When You Can't Feel God's Presence

Scripture

Exodus 32:1–7 NASB95

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.

Introduction

The Reason Behind the Substitute (vs. 1)

Inside of our text, the Israelites have been recently delivered from 430 years of slavery in Egypt and have come to the base of a mountain called Mount Sinai. Moses, their leader, has gone up the mountain for forty days and forty nights. We know that back from Chapter 24.

And he has gone up this mountain to receive instructions mainly about about building the tabernacle.

What is the tabernacle? The tabernacle was basically a tent where God’s presence was going to dwell among the people.

And the Israelites wanted to feel God’s presence. They wanted God’s presence to dwell among them.

But because Moses had been up the mountain for forty days and forty nights, the people became restless, and the text says that when the people saw that Moses was delayed in coming… or in other words, when the people saw that Moses was taking too long, they began to take matters into their own hands and sought to commit idolatry.

Look at verse 1.

Exodus 32:1 NASB95

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Notice how they refer to Moses. They don’t just say Moses. They say this Moses. The man who led us out of Egypt. That’s shade. That’s distant language, meaning they feel a way.

You see in their minds, Moses was an extension of God’s presence. So if they feel a way about Moses, then they feel that way about God. If Moses was taking too long, that meant God was taking too long.

Have you ever attached your faith to somebody you thought God had placed in your life. Perhaps you attached your faith to your father, your mother, you brother, your sister, a husband, a wife, a pastor, a teacher, a mentor. And when those people became emotionally, mentally or physically absent in your life, your started to doubt God’s presence?

Anybody ever been there before?

Moses had been absent for forty days, and after forty days, doubt had started to settle in and the Israelites probably felt abandoned by God, forgotten by God, or that God had moved on to somebody else.

Anybody ever felt that God was taking too long and because he was taking too long, you began to doubt his presence? You were looking for God, but you couldn’t locate him. Perhaps you got to a point where you thought that he had forgotten about you, abandoned you or moved on to somebody else.

(If you have been there before, go ahead and just type in the comment section “I’ve been there.”)

Now before we continue and start to stick our noses down at the Israelites as if we are better than them. I think it is important for us to pause and recognize that many of us are not that far from doing what the Israelites did in this text.

No we are not taking off earrings, melting them down, and creating golden calfs, but we do sometimes end up substituting God’s presence with other things (aka idolatry).

We substitute it with drugs.

We substitute it with sex.

We substitute it with social media.

We substitute it with work.

We substitute it with extracurricular activities.

We substitute it with people.

And you see what gets me about this text, is that this didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t like Moses went up the mountain and the very next day the Israelites began to doubt God’s presence and begin to commit idolatry. It is just around day forty, something inside of them broke.

And some of you that are listening in right now, it may be the pandemic, it may be sickness, it may be your finances, but you may feel like you are at day 39 and something inside of you is getting ready to break. You want to feel God’s presence, but you feel like you haven’t felt it in awhile. You’re trying to locate God but you can’t find him. You’ve been waiting and praying and waiting and praying, and because you haven’t gotten and answer or nothing has happened, doubt has started to settle in, and you are beginning to question God’s presence.

May I suggest to you that in the moments when you can’t feel God’s presence, God is somewhere making plans on your behalf.

You see while the Israelites are down the mountain questioning God’s presence, God is up the mountain creating plans so that they can experience his presence.

Remember right now God is giving Moses plans to build the tabernacle where God’s presence was going to dwell among the people.

So for those of us who find ourselves in seasons of wondering where God is at, we can take hope from a passage like this, because it lets us know that even when we don’t feel God’s presence, God is still up to something.

(Go ahead a drop in the comment section, God is up to something)

Write this down:

Doubt in God doesn’t just settle in overnight, but it begins to gnaw at us overtime. And if we are not careful, doubt can cause us to substitute God’s presence with lesser things.

The Substitute (vs. 2-6)

Immediate Response

So because of the Israelites’ doubt, they go to Aaron, Moses’ brother, and they ask him to create a god for them. This god is to operate as a substitute for God’s presence.

And in response, Aaron tells them to give them their gold earrings, they give him their gold earrings, and Aaron takes them and makes a golden calf out of it.

But notice how quickly Aaron responds. There is no wait a minute, let me think about it or pray about it. There is an immediate response.

Listen, if you are not careful there is always something readily available to take the place of the presence of God in your life.

For instance, think about what your Sunday mornings used to look like before the pandemic.

You got up early in the morning, brushed your teeth, combed your hair, took a shower, grabbed the clothes you got out of the cleaners last week.

There was some level of intentional preparation for worship.

Then you got in the car and showed up to church maybe a little early because you wanted a good parking space, perhaps you had to serve in some capacity, or maybe you just didn’t want somebody to sit in your seat.

Then you sat inside of service for about an hour and a half, not trying to multi-task, but fully attentive to what is going on in worship and then to top it all off many of you went to Sunday School for another hour.

For at least 2-3 hours on Sunday morning, you were fully focused on worship and the Word of God.

But now that we have been at home for 8 months, some of you are doing chores right now, some of you cooking right now, some of you driving right now, some of you are trying to multi-task with other things right now.

