Exodus - 33:12-23, 34:5-9

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

All right, well, hey friends, it's good to be back with you.

I was able to take a short break last week, which was nice.

I got just an ever so slight sunburn, which was really cool.

It was just, it was just enough that I was like itchy but not in

pain. And I realized as I as I left

Florida, I was like, I will not give this much vitamin D until

May. So I should probably soak this

in anyway. So thank you for praying for me

and my family as we are away. I really appreciate that and

it's great to be back with you guys.

Well, this week I, I have to say that we are drawing near to the

end of our time with Moses, which makes me a little sad.

Next week is our last week to spend directly with Moses and

then we come into our Advent series, which is aptly named

Coming Home for Christmas. And so here's the thing, we have

some space right now, which is great.

That means there's room for one more.

And it might be weirder. It might be difficult to invite

people to church, especially if you're thinking about what I

just said, which is like, oh man, next week is the last

sermon in an entire series that might be confusing for people.

I promise it will not be confusing.

It will wrap up nicely. And even if the person has never

been in church, I promise they will be able to understand

what's happening. And then again, Advent coming

up. Can't wait for that.

We're, we're going to spend a lot of, we're going to spend all

those weeks leading up to Christmas in Isaiah and that's a

great place to spend some time. Speaking of all that, by the

way, just as an aside, Christmas is happening soon.

I don't know if any like Christmas is happening soon.

Are you hearing the words that are coming out of my mouth?

No, you're not I'm excited. I, I love Christmas.

It's a great time of here. It just gives us this beautiful

reminder of God coming to meet with us in person.

Well, anyway, when we left off with Moses last week, there was

some strange things happening, some really weird occurrences,

like the fact that they were worshipping this calf, this bowl

that was made of gold. And that's a really strange

thing to do. I suspect it would not be any

different than worshipping a giant wedding ring or something

like that. It just, it makes no sense.

And So what happens because of their stupidity is a lot of

people end up dying. And that's awful.

That's awful. But that's what that's what

idolatry does to us. It promises something that it

never actually fulfills. And in the end, it takes our

lives from us because it requires everything of us and

gives nothing back. So that's a problem.

Now, one of the things I was thinking about, just thinking

about last week and hearing Pastor Matt's message is does

our lack of faithfulness negate God's faithfulness?

Does our lack of faithfulness negate God's faithfulness?

Well, the short answer to that question is no.

The short answer is no. However, there are consequences

for our actions. I think somebody has said it

this way, and I, and I kind of like this phrase, Play stupid

games, win stupid prizes. I have played a number of stupid

games in my life and won a lot of very dumb prizes for it, and

so I would like us all to avoid that if at all possible.

So the question then becomes, how do we move forward after we

do dumb things, after we leave God in the dust, after we

worship something else? How do we come back from that?

Because ultimately it's a relationship.

And so when and and when we basically cheat on God, how then

do we gain his trust back? How do we rebuild that

relationship? Well, this week we're going to

find out kind of what that looks like.

And so I'm, I'm excited for you guys to hear what's going to

happen. But one of the things that I

want to preview on is Moses is going to do something really

unique and really strange in his, in his request, in, in, in

his mediating for the people and the people attempting to come

back to God after breaking his trust.

He's going to make a strange request and the request goes

like this. Lord, show me your glory.

Show me your glory. The reason why this is a strange

request, and you need to understand this, is because if

Moses is asking to see God's glory, what he's really asking

for is he's asking to see God bear.

He's asking to see God exactly who he is and all of his power

and all of his justice and all of his love and all of his mercy

and all of his judgement, everything.

He is asking to see God without a filter.

That's an incredible ask. Is it something that he can do?

Is this something that is it a a request that God can acquiesce

to? Well, we're going to find out.

So as we find out this week, I want to look at this text

through the through a lens that shouldn't say title.

That's dumb. I have a title.

My bad. That's so dumb, so dumb.

The title of this sermon is title.

You're welcome. You're welcome.

Well, let's look at the text through the part that is

correct. How about that?

First, we're going to understand that we need all of God or we

need none of Him. There's not an in between.

We cannot. I'll get into it in a minute.

