In Bed with Another God

Israel’s worship of the golden calf reveals the disposition of every human heart

Exodus 20:18–20 says that after God spoke the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, the people were terrified and said they could not bear to hear more. So Moses climbed the mountain again to meet further with the Lord.

The first thing God said to Moses again concerned idolatry: “You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold” (Exo. 20:22–24, ESV). Just in case someone had missed the point, God repeated what was most important to him.

Worship took center stage in what followed. After God elaborated on the Ten Commandments (Exo. 21–23), he called Israel’s elders to worship him in a covenant-making meal (24:1). After that, Moses again ascended the mountain for his famous 40-day meeting with the Lord, which focused on God’s instructions for Israel’s worship, which involved detailed plans to create a tabernacle and to consecrate a priesthood qualified to mediate for the people (Exo. 25–31). Worship was the pure consummation of marriage between God and Israel.

Wasting no time in finding an idol

Meanwhile at the foot of Mount Sinai, Israel was making eyes at another god. Impatient with Moses, the leaders beckoned Aaron, “Come, make us gods who will go before us” (Exo. 32:1), and he complied. From their jewelry he molded a golden calf. Aroused, the leaders proclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” They offered sacrifices to the calf and celebrated an idolatrous festival.

God’s betrothed people were in bed with another god. Their betrayal could not be more appalling. This was Israel’s defining moment, and it was a disaster. They had bombed the test of exclusive worship.

This story reveals how quickly the fallen human heart turns to other gods. The Golden Calf is not just a sad story of Israel’s gross idolatry; it is the story of you and me and every human’s readiness to move God from his rightful place in one’s heart and replace him with some other ultimate devotion: work, money, romance, sex, family, friends, homeland, hobbies, sports, power, comfort, politics, the stock market, gambling, pornography—any created thing. God is rightly jealous that we should love him more than any such thing.

Jesus commanded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” (Matthew 22:37–38)

April 30, 2018April 14, 2018

Why Jesus Always Takes Center Stage

Growing as a Christian

Knowing God and growing as a Christian always means delighting in Jesus above any created thing.

Why Jesus never becomes secondary

The apostle Paul had an impressive resume and pedigree. He talks about it in Philippians 3:4–6. But he does so only to say how little these things now mean to him. Something far better has taken over Paul’s life. He writes:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7–11)

In your pursuit of knowing God, Jesus Christ is not only essential to beginning your knowledge of God, he is supremely important for your ongoing growth in that knowledge. We don’t start with Jesus and then move on past him to other things.

In the verses above, Paul speaks of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Paul says knowing Jesus is so valuable that he is worth surrendering any other valuable thing in life for. Knowing Jesus is better than anything. And that is so because when we know Jesus we know the Father.

Here is the contrast between our way and God’s way:

Our way: Jesus becomes one of many things we value, but not the chief thing. Jesus is wonderful, but not everything to us. Jesus is important, but not worth sacrificing for. Our life-goals still take center stage, while Jesus is a supporting actor. We acknowledge Jesus as Lord, but our thoughts, time, money, goals, and desires center on other things.

God’s way: In the heart of every believer, Jesus becomes far more valuable than any created thing.

The change in heart that God requires for us to walk in his way is far more important for knowing God and his ways than any theological facts we can know about God. We can read 100 books about God and his ways, but if Jesus does not become our surpassing delight, then we will not know God as well as the illiterate one who loves Jesus more than any created thing.

Knowing God truly is more a matter of the heart than the mind, and therefore it is not about accumulating more knowledge about the Bible. It is about reordering our hearts around Jesus Christ. (This is not anti-mind, because we can’t do heart without mind.)

It is the Father’s will that we know him through Jesus, through loving Jesus supremely.

What supreme devotion looks like

This means that meditating worshipfully on the words and deeds of Jesus in the four Gospels is a crucial part of knowing God and his ways.

It means that means that meditating worshipfully on how the New Testament epistles explain, interpret, and apply the life of Jesus to us is crucial to knowing God and his ways.

This means it is crucial that we monitor the desires and affections of our hearts to be sure no created rivals arise to challenge our central focus on Jesus.

It means we monitor our ways to see that we love people as Jesus did.

You cannot exhaust the riches of Jesus Christ. You cannot know Jesus more without knowing God and his ways better. Jesus teaches us how to know and love the Father, and to rely completely on the Holy Spirit in all things.

Pause in prayer right now and center your life on Jesus Christ.

February 5, 2018February 3, 2018

After God’s Heart

God’s heart is important for those who want to experience his presence. God has heart. If we are to practice God’s presence, he must have our hearts.

God said, “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.” (Acts 13:22)

What does it mean that David was after God’s heart?

It means David pleased him and thereby inspired his affection. The direction of David’s heart pleased God’s heart. David was directed toward God in love, trust, and obedience.

Examples

Here are some of the things David wrote that demonstrate this:

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (Psalm 84:1–2)

“I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” (Psalm 18:1–2)

“O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You” (Psalm 63:1)

“I trust in You, O LORD, I say, ‘You are my God.’” (Psalm 31:14)

“Bless the LORD, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name.” (Psalm 103:1)

David came as close to obeying the great commandment as anyone ever has: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5)

As a result, he moved God’s heart.

God’s heart

That God would speak in this way reveals something ultra-important about him. He has heart. He feels. God has affections. He is love. He cares what we do and think and say and seek and love.

This explains why he describes himself as a jealous God (see Exo. 20:5), because he wants our love and responds to our love or lack of it.

He delights in those who love, trust, and obey him.

Our obedience

Obedience is crucial to being a person after God’s heart. Immediately following God’s statement of affection for David, he added the explanation: David “will do all my will.”

That was not incidental because the situation that prompted God to commend David was King Saul’s disobedience. God had told Saul what to do and how to do it, and Saul had violated the commandment. He had not been careful to obey.

The prophet Samuel rebuked him, “Now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.” (1 Samuel 13:14)

Our hearts

Those who successfully practice God’s presence understand the central importance of the heart. They understand God’s heart. They understand God wants their heart. It’s all about the heart.

So to practice God’s presence is to monitor our hearts. Whom do we love supremely? Trust and obey supremely? Desire supremely? Delight in supremely? To whom do we ascribe ultimate value and surrender what we most value? For whom do we live?

All this rests on a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, for no one can please God apart from his beloved Son (John 14:6; 1 John 2:23). The most important and necessary way we walk after God’s heart is to believe and love his Son, of whom the Father spoke the ultimate words of affection: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).