God's Faithfulness Despite Our Stubborness

Exodus 33:1-11

The Command to Leave Sinai

33 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Depart and go up from here, you aand 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, b‘To your descendants I will give it.’ 2 cAnd I will send My Angel before you, dand I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. 3 Go up eto a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, lest fI 1consume you on the way, for you are a gstiff-necked 2people.”

4 And when the people heard this bad news, hthey mourned, iand no one put on his ornaments. 5 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 3ornaments, that I may jknow what to do to you.’ ” 6 So the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by Mount Horeb.

Moses Meets with the Lord

7 Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and kcalled it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who lsought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp. 8 So it was, whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle, that all the people rose, and each man stood mat his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the tabernacle. 9 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 ntalked with Moses. 10 All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and oworshiped, each man in his tent door. 11 So pthe Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but qhis servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.

Introduction:

If you profess to the know the Lord this morning, why did God save you?

He saved you to have a relationship with Him

Suppose you get married and your new spouse says to you. Well, I’m glad that’s done.

He/she starts wronging you and offending you. So you say, what gives?

Well, that’s what marriage covenant is— I do what I want you have to forgive me.

John 17:1–5 (NKJV)

Christ Prays for Himself

17 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Christ summarizes God’s plan for His kingdom people.

God’s plan begins in creation, transcends any dispensation, and finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Coming of Christ.

The truth is that our sin, unfaithfulness can’t derail the plan of God, but it can effect it. At least in our own lives.

Today we are going to see some of those effects illustrated.

Disclaimer: We’ll have to wade through this carefully because we’re in a different covenant.

Background:

They had just experienced the plagues as a punishment for their sin.

Proposition: God carries out His restoration process.

Interrogative: How does God carry out His restoration process?

He fulfills His promised purposes.

He leads His people to mourn

He restores His people to worship

I. God fulfilled His Promises At a Distance (33:1-3)

Exodus 33:1–3 (NKJV)

The Command to Leave Sinai

33 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.’ 2 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. 3 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.”

A. The Direction - 1

1. The Command

a. Depart from here (Mt. Sinai)

b. To the land which I swore to give.

Carefully repeated themes in these verses include the idea that Sinai was a place the Israelites did not belong in permanently but rather must eventually “leave” (cf. 23:20; 32:34):

“the people you brought up out of Egypt” (cf. 3:12; 12:51; 13:3, 9, 14, 16; 14:11; 16:3, 6, 32; 18:1; 19:4; 20:2; 29:46; 32:1, 7, 11, 23; sometimes with Moses but more often with God as the one who brought them to Sinai);

“the land I promised on oath” (3:17; 12:25; 13:11; 32:13);

the land of promises made to “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (3:6, 15–16; 4:5; 6:3, 8; 32:13); the inheritance promised to their “descendants” (32:13);

the encouragement of God’s “sending an angel ahead of you” (23:20, 23; 32:34) “to drive … out” (23:28–31)82 the “Canaanites, Amorites” (cf. 3:8, 17; 13:5, 11; 23:23, 28).83

2. The Promise

B. The Method: I will send my Angel - 2

C. The Reason for the Change - 3

1. For I will not go up in your midst

and his potential to “destroy” them already was raised in 32:10. God obviously did not want to destroy his people, however, so here he indicated that his rhetorical offer at the present time to them was that he would not directly accompany them in the same degree that he had spoken personally to them from Sinai (20:1–19) or appeared personally to Moses several times at the top of the mountain. The close divine presence at Sinai under this scenario would be moderated after the Israelites left Sinai.

2. Lest I consume you on the way

3. The Problem: You are stiff-necked people (interesting choice of words- not idolatrous, or unfaithful

33:3 The expectation of “going up into the land flowing with milk and honey” has also been mentioned earlier in Exodus (3:8, 17; 13:5; there are many other references especially in Numbers and Deuteronomy), but the warning that ends v. 3 is something new. Now comes a kind of rhetorical proposal to limit the presence of God with his people, a proposed limitation that is later removed in response to Moses’ intercession (33:12–23): God’s statement “I will not go with you” represents what would be a mercifully necessary restriction of the divine presence that is further elaborated in v. 5. The Israelites were already described as “a stiff-necked people” by God in 32:9,

God would be more indirectly present with them in the future for their own benefit, lest his intolerance of sin should require him to “destroy them on the way,” that is, before they reached the promised land. To keep his plan of redemption on course, God had to limit his contact with Israel (see comments on v. 5).