The second thing that we need to understand is what does intimacy

with the Lord look like? What is that relationship?

How does that really function? And then finally, we're going to

see that the Lord has an inheritance.

What would that be? Well, we'll find out.

But as we as we look at this today, we're going to be between

two chapters. We're going to be in Exodus

Exodus 33 · chapter mention

chapter 33 and we're going to read verse 12 through 23, which

gets us through the end of the chapter.

And then we're going to jump over to chapter 34 and read

verses 5 through 9. So if you have your Bibles,

that's where we're going. Exodus 3312 through 23 and then

Exodus 34, five through 9. We read all this in Jesus name.

Moses said to the Lord, See, you say to me, bring up this people,

but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.

Yet You have said, I know you by name and and you have also found

favor in my sight. Now therefore, if I have found

favor in your sight, please show me your ways that I might know

you in order to find favor in your sight.

Consider too, that this nation is your people.

And he said, My presence will go with you, and I will give you

rest. And he said to him, If your

presence will not go with me, do not bring me up from here, For

how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight,

I and your people? Is it not in your going with us,

so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other

people on the face of the earth? And the Lord said to Moses, This

very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found

favor in my sight, and I know you by name.

Moses said, Please show me your glory.

And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I

will proclaim before you my name, the Lord, and I will be

gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy,

on whom I will show mercy. But he said, You cannot see my

face, for man shall not see me and live.

And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me where you shall

stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by, I will put you

in a cleft in the rock, and I will cover you by my hand until

I have passed. By Then I will take away my

hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.

Verse 5 of 34 The Lord descended in a cloud and stood with him

there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord.

The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and

abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast

love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and

sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

Visiting the iniquity of the Father's on the children and the

children's children to the 3rd and the 4th generation.

And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped.

And he said, If now I have found faith in your sight, O Lord,

please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff

necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take

us for your inheritance. Here ends the reading of God's

word. There is a saying that actually

I had conversations around the same this week, interestingly

enough. But there's a saying that goes

like this. Absence makes the heart grow

fonder. Now, some of you know exactly

what that phrase means because you have people in your life who

you do really love, but you love them when they're gone.

Yeah. I mean, I, I I will not name

anybody. I'm not going to do that.

But gosh, there are people who you love dearly, who you're

like. You know what?

Once a week is more than enough. You have filled my cup with you.

I'm good. Please.

I will see you next week, next month, next year.

We're good now as we approach the holidays, I think we, we

probably come into a little bit of that and but just don't tell

them that that's the kind of person they are for you.

Don't do that. Because what's really true that

we have to reflect on is the fact that we ourselves are

probably that person for somebody else.

I know I, I don't know it for sure, but I'm sure I'm too much

for some people who love me and they're like, you know what,

man, I'll see you next month. That's good.

We're good. Well, anyway, that that can be

true to an extent. However, when you have a

relationship where your entire life, your entire existence is

built on that relationship with that person, absence is no

longer a good thing. That's that's our relationship

with God. When our relationship with God

has a period of absence, it does not make us grow fonder, nor

does it make him grow fonder of us.

It just messes things up really bad and and it has the pencil.

The longer the the absence is, the the greater the potential

for things to go sideways. You see, God said he would

previously. Our God previously said that he

would not go with them because he may consume these stiff

necked people along the way. Now that's weird.

By the way, just as an aside, that's a really strange thing to

say. Like it's not, I'm going to for

sure. If I go with you, it's like,

dude, I might have a bad day and just wipe you out.

Lord, I would like some clarity on that if you don't mind.

Excuse me, still fighting a cold, but I want to.

I want to, I want to show you where this happens.

It's not something that we read today, but this is where we get

that idea. It says I will send an Angel

before you and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites,

the Hittites, the Parasites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

You like those names. I go up to the land flowing with

milk and honey, but I will not go with you lest I consume you

along the way for you are a stiff necked people.

That happens earlier in chapter 33.

So what are what are we really dealing with here?

Well, the tough thing about this I, I, I think and let me get my

head wrapped around this because I don't want to say it

incorrectly. I think for some people this

looks like an amazing deal. This looks really good.

You would stop right here and you wouldn't be like Moses.

