Great and Getting Better!
Waiting on God and Other Lessons From the Golden Calf
Waiting is one of the hardest parts of living the Christian life. It only took forty days of silence for the people of Israel to lose their way.
In Exodus 32, we find the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai, facing a major test of patience. Moses had been up on the mountain for nearly forty days, and the people grew restless. Impatience quickly turned into insecurity, leading them to demand of Aaron, “Come, make us gods who shall go before us.”
What follows is one of the most tragic detours in Israel’s history.
Impatience quickly breeds idolatry. Using the gold gathered from their miraculous deliverance out of Egypt, Aaron fashions a golden calf. The people throw a festival, proclaiming, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
Instead of waiting for the true God, the Israelites manufactured a substitute god they could see and control. Their tragic mistake was not just a failure of patience, but a failure of trust. They allowed the silence of the mountain to erode their faith in God, who had just miraculously delivered them from Egypt.
We often face the same temptation today. When God seems silent, or when our prayers do not receive immediate answers, we are tempted to create our own “golden calves.” These modern idols rarely look like statues; instead, they take the form of career obsession, financial schemes, toxic relationships, or compulsive control — anything we turn to for security when we grow tired of waiting on the Lord.
Exodus 32 serves as a sobering reminder that taking matters into our own hands always leads away from God’s best for our lives. True faith is forged in the waiting. When you find yourself in a season of silence, resist the urge to manufacture your own solutions. Trust that God is working on the mountain, even when you cannot see Him.
Remember, God loves you and I love you, and that is the way it is going to be!
Marshall Swindall
Boiling Springs church of Christ