“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.”
In the book “The Lord of the Flies” a group of boys find themselves on an island stranded away from their families and the normal life they were living in. In this power vacuum, a struggle arises between different minded boys. On one side you have the good minded boys and the other side, you have the evil minded camp of boys.
In Exodus, we find Moses and the Israelites in a similar predicament. The Israelites have been led out of a Egypt where they spent over 400 years, most of them as slaves. This slave like existence was their normal life. All of the sudden, the Lord leads them out of Egypt and into a desert. Camped by a mountain where Moses has been gone for quite some time, the people start thinking he is never coming back.
In the Lord of the Flies book, the two groups of boys go to war with each other and the reader gets lost in an emotionally charged fight on both sides. Moses, while on the mountain, heard from God and when he came back, He saw that the people have sinned, made a calf from gold, and are worshiping it. In the beginning of chapter 32, the Bible says that Moses was long in coming down from the mountain. The Israelites, in this vacuum of visible leadership, created a golden calf to worship replacing the Lord and Moses all together.
Our Christian lives are very similar to this story because we often reflect on when God shows up and delivers us from something dreadful and then the silence comes. You know, the days, weeks, and even years without hearing a word from God. The Israelites made a great error in the time while Moses was on the mountain. You see if we are not careful, we will do the same thing. We will keep looking for something new to happen even if that something is not from God. Chasing from mountain top to mountain top.
Moses came down from the mountain and sees what the people have done. He breaks the tablets of stone and enacts the judgment of the Lord that day where over three thousands die. In the Lord of Flies the bad group of kids ends up killing a rival member of the other group in a fight and right after that the parents arrive rescuing them. Shocked at what they see, the parents say what God is saying, “what is going on here?”
If you find yourself in a vacuum of direction from God, don’t make the same mistake the Israelites did. Maybe even the leader of your group is duped into doing something stupid and against God. Remember what Bible says in Isaiah 26:3 “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.” Keep your daily intake of the Lord at the beginning of every day. You never know when that vacuum of leadership might suck you in.
Moses convinced the Lord the next day to not destroy the Israelites. Prayer changes the heart of God. Start a conversation with the Lord that has no end. Some would call that a relationship. He stands at the door and knocks, let Jesus in, you will never be the same. He will fill that vacuum in your life.

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