Sunday, October 12, 2014 | 8:00 a.m.

God Is Not in Our Pocket

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Philippians 4:1–9
Exodus 32:1–14

The two things about God that matter supremely are that he is a living God and that he is very much like Jesus.

David Head

If ever there was a biblical story that fit the definition of a tragicomedy, the story of the Golden Calf is it. There is tragedy in the defiance and disobedience of people and in the threat of God’s anger. There are actions so extreme as to be comical. The story concludes with a happy ending because of God’s mercy, but the way there is fraught with destructive choices.

We come upon the Israelite people in the wilderness, about three months after God has liberated them from the oppression of Pharaoh, after generations of slavery. God has done some mighty works for their deliverance and salvation. When they were thirsty, God regularly gave them water. When they were hungry, God provided manna on a daily basis. When they needed direction and a sense of God’s presence, God provided a cloud by day and fire by night. God gave them hope through the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. God gave them guidance in how to live, through the law and commandments. They were free, safe, well-fed, divinely led, and beloved people with a promising future.

Forty days and forty nights earlier—which is code in the Bible for a long time ago—Moses had left them at the foot of Mount Sinai to obey God’s direction to go up the mountain to receive God’s law and commandments. Moses had told the elders to wait there until he returned. He had appointed his brother Aaron and another man, Hur, to govern them in his place and settle any disputes while he was gone. Moses thought he’d covered all the bases for the time of his absence.

What Moses had not anticipated was how long he would be away from them. As hours became days and days became weeks, the Israelites increasingly felt helpless in their camp at the base of Mount Sinai. Can you imagine the conversations: “Where is Moses?” “What’s he doing up there all this time?” “I wonder if he died up there?” “He doesn’t care about us! If he did, he would be down here leading us into the promised land!” They related to Moses as more than their leader. He was God’s spokesperson, tangible proof of Yahweh’s presence and power. Without their leader and what he represented, the people felt cut off from the divine.

They became weary of waiting. They were weary of waiting for the promised land. Even though at base camp they were safe and cared for, they were impatient to be going forward. Though God’s presence was known to them through a cloud, this did not suffice. They wanted a god they could touch and see to go out before them.

They became weary of waiting. They were weary of waiting for the return of Moses. When he outstayed their expectations, their doubts rose: “As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” How lightly they speak of his person—this Moses. Such a comment reveals contempt and ingratitude, even though Moses had shown tender concern for them. How suspiciously they speak of his delay. Some thought he starved for want of food, as if the God who kept and fed them would not protect and provide for Moses. Others insinuated that he had deserted his undertaking, unable to go on with it, and had returned to his father-in-law to keep his flock. No one seemed to think that if Moses tarried long it was because God had a great deal to say to him, for their own good.

They became weary of waiting. They were weary of waiting for a divine institution of religious worship among them, for that was what they now expected. They had been told that they must “serve God in this mountain” and were ready for the pomp and ceremony of it. But because that was not appointed them as soon as they wished, they took it upon themselves to devise signs of the presence of gods with them and created worship of their own invention, probably similar to what they had seen among the Egyptians, who used the statue of a calf.

Their worship could have been a solemn ceremony of mourning for Moses in light of their sense he was not going to return. Instead, they said, “Moses is lost; make us a god.” This was the greatest absurdity imaginable. Moses was not their god, nor had he ever pretended to be so. Plus, could they have any other god that would provide so well for them as God had done and even as God still was doing? And yet they urged Aaron, “Make us gods, which shall go before us!” In their weariness of waiting, the people became rebellious and unruly (Matthew Henry’s Commentary on “The Golden Calf”).

It’s also incredible that with this demand upon him, Aaron immediately agreed. He did not hesitate or protest, even though he had previously witnessed God’s mighty acts of deliverance and provision. Aaron succumbed, even though he, alongside Moses, had heard God’s first commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” He had also heard God’s second commandment: “You shall not make yourself an idol. . . . You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”

Why did Aaron so blatantly disobey God? Perhaps Aaron was afraid to go against the mob that surrounded him. Or perhaps he too had lost faith that Moses would return and doubted that God was there for them. Though it seems obvious to us that an inanimate figure of a calf fashioned from the gold people once wore in their ears couldn’t possibly have any power, the Israelites worshiped it with much revelry and proclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” It is so absurd it is almost comical. As Psalm 115 declares,

Our God is in the heavens;
he does whatever he pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Those who make them are like them;
so are all who trust in them.”
(Psalm 115.3–8)

We may not identify with this story. In fact, I’m sure if any of your pastors asked everyone to donate your gold so we could create a religious object, no one would part with their precious jewelry. And when we worship, we don’t eat and drink and break into wild, riotous revelry—it’s just not the Fourth Church way.

