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I was exploited to pornography when I was in the fifth grade. And I battled that addiction till I was 17 years old. And one of the reasons why I believe it was prolonged so long was because I was lonely and isolated, buried by guilt and shame. And that's why I'm excited to tell you guys about my friends at Covenant Eyes. Covenant Eyes is a faith focused program that combines technology with accountability. It's not just about behavior control with them, it's actually about spiritual transformation. And I wish I had something like them to help me with my battle against pornography. Their technology detects risky content on your phone and it will even alert trusted partners so it, it can help you continue this purity journey. They integrate scripture, prayer guidances and reflection exercises to help you deepen your spiritual growth in creating healthy digital habits in your life. Freedom isn't just a one time thing, it can be a lifestyle. And that lifestyle for you can start today. So my friends at Covenant Eyes are offering our listeners today a 30 day free trial. If you click the link in my description or scan this QR code and use code BRYCE30, you can start your spiritual purity journey today with Covenant Eyes. So scan this QR code or click the link in my description. You can use code BRYCE30today and start your journey for freedom now. What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Bryce Crawford Podcast. I'm Bryce. And today's episode by the title, we're going to be talking about when God goes silent. What does that mean? You're going to find out when we open up scripture together. I pray that you guys are having a great day, watching or listening. We're going to be in Exodus 32. If you got your Bibles, open up. If not, we're going to read the Word of God. If you're listening, you don't got it or you're watching, but let me just give some context about what's going on here. Okay? So if you flip back just a few, okay? A covenant gets confirmed with Moses in Exodus 24, okay. And God tells Moses to come meet him on this mountain called Mount Sinai. Now right before this moment, what happens is in Egypt, you had Israel, the Israelites, they were enslaved. God sets him free. Moses comes in, does some crazy plagues through the, through the Lord sets it free. They escape Moses, parts of Red Sea, they get in. I mean, can you just imagine the stuff Moses does? Plagues that mock all of the Egyptian gods. Then he parts the Red Sea, they walk across it, it splits in half and then it goes back and kills Pharaoh's army. Okay? A lot went down. The Israelites, if you saw that, if I was in Israel, I'd be like, oh, shoot, I am never forgetting this. I am becoming a Christian. And that's that, right? And that's what we tend to say, let's walk with Jesus. Go. God, if you do this thing for me, then I'll follow you for the rest of my life. But that's always most of the time. Not always, but most of the time, never the case. So now we're in verse. In chapter 32, Moses is still on Mount Sinai alone with God. He's been up there. He's. He's up there for 40 days. That's how, that's how long he goes up there. But he says, hey, I'm going to go up there and I'll come back and blah, blah, blah. Great. Exodus 32, verse 1. When people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together up to Aaron and said to him, keep in mind Moses's right hand guy, Aaron. They go up to Aaron, they say, up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us out, brought us up out of the land of Egypt. We don't know what has become of him. So Aaron said to them, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people took off their rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And then Aaron continues talking, we need to pause right here. So the Israelites got impatient. Mo said he was going to go up there to communicate with God. That's what, that's what his role was to do, to communicate to God and then deliver the messages to the people. Well, he was delayed, according to the Israelites. So they get impatient. When they got impatient, they decided to take all of their gold jewelry, give it to Aaron. And Aaron built them a golden calf to worship. A small detail that we need to recognize is where this gold jewelry came from. When they were leaving Egypt, when Moses was leading the Israelites out, God allowed the Israelites essentially to loot the land and take gold with them as they left. This gold was a gift from God. And in chapter 32, we watched the Israelites take a gift that God graciously gave them, turn it into an idol, and then they say, this golden image that we just built right here, this is the thing that led us out of Egypt. Not Moses, not Yahweh. This thing right here. I want to pause for a minute and reflect on that. When God goes silent in today's society, especially, we do similar things that Israel did. And the whole purpose, one of the main purposes of looking at how stupid the Israelites were in the Old Testament was for us as believers to go, yeah, that I'm never gonna do that. Whatever they did, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do that. You know, I, I, it's like, oh, Adam and Eve were tempted by a serpent in the garden to eat fruit. Yeah, I'd never do that. Oh, I'd never turn on God after he pulled through for me. Well, I just mentioned at the beginning, how many times have you told God yourself? You say, oh, I would never do what Israel did. I would never take a gift that God given me of gold and then turn it into an idol and worship in an abandoned God. Yeah, but every time you say, God, if you just do this thing for me, if you heal my heart from my breakup, I'll serve you, God. If you just help me pass this quiz or test, I'll serve you, God. If you get me a job, I'll serve you, God. If you get me a girlfriend or a boyfriend, I'll serve you. Then God pulls through, and