It Wasn't Me // Exodus 32:15–24

In Exodus 32:15–24, Moses comes down from the mountain and finds Israel worshiping the golden calf. This sermon exposes the human tendency to minimize sin, shift blame, and say, “It wasn’t me.” Through Aaron’s excuse and Moses’ confrontation, we see why honest confession matters and how God calls His people out of denial and into repentance, healing, and mercy.

Series: Leaving the Darkness - Legacy City Church

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Exodus chapter 32 on our Bibles. If you want to turn there, Exodus chapter 32. And we have been working through a series I've titled Leaving the Darkness. We watch Moses lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, out of from under the hand of Pharaoh, slavery, out of darkness, into freedom, into a relationship with God, into the light, into the promised land, into amazing miracles, signs and wonders. And really, this picture of the Exodus is a micro story of the macro story of human history. If you just watch the Exodus story, you get to know yourself really quickly. As you watch the Exodus story, you discover human beings. You see what their tendencies are. There's so much stuff hidden right here in this story. My favorite part is that it's just so colorful. Man, the layers and the color and the emotions and the feelings and the lefts and rights, the ups and downs. Everything is packed into this. You can study it infinitely. And so we here we are again today. We're going to cover verses 15 to 24 in our Bibles of Exodus chapter 32. This is sermon number 82 through the book of Exodus. So we work verse by verse, chapter by chapter. Title of the message today, if you're taking notes, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. Heard of a story, maybe you heard of this one. A Sunday school teacher was walking her class through the Battle of Jericho. The trumpets, the marching, the walls coming down with a roar. When she finished, she turned to little Johnny and said, Now, Johnny, can you tell me who knocked down the walls of Jericho? Johnny's eyes got all big and he blurted out, It wasn't me. It wasn't me, teacher. It wasn't me, I promised. I never even touched it. Well, she was so flustered she marched him straight to the pastor's office and told him the whole thing. The pastor leaned back and smiled and put his arms around the boy and said, Johnny, I know you a long time. If you say you didn't knock down those walls of Jericho, then I believe you. Uh that that didn't satisfy her one bit. So she took the matter all the way to the church board. The treasurer listened to the whole story, true story, rubbed his chin, finally said, Folks, let's not make this a federal case out of this. Whoever knocked him down, let's just take it out of the building from and we'll get him fixed. Okay, let's move on with this thing. That's it. Sorry. That's that's the landing. The point being is the blame game, the shifting of the blame to someone else. And that's something a whole room of people, not one willing to say, I did it. And we've got to hold that thought for a moment because this morning we're gonna stand on a mountainside with Moses, and we're gonna listen to the sound of an entire nation that has done something terrible, and we're gonna watch what happens when nobody wants to take the blame. Not with me, but with yourself. You know, when you get caught, and I mean really caught, no wiggle room, what's the very first thing that comes out of your mouth, comes out of your heart? Think about it, not what you wish came out, what actually comes out, because for most of us, the first words are never, you're right, I did it, it was me. Uh no, the first words are explanation, right? And we want to explain ourselves. We want to give a reason, we want to give a little context. Well, let me tell you what happened. Now, before you say anything, it's not what it looks like, right? And we are people of excuses. We come uh by it honestly. We talk about it a lot. And this this honesty of excuses goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, where the first man God ever made, Adam, he looked at his maker and he said, It's the woman you gave me. She gave me the fruits, and I ate of it. Genesis chapter 3, verse 12. It is right there in plain text. He blamed his wife and God in the one single verse. In one sentence, he said, It's the woman you gave me. Did you see that? Bang, bang, like jab jab. Like he got them both in one little sentence. And we're clever at this. We're we're masters at this. Here's a question this passage is going to put every put on every one of us. When God comes down the mountain and catches you in your sin, are you going to confess it or are you going to try and explain it away? There's a whole world of difference between the two, and only one of them leads ultimately home, leads to heaven. Um and so uh the text will push this. And um because this was a sub-point, I'm actually happy to cover this today because this was a