This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Misc. OT Sermons” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 25, 1998.

Tonight we begin by reading from Exodus 32, beginning at verse 1. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, make us a God who will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’

And Aaron said to them, “‘Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters and bring them to me.’ Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf. They said, ìThis is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.î When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, ìTomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.î So the next day they arose early and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings and the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, Go down at once, for your people, whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf and have worshipped it and have sacrificed to it and said, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Then the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then, let me alone, that my anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them, and I will make of you a great nation. beginning with verse 1.

I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses into the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were laid low in the wilderness. These things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things, as they also craved. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and stood up to play. Let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. Let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents, or grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them as an example. They were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man. And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

Spread again. Please strengthen us, O God, your people. It is not merely a matter of our weakness, but of the fact that we have no power at all except for you. Do you not then, by your Spirit and because of Christ, breathe upon your own? that they might be awakened from this death and this powerlessness.

O God, by your word now, may you minister in our souls, even as you have ministered to your people throughout the ages. We thank you for your kind attention. We thank you, O that by your word we are sustained. And here this evening, may it be as if we are sustained afresh, and with the joy of those who receive your word even for the first time, may we rejoice in you. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

There have been, over the years, many messages from this pentate about the importance of And there have been just as many messages from this pulpit over the years about the nature, the character of worship. To say the least, worship is important to this Church. Not just that you do it. but how you do it.

Some of you will recall, for instance, a few years back, the marvelous message preached by G.I. Williamson from this pulpit. He preached on John 4, and Jesus’ memorable words to the woman at the well concerning that worship which now the Father desires, worship in spirit and in truth. And how, in the course of that message, Mr. Williamson admonished us with regard to the nature of worship which is ours, that ours is a spiritual worship. and that it focuses upon those things that are invisible. And at the heart of this worship, then, is activity on our behalf that does not call attention to itself, but rather directs attention to God and glories in him, the one who is invisible, the one who communes with us, through His Word and Spirit. You note the simple surroundings. I trust that there is nothing here to distract you. That in your faith, and by means of the concentration of your soul, you may focus well upon him who is not seen.

You might also remember from this past summer the remarkable sermon from an intern, Sanjay Patel, a sermon on the Ten Lepers. in which Sanjay sat before us as the center of that text, Where Shall We Worship?, and focused that for us by asking us the question, to what priest might these lepers go to show themselves after they were healed by Jesus?

The resolution of a being, of course, in the figure of the Samaritan Leper, who returned to Jesus, prostrating himself before Jesus and thanking him. What priest might we go to? The one to whom the Samaritan Leper came, giving thanks. Jesus Christ is the one who stands at the center of our worship, even as he is the center of that story. My own messages from this pulpit have dealt with worship.

Some have risen out of the messages on the book of Revelation, early on in the series on that book, in order to explain For instance, the indictment upon the Ephesian church, that famous indictment found in chapter 2 in Revelation verse 4, the indictment that read that she, the Ephesian congregation, had left her first love. How are we to understand that indictment? Is the indictment, as some have suggested, that the Ephesian church had lost its evangelistic zeal? Not at all. The indictment upon that church was that her worship had been corrupted.

We also preached on worship, you will recall, in our message. about the heavenly character of worship presently for the Church as that worship is opened up for us in the images of the marchers standing upon the Crystal Sea in Revelation 15. The song of Moses and the song of the Lamb is not some future song to be sung on the other side of Jesus’ return, it is a song that is presently sung by the people of God. as their worship now is envisioned as heavenly and glorious. We have at one time considered the issue of proper worship against the background of the story of the Transfiguration, when Peter made his famous proposal concerning the three tabernacles to be built, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Christ. ignorantly moving the focus for worship into the realm of the shrines. Peter, as you will recall, in that context, was rebuked for his suggestion. Unfortunately, however, those who claim Peter as their spiritual head, who claim Peter as their original holy father, have ignored this very rebuke. and they have created a form of worship that abounds in shrines, in fact multiplies them. Ironic, isn’t it? Peter receives the rebuke, and the religion that especially claims Peter as its holy father multiplies shrines in deference to the rebuke.