You'd be like, sweet man, I'll, I'll buy that.

And here's why. Because what God is promising is

he's not promising his presence, but he is promising social,

political and economic Wellness. Do you get that?

So what that means is that there are a lot of people, and I would

say a lot of people who would even call themselves Christians

and they would take this deal. They would take this, and they

would run with this. Because here's the thing, If I

can have a God who's going to give me social, economic and

political power but has no expectations on me, is not a

part of my daily life. Sweet.

It sounds like I've won. It absolutely sounds like I've

won. What that might look like is,

hey, Lord, OK, you're going to do all this stuff for us.

And I will just tag in the big guy when I need him.

I can tell you that is not an intelligent or a thoughtful or a

right way to live with God to say I want you when I want you

and besides that you can just go do whatever other business you

have to do. That is not a good relationship

to have. If you don't believe me, let me

explain it like this. Let's say that there are two

people dating and they don't live together, but they're

dating. And So what happens is over a

long enough timeline, this relationship it it blossoms a

little bit. And so now not only are they

going to dinner together, not only they're kind of meeting

friends together, but now they're actually physically

intimate too. And what happens is one of the

people in that relationship when somebody, one person says, you

know what? I would, I would really like to

take this to the next level. I think we should make a firm

commitment to each other. Oh, I don't know, something like

marriage. Crazy idea, right?

And the other person's like, you know what?

I would prefer not. I really like this situation.

I've got my own house. You've got your own house.

And guess what that means? I can just call you when I want

to see you. I can call you when I'm feeling

aroused. I can call you when I want to go

to dinner. And why don't we just leave it

like that? What would you say about that

person? If you're being kind, you would

call them a scoundrel. You would call them somebody

who's using and abusing the other person.

You would not call that a good relationship, would you?

And if you would, I feel sorry for you because those people are

missing out on the greatness of what could be.

They're missing out on that. But that's the way we treat God,

isn't it? Yes, that's how we treat God.

We treat God. Hey, I'll call you when I need

you. I'll call you when I want

something. I will call you when I'm

desperate. Baloney.

That's ridiculous. It is all of him or none of him.

In the Book of Revelation, we hear that it's better to be hot

or cold because if you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of

my mouth. The other thing that matters

here, and I want to bring this up, it's really important, Moses

does not like that set up. He does not like the casual

relationship and he knows it's bad for him and his people.

And so he makes a request. He makes a statement and he

says, Lord, I need you to be with us.

I need you to be with me. I want to be all in with you.

I don't want this social political goodness without you

because it won't fulfill me. And so he asks to be made

distinct. He wants to be a distinct people

group. He wants to be set apart.

Why? Is it because he has a big ego?

No, it's because that word distinct matters.

That word is talking about ownership.

Now, let me put it to you this way.

Gosh, there's a lot of Tim's in our church.

Hey, Tim, that's one of them. Or is it?

There's another. There's another one.

There's a lot of Tim's in our church.

Now, when Megan says Tim, you know what she probably says?

She says my Tim. That's my Tim.

There's other Tim's here, but that's my Tim.

When I look at my wife, there are a lot of married people in

this room, but I get to look at her and I say that's my wife.

She is distinct from every other woman in this room because she

is mine. That's what that's what Moses is

asking for. He's asking for God to come down

and say these people are mine. And that's what we should all be

asking for. We should all be asking for God

to say Lord, call me yours, not just when I call you, not just

when I need you, but call me yours all of the time.

That's what we should be asking for.

That's what we should be seeking for and striving for all of him

or none of him. Make a decision.

Don't be lukewarm. Now that moves us into into our

second point. If we're going to assume all of

the Lord, let's move forward assuming that we want all of the

Lord and if you're not there yet, stick with me.

Maybe it will happen by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But here's here's how we move forward with conviction of all

the Lord. It means that just like Moses is

seeking an intimate relationship with God, we are too.

And how does Moses do that? Well, verse 18, he is seeking

intimacy with God by saying please show me your glory.

Now again, give you an example of this, and this is not a

perfect example, I'm sorry, but it's the best I've got.

I'm going to go back to husbands and wives.

When a man and a woman commit themselves into biblical

marriage, what happens is you are asking for that very thing.

