The Heart of our Faith

Moses had been to heaven and back, and then to hell and back! Why did he do it? What motivated him?

In Exodus 33:12-21, Moses meets with God straight after the disastrous Golden Calf incident. God has already indicated that the people’s desertion of God’s ways only weeks after the miraculous exodus from Egypt, and while God is providing them with manna and quail every day is all too much! God declares that he will not accompany Moses and the Israelites to the Promised Land because their continuing betrayals and whinging might lead him to justly punish them so much that no one would survive!

And now it is Moses’ turn to be upset. He can’t go on if God does not go with him.

How Moses has changed.

At the burning bush he was only worried about whether he was up to bringing the enslaved Israelites out of the superpower, Egypt. In other words he was only focussed on the work to be done.

Now he is focussed on the relationship with God.

15 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How
will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with 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’ question has a haunting quality about it. It reaches across the centuries to us at Living Faith Church. What else distinguishes us from all other peoples other than the presence of the most loving gracious Jesus Christ among us, his Spirit who dwells within us, and our Father who cares for us as his children?

Moses changed on his journey more than anyone. Nothing shows this more than his next request to God.
“Now show me your glory.”

Moses had arrived at the point where he realised that he loved God more than anything. Even more than the success of the journey to the promised land and he had invested a lot of himself in that!

God, who has always loved Moses dearly, is delighted at this personal request and tries to do as much to fulfil it as was ‘humanly possible’.

19 And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
21 Then the LORD said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

Do you think Moses will ever forget this moment?

Do you think it will provide a lifetime’s memories and a lifetime of motivation to work with God?

Yes.

Moses is the same as you. A human being who needs a relationship of love with this loving awesome God.

But … often our Christian lives neglect the relationship and time that could be spent with God is pushed out by the business of life. Even worse, sometimes it is being too busy doing church activities that makes us unable to make time with God! A sad irony.

A relationship with God is the same as with any other person. It needs
• time
• sharing of the important things in each other’s lives
• mutually expressed love
• doing things together

Moses figured it out 3000 years ago.

May you nurture your relationship with God. Everything else will follow from that.

Yours together in Christ,
Graeme