120524

The speaker discusses the concept of idols and altars in relation to worship. They mention how idols are anything that takes the place of God in our lives, and give examples such as phones, money, and ourselves. They emphasize the importance of not worshipping anything or anyone besides God. They also explain the significance of altars, mentioning that God wanted the Israelites to make simple earthen altars for sacrifices instead of using dressed stones, as the stones could become idols. The speaker then briefly discusses a troublesome passage at the end of the reading, mentioning that it may have been a warning against the practices of other cultures at the time. Good morning church. Well, good morning half the church. I think there's a little sun worshipping going on and it's the sun with an U rather than an O going on this morning. But you, you lot are blessed this morning. You've chosen the right sun to worship this morning. So welcome to you. Aileen, come and give us today's reading. Okay, let me pray for you. Father, thank you for Aileen. I pray that the words that she speaks now, Lord, will have power. That your power, by the power of your Holy Spirit, Father, speak to us through your word this morning. In your name we pray. Amen. The reading this morning is from Exodus 20, verses 22 to 26. Then the Lord said to Moses, Tell me, is your life fit? You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven. Do not make any gods to be alongside me. Do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold. Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle. Wherever I call my name to be honoured, I will come to you and bless you. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with red stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it. And do not fill up to my altar on specs, or your private parts may be exposed. Now, I was reading that passage, probably I think it was Monday morning. And we looked at the law last week, didn't we? We looked at the Ten Commandments and some of the other commandments and we looked at what they were, what they weren't. What the point of the law was, what the spirit of the law is. And I was reading this, the bit that comes just after what we were talking about. And I got the idols and the altars bit. What is an idol? What is an idol? Well, we hear this word idolatry quite a lot in the Old Testament. An idol is something that takes the place of God in your life. That's probably the easiest way I can say. So, for the Old Testament Israelites, the Hebrew people, what were their idols? Well, Moses came back down from the mountain and he was carrying those two heavy stone tablets that he and God had worked on. And he found the Israelites worshipping an idol, a golden calf. They had made this effigy of a golden calf. That was the gold that God had given them when they left Egypt. Now, that gold had a very specific purpose. God wanted that gold to be used in building the Ark of the Covenant and a number of the other things for the tabernacle. That gold had a purpose for it and they decided to turn it into something else. And they couldn't wait for Moses who had gone up the mountain to speak to God. So they made their own god and started worshipping that. Moses was so angry that he threw the tablets down and smashed them on the floor. Moses had anger issues, by the way. I get that. I can understand that frustration. So, they had idols and they turned to them. And we have idols, don't we? We have idols in our life. Sometimes we know what they are. My phone, at the moment, my idol, is sitting over in my bag at the moment. I spend probably more time on my phone than anything else. I'm breathing, probably. It's the way I can communicate with the people I work with and the people that need me. So I need it. If people need to get in contact with me for emergencies or for prayer or something like that, I need my phone with me. I carry it around everywhere I go, even to the loo, just in case I need to watch Star Trek in there. Yeah, it is the only place I can lock the door, so it does work. But, really and truly, if nobody is contacting me, I don't really need to be using it that much. But I do. I'll go on, look through the news. I'll open apps up and go, oh, that's funny. I will use that app. I will use that phone to stop doing something else that I shouldn't be doing. What should I do? Well, if I prayed as much as I used my phone, my goodness me, I would be probably the most prayerful man on the planet. If I studied God's Word, read the scriptures as much as I used my phone, I would be able to run off off the top of my head the entire book of Psalms in one hit. But I choose to invest time and praise and awe and wonder in my phone. There are other things we can have as idols, things we do. We can use money. Money is a big one. Money will suck up your time, your thought time, your prayer time. Lord, I need more money. Money will help me to solve issues. If I've got money, why do I need God? I can use money to solve those problems. Money can solve problems, but in my experience it creates more than it actually solves. We could use ourselves as an idol. We could be so caught up in how wonderful we are and how intelligent, how beautiful, how talented, how humble we are that we begin to worship ourselves. I did good there. I got out of that situation. I must admit I had that conversation brilliantly. I am really quite a wonderful person. Anything that takes you away from God or takes any of his glory away can be considered an idol. And he says, don't do that. The first commandment, there are other gods before me. It's first for a reason, not just because it's the first one that came to his mind. He doesn't want us to worship anything or anyone else. Just him. So when we worship, we need a place to do it. And so we need an altar. An altar, I mean, that's a kind of an altar. This table we have, we have it up every week. It's got a cross on it, it's got some candles. It has the rocks that we use to remember the people that died during lockdown and after, remember the memorial service we had. So each