Presence
Notes
Transcript
The Lord has been leading me on a bit of a journey this past week, and for the past few months. I would like to share with you some of that this morning.
This week, as I was praying for about the message for this Sunday, I felt the Lord bring to mind a few passages. One of those was this moment in Scripture where Moses - leader of God’s people of Israel - has this exchange with God that honestly takes my breath away. I’d like to share that with you now:
The Lord said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’
I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.
For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’ ”
Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.
Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent.
When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses.
And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door.
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’
Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”
And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.
For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
To really understand what is happening in this passage, we need to back up in the story one chapter.
In Exodus 32, we open with the people waiting at the bottom of Mount Sinai, and it’s been a while. In the meantime, Moses has been up on the mountain receiving the 10 commandments. Throughout this whole section of Exodus there’s been this drawing up of a new covenant - or agreement - in which God is creating a people for His own with this rabble of salves that left Egypt.
What is amazing about this is that the 10 commandments - written by God on pieces of stone - are the people’s side of the “contract.” When making a covenant in ancient times, both parties received a copy of the terms of the covenant.
So, while Moses is up on the mountain with God receiving the terms, Israel is down below. Keep in mind, they have experienced the awesome power of God delivering them from the most powerful nation on the planet. They had had amazing experiences already with the Lord in the wilderness. But now Exodus 32 opens with this:
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
This is heartbreaking! After all God has done, after all they have experienced, they now are looking for something more tangible. They want something they can see - like all the other nations. Their fickle patience had run out.
What is Aaron’s response?
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 the 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!”
Meanwhile, the Lord and Moses are up on the mountain. God tells Moses:
And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.
They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”
And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.
Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
God was ready to wipe Israel out for their sin. Not because He is fickle or short-tempered. This is a total slap in the face to God, and already shatters the covenant that God had with His people.
Moses interceded for the people, and God relented. But this is where we find ourselves now in Ex 33.
God tells Israel to get up, and get going. He will keep His promise - made long ago to their forefathers - to bring them into the land He had promised to give them.
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
God tells them to go, but did you catch what is now said:
Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
Now, notice what verses 4 says:
When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.
Why was this disastrous? Because the whole point of this book of Exodus has been leading us to see God creating a people for Himself. He has promised them something far greater than the promised land, far greater even than the freedom they now have from slavery. He has promised them Presence.
I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God.
And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.
Think about Jesus, in His death and ressurection, what did He accomplish? Paying the debt for our sins, granting us eternal life. But with Whom? For Whom? God! Now we can be right with God. Now we can live in right relationship with God. Now, instead of being separated from God, we know Him and He dwells within us.
Pre-Christ, we get a look into God’s great rescue plan. He’s creating a people for Himself.
I really liked this quote:
The question was whether anyone understood what the whole enterprize was about: to have God living within them in a love relationship. - Cornerstone Commentary: Exodus. (531).
But now, Israel has totally broken the covenant. Symbolized by smashed tablets on the ground, now their relationship with God is messed up. God determines to keep His promise, but with one disastrous change: God’s not going with them. Now, instead of promised Presence, there is promised Absence (WBC, 437).
The people operate in severe mourning. No jewelry - no symbol of joy can be found on them. This is a moment - and I wonder if we too can engage in the sadness with them - where an entire nation stops at the recognition that God will not go with them.
It is at this point I want to ask: do we really value the presence of God? Sure, we accept Christ as Lord, we believe, and so we should! But do we understand the absolutely essential need we have for the presence of God to be near to us? Think about that for a moment.
This brings us to the end of verse 6. But, then we get an interlude. It seems out of place - and in some ways it is - as the story momentarily switches to tell us about this Tent of Appointed Meeting. This tent, pitched outside the normal bounds of the camp, was for meeting with God. God would meet with Moses there and talk with him face-to-face. In other words, the intimacy between Moses and God was indeed awesome. Through Moses, others could go and seek direction from the Lord as well.
Notice verse 11:
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
What intimacy Moses and God had!
Now, let’s return to the story:
Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’
Moses, having gone down to the people and told them just how disastrous their actions are, now approaches God again. Rather than outright saying “You’ve got to come with us!” He approaches it differently, asking, “You’ve told me to go and lead these people, but you have not said who’s going with me. And yet, God you have told me that I have found favor in your sight.”
Firstly, Moses is harkening back to the moment of his own calling.