Application:

We see the reality of God’s holiness and justice here. He cannot get close to his people.

We see that God is also immutable - He can’t go “out of character”

We also see His mercy: He does not want to consume them.

Transition:

II. God leads His People to Mourn (33:4-6)

Exodus 33:4–6 (NKJV)

4 And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. 5 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.’ ” 6 So the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by Mount Horeb.

A. The Response of the People - 4

1. They heard this bad news

The people had shown by their idolatry that they craved a direct and obvious divine presence to lead them in their journeys. Indeed, the golden young bull was to their way of thinking a means of capturing the presence of some gods (gods that represented a distorted understanding of Yahweh), and the people rejoiced finally to be able to see the gods who had been—they thought—helping them on the exodus so far (32:4).

Now as part of their punishment for that folly they would have to live with less then they had before. Instead of a God who directly communed with Moses and whose presence could be seen on the mountain, they would have to live with a much more elusive representation of God’s presence, an angel, and therefore they realized that they had been demoted from people who dealt with Yahweh directly through Moses to people who now would have an angel added to the chain of command.84

2. They mourned

3. And no one put on His ornaments

In the ancient Near East, mourning tended to involve appearance,85 not just attitude, so that what one wore was a part of the appearance aspect of mourning. Nothing fancy could adorn a mourner because fancy dress was associated with cheerfulness and might contradict the desired pattern, which was thoroughgoing mourning behavior designed to appeal to a god (or the true God) for relief of suffering (including in this case relief from the unknown miseries that might be subsumed under “and I will decide what to do with you”). Therefore they removed all adornment and made their appearance “plain” as a sign of mourning.

B. The Message - 5

1. You are a stiff-necked people

2. I could consume you in one instance

C. The Command - 6

1. Take off your ornaments

What were the Israelites wearing that seemed inappropriate for the mourning attitude they now chose? The Hebrew word translated by the niv (and, e.g., nrsv) as “ornaments”87 seems to refer to jewelry of all sorts, the sort of decorative wear a mourner would not choose to be seen in. Such “ornaments” were often made of gold (2 Sam 1:24; Jer 4:30), and therefore the present removal of all jewelry, including gold, parallels the removal of gold earrings required by the call for gold that Aaron announced in seeking material for the Sinai idol (32:2–4).88 What they had once taken off in a sinful action they must now again take off as a reminder that they were in mourning because of the results of that sinful action. Ezekiel 7:20 appears to echo the former event (“From their beautiful ornament, in which they took pride, they made their abominable images, their detestable things; therefore I will make of it an unclean thing to them,” nrsv) and possibly even the latter prohibition of jewelry (“I will make of it an unclean thing”) though in a context that reflects knowledge of rather than directly describes Exod 32–33.89

In Exod 33:6 the niv inexplicably translates simply, “So the Israelites stripped off their ornaments at Mount Horeb.” This does not reflect the wording of the Hebrew,90 which should be rendered (as, e.g., nrsv and hcsb) “from Mount Horeb onward.” In other words, for the rest of the exodus and wilderness wandering, the Israelites dressed as if in mourning. They did not merely take off their jewelry while at Horeb (Sinai) but kept it off for the next forty years. God’s threat, “I will decide what to do with you,” hung over them all that time, and some of their actions in that long period of wilderness wandering may well reflect their resultant anxiety.

2. Purpose: That I may know what to do with you

Withholding of divine presence is a severe covenant punishment. To be denied access to the presence of God (usually meaning to be expelled from the covenant community and therefore to be unable to worship and sacrifice, which means to be unable to have one’s sins forgiven) constituted a sort of ultimate penalty for heterodox practice. An example of such a severe penalty is found in Lev 22:3: “Say to them: ‘For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the Lord, that person must be cut off from my presence. I am the Lord’ ”)

. Often the prohibition of Yahweh’s presence is simply predicted directly by God; no Israelite court would be needed to impose such a penalty. In these instances terms such as “set my face against” or “hide my face from” convey the idea of divine removal of presence from an individual (e.g., Lev 20:3).

he would not directly accompany them on their journey to Canaan in the same degree of presence he had manifested himself among them at Sinai and accompanied them from Egypt to Sinai through the pillar of cloud/fire (e.g., 13:21–22; 17:1–6).

