ToSermon from St Andrews Church, Slip End, UK. Given by our visiting preacher from the charity Azalia. Ruth Robb gives us an indepth look into the world fo Azalia. Given at the service on 15/10/23.
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Sermon starts at 4:55
Exodus 32 v 1-14
1 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.”
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and
your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”
3 So all the people took off their
earrings and brought them to Aaron.
4 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.”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced,
“Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.”
6 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.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought
up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.
8 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.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiffnecked
people.
10 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.”
11 But Moses sought the favour 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?
12 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.
13 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.’”
14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the
disaster he had threatened.
Matthew 22 v 1-14
1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying:
2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a
king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.
3 He sent his servants to those
who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited
that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered,
and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his
business.
6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.
7 The king
was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their
city.
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited
did not deserve to come.
9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet
anyone you find.’
10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the
people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled
with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was
not wearing wedding clothes.
12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding
clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside,
into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