You are asking to see that person bear.

You are asking to have every part of that person understood

by you. It is a revelation of character.

That's what we're asking for. We're asking for a revelation of

character where there's no more filters.

Now, of course, in human relationships, when we drop all

the filters, when we drop the ACT, you take off the makeup,

you look like a crazy person when you wake up, what happens

is we start to see flaws in people.

We start to see flaws. We see them there.

We see the full revelation of them.

Now, here's the thing, and this is kind of an aside.

Lord, help us to our spouses, or if you're not married, potential

spouses. We will be a gospel

representative to them because we do see their flaws.

We do see them there, and we will treat them the way that God

has treated us in our sin. He sees us bare, but He still

loves us. He still forgives us.

He still wants a relationship with us, right?

So just in thinking about that, I want to say one more thing and

then I have to move on because this is not really what the

sermons about. Lord help me.

Too many people think that being in a relationship is about.

I need that person to make me happy.

They should make me happy. Well, I'm here to tell you,

friends, your spouse is not primarily there to make you

happy. Your spouse is there to make you

holy. And if you think that your

spouse's existence is there solely to make you happy, you

have made a huge mistake. Because guess what?

They are going to fail over and over and over again.

Do not get these things mixed up.

They're there to make you holy, not necessarily happy.

Don't mix that up anyway. So for Moses to ask to see God's

glory is for him to want every curtain pulled back, just like

with a spouse. He's wanting to see the full

revelation of God's power and his beauty and His Majesty and

all of these things. And so here's what that looks

like in verse 19. He said, I will make.

He said, I will make all my goodness pass before you and

will proclaim before you my name, the Lord.

Now something changed. Something got off here in the

translation. Not really.

But Moses asks for glory and God says, goodness, Well, here's

what's happening. And somebody way smarter than me

has explained it better, so I'm going to give you their words.

Tim Keller put it this way. He says that the reason that God

says no to showing Moses his glory is because there is an

incompatibility of nature. There's an incompatibility of

nature. What does that mean?

Well, I'll give you an example. If you have a little fire and a

lot of water, what's going to happen?

Fire's going out. It will be quenched, right?

Or if you have a really big fire and a little bit of water,

what's going to happen? Water's vaporized, right?

Well, because of our sin, because of the incompatibility

of our nature as we sit today, right now in this room, sinners

saved by grace, we cannot be in the total bare presence of God.

There is an incompatibility of nature that will absolutely

consume us. We will not survive that

encounter. The greater will dominate and

overtake the smaller. And guess who you are in that

equation? You are not the greater, neither

am I, even though I have a microphone.

It doesn't matter. God is the greater in that

scenario. And because of our

incompatibility of nature, He will consume us as we are right

now. And so The funny thing about all

of this that I think is like, OK, so this pastor has been

talking about the very thing we need most, the only thing we

ever need in our lives and in the whole world is we need a

close intimate relationship with God.

But we can't get that close to Him because we'll die.

Awesome. That's a problem, I think.

I think that's a problem. But God also gives us a

solution, as He always does. In the last couple verses that

we covered in chapter 34, God does this strange thing with

Moses, really unique experience. He puts the he's on the

mountain. He kind of tucks him back in, in

the cleft in the rock and he says, all right, here's what I'm

going to do. I'm going to I'm going to cover

you up as I walk by. And what you're going to see is

after I pass by, you're going to see kind of the, the tail end of

things. You're going to see the tail end

of my goodness in my glory. You can't see me full, but I'll,

I'll let you see my goodness in my glory in that way.

I'll let you see a partial view of it.

OK, well, I think the most interesting thing about this

partial view of God and and what he says, it's also the most

confusing and challenging thing about those couple verses.

And here's what I mean. And and let's hear.

Yeah. So as God passes by, he says

this about himself, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast

love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and

sin. Cool.

We like that part, at least I hope you like that part.

But then in the same breath, he says, who will by no means clear

the guilty. And I will punish the father in

this generation, in this generation.

And you're like, whoa, hold on. This man is talking out of both

sides of his mouth because quite frankly, how are you going to

tell me that you perfectly love me, but every single tiny minute

sin you are going to judge and you are going to punish for

that? How can it be both?

