Exodus: Moses, The Moon, And Why You Are Breathing

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Let's pray again.

Well, we begin this morning with the understanding that you cannot fail.

Until that truth, that unswerving, unchanging reality informs and affects everything we say and do today.

That we are praying to, we're in relationship.

Those of us that are believers in this room, we're in relationship, a covenant relationship with a God that cannot fail.

That is not even a possibility.

It doesn't exist anywhere on the radar.

And so it's with that certainty that we come to you.

When we pray, we're praying to a God that cannot fail.

That doesn't mean we're going to get our prayers answered.

Sometimes you're going to say no, but you never fail.

So let that inform the way we relate to you, speak about you, think about you, and come at you today.

You're the God that cannot fail.

We take great comfort from that.

No, Lord, speak a word into our head, into our hearts today.

That cannot help but find expression in our hands this week.

We ask this now in Jesus' name, and everyone said.

Amen.

You can have a seat if you've got a Bible.

I might just open it up to Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

I want to talk to you this morning about Moses the moon and why you're breathing.

Moses the moon and why you are breathing.

We're going to our guests.

We're open to the book of Exodus, and we're getting kind of towards the end of the book, the end of the book.

And uh the story we're going to read this morning.

Moses has been up on Mount Sinai for 40 days meeting with God.

And the Bible says that when he was up there, that God met with Moses face to face, and he would speak to him as a man speaks to a friend.

When he would go into the tent of meetings.

So this is the nature of their relationship.

They would commune together.

They would just, and God would speak to him.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Because we're going to end up there in the very end.

But I just want to just kind of say up front that this is what it was like.

It's not like he was afraid or Moses lived in fear.

It was that God spoke to him face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

So 40 days of that, and now Moses is getting ready to come back down the mountain and be around the people.

This is what the Bible says happens.

Exodus 34, verse 29, when Moses came down from the mountain from Mount Sinai with two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down the mountain.

Exodus 34:29

Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.

Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.

Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him.

Moses talked with him.

Afterward, all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded him, all that the Lord spoke with him in Mount Sinai.

And when Moses had finished speaking with him, he put a veil over his face.

Now, whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out.

And when he came out and told the people of Israel that he was what he was commanding, the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face was shining.

And Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went in to speak with him.

Now, what do you mean I say Moses the moon and why you were breathing?

This is one of those stories that if you read the Bible, it's easy to kind of go off on a tangent and this is what the Bible is actually saying.

This past Blessed weekend, Marshall and I met some friends at Bex Prime for lunch.

And I sold the kidney on the way so I could afford the hamburger.

But anyway, geez, I was like, okay, okay, there we go.

But we're in Bex Prime, and I look over, I got to get a refill, I was walking by, there's a table sitting there, a husband and wife, and two toddlers, and the woman had a shirt on and said, Am I glowing yet?

And so I was thinking about today, and I just thought, okay, I'm curious.

And I walked over and I said, Hey, your shirt, am I glowing yet?

What's that about?

And she pushed back from the table, and she was the whole lot pregnant.

And I was like, Oh, uh, and I was like, uh, the shouldn't glow it.

She had two toddlers and she was pregnant, and I was like, and they got she's pregnant and I'm glowing, and like, okay, I'm good to see you.

I just walked up.

It was awkward, and that nano second I even prayed, go, Jesus, come back right now.

He didn't, so I just marinated in the awkwardness of the moment and walked away.

Because the then it gone, oh yeah, they say when we were pregnant, and they said this glow about them.

Uh oh, okay, well, whatever.

My blood was glowing a little bit towards the end.

I like the way glowing enough.

My blood was like, get this kid out of me.

If you see a woman that's like in her ninth month, okay, the glow is off, okay?

She is just like, I'm ready to get my body back.

And so Moses comes out off the mountain and he has this glow about him.

And I just want to, but the Bible tells us something.

As a matter of fact, there's three things the Bible tells us out of this passage I want to point to this morning.

The first thing is simply this that not everything in the Bible is about us.

Put a star by that.

Not everything in the Bible is about us.

I say that because it's easy to make this about Moses, to look at his face and go, oh man, he's glowing.

