Welcome back to our summer study of the Exodus journey.  This has been a lot of fun so far, not just learning about what they walked through but seeing just how much we can relate to what they are walking through.  It’s easy to read this incredible story and think, “Who would do that?”  Who would experience God in miraculous ways, watch God protect, provide, and just do one incredible thing after another, and still struggle to trust God and love Him most?   Well, we would.  We do.  Their story is our story.  So, as we get started today, I wanted to make sure you see the bigger picture of what God was up to. This wasn’t about simply moving these people from point A to point B; it isn’t about torturing them in the wilderness or trying to make sure they get their steps in and get enough exercise.  God is using this journey to shape and mold them into the people He created them to be, and God does the same with us. Life is a journey, and just like them, with every detour, with every challenge, difficult situation, and interaction, God reveals more of our true heart condition and helps us continue to grow.  This is why we can relate so well to their story, because we are in the same developmental process they were in: learning to love God most and trust Him fully with our lives, and that isn’t always easy; it wasn’t for them, and it isn’t for us.  We want you to understand that one of the primary ways God shapes and molds us is through real-life experiences, and not all of them are easy; many are challenging and very painful.  Life can be so tough, but if we are open to it, those tough times can truly transform us spiritually.  This is why Ken shared what Paul wrote in Romans 5 last week.

Romans 5:3 We also have joy with our troubles, because we know that these troubles produce patience. 4 And patience produces character, and character produces hope. 5 And this hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts. NCV

Last week, Ken took us into Exodus 16, as God sends Manna from heaven for them to eat.  It’s another moment where they are learning to trust God with their lives. They are as hungry in Exodus 16 as they were thirsty in Exodus 15; I’m sure they were starving at this point; they wanted something to eat with no McDonald’s or Sheetz in sight!  And in their fear of starvation, they told Moses they would rather go back to the lives they had lived before, back to slavery, because at least there they could eat.  Such a wild response.  As I listened to Ken last week, I had something Peter said in my heart and mind…

1 Peter 1:13 Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. MSG

I kept thinking of so many examples in life, when things get hard, and we turn back to what we used to rather than leaning into God.  Adversity and pain hit, and we slide right back into those old grooves of evil; we turn back to alcohol or drugs or other old habits and vices that we used to struggle with.  It’s like the tough stuff hits and those old things just call to us, and it’s easy to slide back into those old habits of our lives. In many ways, it’s just easier or feels more comfortable than leaning into God.  I really enjoyed Ken’s talk last week, another challenge we can all relate to for sure.  Do you see how with every challenge they face, God is up to something far bigger than the situation they find themselves in?  It wasn’t just about danger, or thirst, or hunger; it was about their hearts.  And it’s the same for you and me; our lives are full of moments where we have real problems, and all we see and feel is the problem in front of us, but God is up to more, shaping and molding us into the very people we were created to be, preparing us for our amazing home, and we can say it, it’s is a long, and bumpy road to get there.  

Now, today we jump ahead another month or so and see them arrive at Mount Sinai, which, if you remember, God told Moses back at the Burning Bush that they would come to this spot to worship.  And we will see another testing of their hearts here, done in a very interesting way, and spoiler alert: they fail this test miserably.  Today, we will see them fall to idolatry, and what stands out most is that this test seems both challenging and simple; all they are asked to do is wait.  That may sound like an easy test after nearly dying by the Egyptian Army, then nearly dying by dehydration, then nearly dying by starvation, but it’s in the waiting that they seem to struggle the most, and we do too.  There is something about waiting that is so challenging and hard to accept.  Time is an incredible filter and squeezes so much out of our lives.  We must learn to wait and move at God’s timing rather than our own, and just to break it to you, God moves way slower than we want!  This is another very deliberate moment; waiting is a massive test that exposes the heart and helps us grow. 

"Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be." John Ortberg

So, to give you some context of where we are in our story, and how intense this moment really is, we turn to Exodus 19…we learn that it has been two months since they left Egypt, and we see the intensity of this moment, where God comes down on top of the mountain. Try to picture this…

Exodus 19:16 On the morning of the third day, there was a powerful thunder and lightning storm, and a dense cloud came down upon the mountain. There was a long, loud blast from a ram's horn, and all the people trembled. 17 Moses led them out from the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. 18 All Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the LORD had descended on it in the form of fire. The smoke billowed into the sky like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain shook with a violent earthquake. 19 As the horn blast grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God thundered his reply for all to hear. 20 The LORD came down on the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses climbed the mountain.  NLT

So, this is a thing, and it’s very clear that God is there, and they are terrified.  They see, hear, and feel God on the mountain and watch Moses go to meet with God.  God is on full display here, and there are two interesting things that stand out to me that I wanted to make sure I pointed out…

Exodus 20:18 When the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of the ram’s horn, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear. 19 And they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!” NLT

So, they are afraid and probably should be; this is a really intimidating moment, but I wanted to point this out: they ask Moses to go do this for them; we also learn how long Moses is up there…

Exodus 24:18 Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. NIV

So we need to see this, first, these people wanted Moses to do this for them, they didn’t want to face God, they wanted Moses to do that for them while they stayed in what felt safer and more comfortable to them, and second, Moses is gone for forty days and forty nights; I mean, that’s a long time, especially in a world without iPhones and the internet to pass the time!  There is just something about waiting and allowing God to do what He wants, when He wants, isn’t there?  How would you do with this?  I mean, after forty days and nights, wouldn’t you start getting a little antsy?  I’ve told you before, time just has a way of squeezing things out of us, and here at Mt. Sinai, they are feeling that squeeze, waiting on Moses; time is going by; aren’t they supposed to be moving toward the promised land?  They struggle with this, and in our world today, it is harder than ever to wait, to just sit and wait on God; it’s not something we are into in our world today, is it?  I’m not sure we know what it feels like to be bored today; we have so many ways to keep moving, pass the time, and stimulate our brains.  Waiting is very difficult, isn’t it?  We just don’t want to stop, be still, and we feel uncomfortable if we do.  I want you to see this. Waiting is part of God’s design; it is not part of the world’s design. Your enemy wants you sped up and busy; God wants you to slow down and wait on Him. This is a real challenge, isn’t it?

I’m always fascinated with psychological and scientific research and studies, because they prove what God’s been up to all along.  I think we could save all these brilliant people a lot of time if they would just read their Bibles!  We keep researching and coming up with new terms that are interesting too, like “The Impatient Epidemic” and “Mood Drift,” which are some of my new favorites. Psychologists are now calling this struggle to slow down and wait for things to unfold “The Impatience Epidemic.”  That’s wild! Science has proven that this epidemic has been caused by the tech industry and how much of tech we are addicted to.  Oh, sorry, it’s much nicer to say how much tech we rely on today.

Here’s the 2023 study that gave us the term “Mood Drift.” They studied 28,000 people and forced them to do the unthinkable…to sit and rest, to do nothing, and they found that the average person’s mood drops by 2% every minute they wait today.  (University College London and NIH)

I even found a wild study from 2014, published in Science Magazine, that showed people preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts!  Lol, yeah, waiting and being still are not easy for us at all.  You know it’s funny, all these new terms for things we humans have always struggled with and got in a lot of trouble over since the beginning of time.  “The Impatience Epidemic”, “Mood Drift”, so many new technical terms for something Scripture has always shown us: that time and waiting on the Lord is challenging, revealing so much about our hearts.  It just challenges us in the faith department to wait and be still, and in our culture today it is harder than ever before…and I will keep coming back to this: there is a reason our world works to keep us moving, sped up, busy, and constantly occupied, and a reason God wants us to slow down, be still, and wait on Him.  Ok, back to our story.

So, what happens while they wait on Moses to finish talking with God?  Well, things take a turn in camp, and they decide to take matters into their own hands.

Exodus 32:1 When Moses failed to come back down the mountain right away, the people went to Aaron. "Look," they said, "make us some gods who can lead us. This man Moses, who brought us here from Egypt, has disappeared. We don't know what has happened to him."  2 So Aaron said, "Tell your wives and sons and daughters to take off their gold earrings, and then bring them to me."  3 All the people obeyed Aaron and brought him their gold earrings. 4 Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded and tooled it into the shape of a calf. The people exclaimed, "O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt!"  NLT

Wow, when Moses doesn’t come back down right away, they make an idol to worship.  It is so easy to read that and think, who would do that?  I mean, who would see the mountain tremble, listen to God thunder on the mountain, see Him provide, protect, and do miraculous things, then moments later, bow down to a golden calf and worship it, calling it their god?  Well, we would; we do; their story is our story.  

