Exodus 33

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together, we have a little bit of coffee, we get into God's Word. We grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2023, Lord willing, we'll make it from Genesis through Leviticus. So glad to be with you this morning. It's just me this morning. I wanted to get through a good chunk with you in Exodus chapter 33.
Builds on what we did yesterday with the kids, and then Lord willing, the kids blessing it is to get to spend time with you, to hear from you in your word. These are historical stories, true fact, and you are the one who teaches us by it. We pray now that your spirit would apply these things to our heart, that you would give us ready minds to be able to pay attention and to learn who you are. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, let's go ahead and open up to our Bibles, Exodus chapter 34. And there's something I want to kind of start off with as we get into this.
There are people who see Mount Sinai as what one theologian calls a reduplication. If you do these exact things specifically, then I will be your people and you will live. And people understand Mount Sinai as this type of thing, right? It's gotta be this exact law keeping. And there seems to be an element to which that's true, right? There's cause and effect causality, right?
And yet, Moses is up on the, tab are up on Mount Sinai as people are breaking the covenant that they swore to keep all the way back in chapter 19 and 20. They've broken that with the golden calf episode that we looked at yesterday in Exodus chapter 32 or 33. And so Is God going to cast off his people entirely? Is there no grace? Was it all works and nothing but works all the time? Or is this actually part of the covenant of grace also? We'll find out. I think today is a really important part for us to look at Exodus chapter 33. Here we go.
Then the Lord said to Moses, depart and go up from here. You and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying to your descendants, I will give it, and I will send my angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, for I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people. What's God saying here? Notice, depart and go from here, you and the people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt. God seems to be saying, right, you go, I'm gonna send my angel, I'm gonna protect you, I'm still gonna give you the land, fine, I'm gonna keep my promise, but I'm not gonna go with you, because I'd be so mad, I'd kill you all.
When the people heard this bad news, they mourned and no one put on his ornaments. That's like the jewelry, anything they hadn't actually sacrificed to the golden calf or given for the golden calf, right, that they had plundered from the Egyptians. Verse five, for the Lord said to Moses, say to the children of Israel, you are a stiff necked people.
I could come up in your midst in one moment and consume you. Now therefore take off your ornaments that I may know what to do to you. The children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by Mount Horeb. Mount Horeb is another word, another name for Mount Sinai.
God's not saying here, you're not beautiful to me. The only reason why you have those ornaments, the only reason why you have that jewelry is because of what I did for you. I didn't want to see that on you. You're not beautiful to me. What you've just done is so wicked. Wrong. I don't know what to do with you. And then we have this interlude, verses 7 through 11.
Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting, which was outside the camp. So it was whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle that all the people rose and each man stood at his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the tabernacle. Moses has a tent. It's away from everybody else's tent, right? The tabernacle itself, when it's going to be built, it's going to be right in the center of all their tents. Right now the tabernacle has been built and Moses's tent is way away from everybody else's.
And every time Moses gets up from his actual tent where he sleeps to this tent of meeting where he meets with God, he gets up, he starts walking and everybody goes to the entrance of their doors. And it's the sign of respect. Man, we've really messed this up. So we're going to stand at our tent doors and we're going to watch as our leader, as our The mediator is the one who goes and talks with God for us, walks to the place where he's going to meet with God.
And it came to pass when Moses entered the tabernacle that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle and Jehovah talked with Moses. And the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshipped each man in his tent door. So Jehovah spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend, and he would return to camp. But his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle. moses goes and when he goes to the tabernacle to this place of meeting this isn't the tabernacle that's going to be built later that god had described or that we're going to see how that gets built later but as he's going to this tent where he's meeting with god the pillar comes down and says if god is speaking to a friend face to face now there's a big Because a lot of this, when we hear about God, it's called anthropomorphic.
It's using human terms to describe something that God is doing. God's speaking to him face to face. God says, I don't know what I'm gonna do with you guys. All this is anthropomorphic language. He's using language that we can understand. We'll find this even more in the next section. He meets with him face to face. God has this intimate relationship with Moses. And then we pick up the main story again. What's God going to do with these covenant breakers? What's God going to do?
Then Moses said to Jehovah, see, you say to me, bring up this people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, I have known you by my, you by name. and you have also found grace in my sight. Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in your sight, show me now your way, that I may know you, and that I may find grace in your sight, and consider that this nation is your people."
Whoa! Well, the Old Testament word here is chin, whether it's whether it's grace or favor of unmerited favor is the definition of grace. So that's fine. But the point is. This is not all about the covenant of works. He's saying, we don't want anybody to go with us. We want you to go with us.