And if this were to happen today, Moses would have a book deal, a talk show, and a speaking tour.

He would have his own YouTube channel with YouTube videos, and you could all figure out how to make your how to flow in four easy steps.

When I say this kind of thing, the Bible is about us, it's because when in reality, the story we read is really all about God.

Think of it this way.

If we were co-workers, and and I came in one day, I had been gone for 40 days, and I came back and I was tanned and rested and ready, and my countenance was bright, and you looked at me and said, Man, you look incredible.

What'd you do?

And I said, I just came back from the greatest vacation ever.

I mean, 40 days, it was phenomenal, it changed my life.

I don't think I'll ever be the same.

The natural next question out of your mouth would be, where'd you go?

Where'd you go?

So if you're not careful, if you don't train your eye and your ear to see and hear what the Bible's really saying, you'll read this and kind of go, How do I make my face glow?

Instead, we should be asking, hey, exactly where was Moses and who was he hanging about with, that this was the byproduct of that communion time together with God.

See, we live in a culture and a world that seeks to convince us every day that we're the sun, that we are the sun, we are the center and the source, and everything orbits around us.

But the Bible tells a different story.

Matter of fact, the Bible says that you're the moon.

The Bible says that you have no light source of your own.

You're created to simply reflect the glorious, illuminating light of the sun.

And uh, that's uh not just I mean, that that that that's all through the Bible.

It's not just a one-off random thing somewhere buried in the Old Testament.

That is the, and yeah, that's the whole story of the Bible right there.

That's why Moses comes down off the mountain, and the fact that his face shone like it, it wasn't a statement about him, it ought to make people curious about, hey, where have you been and who have you been with?

It's like in Acts chapter 4, Peter and John, the Bible say that the people of the city looked at them and they and they observed them as uneducated and ignorant men.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

Don't you wish the Bible said things like that about you?

But then it went on and said this.

They noticed they're uneducated and ignorant men, but they recognize that they've been with Jesus.

We should ask ourselves today, what do people recognize about us?

What's distinguishing or stands out about us?

Because the Bible kind of calls us away from this sense of self-centeredness and into this kind of God-centered reality that says, hey, you're not the son.

It doesn't center around you.

And it's hard to get that.

And I was talking to one of our men before the first service, and he said, Yeah, I read an article.

I meant to send it to you.

And I thought, what's it about?

He said, Well, it was about the kind of the fall of Christian music over the past couple of years.

Just not a little over a year ago, they sold like 55 million units and CDs and stuff of Christian music, and now it's kind of like 17 million.

And one of the reasons they said it is because there's just not that many Christians, as many Christians as we thought there were.

And I thought, yeah, that's part of it.

But the other part is that a lot of Christian music has bad theology.

And you say, What do you mean?

Uh, years ago when I was traveling and speaking, I was at a conference, at a youth vandalism conference.

There's like 6,000 teenagers in the room, and this band, very popular at the time, and these are great women.

I'm not making light of these women, but the song that they sang was fundamentally biblically untrue.

And so it was their last song, and I was over there on the side of the stage waiting to come out, and they started singing a song that said this: God loves people more than anything.

God loves people more than anything.

And I remember thinking, oh no.

And I looked out, and kids had little flashlights, they were swaying back and forth.

It's like the Holy Spirit just come put his arm around me and say, now we're gonna speak to this when you get out there, right?

You know we're gonna say something, right?

And I was like, awesome.

And so after this big crescendo, all the little lights flashing, and we're singing God, and people put their arms around each other, they're sawing back and forth like they're an alien gang, and we're gonna solve them all off.

Out to each other, got lost yesterday.

They're not gonna take it behind the barn and just slam it, okay?

Um leave it at that.

And so I walk out, 6,000 people, I'll stand in, and I said, before you sit down, I've got to speak to what just happened.

What we just said is fundamentally untrue.

Debbie Dammer shows up.

And see, here's the reality.

Because if God loves people more than anything, God is an idolater.

And God is violating the sufficiency of himself.

You see, it's one thing to say, the first point is that not everything in the Bible is about us.