But are there other ways we are like the Israelites? Do you ever become impatient with God? Do you create your own expectations for when things should happen? When life doesn’t fit the timeframe we ourselves created, we become weary of waiting for God to show up, to act. We start to doubt God’s faithfulness and forget what God has done for us in the past. Our attitude towards God becomes “What have you done for me lately?” In the seeming absence of anything happening now, we lose faith in God. We take things into our own control. We no longer trust God. We put our faith in ourselves and the work of own hands. We place our security in money. Even though our coins say “In God We Trust,” we actually invest our trust in how much we can accumulate. Even though the majority of our brothers and sisters around the world do not have enough money to live a long and healthy life, we hoard resources beyond what we really need. We seek protection through locked doors and gated communities or the gun in our nightstand drawer. We seek purpose through advancing in our careers and beating out the competition. Our lives are not about trusting God. They become all about relying on our own power, our own ability, and our own wealth. Theologian David Head wrote, “[Humanity] indeed becomes a god, but a self-appointed one. [One’s] greatest idol is [oneself]” (David Head, He Sent Leanness, p. 52). All because we feel God is shamefully late, causing us anguish, consternation, discomfort, and embarrassment.

The truth is, God is always on time. God’s time table is not ours. F. B. Meyer wrote, “If God told you on the front end how long you would wait to find the fulfillment of your desire or pleasure or dream, you’d lose heart. You’d grow weary in well doing. So would I. But [God] doesn’t. [God] just says, ‘Wait. I keep my Word. I’m in no hurry. In the process of time I’m developing you to be ready for the promise’” (Charles Swindoll, The Tale of The Tardy Oxcart, p. 428).

For years the Israelites, while in Egypt, had seen gods worshiped that were visual and measureable. In the wilderness, the God they were following was wild and unpredictable, a God they could not control or contain in any image. In their anxiety, they reached for what was familiar and tried to make God more predictable. Don’t we do the same? Just stop and think. How do you try to contain God? When do you give up on God? What causes you to give your allegiance to idols of your own making rather than trust in God?

What we personally pray and how we pray reveal what we really believe about God. Many primitive peoples had a deeper sense of awe and worship than that found in many Christian congregations today. Mother Alice Kaholuoluna of Hawaii said,

Before the missionaries came, my people used to sit outside their temples for a long time meditating and preparing themselves before entering. Then they would virtually creep to the altar to offer their petition and afterwards would again sit a long time outside, this time to “breathe life” into their prayers. The Christians, when they came, just got up, uttered a few sentences, said Amen, and were done. For that reason my people call them haolis, “without breath,” or “those who fail to breathe life into their prayers.” (He Sent Leanness, p. 52)

David Head wrote that when we pray,

We speak as though [God] were deaf, as though he needed encouragement, as though he needed to be won to the side of angels, as though he were almighty in the sense of pushing people around at will, as though he were too small, or too lazy, or too full of himself. . . . . Our prayers are expressions of blasphemous distortions and imply a God who is hardly worth knowing. We form our own image of God, and bow down to it, and inevitably become like it. (He Sent Leanness, p. 58)

It is as if we put God in our pocket.

Moses did not approach God or pray to God like that. When God summoned Moses to come up the mountain to receive the law and commandments, Moses humbly obeyed and spent as much time in God’s presence as God required. When God became understandably angry with the Israelites for worshiping a golden calf, Moses fully recognized God’s power to destroy as well as call forth life. Moses knew God can do whatever God chooses. Moses fully remembered that it was God who brought them out of slavery and promised to be in covenantal relationship with them. In both humility and boldness, Moses counted on the compassionate, merciful character of God he had come to know and honor. Moses reminded God of the divine promises God had made to the ancestors of the people, urging God to be faithful to those promises. He also spoke of the terrible waste it would be to bring the people out of Egypt just to destroy them. Moses reminded God of God’s true nature and deepest desires, believing God to be “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6–7).

Moses gives stark contrast to those who bow before an idol of their own making. He models how we should pray and worship, in humility and boldness praising the dynamic, living, sovereign God. We need to stop finding a substitute for God because God is taking too long. We need to be done with trying to contain or confine God for our own convenience. Remember that God created the whole world and all that is in it. God liberates slaves and topples corrupt rulers. God’s love is steadfast and sure. We are to have no other gods before the one true God. Like Moses, let us bear witness to God’s faithful compassion.