible?"

And then again, what have you done? You've lowered your standards. What do you mean at least? At least? What do you mean at least? We don't want at least. We want the whole counsel of God. "Yeah, but I don't like the whole counsel of God." Too bad. Because it's all for us. And so it wouldn't be good for you. It wouldn't be helpful for you. It wouldn't lead to your spiritual health for me to abandon the teaching of God's word because of pressure and maybe do what's popular today.

The big popular thing today, and it's been popular for a while actually, is, "Okay, it's summertime and I know a lot of people are not here. So why don't we do a summertime series and we'll just have this series on popular movies, and we'll just find the morals in the movies." I mean, is that what church is to you? We'll just have a little bit of entertainment, watch some movie clips and say, "Okay, that movie tells you don't steal." Well, so does Exodus 20.

And Exodus 20 kind of puts you into the whole thing of what God's doing and showing all these. And then we'll watch this movie and this little clip here, this little clip, and that'll show you don't lie. And then you're watching a little clip in church, and what do you do? You go watch the movie and you find out it's the most vile, wicked, evil thing that you could watch. And where did you learn that? In your church. Isn't there some kind of distinction left for the church of Jesus Christ? Isn't there some need for holiness and righteousness? Silly questions, aren't they? Of course.

Of course. We don't want to be showing the videos of Egypt to teach you moral lessons. We have God's word. We don't want to be using the idols of the world to teach you moral lessons. We have the word of God. We don't need to teach you the language of Egypt. You get that every single day. When you come here into the teaching environment that God has had in His church, remember they continue steadfastly how? In the apostles' doctrine. That's first on the list.

They needed to come out of the world and into the spirit together. And what did they do first? Apostles' doctrine. They were in the word and in prayer and in fellowship and the breaking of bread. Why? Because moments after you leave here, you won't even have to get to your car. The enemy, your flesh, this world will try to rip off everything you just learned. Your mind might even be spinning right now, trying to undo how God got so close to you.

You're undone right now. And you're like, "I don't want to be undone." And so you do everything to get back done. But you're really already undone because sin is wrecking your life. And it's just this vicious cycle. And so when you come and say, "Ed, Ed, God is delaying. Can you make me a calf?" I will not call for the earrings and the necklaces of the church. I could tell you that. I'll say, "Hey, if you think God's delaying, just know this: Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength."

You can trust God with your life. When I travel and I'm teaching, I've got a message I've been sharing. I shared it with you first. And the very first point that I share with the church, I say, "Today you're going to learn two things. And number one, you're going to learn that God knows what He's doing with your life." God knows what He's doing. And so whatever delay, whatever issue, whatever pain, whatever problem, God knows what He's doing.

You're on the potter's wheel. You're the clay in the potter's hands. And that even today if you see like Jeremiah did, the clay become marred—that word marred in the Hebrew, you could say today ruined. When you just see everything, it seems like it's ruined. The Bible says that God, the potter, took that clay that was ruined because it was marred where? In the potter's hand. And He took that same clay and He made it into something else that pleased the Father. There's always second chances with the Lord. There's always that chance.

So all the pressures that we might have today of friends, of family, of the world, of even YouTube videos and TikTok, whatever's going on, don't integrate Egypt into your life. Expel it. It will influence you toward evil. Don't allow the world into your life trying to be culturally relevant. The Bible is culturally relevant. It does speak to our lives today. Imagine, we're studying a book of the Bible right now that was written 4,000 years ago, and some of the truths in it today are just as real as when they were written. Right now, for my life and for yours.

The more you think on Egypt, the more Egypt takes over. The more you adapt to Egypt, Egypt takes over. And Egypt doesn't need to be adapted. It needs to be forsaken. And Egypt, in the Bible, becomes a type and a picture of this world and even our flesh at times. This calf caused more problems, bringing more Egypt out of people. It says in verse seven, the Lord said to Moses, "Go, get down. Your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf and worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of this land of Egypt.'"

And the Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore, let Me alone that My wrath may burn hot against them, and I will consume them." And look at this offer at the end. "I'll make of you a great nation." Now this, if you were Moses, for a split second you might think, "Okay." Because a part of leadership, too, is there's just a part of us who just don't want to deal with problems.

The whole point of our lives is God has given to the church, in particular leaders, pastors, elders, to help with problems. It does wear on you. I don't really know anyone that goes, "Oh, I hope there's double the problems today or triple the problems." Do you want to make a new nation out of me? I really like me. Let's do it, Lord. But you really don't want a new nation made out of you because you're messed up. I'm just as messed up. So I might have sidestepped one thing, but the warning is still there.

Hey Ed, you stay abiding in Christ or you'll be next. You stay close to Me, Ed, or you'll be next. I hear the Holy Spirit speaking today, say, "You're standing in the pulpit, you've got 25 years of ministry, but if you don't guard your walk with the Lord, you'll be next."

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us today as we study through the Bible and learn of God's abounding grace. This is Abounding Grace with Pastor Ed Taylor. Are you interested in hearing this message again? It's easy to do, just visit aboundinggraceradio.com, 1place.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Our pick of the month here in April is Real Worship by Warren Wiersbe. In it, he defines the essence of worship and discusses the key issues surrounding this sometimes controversial topic within the church. We'll send you Real Worship when you give a gift of $25 or more to Abounding Grace. Call toll-free 877-30-GRACE. Again, we're at 877-30-GRACE. We'll return to Exodus next time out on Abounding Grace with Pastor Ed. We'll see you then.