Sermon Notes: Exodus 33:1-11 - Rupture and Repair

God’s saving of a people for himself is relational. God made us not because he needed relationship. He exists in relationship with himself as Father, Son, and Spirit.  

God created all things as an overflow of loving relationship, and he created us in his image. Because we are image-bearers and serve as his representatives on earth to function as his presence, we are relational, and we are not what we are fully supposed to be without repaired relationship with God.  

The curse of sin ruptured mankind’s relationship with God, and there is no way we can repair it on our own. The only way to repair relationship with God is for God himself to repair us based on the laws he created for relationships.  

God the Father provides that repair at his own cost in the incarnation, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Creator Son of God, Jesus. And God testifies to this work of the good news from the opening pages of the Bible until it is finally and fully accomplished in the work of Jesus recorded for us in the New Testament. 

We have been studying the multi-faceted ways God has testified to the work of Jesus in Exodus.  

Today, we are getting a glimpse of how relationship with God works in his good news work to save us for that relationship. 

God is so good. He never ruptures relationship. He only repairs, and God repairs based on how he designed relationships to work.  

We rupture relationship constantly. We rupture relationship with God and each other almost by the hour. The truth is we are always repairing in one way or another. If you are not actively repairing rupture you caused ever you might be a narcissist.  

Now, when we repent/believe this good news of Jesus, God works the great substitution which is the gold standard of relational repair. He substitutes Jesus’ perfection for our sin. He counts to Jesus’ account all our guilt past, present, and future because only he can absorb that level of evil, and he counts to us the righteousness of Jesus forever. We can’t earn that. We only receive it by faith.  

Romans 10:9-11 (ESV) 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 

If you are in Christ, you have been justified. And you are now in a repaired relationship with God. The problem is that we keep on violating God’s law and have a taste for the downstream sins of law breaking, and when we do that, we grieve God. We rupture our relationship with him. 

Ephesians 4:30-32 (ESV) 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. 

So, when we who are justified grieve God, do we lose relationship with him? No.  

We don’t lose relationship. We rupture the relationship.  

How do we repair the relationship we ruptured? Repentance.  

Repentance/belief is how we enter salvation.  

Ongoing repentance through confession is how we repair our ongoing grieving of God.  

Ongoing repentance/confession is not the same as that first repentance/belief. The first repentance is how we enter salvation. The ongoing repentance/confession is relationship maintenance and growth.  

When we practice 1 John 1:9, we are not getting saved again. We are repairing the rupture we caused by acknowledging our sin and receiving the good favor of Jesus’ work on the cross for us to keep us.  

Hebrews is clear that if we don’t live like this, we’ve never actually entered relationship with God through repentance/faith. If we are satisfied with our grieving of God and enjoy trampling over the cross of Jesus, we are not followers of Jesus and are in danger of forever judgment if we don’t enter God’s rest by repentance/faith.  

We get a glimpse into the relationship of salvation as we watch Israel’s idolatry, God’s grieved response to Israel’s intentional rupture, God’s response and restoration, and the ongoing relationship.  

How will Israel work all this out? What will God do? Well, we have to keep reading Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to see what happens.  

Today, our text focuses on this relationship.  

Exodus 33:1-ll. 

What do we need to see? 

Israel’s idolatry grieves God and ruptures the relationship with God. V. 1-3  

God is not capricious. God is relational. God, by his relational nature, responds to relational rupture. God is pleased and grieved, and he is the standard of good pleasure and appropriate grief.  

Ephesians 4:30 (ESV) 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 

Notice the distance Israel’s sin puts between them and God.   God tells them he is going to send “an angel” and no longer “my angel” (Exodus 23:23; 32:34) that he has been mobilizing on their behalf. God is no longer mobilizing the same being for their benefit.  

Now, most Old Testament scholarship, and indeed we have taught, the Father’s “Angel” he has been sending is most likely the eternal pre-incarnate Creators Son of God Jesus. Not that Jesus is an “angel” in the manner of others, but he takes the form of other angels he created and comes to his people.  