And listen, I’m not trying to send you on a guilt trip or beat you up. I’m just trying to bring to your attention on how quickly it is for something to take the place the presence of God.

And I dare some of you right now to take a brief moment to reclaim this time for the presence of God.

I dare you turn down the grits, put down the mop, put the down the dishes, pull over to side. And just begin to reminf yourself that this time is not for me to catch up on what I didn’t do last week, but this time is just for me to sit in the presence of God.

Worshiping God Through Images

And so after Aaron’s immediate response in making the golden calf, the people respond in three different ways.

The people say that this is the god that led them out of the land of Egypt.

Aaron builds an alter in front of it.

And they throw a big party.

But notice who the party is for.

Look at the latter part of verse 5, Aaron says the feast is to the LORD in all capital letters.

In Hebrew, LORD here is Yahweh, which is the one and living true God. The God we serve.

The Israelites are more in violation of the second commandment than they are of the first.

The first commandment says “you shall not worship other gods.”

The second commandment says “you shall not make for yourself any graven images and worship those images even if that image represents Yahweh.”

In the Israelites minds, they haven’t gotten rid of God altogether, they have just added a golden calf.

So essentially what they are doing here is trying to worship God through an image they created.

I wonder how many of us have tried to worship God through images we’ve created? And I’m not even just talking about physical images, I’m talking about mental images.

You see most likely Aaron created a golden calf to take after the Egyptian bull God which was the god of strength and fertility. For the Israelites, mentally they wanted God to be their strength and they wanted God be their increase. And though God can be strength and God can be their increase, he is that and so much more.

He is the lion and the lamb

The beginning and the end.

He is a forgiving God, but he is also a God of justice.

He is Jehovah Jireh

Jehovah Nissi

Jehovah Shalom

There is no one image that can fully capture the presence of God.

Matter of fact, that’s why when Moses asked God what his name was earlier back in Exodus, God didn’t give him a name, because names defined you. But because God cannot be defined, instead of giving Moses a name, God just said I AM THAT I AM.

And where some of us go wrong is that instead of worshiping God for who He is, we worship him through the mental image we have created him to be.

And when God doesn’t live up to the image WE have created him to be, we do exactly what the Israelites do and we begin to doubt God’s presence in our lives.

Some of us are having a really rough time in our faith right now not because something is wrong with God, but because something is wrong with our image of God.

Some of us only see God has healer, provider and restorer, and that image doesn’t make sense when you are sick and unemployed.

Sometimes we come into Christianity with false ideas and wrong expectations. Perhaps we thought being a Christian was going to solve all of our problems.

So when Christianity doesn’t work out the way we thought it was going to work out, we do exactly what the Israelites do in this text. We become a little less Christian and little more spiritual.

You know what I’m talking about.

We begin to lay out all the religions like its a buffet and we pick and choose the things we want to live our lives by.

We’ll take a few Scriptures from the Bible.

A few things from the Qur’an.

I’ll take some beliefs from the Hebrew Israelites standing in purple on the corner because they appeal to my black roots.

We’ll play around with some Tarot cards and energy stones.

And we’ll take our horoscopes for dessert, because you know I’m a Sagittarius.

Instead of continually waiting on God, we reach out for anything that can readily help us make sense of what we are going through.

We’re not trying to get rid of God necessarily, we’re just trying add our golden calfs.

Consequences

And you see when we try to add our golden calfs…when we replace God’s presence with other things in our lives we do not bring God closer, put we push him further away.

Look at verse 7. The text says:

Exodus 32:7 NASB95

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.

Usually when God refers to the Israelites, he calls them MY PEOPLE. He says MY PEOPLE that I delivered out of the land of Egypt.

But now the Israelites are just the people that Moses led out of the land of Egypt.

Because the Israelites have committed idolatry and have substituted God’s presence with a golden calf, it has caused God to distance himself from the people.

You see sometimes the reason why we can’t feel God’s presence or the reason why we may feel that he is distant is not because we have been in a waiting season, but simply because we have other things taking up the space where God wants to be.

God wants to tabernacle with you. God wants you to feel his presence. But God can’t tabernacle with you so long as other things are taking up the space.

It’s alright to make money. Make your money boo boo. But you have to tell your money that this space is for the presence of God.

It’s alright to be in school. Go ahead and get your degree. But you have to tell your education that this space is for the presence of God.

It’s alright to have friends, but you have to tell your friends this space is for the presence of God.

It’s alright to be in a relationship, but you have to tell your relationship this space is for the presence of God.

God is a jealous God. And he has the right to be jealous because he created you. As such God is not into sharing the seat of your heart with anything or anyone.

Prayer

If you continue to read the rest of the chapter, you will find that because of the Israelites idolatry, God was ready to wipe them out and start over with Moses. But because Moses was a praying man. Because Moses interceded on their behalf, he appealed to God’s heart and the text tells us that God relented, that he changed his mind.

And for those of you that feel like you can’t feel God’s presence right now.

For those of you who are beginning to doubt.

For those of you that feel like you are at day 39 and your’re reaching your breaking point.

For those of you have substituted God’s presence with golden calfs in your life.

May I suggest to you that you find you some praying people that can appeal to heart of God. Stop caring about what people might say if you let somebody know that you have doubts. Find you someone today that can pray with you and for you.