then you abandon God. You say, all right, see, I got what I wanted. You never loved God in the first place in that moment. In fact, we do it all the time, so we can't say, oh, I'd never do that. I mean, the Israelites did it. I've done it in my own life, especially before I became a Christian. Maybe you're doing it right now. Maybe you have done it in the past. And we think, oh, God's gone silent. He's forgotten about me. He's not answered his prayer. Or how many times have you prayed and asked God to do something in your life? And, and you say, oh, God, would you just give me this thing? And then you don't get it. And then you say, oh, God never answered my prayer. I remember when I was younger, I wanted an Xbox. God, would you give me an Xbox? I didn't get an Xbox when I prayed for it. So I thought God didn't answer my prayer. That was not the case. Maybe, just maybe, two things. Number one, When God doesn't give you something, maybe that's because you can't be trusted with it. But the second thing is, when God does give you something, that is, that should, that gift from God should lead us into more worship unto him, into more depth of wisdom coming from the Holy Spirit, learning in the Scriptures, not turning our back on Him. And you know what's so crazy? Do you know what Moses is doing on Mount Sinai with God? Like the perspective that the Israelites have of Moses and God. God Yahweh at the time. Yahweh in this, in this context. And we do this all the time with God or maybe even with friends, we think, oh, he's just dilly dallying up there. He's just, he's just being lazy. He's just doing his thing. No, no, no. A couple things are going on up there. Number one, Moses gets the Commandments up there. Moses receives the Commandments on Mount Sinai. But secondly, in this instance, he is actively receiving the Commandments for Israel and for you and I. But secondly, do you know what else he's doing? He's getting the instructions to build the Ark of the Covenant. Now that may sound like, oh, yeah, he's building the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah, it's a. It's a thing that happened in the Bible, whatever. No, no, this is monumental, the news that he's getting delivered. Because the Ark of the Covenant was the next way that God desired to get close to mankind. So here's the timeline. God designed mankind to be in active relationship with Him. That's how he's originally designed you and I. God has designed you and I be in relationship with Him. That's what the garden was. It was walking in relationship with him. Sin created a separation, a gap between man and God. So the first thing God does is he wants to get closer to humanity. So he delivers the law. He delivers the Commandments to Moses. So you have the law, right? This is what righteousness looks like according to the Old Testament. Here's the law. 613 laws, 10 commandments. There you go. This is the law. That's one step closer. Because if you follow the law, you're walking in righteousness. According to the Old Testament law, right? Now, righteousness can be summed up in love. God love people, as Jesus says in the New Testament. But here, the law. And then actively on Mount Sinai, after he delivers the Commandments, he goes, hey, one step further. I want to get closer to you. I want you to build this Ark of the Covenant. And I want to actually house my presence inside of this box. So now he says, yes, my Holy Spirit rests on one particular prophet. But I want to put my presence in this thing called the Ark of the Covenant. And you could take it from city to city. There's a certain people group that has to carry it. And when it comes to the tabernacle and things like that, there's only certain people that come up. But here's the thing. I'm going to put my presence in a box. They can carry the presence of the Lord wherever they go. And then it became one step further. Jesus took on flesh. Then God became a man. God became a friend, physically in a physical body. So you and I can know what it's like to experience relationship with him. He walked among us. He lived a sinless life, he experienced suffering, all these things. And then he comes one step further, goes even further. As Jesus ascended into heaven, human beings now became, quote, unquote, the Ark of the Covenant. The Holy Spirit can now live inside of people. It doesn't just rest on one person. It can actually dwell, live in, inside of people. Moses isn't just up on this mountain, dilly dallying, doing his thing. They're taking a monumental step to bring God closer to people. Here's the Ark of the Covenant. I'm going to house my presence in it. While people think that God has forgotten about them, that Moses forgotten about them. No, no, no. They're taking a step. If you feel like you can't hear God and God's not responding, you don't even know what God is up to, what he's working on. For all things work together for the good, for those who are in Christ. Jesus. God, I can't hear you, so I'm just gonna. I'm gonna go back to this thing. That's the immediate gratification we live in. We're a popcorn generation right now. It's like we want things done quickly. We don't have patience, we don't have time. God tends to take time on things. In fact, the most beautiful things in life take time. The most, the. The most beautiful cathedrals, the most beautiful buildings, the most beautiful projects. Diamonds, gold. Takes time. How long did Israel wander in the desert? 40 years. How old was Abraham when he had. When he had Isaac? A hundred years old. The silent years. 