In this sermon, the preacher begins by explaining that he initially didn't plan to use a microphone but decided to do so. He then provides a brief history of the text from Exodus, where Aaron falls for a trick and leads the people to produce a golden calf. The preacher reflects on the challenges of being a leader and the importance of not letting sin steal glory from God. The sermon emphasizes the need to destroy and get rid of sinful things in order to free ourselves and give glory to God.

A very familiar story, a very familiar passage of Scripture. And I'm going to use this Scripture just as an explanation. I'm not going to try to preach long. I wasn't even going to put the mic on. I'll stand at the pulpit. But then I got to thinking about things and decided I'd just better go ahead and put the mic on. You can't ever tell which way the Lord might go with this thing. But let me give you a little history of the text of Scripture here. Then we're going to read a few verses. And then we'll go into some thoughts about what we're going to do tonight. We just want to make clear the purpose and the plan for what we're doing tonight so there's no confusion. And we don't want to be involved in any misunderstanding at all of what we're doing. And so we're going to use this text of Scripture to help us. In Exodus chapter number 32, the people of God are in the valley of Rephidim. And Moses has gone up on the mountain to spend time with the Lord. He's been gone for quite some time at this point. And the people of God, the children of Israel, God's chosen people there in the valley, begin to murmur and complain that Moses has been gone so long that we don't know where he's at or what's happened to him. In a sense, they come to Aaron and they say, for all we know, he could be dead. He's been gone so long. He's up there. There's smoke, clouds, lightning, thunder. And for all we know, God killed him and we don't know what happened to him. And so lead us. Well, like some weak leaders, weak, I should say, weak children, Aaron fell for the trick. And he was approachable and he found out real quick that he could all of a sudden become the senior pastor of the large congregation. And so he felt led to jump right in and lead the people. So he did. And he leads the people to produce a golden calf. They all give their offerings. And that's always hard on the preacher when there's an offering involved. And so just being honest, y'all can say amen if you want to. Since I am the one that said it, amen. And so here Moses is on the mountain getting the Word of God. And they're down in the valley and they're building what we know as the golden calf. And they begin to worship and to celebrate. Moses coming off the mountain and hears the noise of this stuff going on in the valley where they're meeting. Joshua's with him and Joshua looks at him and says, It sounds like war. Sounds like the cries of war. Sounds like something going on down in the valley. And Moses looks at Joshua and says, That's the sound of dancing and music. They're having a party. Now I could get into that a long time if I wanted to, since we're going to deal with that tonight in this trash that we're going to deal with. But I guess maybe the Holy Ghost cleared it up for you already, didn't he? And so there's the sound, there's the noise of much shouting and crying and partying going on down there beneath the mountain. I wonder if we could pick up reading in verse number 20 and I want to show you what Moses' responsibility is and try to illustrate what our responsibility is tonight. Verse number 20, And he, that is Moses, he took the calf which they had made, and burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strut it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink it. Now we're not going to go that far, but I just wanted to clear it up real quick that we're going for the first part of that verse. We're not going to make you drink the ashes, amen. And although I'm so mad at sin today, I got so mad at sin today. Brother Miller, you wouldn't believe this, but I was sitting at El Sotillo's and I had sauce and chips and sauce and chips and I got so mad I just threw the chip down and said, I just don't even want to eat it. Now, you've got to be pretty mad at sin to be passing up some sauce and chips. And I just got so furious. My wife said, yeah, you look like you're having a great time. I said, I just want to take the table. Sin's just, the more I pray, the more we go into this meeting, and the more I pray, the madder I get at sin. The madder I get at the devil. I just want to yank his left ear off, you know. I'm trying to contain myself and not expose that to others. It's not me against you, but ooh, if he'd rear his head up, I'd just beat him with his pulpit, you know. That's just how angry I've gotten. And then after last night's message, the Lord has dealt with me so much that I'm watching and I'm looking at how close sin passes by my children all the time and how close it comes to them and how they're exposed to it, and I'm getting more and more furious. And so I came into service a little while ago and I just bowed down and I said, thank you, because you're giving me such a disgust in my gut for sin. And I hope that all of you are getting that way. After service last night and looking at how sin affected the children, I've just got madder and madder. And I probably have lost my smile over the whole thing, just the thought of sin has just made me disgusted. And so Moses here, he's upset. He's dealt with God's upset. Remember, God said he was going to kill the whole crowd. I thought that might have been a good idea. Someone once said, go with your first thought, because if you second-guess yourself, you probably... And God said, Moses, get off the mountain. I've got to go kill a bunch of people. I'm thinking he was probably right up at the