Implications:

There is often a noble desire behind sin, but fulfilling a right desire the wrong way, through short cuts and counterfeits will ultimately end in unfulfilled desires.

Often the consequence of sin is a further delay in fulfilled desires.

True restoration to God always includes repentance and requires a time of mourning over our sin.

Matthew 5:3–7 (NKJV)

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are those who mourn,

For they shall be comforted.

Transition: Once the people mourned over their sin, God was prepared to at least partially restore them so that they could worship him.

III. God Restores His People to Worship (33:7-11)

Exodus 33:7–11 (NKJV)

Moses Meets with the Lord

7 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. 8 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. 9 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. 10 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. 11 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.

A. The Transitional Tabernacle - 7

1. Moses switched his tent outside of the camp

2. Those who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting

What he so far granted to them was a more distant presence, not an utter abandonment. In contrast to the elaborate tabernacle and its many symbols of the presence of God, the Israelites would now deal (for a time) with a small, simple “meeting tent”91 (or as tradition words it “tent of meeting”).

The “tent of meeting” (lowercase, not capitalized in the NIV) described here is simply a kind of substitute for the tabernacle, which already was designated “Tent of Meeting” (uppercase in the NIV) in Exodus 27:21; 28:43; 29:4, 10, 30, 32, 42, 44; 30:16, 18, 20, 26, 36; 31:7.

B. The People’s Custom - 8

1. Whenever Moses entered the tabernacle

2. Pillar of the cloud descended

3. The Lord talked with Moses

C. The Sight - 9

1. When Moses entered the tabernacle

2. Pillar of the cloud descended

3. The Lord talked with Moses

Instead of an elaborate tabernacle, they had a small, simple tent of meeting

God’s presence would reside outside the camp instead of residing in the midst.

Instead of an entire order of priest, you have just Moses and Joshua

God’s presence would be both distant and non-continuous.

Inquiries and fellowship require more effort on the part of the people.

D. The Worship - 10

1. Saw the pillar of the cloud

2. All the people worshipped

As v. 10 indicates, the people could see the pillar of cloud, a symbol they already knew represented Yahweh among them (13:21–22; 14:9, 24), and so they gave proper respect to this distant (far outside the camp) indication of Yahweh’s presence by worshiping (bowing to the ground, probably prostrate).

E. Summary: - 11

1. So the Lord spoke to Moses Face to Face

2. As a man speaks to His Friend

3. Joshua Remained

Implication of this Section:

Moses imperfect intercessory role should point us to the need for Christ.

Hebrews 7:24–25 (NKJV)

24 But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. 25 Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

Consider the Contrast

John 17:20–26 (NKJV)

Christ Prays for All Believers

20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

33:11 Although God’s presence among the Israelites in general was currently greatly curtailed, this distancing did not apply to Moses. The same close conversational relationship he enjoyed with God atop Sinai was also available to him at the entrance to the little “tent of meeting,” a face-to-face encounter as someone “speaks with his friend.”111 Because the reader might wonder what would happen to the “tent of meeting” when Moses was not there, he added the detail that Joshua guarded it at all times (“Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent”). This fact does not automatically elevate Joshua above the other Israelites, as if to a par with Moses, since any Israelite could go to the tent with an inquiry for God; access to it was not especially restricted for individuals or small groups. But it does show the trust Moses (and God) placed in Joshua and his continuing importance as a leader (see already comments on 17:9–14; 24:13; 32:17).

Joshua’s not leaving the tent is not intended to imply that he lived in it—only that his own tent was nearby so that he could serve as its custodian. Joshua thus lived outside the concentrated Israelite encampment. Joshua was called Moses’ “young aide” not because he was immature but because he was so much younger than Moses, who was eighty at this point.112 Forty years later, Joshua may himself have been eighty years old (or more) when he led the Israelites in the conquest of Canaan.113

Concluding Applications:

We must view God as He really is, not what we want Him to be.

We must mourn over our sin, rebellion, and unfaithfulness.

We must realize our desperate need for Christ’s atonement and intercession on our behalf.