I invite you to turn in the scriptures this morning to the book of Exodus, chapter 33. Exodus chapter 33, last time we studied this tent of meeting, this sort of alternate tent of meeting that was set up before the other one, and there we saw the Lord's plan to continue the project, and now we come to verse 12 of chapter 33, second book of the Bible, verse 12. We'll read to the end of the chapter. This is the word of the Lord. Moses said to the Lord, see, you say, bring up this people, but you've not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, I know you by name and you have also found favor in my sight. Now, therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways that I may 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 us 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 will proclaim before you my name the lord and i will be gracious to whom i will be gracious and i 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 of the rock, and I will cover you with 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. May the Lord bless this morning the hearing of his gospel. I've realized in our study of the book of Exodus how important it is to be challenged frequently with what we believe, why we believe it, and how it's so easy to drift from those things. The book of Hebrews warns us about drifting, to be refreshed in them and to understand them. And one of the things that we have constantly emphasized in the course of the ministry here, in the Scriptures, even in our confessions, is that we are our sinners. That's nothing new. It's one thing, of course, to say that, an entirely different thing to understand how it shows up and what it looks like in the course of our lives, isn't it? In other words, do we really take seriously how bad the problem is? The things that we do against the Lord, what they really deserve from Him. how serious it all is the consequences of losing and not taking sin seriously we're learning in the book of exodus are disastrous aren't they when that doesn't happen as we've considered and the message becomes as we've considered that everything is love everything is encouragement everything is a word of encouragement everything is grace everything is nice everything is non-offensive you begin to lose an appreciation of how it's even possible that god himself dwells with you you you have to have a balance don't you when these truths of the christian faith are not brought to people and to bear on their consciences in a meaningful way in a way that's searching and trying as david asked for the consequences are awful you will lose your doctrine of god you will abandon your doctrine of sin and man and the consequences are all kinds of false ideas and approaches to God as we're learning here in worship that directly contradict his will and nature and our own there's no longer any restraint there's no longer any discipline as we've considered we don't even like to talk about the fear of the Lord right is the beginning of knowledge those sort of things are gone in our speech well there's anything we've been learning in exodus it's that god is is is supremely holy it's all over the place he can't tolerate sin he won't tolerate sin he's as intolerant as it gets when it comes to sin and that's left us in our study of exodus with a real dilemma you see they had received so far from the lord in in the lord's deliverance nothing but help from him he had with his strong arm brought them out of the land of egypt and he had put on display his great power and his great might but what we're seeing as he brought them out is that even though they were delivered from the physical land of egypt Egypt is still very much a part of them. Egypt is still in their hearts. Egypt is their heart. And this has created a great problem in the relationship, hasn't it? Because the Lord has brought them out to be a worshiping people. Remember, that was the purpose, one of the purposes of the Exodus, that God would dwell with them, but that they would come out and that they would worship. And God had given them specific sets of laws to say you can't do anymore what you did in Egypt with your old gods. You can't come to me that way. You can't treat me that way. You can't even see me that way. You can't worship me as you want. I command your worship. I determine your worship. It's a danger zone when you start doing that stuff. And this is exactly what we've been studying in Exodus. A whole conflict broke open. The greatest moment in the relationship if you will in terms of of now coming to mount sinai as had been promised to moses the whole issue broke open over worship we've been looking at that the same battle goes on today worship was the place where the bitterness of their hearts was most exposed Isn't it something? Worship. It was in the act of coming before the Lord that the bitterness became really apparent. That everything about their problem came out. They did not like to worship Him on His terms. In fact, as Psalm 81 said, they wanted nothing of Him. He was too, in their view, buying into the lie of the devil, too constricting, Taking them nowhere. We're just stuck in the wilderness. He was hidden. Who wants to worship a hidden God? How are we supposed to know a God and commune with a God we can't see? You start to realize this is kind of what we're doing now. This is one of the most unsatisfying experiences we've ever had in life. You're calling this worship? Do you know what we enjoyed in Egypt? Do you know what we did in Egypt? This is worship? Doesn't make any sense to us. Can't touch, can't handle, can't see. Big problem for us. So they rejected him. They replaced him. Even though they slapped his name on the new God, they had created one. They built one. They built one they knew. They built one they liked. They built one that satisfied them in their view. But it's created a giant dilemma now that I