Beyond the Glory

Subject: God's Presence

Date: October 20, 2002

Place: Great Hope Church of the Nazarene, White Bear Lake, Minnesota

Fox Sports has a 60 minute expose show out called Beyond the Glory that takes a behind the scenes look at the lives of athletes. Exodus 33:12-23 gives us a behind the scenes look at a private moment in Moses’ life that showed a lot about his character and that of his God.

Intro: Let’s look at the context of this situation. Moses has just finished one of the most trying times in his life. The people he was charged with leading had sinned against God by building a Golden Calf to worship. We often find out about a person’s true character with how they respond under pressure. Moses’ response is to start some serious praying and evaluate his entire view of the presence of God both corporately and personally.

1. Moses Wanted God’s Presence

Moses was a man of prayer. We know he interceded for the people who built a Golden Calf and begged God to forgive them. In Exodus 33:12-15 we find that Moses was asking for a closer relationship with God. He says, “teach me your ways so I may know you...”

Then when God promises his presence will go with Moses, Moses says, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” Moses knew that without this presence there was no point in continuing on (vs. 15).

The question for you and I today is do we value a relationship with God--His presence, so much that we don’t want to go on without it?

Illustration: Cathy says to Heathcliff in Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights: Because of you, and your love and presence in my life, I feel "more myself than I am"? --As quoted in Ralph Harper's On Presence (Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1991), 4.

The presence of God will not just give us survival it brings success. Moses knew the unique importance of the presence of God when he said, “How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?“ Moses is basically saying if we don’t have your presence we will fail. We will be no different than the other people of the earth that don’t know you. Do you ever find yourself saying, “God we need your presence in this church, because if we don’t have it we are no different than a social club such as Rotary Club or Kiwanis.“ You and I were created to find our life in God. We will never be successful until we do that.

At the funeral service in the hit movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral," the W. H. Auden poem "Funeral Blues" is read, some of whose lines include: He was my north, my south, my east, my west, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought love would last forever; I was wrong. --W. H. Auden, The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York: Random House, 1995).

We know that every other relationship in life will leave us. Nothing lasts forever. But praise the Lord we have the hope and assurance that our relationship with God can last forever. “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Do you want God’s presence today? Do you want it so much that you are willing to sacrifice time, resources, and all other affections for it? In this difficult time in Moses’ life he understood in a greater way that he needed the presence of God. Wouldn’t it be great if it could be said of us that we are longing for the presence of God.

II. God Wanted to Offer His Presence to Moses.

We find that God was more than willing to give Moses his presence. How do we know this. Look at the Scripture in Exodus 33.

A. In vs. 12 and vs. 17 we are told that God had said he knew Moses by name.

B. In response to Moses’ request for God to teach His ways in verse 13, God responds by saying that “My Presence will go with you...” (vs. 14).

C. In verse 19 God says to Moses, “I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence.” In fact, God wanted to give His presence to Moses so much that He offers his goodness, mercy, and compassion. His character was His presence.

That does something for me to know that seeking God’s presence is not a one way street. God longs for this relationship with me even more than I. Some people serve a god who they have to impress or perform tricks for an audience with. That’s not the case for us. The glorious thing is that the Lord we serve, just like for Moses, wants to have a relationship with us. You and I will never advance in our understanding of the presence of God until we simply realize every hour that God wants more than anything else to give us His genuine presence.

If there is a time in your life when you feel abandoned by God, know that you are not. He loves you and will never leave your nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:8 says, “And the Lord, He is the one who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed."

III. God Concealed Some of His Presence

Notice here that Moses was forbidden from seeing the face of God. He was only permitted to see the back of God. This indicates that there is a mystery within God that we can not completely know. We should never assume that we deserve or have a right to know every detail of what God is doing. Who do we think that we are? That seems to be the precise problem the people had when they committed the awful sin of building a Golden Calf. Moses is away; they don’t feel as close to God. Instead of waiting and trusting in the unknown period they take matter into their own hands by building an idol.

This is very difficult for us as human beings. We want to have all of the answers. We want to know exactly what God is doing before He does it. The fact that Moses was only permitted to see the back of God symbolizes that often times we may only be able to see God’s work and presence after it is passing us by. As someone has said, “Hindsight is always 20/20.”

Illustration: On a vacation trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, Roy and Karen Pike from Columbus, Ohio, slammed into a tractor-trailer parked along the shoulder of the road, and were killed instantly. Their three sons, aged 20, 17 and 16, were left behind to open anniversary cards and sympathy cards the same day, to turn roses sent for celebration into memorial flowers, to "take their first steps into adulthood by selecting caskets and burial spaces for their parents, " as Timothy Forbess, the minister who conducted their funeral service, put it. Yet 17-year-old Kevin Pike, who handled all the burial arrangements for his parents, testified before the memorial service how he was experiencing God amidst the tragedy. "Right now," he confessed to Forbess, "I see God as my shelf; every thing on it has been moved around, changed or broken and I know that it is always going to be different and changing, more now than ever before. But the shelf that I can put everything on hasn't changed. God is still the same." In Forbess' words to that packed church: "God is our shelf that we can put our lives upon, and no matter how rearranged it becomes, God will sustain us." --(Timothy Forbess, "Rearranging God's Shelf")

Is God your shelf today? The most telling part of our relationship with God is how we respond when God seems far.

Buell Kazee in his book Faith is the Victory said, “Faith is not trusting God to get something; faith is trusting God when there seems to be nothing left. When everything is gone with no hope of restoration and when there is nothing on which to base your faith; then can you still trust God?” --Buell Kazee, Faith Is the Victory (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1983), 149.

Let’s close by remembering what is said in Romans 8:38-39: "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. "