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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh

Playtime is Over

I want you to turn with me to the book of Exodus, the 32nd chapter.

Exodus 32 and verse 1, I'll read in your hearing.

The scripture says, And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him, up make us gods which shall go before us.

As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we want not what has become of him.

And Aaron said unto them, break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

And all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears and brought them unto Aaron and he received them at their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool after he had made it a molten calf and they said these be thy gods O Israel which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made proclamation and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.

Verse 6 says, and they rose up early on the morrow and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

A message this morning is entitled, Playtime is Over.

Father God, we thank you Lord for this opportunity to study your word and to extract from scripture precious truths and warnings.

Oh Father God this morning let me not be seen or heard but Father God fill this place with your Holy Spirit.

The message that is heard be a message from the throne room of God.

Father God even in these last and terrible days your children would stand without fear proclaiming the 3 angels messages and Lord ready for their coming King.

This is our prayer in Jesus's name, Amen.

The children of Israel were having an interesting journey from Egypt to the promised land.

The scripture lets us know that they had actually reached as close as 11 days journey to the promised land.

Yet they traveled in the wilderness for 40 years.

There were many times when it seemed as if they would be ready to go across but God in his infinite wisdom saw that the children of Israel were had failed him on many accounts and it only took for opportunity to present itself for the children of Israel to make a real mess of the situation.

In this particular story God has just given them in chapter 31, at the end of chapter 31, God has just given the children of Israel a very stern command on the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath, warning them that working on this day would cause them to could cause them to be put to death and telling them that this was his holy day that he had sanctified it the Sabbath should be an eternal covenant between he and them I believe that the Sabbath is given in in terms of time I believe a day was given as a memorial of creation rather than a tree perhaps or or a certain animal type because God knew that if he had done this people would have worshipped the object but time being intangible and invisible couldn't you couldn't make an altar to it and so he used time as this memorial and he knew that man would always want tangible evidence.

Man would always want something that his 5 senses could manage or could evaluate, something that you could touch, feel, smell, taste, or see so that you had evidence in your own mind that God was with you.

So the scripture tells us that Moses goes up and the last verse of the 31st chapter tells us that he went up and got stone tablets and that God himself was going to write the 10 Commandments in the stone with his own finger.

Always amazes me when people tell me the 10 Commandments have been done away with because God only writes in the Scripture 3 times.

This is the first time that God writes, is when he writes the 10 Commandments, and he writes the 10 Commandments with his own finger in something as permanent as stone.

The second time the Bible talks about divine writing is in the book of Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar's grandson is having a big feast and out of nowhere a hand appears and writes on the wall meenie meenie teekle ee farsum you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting he writes based on the law that he wrote with his own finger.

The third time in the scriptures that God divinely writes is when Jesus bows in the book of John to write the sins of the Pharisees who brought the woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, Jesus being God.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God don't let the Jehovah Witnesses fool you he wrote that thing or in the sand with his own finger being God so God writes that you know that we can see clearly 3 times in Scripture but I'm always pleased that when he writes sin he writes it in sand.

So he can just take his foot and wipe the sand and your sins will be forgotten forever.

But here again God is about to write, he's about to do something, he's about to hand down to Israel a powerful monument of his law and of his love because his law is a law of love and and as God begins to look to do this the children of Israel become restless, they are impatient.

Moses disappears for 40 days and 40 nights into the mountainside dealing with God, wrestling with God on this issue, and in that time the children of Israel become so frustrated that they decide Moses is the 1 who brought them out of Egypt since he's not here we will create for ourselves another God ah see they had it wrong in the beginning they said that Moses brought them out of Egypt I want to let you know that that's the problem with the church sometimes.

You know, we we put a little too much emphasis on people.

Sometimes we think that it's the evangelist that wins souls to Christ.

Sometimes we think it's the singer or the musician that allows the stage to be set for the Spirit to come into a room, but I think we ought to always remember that just as it was the mighty hand of God working through 10 plagues that finally convinced hard-hearted Pharaoh to let the children of Israel go, that even in the current times men don't convert other men to Christianity.

Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit and when you give man those dubious distinctions of being able to convert other men, you you give them an honor that really only belongs to God.

And then you begin to put men on pedestals.

And there was a saying that I learned in social studies in junior high school where I think it was Machiavelli said that power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And so when men begin to think somehow that they have a special place with God, that they are necessary for God's work to be done, sometimes it can wind up going to your head a little bit.

And you start to act like somehow and stretch yourself for stuff like, if not for me God's work won't go forward.

And I think we forget that the scripture says that if we don't preach the gospel, the very rocks themselves will cry out.

There are those, you know, I've been in church all my life and you get these board meetings, maybe not at your churches, I don't know.

