Face to Face with God

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Well, we are gonna be in Exodus chapter 33 today, and we are in the middle of this big betrayal that we have been kind of working through slowly with the golden calf. So God's people are brought into the wilderness, they're out of Exodus. Moses goes up on a mountain and is up there for too long for the people's taste, and they get nervous, they get crazy, they make some golden calves, they make a golden calf, and they begin to worship it, and they begin to ascribe to this golden calf worth value to say, here are your gods that brought you out of Egypt. And it creates this huge rift between God and his people, and God is legitimately hurt if we can kind of think about him that way. God's pained over this. And Moses has gone to God over this, and they've been able to kind of talk back and forth, and Moses has become shown himself as a mediator. God is having conversations with Moses,

and he's saying, step aside, I'm gonna wipe everybody out, and Moses jumps in and says, no, no, no, don't do that. And begins to kind of talk to God about not doing that. So Moses is becoming a mediator. Also, in that exchange, Moses is offering himself as a substitute. He's saying, don't wipe everybody out, blot my name out. And both of these foreshadow the one who is to come. They foreshadow Jesus. Today, that story halts to point to something a little bit more profound. So we will get back to this story next week. Drew Ivey is going to be preaching next week on that story, and I'm pretty excited about that. He's counting offering right now. But he's gonna do a great job in that as we continue to look at this golden calf incident. What we are gonna look at today is something a little bit different. It's only a few verses, but it's worth stopping down on.

In fact, in the Exodus narrative, as you're reading it, it doesn't really seem like it fits. It's a complete stop down of something else that's happening, and I believe that we get it right here in order to point to something else, even that's gonna happen later at Exodus that we've already discussed here on a Sunday morning. But let's just read about the incident right now. Exodus 33 verse seven. Again, there's no context for this. There's no lead up to this. It's just kind of a clean break right here. It says, now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp. And he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. So Moses would set up his own tent. He would go outside the camp, set up a tent,

and he would talk, he would go inside the tent and he'd talk with God. If anybody needed to seek the Lord on any of this, maybe they needed guidance, maybe they needed forgiveness, maybe there was an unsettled dispute, maybe they needed whatever, whatever they needed, they would go to the tent. They wouldn't go in. Only Moses would go into the tent. But they would go to the tent and ask Moses to talk to God for them. Right, and that's kind of what's happening here. Moses is interceding for the people here in kind of this really slow motion kind of way, like one at a time, Moses is going into the tent, asking, coming out, Moses is,

and Moses is doing it. It's a very strange story. But again, I think we're reading it for a reason this morning. And it's curious because this tent of meeting that Moses is setting up right now is about to be replaced with the tabernacle. Now we've read about the tabernacle already. We're kind of going out of order in this whole thing. But it's gonna be helpful to remember by the end of Exodus, Exodus 39-40, there is a tabernacle or temple that is built. Right, and even in the middle of that, it is often called the tent of meeting. So what Moses is doing right now is different than what happens later. But what Moses is doing now is only kind of for like a really short time. So it's almost like while the tabernacle is being built, Moses is making do because he still needs to seek the Lord, people still need to seek the Lord.

And it's describing what Moses is doing and then what happens. So look at the next verse, 33, eight. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up and each would stand at his tent door and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. So there's a bit of a procession that is happening. This is not a small thing. When Moses gets up to go to the tent, it's not like he just goes to the tent like three times a day, you know, like after a meal or something. It's a big deal. It's a procession. Moses is going out to the tent. Look at verses nine and 10. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship each at his tent door. Okay, so the people are responding

to all of this that's happening. Moses gets up to go out to the tent. Everybody gets out of their tent. They stand at the tent door. And then when Moses goes into the tent and the pillar of cloud descends, all the people are having this moment of worship and praise, whenever that would descend. I don't know if you've ever been caught up in something like what you would describe as a moment of worship. It's hard to describe if you've never experienced that, but you have this kind of this deep sense that the Lord's presence is there. And it's difficult. You know something's happening and you want to respond physically like you actually want to pray. You want to sing. You want to do something. You want to respond physically. Sometimes it happens in the car when you got like a worship song on and you're like, man, this song is my jam right now. And I'm going to turn this junk up.

