Are You Hungry?

Exodus 33:12-22

It is said that the great philosopher and orator of Greek descent named Socrates had a young man approach him one day, and this young man said, "Can I be one of your disciples because I want to know wisdom and increase in my knowledge?" Socrates, who by this time was a wise, old sage, took one look at the young man and said, "Follow me." The young man followed him into the waters of a nearby river. Socrates took the young man's head and submerged it under water for about 15 seconds. When the young man came out of the water dripping wet, Socrates said, "What do you want?" The young man said, "Knowledge, wise man. I want knowledge." Socrates took this young man and put his head under a little bit longer this time. When the young man came out, he was gasping for air. Socrates again said, "What do you want, young man?" He again said, "Knowledge. I want knowledge." This time, which was a third time, Socrates dunked him down under the water and kept him down for what seemed like forever. His hands began to fling, and he thought he was about to drown him.

When the young man came out of the water, Socrates again said, "What do you want?" This time the young man was saying, "Air, I want air. Give me air." To that, Socrates said, "When you want knowledge like you want air, then you will have it."

I believe that our spiritual hunger is that way, as well. When we desire God desperately with passion, intensity and burning fire than we will experience the fullness of God. So I want you to take your Bibles and turn to Exodus Chapter 33.

I also chose to speak out of Exodus Chapter 33 because there is something deeply disconcerting about much of the Christianity that we are living in this nation. Go to Africa, Asia, South America and you will see a very different spiritual atmosphere. "What is it, Lord, that seems to be missing? If I were to put my finger on it, I think that it would have to be hunger, holy hunger.

The account of Moses in Exodus Chapter 33 is really an incredible story of a man who walked with God and talked with God in a way that few have. He was on the holy mountain in which he received both instruction from God and received the tablets that we so fondly call the Ten Commandments.

It had been only 40 days when he came down and heard the loud sound of Israel gone wild. It was not wild for God and definitely no Pentecostal church meeting. This was an all-out pagan party. They had quickly decided that they needed another god and needed the immediate gratification of something that they could see and feel, so they reverted back to their pagan practices and borrowed from their pagan culture. When he came down from this holy experience, Moses was frustrated. God was angry and the people were carnal.

God takes Moses aside and says, "Moses, I have had it with these people, but because I am a God that honors covenant and keeps his promise, I am going to take you into the promised land. I am going to do what I said I was going to do. I am going to defeat your enemies and take you into the promised land but I will not go with you. In fact, if I go with you, I might end up destroying you."

In verse 12, we hear the heart of a man who hungers after God. Today I want you to look at the effects of holy hunger and what it would or could look like in our lives.

1. HOLY HUNGER CREATES A DESIRE TO KNOW GOD (EX 33:12-13)

I believe that the first effect of holy hunger is that it sparks a desire for the knowledge of God's ways. What God was saying, in essence, is he was giving Moses a pretty good deal. It is my belief that most of us would have taken the deal that God was offering. After all, here's what God was saying;

"Moses, what I am going to do for you is I will make you successful and am going to give you the land that you asked for. I am going to wipe out your enemies and am going to give you what you dreamed about as well as beat your competition at it. How about it, Moses? Do you want to take the deal?"

Most of us would have jumped at the deal. We would have said, "Success, prosperity and getting ahead? It is a great deal so I will take it." But there was something left out of the deal that God deliberately withheld. He said, "I will give you your dream and give you success, but I am not going to give you my presence." Moses immediately caught on to this. I call these deals "lower shelf" deals. We get the blessing, the answer to prayer and the touch of God, but we miss the very presence of God. Only holy hunger tells you it is missing.

How is holy hunger awakened? I love what John Piper says. He says,

"Do you have hunger for God? If we do not have strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because we have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world that our soul is stuffed with small things and there is no room for the great. We are hungry not because we have not tasted but because we have."

I believe that an appetite for God is an acquired appetite. I believe that we hunger and thirst after God when we stir the appetite within our soul for God. There is something interesting that happens during fasting.

Fasting facts: after ten days into the fast your body has not eaten solid food so your digestive system slows down.