keep referring to the dilemma of these passages. If sin and idolatry are a part of us and this is what we do, if Calvin was right that our hearts are idol factories and we keep making them all the time, if we are polluted in this kind of way and God is just and God is holy, how is this relationship even going to work? It's really an issue, isn't it? And that's particularly what's before us this morning that Moses himself is wrestling with. You see development in Moses here in understanding law, gospel, grace, judgment, all these things. He's working, he's thinking, he's approaching the Lord thinking about these things. And it's been going back and forth in a reason to show us the struggle to give grace, if you will, to teach us about how this is possible. It's not cheap. It's not just thrown out there. And we're being really tested with understanding it, aren't we? How can God be their God and these people, His people? Well, God is now beginning to unveil that. And you'll see the beauty. I'm really excited to preach this one because you see the whole story so powerfully put on display here for you. Everything you've ever learned, this is what I like to tell the children, that when you begin to understand the Bible, you have this giant book in front of you and it just begins to shrink and you see the one story that's constantly, the Bible shrinks. You see the one story that's put right in front of you over and over and over again. You see it this morning, this great answer of this. You see it in Moses' plea for his presence, the promise that God gives of his presence, and the place God provides for them in his presence. So you have here the plea for the presence, the promise, and you'll notice the place God provides. Last time, we left off with a dreadful statement. I am no longer going with you guys. I'm done. I can't be among you. You understand that, Israel? I can't be among you, because if I am among you, I'll consume you all in a minute. It was over. And Israel, it left them, of course, in this state of mourning, realizing what did we just do and what did we just lose? I mean, it was really a moment where they felt the weight of it all of a sudden, and now they lost everything that ever mattered in life. If you've ever seen people tank their lives and then realize what they've lost, that's a painful thing. This is the most important and painful loss. God can't be with them. He just said it. I'm not going. I'll fulfill what I said. I'll get you to the land. But I'm not going on the journey. Trip canceled. They had just broken the Sinai covenant. God had said openly, if I come among you, I'll consume you. I can't. And so here we are. The Lord had said, you need to sit here and wait, and we'll see what I'm going to do to you. Imagine living like that. Let's wait and see what I'm going to do to you. Well, we know what happened last time. The Levites had gone in with armed sword and exercised severe judgment on the nation, killing about 3,000, most likely the ringleaders of this insurrection and rebellion. But here's Israel. They have stripped themselves of the idolatry, the jewelry's off. They're no longer bowing to the calf. The calf's been pulverized. Moses had pulverized it and made him drink it. All the symbols of idolatry are gone. A stripped people stand in front of them now. An imagery of what will God do to them? Well, that leads us to where we are. Moses is really wrestling with that question. Moses is really wrestling. There's got to be a way. There's got to be. He had already offered himself as the atonement, remember? Blot me out of the book. I'll take it, Lord, for them. God said no. He couldn't. That's what we know from Arnold Heidelberg. No one can bear that. Moses is a sinner. Moses had offered himself, but he knows life without the Lord spells certain death. What good would it be to go through this life without him? I can't even process that thought. You've been so used to it. You've seen his power. You know it in the course of your lives. So Moses begins a serious time of prayer and intercession here that I hope you will really take to heart. Verse 12, Moses said to the Lord, see, you say to me, bring up this people, but you've not let me know whom you will send with me. Moses is troubled at this point and begins by asking about the identity of the one whom he's sending. Remember, God said, I'm not sending my angel, I'm sending an angel to go with you, back in verse 2. God was not going, but now this angel would just do the work. Moses is not really excited about this. In fact, this is really troubling him. It's as if Moses is saying, I really can't accept that. This is not what you promised. So what do you mean? Well, he's thinking a lot about back to the burning bush. And you'll remember the original promise at the burning bush when the Lord had called him and said something that really the heart of the Exodus is all about. What he said to Moses was, when Moses said, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring the children up out of Egypt? He said, I will certainly be with you. That's the whole point of the book. God dwelling with His people. He said it at the end of this section here in chapter 29, I believe it was. It's one of the most moving cries from God's servant because he begins to think about the promise here. He's really thinking about the promise and he's wrestling with it. And it really does become a model for all of your prayers. I'm going to show you that, Lord willing. Moses is wrestling with law and gospel. Moses is wrestling with judgment and mercy. Moses is wrestling with sin and the consequences and other things. Moses would write in Psalm 90, they say one of the only psalms that he penned. I'm curious if he penned Psalm 91. But as it goes, the only psalm of Moses is Psalm 90. And we read, we have been consumed by your anger. You know that psalm. By your wrath, we've been terrified. Our years, remember, 70, 80, and they're full of all this hardship, and he watched an entire generation die out in the wilderness. How does this work? Righteous wrath against sin and the problem of idolatry, and yet you've promised to be with us. How does that work? I know at some point, if you're a thinking Christian, you're going to be tormented by that question. You have to be. You have to be. I mean, don't look at Israel and say these stiff-necked people as if God's not holding up a mirror here. That's the intention of inspiring all of this. God's doing this to say these people are you. We run to idols all the time. If we didn't, the Bible wouldn't have to constantly command against it. End of 1 John. