Today’s reading: Exodus 33; Ephesians 5
If you had to pick one, which would you rather have, the blessing of God, or the presence of God?
I have to imagine that, for each person, answering this question starts with what your relationship with God looks like today. If you know the Lord through Christ, and regularly invest in your relationship with Him, then while you will definitely want the blessing of God, my bet is you would pick His presence. But for a lot of people, the blessing of God would be enough. They aren’t so much interested in having to invest in a relationship with Him as they are interested in things going their way.
This isn’t exactly the choice Moses is faced with in Exodus 33, but it’s not far from it. After the absolutely disastrous episode with the golden calf in chapter 32, God says He is not going to go up with the people lest He destroy them on the way. And if you read our discussion yesterday, you’ll understand why. The golden calf incident wasn’t some random stumble into sin. This was a willful pursuit of a false god of their own creation, and as part of their celebration of this new god it says, “they sat down to eat and drink.” What did they have to eat and drink? They had the manna that God miraculously provided for them out of heaven each morning to eat, and the water He miraculously brought forth from the rock for them to drink. Even as they sit beneath the physical manifestation of the presence of God on the mountain, despite all He has just done for them, they abandon Him and worship a new god they have just made, using the active and miraculous provision of Yahweh as the food and drink for their celebration…
You see why Yahweh calls them a “stiff-necked people,” and says He would destroy them on the way if He goes up with them.
But here is the amazing thing about our God; He doesn’t forsake His promise to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, even despite the complete infidelity of the people at Mount Sinai. He tells Moses that He will send His angel before Israel to clear the current inhabitants out of the land ahead of them so they can just go up and take possession of it, He just isn’t going to go with them on the way. And really, this isn’t too bad a deal. He doesn’t say He’s going to cut off their manna or water supply, He will clear the land out ahead of them, and they should be at the land soon anyway. While we don’t know the exact location of Mount Sinai, we know it was in the region of Seir near Kadesh, a region not too far south of the promised land. Keep in mind that the 40 year wilderness wandering wasn’t because it takes 40 years to get from Mount Sinai to Israel, it was because they were afraid of the people of the land and refused to go into the promised land that God had them wandering for 40 years until the faithless generation had died off. So even at the slower pace of their flocks and herds, Israel is only a week or two from the promised land right now.
So this really doesn’t seem too bad. They get all the provision, they get all the promise, and they get all the blessing, they just lose the presence of Yahweh among them for the next week or two on the way. I honestly bet there are a lot of people who would take that trade.
But to Moses, the presence of God was more valuable than all the blessings of the promised land. Moses had a personal relationship with God that made the choice of going up to enjoy the blessings without the presence of Yahweh no choice at all. And how do we know that relationship was the basis for Moses’ decision? Why else would we get the interjection about how Moses related to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend? Why else would the author break a very tense story to tell us that? Think about it. God makes this pronouncement, the people take off all their ornaments as they wait for God to decide what to do with them, and in the suspense of wondering what is going to happen, we instead get told how Moses would set the tent up outside the camp and go be in the presence of God there and talk to God face to face. It is only after that interjection that we get back to resolving the suspense of what is going to happen. So why bother including that paragraph? Because it tells us why Moses was not interested in the promises of God apart from the presence of God.
I bring this up this morning because there are a lot of Christians today who are only really interested in the presence of God when they feel like they are experiencing the provision of God. When all is going well, God is good, and going to church on Sunday is worth it, and we can probably even wait to eat dinner until we pray sometimes, but when things aren’t going so well, where is God? Why doesn’t He care? What was the point of doing all that if He was just going to let that terrible thing happen…?
But for the Christian who has cultivated a depth of relationship and trust in the Lord over years of knowing Him and walking with Him, it is a very different calculus. I have seen friends who loved the Lord deeply experience incredible loss and suffering, and they were confused why God would allow it, and they were angry that they felt like their prayers weren’t answered, but they took their confusion and their anger to God. They knew from years of experience that He was good and loving, and they could go and yell at Him in their anger, and cry before Him in their confusion, and demand answers from Him they might never get this side of Heaven, but in all of it, He was there, and His presence, His relationship, was worth it. It is worth it.
Knowing Him is the greatest blessing we could possibly have. So like Moses in our passage today who could say, “Even if you’re going to send your angel to clear the land ahead of us and bring us into the promised blessing, if you aren’t coming, don’t send us up,” or like Job who refused to curse God even in the midst of the loss of everyone and everything he held dear, so too can we have that same stability before the Lord, if and when we are willing to invest in our relationship with Him, not for the sake of the blessings we get, but for the sake of knowing our Lord more intimately.
So which is more important to you, the blessing of God, or the presence of God?
Lord, draw our hearts to value you above all else, to recognize the incredible privilege of even having the opportunity to know you, and to seek to know you better every day than we did the day before. You alone are worth it. You are worth everything.
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