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
In this moment, God is making it clear to Moses that He is going with Moses. Not just an angel, or some great army. But the Lord of Hosts. I AM is going with Moses.
You see, as great as Moses was, He was just a man. Just as I am or you are. Humanly speaking, the task before him - to lead the people out of slavery in Egypt - was too great for him. He needed the presence of God.
Turn over to Acts 1:8 for a moment:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
To accomplish the mission given to us by Jesus Christ - to go and make disciples - we need something that sets us apart from every other entity, people group, organization, etc. We need to have the presence of God. Indeed, it is the presence of God dwelling in us that both gives us identity and empowers us for service.
Moses understood, I think much more than the people did, this simple thought:
The Giver is more important than the gift.
And so he now asks God the question: “who’s going with me now?” Remember, instead of Presence there is now Absence. So, who will go up with this people - with Moses to help him lead?
Notice next Moses says:
Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”
The implication here is simple: If Moses is to keep finding favor in God’s eyes, he must know God’s will. Therefore, God must indeed dwell with him and commune with him so that Moses may know God’s will. Otherwise, Moses will soon step out of the will of God, and end up on the wrong path.
It reminds me of a verse in (Isaiah 53:6) that says “All we like sheep have gone astray.” Honestly, how many times a week do we need to stop and ask God for help, or wisdom, or guidance? We are sheep, and we like to wander. Moses is saying, “without your Presence, we’re in trouble. We need You to guide us, lest we wander from the way.”
Then he concludes with this plea: Remember that this nation - literally these people - are special. Why? Because they are your people.
God has not forgotten who His people are. He has not forgotten His promises, nor is He petty or simply butt hurt. We need to understand the lesson. What has happened here is a grievous error. God is a jealous God, who will not share space with false gods. Yet already Israel turns away. The consequence for this sin - ultimately - is the removal of Presence. Is this not the same thing that happened in the garden of Eden? Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, away from paradise, and away from the Presence of God.
Moses steps in - his intervening makes us think of Jesus, who stood in the place of all humanity by sacrificing Himself once for all sin. Moses stands now, temporarily, pleading for the re-giving of God’s presence.
This is the climax of the whole event! What will God say? Will He have mercy, or is that it for everything? Note Moses’ response in v 16:
For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
Without the Presence of God, there’s no difference between these Israelites and the rest of the world. There’s no existence of this new nation. Even Moses himself need the Presence in order to be and do what God has called him to.
What will God do?
God responds:
And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Oh what joy and relief this must have brought for Moses, and no doubt for the people too when they heard. God relented of His justified wrath and once again claimed His people as His own. Not just the gift, but the Giver would be theirs.
So Moses responds:
And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.
For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
God’s response speaks restoration to brokenness:
And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
To be known by name by God — wow!! Yet this is our lot - as believers - we are known also by name. The Lord has given us His presence, and so we can understand with great depths the sense of relief as we see God once again restore presence to this wayward and stubborn people.
When I started this message, I shared that the Lord has been taking me on a bit of a journey over the past couple of months and few weeks. Further, I shared that He had put some Scriptures on my mind for today.
The first one to share is that last response of Moses:
And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.
For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
If you’re wondering why God may have brought this up, I would also like to share another Scripture that I believe God brought to my mind. It’s a short story:
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.
But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Two sisters, two responses. Martha, busy with the housework and preparing thing for Jesus gets crabby when her sister assumes the place of a male disciple and sits at the Lord’s feet. Yet Jesus’ response flips the tables:
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Indeed, while Martha was busy getting ready for Jesus, she was missing His Presence. Mary had discovered something better. Better than preparing the room was being with the Person in it. Jesus.
Anyone starting to catch the pattern with the Scriptures here?
One more:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
Jesus says that when we come to God genuinely asking according to His will, He will give! Specifically here, we are talking about someone seeking God Himself. The Lord will always reveal Himself. So if you seek, you will find! If you knock on the door of salvation, the Lord Himself will answer.
So, anyone catch the theme in these verses?
The Giver is more import than the gift.
Moses’ cry as he met with God was simple: “If You’re not coming, don’t send us.” It was a cry for presence.
Jesus to Martha says, “Martha while you were busy doing things for me, I want you to be with me.
And to the one who seeks the Presence of the Lord, to the one who asks, and who knocks, it will not be held back from them.