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. That's a New Testament problem. And we drink from the lusts and idolatries. You know what you run to. You know when you're stressed. You know when you're worried. You know when you're trying to flee all the pressures of life. What you run to, to numb it, to dull it. It's an idol. And everyone here does it. When we do it, we're perplexed. The law has exposed us and then you go through this feeling of real guilt. I don't have any power to get out of this. We do the things, Romans 7, what I don't want to do. And you know the real discouragement that sets in at this point. The condemnation that we begin to go through is awful, isn't it? We go through this life and we have a hard time as believers with what really amounts to what we know is little progress, it seems. I mean, the framers of the Heidelberg knew when they said even the holiest of this life only make a small beginning. You know the conflict that brings? of course you do cloud hangs over the head how can i be sure about anything if i'm in the midst of this conflict we're doing the same stuff what do you think the fight in church has been for pastors who want to reform worship worship it's idolatry everywhere we struggle how do we figure this out in the midst of what is often a sense of a real lack of victory and what it seems to be defeat. This lingering question looms over us. Is God for us or against us? It doesn't really help when you come to the next chapter and you read verses like, which we don't like to read, I by no means clear the guilty. I punish to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, he said in the law. Second commandment, no images. That all makes matters worse, doesn't it? Makes matters much worse. He by no means clears the guilty. You have a God who can't look on sin. We've taken it all lightly. Who says to Israel at this particular moment, you just stand there and let you know if I come among you, it's over. I'll consume you all. You just wait and see what I'll do to you. Not the God of American Christianity, it seems. How do you live and go forward in that? Israel feels it. This is why you preach sin and law because what's brought out is mourning. The very thing that's needful. They've just seen the power of His anger. Psalm 90. We lived our days consumed by your fear. Psalm 90. And then you can't seem to figure out what He's doing. It's all so mysterious to us, isn't it? Even the great Moses is wrestling with the hard realities of life that directly involved with his struggle with how is God working? I don't get this. I don't get this. What is he doing? Why is he doing it? This is the passage. You ever felt that way? It's the scene of wilderness life. We're tried. We're tested. We suffer loss. We hurt. And we don't understand at times why God does what he does. It doesn't matter all the goodness that you've enjoyed. When you get to a moment like this, it's all eclipsed, isn't it? The presence seems to indicate God is not with us. Didn't he say it to Israel? You see where Moses is? But Moses is thinking here. And Moses is thinking about things that have happened. And Moses is really reflecting on the past and what happened in his calling. And there was something else that God had said in the course of his dealing with Moses, a concept that has overtaken him. You haven't seen it yet in Exodus this way. One concept. You've said, Lord, you know me. There was something else you said. You have said, I know you by name. Look at verse 12. And you have also, I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight. I wish the ESV here had translated it as some of the older translations and just put grace. Grace. Saturated right here. Now therefore I pray, if I have found grace in your sight, He keeps saying it. Show me now your way. You see that in verse 13? Please show me now your ways that I may know you in order to find grace in your sight. See, Moses is really, really reflecting on something here that he knew. Remember back to how difficult Moses was? You forget about this. You think this great pillar who was such a righteous guy. This guy was a knucklehead at the beginning. Remember? He forgot. god almost killed him at one point you forgot in chapter 4 he refused to circumcise his son to give him the covenant sign and god almost took him out and the whole calling was just difficult excuse after excuse after excuse so that the anger of the lord was kindled against moses he even refused to go at one point what a stubborn mule what a stiff necked man but God didn't give up on him you see Moses is living and has lived Israel's experience Moses begins to think well if it's possible and I know from experience God didn't give up on me when I was at the brink of death remember lord that i know what i was you said that even though i was stiff-necked you said moses you stand i know you by name because you found grace in my sight wait a minute if grace is what it is and grace was never earned think of the logic and the reasoning going on in his head right now if grace is what it is if grace was never earned in fact if grace means you had a full knowledge of me, you saw what I did, you