Choose His Presence

Think with me for a second: what is the one thing you want, more than anything else?

Is it a better job, better physical health, or stronger relationships? Maybe you are thinking bigger—something like world peace or an end to racism or hunger?

Where we pick up in Exodus this morning, we are finding Israel in a similar situation. In a sense, God is promising to give them what they want, but

What if God offered to do what it was you wanted, but with a catch? What if God granted you a stronger relationship with your spouse, or all the money you would need to live comfortably, or even peace on earth, and yet if he did, you would never know the closeness of his presence again?

That’s the situation Moses and Israel found themselves in in this morning’s passage. Go ahead and open your Bible to .

As you’re turning that way, let’s talk about what has happened with Moses and Israel since last time we were together.

God has delivered his people out of slavery in Egypt, and now, they have been led by him to Mount Sinai. They have been at Sinai for some time while God called Moses up on the mountain to receive his law.

Moses was gone for a long time, and the people started getting restless. They could see that God’s presence was like a cloud on top of the mountain, but they couldn’t go any closer to get near him.

They decided they would do the next best thing: build an idol. The people gave gold to Aaron, Moses’ brother, and he made it into a calf for them to worship.

The people started partying and worshiping this false idol, and eventually, God pointed it out to Moses.

Moses came down from the mountain, and he and others put 3,000 men to death that day for their idolatry.

Moses had to plead with God not to destroy the people, not because they didn’t deserve to die, but because of a concern for God’s name. If God killed off the Israelites, it would give the other nations reason to think that God wasn’t big enough to rescue his people.

God

Still, as punishment for their idolatry, God caused a plague to go through the people and many of them died.

That’s where we pick up this morning.

Moses is given a choice, and he chooses to pray boldly to God on behalf of his people. Instead of settling for what seemed great on the surface, he leaned in and begged for God’s presence.

This passage gives us a great picture of who God is and how he deals with people. There is a thread running through it, though, that points to how important it is for us to choose God’s presence over anything else.

That’s where I want us to be as we leave this morning…willing to put it all on the line so that we can know God’s presence in our lives.

I know, God is present everywhere at all time. That is part of his nature and cannot change. However, there is a unique way that God shows up to comfort, confront, and guide his people at different seasons.

It is a poor analogy, but you know the difference between your spouse or your kids being in the room with you on their phones or tablet or zoned out watching TV, and when they are actually present with you. Sure, they may be there, but you don’t sense that tenderness of being together.

To be clear, God is never distracted, but there are times when we are more aware of the nearness of God than others.

For Moses and Israel, this was demonstrated by the pillar of cloud and fire.

It is true that we aren’t likely to have the same kind of experience Moses did, but we can and should be just as hungry and thirsty for God’s presence as he was. We should desire God’s nearness more than anything he can do for us.

We must choose God’s presence.

Let’s draw three principles for our lives from what we see between God and Moses this morning.

Start with me in .

In order for us to choose God’s presence, we must...

1) Get serious about sin.

Verse 1 starts off sounding good, doesn’t it? God is going to fulfill his promise to give them the land. He is going to send an angel to defeat all the nations ahead of them, and they will finally be able to take over what they had been waiting on for over 400 years.

It is going to be a rich and fertile land, but there will be one thing missing: God’s presence is not going to accompany them as they go.

From the moment they left Egypt, God has demonstrated that he was with them through a pillar of cloud during the day and fire at night.

Now, they have shown their hand, and their hearts are not in line with God’s design, so he will not go with them.

Look again at verse 3...

God said of them, “You are a stiff-necked people.” That doesn’t mean they needed to go see a chiropractor or get off their phones and work on their posture. It meant that they were like a stubborn ox or donkey that wouldn’t turn its head when you tried to lead it a direction it didn’t want to go.

They already showed that they weren’t willing to follow God’s lead, and that’s why so many had died in the aftermath of their sin.

God said, “I might destroy you on the way...” Then look at verse 5.

Let’s stop and think about this for a moment: is God saying that he is stressed out by them, and they are about on his last nerve? If they mess up just one more time...

Is he the dad who has been in the car for a long time with kids who are whiny, yelling, “Don’t make me pull this car over!”?

For some of you, that is your view of God, and I hope you will see something clearly here: God isn’t a frustrated old man whose last nerve you just happened to find.

