Exodus 32:1-14, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14

What do we do when there are delays and we don’t know what is going on? Do we remain calm, immersed in prayer and preparation? Or, do we panic?

In our Exodus reading, we pick up the journey of the Israelites at a point where Moses is on the mountain conversing with God. However, at this point he has been gone for forty days, the Israelites do not know what is going on or why he has not yet returned and they are, most certainly, panicking.

To them it has been a very very long time since Moses was last with them; but God’s time is not as our time and to Moses it seemed a relatively short time when compared to the out working of God’s plan for Israel. A delay ordained by God.

How we deal with, or handle, God’s ordained delays – times allocated for waiting and preparation – like Lent or Advent – is a good measure of our spiritual maturity. We should make good use of these times to deepen our perseverance in following God, to pray and study God’s Word, to ready ourselves for whatever will come next.

However, if we allow such delays to be used for drifting into sin, or lapsing into resignation to fate, then we are reacting poorly to those times – like the people of Israel did here. This episode of sin described in this passage started at the impulse of popular opinion. An example of where the will of the people is not always the will of God.

Not knowing what was happening with Moses, the people allowed their uncertainty to take over and turned to idolatry and sin instead of trusting God.

Aaron is just as guilty as the rest of the people. He asked them for their gold and they were generous in what they gave.

In general, people tend to be more generous in what they give to idols but we should be being more generous with what we give to God.

Aaron melted the gold, moulded it and fashioned it carefully with an engraving tool. This work was not led by the Holy Spirit but instead was inspired by sin and yet Aaron took the time to plan it out and carefully detail what he made.

Instead of refusing to go along with what he knew to be wrong, Aaron went along with the people and with popular opinion instead of standing firm for what is right.

Aaron and the people then put their energy, time, sleep, money in service to this idol. People usually find a way to rise early/give to things that are really important to them; but what should be really important to them (and us) is the Lord God.

God told Moses what the people were doing and was a tad upset. God offers to destroy all the people and still keep His promises by rebuilding the nation from Moses. He tells Moses to let Him alone so He could do this.

This implies that if Moses did nothing this plan would go ahead but Moses refused to do nothing. Just as when we see wrongs we should refuse to do nothing. Moses pleaded with the Lord in a short prayer. Prayer does not have to be long – it is the strength of the prayer that matters, not how long it is.

Moses was full of compassion for the people but also concerned with the honour of God. Just as what we do should bring honour to God.

Moses prayed: ‘Lord these people belong to you not me. We didn’t deserve to be freed from Egypt but you saved us by grace, continue to deal with us in your grace. If you kill the people the Egyptians will say you are a cruel God who only saved the Israelites to kill them – don’t let anybody say that about you. Lord you keep your promises and are always faithful, don’t break your promises.’

Now, the wording translation in our reading is “so the Lord changed His mind.”

This is a good place to pause and point out that Moses wrote in anthropomorphic or “man-centred” language. He described the actions of God as they appeared to him.

Moses’s prayer did not change God, but it did change the standing of the people in God’s sight – the people were now in a place of mercy, where previously they were in a place of judgement.

God did not destroy Israel and He knew He would not destroy Israel. He deliberately put Moses into this crucial place of intercession so that Moses’s heart could become like God’s heart for the people, a heart of love and compassion.

Moses prayed just as God wanted him to – as if heaven and earth, salvation and destruction depended upon his prayer.

This is how God wants us to pray.

He also wants us to live a life of prayer, which brings us to Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

The segment that forms our reading this morning starts with Paul addressing a disagreement between Euodia and Syntyche. Paul urges them to settle their differences or agree to differ and to remember their common ground in the Lord. He also advises the rest of the church to help them resolve this matter instead of taking sides and causing a rift.

Paul then moves on: “Rejoice in the Lord. Again, I will say rejoice!”

Joy in the Lord is a cure for all discord.

Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Have patience, forbearance, magnanimity, moderation to all men, not just to whom we please.

Live with the awareness that Jesus will return, that He will settle all wrongs and we can trust Him to make things right in our falling apart world.

Live a life of prayer.

Everything is the subject of prayer – there are no areas of our lives that are of no concern to God. Both prayer and supplication are required. Prayer means all our communications with God whereas supplication is directly asking God to do something.

Many of our prayers go unanswered because we do not ask God for anything. God invites us to make our requests known to Him. He wants us to ask with thanksgiving.

Pray about everything. Ask God our requests. Be thankful for anything we receive.

Paul goes on to say that the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds for us. God’s peace is a gift and is beyond our power of thinking. Peace with God is the relationship we enter into with God through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Finally, Paul tells us to meditate on what is:

• true
• noble
• just
• pure
• lovely
• of good report
• virtue
• praiseworthy

This is a way to bring our thoughts and minds back to the obedience of Christ. Follow Jesus’s example and set that example.

Can we say of our lives “Follow me as I follow Jesus”?

If we do not follow Jesus we are rejecting Him. In the reading from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the Wedding Feast to explain to the religious leaders and listening crowds the dangers of rejecting Him.

Those who had been invited were not willing to come to the Royal Wedding. It seems strange that all those invited refused and this illustrates that there is no logical reason for God’s good gifts to be refused.

The king made the invitation as attractive as possible. He really wanted these people to come and he sent more messengers to them, yet they still refused. Not only did they refuse but they laughed and killed the messengers. The king proclaimed judgement, sending an army to destroy these murderers. A prophesy of what would happen to Jerusalem where the religious leaders strongly, and repeatedly. rejected Jesus.

The king sent his servants to go out and invite everyone they came across. Everyone was to be invited.

This is both like God’s grace and like His invitation to both the Jews and the Gentiles.

Those invited and those who came to the wedding feast were undeserving of the invitation, much less the wedding feast itself.

We are undeserving of God’s grace, yet He freely and indiscriminately gives it to us.

The king came to see the guests just as we will all come before God in judgement. And there was a man there without a wedding garment. He was noticeably different from the other guests.

This man came only because he was invited but came only in appearance. The wedding banquet was to honour the king’s son but this man did not intend honour or respect. He came to eat the good things on offer but in his heart there was no love for the king (God) or his well-beloved son (Jesus).

This man has made too free with holy things and actively insulted the king. The result: this man suffered a terrible fate.

Those indifferent to the gospel and those antagonistic against the gospel and those unchanged by the gospel suffer the same fate – none of these will enjoy the king’s feast.

For many are called but few are chosen.

In this context , this statement of Jesus touches on the great working together of the choices of man and the choosing of God.

Why did they not come to the wedding feast? Because they refused the invitation. Why did they not come to the wedding feast? Because they were called but not chosen.

Do you accept the invitation? Will you be one of the chosen? Do you accept or reject Jesus? Will you come and follow Him if He but calls your name?