More recently, we have preached to the subject of worship from John chapter 20 and its story about the first Christian Sabbath, the story of Christ’s resurrection. And we have preached on worship from that text in order to ground the historic Christian practice of morning and evening worship in Scripture. As Jesus met Mary raised from the dead in the morning, so the Church of Christ gathers in the morning. And as Jesus met with the disciples in the upper room on the evening of that day, so the Church of Christ gathers in the evening. to worship the risen Lord. You begin the day, you end the day, with worship of the risen Christ.

Now, through all of these messages on worship, You might get the idea that worship is important to this congregation. To all these messages on worship, I now add this evening’s message, with the suggestion that none may be as important or as serious.

Before us is the story of the golden calf. You know the story, and the response to me as you hear it once more may be nothing too difficult here. You may even suggest that I would serve you well if I merely retold you the story, made appropriate references to the Second Commandment, challenged you not to make any golden calves for yourselves and sent you home. Simple enough. You may be happy if I would do that.

But the tendency among reformed people They being the kind of people that are especially moved by appeals to the grammatical, historical method of biblical interpretation, is to set this story in its immediate context. While banking for application on the absolute, always binding character of the moral law, the Ten Commandments, the story’s relevance, then, is found in the fact that the law forbids making idols, therefore you shouldn’t make idols. With a few appropriate illustrations about present-day idol-making, how the tendency may be found within your own heart, we can then end the sermon, and as I said, I can send you on your way. But you’re thinking, that doesn’t sound much different from what you said before. How is the Reformed faith and the Reformed approach any better?

We don’t seem to be making any progress here. But as is true for the relevance pandering messages from the modern pulpit, Reformed and otherwise, They simply fail to grasp the genuine relevance of a passage like this one, Exodus 32. Isn’t it interesting? Those who claim Peter ignore the rebuke that Peter received. Those who claim relevance are irrelevant when it comes to the true significance of the text. You see, if you look closely at Exodus 32 again, particularly verse 1, the true relevance of this text begins to open up for you.

Let me read that verse one more time. Now, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, they assembled about Aaron and said to him, Come, make us a God who will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. Now, I’m hoping, as that is read for you one more time, that in hearing this verse again, You catch something of its redemptive historical significance, something of its redemptive historical setting. If it is still a bit opaque for you, let me work it out for you. Moses, the mediator of the covenant at Sinai, and the one by whom the Lord was pleased to deliver Israel from Egypt, has gone up into the mountain to be with God, and is now hidden from you.”

The people don’t see him. Sound familiar? Meanwhile, the people at the base of the mountain had become impatient with Moses’ absence, and in their impatience they had turned to Aaron, their priest, the ordained man among them, and demanded a god more to their liking. In this, my friends, you would do well to see the figure of the Lord Jesus Christ looming behind the figure of Moses.

The mediator of the old covenant anticipates the mediator of the new covenant, the one who affects the greater exodus and leads his people out of a greater tyranny. But now, having become his people’s deliverer from sin and death, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, like Moses, has disappeared from you. This he has done by ascending into heaven in his resurrection body. Moses ascends Mount Sinai, Jesus ascends into the heavenly Mount Zion. And just as the children of Israel awaited Moses’ return, so the Church awaits Jesus’ return.

There it is. It was all being preached in Exodus 32. The whole of it was being preached in Exodus 32. It was being telegraphed. You’re with me now, I hope. You know where we are going then with this text, do you not? And its importance and seriousness with regard to the whole matter of worship is beginning to settle in upon your conscience. And oh, how the Church today needs its conscience pricked. when it comes to worship.

When the Israelites complain, then, as for this man Moses, we do not know what has become of him. They are forecasting the complaint rising from the Church with regard to Christ’s return. where is the promise of his coming? It is in this context that many in the Church have appealed to their ordained leaders. In the context of having raised this question, where is the promise of his coming, in that Many in the Church have appealed to their ordained leaders, like Israel appealed to Aaron. These ordained leaders being all too ready to accommodate the people’s desires through a proclamation of proper worship, that proper worship that belongs to the world. You are getting a preview of what is coming for the Church. You are getting a preview in Exodus 32 of the life of the Church presently, of where the Church is today. Talk about relevance. The point is clear.

The apostasy of Israel at Sinai speaks to us about the Church herself as she waits for Christ to return from Zion. She, too, apostatizing by worshiping a God, even a Christ of her own making. And just as Israel in the midst of her sacraments here constructed and her festivals, surrounded herself with religious revelries, the Church presently does the same. What do you think is going on right now in the crisis in the Church over worship? We are not here dealing with innocent matters. We are dealing with the effects of apostasy and the creation of gods. after the people’s own likings.

