July 9, 2023
Pastor John Hering
Exodus 33:12-23
Exodus 33:12-23
12 Moses said to the Lord, “Look, you yourself have been telling me, ‘Lead this people up,’ 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.’ 13 So now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight. Consider that this nation is your people.”
14 The Lord said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
15 Moses said to him, “If your Presence is not going to go with me, do not send us up from here. 16 After all, how would people know that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Isn’t it in this way: that you go with us, so that we are distinguished, I and your people, from all the people who are on the face of the earth?”
17 The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have said, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
18 Then Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”
19 The Lord said, “I will make all my goodness pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord in your presence. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.” 20 He said, “You cannot see my face, for no human may see me and live.”
21 The Lord also said, “Look, there is a place next to me, where you shall stand on the rock. 22 It will happen that, while my glory passes by, I will put you in a crevice in the rock. I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you will see my back. But my face will not be seen.”
You take a double take. Your heart skips a beat. Your palms get all sweaty. You’re afraid of flah-doobering your words and blurting out something stupid, all because, out of the blue, a Dak Prescot the Dallas Cowboys quarterback sat down next to you at the bar in Frisco. You scream to your husband, “Take a video! Take a video!” Well, if that’s your reaction when you encounter someone famous who is a mere mortal, imagine how you would feel if you turned around in your chair and sitting right behind you was Jesus! In today’s first reading from Exodus 33 Moses interacted with God and this important truth is declared to you:
You Are At Peace In The Presence Of God
His Glorious Word Guides Us
Last week you remember that the Israelites were dancing around a golden calf and faced the consequences of their idolatry. While I don’t think I would find such an idol in your house, I do worry that the current of ungodly ideas and assumptions in our world might pull you off course as you paddle down the stream of Christian living. I recall a conversation I had with someone years ago that went like this: “He said, It would be a good idea to ramp up our nation’s space program so that human life could be preserved on a space-station since it is likely that a massive space rock will one day smash into our planet wiping out the human race in the same way that a rock rammed into earth sixty-five million years ago and wiped out all the dinosaurs.” Did you notice all the false assumptions? First, there’s the assumption that the universe is around sixty-five million years old. In reality, the universe was created with age in it, but according to the genealogies in God’s Word is between 7,000 to 10,000 thousand years old. Second, why assume that dinosaurs (besides, the word “dinosaur” wasn’t invented until 1841) were killed by a rock hurtling out of the sky? How could one rock smack into the globe and hit every dinosaur? Wouldn’t the Flood account as recorded in the Bible be a much more logical explanation for the destruction of dinosaurs with the few baby dinosaurs that walked off the ark becoming extinct after the Flood? Third, do you really think that when God destroys this planet on Judgment Day, he would somehow miss people in a space-station? There are all kinds of ideas and assumptions floating around that lots of people accept as fact when in reality they are not. Be careful. Before you buy into any theory or assumption, check to see if God has something to say about it in Scripture.
The Israelites had been camped at Mt. Sinai for several months. Their leader, Moses, had gone up on the mount for the seventh time to get more rules and regulations from God, but this time it didn’t seem like he was coming back. “When the people saw that it took so long for Moses to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Get up, make a god for us, who will go before us, because this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt—we do not know what has become of him” (Ex 32:1). So Aaron melted down their gold jewelry, fashioned a golden calf, and said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). Worshiping a golden calf might seem foolish and absurd to you, but the appeal came from how they did it. Worshiping the golden calf meant an extended happy hour every day, a big smorgasbord, and then lewd, sensual, late-night groping. Yuck!
God was not pleased. In fact, he was burning with anger. “Leave this place … and go up to the land I promised … I will send an angel before you … But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way” (Exodus 33:1-3). After the kind of behavior they were involved in, how could the Israelites find any comfort or joy standing in the presence of the holy God? How could they expect God to guide them? By all rights, they should have expected to be shoved out into the wilderness to wander until they dropped dead. But Moses stepped in:
“12 Moses said to the Lord, “Look, you yourself have been telling me, ‘Lead this people up,’ 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.’ 13 So now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight. Consider that this nation is your people.” 14 The Lord said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
That’s all Moses needed to hear—God’s promise.