one of those rocks is placed on the altar. So these people, we carry these people that were lost in that time. We remember them and we place them on the altar, an offering to God. But God says to these people at that time, in that place, Look, I want you to make this an earthen altar. Very simple, just a mound of earth where you will bring the sacrifices and burn them. The burnt offerings, you will make the sacrifice there. That's the focus. So you would gather and you would watch as the priest performs the ceremony of the sacrifice. Don't use dressed stones. And that seems a bit weird, doesn't it? Don't use dressed stones. Don't use any stones that have been worked on by tools. Why is that? Okay, well I want you to imagine you are making an altar out of stone. You are an amazing stone maker. You've got this gift. And you want to make something to honour and glory God. You're a God-fearing man or woman. What are you going to do with that piece of stone that will be good enough to be the place where these sacrifices are made to the God? What are you going to put on there? Any suggestions? Nothing. You could maybe do a cross, but they didn't have the cross at that time. Nothing you could do with your hands can actually be representative of something perfect from God. So you could put it up there and you could go, yes, that is perfect. And all of a sudden you've made an idol, haven't you? Oops, you've fallen into idolatry. You've done it for good reason, but now you're standing back and you're admiring your craftsmanship. Instead what God said, he said take the stones that you find that have broken away from Cliff. They've broken away from Cliffs that I have broken. These aren't just mere rocks that are scattered around. God has used his creation to sculpt these rocks. Think of the pebbles on a beach. Each one is completely different and yet they look all very similar just to look at. These pebbles here came from the beach of lightning. Each one is an individual. Each has their own things and they've been sculpted over time by creation. Each one is perfect and sculpted by God's hand. He knows every single rock. So God is making the altar pieces. All they have to do is assemble them. Now that's a pretty standard interpretation. Don't have idols and don't make altars. Then there's this really troublesome passage verse at the end. I admit, right, I am a simple silly man. I read that on Monday. I think it was in a prayer meeting. And I went... I admit that. It made me laugh. And I thought, when I see these passages, these types of passages, there's one in Deuteronomy about pooing. It says don't poo in the camp. Go outside the camp, dig a hole, poo in the hole. Hover it over. Lest I come into the camp, I don't want to tread in it. And I think, why are you putting this stuff in there, God? If you're going to write a serious religious book, don't put things in there about poo and willies. Because we're just going to go... I thought that was funny. I had an image in my head of Moses going up these steps and everyone going... Stupid man! You can see everything! I wonder if he knows! And then the Holy Spirit went... No. Not that. So I started doing some research. And it turns out that the people in Canaan at that time, at the time that God was talking to them, they had altars as well. They had beautifully crafted altars made from dressed stone with images and idols on them. And they had wonderful steps up to them there on the hills where people could see them. They were stunning, absolutely stunning pieces of man-made art. And on those altars would be a priestly-type figure. And that priestly-type figure, and you'll be glad that we are not one of those, that priest that stands at the front is but naked. Naked as the day he was born. And he is worshipping his God, Baal or Moloch, whatever God it was, and he would be having sex with the prostitutes, the temple prostitutes that they had. Yes, they had a temple that was full of prostitutes that were there specifically to pleasure the priests in worship services to their gods. So now you can start to see why God is very specific about altars and idols. He wanted his people to be set apart. So when your everyday is a man on top of a hill having sex with a woman, or many women, or committing vile acts of sexual deviancy with animals, yes, it happened. You can see how a simple earthen altar and a very humble man making offerings to God would be counter-cultural. That would be the shocking thing. For us, we would go, Oh my goodness, that man's naked! What on earth is he doing up there? This is what you... Oh my goodness me! That would shock us. But anyone in the ancient world, that would just be perfectly normal. What's your problem? This is church. Yay, church! Perfectly normal. And then they'd see Moses and the Israelites in these very simple earthen altars and a very simple ceremony and they'd be... Wow, that is shocking. What on earth are they doing? Did they not care about what their altar should look like? Why are they modestly dressed? Why are they so sombre? Goodness me! That's shocking to me. God wanted them to stand out. Now the other thing that these priests, these Canaanite priests, would not have is... shame. They wouldn't be standing up there in the altar together, doing what they're doing, going, Oh dear, it's a bit uncomfortable, isn't it? All these people can see me naked. Oh dear, that's not good. They'd be reveling in it. They'd be enjoying it. Spiritually, as well as physically. It would be an all-round perfect worship act for them. It's something that they consider very normal. The best thing they could do for their God. They were without shame. And I read this passage and the thing that struck me really, really strongly was that God did not want Moses or one of his priests to suffer shame at his altar. Moses was a good man, right? He was a strong man. He had his faults, sure. But he didn't want Moses put to shame. He didn't want Moses' private parts exposed and so bring him shame, a sense of shame in front of the people he'd lead. It's very difficult to lead a bunch of people when