The second thing is that Moses has been with a glorious God.

When they see Moses, they should be thinking, hey man, where have you been and what happened to you?

Because this is about God.

Not only is this all about God, but this is about a God that is incredibly God-centered.

God loves God with all of his soul, heart, mind, and strength.

And to take it one step further, for God to love anything, think for a minute, beloved, for God to love anything more than he loves himself.

Because one of the reasons Christian music sales are down is that thinking people are starting to say, now is that really true?

Or does it just have an Iambic pentameter and a nice book to it?

Because if you say God loves people more than anything, then what is ultimate and what is of highest priority in God's affection?

If it's me, then God violates the first and second commandment, where God said, You shall deal with gods before me.

And he says, Secondly, don't make a grave image, or I will inform for yourself.

And so if we could just kind of dial back from ourselves and just say, Moses has been with a glorious God.

And I know, let me just acknowledge what I just said sounds crazy.

Some of you are like, you walked out and said that to 6,000?

Yes.

Yes.

Because I don't want 6,000 teenagers, I don't want six teenagers growing up and thinking, you know what?

It is all about me.

Because if your kid grows up thinking it's all about me, then here's the question you've got to ask: Who's that kid gonna submit to when they get older?

Who's gonna have authority over that person?

If they've been told their whole life, if they sing songs and like, yes, me, me, and more me, then who says no to that person?

But if you read the Bible, no, by the way, the Bible's not, doesn't it?

You know, it's like, oh God, no, no.

It's very centric.

It puts things in a proper perspective.

And that this is offensive to the modern progressive ear.

And here's why.

We've reversed what the Bible says in the eighth Psalm.

The eighth psalm, I'll come up on the screen.

I just want to read you.

This is the way people, David, best we can tell, David is Amendment David, he's outside and he's looking around.

And he's kind of overwhelmed.

This is before the Hubble telescope.

This is before modern technology.

I mean, David didn't see that like billions of light years away, there's galaxies that the Hubble telescope is beaming back to us that are bigger than our current galaxy we live in.

And David is humbled by the fact that God spoke all of this into existence, and he put a little speck called humanity on it, and David says this, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

You have set your glory above the heavens, and out of the mouth of babies and infants you've established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy of the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place.

What is man that you're mindful of him?

And the Son of Man that you care for him, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and you've crowned him with glory and honor.

You've given him dominion over the words of your hands, and you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heaven, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

You see, when, beloved, when we lose the truth of this picture that David paints, we have to ask ourselves, whose name is majestic when it comes out of our mouth?

Is it just the name of your lover that is majestic when it comes out of your mouth?

Is it the name of your children that is majestic?

Is it God's name when it comes out of mouth?

When you when you say, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth, does it just take your breath away?

Because you see, you said, what do you mean?

We've reversed Psalm 8.

This is the way we read Psalm 8 these days.

Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is my name and all the earth.

I've set my glory above the heavens, and I've got a Facebook page to convince everybody that it's true.

Out of the mouths of babes and infants, from that early on, we've raised them and told them you're strong.

You can do whatever you want.

Your truth is your truth, so you hold on to your truth because you're a unique individual.

When I look at the heavens and the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, I ask myself, what is God that I am mindful of him?

And what is Jesus that I care about him?

I made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and I put him in the category of Buddha and Allah and all the other roads that lead to the same God.

I have dominion over the works of my hands.

All things are subject to me and what I feel.

Oh Lord, O Lord, how majestic is my name in all the earth.

That just sounds weird coming out of the mouth, but if that's in your head and that's in your heart.

We live in a day and age where we just kind of reverse those, and I think the church has been an unwittingly participant.

And this is man-centered theology.

When someone stands up and says, God loves God with all of God's heart, soul, mind, and strength, we kind of crazy a little bit.

And I want to say to you that the world holds together because that's a true statement.

It's hard for us to think like this about God because most of us prefer this God.

It's not the glorious, fulgent, sufficient, holy, terrible, loving God of the Bible.

Instead, it's this tail-tepping pet God that we've constructed out of our preferences, our appetites, and our desires.