And I don't care who sees me like getting caught up in the third heaven at a stoplight, I don't care. We're going for it, okay? Sometimes it happens in the car. Sometimes, man, even just while we're here singing, there's just this moment where you're kind of caught up into something. You just feel it really, and you're responding to it. I realize it's a weird thing to just describe a feeling like this, but there's almost no way to really articulate what is happening, but you know it when you feel it.

Well, this is what Israel is feeling as Moses is marching out to the tent. They know something is going to happen that's good. They know that the presence of the Lord is going to descend on this tent of meeting that Moses pitched, and they are eternally grateful for that. They are caught up in that moment. The people recognize that this is not just a moment of praise and worship, but that this is also a significant thing that God would relate to a person like this. They are witnessing something breathtaking, and this really is what makes Christianity pretty different than other world religions, that God would descend and speak with people this way, that God's not asking them to follow a certain thing, and then he'll speak to them, or you go down this path, and maybe God'll speak to you, that God actually descends to the people and speaks to them, speaks to Moses this way.

It's significant. They are witnessing something good, something awe-inspiring. Look back at verse nine. We just read this, but I want to read it again. It says, when Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. Now, if you were here with us a few weeks ago, this probably looks familiar, right? And I alluded to it early, whenever we were talking about the end of Exodus. The end of Exodus, the very end of Exodus, when the tabernacle is complete, this is in Exodus 39 and 40, the whole tabernacle is complete. Everything is built. Everything is totally done. And right when they put the finishing touches on that thing, what happens? A pillar of cloud, or God's glory, descends on that tabernacle. In fact, it descends on the tabernacle, and it's so thick that people can't go inside.

They can't even kind of approach the thick presence of God as it has descended upon this tabernacle. And this is probably two or three weeks ago. And because we've gone out of order a little bit in Exodus right here, we need to remember that it hasn't happened yet. For the purposes of reading this, we need to understand that is about to happen, but here we are right here, just Moses pitching a tent and the presence of God descending on it, okay? So the cloud is descending on the tent. The cloud is obviously representing God's presence. And what this means, whenever Moses is pitching a tent and the pillar of cloud descends on it, what this means is that God's approval is there.

It means God is saying, this is where I want to be. This is what I'm carving out time to do and interact with Moses on. This is important to me. It means that God is giving complete access to Moses, to Moses, saying, I am available to you alone. I'm available to you. I will meet you here. And look at verse 11, kind of a resumptive verse. And the last verse in Exodus 33 that we're gonna read today, it says, the Lord, thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. So Joshua was in the tent with him. That's a completely other sermon. We aren't covering that today. So we're just not doing it. We're gonna stay on the top part. We're gonna say that thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

Speaks face to face. What does that even mean? God speaks to you face to face. Wild. The last time that that happened before this was in the Garden of Eden. It says that God used to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve, like to and fro. Just walk with them. And whenever Adam is actually hiding from God, he said, I heard you walking in the garden. So God is taking on this human form and walking in the garden with him. Adam heard him walking. This is the last time this has happened. And it doesn't mean that Moses is sinless. It doesn't mean that he has somehow achieved perfection or anything like that. It does mean though that a deep and abiding trust had developed between both of them.

That there was a level of depth, a level of intimacy in God's relationship with Moses, Moses' relationship with God, so that this made sense. So that Moses could go to God and speak to him face to face and it wasn't weird. I don't know if you've ever had a conversation with somebody where you thought you were closer with them than they thought they were closer with you. Like where the friendship was a little bit imbalanced and maybe like confide in them or maybe you tell them something and you realize like all of a sudden you're like, no, we're not as close friends as I thought we were. And it's kind of obvious right now and it's written all over your face. That is not happening with God and Moses. Moses is going to God as a man speaks to his friend and it's familiar and it's okay, it's good, it's proper.

