7-20-25 God With US

Good morning, I want to give a big thank you for the opportunity to share with you this morning.

We have this docturnal belief that after the miracles of the New Testament they slowed and even ceased.

Meaning, God was still at work, but as more of a background worker rather than on the forefront.

Meaning when we read the Bible we see instances of people laying hands on people who are blind, deaf, lame, or dead. And then they stop being blind, deaf, lame or dead.

That is a miracle and God used people to execute these miracles.

God also, throughout the scriptures, showed up in visions, dreams, and sometimes in person.

And there are people today that say that has all stopped with the apostles and will resume again when the end times are in full swing.

Many of us believers today come from different backgrounds when it comes to modern day miracles.

Some are Assembly of God background and I know you guys lay on hands and see results.

Some have a background in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and we too fully believe God is ever present and ever working in and through believers.

Others come from a background where we are taught that miracles happened a ton in the Bible and since we don’t see a ton of them today that means God has pulled back.

Today I want to use a little of my time to reaffirm those who believe God is still active, and hopefully persuade those that believe that he has ceased, that he hasn’t.

Let’s start with a little timeline.

When I started searching for Christ in the Old Testament, I obviously started with Genesis. And I found Jesus everywhere. I found him at the forefront of many passages, in the background, and even in subtle events. He was everywhere.

And the book of Genesis covers just over 2,000 years of human history, so you would expect a lot of God in those pages.

Exodus, however, I’m finding Jesus less prominent and much more subtle. Sure, he’s there, no doubt, but not like in Genesis.

And in fact, we are going to see in Exodus, this week and next what the people did in order to tell God to back off a bit.

Now, I hope no one here would be the one to stand up and say, I got enough God, I’m good. But there are a lot of us who live that statement.

A man by the name of Brennan Manning once said,

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” - Brennan Manning

But that is many a Christian’s lifestyle. We don’t want to be weird so we act more like the world than Jesus.

But I will say this, the closer you get to God, the weirder you’ll get to people.

And the weirder you get to other people, the less you’ll care what they think about you.

Let’s open our Bible’s to Exodus 19 and see what happens when God shows up in the wilderness to his people.

Exodus 19:1–6 ESV

1 On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. 2 They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain, 3 while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

This underlined phrase is a very interesting phrase to tell an entire people.

A kingdom of priests.

What does a priest do?

- Talks to God. - Tells people about God

That’s the basics, obviously more to it, but talk to God and tell people about God.

And a question arises, isn’t this the Levites job?

And that would be a very good question. But it does not become the Levites job until Exodus 32 and the reasons for that start here at this event.

You see God wants only the very best for everyone who follows him, but we often take a step back when God get’s too close.

Here in our passage today we see an invitation. And it’s not just any invitation it is a personal and intimate invitation to know God. God wants the people of Israel to be in his presence. He wants to be with them.

And at first the people said, Yeah, Let’s do it.

But that’s not all. You see God knows he is perfect and that Israel is not. So, some things have to take place so that the people can even hear God’s voice. They have to wash themselves, their clothes and take 3 days to do it all.

Then they are instructed that when God is speaking not to get too close. Yes, God wants to be in the midst of the people, but when you introduce something so perfect and holy to something that is not, one of two things happen. The perfect thing gets tainted or the tainted thing gets destroyed.

Since we know that God can not be tainted the only other option is that the tainted person would get destroyed. So, God warns them. And a spoiler, they listen. This time.

And this is what God says to the people:

Exodus 20:2–3 ESV

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

Exodus 20:4 ESV

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image,

Exodus 20:7 ESV

7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,

Exodus 20:8 ESV

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Exodus 20:12 ESV

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Exodus 20:13 ESV

13 “You shall not murder.

Exodus 20:14 ESV

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

Exodus 20:15 ESV

15 “You shall not steal.

Exodus 20:16 ESV

16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Exodus 20:17 ESV

17 “You shall not covet

This is the poster on the wall version. Reading the whole of chapter 20 gives some more details to these words. But these are the words that God himself directly spoke to the people of Israel.

God came and spoke to the people. Loved on them. Gave them everything they needed so they could point themselves in God’s direction and walk his way.

The 10 commandments were an encouragement to show the people that with God in their midst they could be that kingdom of priests to the world and point everyone to God as their savior.

But what does Israel do?

Exodus 20:18–19 ESV

18 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”

God was in their midst and no one fell dead. But that is their fear that even being near God is too scary. This isn’t the healthy, I respect God’s holiness, fear. This is I’m going to die because God is scary fear.

This is not what God was trying to get across, but that is how the people took it.

When Moses went to speak with God, he couldn’t get up that mountain fast enough. The Bible even says God’s glory shone on his face. Moses knew God and wanted to be with him every moment.

The people on the other hand, didn’t.

Even Moses tries to reassure them.

This was not the right response to the presence of God, but as we learned last week, God often meets us where we are at. And next week we’ll see his compromise, but let me illustrate as best I can how this went down and show you another instance where it happened again with different results.