they've seen you accidentally naked. It's all of a sudden any pretense of power or leadership evaporates in that moment you see your pastor naked. Ooh! You'll never be able to look at that person sensibly again, would you? You would struggle every time you have that image in your head. I can't. I just can't take him seriously now. And so I really felt strongly that God was saying in that moment as well there'll be no opportunities for you to be shamed at my altar. Now I was preaching at the URC on Wednesday about Isaac and Abraham and how that sacrifice Isaac being put onto the wood and Abraham standing over him with the knife, remember? was just about plunged down into Isaac's chest and killed his own son as God had told him to. And God said, No, no, no. This sacrifice is mine to do, not yours. You've been faithful. I know how much you fear me. You did what I asked you to do. But this sacrifice is mine to make. I will provide the sacrifice. And what I found in this passage here is exactly the same thing. Moses, priests, Aaron, I don't want you to feel shame on my altar. Because that is for me to do. I am the one who will feel shame upon the altar. And I saw Christ on the cross. And we see effigies of Christ on crucifixes, don't we? We have them around our necks and we see them in churches. We see paintings. We see the stations, the icons in church, the stations of the cross. We watch films of Christ on the cross. And there he is. Topless. Wearing a loincloth. Hung for the world to see. It didn't happen like that. There was no loincloth. He was naked. He was an author and his nakedness exposed the world to see. Now at some point the Catholic Church decided that the image that the image of a naked Christ was too offensive for us to look at. And so they gave him some modesty on the cross. And they presented him with a loincloth to cover his shame. Right or wrong, I don't know. I don't want to think of my saviour in that state. I don't want to think of him in that state. But this week I've been forced to think of that. And it's, all it's done for me is to is to teach me I will never understand the true shame of the cross. We've all done things wrong, haven't we? We are people we think we know ourselves. We know what we've done and God forbid that anyone else finds out what we've done. Or the person that we think we are. If they knew me, if they really knew the person that I am in my head they wouldn't like me very much. There's a battle in our minds, isn't there? Over the things we've done and we beat ourselves up about it. And the situations arise and in our heads our first thoughts go to somewhere dark usually, mine certainly does. We don't want people to know what we've done. And sometimes we'll go to extraordinary lengths to cover that up. But Christ bore that shame for everyone. For you, for me, for them, for our children, for our children's children. For every man and woman that has ever been born he bore their shame upon the cross. He suffered in the full measure of our understanding and beyond of the word suffering. Physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. It was all there. You see, the cross is a place where the work was finished. It's where sin died. I'll read to you from Hebrews. The high priest carries the blood of animals into the most holy place as a sin offering. The bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city. But we are looking for the city that is to come. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others. For with such sacrifices God is pleased. You see, the cross is not simply a method used to punish, to kill, to destroy. The cross is actually an altar upon which a sacrifice so powerful and perfect was openly given. That it paid for the sins of the world. Jesus was the Lamb sacrificed on the altar of the cross. And it's that altar, it's that sacrifice that we gather and worship. Because there we find an end to shame. We find peace. We find that sin no longer means death. We have a chance. For here we do not have an enduring city. We do not have an enduring city. The city of Jerusalem was one of the greatest cities in the world at the time. It was a marvellous, wonderful city. A city that was thousands of years old and it endured the test of time. But outside of Golgotha, or as it was in the Old Testament, Mount Moriah, where that sacrifice of Isaac nearly happened. There we have nothing that endures other than the promises of God. No dressed stone, walls of a city, walls of houses, a gathering of people, where everything in that city was built by a human hand. When we go to the foot of the cross at Golgotha, at Moriah, we find that God has built something more enduring than anything we can build with our hands. For there, we don't find a city, we find the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God was Christ. And we are called to be citizens. And when you are citizens you follow a code, you follow a leader. And our leader is God. Our leader is Christ. And the work that he accomplished on the cross is what sustains us. It's what gives us everything we need. We are forgiven through the power of that sacrifice on that altar. We are forgiven. Anything that we have done, anything we have thought, anything we will do, there is forgiveness at that altar. And we need only to believe in Christ. Next morning, I want us to think about what that actually means. How do I get that forgiveness? One thing. Believe in Jesus Christ. You believe that he is who he said he is and that his works are sufficient that you may seek the company of God. Good works are there. Do not sit there. Do good works. Do good things. Be nice. Accomplish these things. These are great things. Don't be mistaken. They won't get you there. We think about the man on the cross. He couldn't get off the cross, could he? That thief that was next to Christ. He couldn't get off and do good works. He couldn't earn his salvation. He couldn't go and read the scriptures and find out exactly all the prophecies and weighed them up with what he'd seen. He hadn't seen any miracles that Jesus performed. He only had time