And he's known as my God.

Well, my God would never send anybody to hell because my God just cares too much about people.

See, God cares so much about people because God loves people more than anything.

And the way we know that God loves people more than anything, and what we believe is that because God loves people more than anything, see, when you start with that erroneous conclusion, then you've got to all the ramifications mean that people are on the throne and God's kind of in orbit around them.

Because God loves people so much, he would never send anyone to hell for violating his law.

Because my God's a God of love.

That's what people are saying when they're saying, My God's a God of love, they're just saying, hey, my God would never do anything that violates me.

Yes, he would.

Yes.

Yes.

We don't always get our way, beloved.

And so one of the things we've got to ask ourselves is just, who do I submit to?

Who do I submit to?

I was talking to somebody in counseling this week, and I just said, God came to say to me and said, Hey, I don't want to go to church here, there, anywhere.

Somebody recommended you, and so here I am, and I said, okay, let's start with a question because I just want to get to know you.

Who do you, who or what do you submit to?

He goes, I don't submit to anybody or anything.

What do you mean?

I said, submit.

Who do you, who has the capacity to affect your life choices and the warp and move of life, all the way from what you eat, how you drink, who you spend your money, who you love, who you hate?

And he said, I'm the master of my own destiny.

And I start opening the drawers of my desk.

He goes, What are you looking for?

I said, something stronger than coffee to drink.

Because that is a sad saying.

And he goes, Do you think you're being helpful?

Yeah.

I think I am.

Because here's what I wanted to understand.

If you were the master, and I will say this to you too, not out of spite or to be cute or sarcastic, but if you are the master of your own destiny, then all you will experience in this life is whatever you can create.

Whatever you can finance.

But if there's a God in this world, like Paul said to these unbelievers in Athens, the city of Athens in Acts 17, he said, Okay, he's trying to help them understand what God's like.

And he says, God has determined the exact places that people should live.

And he lists all this stuff that God has done.

And then he says this, he says, like some of your own followers have said, we are his offspring.

He's done all of this so that we would somehow seek him and find him, though he's not very far from any of us.

Paul says, hey, you smart lost people are not beyond the pale.

But you need to understand this about God.

See, what Paul's saying is you've got to think rightly about God.

So when it comes time to submit to God, you know that you're submitting to him.

But here's the issue: we don't submit to anybody.

We don't.

I mean, ask yourself today, who do I submit to?

And my friend that I'm at, I said, hey, listen, I'm not trying to convert you or anything.

I'm just trying to understand what has authority over you.

He said, I don't submit to anything.

I said, well, as a Christian, I submit to God and the teachings of the Bible.

So that's the perspective I come from.

So you may not want to come back for another appointment with me, because that's how we're going to think about this.

And he goes, Well, I'm listening.

Go ahead.

And it was great.

It was an incredible time.

But I realized I am talking to a man his entire life who's never submitted to anything but himself.

And I'm saying to you, that is not what you were created for.

Submission is not a four-letter word.

But we live in a culture where man is so exalted and God is so debased.

That just sounds natural.

That sounds normal to say that.

And so I just want to say, not everything in the Bible is about us.

Secondly, I want to say that Moses, the way that he looks like he does, is in a statement about the fact that Moses has been communing with a glorious God.

And so ask yourself today, is God still glorious in your thoughts and in your affections?

Third thing the Bible tells us is that Moses speaks with authority.

He speaks with authority.

You say, I don't know what you mean.

Moses remembers a mediator between God and the Israelites, and as such, he has authority.

Back in chapter 32, they refused Moses' leadership.

They turned away from him.

They said, Hey, we don't always have this Moses got.

Aaron, get over here and make us a golden calf.

And Aaron said, okay, take off your jewelry.

Why is this a big deal?

Because we need to hear this fresh and new this morning because we live in a culture that's void of authority.

It is a hate crime for stand up and say, This is right and this is unchanging.

The word they use now is, well, that's like microaggression.

You're imposing your views upon me, and you don't have the right to do that.

Why?

Because there's no such thing as authority in our culture.

If you want to see this in action, go to a public school and watch who runs the classroom.

