Too Busy for God?

(Part 1)
October 12, 2014

Exodus 321!14 P"#$#%%#a&s 41!' (att"e) 221!14

When I was growing up, ordering things by mail was something of an adventure. We would read
magazines like Boys Life, that came because my brother was in Boy couts, comic books, and also the
catalogs that came in the mail. !t the bottom of almost every advertisement, in small print, was a warning
that delivery could be e"pected in si" to eight weeks. #hink about that.
i" to eight$ )ee*s.
%ast forward thirty five or forty years and we have !mazon, eBay, and a host of other e&commerce
websites, many of whom do not have a physical, brick and mortar store. !ll of these vendors come into
our homes through high speed Internet connections that carry our orders faster than the wink of an eye. 'n
the model rocketry forum where I visit, you can pick out a generational difference. (any of us, despite the
fact that weve ordered hundreds of things online, are still in awe of how )uickly things arrive. We phone,
or email, or order off the web, and a package arrives before the week is over. But there is a younger
generation to whom the phrase, *please allow si" to eight weeks for delivery+ is a completely alien idea.
#his generation grew up with cell phones and the internet and for them a one week delivery ,or even
overnight- is completely normal and e"pected. 'ccasionally, members of this group will post complaints
because they emailed a vendor and have not yet received a response. In their minds, the behavior of the
vendor is absolutely terrible, because they have not responded in two or three hours.
#wo or three "ours.
It is left to us *old&timers+ to e"plain that many of the model rocketry vendors are part&time businesses that
are operated out of garages and basements by people who have full&time .obs. While they are responsible
business people, and you can e"pect an answer from them, it will probably not happen until they get off
work, or even ,as shocking as this sounds- until they return from a business trip.
omehow, culturally, our e"pectations have shifted so that where we once thought nothing of waiting two
months to receive our order ,and the anticipation was almost painful-, we now grow impatient if we
havent heard back in a matter of hours.
adly, those same e"pectations follow us into other areas of our lives. Because we have become so
accustomed to almost immediate satisfaction, from cell phones, to the interstate highway system, to
shopping, to fast food, to television and entertainment, we often e"pect the same sort of responsiveness
from other institutions like schools and churches. We think that our childrens teachers ought to be
available at a moments notice or the church will reply to your emails on aturday. !nd while its not good
for us to be so impatient, we notice that we have begun to place these same, unrealistic e"pectations upon
/od.
*I prayed for patience .ust last week, and I dont feel more patient yet.+
0
*I prayed for wisdom last night and, well, Im still waiting.+
*'ur church asked /od to heal my friend, and hes still sick.+
'ur impatience causes us to doubt, and our culture has fed our sense of impatience.
But we should remember that were not the first generation to be impatient. Impatience has caused trouble
for /ods people for thousands of years as we see in the story of 1"odus (Exodus 321!14)+
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 dont know what has happened to him.
!
Aaron answered them, "ake off the gold earrings that your wi#es, your sons and your daughters are
wearing, and bring them to me.
$
%o all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.
&
'e
took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool.
"hen they said, "hese are your gods, (srael, who brought you up out of Egypt.
)
When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "omorrow there will be a
festi#al to the *ord.
+
%o the ne,t day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented
fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in re#elry.
-
"hen the *ord said to Moses, .o down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, ha#e
become corrupt.
/
"hey ha#e been 0uick to turn away from what ( commanded them and ha#e made
themsel#es an idol cast in the shape of a calf. "hey ha#e bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and ha#e
said, 1"hese are your gods, (srael, who brought you up out of Egypt.
2
( ha#e seen these people, the *ord said to Moses, and they are a stiff3necked people.
45
6ow lea#e me
alone so that my anger may burn against them and that ( may destroy them. "hen ( will make you into a
great nation.
44
7ut Moses sought the fa#or of the *ord his .od. *ord, he said, why should your anger burn against
your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand8
4!
Why should the
Egyptians say, 1(t was with e#il intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe
them off the face of the earth8 "urn from your fierce anger9 relent and do not bring disaster on your
people.
4$
:emember your ser#ants Abraham, (saac and (srael, to whom you swore by your own self; 1( will
make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and ( will gi#e your descendants all this land (
promised them, and it will be their inheritance fore#er.
4&
"hen the *ord relented and did not bring on his
people the disaster he had threatened.
(oses goes up the mountain to speak to /od and leaves the people behind because, if you remember, the
people were afraid that if they heard /od that they would die. !nd so the people as*ed (oses to speak to
/od for them.
But (oses is gone too long.
!pparently, talking to /od took longer than they thought it should, and so the people who we refer to as
*the people of /od+ decide that they will .ust invent another god and say that this new god is the one who
