Look within, be in service and of service, help people see God, and put your heart into worship of God.

VS.

Look at the world, expect services and thank yous, set your heart on expectations from people, and have preconceived expectations from God. 

There’s a BIG difference between those statements. What is better of an attitude? What will bring you closer to peace? Peace is a place best known between you and the Lord. Peace is a quiet spot to hash out the harshness and cultivate hope.

What can we do to not fall into people pleasing?  Even if we love people, which I do, people pleasing can be false peace, leave us unsatisfied, and leave us seeing the flipflop nature of earthly hearts. Even if we love people, and we do help them as servants for the sake of God, some people unknowingly (or knowingly) want a piece of us not knowing what to grab for. Wouldn’t it be better to offer them a slice of His Peace? It would and in doing so we can keep focused. 

People in Moses’s time wandered and continually forgot both the fear of God and the focus on God. They certainly could not see long term. False worship of idols happened then and now. Moses went up the mountain for the instructions of God. Aaron was left with people derailed by their impatience. Aaron made a golden calf from the riches of gold,  because they wanted to follow something but a false idol was not and is not infallible or indestructible. An idol is not a LIVING God.

Moses, being able to talk to God one on One, convinced God to hold off burning up His Anger in destroying the disobedient people (Moses had not yet seen them with the calf idol). It ANGERED God to not have His people’s attention. And once Moses saw it, and saw the people’s misdirection of focus, he burned it, made it into dust, and even forced the people to eat it.

Moses continued His devotion and his communication with the Lord for the sake of His people, His infallible people. Burning anger of God is but a fraction of the burning love God had for them and for us. Old testament worshipers burnt up repentant offerings, symbolizing  the perfect offering to come. After Christ was sacrificed once and for all, no more sacrifice for sake of atonement was required.  But the devotion to the Lord always continues as requirement and the source of peace. 

Now, the burning becomes burning desire to know Him better. Moses’s face was radiant from speaking with the Lord. He covered the radiance with a veil to protect the people. We too can burn bright for the Lord. As we extend our lives into work, wait and worship, we best not wobble or waiver. Let us approach the Lord as our Guide and Protector, not wondering if we got away with whatever.

Our sacrifice of time and excesses are coupled with our sacrifice of pleasing people – don’t please people over pleasing the Lord. He must be where we direct our attention first, He has the best Ways planned out. The Israelite people only got day to day instructions, day to day provisions, and had to watch for God’s cloud and fire to move. They dared not step unless God sanctioned it. We have much freedom of choice, yet we also best step where God needs us to go.
Go with God. Be His first and the rest will follow.

Amen 

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The Glory of the Lord

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.  Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels. Exodus 40:34-38

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The story of the golden calf:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2032&version=NIV
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.” Moses replied: “It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.” When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?”

“Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold.  But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.” And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.