For many of us, when we picture idols, we picture golden calves, or giant statues, and we think, I would never do that.  I would never build a giant cow in my backyard and worship it as a god, but idols are not just statues or physical objects. An idol is anything we place in the spot God should have in our lives, anything that is more important to us than God, and when we understand that, we see that we struggle with this too.  And I would argue that this is far more challenging today than ever before.  Our idols are much harder to avoid; because it’s one thing to not bow down to a golden calf you just made, but it’s a whole other thing to avoid letting things we care deeply about slide into the place God should be in our lives.  We have so many more things that can take our focus, time, money, and energy, and while we don’t bow down and pray to those things directly, these things do have our worship.

It’s really hard to avoid idol worship. I mean, the children of Israel are a great example of how hard it is to avoid.  After watching God move in incredible ways, saving them, providing, and protecting them repeatedly; even in this moment, they can see, hear, and feel God’s presence right there on the mountain, and they still fall to it!  And what caused the fall? It was waiting.  The longer they had to wait, well, the easier it was for them to think that God wasn’t going to come through for them.  It was taking way too long, and to be fair, it’s been 40 days and 40 nights, so they took control and created a god they could control, and I’m sure they found some comfort in that; it sure is less terrifying than the God rumbling that mountain!

We can relate to the challenge of waiting, can’t we?  I mean, 40 days and nights is a long time; we can struggle if the internet is running a little slow, or the Amazon package comes in two days instead of one!  We also live in a world that is finding new ways to keep us from having to wait on anything…and I will keep coming back to this: this world is designed to keep you moving, busy, sped up, while God’s design is to slow down, be still, and wait on Him.  Waiting is a difficult testing of our faith.

Exodus 32:8 How quickly they have turned away from the way I commanded them to live! They have melted down gold and made a calf, and they have bowed down and sacrificed to it. NLT

It’s amazing: they have watched the Red Sea part, watched water be sweetened, watched God drop food from Heaven, and now they bow down to a golden calf, saying that the thing they made is what delivered them from Egypt. What is happening here?  Well, they just couldn’t handle the waiting; it was killing them not knowing what God was up to, so they made something they could control. This idol is comforting; they can see it, touch it, understand it, and it will always be where they want it to be, at the exact time they want it to be there, which is much less stressful and requires far less trust and faith than allowing God to lead our lives.  Do you see it?  That is what idols do.

You know, I don’t believe that most of us wake up one day and decide, “I’m done with God, I’m making my own god now.”  It’s not that intentional for the most part; it’s more that life beats us up and wears us down. We deal with real problems, and real pain, and we want relief and real solutions.  And God just seems slow, or feels silent, and the relief and answers aren’t coming fast enough, and the longer God takes, the more uncomfortable we become, and as that pressure builds, we can easily turn to other things for relief. So, think about that for a moment: your golden calf may be whatever you run to when life gets hard, and waiting on God becomes uncomfortable.  For some people, that may be work: if I just stay busy enough, I don’t have to think or be still.  For others it’s money, and accumulating wealth; if I just have more, then I will feel safe and secure.  For some of us it’s our relationships: if this person loves me, then it will all be okay.  For others it’s alcohol or just some way of numbing that discomfort away; for others it’s politics, or entertainment, or their phones and social media, or success or achievements…well, you get the point.  Your idol doesn’t need to be a statue; it can be about anything, and it’s important to see that most of those things, on their own, aren’t bad; the problem is that we are asking them to do things that only God can do in our lives.  Think about this golden calf: the issue wasn’t the gold; gold is something God placed on this earth; the issue was what they were asking the gold to do, and that is the thing about idolatry.  Do you see it?  It’s not the money, or the person, or the thing that is evil or sinful; it’s what we ask those things to do; that is the problem.

So, I had a couple of goals for this day: I wanted us to understand what idols are, and I wanted us to be able to identify them in our lives.  I also thought it would be helpful to list modern-day idols we struggle with, but I realized something: in the end, I think all those idols can be traced back to what may be the biggest idol we face today.  It’s us; we could call it the “Idol of Self.”  We have become experts at asking questions like this in our culture today.  “What do I want?” “What do I deserve?” “What do I need to feel good and happy and enjoy the day?”  This is another clash between God’s design and the world’s design for us.  This world is very specifically designed to keep us focused on ourselves and to make sure we do whatever we can to feel good.  But God teaches a very different mentality and way to live…

Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” NIV

Do you see it?  This mindset of following Christ is the opposite of the mindset our world says we should have.  And just to lean into that idea many of us have that we deserve a specific thing, pleasure, or lifestyle at this point in our lives, Scripture is very clear on what we have earned, and it isn’t pleasure and comfort or an easy life. As imperfect, sinning people, we can be thankful we don’t get what we deserve.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The world says deny yourself nothing; you deserve to feel good; it’s your right.  God says to truly experience life we must deny ourselves and follow Jesus, and what we have actually earned is death, and our joy is found in the fact that while we earned death, we get the gift of Jesus, and don’t get what we actually deserve.  Do you see the tension between God’s design and the worlds?  God's design says slow down, be still, and move on God’s timing; this world says speed up, stay moving, and move as fast as you can.  God’s design says deny yourself and follow Jesus, and remember you deserved death but can live in the incredible gift of life you have in Christ.  While this world screams at you to deny yourself nothing, to look at all you have done and worked at and understand you deserve to indulge in whatever makes you feel good.  Polar opposites here. 

Throughout this exodus journey, they are being taught to trust and depend on God, to deny themselves,  and follow God faithfully, even though they can’t see the big picture.  They are being tested here once again, and they are failing, and we can think: who would do that?  Who would see all God is doing and build and worship a golden calf?  Well, we would.  We do.  Their story is our story.  It’s easy to think we would never fall into idolatry because we aren’t building statues and monuments and worshiping them, but we must understand that idolatry is placing anything in the place God should have in our lives. 

So, think about this.  Where do you find your identity and self-worth?  Where do you find joy and peace?  What consumes your thoughts?  What do you talk about, think about, and focus on?  Where do you spend your time, and what do you make sure you don’t live without in your life?  No, we would never build a giant statue in the backyard and worship it, but make no mistake about it, idol worship is a major issue in our world today.  Here’s a great definition of an idol from Tim Keller.

"An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, and anything that you seek to give you what only God can give." Tim Keller

An idol isn't simply something you love. It's something you depend on and need to be okay, anything you seek to give you what only God can give you.  So, you might be wondering, do I have any idols in my life?  Well, I will show you a great way to know, but you have to be honest and challenge yourself here.  Let’s say someone just got to watch your life for a while, just a fly on the wall, observing your life.  They could see your choices and priorities.  They listened to your conversations and what you talk about.  They hear your thoughts and know what you're focused on.  They see what you make sure you always have, what you spend your money on, and what would never slip your mind to keep close to you.  They watch where your time, money, energy, and resources go. After watching you for a few weeks, what would they say matters most to you?  What would they say that you depend on?  Be honest with this: I know in church we are supposed to say it’s God, but what would that be?  Now let’s keep pressing into our hearts today.  What are you most afraid of losing? What is it?  What came to your mind?  And we will take it a step farther now: if God were to ask you to give Him one thing of yours today, He came to you and said you must stop doing, or let go of this one thing in your life.  What would you be hoping He didn’t mention?  Is it your money?  Is it your career?  Is it a person?  Is it success?  Is it alcohol?  Is it social media? Is it popularity, success… whatever it is, can I tell you something? Well, that is your golden calf. 

So, let’s close here. At Mt. Sinai, we see the children of Israel struggle to wait on God; it took so long that they end up taking matters into their own hands and fall to idolatry.  And we can relate to that tension.  We struggle in the waiting, in the silence, and the more we care about something, the longer we wait, the harder it can be to trust God because we want answers, we want relief, we can wonder if He forgot us, or isn’t going to come through for us, and it’s easy in that tension to do what they did and turn to things we can control and assume that we can take care of us better than God can, which is never true.   

It feels like every week lately, I have made statements that are easier to say and preach than to live out, and this is another one.  We must trust God while we wait; we must trust and believe He has us even when we don’t know what He is up to, which is easier said than done, but maybe that is the point.  So, let’s end with the question we’ve been asking since the first week of this series.  What do you love the most?  What do you trust the most?  It’s funny because it’s in the test of waiting and moving at God’s pace instead of our own that we know our true answer to that question.  You may think it’s really silly to trust a golden calf more than God, while at the same time you're turning to alcohol, money, your iPhone, social media, sex, sports, shopping, food, career, your children, or pleasure…yeah, their story is our story, and this whole story is about the heart, it’s about learning to trust God, and to love Him most.   This week, think about this: maybe the most challenging test you will face, and what will reveal the most about you, is found in your ability or inability to wait on God.