400 years of silence between the last Old Testament prophet and Jesus being born. God tends to take his time on things. Why is that? Well, we know that to be true, that he takes his time on things. We see it through scripture, we see it in our own lives. But one of the reasons that God takes his time is because he knows what's best for us. God's never late or delayed as the Israelites. Oh, Moses, delayed. God's delayed? No, no, no, he's. God's always on time. Patience is a fruit of the spirit. We got to learn to use patience more. But why is it that when we feel like that God has gone silent, we decide to use things that God has graciously given us and rebel against him? As a matter of fact, the Israelites deemed that this golden calf that they built out of the gold that God gave them, that was the God that set them free out of Egypt. Let's substitute it this way. God's becoming impatient. So I'm gonna turn back to the porn. Then you get this immediate dopamine hit for a moment and you think, oh man, that's the relief I was looking for. That's where I got it from that porn. It really set me free. Then the shame and the guilt hits. Reality hits, weight of sin hits, suffering hits. Oh man, I'm just lonely. I need a girlfriend or a boyfriend. Getting that relationship, immediate dopamine hit. Wow, man, you changed my life. You're the only reason why I'm alive today, man. I believe this isn't that. And then you realize that they're a finite human being and you can't put God sized expectations on a limited human being. And then they fail you once. And then you go, wow, I'm back into this place. What did I do? God is always on time. So when it comes to going, when God goes silent, God doesn't just like go silent for no reason. There's a couple reasons that you might not be able to hear God. The first reason is maybe because God's voice is described as still, calm voice, just like the waters. And you can't hear because you got a lot going on in your brain. It's crowded, it's noisy up there. You can't focus, maybe you're distracted. If the devil can't make you sin, he'll make you busy. Maybe that's why you can't hear the Lord. But maybe you just can't hear him. Maybe because God's up to something. God's always up to something. God's the God of the universe. He's got it in his hand. But he cares about you. That's why he desires to work in your life. That's why he is desired. From the beginning of time, when sin separated, man from him. He said, I want to do everything to draw people back to me because I am jealous for relationship with them. Let us not grow impatience. Impatience in our life breeds rebellion against God. Because when we become impatient, it allows us to get this warped perception that God doesn't care about us, he's neglected us. God isn't listening to me. God has gone silent. God has abandoned me. And that can allow sin to creep in the crack of the door. Breathe this life of rebellion. Don't use the things that God has given you, your gifts, your talents, things that he has given you for rebellion against Him. Use them for his glory. As a matter of fact, even though Israel and Old Testament would be idiots a lot of the time, when they would get in exile, you know, or they would wander the desert for 40 years or something like that, you know what they would do? They would use circular thinking, not linear. See, we in America, we do linear thinking. The past is in the past. The moments now, the future's to come. We only look ahead. Israel, on the other hand, when they would get in a bind, they would go, well, Yahweh pulled through for us before. So if we're in a rut, we're in a sticky situation. God's gonna pull through for us again, if not with more power than the last. That's how we should view life. That's how we should view this whole thing that we have called the human experience. This one life that we get. We're simply pilgrims in this life. And then when we die, we stand before God. But secondly, I want to say something. What if you pray for something and God doesn't answer? What if you ask God to do something in your life, he doesn't give you what you want? And you think he said he didn't answer? Well, first of all, knows our answers to prayer, knows our answers to prayer. Because if we're trusting God, we're trusting that he has our best interest at heart. We're trusting that his way is better. We're trusting the whole nine. So if he doesn't respond, we have to trust him. Now, in 2 Corinthians 12, if you have your Bible flip there, read it yourself. Paul says, I got this thorn in my side and I asked God to take it away. We don't know if it was a sin issue, spiritual attack, whatever it may be. But then he's complaining about it for a little bit. But then he goes on to end it with by saying, but I'm grateful for the storm because it keeps me humble and reliant on God. And then Jesus Christ speaks to Paul and says, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in your weakness. What's the parallel I'm making here? The point I'm making is if you ask God to take something away and you think he's gone silent, maybe the reason he hasn't taken it away is because if he did take it away, you'd be your own God and you wouldn't need Him. Maybe you're praying for something and God has said no. And you think God hasn't answered your prayer. You don't think God cares about you. But the reason he said no is because if he said yes, that thing would crush you, hurt you, create this gap between you and him where you wouldn't need him. This thing that he's been trying to from the beginning of time, to have no gap. That's why he sent Jesus Christ, to be the bridge to Him. We, we have to have a right perspective. And so I want to pray for us that God would give us peace, that we can remain content with who he is, what he has in store for us, and that we don't grow cold and impatient. Lord Jesus, we thank you for everything that you've given us. We thank you for your son, Jesus, the ultimate gift. God, we thank you that you've given us gifts, you've given us friends, you've given us family, whether blood related or not. Lord Jesus, would you allow us to not grow impatient? Strengthen us, be with us, give us peace and joy. Lord, we love you, we thank you, we praise you, and it's in your name we pray. Amen.