Consider what it might've been like in that tent. I just want you to think about it for just a second. If it helps to close your eyes, you can do that. You go into a tent, maybe it's like a, I don't know, 10 by 10 tent and you go in to meet your friend and you discuss the things that are on your mind. You just unload a little bit. Maybe you wrestle through some decisions together.

Maybe you laugh about old problems that used to seem really big and now they're little and you're laughing, you got some perspective. Maybe in that conversation you are gaining some specific wisdom and some insight that you need. What is happening in this tent is life-giving because you also remember that you are absolutely cherished by this person that you were talking to in the tent. That whenever you go in the tent, it's probably the highlight of your day, the highlight of your week, probably the highlight of your life. For you to be able to go into the tent, be accepted, be loved, be understood,

be listened to, be pursued. This is what it is to be inside the tent. Okay, if you close your eyes, you can open them. I wanted us to see the tent, but I also want us to pull the lens a little wider and to see something else that's happening with the tent. Because if God's presence descending like a cloud is this significant moment of praise and worship, if God's presence descending like a cloud is it means God's approval, it means that his invitation is here locally and in this tent, then seeing this should change how we see the end of Exodus. I've alluded to it a couple of times.

At the end of Exodus, this same thing is happening, but it's happening over the whole tabernacle. It's not just happening over one tent that Moses pitched. It's happening over the whole tabernacle. And when the glory fills not just the tent of meeting, but the whole tabernacle, you have to understand that everybody that sees that understood something intuitively in that moment. They understood intuitively. God's presence isn't just for Moses anymore. God's presence is for the priests now. Do you see how they would make that jump? They see Moses, remember, they don't see the tabernacle yet. They see Moses, Moses pitching a tent. They all stand in worship. They understand what's happening. God's presence descends and just Moses gets God's presence. Maybe Moses and Joshua, again, another sermon. But just one person or two people are getting God's presence face to face.

And they know that's happening because they see the cloud descending. What are they thinking when they see the tabernacle receive that? They're thinking now all the priests, now all these priests now are going to be in the presence of God and they're right. They're making a correct assumption. All these priests now are going to be able to be in God's presence just like Moses was in God's presence. Just like Moses spoke to God face to face, now these Levitical priests can speak to God face to face. God is saying by that what happened with Moses can now happen with the priests. God is enlarging the access to a face to face conversation. But it doesn't stop there. Because that's not the last time that God's glory descended. I need you to fast forward. It'll be up here so if you don't want to turn to it, that's fine. I need to fast forward to Acts chapter two, verses two through four.

I know we're going Old Testament, New Testament. It's just a ride, I get it. In Acts two, two through four, Jesus has just ascended into heaven. Jesus has just told the disciples, pray and wait. So the disciples are praying and waiting. And then this happens. And suddenly, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared on them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Speaking in tongues is also a whole nother sermon that we're not preaching today. Preached on it before. You can get on our website and just search tongues. And you'll find all the sermons we've ever preached on tongues. What's happening here is important because this is the same thing that happened with Moses in the tent of meeting. It's the same thing that happened in the tabernacle whenever it was completed. It's the same thing we didn't cover it here. It's the same thing that happens whenever Solomon builds God's temple. It's the same thing. God's glory descends and there is now access granted.

Guys, what was going on in the tent of meeting with Moses and God as he spoke face to face is the exact same thing that God invites us into today. That whenever we read this, we should understand that God's Spirit descending on people. It's not a building, it's not a tent, it's people now. And that if you are in Christ and you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, you have the same mechanism that's happening with Moses and God in the tent of meeting.