led them out of 1gypt.
2
'ne of the things about this story, besides the fickleness and impatience of the people, is that they were
able to convince !aron to build them an idol. Whenever I thought about this story I was amazed that !aron
was the man who would become the high priest. 3e was (oses brother, the man who went with (oses to
speak to the 4haraoh, and the second in command of the entire nation of Israel. #he way that this story is
written, he doesnt even seem to resist at all. But it occurs to me now that !aron was also a product of his
culture, in this case, the 1gyptian slave culture. !aron didnt grow up as the son of an 1gyptian princess
like (oses and he hadnt spent 56 years herding sheep like (oses. !nd so, despite the fact that they are
brothers, (oses life e"periences are dramatically different and !arons life e"periences are nearly identical
to every other slave that has .ust walked away from the life that they knew. If (oses had been gone for
two or three days, it could be that these former slaves had never gone that long without some slave master
telling them what to do. !nd so they get impatient, then bored, then worried, then they simply assume,
without sending any kind of search party or rescue party, that (oses is dead, or has run off and isnt
coming back, and that, despite all of the miracles that they had witnessed in the last few weeks, that /od
wasnt coming back either and so$
$they should invent a new one.
7eally8
#he people of /od allowed their impatience to take them to places that none of us would have imagined.
!nd yet, how many of us are e"actly the same. 'kay, maybe we havent constructed our own idols .ust
yet, but often times, we do allow our impatience to get the best of us.
In our high tech world where we have come to e"pect packages to be delivered overnight, we get impatient
and decide that since /od hasnt answered our te"t messages in three minutes, or our email in three hours,
or because /od hasnt answered our prayers in three days, we give up and find something else to worship.
But we forget that /od doesnt work the way that we want on the timetable that we e"pect. !nd even when
/od answers prayer, his answers arent always the answers that we hoped for. !s we scan through the
Bible we find that many of /ods favorite people were often frustrated and angry about the way that /od
answered their prayers.
/od promised !braham and arah that that they would be the parents of nations. But they were childless
for a hundred years, were called upon to raise an infant in their retirement, and after all that, /od asked
!braham to sacrifice Isaac ,I assume that this was while he was still a young boy, because most of us
would be far more willing if asked to sacrifice a teenager-.
/od promised 9acob that his family would live in the 4romised Land, but he didnt live to see it. In fact,
before they made it to the 4romised Land, they had to live in slavery in 1gypt for 566 years.
/od called (oses to free his people from their slavery in 1gypt. But before he could, he was convicted of
murder, and lived in e"ile, herding sheep, for forty years.
!s often as the people prayed to enter the 4romised Land, even after they left their slavery behind, they
spent forty years wandering the desert and of them all, only two men, 9oshua and :aleb, ever set foot in it,
and (oses himself only got to see it from a distance.
;ing <avid was known as a man after /ods own heart. It was one of <avids great missions in life to
return the !rc of the :ovenant and the #abernacle of /od to Israel. While <avid accomplished these
=
things, he desperately wanted to build /od a permanent home, but /od said no. <avid planned the
#emple, he stockpiled all of the gold, silver, bronze, gemstones and building materials needed for its
construction, he found and hired all of the builders and artisans needed to build the most magnificent
worship space ever constructed, but construction did not begin until after he died and his son olomon was
crowned as king.
(any years later, /od sent his people into captivity in Babylon, and despite the prayers of the entire nation,
it was >6 years before any of them returned to Israel and even longer before they were able to rebuild the
#emple.
/ods people prayed for the arrival of the (essiah for thousands of years but he did not come to earth until
/ods time had arrived. 'ften times, /ods answer is, *Wait.+
9ohn the Baptist was called to proclaim the arrival of the (essiah, but although he knew who 9esus was,
besides hearing the voice of /od at 9esus Baptism, there is no evidence that 9ohn ever got to witness a
single miracle or hear 9esus preach before he was murdered.
#he prayers of /ods people were answered in every situation, but clearly, not in the ways that they had
hoped, and certainly not overnight by e"press mail. ometimes, /ods answer was *?o.+
'ur culture of overnight delivery, instantaneous communication, and instant gratification, feeds our sense
of impatience every day and we were dangerously impatient to begin with. Impatience itself is not a sin,
but our sense of impatience, if not controlled and properly managed, can cause us to fall into several
behaviors that are sinful. ,(ore about that ne"t week in 4art 2-.
'ur impatience can cause us to give up on /od or to give our devotion to someone, or something, else.
We must always remember that /od is /od, and we are not.
/od always answers prayer, but not when we say so and not always the way that we want.
ometime, we .ust need to take a deep breath, slow down, and trust /od.
Because the answers to our prayer might .ust take longer than we think.
!nd after si" to eight weeks for delivery, /od might only be getting warmed up.
5

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