NOTE: “Angel” is not ontological, the nature of these beings. “Angel” is function. Angel means “messenger”. So, these beings we encounter in the Bible are not in their being “messenger”. You’ll see them in various ways different from messenger. So, don’t let the noun “angel” let you think less of the Father’s all-powerful Son of God Creator who takes on the form of a “messenger” sometimes. Don’t miss the magnitude of him no longer going with them. Father not sending THE Messenger and only sending a messenger is a massive loss for Israel.  

Israel’s idolatry has ruptured the relationship and grieved the Father to the point that he’s going to send them on up, but he is no longer going with them in the Son of God “angel”. Creator Jesus is no longer going to fight for them. 

They want a little godling, then fine, they can have that godling, and all the distance they want from Jesus. Sometimes the Father allows people to have what they want. 

Isaiah 59:1-2 (ESV) 1 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 

God loves his people so much that he will let them have what they choose, and they want Apis and Baal, then they can have them and all the downstream fruit that comes with that choice.  

What’s wild is that the Lord sends them on to the land, but Israel has lost their relational connection and powerful escort to get the mission done.  

Notice the discipline Israel has brought on themselves and the mercy imbedded in the discipline.  God tells them he will not go with them because if he did, he would consume them. God disciplines by not going up with them.  

In this discipline, how kind of God! It’s hard to imagine the consequences of choosing another god being awful and merciful at the same time.  

Their sin has separated them from the Lord, and that separation is saving them from being vaporized in this moment.  

So, Israel has grieved God and ruptured the relationship, yet the Lord is being kind and compassionate to allow room for Israel to confess and repent to repair the relationship.  

Ongoing repentance belonging to faith is internal distress matched by external change. V. 4-6  

When someone who really loves God through faith in Jesus ruptures the relationship with God, they are internally distressed and that distress moves them to repair what they ruptured.  

Israel mourns, and in their mourning, they chose to leave off their ornaments.  

The word for ornaments is translated two ways. One is translated as we have here, “ornaments”. The only other translation option is “trappings”. A trapping is a bit used in a horses’ mouth.  

So, these ornaments may not be merely trinkets hanging of their clothes and may be more related to jewelry connected to something worn or attached to their face in some way that is also connected to Apis and Baal.  

In Genesis 35:2-4 Jacob goes to Bethel to renew the covenant, and in this covenant renewal he has his family get rid of their idols and jewelry (everything from earrings to other piercings to you name it), and he hid that jewelry under a tree. Why? 

The jewelry was connected to their idols in some way, and as they approach the Lord they should not be participating in rupturing the relationship with the Lord.  

NOTE: This action of Jacob is what Paul has in mind in 1 Corinthians 11 when we approach the covenant renewal ceremony of the Lord’ Supper. We make sure we approach in repentance/confession so we don’t eat and drink judgment on ourselves.  

Israel voluntarily not putting their “ornaments” or “trappings” on indicates they are very much aware that their jewelry is connected to their idolatry, and those ornaments have been like a bit in a horses’ mouth to turn them away from the Lord. They know what that stuff is about, and they are keenly aware they need to put it off.  

The truth is, when we violate relationship with God, if we have a relationship with God, we know. A Holy Spirit informed mind/conscience is quite forceful.  

Notice what God does next. God gets explicit for those who may not have voluntarily left their ornaments off and tells them to take the dadgum trappings off.  

Verse 6 tells us the people then “stripped” themselves of the ornaments. That word “stripped” is a very intentional response to a command. It is active. It is on purpose.  

They actively took that stuff off. Israel responds to the Lord’s word, and in their felt grief, they act by reversing their course of action.  

The rupture Israel has made has been addressed by God, and the people are grieved appropriately, and they respond by ridding themselves of the trappings of their revelry.  

I believe we are safe here to extrapolate something here.  

Israel’s idolatry manifested itself with the golden calf, and that golden calf had it’s hooks in Israel with personal trappings of some sort. In this instance, it was their jewelry that acted as a bit to turn their actions toward the godlings of Apis and Baal. That doesn’t mean jewelry is innately connected to idols who are manifestations of other gods. It just means that the forces of darkness are much more nefarious and subtle than a little statue on the mantle. In this instance, their jewelry were the hooks that kept them tethered to a golden calf that allowed these godlings to take up residence.  