You have the same access, the same drive, the same ability, the same approval. And so this is God's invitation to us. As we read Exodus 33, where Moses is pitching a tent and being in God's presence, that you and I should read that as an invitation to do the exact same thing. And you might think to yourself, well, I'm not Moses. Acts two says you don't have to be. I say, well, I don't know about, I don't have a tent or like a place. Acts two says you don't need one. What is happening here is that all believers now are God's temple. Some of you who know me very well know that I don't, that I take small issue with calling a church house God's house. I'm not gonna be ridiculous here. I'm just gonna say, I don't like it for reasons. If you wanna know those reasons, we can go out for coffee. That's fine. It probably makes me a little crazy. But this building here, God does not live here, okay?

God, we meet here, it's great. And God inhabits the praises of his people. So sure, yes. Is God's presence here in a specific way whenever we're all praising the Lord together? Yeah, sure, right. But like, does he sleep here? What's his morning routine? Is he here all the, no, he's not, he doesn't live here. In the New Testament, God's temple isn't a building. In the New Testament, and the New Testament actually makes a huge point of this, which is why I get so annoyed when people say that this is God's house. The New Testament makes a huge point of this, is saying God's temple is people, people.

Guys, when you look at Acts two, you need to understand that God's glory is filling his temple again. It's just that his temple is people now. And that you and I have the same indwelling, powerful Holy Spirit that filled the temple that was so thick that people couldn't even go inside. Something that was so exclusive just to one person is now open to all of us.

And so I want you to think again. I want you to think again about going into the tent of meeting. You don't have to close your eyes, but I want you to think about it. This is God's invitation to you, to go in to meet your friend. God wants you to go in and discuss the things that are on your mind. He wants you to wrestle through decisions with him, face to face, as one person to another. He wants you to laugh about old problems that seemed so big before, but now aren't that big anymore.

He wants to hear about your anxiety. He wants you to gain wisdom and insight. He wants to hear about what's going on with you. He's pursuing you. And in that conversation, you can remember that you are cherished by your creator. What an opportunity. We have a name for this. It's called prayer. It's something that you and I take totally for granted every day of our lives. You and I, we talk about prayer, or we say like, hey, we're gonna talk about prayer today. And there's maybe in your heart, there's a little bit of an eye roll, right? Okay, oh, we're gonna talk about prayer today, okay. But here, I just want you to think this through that knowing this, looking at Moses in a tent of meeting that he goes out and he meets God in, that knowing that, seeing the implications of that can revolutionize prayer for you, but you must act on it. I'm gonna give you two ways to kind of think it through.

One is about mindset, the other is about frequency. If God's, if prayer is God's invitation to you, because here's how we talk about prayer. We talk about prayer as us pursuing God. That's what we talk about. What you understand as you read the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, is that God is somehow always ready to talk. You think, oh, I'll pray right now, but God is already ready to talk to you. In fact, in many ways, God is inviting you to pray to him. And so if prayer is God's invitation, then you need to understand when you pray, you are not bugging him.

You don't need to go to the throne of grace and just be like, well, I mean, maybe you're busy, but maybe you can, or we think our requests are too small, or we think we just kind of have this mentality break that's different. And so instead of being critical, I wanna give you three things to do. Three mentality, three ways to change your mentality. And I'm just, I'm gonna straight up tell you how to pray. You don't have to do this word for word, but I'm just gonna tell you, I'm gonna encourage you by telling you how to pray. So show confidence in God's work.

