Exodus 32:1 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.”
Have you ever engaged in Golden Calf Christianity? That’s when you’re tired of waiting on God. You crave answers, but all you hear is crickets. You’re afraid of being stranded and stuck in the wilderness. And you feel the pressure to do something—ANYTHING—to get you moving forward. Because you can’t see God, you assume he’s not there.
So you build a Golden Calf. A Golden Calf of your own ideas and thoughts. Rather than continuing to wait on the Lord, you push ahead, leaning on the idolatry of your own understanding to lead you. Not unlike Israel after their exodus from Egypt.
You know the story. God delivered his people from 400 years of oppression under Egyptian slavery. The plagues, the blood on their doorposts sparing their firstborn, and the miraculous parting of the Red Sea seemed like a distant past. Their leader, “this fellow Moses,” had supposedly gone up Mt. Sinai to meet with God. But after 40 days, he was still nowhere in sight. Their conclusion: no Moses, no God, no vision. Their hopes of a Promised Land as burnt as the desert sand. They reacted exactly the way scripture warns us people without vision respond. They threw off all restraint (Proverbs 29:18). And created a Golden Calf to worship.
The consequences were devastating. Not only did they become the laughingstock of their enemies, three thousand people died on the spot. Had it not been for Moses’ intercession, God would have annihilated the whole nation.
There’s no doubt about it. Waiting on God can be tough stuff. It requires us to trust him when we don’t see him. It means we choose to believe his Word because he said it, not because we understand our circumstances. And when we feel like we can’t hold on any longer, we have to lean hard on the Holy Spirit, rather than creating a Golden Calf to save us.
So if you’re waiting for direction from God right now, don’t get weary and fall into Golden Calf Christianity. Because Golden Calf Christianity isn’t Christianity at all. It’s idolatry.