But folk get mad when they don't get the office they wanted a position they wanted a title they want and storm out of church thinking that it because they aren't involved in church somehow the whole gospel is gonna come to a close the children of Israel were wrong Moses didn't bring them out of Egypt.

And based on that misconception, they then set up a very serious offense against God.

And in verse 2 he says, and Aaron said unto them, break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives and of your sons and of your daughters and bring them unto me.

The earrings were worn by the children of Israel with great pride.

The earrings were the reminder that they once belonged in slavery and different earrings I would imagine, different earrings had different symbols and different meanings which tied them back to different families that might have owned them in Egypt.

And so they wore these as a sign, as a perpetual sign of their connection back to their past life.

As a matter of fact, Ellen White tells us that Aaron made this command.

He asked for their earrings because Aaron believed that they would never turn over their earrings.

He figured he could squash the whole crazy idea of making an idol by asking them for something as precious to them as the earrings that tied them back to their old lives.

He was wrong because the part of their old life was idolatry.

The calf was a symbol of fertility and protection and they wanted that again.

But I want to submit to you that even as Christians in this modern time there are some of us who are still wearing earrings.

And I don't mean physical earrings, I mean we are wearing the earrings that tie us back to our old lives.

Somehow we're in the church, but we wanna keep a trap door open somewhere that keeps us doing what we used to do, that keeps us living the life we used to live.

We leave phone numbers in our cell phones that have no business there.

Oh, let me just, should I get real for a minute?

Young ladies, you've got men that you got in their phone number in your cell phone, and you know that man has no good intentions for you.

We've got men who even though they've got a knowledge of Jesus Christ, now somehow they still have trap doors back into the old life where they're still trying to hang with a crowd that now that they're in Christ Jesus, they can't run with that crowd like they used to.

I want to submit to you that the way to get rid of the Aaron's is to destroy them, not to take them and convert your old life into a new life of sin.

And this golden calf that was set up, Aaron did it.

And Ellen White warns us, she says that the reason Aaron did this is because Aaron was seeking popularity.

He wanted to be accepted by the children of Israel.

He did not want to be rejected when Moses was gone and so Aaron set up for them a false God idol in the middle of Israel.

Ellen White warns us that in the last days there will still be pliant errands who will do what they do so that the people are pleased rather than God being pleased.

I want to tell you that in love and in long-suffering as Christians in these last days we still have a responsibility to stand up and say, no, this is not what God would have us to do.

That's not easy Because people begin to call us names like prudish and they call us old-fashioned overly conservative they'll call you a Fanatic even at times and I'm not for fanaticism but I want to tell you that there are times and you've got to simply say no this is not what God has for his people.

And somebody's got to sometimes stand up and that might mean you have to stand up and be moved from where you are.

You you might actually have to be rejected but but I'm here to tell you that even Jesus was rejected.

Those who are leaders are owe an extra bit of responsibility.

They are more responsible for what happens because when you stand before God's people and preach or lead out, you are then elevated to higher standard.

So you can't allow the people's standards to become your standards.

You've got to remember God's standards and and I'm telling you, you will see inside of our denomination as time goes on, there will be those who will continually try to attack basic standards.

There will be errands who will happily begin to to turn over stuff and and try and lower the standard so that people will be accepted.

This is the way of modern Christianity in general I would like you to know.

Churches are now formed with the idea that the church must be seeker sensitive and now churches are going around and polling the community and asking the communities what is your favorite style of secular music.

So that even at Saddleback Church down in Orange County, 1 week 1 of the members told me that for closing hymn they played the old funk song from the 1970s, Car Wash.

Sounds crazy, but I'm warning you that if we are not careful, like Aaron, you will bend.

And what we see, what we confuse in the church sometimes is, we confuse the number of people in church with success.

The scripture never tells you that big numbers are a sign of success.

As a matter of fact, the scriptures warn you that when the crowd is going in a certain direction, if you follow the crowd, you're probably going the wrong way.

Wide is the gate, the scripture says, and many there be that travel on the road that leads to destruction, but straight is the way and narrow is the gate, narrow is the way, and few there be that travel on the road that leads to eternal life.

A popularity contest in church is foolishness.

We are not in a time when we can afford for Aaron's to come in among the children of God and to lower the standard so that our numbers are increased.

Listen, with God I'd rather have just 1 or 2 than to have multiple millions and be with the enemy.

Aaron in verse 3, and all the people break off the golden earrings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron, and he received them at their hand and fashioned with it a graving tool after he had made it a molten calf they said these be thy gods Oh Israel which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt they then transferred the the blasphemy that they placed on calling Moses the 1 who brought them out of Egypt and transferred it on to a false God.

I don't know if this, I mean you've got to really stop for a second.

These are people who saw the Red Sea come to a halt so they could walk across on dry land.

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Playtime is Over

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