The turkey has been eaten, and if you’re lucky, there still are a few leftovers remaining in the fridge. In this season of Thanksgiving, this long weekend of looking around and then looking upward, we find ourselves in a good land.

Some would call such an assertion debatable, citing the recession, high unemployment, rising prices for essentials like food and fuel, and political gridlock as their evidence. And these problems do exist, causing suffering.

We still live in a good land, however. If for no other reason, it is good because it remains a place where we can freely remember and worship God. (I also think there are many other reasons it remains a good land. Despite the current gloom and doom, I’m an optimist, and I’m mindful that we’ve faced much worse as a nation.)

To me, the parallels between our situation and the situation the Israelites were in as they prepared to enter the Promised Land are striking. The book of Deuteronomy largely is Moses reminding the people of their history and their relationship with God, preparing them for Moses’ imminent death and their first steps into a long-anticipated future.

“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper,” Moses told them, his words recorded in the eighth chapter. “You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.”

With a few modifications to the types of crops and some additions to the minerals, this could suffice as a description of North America.

There also is a warning: “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God,” Moses said. After reminding them once again of all the perils God had brought them through, Moses added, “Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ “

I would not go so far as to describe the United States as some kind of new Promised Land. Our nation was not designed to relate to God through a direct covenant. It is, however, structured so that individuals can enter into any kind of covenant with God, assembling with those of like mind without fear of persecution. That freedom has allowed Christianity in all its variations to thrive here.

Yes, the stock market gyrates; yes, gas is well over $3 a gallon. But even if the market crashes and gas is rationed, this land remains a great blessing to its inhabitants and the world as long as our principles of freedom remain. Less stuff does not diminish our connection to God.

The lesson from today’s text is simple, and as relevant to us as it was to those desert people longing for a little variety in their diets and a constant water supply. Remember God—remember the one you follow, the one you have declared to be above all creation. Worshiping God in good times and bad is our primary task.

These words in Deuteronomy also are words of hope, something we celebrate on this first Sunday of Advent. God had begun a relationship that ultimately led the people to look for a messiah, one who would make that relationship with God full and complete. Christians gather to worship because we call Jesus the Christ, another word for messiah. He died on the cross to make that full relationship possible. He first experienced the resurrection, giving us a sign of what is to come.

Many of you find yourselves enormously blessed, with plenty of food, good shelter, and lots of love in your lives. Take care that in your comfort, you do not forget the Lord your God.

Some of you find yourselves struggling, perhaps concerned about your next paycheck or feeling isolated. Take care that in your worries, you do not forget the Lord your God.

Wherever we are in our lives now, we worship a God who has done great things for us and is moving us toward something greater. All God asks is that we love him back, and in the process learn to love each other better.

Exodus 32:1-14

Last week, I talked about how God reintroduced himself to the Israelites as he gave them the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. It was a big, awe-inspiring introduction, shaking these people to the core.

Indeed, they expressed great fear of God to their leader, Moses, asking Moses to stand as mediator between them and the mighty God they had seen. They found God to be too much.

In Exodus 32, the story of these people and their reaction to God resumes. At this point, Moses had been on the fire- and smoke-shrouded mountain nearly 40 days, and the Israelites had given up on seeing their leader again.

Their solution, unfortunately, was to return to their former understanding of gods, little “g” gods, gods visibly before them in metal, wood or stone.

“Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us,” they told Aaron, Moses’ brother and the high priest. “As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Aaron fashioned a calf idol from their gold jewelry, while at the same time trying to maintain some control of the unfolding disaster. After building an altar before the calf, he proclaimed, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord,” using language contradicting the people’s declared need for “gods.”

Big “G” God was not impressed by Aaron’s nuanced language or the revelry that followed. Ultimately, only Moses’ pleas before God saved the Israelites from annihilation.

The Israelites’ sin, a violation of the second commandment, was rooted in their earlier demonstrated inability to accept the magnitude of the eternal God they were called to worship. By making an idol, they sought to capture in some sort of manageable form the power that had led them out of Egypt.

The story seems ancient and disconnected from us, with its talk of “gods” as people dance around a golden idol in the middle of a desert. But the sin of trying to reduce God, to capture and keep God in a manageable and comfortable form, is prevalent today.

The most obvious example I see is when we attempt to make God like us. We define him through a human lens, thinking that what we feel must be what God feels and what we desire must be what God desires.

I also see us committing this sin when we try to force God into a particular human ideology, claiming God resides in a particular political party or movement. This can result in serious perversions of the revelation of God in the Bible. Remember, the Nazis had “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us) stamped on their belt buckles as they committed some of the great atrocities of the 20th century.

I have yet to find a political party that fully represents God’s will for a nation. God’s will still is best revealed through the study of the Bible, and Christians should fully understand how God is revealed there before aligning themselves with the platforms of political groups.

There also is that easy-to-commit sin of trying to put God in a box, in particular, a storage box, where he can be taken out when needed. Self-reliant people like this strategy: “I’ll take care of myself and turn to God if it seems I suddenly cannot.”

When we try to reduce God in such ways, we resist God’s efforts to grow us into the beings he would have us be. When we make God small, there seems to be no need for change.

Christians must constantly keep in mind that there is more to God than what we can see even in Jesus, God among us in flesh. To make himself more understandable, God did voluntarily limit himself in some ways to take on human flesh. (Matthew 24:36 is one of the better examples of this principle.)

But this choice did not actually shrink God’s eternal nature. It just made the eternal nature approachable.

Had the Israelites waited patiently and sought to grow into the mystery before them, those last couple of days at Mount Sinai might not have ended in so much violence and disease, the punishments that fell on the people. I cannot even guess at the glory they might have continued to experience.

With a much greater revelation before us—the revelation of the loving, sacrificial Christ—I pray we can continue to grow in our understanding of God and our imitation of what we see.

Sermon Shorts

Sunday Summaries and Other Stuff from Cassidy UMC's Pastor

Tag Archives: Moses

By Whose Hand?

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

Capturing God

Exodus 32:1-14

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Deuteronomy 8:7-18

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Exodus 32:1-14

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