saw every stupid thing that I did, I did all these same sins. If you're omniscient, well, you knew that about me before you even called me. You chose to give me grace. This is what he's thinking. You chose to give me favor i didn't deserve a lick of it but what i did deserve was wrath so i don't get what you're doing right now i don't understand this please explain your ways to me this is so confusing for me i don't get it ever been there of course you've been there show me your ways you said you would bring them up is grace not for them if grace is true if it is what it is if it's undeserved blessing of deliverance please make clear what you're doing that i may know you and consider this people ready they are yours too this is this is just wonderful isn't it it's the heart of it it's the heart of the book right here it's the single great prayer of the book i need you to tell me what you're doing that i may know you because right now i don't get any of this you think whoa these great servants of the lord went through that kind of stuff yeah moses it's a wonderful prayer make me to see how this works i'm in a web of confusion lord make me to understand I'm so confused about all this consider your people you've just what you're doing here doesn't correlate with what you've spoken you'll get there if you haven't well you come to the most meaningful passage that captures life doesn't it of believers and those who have any kind of relationship with the Lord you've been here and doesn't verse 14 and the immediate response so stand out after this plea and he said my presence will go with you and i'll give you rest so that's a little bit of light look at it carefully my face will go so it reads and i'll give you rest singular nothing about israel i'll do it for you remember there's been this play on whose people this is the whole time. They had exchanged their God. They had said he was not their God who brought them up. And the Lord said, fine, Moses, you brought them up. I'm not their God. There's been a whole play here going back and forth. And God says nothing, but Moses thinks, no way, no way, no way. He says, notice the language here of how Moses is interceding. And notice the language of how he's reaching here. It's very good. You'll see it in verse 15. And he said to him, if your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? How are we going to know? No, no, no, no. It's not just for me. Me and your people. How are we going to know we had grace? Verse 16, you see the thing that he's doing and what a plea. Lord, you promised grace for them too. If you're not going to go with us, if you are not going to go with us, it's not even worth going. I don't want to go. You see, what would distinguish us on the earth from anyone else if you're not with us? We are a separate people by God's presence. What makes us distinct is not that you ever made a decision for Jesus. You wouldn't. He had said in the last chapter, come, no one came. Except the Levites. It is that he desired and made the choice to sovereignly, in grace, come down and dwell with his people. It's his presence that sanctifies us. That's why it's a scary proposition in the book of Revelation when these churches who had abandoned Jesus, he says, I'm going to pull the lamps down. The presence is gone. You could have a church, but that doesn't mean he's there, right? It's the presence that sanctifies us. Lord, we can't go without you. You're the center of our existence. You're our life. Without you, we're nothing. It's the blessing of the presence. You know, this is the way the New Testament writers continue to speak to the New Testament church. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness, and what communion has light with darkness, and what accord has Christ with Belial, or what part has a believer with an unbeliever, and what agreement has the temple of God with idols, for you are the temple of the living God, as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, come out from among them and be separate. It's me that sanctifies you. It's my presence. That's why I don't want you touching what's unclean. That's why I don't want you doing sexual immorality. That's why I don't want you loving the world. That's why I don't want you marrying unbelievers. My presence sanctifies you. That's why I don't want idolatry. Lord, if you're not with us in everything we do, don't even let us go forward. Don't even let us attempt to go forward in our lives without you. Don't even let us take a step from this mountain without you. That would mean an end to us. Verse 17. And the Lord said to Moses, This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found grace in my sight, and I know you by name. He just said, I'm going to deliver them too. Right then and there, God said, I'm going forward with the project. We're going to build the tabernacle. I'm going to dwell with Israel. Chapter 40, he comes down and the whole place is filled with his glory. And you said, well, wait, he just said he's not going. Now he says he's going. Did God change his mind? No. Moses, he's answering Moses' question, show me how this works. Explain this. you've just come to the most important question that you could ever ask. God, what does God says? I will do all that you've spoken for you have found grace in my sight. I know your name. That singular again, I'm doing it, Moses, because I delight in you. I think at this point, Moses is so overwhelmed with that. I delight in you. So overwhelmed with that. Moses says, show me your glory then. Let me see. I want a full revelation and confirmation of that. You're about to hear the answer to the entire book of Exodus of how God can dwell with His people and how the problem can be reconciled that has been presented of a holy God dwelling among sinners. The Lord says something here now that is just beautiful. Verse 19, He said, I will make