It's very okay to say, God, thank you for saving me. Thank you for what you're doing in me today. Thank you, and I'm not talking about manifesting. I'm not talking about speaking into existence. That's not, that's junk, don't do that. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about, we're talking about showing confidence in what God has done. This isn't about manipulating God at all. This is about being confident before him in what he's done. And you can say, whenever you are frustrated with something, you can say, God, I know that you are working in this situation. God, I know that you care about this more than I do. That this is fitting into your plan in a way that I can't see. Now, I might not need to be as worked up as I am right now,

but I need to never doubt that what is freaking me out is important to you. I need to never doubt that. I need to always know, God, I know you are working in this situation confidently. So show confidence in his work, not in your ability to manifest anything. Show confidence in his work. Second, as you're praying, ask him to do what he has promised to do. We speak a lot about memorizing scripture. We've had scripture memorized this whole summer. This is why scripture memory is important because as you're praying, these things can come to mind and you can say, God, help me remember the joy of my salvation. That's a scripture term, right? The joy of my salvation. God, help me remember the joy of my salvation. God, finish the work that you have started in me. That's Philippians 1:6. But that's not just reciting verses. You're not impressing God with how many verses

that you know. And what you're doing is you're saying, God, you promised to do this. You promised to meet me. You promised that whatever I am brokenhearted, that you will be near to me. You promised me that. And God's not sitting there going, hands in his pockets like, well, I guess I did. No, God's like, yeah, I did. I promised you and I'll do it. You sit back, you buckle up.

Guys, that gets God excited. Do you understand? Like we're not talking about something that you're kind of like dragging God into and God's like, ah, you know. God is at work in you right now. God wants to meet you in that need. God has given you promises. Pray them. Pray the promises of God. This is where, I mean, the Psalms come in pretty clutch right here. You read a Psalm and you're like, I can pray that. I can do that, right? Sometimes people read Psalms maybe for the first time. They're reading that Psalm and they're like, I don't know if I can pray that right now. You know, you're reading a Psalm and you're like, God, please smite my enemies. You know, and you're like, okay.

Another Psalm, you know. But there's 150 of them and about a third of them are, you know, like that. They're called imprecatory Psalms, they're fun. Ask him to do what he's promised. Like, I'm not saying don't have grace with people, but like, if you have somebody that is bugging you at work or somebody who is trying to get you fired or a boss who is just totally unwieldy, yes, you need to pray for the Lord to show you where you need to bend and change. Yes, yes. And yes, it's okay for you to pray, Lord, give me a new boss. Lord, let justice roll down like a river on this person who is bad-mouthing me, who is like, let it happen. I'm not saying don't have grace with people, but I'm saying like, the Lord knows and the Lord can meet out justice however he wants. So it's perfectly acceptable for you to pray, Lord, let your justice roll like a river. Let it happen.

We can take hope that one day everything will be done. That's our hope, right? One day every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. Every wrong righted, that will happen. We believe that as believers, yes. That is part of our basic doctrine of understanding Christianity, that that will happen one day. However, if in the meantime, you need to pray for your neighbor to be quiet at three in the morning, then pray, okay? Pray, ask the Lord. You think the Lord doesn't care about your neighbor being noisy at three in the morning? He totally cares. Pray. Don't sit there in one. Don't try to rank the things that are important to God. Just pray. Just bring it to him. It's okay. Ask him to do what he promised. Lastly, repent, don't run.

This is a tough one. It's a tough one. Repent, don't run. Running, running looks like, Lord, I'm so dumb. Why do I keep doing that? I don't know why you keep me around. This is running in your prayers. This is not going to the throne of grace confidently. This is trying to apologize your way into God's presence. This is self-loathing disguised as something holy. This is just you hating yourself. It really has no place really anywhere. It's another thing to say, Lord, I repent of speaking harshly. Lord, I repent of coveting as I'm looking through Facebook. Right? Lord, I repent of lying when confronted with that hard truth.

Lord, I repent. Listen, if all of the prayers start with, Lord, please don't kill me. I don't know if you kind of understand what is supposed to be happening here. Okay? And it's one thing to honor the Lord. Yes, like we need to come before the Lord and we need to be able to say like, Lord, you're holy. There's things you know about that I could never even dream of. I praise you, you're smarter than me. There's nothing wrong with that. Ascribing worth to God, that's praise and worship. When you start un-ascribing value to yourself, that's not the version that we need, okay? Like you don't need to do that. You need to ascribe worth and value to God and that's good and right and holy. But I realize in the Bible, it's like, people say like, I'm but a worm. I get it, like it's there every once in a while. But if that's often for you, then that probably is not a super helpful path.