If you want to rest easy in the presence of God, don’t be fooled by feelings. “Pastor, I’ve struggled in prayer on what to do. My boyfriend wants me to move in with him. We love each other. We plan to be married. What should I do?” The answer is captured nicely in the title of a little article someone shared with me several years ago, Stop Praying and Start Obeying! Of course the point is not to pray, for prayer is good. But, neither can we use an intense, emotional prayer as an excuse to fail to listen to God’s Word. This is why we constantly hear the encouragement to be in worship, to be in Bible Class, to read your Bible at home and with your family. And when we fail to hear God’s Word then we could compare ourselves to the Israelites who failed to listen to God. Then come the temptations to wonder, “Where are you, God?” The Bible tells us where God is, he is graciously with us and through his Word he wants to build calmness, confidence, and cope-ability on his words. Those were the words Moses needed to hear so he could stand behind God’s Promises and speak with confidence: “15 Moses said to him, “If your Presence is not going to go with me, do not send us up from here. 16 After all, how would people know that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Isn’t it in this way: that you go with us, so that we are distinguished, I and your people, from all the people who are on the face of the earth?” These were the Words God spoke and was bound to keep. The promises of God gave Moses confidence to hide behind those promises and made his bold request. As the Word of God guided Moses and his life, so also Word of God Guides Your Life. You Are At Peace With God in His Presence. For there in his Word you hear that
His mercy hides us
The rebellious Israelites didn’t just deserve to wander in the wilderness. They deserved to get stuck in the quicksand of hell. How could they expect to stand before God? They deserved only God’s anger, not his mercy. And when Moses interceded for them, he might have felt like he was taking a risk. Would God call up Moses’ own record of sins – and there were plenty of them?
But Moses was bold, “Show me your glory…. 20 He said, “You cannot see my face, for no human may see me and live.” You’ve seen footage of an atomic explosion. The bright flash is too much to bear. People have to cover their eyes or be blinded. When a solar eclipse approaches, we are warned, “Don’t look directly at the sun! It’s too bright!” When Jesus revealed his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration the disciples had to look away from the bright glory. Yet, even then God was merciful to those disciples and they lived to tell about it. We get the point. No sinful person can stand before God. That is unless God gives them his mercy to hide them from his burning glory. And God did just that for Moses:
“19 The Lord said, “I will make all my goodness pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord in your presence. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.”….21 The Lord also said, “Look, there is a place next to me, where you shall stand on the rock. 22 It will happen that, while my glory passes by, I will put you in a crevice in the rock. I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you will see my back. But my face will not be seen.”
How nervous would you have been if you were Moses hiding in that rock waiting for the Lord to pass by? You realize that no sinful person can be in God’s presence, and Moses was a sinner. Or perhaps Moses remembered that he was a forgiven sinner because he was being hidden by God’s mercy!
Has the thought of past sin ever come back to haunt you? Did you cheat at school, cheat on your spouse, or cheat on your taxes? Have you failed to respect God by keeping him #1 in your life, loving him with your whole heart, and trusting in his care at all times? Remember the times you doubted God’s guidance for your life, doubted that God was paying attention to you, doubted God’s care as worries, bills and the business of life piled up? Remember when you fell victim to indulging in sinful pleasure almost like dancing around a golden calf? You know what you deserve from our holy, just God. But, You Are Hidden By God’s Mercy because the Words of Promise spoken to you, you took to heart. Maybe it was Isaiah 44: “21 Remember these things, O Jacob, because you are my servant, Israel. I am forming you to be my servant. You, Israel, you will never be forgotten by me.[a] 22 I am blowing away your rebellious deeds like a cloud, and your sins like a mist. Return to me, because I am redeeming you.” God’s mercy hid you in the fulfilment of his promise through Jesus Christ who died on the cross to pay the penalty of all your sins. God hid you in the “Rock of Our Salvation” like Moses a redeemed and forgiven sinner.
God still comes to us in his glory! He does not come at us in blazing holy glory. He hides us in the blood of Jesus Christ. He comes to us in the sweet promises of forgiveness through Jesus’ body and blood hidden in bread and wine. He hides us in the Rock of our salvation like Moses hidden in a cleft of the rock on Mt. Sinai, and says, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” We are at rest in the presence of God because his mercy hides us.
You take a double look. Your heart skips a beat. Your palms get all sweaty. It isn’t because we are so nervous about being eternally punished by God, but because we are here in God’s house to hear his Word again. God’s Word guides us as Christians and God’s Word Hides us in His mercy for Jesus’ sake. Thank you Jesus, that I’m not nervous about seeing you, but because through faith I already see you. Because of Jesus You Are At Peace In The Presence Of God. Amen.
