Day 1 (Monday)
Exodus 32:1-35
Last time we read excerpts from the several chapters describing what Moses saw and heard during the 40 days and nights he was up on Mt. Sinai, with instructions for how the people were to worship God, reflecting the worship of God in heaven, and pointing toward many things that we see fulfilled now in the New Covenant. Today we will see what the people of Israel were doing while Moses was on the mountain, and what happened when Moses came down again.
The Golden Calf
32 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” 6 They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
7 The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”
11 But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” 14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
15 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and on the back. 16 The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. 17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18 But he said,
“It is not the sound made by victors,
or the sound made by losers;
it is the sound of revelers that I hear.”
19 As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. 20 He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.
21 Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” 22 And Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn hot; you know the people, that they are bent on evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”
25 When Moses saw that the people were running wild (for Aaron had let them run wild, to the derision of their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. 27 He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.’” 28 The sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand of the people fell on that day. 29 Moses said, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day.”
30 On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, if you will only forgive their sin—but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written.” 33 But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. 34 But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; see, my angel shall go in front of you. Nevertheless, when the day comes for punishment, I will punish them for their sin.”
35 Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf—the one that Aaron made.
Discussion questions:
1) What did you notice in today’s reading? What surprised you or what was memorable to you? (Things to note are that here we see the consequences of the people being scared of God and asking that Moses be the go-between for them and for God. They don’t want to come close to God themselves, so when Moses doesn’t come back, they decide they need a statue, an idol, to interact with God and try to control Him. They would have learned this custom in Egypt; it was the normal way to worship pagan gods. What also must be noted is the strong undertone of God’s intent to make Israel a priestly nation, which we saw in chapter 19 in week 21. The people of Israel had agreed to this covenant, and that agreement had been sealed in blood before Moses went up the mountain. This is why the Levites who offer themselves to serve as God’s instruments of judgment are told that they have ordained themselves; they have remained faithful to God and His purpose, and have brought the consequence of bloodshed upon those who betrayed their covenant with God. Now THEY are a tribe of priests, while the rest of the people have abandoned that calling and betrayed their promise to God.)
2) What do we learn about God in this story? (God is serious when He tells us that we must live differently from those around us if we are to be His people).
3) What do we learn about human beings in this story? (It is difficult to find a clearer example of human failure and sin than this story.)
4) What do you find difficult about this story? Is there anything confusing about it, or anything that you dislike? (This is an open question, as always. It is difficult to understand how the children of Israel could sin so horribly after seeing what they have seen. It is also difficult to see what it looks like when people reject God’s mercy again and again. It’s something of a challenge, too, how God changes His mind about destroying the people completely, but this can be seen as an example of the power of intercessory prayer.)
5) Does this story make you think that you need to change anything in your life? (We have a horrible habit as human beings of thinking that we can fool God, or get away with not following His commandments, because He seems far away. This story is a vivid reminder that God is not actually far away at all.)
Day 2 (Wednesday)
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom on Our Absence from God
These last few weeks we have been reading excerpts from Metropolitan Anthony Bloom’s “Beginning to Pray.” This time we will see him talk about how we have to be really present ourselves, and how we can’t be truly present if we are not really committed to following God.
There are other ways too in which God is ‘absent.’ As long as we ourselves are real, as long as we are truly ourselves, God can be present and can do something with us. But the moment we try to be what we are not, there is nothing left to say or have; we become a fictitious personality, an unreal presence, and this unreal presence cannot be approached by God.
In order to be able to pray, we must be within the situation which is defined as the kingdom of God. We must recognize that He is God, that He is King, we must surrender to Him. We must at least be concerned with His will, even if we are not yet capable of fulfilling it. But if we are not, if we treat God like the rich young man who could not follow Christ because he was too rich, then how can we meet Him?
So often what we would like to have through prayer, through the deep relationship with God which we long for, is simply another period of happiness; we are not prepared to sell all that we have in order to buy the pearl of great price. Then how should we get this pearl of great price? Is that what we expect to get? Is it not the same as in human relationships: when a man or a woman experiences love for another, other people no longer matter in the same way. To put it in a short formula from the ancient world, ‘When a man has a bride, he is no longer surrounded by men and women, but by people.’
Isn’t that what could, what should happen with regard to all our riches when we turn to God? Surely they should become pale and grey, just a general background against which the only figure that matters would appear in intense relief? We would like just one touch of heavenly blue in the general picture of our life, in which there are so many dark sides. God is prepared to be outside it, He is prepared to take it up completely as a cross, but He is not prepared to be simply part of our life.
So when we think of the absence of God, is it not worth while to ask ourselves whom we blame for it? We always blame God, we always accuse Him, either straight to His face or in front of people, of being absent, of never being there when He is needed, never answering when He is addressed. At times we are more ‘pious’ (very much in inverted commas), and we say piously ‘God is testing my patience, my faith, my humility.’ We find all sorts of ways of turning God’s judgment on us into a new way of praising ourselves. We are so patient that we can put up even with God!
Beginning to Pray – pg. 30-31
Discussion Questions
1) What did you notice in today’s reading? What surprised you or what was memorable to you? (Leader should point out how the relationship with God can’t be approached half-heartedly. )
2) What do we learn about God in this reading? (We learn that He cannot just be “an important part of our life.”)
3) What do we learn about human beings in this reading? (We see that we struggle to recognize that God is Lord and King, and that we must submit to Him completely. We prefer to present Him with a “fictitious personality” that we somehow think He will like better than our genuine selves, because this allows us to keep our “genuine selves” under our own control.).
4) What do you find difficult about this reading? Is there anything confusing about it, or anything that you dislike? (This is an open question, as always. This passage is deeply challenging to anyone who takes it seriously.).
5) Does this reading make you think that you need to change anything in your life? (Urging the necessity of wholesale change is the entire point of this reading).
Day 3 (Friday)
Luke 10:1-24
Last time we saw Jesus talking to the Twelve Disciples after the Transfiguration, and correcting some mistaken ideas they had about how they were better than everyone else. This time, we will see Him expand the program of preaching, and send out not twelve, but seventy others to preach.
The Mission of the Seventy
10 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.
Woes to Unrepentant Cities
13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But at the judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades.
16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
The Return of the Seventy
17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Jesus Rejoices
21 At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
23 Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”
Discussion Questions
1) What did you notice in today’s reading? What surprised you or what was memorable to you? (Leader should point out how the instructions Jesus gives the seventy are similar to those He gave the twelve, but there seems to be more detail. Also, we can see Jesus starting to warn those who refuse to listen to Him at this point, indicating that there is a limited period of time in which they will be able to repent. He also warns the disciples not to rejoice or take pride in the authority He has given to them, but only to rejoice that their names are written in heaven.)
2) What do we learn about God in this story? (We learn that even in the New Testament, there is still a reality of judgment, just as we see in the Old Testament. We also see Jesus pray to His Father, with a revelation of the Holy Trinity to His disciples that we haven’t seen so clearly yet in Luke.)
3) What do we learn about human beings in this story? (We see that too many of them reject the preaching of the apostles and of Jesus, and that the apostles continue to be tempted by pride).
4) What do you find difficult about this story? Is there anything confusing about it, or anything that you dislike? (This is an open question, as always. Some may be confused why Jesus rejoices that the secrets of the kingdom are hidden to the wise and the powerful, and are being revealed rather to the weak and the foolish. It is worth noting that this is ALWAYS how God works. Reference can be made to 1 Corinthians 1:27, where Paul says “God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise”).
5) Does this story make you think that you need to change anything in your life? (Open question – see what everyone has to say).