Here in Exodus 32, Israel’s worship now is as much marked by the conclusion of the sixth verse in this chapter as it is by the beginning. In the first part of that verse, the sacraments to which Israel’s desire for a God of her expresses itself now by the conclusion of this sixth verse in a form of worship that is anything but the reverent devotion the Lord expects and desires.

And the people, says the text, sat down to eat and drink and they rose up to play. This is not extraneous to the worship in view, this is the worship in view. The worship has become play. In some churches, they put on plays. Worship has become entertainment. It has become a pandering to the people’s desires. It has become stimulating. It has become erotic. And most of you know that that’s true.

This is then no innocent description of the people’s activities. But now as you look at the scene, possibly in somewhat a detached fashion, drawing back from it a bit, you might well respond, well, what’s so wrong, noting that sixth verse again, what’s so wrong with a meal? They sat down to eat and drink. What’s so wrong with a meal? What’s so wrong about rising up to celebrate? Isn’t celebration part of our worship? In fact, isn’t that what worship is all about?

Later in this chapter, the celebration of The Israelites is described by Moses as singing, verse 18. As the narrative goes on in verse 19, it is described as dancing. Didn’t Miriam and the women of Israel at the Red Sea sing and dance with Timber and Anne, Exodus 15, 20 and 21, and later on in the days of the monarchy? Didn’t the Psalms commend not only singing, of course, but dancing as well? Psalm 149-3, Psalm 150 verse 4, “‘And did not David dance before the Lord when the ark of the covenant was brought from the house of Obed-Edom into Jerusalem?’

2 Samuel 6.14.

Doesn’t our own worship, especially our staid and predictable worship, that which is found In our run-of-the-mill Orthodox Presbyterian churches suffer from a lack of enthusiasm, zeal, and spontaneity. Don’t we need a new day here? Maybe you need a new worship leader. Wouldn’t we fare better if we moved away from our tired, boring style of worship and presented something much more interesting? In fact, doesn’t our own regulative principle of worship demand that we do so?

For those of you who might have forgotten, that regulative principle states that whatsoever is not commanded by God in the Scripture for our worship is forbidden. Well, it would seem from the examples of Miriam and David and the injunctions of Psalms 149 and 150, the kind of celebration and worship we forbid is actually the kind of worship that is commanded.

However, it is specifically now Exodus 32 that stops us in our tracks and makes us step back. It is marvelously positioned and intended. For we can’t simply leap now. as we are wont to do. We can’t simply leap now to our celebratory scenes in scripture as if our mere repetition of the activities described is immediately and always correct. Exodus 32 gives us pause, and it does so especially because of its redemptive historical setting, the redemptive historical setting of Israel’s apostasy, an apostasy which has as its center, before the mediators return, the falsification of worship.

Does that bother you? Does that concern you? The falsification of worship? No, it doesn’t bother me. just go to whatever meeting happens to be scheduled, and I jump in with all my energy, and I’m just moving with the Lord, and the Spirit directs me as He will, and I just let loose. You are wrong.

What our Church in this day is faced with monumentally is the falsification of worship. And what is threatening us is the uncritical involvement by so many in a false form a misguided form of worship. The redemptive historical setting of Israel’s apostasy, then an apostasy which has as its center, before the mediators return, the falsification of worship. We ourselves now, talking about relevance, drawn into the text in keeping with the divine intention. We are set in a context in which the mediator, by whom God’s people have been saved, has been taken away out of sight with the promise of his return.

And in that context, the people of God, weary of the weight, and in the interest of their own gospel of relevance, enlist the clergy in creating for themselves a God more suited to their needs and a worship more to their liking. And that clergy, like Aaron previously, presents to the people a God as if that God were God. Now, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before the calf. and Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow we shall have a feast to the Lord. They are worshiping a golden calf, and Aaron says, We will have a feast to the Lord. He is calling what is happening, worship and celebration, for the sake of any light of the Lord himself, where sacraments and festivities worship itself supposedly directed to the true God. As I said earlier, the advocates of the gospel of relevance miss the story’s true relevance. That relevance places them

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.