Some people, in their first day of a fast, say that they are hungry or having hunger pains. This is not really hunger, but just acid in the stomach activated at meal time reminding you it is time to eat. Some people after the third day say, "I think I am starving." To be honest most of us have got enough extra fat to probably last for quite a while.

After ten days your digestive system starts shutting down and you start losing the edge of hunger. Yes, your body gets tired, you begin to lose weight, you lack energy, but that intense hunger starts to subside within your system because your body is getting accustomed to not having food and your digestive system is shutting down. If you happen to chew a piece of gum it starts up your digestive system and your appetite ignites again. Your body begins to taste food again, and suddenly you have hunger again because your body's appetite has been awakened.

I believe spiritually this is what happens with our appetite for God. We have very little hunger for God and very little desire for his presence, in part because our spiritual digestive system has shut down. We are so used to junk food that we feel spiritually bloated even though we may be experiencing malnutrition.

ILLUS: I heard a report on television not too long ago about a man that they could not get out of his house because he was so obese. They had to break down the door and bring in a special lift to get him out of the house. What caught my attention was that the doctor, after examining him, said that he was obese but was suffering from malnutrition. I thought to myself, "How can that be? How can someone that weighs 800 pounds be experiencing malnutrition?"

There is a link between malnutrition and obesity. Sometimes your body is not getting what it needs even though you are eating. You can stuff yourself on popcorn, Doritos and all kinds of snacks that have zero nutritional value. You can get big and heavy and look like you are well fed, but in reality, you are seriously malnourished.

I wonder if are experiencing obesity in our Christianity and malnutrition at the same time? Is our country experiencing a gluttony of religious music, books and broadcasts? You can google sermons, turn on a Christian radio station or buy the latest books.

There is more available than ever before, but yet something seems lacking. Some of it is really good food, but there seems to be a malnutrition in the general state of our Christianity.

I look at Moses and wonder what made him so hungry. Why did he say, "God, I do not want just the land and the prosperity. I want your presence." What made him hunger and desire God? I believe what made him hunger and desire God is that Moses had spent some time with God. He had a spiritual appetite that had been cultivated. We read that he had been at the tent of meeting, and you can read about it in the earlier part of chapter 33. It was a place where Moses went just to hang out with God. He was listening to God and meeting with God. It says that the people would rise and watch as Moses would enter into the tent of meeting and a cloud would come. Then it would lift and he would come out. Moses was in the habit of meeting with God. So when God offered a lower shelf deal of "I will bless you but my presence will not go there", Moses' holy hunger kicked in and he said;

"No, I have tasted your goodness God. I have sipped of your glory and tasted your favor. I have experienced your presence. Success and blessing are good and nice, but nothing compares with the presence and the beauty of your majesty. Blessing pales in comparison with who you are God. My heart and my soul hunger for the living God."

I am convinced that this hunger for God was created in all of us. I believe that if you are here today and have no holy hunger, passion, desire that drives you and propels you to want more of him . . . if you force yourself to read the Word and drag yourself to prayer and bribe yourself to go to church and worship, than you are living in a way that is unnatural to how God has designed you. Your physical body parallels your spiritual body. You were created to have physical hunger, and when you do not have that food, you hunger inside.

You were designed to crave after God. It is only when your appetite has been spoiled by cheap substitutes that you lose your innate hunger. I believe that all creation hungers for God.

Creation groans for the manifestation of God. The earth groans for the day of his appearing. Our spirit groans inside with a hunger that cannot be satisfied in relationships, in success, in addictions, in popularity or anything that is out there. You have been created with a divine holy hunger that can only be satisfied in the person of God through your relationship with Jesus Christ.

2. HOLY HUNGER CREATES A DEPENDENCE ON GOD (EX 33:14-17)

Another way that holy hunger affects us is found in the following verses. God replies to Moses in verse 14-17 where it says,

I know theologically that God is omnipresent. God is immutable, which means that he never changes. God never improves because he's always been perfect. He never gains knowledge because he's always known all things. He doesn't get better with age because he's always been perfect and is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is present if you go to the deepest part of the sea. He's present if you go to the highest mountain. He was there when the first Americans landed on the moon and put that flag in the ground. So why is Moses saying, "Oh, I am not going unless you go with me", if God is present everywhere? Moses is talking about not just the presence of God but about the manifest presence of God. God is omnipresent but chooses to manifest himself at times and places in special ways.