I was talking to a teacher yesterday, and he's like, oh yeah, seven of my kids are in school suspension.

This is an elementary school teacher.

Now, I got to confession tonight.

I'm not about advocating violence.

What I'm about to tell you is not an advocation of violence.

But when I was in the eighth grade and we popped off Mrs.

Hanson, she went down the hall and got Coach Hogue.

He got my friend Peaches by the neck and bounced his head off the locker three times and said, Is there any questions?

No, sir.

Went right back in there.

We were the naked clock spirit.

He just raised his hand and said, If I go to the hospital and ask me, Coach Hogue beat my head against the locker.

I got a headache.

And the teacher said, You can go and come right back.

And that was it.

There was no lawsuits.

Some of you are gone.

Yes.

That's what I grew up in.

And guess what?

Nobody else talked in the class.

Nobody body slammed the teacher.

No.

No.

Matter of fact, he stood up in front of all of us and said, If I so much as you're a people rescue, if she has to come get me, I'm going to make her life miserable.

And I thought to myself, I think he means that.

So you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to shut up and submit.

I'm going to let somebody else be in charge of this classroom.

See, somebody else being in charge of the classroom sends your kid the right message.

They're not in charge of the word.

But we live in a culture that's void of authority.

Why did I tell you that?

Because into such a culture, because that's what the Israelites did, they threw off restraint.

They said, You're not the boss of us.

You're not going to tell us what to do.

We're going to formulate teachers up to our own desires.

Come on, Aaron.

Make us the golden calf.

The Bible says this.

Look at verse 31.

But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation, they returned to him.

That doesn't mean they just look back at Moses because, okay, maybe he's not going to overwhelm us with this glowing chekalah of glory.

No, they returned to him.

They came back and said, You know what?

You lead with a measure of authority, so we're going to submit to you.

And Moses talked with him, and after which all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai.

And when Moses had finished speaking with him, he put a veil over his face.

And whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out.

And when he came out, he told the people of Israel that when he was commanding, the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, and the skin of Moses' face was shiny.

They would see and they would realize, oh, this is not just his opinion.

He's not trying to oppress me.

He is God's chosen person to lead us.

There's a measure of authority.

It's all over his face.

So they see that the skin of Moses' face was shiny, and Moses put the veil over his face again until he went in to speak with them.

What's the big deal?

You see the same thing in the life of Jesus.

Remember the life of the ministry of Jesus?

Jesus would cast out a demon or he'd kill somebody?

And remember the question they would ask?

What authority do you do these things?

There's a story in Mark chapter 2 where these guys bring their paralyzed friend, they dig a hole in the roof, they lower him down the presence of Jesus.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

And Jesus says, Hey, uh, you pick up your mat and go home.

And the people are like, What?

Who do you think you are?

I mean, oh, and Jesus says, Hey, your sins are forgiven.

Pick up your mat and go home.

And the people responded by saying, Hey, what do you think you're doing?

Who can forgive sins but God alone?

And Jesus says, You got yourself a point there.

Who can forgive sins but God alone?

Now think this for a second.

Follow me, because I'm going to bring you to a conclusion you need to see today.

They said, Hey, who can forgive sins but God alone?

And Jesus says, which is easier?

To say to this paralyzed guy, take up your mat and walk, or to say to him, your sins are forgiven.

And Jesus says, so you'll know that the Son of Man has authority.

I'm going to do both.

And he does.

And the Bible says the guy picked up his mat and he walked out in full view of them all.

And this amazed everyone.

And then praise God and saying, We've never seen anything like this before.

Translation, that's why when Jesus first spoke, the people said, in the temple, they said, hey, he didn't speak as a scribe or a Pharisee, but he talks as someone who has authority.

Why do I tell you all that?

Because the Bible teaches that you and I were created to live the same kind of life.

What do you mean?

See, when Jesus does what he does, when the people say, who has authority to forgive sins but God alone, it brings up this great point.

Who has the spiritual authority to forgive you?

Because if you don't believe in authority, then I would ask you today, where do you get forgiveness?

I don't know what you mean.

