Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What's Sin Costing You? | Torah | Exodus 33:1-8

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

How does God react to sin? Is your relationship with God ruined after you sin? Do you know the outcome of your sin? In today's episode, Tanya looks at the way God reacts to Israel's sin in Exodus 33:1-8. Find out exactly what your sin is costing you. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 33:1-8

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth, and right now we're in the book of Exodus. So when I was 16, I had a summer job at a store called Montgomery Ward. Anybody heard of that one? Well, while I was there, I met an older boy, and he wrote a black and yellow motorcycle. Now, I knew my parents probably wouldn't approve of the guy, but I absolutely knew they wouldn't approve of the motorcycle.

But I thought I was doing a great job keeping the whole thing a secret. from them until we pulled up to a stoplight in my hometown next to them one night. They in the front seat of their car and me next to them on the back seat of a motorcycle. So when I came home that night, they were waiting for me in the living room. I thought, here we go. Let's get this over with. But instead, they turned off the lamp and said, we'll deal with this in the morning. The tension was so much worse than the punishment.

In fact, I don't even remember the punishment, but I didn't. definitely remember waiting to see what they would do. In Exodus chapter 33, the tension the Israelites and their leader Moses felt was off the charts. The terrible day of the golden calf had ended, but the sun had risen on a new day, and the tablets containing the Ten Commandments were still broken. Who can repair them? Who can restore the broken relationship and fellowship between the people and their God? Is it even restorable?

I think this psalmist sums up better than I can what has just happened at the base of Mount Sinai from Psalm 106 They made a calf in Horib And worshipped a metal image They exchanged the glory of God For the image of an ox that eats grass They forgot God, their savior

Who had done great things in Egypt I wonder if you've ever Woken up to a new sunrise And felt the way the Israelites felt After the golden calf I wonder if you've ever felt attention of guilt and uncertainty about your sin and wondered how God feels about you. Exodus chapter 33 narrates the events after the Golden Calf episode.

But for today, we're just in the first few verses of chapter 33, and we have to sit in the tension for a bit. Here's where it stands. The Lord said to Moses, depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, to your offspring, I will give it. And then verse three, Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey,

but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people. See, while Moses was up on the mountain, the people were impatient and discontent. God had given them himself, but they looked for comfort from something else. So they threw all their gold into a fire

and melted it so they could shape it into a golden calf to worship. It was an outrageous, just act of idolatry, and it put everyone at risk of losing the one thing that defined their identity and the one thing that gave them hope for the future, the promise of God's presence among them. Now, the Israelites broke the covenant and life didn't just carry on. God had promised them a personal relationship, but they looked for love and devotion somewhere else. God didn't just turn the other way. He doesn't do that. He is always holy and always just. Last weekend, we took a family road trip to visit my grandfather.

So he's going to be 94 in August, and we haven't seen him in person for almost two years. We also realized our youngest, Ashby, has never seen his house. We usually meet up or he comes to visit us. So we all piled in the car, the six of us, and headed for his small town. However, on the way, we had to drive through lots of little bitty towns. There were four of us in the car over the age of 16, so I'm not going to say who, but one of us failed to notice this speed limit had dropped from 65 to 45. Edgar Springs Police, population 197, didn't fail to notice, however, and we realized we were getting

pulled over. Here's how the conversation went. Did you realize the speed limit dropped to 45? No, not really. Did you realize you were going over 65? I was? Would it be okay if I just wrote you a ticket for going six? Uh, I guess.

The speed limit posted was 45. And the sign doesn't say, unless you're going to visit your grandfather, or unless your whole family is in the car, or unless you didn't see. It just says 45. And while we might not follow the limit, we tend to understand the punishment. When God tells us to honor him and worship him only, no matter what, we find the limit unnecessary. We can control our speed. The Israelites built a calf to take control of their lives. Then when the Lord came down from the mountain to deal with their sin,

they discovered that he would still give them the land as he promised. He would still drive out the enemies of the land so they could possess it and enjoy it. But God's words, I will not go up among you were devastating. And the weight of those words landed like a brick. Essentially, this meant they could have everything they wanted, minus God's presence. Now the people understood what this meant, and they went into mourning.

They took off the beautiful jewelry and the robes they'd taken out of Egypt, and the plans to build a tabernacle for the Lord's presence came to a stumbling halt. Imagine the confusion and the fear, as the people ran back to camp telling one another, the Lord isn't going to go with us. Imagine what it felt like to face the reality of life without God. Their sin changed everything. their identity as God's people, their purpose in building a tabernacle for his presence, their future as their hope to live with him forever was gone.

Now they have what they wanted when they made the calf. They get to live for the moment. They get to define their own truth and their own worth. They get to decide for themselves what their purpose will be and how they will do it. They have all the freedom in the world. They can drive whatever speed they want because God, will not go with them. This is the intersection where we often find ourselves standing.

We think there's something other than the limits God is placed in our life that will give us happiness and joy. We devise plans in our minds of ways that God has let us down. Maybe our spouse is no longer making us happy. Maybe we don't have the house or the car or the clothes we want. We have the freedom to go outside God's limits and pursue alternatives. But it comes with a cost. Do we calculate the cost?

Now Moses was further ahead in the game, and he had already calculated the cost for the Israelites. Having already been through so much with God, he stood apart from the stiff-necked people, but yet he also chose to stand with them. Moses knew they couldn't survive the journey, literally or spiritually, without God's presence. The greatest evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is the absence. of a desire for control, the absence of pride, the absence of selfish ambition. And in Moses, it was evident in his humility. He was willing to give up his own status to lead this group of stiff-neck people. He didn't crave their destruction or celebrate their downfall, but he grew for them

and he stood among them. And he wanted the Lord to work in their hearts the same way that God had already worked in his own. Moses was a cynic for false hope. Why waste people? Why waste people people's time. God was the only one who could fill this emptiness in their lives. This tension spelled out for us in Exodus 33 reminds me of Paul and his words that I relate to so much. In Romans 7, starting in verse 18, Paul says, for I know that nothing good dwells in me. That is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep. on doing. And in verse 24, he says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. These words are hard for us, but they're true. But they're also evidence of God's presence in Paul's life, and if we relate to them, evidence of God's presence in us, because these aren't the words of someone who doesn't care about their sin. These are words that mean a stiff neck is softening. They're from someone who sees sin for what it is and wants God to be with us. God is sending the stiff-necked Israelites into a land flowing with milk and honey. Jesus is inviting us into a kingdom. It's a kingdom of restoration and hope.

But it's a kingdom filled with outcast. It's built with people who struggle with things like sexuality, addiction, those who've had abortions, those whose marriages are on the brink of failure and everything else in between. It's a kingdom where we have our feet washed and our dignity restored by the cross. Jesus is building a kingdom where truth is not compromised, but those of us who fall short of it are given mercy and we are loved. Let's embrace the reality that God has made this kingdom a possibility for us, and let's share the true hope of this kingdom with others. Let's follow the example set forth by Moses as we live in the tension, between the cross and the kingdom come.

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