Sermon Tone Analysis
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Think with me for a second: what is the one thing you want, more than anything else?
Is it a better job, better physical health, or stronger relationships?
Maybe you are thinking bigger—something like world peace or an end to racism or hunger?
Where we pick up in Exodus this morning, we are finding Israel in a similar situation.
In a sense, God is promising to give them what they want, but
What if God offered to do what it was you wanted, but with a catch?
What if God granted you a stronger relationship with your spouse, or all the money you would need to live comfortably, or even peace on earth, and yet if he did, you would never know the closeness of his presence again?
That’s the situation Moses and Israel found themselves in in this morning’s passage.
Go ahead and open your Bible to .
As you’re turning that way, let’s talk about what has happened with Moses and Israel since last time we were together.
God has delivered his people out of slavery in Egypt, and now, they have been led by him to Mount Sinai.
They have been at Sinai for some time while God called Moses up on the mountain to receive his law.
Moses was gone for a long time, and the people started getting restless.
They could see that God’s presence was like a cloud on top of the mountain, but they couldn’t go any closer to get near him.
They decided they would do the next best thing: build an idol.
The people gave gold to Aaron, Moses’ brother, and he made it into a calf for them to worship.
The people started partying and worshiping this false idol, and eventually, God pointed it out to Moses.
Moses came down from the mountain, and he and others put 3,000 men to death that day for their idolatry.
Moses had to plead with God not to destroy the people, not because they didn’t deserve to die, but because of a concern for God’s name.
If God killed off the Israelites, it would give the other nations reason to think that God wasn’t big enough to rescue his people.
God
Still, as punishment for their idolatry, God caused a plague to go through the people and many of them died.
That’s where we pick up this morning.
Moses is given a choice, and he chooses to pray boldly to God on behalf of his people.
Instead of settling for what seemed great on the surface, he leaned in and begged for God’s presence.
This passage gives us a great picture of who God is and how he deals with people.
There is a thread running through it, though, that points to how important it is for us to choose God’s presence over anything else.
That’s where I want us to be as we leave this morning…willing to put it all on the line so that we can know God’s presence in our lives.
I know, God is present everywhere at all time.
That is part of his nature and cannot change.
However, there is a unique way that God shows up to comfort, confront, and guide his people at different seasons.
It is a poor analogy, but you know the difference between your spouse or your kids being in the room with you on their phones or tablet or zoned out watching TV, and when they are actually present with you.
Sure, they may be there, but you don’t sense that tenderness of being together.
To be clear, God is never distracted, but there are times when we are more aware of the nearness of God than others.
For Moses and Israel, this was demonstrated by the pillar of cloud and fire.
It is true that we aren’t likely to have the same kind of experience Moses did, but we can and should be just as hungry and thirsty for God’s presence as he was.
We should desire God’s nearness more than anything he can do for us.
We must choose God’s presence.
Let’s draw three principles for our lives from what we see between God and Moses this morning.
Start with me in .
In order for us to choose God’s presence, we must...
1) Get serious about sin.
Verse 1 starts off sounding good, doesn’t it?
God is going to fulfill his promise to give them the land.
He is going to send an angel to defeat all the nations ahead of them, and they will finally be able to take over what they had been waiting on for over 400 years.
It is going to be a rich and fertile land, but there will be one thing missing: God’s presence is not going to accompany them as they go.
From the moment they left Egypt, God has demonstrated that he was with them through a pillar of cloud during the day and fire at night.
Now, they have shown their hand, and their hearts are not in line with God’s design, so he will not go with them.
Look again at verse 3...
God said of them, “You are a stiff-necked people.”
That doesn’t mean they needed to go see a chiropractor or get off their phones and work on their posture.
It meant that they were like a stubborn ox or donkey that wouldn’t turn its head when you tried to lead it a direction it didn’t want to go.
They already showed that they weren’t willing to follow God’s lead, and that’s why so many had died in the aftermath of their sin.
God said, “I might destroy you on the way...” Then look at verse 5.
Let’s stop and think about this for a moment: is God saying that he is stressed out by them, and they are about on his last nerve?
If they mess up just one more time...
Is he the dad who has been in the car for a long time with kids who are whiny, yelling, “Don’t make me pull this car over!”?
For some of you, that is your view of God, and I hope you will see something clearly here: God isn’t a frustrated old man whose last nerve you just happened to find.
No, he is saying this as an act of grace.
You see, God is a just God, which means by his very nature, because he is so holy, so perfect, and so just, he cannot tolerate sin.
He cannot overlook sin in his presence.
He is too good for that, which is really a good thing for us.
If God wasn’t that just, then we would have no certainty that he will ultimately deal with the injustices in the world around us.
You might draw the lines in different places, but we can all agree that there are some people who commit unjust actions who deserve punishment for them.
He knows the hearts of the Israelites, and he knows how stubborn they are.
He knows that they will continue in sin, and if so, he will have to punish it.
Let that sink in for a minute—that’s how serious sin is.
It isn’t that God set up some arbitrary set of attitudes and actions he thought you should and shouldn’t do.
No; right and wrong stem from his character and nature, from who God is.
When you and I sin, we are saying to God, “I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you say, I am going to do this the way I want to do it.”
God is too holy to allow that kind of behavior.
He is too good to let sin go unpunished.
That’s why he said, “If I go up with you, I am going to judge you.”
It was an act of grace that was designed to get their attention and help them see how serious their sin is.
He called them to put away their jewelry, which would have been a sign of mourning.
You would wear your nice jewelry to a party, not to a funeral.
As an act of mourning, the people put away their jewelry for the rest of the 40 years of wandering.
Let’s get personal for a minute: how do you respond to sin in your own heart?
If you are going to choose God’s presence, then you need to get serious about the sin in your life.
I am not talking about how many times you “like” and share that post on Facebook that calls out a particular sin.
I am talking about in your own heart, in your own life: what do you think about the sin in your own heart?
When is the last time you sat down with God and seriously asked him to do what David asked:
There is not a one of us who has reached the point where we are completely without sin, so when is the last time you let God search out your heart?
If you know of areas where you have been sinning, what steps are you taking to change?
Remember, Jesus advised us to take drastic measures to defeat sin:
matthew 5:
“Well, I feel really bad when I sin.”
Good—that’s called conviction, and it is a good thing.
James says our hearts should be burdened when we realize we are sinning:
ja 4:9-10
However, it can’t stop with just feeling sad; you need to truly repent, which means you allow the weight of how far you have fallen from God lead you to change and start living differently.
The people of Israel demonstrated that with outward signs of mourning, but their hearts weren’t changed, and God did have to discipline them over and over and over.
They never were truly serious about their sin, which also kept them from recognizing what Moses saw.
He knew that the only way to keep from falling back into sinful patterns is to...
2) Spend time with God.
Perhaps this is too obvious, but if we are going to choose God’s presence, we have to spend time with him!
Pick up again in verses 7-11...
As a symbol of God’s presence being distant from the people, Moses put a tent outside the camp where you would go to meet with God.
This wasn’t the Tabernacle that would be built later; this was a special tent that was just for meeting with God.
There wasn’t an altar, and it didn’t have the Ark of the Covenant or anything in it.
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