beginning, just go ahead and kill the whole crowd. And then I got to thinking about us. He'd probably be right, and I would say he'd be just right. Just kill all of us. Start up a new crop. But Moses prayed for them and interceded on their behalf and prayed, and then Moses comes down to deal with sin. And when he comes to verse number 20, he takes the calf. Remember, the calf, they have made this calf and then gave it honor and they gave it praise. It became an influence in their life, and then it caused them to party in a way that displeased God and to express their praise that they should have been giving God to this calf that was made by hand. And they actually went far enough to say, this calf that we've made, that we have right here, is what led us out of Egypt. Now you may be saying, well, my sin's not that bad. I don't know which dollar store you bought your measuring stick at, but God's not real happy with any of our sin on any level. And the sins, the things that have been placed up here in this altar that are going to the burn pile in a little while and the stuff that you've kept at home that you haven't brought yet are things that have caused our praise and our attention to be diverted from the God who deserves them. And our problem is right up there next to the children of Israel, and God ought to just push us off the mountain, go down to the valley and kill all of us. But God in His mercy gives Moses the opportunity to go straighten the problems out down here in the valley. So in verse number 20, he takes the calf, and this is our direction for what we're doing. Don't leave the calf. Do you realize the calf was made of gold and was valuable and could have very easily been molded back into something for praise, honor and glory, or molded into something and distributed back to the people for coins or whatever? In fact, what I'm saying is it was of value. But without being too descriptive and so that you understand what I'm saying, Moses deals with it in a way until it becomes a dung heap. Do you understand that without me having to illustrate it any further? They digested it and that's what it becomes. This thing of value. So they destroy it and they get rid of it. That's the point. Verse number 20 is our theme for tonight. We're taking it to the fire and we're going to burn it. So it cannot come up again. And so we'll all remember the investment in our sin and how we had to get rid of that thing and get that stuff away from us in order to free us from that thing which stole glory from our God. If you'll remember back to Thursday's message, that was the big problem God had with David and his sins as his sins stole glory away from God. It caused an open door for God's glory to be damaged. And so does all this. And so I don't know how you look at it, but any sin exposed, seen with the eyes, handled with the hands, looked upon, becomes a testimony of our wickedness. I know we have secret sins, but some of this stuff up here is not a secret. We're doing this in the open. And so it needs to be destroyed and got away from us. Amen? Else it's going to not only contaminate us, but it's going to contaminate others and innocent people around us are going to be hurt. And our children are going to be influenced and they're going to be hurt. And so God help us. We're going to burn it and destroy it. There'll be nothing left of it after tonight. The Lord's help. And that's our purpose and plan. Then He goes a step further than just burning and destroying the idol. He calls for separation. And I want you to know something. Before I read the verses, I want you to know something. This is not us getting right. We get rid of the junk and then we get right. Because you need to understand the way it works with God. He ain't hearing us yet because we still got the junk. But after we get rid of this, then we need to get broken. Then we need to come to tears and cry. Then we need to pour ourselves out before God in the altar. Then we need to fall upon our knees and express ourselves and make our decisions for God. You say, well, I've got it all right. It's all on the altar. It's still right here. It's still within visibility. And until it's gone, God ain't even listening to us. So we're just in the process of confessing and making things right. So verse number 26, after the thing was burnt, after he'd ground it up, throw it in the water, caused the people to drink it, digest it, then he says, Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, Who's on the Lord's side? Now, this comes a time of separation. When I was growing up in school days, me and Dr. Hudson, Dr. Hudson now, then we were just boys. We were just growing up. We were always in some kind of trouble. And we had this thing. You've all heard it before, but we're the ones that coined the phrase. This is where we separate the men from the boys. I don't know how many football games we had to play or how many basketball games we had to play or how many times we had to go round and round out beside the oak tree in order to prove ourselves, but we always had this saying. And we were so much trouble. Now, we were good Christian boys, but we were in so much trouble all the time that we had adopted ourselves a title from the Scriptures because we wanted to be good Christian boys. So they called us the Sons of Thunder. And some of y'all read the Bible a little bit, you know about that. And so they called us the Sons of Thunder. And so here we'd go out. It'd be amazing. We'd go out. We never went out to a fight with our heads down looking down. We always started swelling on our way. We looked like John Wayne. Y'all know how John Wayne walked? John Wayne walked like this. So y'all ain't paying a bit of attention. And so here we're going out to fight. One of us looked over to the other. Time to separate the men from the boys. Here we go into war. And well, the Lord forgave