Title: The Golden Calf
Reference: Exodus 32:1-35
Speaker: Ben Beasley, BenB@cckc.church

Crisis #1-Confidence

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~ Wendell Berry

Crisis #2-Control

An idol is something that we look to for things that only God can give. ~ Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

An idolatrous attachment can lead you to break any promise, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance, in order to hold onto it. It may drive you to violate all good and proper boundaries. To practice idolatry is to be a slave. ~ Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. ~ Justice Anthony Kennedy

Our challenge: In an age that tells us to seize control of everything about our lives, can we embrace the freedom of God actually being in control?

Crisis #3-Compassion

Our challenge: are we able to take up both the compassion of God and the holiness of God?

My Hope is Built on Nothing Less

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath his covenant his blood
Support me in the whelming flood
When all around my soul gives way
He then is all my hope and stay

~ Edward Mote