If God does not have the authority to command you, then where does he get the authority to forgive you?

He can't have it both ways.

You're smart people.

You can't say, you're not the boss of me.

I can do what I want.

I'm the master of my own destiny.

Okay?

And I said to my friend over confessing, hey, by the way, one of the things that this whole master of your own destiny can have to work out is how do you get forgiveness for your sins.

I don't know what you mean.

Well, what I mean is, is if God does not have the authority to command you to say, do this and don't do that, then how does God get the authority?

And where does he get the authority from to forgive you?

And then what my friend wanted to say was, well, I get, and he caught himself.

Because we don't have the authority, we don't have the capacity to tell God, hey, this is what you can do in my life, and nothing more.

Either God is God, or you're on your own.

You just choose to live at the mercy of whatever you can come up with.

There's a difference in the glory that Moses reflected and the glory that Jesus radiated, by the way.

Moses was like the moon, he just reflects the light of the sun.

Jesus is the sun.

What do you mean?

The Bible says it like this in Hebrews chapter 1.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

Long ago, many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world.

He is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of his nature.

And he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

So Jesus is not reflecting glory, he's radiating glory from his own being as the Son of God.

Which is why when he spoke to his disciples, he said, Hey, go and make disciples of all nations.

He says, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Therefore, therefore, in other words, what I'm fixing to tell you is predicating on the fact that I have all authority.

And what he tells us to do is rooted in authority.

What I'm saying to you this morning is you're created to live authoritative lives, which are oriented around and motivated by the glory of God.

But instead, what we do is we look around and we get some people that agree with us and like us and accept us and tell us, hey, that's okay.

I know God wants you to be happy.

My God's God's love, and I think God wants you to be happy.

So if that makes you happy, don't want to judge you.

What you have to do eventually is you have to put a veil over your face, not to hide the radiance of God's glory, but to cover up the fact that it's not there anymore.

And that's a miserable place to be.

Because you know when you have I was created to live with authority.

I was created to bring God glory.

Whatever I do, whether I eat or drink, I do all for the glory of God.

That's my native environment.

But I've got to put a veil over my face to stay in this relationship.

Because I don't want them to know that it ain't there anymore.

I'm not experiencing what I was created for.

So, here's what I'm driving us to this morning, and I'll be done, okay?

Here's what I want to ask you to do.

I want you to consider this morning to begin the habit of meeting with God on a regular basis.

You say, what?

I want you and I to begin the habit, cultivate the habit of meeting with God on a regular basis.

Just you alone with God and the Bible.

Don't, this is not just meditate, whatever pops in your head.

That's God, not at all.

You may want to start the Gospel of John.

Great book.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

Fourth book in the New Testament.

Starts off with who Jesus is, that he's the Son of God.

The first thing the Bible will tell you in John's gospel, John says, hey, God put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood.

He says, We beheld his glory, he's the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

And you'll see early on that God is a balance of grace and truth.

Because if all you do is live your life around grace, then what you end up with is permission.

But the truth brings power.

That's where the authority comes from.

That gives us something to submit to, something to say, oh, I want to eat more, but that would be gluttony.

You already served on gluttony lately?

We don't touch that with a 10-foot pole.

What would you be built?

Just to consider.

Beginning to meet with God.

And he said, Why do you say that?

Because this whole thing happened because Moses went up on the mountain and he spent 40 days talking with God face to face as a man talks to his friend.

That's the way Moses and God related to each other.

And by the way, sometimes I talk about people that I meet with.

I'm not making loud or fun of them.

Matter of fact, my buddy got done and he said to me, he said, Well, this was kind of helpful.

Some of it just frustrated.

I said, I'm glad I can be of assistance.

And so I said, I'm going to pray.

You okay with that?

He goes, Oh yeah.

I said, because if there's no God, I'm just talking to the ceiling, right?

Well, pretty much.

And so I prayed and he swerked his colour while I was praying.

Now the redneck to me was kind of like, just jump the desk and be it out.

When I got done, he's kind of looking at me like, and he's getting ready to walk out, and I said, Hey, you want to be friends?

That's such a weird question.