In the temple, he manifested himself with Shekinah Glory, when he came down with so much power and radiance that the priests who were dedicating the temple had to stop the services because the presence of God was overwhelming. Isaiah was praying and the presence of God came in such manifest power and glory that he had to stop and cry out, "Woe is me for I am a sinner and live among sinful people. I need cleansing."

This is the manifest presence of God. He is present all the time, but there are times in which God shows a portion of his glory and manifests a bit of himself. That is exactly what Moses was asking for. "Oh God, I want your tangible and manifest presence to go with us. God, if you do not go, I am not going anywhere."

You see, holy hunger creates a dependence on God's presence and an unwillingness to move forward without it. When is the last time that you said, "God, I will not go forward unless you move ahead." When is the last time that you cried out to the heavens and said, "God, I will stay put."

God looked at Moses and loved the heart Moses had that was crying out for dependence on God's presence.

3. HOLY HUNGER DRIVES US TO PURSUE GOD (EX 33:18-23)

Thirdly, Holy hunger drives us to pursue God with a sacred boldness and a burning passion. Look at what it says in verse 17.

Moses prayed a prayer and said a statement that only someone half out of their mind would say. Only someone possessed by a passion and a boldness of living and walking and only someone with deep holy hunger would dare to say to God. Moses looks at God as he's speaking.

18 Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory."

Now it is hard to even fathom what Moses was asking of God because when we say glory to God, it seems like an etherial term or a vague statement that we hear in the hymns of old. But when we are asked to define what glory means, it is illusive and hard to explain, but it is what Moses wanted to see. What is the glory of God?

In the New Testament, the word "doxa" is used and means beauty, radiance, brilliance and is the total manifestation of God's attributes and revelation. The manifestation of all that he is. The total sum of the attributes of his characteristics. The glory of God is the manifestation of his holiness. It is going public with his holiness. In essence, the glory of God is the core of who he is.

You cannot understand the purposes and plans of God unless you understand and begin to grasp the glory of God. The purposes of God are wrapped around his glory. The plans of God revolve around his glory. The salvation of humanity revolves around the essence of the glory of God because all throughout Scripture from the beginning of creation until the end of creation it all swirls around this gravitational pull of the glory of God. The glory of God is the essence of who he is and is the manifest beauty of all his attributes. At the center of what God wants to do is to reveal himself. In salvation, he reveals himself. Through your life, he reveals himself. Through worship, he's revealing himself. It is the revelation of who God is that changes you.

I do not know what surprises me more, Moses' request or God's response. Moses says, "Show me your glory," and God says, "Okay. I will show you my glory."

VERSES 19-23

God says, "Okay. You want to see my glory, and I want to show you as much of my glory as you can possibly handle."

His glory passed by, Moses was hidden in the cleft of the rock so that he could not see the glory of God. As soon as the glory of God was passed in his full magnificence, the hand of God lifted off of Moses and all he saw was the train of his glory, the back of his glory.

"I will show you as much of my glory as you can handle.”

We are being transformed when we begin to see his glory. We are being transformed as we begin to gaze at his glory because we have a hunger to know him. It is a holy hunger that drives us. It tells us that we, with unveiled faces beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image. What image? The image of God and the image of his son Jesus. We are being transformed from glory to glory just as from the Spirit of God. What will change your life more than anything else and what will transform you from the inside out is continual exposure to the manifest glory of God.

Some of you may say, "Why don't I change?" Well, some of us never change because we do not hunger for more of him. There is something that happens in his presence. There is something that happens with holy hunger that causes us to desire more and spend more time with him. It makes his Word sweeter and makes praises more compelling. It causes us to be still and know that he is God. There is something that occurs when we have tasted and eaten and seen that God is good, that makes us hunger and desire more of him. A strange thing then begins to occur. The more you hunger for God, the less you hunger for the things that compete with God. I want to close with a challenge.

There are some of you here that have tasted a bit of God and a bit of his presence. The Holy Spirit has been deposited into your heart, so there is a hunger for more. Yet there are some of you here that say, "I have very little desire for God." Your faith drives you to want more; to pray, "I do not want to be this way. I want to desire God."