How can you do that? There's a solution.

It's a very real solution, and if you have your Bibles, here's

what I want you to do. If you have your Bibles, if you

have a physical Bible or your phone Bible, I want you to turn

to John chapter 1. I'll give you a second because

John 1 · chapter mention

this matters. Go ahead and turn to John

John 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 and find verse 14. Now I will tell you that I think

that John 114 is maybe one of the most important verses in the

New Testament because it gives us such a clear bridge from we

cannot endure the glory of God to how then can He still

maintain a relationship with us? Not just a baseline

relationship, but how can He maintain a relationship of real

intimacy with us? How does He do that?

Here's what John 114 says. Underline it, highlighted

circle. It puts stars all over it.

You need this verse. And the Word became flesh and

dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.

We have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father,

full of grace and truth. Two things here and then I'm

going to close up with these two short ideas.

First and foremost, when it says that he dwelt that Jesus dwelt

among us, you know what that word is indicating?

It's it's the same word as as as Exodus.

But in Exodus you might say God was tabernacling with his

people. In other words, he was in their

midst. He came right into their camp.

He was with them. Well, that's what's happening

here in the New Testament with Jesus.

Jesus is tabernacling as God. He's in the midst of his people.

And you know what that means? That means he became

approachable. That means he became somebody

who you could touch, who you could talk to, who you could

have a meal with. That's an incredible thing.

That's a ridiculous thing. It makes no sense, if you stop

and think about it, that God, the God of the universe, is

approachable. And the second thing that makes

this all the more ridiculous is that Jesus Christ, as the Son of

God, has the full glory of God. He has the full glory of God,

and guess what? We get to approach him in his

full glory. So the Moses problem is handled

through the Son of God, Through Jesus Christ, the glory problem

is handled. That's how we have that intimate

relationship with God because the Son of God came in full

glory to be tabernacling, to be in the midst of His people.

I know Jesus isn't walking in physical form in our church

today, but do you realize that He's walking through His Holy

Spirit, that He's walking with you right now?

He is tabernacling with you. He is in your midst, He's in

your heart, He's in your soul through the Holy Spirit.

That's what He does because He loves you that much.

Your sin has been fully taken away and has been fully

discarded. That perfect judgement of God

has been put on the shoulders of Jesus Christ fully, full stop,

all of your sin completely removed from you.

There is nothing left for you to be ashamed of.

There's nothing left for you to fear or be anxious about.

He is tabernacling with you because He loves you that much.

You get to experience the full glory of God through the person

of Jesus Christ. Here's the thing, you as an

individual have a choice to make and so do I.

I can, I can try and tag in God when I really need him or I can

ask for all of him. I can I can try and and reach

out to Him when I'm looking for peace and and intimacy that goes

beyond any human imagination. I can do that from time to time,

or I can just go all in for the Lord because He has gone all in

for me. He has been consumed.

He was consumed by our sin because He loves us that much.

That is somebody who I want to go all in for.

It is a remarkable thing to know that you are loved beyond

anything you can imagine. I'm trying right now to imagine

God's glory and His love for me, and I cannot wrap my head around

it. If you're not there, I hope you

get there. And it's not just that this

emotional one time feeling thing.

It is God's Holy Spirit dwelling within you every single day,

pushing you towards His love. If you've fallen off, if you've

fallen short and you need somebody to pray for you, we'd

love to be able to do that today.

I'm going to pray for all of us right now, but if you need

something extra, please stop in the prayer room before you leave

today. Let's go to the Lord who loves

us. Our Father in heaven, You are

good and You are gracious beyond anything we can understand.

You allowed your Son to be consumed by your perfect

judgement for us. Lord, I can't get my head around

that. That's what you did so that we

can have intimacy in a relationship with you.

Lord, I pray for every single person in here right now that if

there has been a strain or a walking away that you would draw

them back in in such a way that they would want all of you and

they they would seek you every single day.

So, Father, moving our hearts, moving our minds, moving our

mouths, that we might call on the one more to bring them into

Your glory and your goodness. Father, we pray all these things

in the precious name of Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and our

King. Amen.

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