in his very short life at that point to make one decision before he died. And that decision was to follow Christ. And with that he saw Jesus in paradise. That day. For others there's a path to understanding who Christ is, isn't there? You weigh stuff up. You read the bible. It's sometimes not an instant decision. I would say to you this morning, do you know you're going to be alive at the end of the day? Can you say with authority that you will wait to see another morning? Can you say with authority you will be alive in five minutes time? I can't. I hope I will be because we've still got a lot to get through. But you see what I'm saying? We don't know when the hour comes. When our time is up. We can't possibly know here. So when there's an opportunity to respond to the gospel, to respond to the love of God I really feel, especially in these days and these times, it's on us to make that decision in good time. So don't leave here today and put aside what you've heard. Don't leave here today and without thinking how much, without knowing how much God loves you. No matter who you are, no matter where you've come from, no matter what you've done, God knows you utterly, completely. He reads every single thought that you have. He's seen every single action that you've done. There is utter and complete love He has for you. He has opened a doorway for you to return to Him as His child as a sacrifice upon the altar of the cross that Christ did for us. You are loved. He wants you back. And we are running out of time in this world. I don't know when it's coming but I know it is. I look around this world now and I see despair, destruction, putrefaction, decay. I was listening to Billy Graham this week and I was listening to a sermon he was giving in 1975 and he was talking about the moral collapse of western civilisation and I was sitting there thinking goodness me, you ain't seen nothing yet Billy. You ain't seen nothing. He was talking about the things that were going on in the world at that time and I was just like wow! I look back with nostalgia about that time. They were great. Those times were not as bad as they are now. That's 40 odd years ago. A great span of time, this great landscape of time and space. The shift of the world has ramped up enormously. We've got people who don't know who they are. They're being told lies about who they are. You can be anything you want to be. No, you cannot. You are a child of God. You were made. You can have just what you are but you can be more. You can be with God. Eddie Gray, you ain't seen nothing. 1975. You wait. You wait till you get 2024. My goodness me. You know, I was reading about the Eurovision song contest and our entrance, our entry into that Eurovision song contest I didn't watch it. I saw some pictures of the video of the contest and it had a young man in a simulated sex act with other men in a public toilet. Hi, Billy Graham. Mate, you have not seen anything yet. When that is considered something that we let our children watch, that we ourselves watch, that we hold up to be a good representation of who we are as a nation, we have to understand how far we are falling. This world is dying. Our nation is dying. Are we good enough representatives to turn our nation around? Are we good enough representatives to turn our community around? What happened to us? What happened? I tell you what happened. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We made altars. We let our sons and our daughters worship at these altars. We wonder why they do it. They say it's time to stop. I'm guilty of that as anyone. I'm not outside of this. I preach it to me as well. The time is coming. We need to start acting like the children of God. It's time to stop worshipping at man-made altars and man-made gods. Are you going to come back to the cross? Are you going to worship Christ? Or are you going to watch things that promote male sex acts in a public toilet in the name of entertainment? You see? You see? That's where we've gone. The people of God at that time were moving away from that. And for a time, yes, it did get better, but now we are living in the land of Canaan. Canaan. You are loved. You are bought for a price. You have worth. You have value. God himself sees your worth and your value. He sacrificed his only son because he loved you so much. He bore the shame of having his nakedness for all the world to see. You know what? We cover his testicles up on the cross. But we watch pornography. We watch Eurovision. We let our children watch this stuff. Cover up Christ's testicles. Goodness, no, that might be offensive. You know what? It is bloody offensive to me. It's offensive because it reminds me of my skin, my shame. Why did he have to suffer that shame? He didn't deserve it. Why did he have to suffer that shame? Because he loves us so much. He was on that cross and the only thing he could think of was you. You, Mike. You, Andy. You, Chris. You, Andy. You, young lady, I don't know your name. Andy. Good name. He loves you. He loves you. He knows you. He knows exactly who you are. He died on that cross with you in his mind, in his heart and he said, it's worth it. It's worth it. He has value. I will take the shame of public nudity on a cross because you're worth it, Andy. You're worth it, Chris. You're worth it, Dave. You're worth it, David. Every one of us he deemed us to be worth it no matter how worthless we feel. You are loved through very much and there is forgiveness at the cross that you cannot understand. All he asks us to do is to believe and when we've screwed up come back and ask for forgiveness because he went through all shame to make that possible for you to do and it's there for you today and it's there for you for tomorrow. Don't go home without it. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish in eternal life for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned. Whoever does not believe Sam condemns already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son. Amen. Let's pray together shall we? May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and evermore. Amen.