sub point two weeks ago. I don't know if you remember it, in the last sermon. I was contemplating this a lot, and it it came forth at a real life counseling session that same week. And I I think I'm shocked to the extent that people will go to act like there is uh no sin and that it's not that big of a deal, and then blame others for their actions. I watch it in real time. Honestly, it's a mirror for me because I know I have the tendency of doing the same, but when I see it up close and I can taste it and I sense it, it's wow, what is this in human beings that we we want to do this to each other? We have such a hard time seeing where we uh have failed. And so we're gonna look at this closely. We're in Exodus chapter 32. Can we stand for the reading of God's Word? We're gonna read verses 15 to 24. I'm excited about this text because I think it might be one of the greatest gifts I can give to you as a human being. Um, apart from salvation, I can't give that to you, God gives it. But really, the ability to be able to see when you're wrong or where you failed. This is a superpower, and it is very difficult to gain. Uh, Exodus chapter 32, take a look at verse 15. Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the testimony were in his hand. Tablets were written on both sides, or written on one side and the other. Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the finger, or was what the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. Then Joshua heard the sound of the people as they shouted, and he said to Moses, This is the sound of war in the camp. But he said, It's not the sound of a cry of a trumpet, nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat, but it is the sound of singing I hear. Now it happened as soon as Moses came near to the camp that he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands, and he shattered them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf which they had made, and he burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water, and made the sons of Israel drink it. Then Moses said to Aaron, What did this people do to you? That you have brought such a great sin upon them. And Aaron said, Do not let the anger of my Lord burn. You know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. Indeed, they said to me, Make gods for us who will go before us. For this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. And I said to them, Whoever has any gold, let him tear it off. So they gave it to me. I threw it in the fire, and out came a calf. This is the word of God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for, yes, this humorous text. And we pray, God, we would be able to laugh our way all the way into truth, and that it would enlighten us, that our hearts would actually grow today. Uh, that our ears would grow, that our eyes would grow, that we would learn our tendencies, that you would do a work in us that we cannot do. Lord, grow our roots deeper. Strengthen us by your word. Put new fruit on the tree. We ask it now in Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. Allow me to set the table because you have to feel where uh where we are to feel the weight of these ten verses here today, especially if you're just joining us. Uh Moses has been on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights, up in the cloud, up in the fire, in the very presence of the living God. And what God's uh uh what's God been doing all of this time? He's actually been writing with his own finger. He carved the law into stone, the ten commandments into stone, the terms of the covenant, the blueprint for the holy people. And this is the mountaintop of the whole book right here. While Moses is up there in glory, what's happening down at the camp? Well, a party is going on, a wild one. And the people got tired of waiting, and they lean on Moses. Um they lean on Aaron and handed uh Aaron um the gold, and he handed them a god that they could see and that they could pursue. Verse 6, uh, just before our text, says that they rose up to play. That's a polite word. Uh, that it was loud, it was drunken, it was out of control, maybe orgy type. They're dancing and they're singing and they're prancing around this golden calf naked. So two pictures, the scenes at once, the most holy moment in Israel's history at the top of the mountain. The Ten Commandments are happening in real time, and at the bottom, they are breaking the law at the highest degree. And one man with two stone tablets in his hands, frolicking down the mountain, skipping down for sure. He's so happy, for in his presence is fullness of joy. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore. He's he's elated, his face is a shone, huh? He's glowing. The Shekinah glory is upon him, he's coming down, and what does he find? The people doing wild stuff. Three movements. Watch, watch the theme build, because before anybody ever says it wasn't me, something has to happen first. Point number one, if you're taking notes, deaf to our own sin. Deaf to our own sin. This verses 15 to 18 here. Um it says that they heard a sound down below, and they thought it was a sound of war, but Moses' like, it's not a trumpet, and um there's no battle cry going on here. It's the sound of people dancing and partying down there. What's going on? Verse 15 and 16, Moses turns and starts down, and in his hands of the two tablets, the scripture nearly trips over itself, telling you who made them. The finger of God. The tablets were the work of God, the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. Twice in one verse. God's work and God's writing. Really amazing. Completely God's doing. Amazing to be holding stone that God's finger touched. Uh, why does this matter so much? Because carved right there in the first lines are that stone and these words, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. You see the irony there? Moses is carrying down the mountain the very commands they are breaking while he carries it. Now, watch this little exchange. One of the strangest verses in the whole Bible, Moses meets Joshua, and as they get close to the camp, a sound drifts up to them, and Joshua, he's a soldier, and it's all he knows. He's a general. Joshua says, That's a sound of war in the camp. And Moses stops, he says, No, no, that's not the cry of victory, that's not the cry of defeat, that's the sound of singing. The people are singing. Here's what you can't miss. The people down in that camp were singing, and in their own minds they weren't sinning, they thought they were worshiping. They drowned a religious festival around a golden calf and called it a good time with Yahweh. Remember, Aaron pointed that out a couple weeks ago. He says it's under Yahweh. They had grown so deaf to their own rebellion that they set music to it. It became a song they enjoyed. How did that happen? They were just singing the praises of God. Now they're singing to this golden calf. And this is where it wasn't me actually begins. Long before you ever say it out loud, something happens on the inside. You stop hearing your sin as sin. You go deaf to it. What used to grieve you, you start to entertain it. And what used to convict you starts to sound like singing. You can't confess what you can't even hear. Deaf spiritually. That's scary, huh? The people in that camp couldn't say it, they couldn't say it was me because they lost the ability to recognize that anything was even wrong. They were having a good time. They're having a good time. And you look at the contrast of Moses, he's about to take these tablets and smash them to the ground. But they're having a good time. It's like, what's the deal, Moses? Lighten up, dude. We're just having a good time. And he's like, Don't you realize what you're doing? God's up on the mountain about to crush all of you. He'd be able to kill you all. Notice Joshua and Moses hear the same noise, and one assumed the best, the other knew the worst. The difference wasn't their ears, it was how recently they had been with God. Moses had been on the mountain, his ear was tuned to holiness. And the closer you walk with God, the faster you'll recognize the difference between the singing of worship and the singing of a people who have forgotten him. Here's the application. It's simple. Stay close enough to God that you can still hear your own sin. You stay close enough to Almighty God that you can keep hearing your own sin. Because you are never more than 40 days away from going deaf spiritually. Skip the mountain long enough, skip the word of God, skip the prayer closet, skip gathering with God's people, and your ear starts to change. Isn't that interesting? Um the party starts to sound like worship, and once you can't hear it, you'll never confess it. Charles Haddon Spurden said, Beware of no man more than yourself. We carry our worst enemies within us. So the scariest thing is if you're living in sin and you can't even see it. You're blind to it, you're deaf to it. You can't even see it. And you're dancing around singing in it, and everybody's like, dude, can't that guy see like what he's doing? And if you can't see, that's the scariest day, right? It's like I don't want to get to a place where I can't see my own sin. It's so dangerous to be blind, to be deaf. Thomas Chalmer said, the only way to dislodge an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. And that works in both ways. It works with godliness and exchanging it for sin, another God, or it works the other way, exchanging your sin for godliness, putting in the right God. Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is more deceitful than all else, and it's definitely desperately sick. Who all who can understand it? Who can understand this thing? I remember reading long ago that the seed to every sin sits in your heart and is just waiting to be watered. You never want to look at somebody else and say, I would never do that. I would never be like them. You don't want that. Oftentimes the sins that you see most in other people is the sin that you maybe struggle with the most. The reason why is because you're closely acquainted with it, you can identify it very quickly. But you say I would never do that, but you might actually be doing that. It's just blind, deaf, can't see. We have to have these things built around us so we can understand the human tendencies, and then you can self-analyze and examine. And the best way to do that is just to go before the Lord, right? It's amazing how you go before the Lord and how everything can be seen very quickly. Listen now, the Apostle Paul reaches all the way back to this scene in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 7. He says, Do not be idolaters as some of them were, as it were written, the people sat down to eat and drink and stood up to play. Paul quotes Exodus 32, verse 11. He says, These things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction. This isn't ancient history we're looking at today, it's a mirror. It's for us. A.W. Pink defined the whole problem when he wrote this that an idol is this. Anything which displaces God in my heart, it may be something quite harmless in itself, yet if it absorbs me, if it be given the first place in my affections, it becomes an idol. Anything that can take the place of God in a heart, anything that takes the throne, we start singing its song. We can't wait to look at it and think about it. The calf was never the real problem. The calf was a symptom. The problem was a heart that wanted something more than it wanted God and had stopped hearing the difference. And that heart is not unique to Israel. We carry it right here in our hearts today, and right here in this place. And though I don't, I'm not going to believe that legacy is in that place. I believe you're in a different place. You're here. You're worshiping, and you're letting me preach at you with these gnarly words. You keep coming back. This is good. Because I think you want the truth. I think you just want to know, even if it stings like you want to be aware, and this is very important. I want to believe the best about you. That though your heart is prone to wander, like mine, deceitfully wicked, who can know it? Sick, who can know it? Who can understand this thing? That we're going to keep turning back to the Lord one day at a time. As we see things, we're just going to turn to him, we're going to call upon his name. Point number two, if you're taking notes, drink the medicine and you will be healed. A very interesting thing here in verse 20 says, then he took the calf which they had made and he burned it with fire, and he ground it to powder, and he sacred and he scattered it over the surface of the water, and he made the sons of Israel drink it. Now, this is not in my notes. I didn't see it until we stood for the reading of God's word right now. I just it just hit me. You never know when the word of God's going to show you something. It doesn't say he made Israel drink it. It says he made the sons of Israel drink it. He made the males drink it. Men, come forward. It's the wife you gave me. Get over here. Why do I have to drink it and she doesn't? You're responsible. I'm the head of the home. Is Christ the head of the church? Yes, you are. Get over your head. We're gonna talk. You're gonna drink down the idol. Never saw that. And he made the sons of Israel drink it. My wife was dancing with them! I wasn't even dancing with them! Get over here. You weren't watching your wife. You weren't watching your kids. Why'd you let them dance over there? Moses comes down to the base of the mountain and verse 19 says he saw it. Up to now he's only heard about it, but now he sees the calf, he sees the dancing, and his anger starts to burn. What does he do? He takes the two precious tablets written by the finger of God, the most valuable objects on the face of the earth at that moment, and he smashes them. He hurls them down the mountain and he shatters them at the foot of the mountain. I wonder if he he's he's he's up on like almost some cliff and like looking down, he just can't believe it, and he's like, forget this. He just throws it down. Maybe they smash off at a distance, right near the people. Is he in unjustified anger? Now watch carefully. This was no tantrum, this was a prophetic act. Moses is preaching a sermon without words. He's saying, You want to know what you've done? You have broken this. And he throws it and he breaks them. You broke the covenant, you have broken the law. You've broken the law before you even held it, before you even touched it. You've broken stones for a broken vow. Smash at the very spot where they had just. Sworn a couple chapters ago, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. The entire law broken right there. They broke the law, which which is a phrase that you see throughout the Bible. That we've broken the law. We've broken the law, we've broken the law. What a picture. James chapter 2, verse 10. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become guilty of all of the law. Broken the whole law. What a picture. They were sinning against God, and Moses breaks the whole law in front of them. We too are guilty of the whole law. We have broken the entire law of God with our sin. Moses doesn't go over with a Sharpie and draw a line through, you know, you shall have no other gods before me, or no other idols before me. He doesn't do that. He just breaks the whole law. What a sermon. And then verse 20, he doesn't just put the calf away for safekeeping. It says he burns it. So he throws it in the fire. I mean, just thinking about the process about how hot the fire has to burn to melt down this gold and burn this thing up. I don't even know. And then it says that he takes it out and he cools it off. He must have cooled it off because he says he grinds it down. It was wood and gold. He grinds it down. He burns it, he grinds it to powder. The text, the word is used powder, gold dust. And he makes them, he scatters some on the water, and then he makes them, he brings out a, I don't know, where he got it from the water. If he threw it in the nearby water, there's a pool there, or if he put a giant bowl together and sprinkled it in the water and then says, all the guys get over here. We're gonna have a talk. Everybody's drinking this down, and he makes them swallow their own idolatry. He doesn't relocate the idol, he annihilates it. He grinds it down until there's nothing left to go back to, and then he makes them drink the medicine. Now, this is a difficult task. All of you have ever tried to get children to take their medicine, you know what I'm talking about. But it is equally as difficult to get adults to drink their own sin. They will do gymnastics to get away from their sin and act like they didn't do anything. And Moses makes them drink it, and there is a deep importance to it. A picture illuminated my mind. I noticed this with my kids. I never knew this was so real, the blame game with my kids. Thinks she did it, he did it, they did it, yeah. The blame game is wild. You'll you'll see it at the park. They'll blame kids. They just play, they're so good at this. It's like they took a master class on blaming. It's like, how do you know? Who taught you how to do this? He did it, no, she did it. Even Wes, my little guy, he's only three years old, but he has a masterful way of blaming his sister and his brother. But where did they get that from? Probably their daddy. Blaming. But he didn't realize the importance until I saw it through my kids. I make them confess what they did. No excuses. No, no, you're not, no, don't blame it on your sister. No, no, don't blame it on your brother. No. You tell me what you did. What did you do? I make them drink it. And it's sad. But when they finally get to the point of true confession, oftentimes they will cry. And then I'll hug them. And I'll say, it's okay. Go say you're sorry. I'll give them a hug. I'll say, go play and have fun. Get on with it. Don't worry about it. There is an importance, the importance of drinking our own sin. Because we can go on convincing ourselves we didn't do anything that bad. And it's not until we taste of our own sin we realize how sick it makes us and everyone else around us. We realize how bitter and sour it tastes. You know, video and audio recordings are wild because we believe we look and sound different than we really do. You ever heard an audio recording of yourself? I mean, I've heard thousands of myself, and I still cringe when I hear myself talking. I don't like that guy. But it's why you see yourself in video, you think you think you look a certain way, but you see yourself in video, you're like, oh my gosh, do I really look like that? Was that really the look on my face? Do I sound like that? Oh man, when we see ourselves and hear our voice, especially when we're being mean to somebody, this taste of our own sin is shocking. I remember John Corson had taught us this at a pastor and training program retreat in Mexico 20 years ago. He said this to us. We're young guys, I'm 21, 22. He says, to the degree and specificity you confess your sin is the degree to which you will be healed of it. If you don't confess it directly, you can't be healed of it directly because you don't believe you did it. You don't actually believe you did that. You have convinced yourself of something else. And it's not until you see the video and then you say, Oh my gosh, I did that. But saying it clearly and directly does something to the conscience. You can build the other way. If you want to make excuses for the rest of your life, start building excuses now, and you'll be that person in 20 or 30 years. You'll be the excused person. Or you can build the other direction. You can say, when you do something wrong, you don't need to give an excuse. You say, I did it, I'm sorry, guilty, my fault. It's me. I take full responsibility. Don't ever blame somebody else. Especially you guys who are leaders and you guys who run businesses or you're leading your family or whatever, take responsibility. Everything is happening to the degree of which you allow. As a leader, as a business owner, as whatever it is that you're leading. It you are allowing that. The best thing you could ever do to your employees, to your family, to your church is say, it's my fault, it's my responsibility. I know this happened over here with these people, but it comes back to me. I take the responsibility. We are a society that is pushing away responsibility and it is messing up this generation. 