my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. I'm going to pass by and show you my gracious nature of my goodness, gracious and compassionate nature and I'm going to proclaim the name, the Lord. I'm going to give you, and this is tonight, I won't be passive aggressive like last time, but I'll encourage you to come back. You're going to get a gospel sermon preached by the Lord. That's tonight. I will proclaim the name of the Lord but you can't see my face for no one shall see me and live. My glory is so resplendent. It's so majestic. I'm so full of holiness that if I were to come among you and just show you the glory, it would utterly consume you. But here's a place. I'm going to hide you in the cleft of a rock. Here's a place. Here's how it's going to work, Moses. Here's how this whole relationship can work. When I pass by, I will declare that I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will be compassionate to whom I will can be compassionate. And when I do that, I'm going to set you in a cleft of a rock. I'll put you there and my hand will hold you there, covering you while I pass by. So God would pass by Moses. And Moses would see just a glimmer of the backside of his resplendent glory, and he was not consumed, and he was not consumed because he was hidden in the rock. Who is that? Lord, you say, bring up this people, but I don't know who you're going to send to do it. Here he is. Here he is. I'll put you in the rock. To which you have an inspired commentary by Paul in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 10 who says that rock was Christ. In the last scene, Moses goes out to this different tent of meeting and speaks with the Lord face to face. Here, he's not looking at the Lord face to face. You say, who was in that tent of meeting? I want to close with this thought. If you're so inclined, and I hope you are, turn to John 14. Verse 8, Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father and it's sufficient for us. Let us see that glory. We need to know You're really for us. We need to see. We need to see. We want to see God. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Truly, truly, verse 12, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do. When he's speaking to Philip, Lord, we want to see God. We want to see the glory. Don't you see the whole scene repeated? Moses, have I been with you so long and you've not known me? The only basis God has been among them is His Son from the burning bush forward. I think it became really clear that day that Moses saw Jesus. That the basis of God's acceptance of us in love is the love that He has for His Son. And because of him, he can say to you, you've found grace in my sight. When they were looking up at the glory, at the transfiguration, and Moses shows up with Jesus, suddenly the veil was pulled back and it got so bright and so glorious that as he talked with Moses, they could no longer see because of the glory. And in the next moment, when he was back, all they saw, first thing they saw, was the face of Jesus. And that was the day the Father proclaimed from heaven, this is my beloved Son with whom I'm well pleased. This is the reason I'm pleased with you, is because I'm pleased with Him. And that's the answer to the Exodus. That is so much comfort for us because what it means is God never decided to be with us and bless us on our own efforts, that He has always loved us because of His Son and He is committed to separate us from the world, to love us, to save us, and to deliver us. and the only reason we stand, Romans 5, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we've obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. The law is having you take very seriously this problem so that you'll see the need for Him. If I look too much at myself and I think that God is measuring His favor by how well I'm doing, which I constantly do as a pastor, by the way. It's really remarkable. You preach justification. You preach forgiveness. And yet, in the course of my own week, I'm constantly going through the struggle of, I'm a failure. I'm not doing enough to love them. I'm not doing enough. And you begin to live under this cloud that maybe God is not for me. If I think that God is measuring His favor by how well I'm keeping the standard, That's most certainly a recipe for despair in life. But then I'll remember that grace means that He was never pleased with me to begin with. And I'm really thankful for that. That He made promises to me. And He's given me the faith to believe it of a mediator. That God is pleased with me and His Son. And that's why grace is possible. And in him I behold the glory of God, Emmanuel, God with us. This is what they said, we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of God, full of grace and truth. In Jesus, you're sheltered in the cleft of the rock. And when you have him, idolatry begins to lose its grip. What was the promise of Psalm 81? I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. He will feed you with the finest of wheat. Come to the table next week. It's the greatest preparation you'll ever get. With honey from the rock, I'll satisfy you. That's the end of Psalm 81. I pray that you trust him, that you know that God himself is indeed with us, for it was Jesus who said when he finished the work, In his last words, lo, I am with you always. Amen. Lord, thank you for such comforting words that you will not abandon us. That you gave us an answer. In the person, the work of your Son in whom we are hidden. And in his face, we see the glory. And in his face, we know that you're indeed for us. And not against us. And that we have a promise that we are not alone in this life. You'll finish the project. You'll bring us to the land. And our Savior has gone before us to make it so. Thank you for such love. Encourage your people here today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.