No, he is saying this as an act of grace.

You see, God is a just God, which means by his very nature, because he is so holy, so perfect, and so just, he cannot tolerate sin. He cannot overlook sin in his presence. He is too good for that, which is really a good thing for us.

If God wasn’t that just, then we would have no certainty that he will ultimately deal with the injustices in the world around us. You might draw the lines in different places, but we can all agree that there are some people who commit unjust actions who deserve punishment for them.

He knows the hearts of the Israelites, and he knows how stubborn they are. He knows that they will continue in sin, and if so, he will have to punish it.

Let that sink in for a minute—that’s how serious sin is.

It isn’t that God set up some arbitrary set of attitudes and actions he thought you should and shouldn’t do. No; right and wrong stem from his character and nature, from who God is.

When you and I sin, we are saying to God, “I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you say, I am going to do this the way I want to do it.”

God is too holy to allow that kind of behavior. He is too good to let sin go unpunished.

That’s why he said, “If I go up with you, I am going to judge you.”

It was an act of grace that was designed to get their attention and help them see how serious their sin is.

He called them to put away their jewelry, which would have been a sign of mourning. You would wear your nice jewelry to a party, not to a funeral.

As an act of mourning, the people put away their jewelry for the rest of the 40 years of wandering.

Let’s get personal for a minute: how do you respond to sin in your own heart?

If you are going to choose God’s presence, then you need to get serious about the sin in your life.

I am not talking about how many times you “like” and share that post on Facebook that calls out a particular sin.

I am talking about in your own heart, in your own life: what do you think about the sin in your own heart?

When is the last time you sat down with God and seriously asked him to do what David asked:

Psalm 139:23–24 CSB

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way.

There is not a one of us who has reached the point where we are completely without sin, so when is the last time you let God search out your heart?

If you know of areas where you have been sinning, what steps are you taking to change?

Remember, Jesus advised us to take drastic measures to defeat sin:

Matthew 5:29–30 CSB

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

matthew 5:

“Well, I feel really bad when I sin.” Good—that’s called conviction, and it is a good thing. James says our hearts should be burdened when we realize we are sinning:

James 4:9–10 CSB

Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

ja 4:9-10

However, it can’t stop with just feeling sad; you need to truly repent, which means you allow the weight of how far you have fallen from God lead you to change and start living differently.

The people of Israel demonstrated that with outward signs of mourning, but their hearts weren’t changed, and God did have to discipline them over and over and over.

They never were truly serious about their sin, which also kept them from recognizing what Moses saw.

He knew that the only way to keep from falling back into sinful patterns is to...

2) Spend time with God.

Perhaps this is too obvious, but if we are going to choose God’s presence, we have to spend time with him!

Pick up again in verses 7-11...

As a symbol of God’s presence being distant from the people, Moses put a tent outside the camp where you would go to meet with God.

This wasn’t the Tabernacle that would be built later; this was a special tent that was just for meeting with God. There wasn’t an altar, and it didn’t have the Ark of the Covenant or anything in it.

Since God had pulled back his presence because of their sin, he met Moses outside of the camp as a reminder of what had taken place.

Yet, look at how those meetings are described. The people would bring their concerns, and Moses, as the intermediary between God and the people, would then take those concerns to God.

The two would talk as intimately as you would talk with a friend.

Isn’t that incredible? To think of having a relationship with God that is so close that you can talk to him as a friend?

Can I tell you something interesting? We have something even better.

You see, Jesus’ death gave every believer direct access to the Father, without the need of any other priest:

Hebrews 4:14 CSB

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens—Jesus the Son of God—let us hold fast to our confession.

hebrews 4:14,16

Hebrews 4:16 CSB

Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.

If you have been saved, then you have direct access to the throne of God!

As if that wasn’t enough, it gets better!

Ever since the day of Pentecost, just a few weeks after Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit has been given permanently to every person who has put their trust in Christ, so you have God living inside you!

Not only that, but we learn that he Holy Spirit prays for you when you don’t know what to say:

Romans 8:26–27 CSB

In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

romans 8:26-27

Isn’t that incredible? You don’t have to go outside the camp to a tent and have someone else talk to God on your behalf; you have him living inside you, praying for you right now!

Not only that, but Jesus is praying for you as well!