us of all those things. And that's good, and even brought them all up. But there comes a time of separation. And this ain't just separating men from boys. There's plenty of people who trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior and sat daily and defiled His name and joked about it, laughed about it, and carried on about it, and it never means anything. But there's only a few people that ever get to go to a high, holy place with God. Only a few people. Those people have to be separated. This is where we separate from those who are just interested in a part-time religion and those who are interested in a full-life relationship. You see, all twelve disciples walked with the Lord, but only three went on to the mountain of transfiguration and saw the Lord in His perfect glory. All the disciples went to the garden to pray. All the disciples went to the garden to pray. Eleven disciples. One was gone to betray. Eleven disciples went to the garden to pray, but only three went with Him a little bit further. You see, and God wants to be with us. God wants to fellowship with us, but there are only a few that will ever get to walk in that place. And according to Psalm 24, it's He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. And so, Moses cries out and said, Time to separate. Joshua, you know, followed Moses in leadership. After Moses' death, Joshua became the one who led them into the land of promise. And did you know that Joshua also one day had to stand up in front of the same people, the same nation at least, different generation, but the same nation, and cry out again, Choose you this day whom you will serve. This choice seems to come up all the way through life and all through every generation. And it just so happens, without us planning on it, that it has come down to that now for us in this generation, in this church, and at this time. It's time for us to make a choice where we're going to stand. Moses said, Choose. Show me who's on the Lord's side. You're on the Lord's side. Come stand with me. They separated. Can you imagine that in that separation that people literally would not identify themselves as being on the Lord's side? And you'll be thankful to know we're not going as far as Moses did again, but Moses turned around to the Levites and said, Get your swords and kill all those people. We're passive now, you know. I mean, we can all come to church together. There can be like half a dozen of us that just really want to see God. And there can be another half a dozen that are just really contrary. Fight against everything that ever tries to be right. Just stir up problems and ornery and just go against God in everything. No matter what's preached, just do the opposite and fight the truth and go against what's right and go home and commit sin on top of sin and think nobody's business. And all the while, they're keeping us from the glory of God. And we're so passive that we just join up together and we don't want to hurt nobody's feelings. Moses said, We can't go on like this. You get on the Lord's side or you're out. And out, my friend, was not taking your church letter to a different church. Out was a graveyard. And Lord, help us. I hope it never has to come to that, but let's let God be the judge of that. You know, we say, Well, can't we all just get along? You ever heard that? Can't we all just get along? Not if we plan to walk with the Lord. It's time to choose and pick a side where you're going to stand. Let me show you the last verse. I'm done with this. When I say this, verse number 29, Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord. This is after the sin is dealt with. After the separation of those who were going to follow God and those who weren't. Then it was time for them to sanctify themselves unto the Lord and dedicate themselves to the Lord. Now here's what I believe. I believe that once we deal with sin and we're not done yet, there's still much more to be done. There are people who still have things they need to deal with. You don't need to deal with them for me. You don't need to deal with them for the pastor. You don't need to deal with them for the church body. But you need to deal with them because of your relationship with God. And when you do that, when we get to the place where we have thoroughly dealt with these things that have risen up in our lives and we have thoroughly got rid of them and burned them out of our lives for good and we have separated ourselves unto God, I believe at that point God is going to start calling. And God's going to start picking people for ministry. And a whole new door of ministry is going to open up for our church in a way we have not seen yet. You say, well, I can remember when God did that before. No, no, no. You don't know. We haven't ever been there yet. But you watch. Watch and see if God don't separate people unto Himself. And people who consecrate themselves to the Lord, watch and see if God don't thrust them into ministry and use them in a mighty, mighty way. That could be you. Now that's all the message. I just want to give you these verses. We're going to take care of these things tonight for the sake of those people who are trying to come near the Lord. These things need to be taken to the fire and they're going to be burned. So they can't return to anyone's home and they cannot defile anybody else. But you know, the shelves of the stores are full of this stuff. You all can go get you some new stuff if you want to. But I hope that this is the night when you separate yourself from these things and choose where you're going to stand with the Lord or not. And I hope you choose the Lord and choose the Lord's side. So let me give you some instruction about where we're going. We're going out to the fire. The guys are out there right now and they're prepping the fire to get it ready to burn. We've got some wood.