Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Path to Restoration*

/Exodus 33.1-17/

Pastor Oesterwind

 

*Background~/Review:* 

1.

God’s response to Israel’s sin with the golden calf is a test of Moses’ leadership over the people.

He passed that test by interceding on their behalf.

2.       God invested much in the redemption of Israel.

Moses reminds God of this so that He would in mercy remember this investment.

3.       Sin in God’s people brings reproach.

While we may be faithless, He ever remains faithful.

4.       Moses witnessed firsthand what God had revealed to him on the mountain.

When he did, he was filled with righteous indignation – breaking the commandments because Israel had already shattered them; grinding the calf into drinkable powder because Israel must drink the bitter results of their idolatry.

5.       Aaron responded to Moses’ indignation by deflecting and marginalizing it.

6.

The Levites responded to Moses’ call and command to kill their brothers, friends and neighbors.

This dividing line demonstrated the true loyalties of these men, even though it must have been agonizing to follow through.

It’s like disciplining one of my sons when I’m the one who needs the discipline.

7.

There are awful enduring consequences to sin.

None are more enduring than being blotted out of God’s Book of Life, God’s record of those who possess eternal life.

We must always remind ourselves that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3.9).

This brings us to the text under consideration this evening (Read Exodus 33.1-17).

The aftermath of the golden calf continues.

God reveals to Moses that He will not go up in the midst of Israel because they are stiff-necked.

The people respond to this pronouncement with sorrow (1-6).

Moses responds by pitching his own tent far from the camp and meeting with God face to face, as a man speaks to his friend (7-11).

Moses presses Israel’s need for the grace of God, and God promises that His Presence will go with Israel as they continue their journey (12-17).

This passage provides for us the path to restoration after failure in our lives.

*/Transition:  Restoration begins when God reveals the greatest consequence to sin in our lives:  His departure./*

The Revelation of Sin (33.1-6)

“/Then the Lord said to Moses, “Depart and go up from here, you and the people whom *you* have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’

And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.

Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.

For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the children of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people.

I could come up into your midst in one moment and consume you.

Now therefore, take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do to you.’ ” So the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by Mount Horeb.

/” (Exodus 33:1–6, NKJV)

The text opens with the same abruptness that verse 7 of chapter 32 opened (that’s where we began last time).

Instead of “Go and get down [from His mountain]”, Moses is commanded “Go and get up from here [to the land]”.

Leaving the mountain is really leaving the Presence of God.

That He is disgusted with the sin of Israel is obvious in the opening six verses of chapter 33.

God will fulfill His */promise/*, but Israel will go without His */Presence/*.

At the close of chapter 32, the LORD plagues Israel for the sin of the calf.

He speaks of visiting them in order to punish them.

While the plague is certainly part of this, the greater grief and punishment stems from the fact that He will stay on the mountain and they will go into the land of promise without Him.

Some of you have astutely noticed that v. 3 states that God will send His angel.

The NKJ translators have capitalized angel.

The KJV and NASB render this phrase “an angel” which is the better interpretation of the text.

That this angel cannot be the pre-incarnate Christ stems from the fact that God will not go up with Israel.

The Angel of the Lord is the second member of the Godhead; therefore, if God will not go up, it seems reasonable that Jesus, the Son of God, will not go up.

When the people hear this “bad news” (v.

4) they mourn as one would mourn for the dead.

They are struck with hopeless grief.

They express the grief by removing their ornaments.

A cursory reading of this may make you think they dressed like Christmas trees J, but it simply means festive dress and jewels – that which the people had donned in the presence of the calf to make merry in the swill pit of immorality.

This is a bleak revelation of sin.

It separates us from a holy God because it demonstrates our rejection of Him.

Instead of being separated from the world to God, we separate ourselves from God to the world!

We cannot sin without rejecting God at some level.

So, we are left alone in great grief and anxiety.

A holy God could come into our sinful midst (even as that possibility existed for Israel; see v.3), but in one moment He would have to consume us.

Perhaps God would have sent */the/* Angel of the LORD had Israel not sinned with the golden calf; but they did.

They would settle for */an/* angel that would simply guide them.

When sin is revealed in our lives, it demonstrates to us how far we have strayed from God to our own idols.

At least Israel grieved at this revelation of God not going with them.

Are there not times in our lives when we want the blessings of our own promised land and are perfectly satisfied with the fact that God will not go up with us?

We want eternal life, but not the restraint from living our temporal lives as we see fit!

When God reveals sin in our lives, we should strip it out of our lives in the way Israel striped the ornaments off of their bodies.

The Spirit of God moves and convicts of sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come.

We need to take off the dark robe of unrighteousness and refuse to wear it again!

The revelation of sin ought to lead to repentance of sin.

Nothing is more important in life than the Presence of God in our midst – to know He is close and to grieve not God the Holy Spirit.

When God reveals sin in our lives, He reminds us of our need for Jesus Christ.

*/Transition:  The revelation of sin leads Israel and Moses to an awful realization.

In verses 7-11, we have…    /*

The Realization of Sin (33.7-11)

“/Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting.

And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp.

So it was, whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle, that all the people rose, and each man stood at his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the tabernacle.

And it came to pass, when Moses entered the tabernacle, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses.

All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshiped, each man in his tent door.

So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.

/” (Exodus 33:7–11, NKJV)

Moses pitched what I believe to be his personal tent outside the camp.

He called it the tabernacle of meeting.

It is here that Moses spoke with the pillar-manifestation of God.

Moses spoke face to face with God, as a man speaks to his friend (v.

11).

The people were keenly aware of Moses’ movements.

When Moses went outside the camp, the people rose, stood at the doors of their own tents, and watched Moses until he disappeared into the tabernacle of meeting.

The people also witnessed the pillar of cloud.

They worshiped, each man in his tent door (v.

10).

God had not abandoned Israel completely at this point.

He would not be worshiped in a tabernacle in the midst of Israel (encircled by the 12 tribes), but He would meet with their leader outside the camp.

I believe this accentuates the absence of God.

However, God would continue to protect and care for His people.

The tent of meeting is not the tabernacle (sometimes it is; context dictates the use of this term; see 40.2).

It did not hold the ark or any of the other furniture we looked at a few weeks back.

It became a substitute for the tabernacle.

It also helped Israel to realize and acknowledge what they had done.

They must now separate themselves from the camp and go out to God via Moses’ intercession.