1 John 1 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. James 5, 16, therefore, confess your sins one to another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Proverbs 28:13, whoever conceals his transgression will not prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. This is a superpower, I am telling you. You want to know why a lot of marriages they get hung up? It's because they know the other person is guilty of something, but they just won't say it straight. They just won't say, I've sinned. I'm sorry. That's it. Will you forgive me? It's that simple. Why is that so hard to say? Why is that so far from us? We'll do gymnastics trying to get away from this thing. But this is the center of the gospel. This is what God is getting after. Now, here's why this is the heart of the thing. Everything in it is it wasn't me. It's about looking away, minimizing, downplaying, refusing to stare at your own sin in the face. Moses does the opposite. He won't look away. He names it, he owns the confrontation, he deals with the calf so thoroughly there's nothing left to deny. In church, there's a way to handle sin that looks like dealing with it, but it isn't. We don't kill the idol, we just move it out of the living room, into the closet. We tell ourselves we clean the house, but it's still in there. It's in the cupboard, it's waiting for the next weak moment to crack the door. The man swears off the thing destroying him, and he keeps it within arm's reach just in case. The woman doesn't end the relationship. She just cools it for a while. That's not destroying the calf, it's babysitting. It's it's a babysat idol just in case for the future. It wasn't me waiting to happen. So here's the hard, holy word for us, church. The hard word, the holy word that we have to apply. It's simple. Just don't manage sin, you just cut it off. Grind it to powder, leave yourself nothing to return to and nothing to deny. You know, Moses was angry, but he was angry and he did not sin, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 26. Most of our anger is the other kind, the pride kind. Wounded pride over what we didn't get. So how do you tell the difference between righteous anger and sinful anger? Real righteous anger never loses control of itself. It burns hot, but it never burns past the line of obedience. Complete self-control. Burning on the inside. And that's the difference. Colossians 3.5 says, therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passions, evil, desires, greed, which amounts to idolatry. Consider them dead. And really, that is the grinding this idol, this calf to powder. Romans 8.13, if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. The great Puritan John Owen said this, and no one's ever improved on this one. This is about as good as it gets. Be killing sin, or it will be killing you. There's no neutral ground. You're either grinding the calf to powder, or the calf is going to start grinding you to powder. The man who keeps saying it wasn't mean never picks up the hammer because you can't put to death a sin you refuse to admit is yours. Drink your sin down in confession and you will be healed. It's that simple. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement. He is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Matthew 5, 29, Jesus said it. And finally, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. 21 to 24. You guys okay? Strap on the seatbelts, five part, aren't it? Get your helmet on. You're gonna be all right. You're gonna make it through, I promise. Now comes the confrontation. Uh it's almost painful to read, but Moses turns to his own brother. Remember, Aaron is his brother, blood brother. Aaron, the man he'd left in charge, and he asks the one question that matters. Verse 21 Aaron, what did this people do to you that you have brought such great sin upon them? And this is a gracious question, actually. Like Moses is trying to be nice, he's trying to be kind. Moses is sending him an opening. All Aaron has to say is the four words, brother, I have sinned. The door to forgiveness is standing wide open. And instead, Aaron gives us the all-time master class, and it wasn't me. Three moves he makes. I'll point them out to you. See if any of them sound familiar. Number one, move on. Don't get so upset, brother. Verse 22, do not let your anger of my Lord burn. Don't let the anger of my Lord burn. Suddenly Moses is a part of the problem, the one with