Okay. On repentance, it's a little tricky for the reasons that I just said. Tim Keller has done really great work in this area, like really great work. And one of his best works is one that we read, all of our life groups read this. It's really helpful. It's called All of Life is Repentance. It's a very small, like I don't know, it's probably two and a half pages, very, very small. And Keller says, he makes this really great point, and I don't even know if he says it in the article exactly, but in the ways that you see it play out, this is what he's pointing out. He's pointing out that we are always repenting toward something. Let me say that one more time. Because we always think of repenting away from something, and we do, we should, right? That's good, that's right. So whenever we're repenting, we're saying like, God, I repent of, and even those things I listed,

I repent of speaking harshly to my children. I repent of lying whenever I was confronted with that hard truth. Yes, that's good. We should do that. Okay, that's repentance. But you're not just repenting from something, you're also repenting toward something. And this is what Keller lists. This is the four things that he talks about. Deep humility, burning love, wise courage,

godly motivations. So he says, for example, when he's talking about deep humility, the opposite of deep humility is, well, I don't remember that one. I remember wise courage, so I'll go with wise courage. I think I can do it on the off the cuff here. Wise courage, he's talking about anxiety. So as you're reading that, as you're reading about anxiety, so the repentance is, Lord, help me get rid of this anxiety. And Keller kind of gets at some of the root causes of anxiety, and you're repenting of those things, but there's a point at which it turns, and he starts saying, consider the free grace of Jesus until you are at a point of wise courage. Continue to meditate on God's goodness and let it push you to a burning love. Continue to look at the majesty of God, see how big he is, and let that inspire you to a deep humility.

He's saying that you're not just saying, I'm sorry, I did the thing, but he's saying whenever you repent that you are repenting toward these things. That whenever you repent, you are saying, God, I want to be a person of wise courage. God, I want to be a person of burning love. I wanna have deep humility. I wanna have godly motivations. And here's the prayer that he kind of gives to show us this. It says, oh Lord, make us happy enough in you to avoid sin and wise enough in you to avoid danger that I may always do what is right in your sight, in your name I pray, amen. I think that this is a really great way to think about repentance, maybe calling it the other half of repentance. When you go to God in repentance, it's not just saying, I'm sorry for this and this and this and this and this. I mean, it is, but it's so much more than that. If God is inviting you into the tent of meeting

this morning, be bold as you come before him. Because if it's God's invitation, then you're not bugging him. Here's the other thing I wanna say, if it's God's invitation, then you need to understand that he is leading you into something. That it might surprise you to know that God right now is thinking about your joy. Not always thinking about making you happy. That's different. But thinking about your joy, thinking about things that feed your soul, God is actively inspiring hope in you right now.

Not when you're thinking about it, not when you're at church, not when you got your Bible open, not whenever you're praying, not all those times, yes, but more, that God is constantly stirring you up to love and good deeds. It's Hebrews 10, 24. God is actively doing that. Right now, God is actively building community, spiritual community around you right now.

Guys, if prayer's God's invitation, if we're called to join him in that prayer, if we're called to pray without ceasing, like it says all over the New Testament, if it says in the New Testament, if Jesus is saying, this is how you pray and he calls God daddy, then call God daddy. If you pray in King James Version, that's fine, I guess, that you really wanna do that. But it doesn't mean more to God if you say thee and thou. It doesn't, it's not more spiritual, it's just older. That's all. Might sound more spiritual, but it's not. God's okay with modern English, it's cool. It was his idea. If prayer is God's invitation, then it's always the right time to pray. It's always the right time.