Romans 8:34 CSB

Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.

So both the Son and the Holy Spirit are interceding for us!

With direct access to the Father, and with the Son and Holy Spirit praying for us, what is our excuse for not taking the time to spend in his presence?

He is there, he is ready, and he is willing for you to come and spend time with him. Why aren’t you?

Now, when you pray and open God’s Word, the room isn’t going to fill with smoke and there won’t be an audible voice, but there will be times when you become keenly aware of his presence because your heart will be comforted through prayer, or a passage from God’s Word will suddenly become clear where you have never seen it that way before.

Don’t make the mistake that so many do, though: seek his presence just to be with him, not for the warm fuzzies or for a gold star on some heavenly obedience chart.

As you come to him through prayer and his word, you are naturally going to grow in the third aspect of choosing his presence that we see in this passage:

3) Learn who he is.

Because Moses spent all that time with God, he was equipped to pray boldly for himself and for the nation.

Think about it: how well do you really know God?

You know the Sunday School stories, perhaps, but do you understand him?

Look at what Moses was asking for in verses 12-13.

He didn’t just want the blessing of the Promised Land, he wanted the very presence of God. He didn’t want to just see what God could do, he wanted to understand his ways.

Do you see the pattern that Moses highlights here? He has found favor with God, so he wants to know his ways, so he will know God better, and find favor with him.

Although Moses had spent more time in the manifest presence of God than likely anyone in history, he still wanted to know God better.

It was that closeness that gave him the boldness to pray for God to send his presence with Israel. God agrees to Moses’ request.

If you notice, his prayer wasn’t for the people, but it was for God’s glory. Jump down to verse 15-16.

He knew that if God didn’t go with them, the rest of the world wouldn’t realize that they were God’s people.

Even if they were victorious, it could be that they just got lucky or they had some great leaders.

Instead, if God’s presence clearly went with them, it showed that Israel was God’s unique people and that he was doing what he had promised to do.

Here’s where it gets even more incredible.

God had given Moses the assurance that he would go with the them, but Moses asked for more.

Look at verse 18…To show that God was still with his people, Moses wanted to see God’s glory again.

He had already experienced the glory of God on Mount Sinai while God was giving him the law, but he wants to see it again.

Read verses 19-23.

God granted his request, but he reminded Moses of just how holy he is. If God were to show any of us the fulness of everything he is, we would immediately die. We don’t get to see his glory unchecked until we are in heaven with him…it would kill us.

So here, he promises to show Moses as much as Moses could handle without dying.

We don’t know exactly what this looked like, or all that it meant, but it must have been incredible to be as fully in God’s presence as possible in this life.

Not only was he revealing his glory, he also explained his character. Jump down to 34:5-8...

To hear God proclaim this would have been incredible. Here, he explains that he is the eternal, pre-existent God that his name says. He is compassionate, gracious, and faithful in love and truth.

He keeps his promises and his faithful love to a thousand generations, granting forgiveness to those who have been stiff-necked.

At the same time, he is just, punishing sins as they are repeated in patterns throughout generations.

This is a summary statement of many of his ways, which was what Moses was asking God to teach him!

Moses prioritized the presence of God. He got serious about sin, he spent time with God, and because of his desire to honor God this way, he experienced the presence of God in an incredible way.

Here’s the thing, though: Moses and the Israelites were still figuring out who God was. They were learning that he really does keep his promises, and he really does forgive sin, but they didn’t see what we know.

They knew God was gracious and compassionate as he continued to accompany them on their wandering. However, we know that God is more gracious and compassionate than that.

Like Israel, all of us are stiff-necked. We have all turned aside and none of us deserve God’s gracious presence.

However, God loved us so much that he would put our punishment on his son and give us his son’s life in its place.

Isaiah 53:5–6 CSB

But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.

What an incredible God he is! Why, then, do we think sin in our lives isn’t a big deal? Why won’t we spend time with the God who went to such extraordinary lengths to rescue us? Why don’t we want to devote our lives to recognizing his presence in every corner of our lives?

Let me suggest a few action steps for you this week:

If you haven’t yet done so, surrender to Christ.

Ask God to cultivate in you a hunger for his presence.

Set aside a regular time for prayer and Bible study.

Cultivate the habit of prayerfulness