the problem. Easily, easy now, big brother. Why are you so worked up? Let's not overreact. He turns the spotlight of his sin onto Moses' temper. We're experts at this. Why are you making such a big deal out of this? We say. Move number two, it was them, not you. It was them. You know the people, they're prone to evil, Aaron said. They said to me, they made it. So the people did it, the circumstances did it, you were gone too long, Moses. What do you expect? There's always somebody to point at, isn't there? My parents did it, my spouse did it, my boss did it, my elders did it, uh, the church did it, uh, he started it, she pushed me, uh, everybody was doing it. It wasn't me, it was them. I mean, we're masters at this. And move number three, and this one just takes your breath away. It it practically, Moses, my brother, it did it itself. I mean, this is one of my favorite funny verses in the Bible. I love the one where uh John writes down that he beat Peter to the tomb. Like that's all time, of course, their little race uh around Easter time, around resurrection. That's all right, yeah. And uh, but this one is classic. Aaron literally says he just threw the gold in and out popped a calf. Um he says, uh Yeah, yeah, so verse two through four, and he told them to bring the gold. He took it from their hands, he shaped it with a tool, he made it into a calf, he built an altar in front of them, he organized the entire worship service, and now here his version, verse 24. So they gave it to me. I threw it in the fire and out popped this calf. I don't I didn't I didn't do anything. Out came this calf. I mean, was the the fire pregnant or something? It just had a baby, like here's the calf. It just happened as if he tossed in some earrings and poof, a fully formed golden cow came strolling out of the flames. And Aaron was as shocked as anybody. Wow, a cow? This is incredible. Moses, you should have seen it. I have no idea where this came from. The people threw in their jewelry, and the next thing I knew, there's a calf, and people are bowing to it. Strangest thing I ever saw. Idols are always man-made. But Aaron's standing there trying to convince his brother this one was self-assembled. It wasn't me, it was the fire. Blaming the fire. We have a modern word for what Aaron is doing. We call it the spin. You know, mistakes were made. That is the passive voice. Mistakes were made by no one in particular. We minimize, we we leave out the incremental uh incriminating parts. We tell our side so people understand it. It wasn't as bad as it looked. And usually, let's be honest, we're only fooling ourselves. Everybody else can see the calf but ourselves. So it's always best to just you don't have to confess for what you're not guilty for. But you should confess what you're guilty for. And I know sometimes it's hard to see what we're actually guilty for as well. And so what you have to do, you have to live a little, that's the problem. Because when you're young, you literally can't see your tendencies. So somebody brings up something to you and you're like, I didn't do that. But you have to look at your patterns, your record, your history. Because you could be blind, you could be deaf and not able to see what's going on right there. Like, do I actually have that tendency? Have I done that many times in the last 20 years? Yeah, maybe they're right, and I literally can't see that I'm doing that. I used to push carts at Stater Brothers. I was a bad boy, boxing groceries. I think I'm 16, 17 years old or something like that. And I remember people telling me, like, are you okay? I'm like, Yeah, I'm fine. What's going on? Hey, you don't look like you're okay. Like, what is it? You know, is it your face, your demeanor, you feel angry or something? Are you all right? Yeah, I'm perfectly fine. I didn't know that my face was carrying this weight. And it still does to this day. I've been trying to work it out of myself forever, but I can't see myself doing it. But if somebody says, like, you kind of look like you're mad, I'm not gonna be like, no, I don't. Because those are my tendencies. Even when you fool everybody else, we have to remember we never fool God. And you can fool everyone, but what you're doing is you're building up, you're almost creating a bigger rug to be pulled out from under you. So you can keep fooling people, but there comes a time when the rug gets so big, you could have been pulled on the first one, you could have said guilty, but you've said not guilty like 30 times, and you're actually guilty of it, and God's like, All right, that's it. Now I'm gonna really let you learn your light. You're gonna see it, and everybody's gonna see it. The golden calf is gonna show up, you're gonna do something crazy, you're actually gonna say it just came out of the fire. You'll say wild things to cover yourself, and it'll be recorded in the Bible forever. So here's the application. Let's wind this down. The heart of the whole sermon. Stop explaining your sin and