He looked at me like I said, let's take our shirts off and hover.

Hold it on to my door like.

And I said, Yeah, you want to be friends?

You gotta be preacher?

You gotta be friends with preachers?

No.

I said, don't say it like that.

Like that's miserable.

Well, what do you what do you what do you mean, friends?

I don't know.

Get lunch, coffee, whatever.

We ain't gotta see each other every week.

I just, you wanna be friends?

Because I want to be friends.

Why?

Why are you saying that?

Because this guy that I'm talking about, he wants to be friends.

You were born his enemy.

But he's willing to make a friend of you.

So I'm just saying if you want to be friends.

I said, you can develop any taxes.

They can say, I'm friends with the preacher.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Okay, sure.

So he shook hands, and out he goes.

Why do I tell you that?

Because the thought of beginning the habit of consistently meeting with God.

Because by the way, as we get close to the end of the year, your life is not going to slow down, it's going to speed up.

And so you've got to carve out some time and space to kind of say, okay, I'm not doing anything.

I'm turning off all the media, all the technology, and I'm just going to sit here.

And not because, not that it feels good, feels right, because I have to just discipline myself just to be with God.

And as a result of that, not as the goal, but as the byproduct of that, Moses comes down the mountain and people are overwhelmed.

Let me give you four questions to think about this morning.

We'll be done.

First of all, in your worldview, are you the moon or the sun?

Secondly, whose name is majestic when it comes out of your mouth?

Thirdly, who do you submit to?

And fourthly, who or what has the authority over you?

Let's think about these things for just a moment.

Let me pray.

We want to take some time and just kind of reflect on what you said.

Let me think about what's been said and what you're saying even now.

Pray, Holy Spirit, for clarity.

Or we can't have it both ways.

Either you have the authority to command us to do things, and therefore to forgive us when we fall short, or you don't have the authority to do either.

Moses' shining countenance is a reminder that you're a glorious God.

And so everything in the Bible is not about us.

It's not a self-help book with a cross on top.

It is a book that is very God-centric.

And though that can sound offensive, it's actually a great thing.

Because my life can be built on something that's a server as God is.

And because you love us, you invit us into that serpenty today.

So we just want to take a few moments and think about this before we go.

So here are our thoughts, Lord, as we think them to you.

So without you, we would be beyond loss.

So I pray for anyone in this room today that's never responded to your offer of friendship, a relationship.

A relationship within which is found forgiveness and authority and the capacity to live the life that God talks about.

Not as effort, but because of intimacy.

We understand that to be the truth today.

And that's the thing that sets us free.

Everything else, God, is just a socially acceptable form of bondage.

But the truth sets us free.

So we ask for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So help us, God.

Because there's a big world within which we're called to testify.

And so we want to speak.

We want to do that in Jesus' name.

So help us to do that.

We want people to recognize that we've been with Jesus.

That would help if we spent time with you.

We just carved out and cultivated a habit of just saying, before I do anything else, I want to spend some time kind of getting oriented around the sun.

Thanks for the simplicity of the gospel.

We're grateful today.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You came in, you're giving a worship vote that has different information about events in our church, but also that's a little tear our portion asked you for some information.

You matter to us, uh, and you matter to God.

That's why we we want to know that you are here.

So if you've got a chance to fill that out and to tear it off and drop it on these wooden boxes by the doors, and if today's the day you practice obedience and generosity and giving, that's where you would do that as well for the rest of our church.

Okay?

Myself and some of our pastors will be down front.

Uh, if you have a question about anything you heard, or you'd like to play and pray with you, you've got something going on, we would love to do that.

If this is your first, second, or third time to visit our church, we would just ask you to come up and just introduce yourself.

We want to put a name in a face.

That's it.

I'm not going to keep you and try to have a conversation you don't want to have.

We understand lunch is happening, and we want you to get to that.

Amen?

Stand to your feet.

Hold your hands out and speak a blessing over you.

May the Lord bless you.

And keep you.

May the Lord cause his face to shine on you.

May the Lord turn his counter toward you.

His face toward you.

In the name of the Father and the Son of the Lord.