For the past several weeks - before going on vacation even - I have been planning. August is planning month for me. What ministries are we doing? What’s the focus this year? What needs to change? What are we preaching on? Is this the year we reupholster the pews lime green??
Perhaps you can relate: If you’re not on vacation (and maybe if you are) there’s this sense of anticipation. Schools starts soon, maybe you’ve got young adults who are headed off to post-secondary for the first or fourth time. Kid’s and youth activities continue. A new grade is about to begin. Harvest season is in full swing - what’s the strategy for getting in these crops? Do we have parts that we need? Are these machines ready to go? In the back of all our minds is the reality that winter doth approach! Is the yard and house ready? When should the camper get packed away - can I still use it for one last hooray?
I think this is good. Certainly as a church, I think there’s a feeling of anticipation - perhaps a bit overwhelmed even! We’ve got wonderful things either re-starting or starting for the first time. God is moving in our midst and in our communities, and as we have prayed He has seen fit to involve us in His plans. Praise God.
But this week, I felt that perhaps - and I ask you to check this for yourself - we need to take a step back for a minute.
You see, September comes and we hit the ground running. We start plowing at all the things that need to be done.
Perhaps we’ve missed a step in August: Instead of asking as Moses did, that the Lord would show us the way, maybe instead we show God the way and say “please bless it.”
But that’s backwards. Because it is not us, but God, who sits on the throne. And we should seek His counsel not for blessing first, but for guidance and then blessing, as we busy ourselves about the season.
Something that Israel needed to learn in those moments after the golden calf was that they were to have no other gods before God, as the 10 commandments tell us. So too we must place God squarely on the throne of our hearts. As individuals, as families, as a church - as a people. Not our plans, our hopes, our dreams, but the Lord. Who then orients all of these things to His way.
I suppose, what I need to share with you is a confession: I felt the Lord convicted me a few weeks ago that I needed not to run ahead and try to pull Him along, but to stop, sit in His Presence, and follow in the way He makes clear.
Then again this week - even after the planning and thinking and praying were beginning to give way to practice, I felt as if we should stop, and commit our way to the Lord.
We are a very busy church. We have something every Sunday of the month (no that’s not always the case). We have mid-week ministries and next gen stuff and community things. This is a blessing. But only if our way is committed to the Lord, and first directed by Him. Otherwise, much like the people going into the promised land apart from the Presence of God, it is truly worthless.
1 Pe 2 9-10 says
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Once friends, you were of this world. Once you were unsaved. But you received mercy from God! The defining factor as a Christian is that we have been made right with God, receiving new spiritual life, and being given the Presence of God within us - the Holy Spirit!
Without God’s Presence then, who are we? Like Moses, like Israel, we are nothing. Like Martha, we can get so busy doing we miss being. We don’t want that.
Friends, as I’ve prayed and planned, and even shared things with our council, I do believe the hand of the Lord has been in it. We have many wonderful things coming up as a church. But all of us need to stop, before we go further, and come before the Lord in humble submission. We need to ask Him to both keep us in step and guide our steps.
So again I am drawn back first to Mary and Martha. Jesus said that what Mary had found - namely Presence - was better. In fact, the call to the Marthas in the room (like myself) is to stop and listen. Stop and be in the Presence. We cannot be so busy doing for God that we miss Him.
And again to Moses.
And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.
For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
I would like to pray a prayer of desperation together. If Your presence will not go with us Lord, do not send us up. Perhaps in our case - keep us from going! Why? Because we need the Presence of God going with us. What sets the people of God apart is the Presence of God in their midst. But if we march to our own plans, God has no place in them. So our prayer is like Moses’ request: show us your way. The call to us is to ask, to seek, and to knock, and the Lord’s promise is He will answer.
The first Sunday of the month is communion Sunday here at LGT. Communion is a gift where we together remember the sacrifice of Christ for us on the cross. We remember this as we eagerly wait for His coming again.
As we think about presence, this is an opportune time for us the engage with the Lord.
So, here is what I’m asking us to do. Let’s receive communion together. As you prepare, focus not on what needs to be done this week, or how even you can serve God. Focus just on Jesus’ sacrifice - for you.
Once we’ve taken communion together, I’d like to open it up to allow anyone that would like to to pray a prayer for God’s Presence, and His leading and guiding. Together, we will commit our way to the Lord in this season, asking that as He has already guided, so He would continue.