Imagine two plates. One is very clean, the other is very dirty. If I put them together what happens to the clean plate?

Right, it becomes dirty. So, for the dirty plate to touch the clean plate, what must one do?

Right, clean the plate. Well, let’s make this harder. First, we have the clean plate, and let me tell you, it’s never been dirty. In fact, it can’t get dirty, it repels all filth.

Now, let’s say I take some dish soap to the dirty plate. Am I going to get 100% of all germs and molecules of this plate? Nope, most soaps claim is 99.9%. That means the plate it still a little dirty. But it’s close. Not close enough to be stacked with the clean plate, but clean enough to be close to it.

Enough to see how clean the plate is and to see where it’s own flaws are still present.

God is the clean plate. And he wants the other plate close. The Israelites are the dirty plate.

They’ve cleaned themselves, but are too afraid to even listen to God.

We are often like that ourselves, we like to hear about God, from books, or pastors, or other believers. But when it comes to really getting close to him, some of us back off.

We think we’re not good enough. ANd to be honest. You’re not. Not even close.

James 2:10 ESV

10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

Even if you were 99.9% clean, you’re not good enough.

But God still wants to be with you. He loves you and desires you. No matter how dirty you are.

You come as you are, but you will leave changed.

So, in Exodus 20, God opens up his perfect realm to an imperfect people. They don’t see God, but they hear him. And they feared God.

Let’s look at that verse briefly

Exodus 20:20 ESV

20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”

The first fear here is a verb, an action. Do not act afraid.

Same sentence, fear again, this time as a noun. A noun is a person place or thing. Here it is a thing. meaning have a stature of fear, of respect, awe, wonder.

But at all this Israel still backed off. Moses got closer. He wanted to be near to God, every second.

Now, let’s fast forward about 2,000 years to 1st century Judea. Let’s hike up a mountain with Jesus, Peter, John and James and see an interesting occurrence.

Luke 9:28–36 ESV

28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. 30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34 As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” 36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

On a mountain, God’s glory shinning. I want you to note the different response from each audience.

The people of Israel were scared. They didn’t want to be there. They were fine with Moses going to talk to God, but they were too scared to do it themselves.

Here we have Peter, James and John. Granted they have been in the very presence of God the Son for quite sometime, but here we have a gateway between heaven and earth, we see Moses, Elijah and Jesus in glory with the voice of the Father booming around them. And they were dozing.

I think they were at such peace in the presence of God’s ultimate glory they started to fall asleep.

So of course that means those who fall asleep in church must just be really in tuned to the glory of God. Or not.

So, the disciples, in their peaceful sleepiness, want to build some tents. The word they used is tabernacle. And a tabernacle is a dwelling place. We are going to get into that more next week, but Moses and Elijah are not there to stay, they were only there to speak to Jesus briefly.

And we don’t get much on their conversation, just that they were speaking to Jesus about his departure.

But we do hear from the Father.

“This is MY son,”

We had also seen this at Jesus’ baptism, but here it is significant to the audience.

When God’s voice boomed to Israel, I firmly believe it was an encouragement. God was letting the people know that they were going to be his mouthpiece to the world. But they didn’t want it. They wanted Moses to be God’s mouth piece to them.

The disciples on the other hand. Got it. They knew their job was to tell others about Jesus. And they got to work.

Imagine if the disciples decided to let the resurrection speak for itself. And the 500 witnesses to the resurrection did the same.

Let somebody else do it.

But, I’m not a pastor, you say. I’m not a good study, I don’t know much. It’s all i can do to understand 10% of what is said at church.

Great tell that 10%.

After Jesus’ ascension a guy named Saul came to know Jesus. We know him as Paul. And he was a learned man. He knew the Old Testament better than anyone. He knew the law. He knew it all.

But here is what he said,

1 Corinthians 2:1–2 ESV

1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

That’s all you need. Can you know more, sure. Don’t limit yourself if you can handle it. But if you have a family member or friend who doesn’t know Jesus. Let them know that Jesus Christ was crucified for them. That’s it. No fancy message, no great debate. Just Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And then watch the glory of God wash over. Or the fear creep in. It’s going to be one of those. Some people don’t want to hear it and that’s not on you. They are not rejecting you, they are rejecting Jesus. And others are hungry for it and want to hear more. If that’s you, great, tell them what Jesus has done in your life. If you aren’t confident, give me or Jim a call and let’s meet.

Being in God’s presence is a fearful thing. But not in the way we think. It can be a respectful awe. A peace that fills us. Don’t run away or let someone else be the mouth piece. Stand up and say

Jesus Christ and him crucified.

If you didn’t write it down last week and want to now, I have the prayer many of us said last week up on the screen.

Lord, do in me all that you NEED to so that you can do through me all that you WANT to.

Saying and meaning these words will bring change to your life. I hope you say them and draw closer to him.

You may never be a preacher or a street evangelist. But you might plant the seed that grows in someone’s heart to the glory of God.

Let’s pray