simply confess it. There's a world of difference. An explanation guards your reputation, a confession surrenders it, an explanation says, here's why it's not as bad as it looks. Confession says it's worse than you know, and I did it. Until you can say, I did it, no spin, no, it wasn't me. You haven't confessed. You're only negotiating. And you can't be healed. Children must learn not to blame, or they will blame the whole world but themselves for the rest of their life when they're older. We must all learn to take full responsibility for our actions. Only then can we begin to grow. And if if it's always someone else's fault, then there is no need for me to grow. I'll never see my need to grow. And I can't grow. Proverbs 28, 13, again, he who conceals his transgression will not prosper. Psalm 32, 5, though, David, I acknowledge my sin to you, and my iniquity I did not hide, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Praise God. Psalm 51, 3, Nathan came to him. You are the man, David. You did it. You killed that man, you killed that husband, you took that wife, you got her pregnant, you murdered the dude. And what did he say? I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me. Against you, and only you, God, have I sinned. He just says it straight. Luke 18, 13, beating his trust chest, the broken man said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. Zacchaeus, you remember him? Little Zacchaeus, the tax collector who worked everybody over in society. When his sin approached him in the face, you know what he said? Luke 19, 8. If I have defrauded anyone, I'll give back four times as much. If I've stolen from them, I'm giving them back four times what I took from them. It just says his sin outright. If you're in a situation, in a conflict, and you have concluded you have done nothing wrong, I'm telling you, you are blind. For I don't know if there's any conflict I have ever come in contact with with myself, where I am thinking I'm absolutely right in the whole situation, and I may be, but it doesn't mean I have done nothing wrong. That is called self-righteousness. We are blind, deaf, and dumb spiritually. We can't see, we have develop the discipline and rhythm of being able to find something in there. Then you can trust that you are always growing. If you develop the opposite, you can stunt yourself for a very long time, and that is very dangerous. You become so blind to yourself, everybody's looking at you like this dude's got a lot of work to do. And you're like, I'm the I'm the greatest guy around. Do you know me? I'm amazing. You don't want to be that person. The person who is unbelievably mature and righteous and holy in your eyes, and you see them confessing to you, I'm so sorry I was wrong. Forgive me. You're like, please, you're amazing. Stop doing that. You're making me uncomfortable. That's the direction we want. That's the humility we want. We have to, we have, we need supernatural help. I don't know if you can train this into yourself. You can try, you take steps of faith to confess and let God meet you and heal your heart. Amen. I'll close with two quotes here. I'm over on time. Philip Brooks, the only hope for any of us is in a perfectly honest claim to our own sins. I did it, I did it. Let me say of all my wickedness, it is the only honest and the only hopeful way. Augustine said, the confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works. And that's the cross now, isn't it? Jesus doesn't want us dancing around our sin. What is the one thing that he requires in the gospel is that we would come to him and be honest. This is a good and trustworthy saying, deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save who? Sinners of who I am the chief. So that's the criteria. If you can't even see yourself as sinning before God, then there is no saving involved. You can't be saved from what you don't know is sin. I'm going to pray for us that God would heal us, rejuvenate us, resurrect us in Jesus' name. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this talk. And Lord, I pray that we would be a people who would be prone to confession and honesty and even overdoing it from that, and then going the other way and acting like we have no sin and we're better than everyone else. Lord, we do not want that. Please, Lord, I pray for a supernatural work in our hearts. I pray for every heart here today. I pray for every person here today. They would call upon the Lord Jesus, they would see their sin and say, Lord, I have sinned. Save me from my sin. Lord, I need you. Save me from myself. Help me. Save me from myself. Save me from my sin. Do the work in me that only you can do. Heal me, resurrect me. I may I make you Lord and Savior over my life again. I turn to you with all of my heart. Lord, help us not to run the other direction. And I pray, Lord, that repent, therefore, that times of refreshing may come in the presence of God. That you would refresh us. We give you our lives. We do it in Jesus' name. Amen.