God said, go take your people whom you brought out of Egypt. He says, no, your people. The people are here, God is here, and Moses is acting as a mediator, as an intermediate between the two of them. He's interceding for the people. He's talking to God for them, and he's saying, we need your grace, we need your presence, we need you to be with us. And God said, verse 14, my presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. Whoa. He just said he wasn't going to go with them. But now because the intermediary has come and has pleaded for grace, grace is shown. My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.
Then he said to him, this is Moses speaking to God now, if your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known to us known that your people and I have found grace in your sight, except you go with us. So we shall be separate, your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth."
Now Moses, the one who is so mad at the covenant breaking people, he's speaking about us. He identifies himself with the covenant breakers. He identifies himself as one of the people. Even though he didn't participate in that, and he says, I'm still an Israelite.
We need your grace. We need your favor. We need you to go with us. He identifies with them. So Jehovah said to Moses, verse 17, I will also do this thing that you have spoken for you have found grace in my sight, and I know you by name. This is a gracious God. Yeah, he's a jealous God. He's also a gracious God.
You see him here showing favor that they don't deserve. The covenant breaking people and yet. He's saying, OK, my favor is going to go with you. You don't you obviously don't earn it. I mean, these people aren't keeping. They've just failed this. He wants them to keep it, obviously. but he's still showing them grace.
And in light of this graciousness, mercy that God is showing, this is what Moses says, verse 18. And he said, please show me your glory. Isn't that the cry of every single Christian? When we understand the free grace that we have from God, we want to see his glory. And the Lord said, I will make my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of Jehovah before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
But he said, you cannot see my face, for no man shall see me and live. And Jehovah said, here is a place by me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand while I pass by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen. God seems to indicate here His full glory can't be seen, right?
They've seen all sorts of anthropomorphic facades, right? Ways in which God has made himself known. Earlier, the elders had gone up to Mount Sinai and they'd eaten a covenant meal with God. And it said that they had seen him face to face, right? So there must be a way in which God is able to reveal himself in a way that people are able to see. We saw this all the time with the patriarchs, but there's a real way in which God's full glory can't be known. We would be undone. God says, I'm going to display some of it to you. We'll get to that story in a little bit. What's this whole section about?
This is Moses mediating with God. And even though they were covenant breakers, God would remember and show grace to the people. He wouldn't forsake them in the desert. They would still have a relationship with the Lord, that he would remember his promises, remember his people, and still be gracious to them.
What's the best verse to summarize this? I'm going to leave that up to you, but I want to talk about seek calling here. I think this passage is so instructive in even our Christian lives. The covenant that Jesus has made with us in his blood better than this one.
But that doesn't mean we get to do whatever we want. This whole covenant that God entered in with the Israelites as they were coming up out of Egypt, we saw it as God's power, God's power, God's power, God's doing this, God's doing this, God's doing this, God's doing this. That doesn't mean the people get to do whatever they want though. In light of God's grace, There is grace-filled obedience, heart-filled loyalty. And that's the same for us today now.
It's not about earning God's favor by precept upon precept upon precept, following traditions and laws and rules perfectly. That's not how we earn God's grace. Because you can't. We would boast about it. We would brag about it. nor does that now give us license. Just because Jesus has saved us from our sins that we might go out and sin that grace might abound even more. May it never be.
God wants us to love him so much and even gives us his spirit that we would apprehend the mercies of God, that we would truly understand the depths of his grace. And then with grief and hatred of our sin, we'd see the heinousness of it, the wickedness of it, what it brings and what it is for what it isn't. And we would so hate it that we would then turn from it and turn unto God and have eternal life. That is gospel repentance unto life. This is what we find here in the book of Exodus. The people taking off their ornaments and recognizing, man, we've really done messed this up.
And Moses acts as a type of Christ. Moses acts as a mediator going between the people and God. This is what Jesus does for us. He is our mediator. He is the one who has gone between his people, even someone like Peter, or what a covenant breaker Peter was, or like Saul, who had become Paul. Go read the book of Acts. I mean, it's all over the place. God's people aren't perfect. Go read 1 Corinthians. God's people aren't perfect.
But he saved them by grace, and he's called us to walk in light of that grace. So know that God's favor is with his people, but don't presume upon that grace. Recall the gospel of the Lord, because we have a gracious, merciful God. Father, we thank you so much that your face has shined upon us and that you are gracious. But we don't deserve this grace. We are covenant breakers. You have given us a great high priest, a mediator who intercedes for us. And you have given us your Holy Spirit.
God, we pray that we would be those who would truly walk in the light of your love. Our hearts would be conformed to who you have called us to be. In Jesus's name, amen. Well, may you walk in the joy of Jesus May you know His face has shined upon you. May you have peace because He's given it to you. May you truly be one of those who knows your sin, feeds it, but also you apprehend the mercy of God. May you turn and live unto life.
I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.