What would the Lord do in response to Israel’s mourning and stripping themselves of their ornaments? We don’t get to see that today. We’ll have to wait until next week to see God’s response to their repentance.  

What does Moses show us in the text before he shows us God’s response?  

Moses models repaired relationship with God by faith. V. 7-11  

Moses, in his Holy Spirit inspired words he was penning, chooses to show us a glimpse of his intimate connection with the Lord and the people’s current distance from that intimate connection. 

Moses would pitch a tent, called the tent of meeting, and this is not the tabernacle. Moses has a special place designed to meet with Moses.  

When Moses went out to the tent, the Lord would enter and meet with Moses and evidence his presence with the cloud of his presence that led them out of Egypt.  

Moses met face to face with the Father as his friend. Joshua is witnessing this and lingering in it as the next up. Joshua is hungry for the Lord’s presence. He lingers.  

Notice the people. They go and observe at their tent entrances as Moses enters the tent and when the Lord’s presence becomes evident to them, they offer worship to the Lord. At a distance, they are longing for the Lord in spite of their sin.  

What is God doing here? 

What is available to Moses is available to Israel and all who will come to him in faith. How much more when one comes to the full-blown version of what Moses is modeling available through faith in Jesus and his downloaded presence in the person of Holy Spirit? 

God is showing Israel what they can have if they stay in the boundaries of his relational connection to them and don’t violate the relationship with incursions of the boundaries of his holiness and thus his good for themselves.  

Presence. Relationship. Fellowship. Face to face friendship. Lingering in the good of closeness of God. A liturgy of worship.  

All of this is available to Israel, and they have tossed it in the trash for godlings.  

What are we going to do with this? 

Application 

1. Have you repented/believed and received the Holy Spirit, been baptized into the fellowship of the saints in the church of God through covenant membership with a local church?   

If you have not believed, believe today. Today is the day of salvation.  

If you are attending and not a member of this church, get in the membership class, go through, covenant with us, and be part of God’s plan.  

There is a supernatural covering to being in covenant with others in the faith. My friends from other traditions call it “covering”. There is supernatural covering to being in covenant with others on mission under God’s designed means of elder oversight.  

There is exposure to things you don’t want when we don’t get into the good boundaries of God’s laws.  

Believe. Be baptized. Be in covenant with the local church.  

2. Have you ruptured relationship with God by breaking the law of God and the downstream violations in a host of sins? Have you repented? Have you confessed to God? Have you confessed to a trusted brother or sister?   

James 5:16 (ESV) 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 

If you believe God is silent toward you, maybe you need to test yourself to see if you are walking in the faith.  

Are you into things that are violating your Holy Spirit fueled conscience? Repent then. Confess. Live in fellowship with the Spirit not grieving him.  

Pursue holiness in faithful and truthful obedience to God’s word.  

3. Have you opened yourself up to principalities and powers and godlings in the heavenly places with their willy crafted hooks?   

The Christian influenced western world is waking up from the slumber of the enlightenment, and much of the church in the west is foolishly still asleep in our naturalism.  

We are still trying to disprove Darwin and lost to the reality that the followers of forces of evil in the heavenly places didn’t go anywhere, they just operated in the shadows. Now, their wares are being sought out because we’ve figured out our naturalistic ways and theologies are empty, and as Christians we’ve offered zero spiritual answers. These wares are now overtly marketed and becoming more mainstream for how we can manage our hurts and dysregulation.  

4. Are you in Christ and certain of your salvation and its security but hungry for a robust friendship with God where you hear him and you know he hears you?  Jump into the disciplines of the faith.  

God gave us foundational practices for life with God, and when we don’t do the basics for life with God, we can’t be surprised when there is no life.  

Scripture reading and study.   

Prayer.   

Fasting.   

Silence.   

Fellowship.   

Appropriate solitude.   

Confession.   

Repentance.   

Accountability.  

5. Pray: Peace/Unity/Joy/Love/Mission/Increase us/Holiness/Send