Tough Questions � Real Answers
April 15, 2007
Sometimes as we grow older we lose the innocence and faith we have as children. Somewhere in the passing of time trust and hope becomes suspicion and cynicism. Our knowledge of God is no longer a simple knowledge but a complex intellectual philosophy that no one can explain or understand.
When Helen Keller was a baby she had a high fever that destroyed her vision and her hearing. Years later a teacher, named Anne Sullivan, was able to break through her veil of darkness and quiet and begin to tell her about the world around her. One day Anne began to tell Helen about the existence of God. In the middle of her signing to her about him Helen interrupted and signed back that she already knew about God.
Where did that knowledge come from? It was internally and eternally revealed.
This week we begin a journey to study some tough questions in the quest for some real answers.
The first is simple: Why don�t I always feel God�s Presence?
As Children we know some things that we�ve forgotten about God.
There are times I have felt his presence. Once when I was about 16 or 17 years old I remember spending the greater part of the afternoon on Vesper Point at Rock Lake and felt the very presence of God. In fact this place where Rich Mullins wrote �Our God is an Awesome God� is, to this day, a very special place for me.
But there are other times I feel very much alone.
How about you?
Why don�t we always feel the presence of God?
Let�s go back to one of the greatest leaders in the Bible and learn from his life and one special instance. The leaders name is Moses. He led his people, God�s people out of Egypt through the desert places to a promised land over the course of 40 tough years. I�m certain that there were times he felt very alone which is in some ways pretty surprising.
Look at what he says to God in Exodus 33 � this is just after the people had made the golden calf and Moses had broken the law God had written on the stone tablets.
He leaves the people and goes to a tent on the plains where God came in a cloud and spoke to him.
Here is what he said
Moses Wanted to Know God
13 If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.�
Moses wanted to know God and to be in his favor. Moses wasn�t asking for God to do things for him or to get something special from him. No, Moses just wanted to see and experience his Father.
He wouldn�t settle for less. Does this seem just a little strange to you?
Why would Moses, this man who had as much contact with God as any man in the Bible, throughout these verses keep asking for God.
Moses, give me a break!
You met God at the burning bush.
By his power you watched your staff turn into a snake.
You experience God�s power in the 10 plagues.
You spread your hands and watched a sea become a road.
You cracked a rock with a stick and it became a drinking fountain.
You even saw God engrave two stone tablets with his law.
Moses, when I think about your life, I see many encounters with God. Moses you seem a just a little greedy. Moses, nearly every page of the Book of Exodus records a situation when God is revealing himself, his purposes or his ways to you, and yet here we see you a God drenched, God saturated, God immersed man hungering for his Father.
So what does God say to Moses�
God�s Promised Presence
14 The LORD replied, �My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.�
Huh? Moses says, I want to know you and have your favor� and all he get is a simple statement. I�ll be there and I�ll give you rest.
It�s a simple promise with a powerful outcome. God�s presence results in rest. When God is with you one of the signs is that you are filled with peace.
In fact, we could say that restlessness is a symptom of the absence of God.
My wife gets something called �restless leg syndrome.� Its really pretty weird. She�ll be laying on the couch relaxing and watching TV when her leg with suddenly twitch � kind of like what happened when you put an electrical current through a frogs leg in 7th grade biology class.
I think that our souls hunger for rest that comes only from God�s presence and we twitch inside when he is absent.
Moses was twitching inside � he hungered for God�s presence and what God promises here is not enough for him� so Moses says some more.
Moses Wanted to feel the Presence of God
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?�
Exodus 33:15-17
How can I know that your presence is with us? The promise is not enough. He wants proof! I want to know you are here with me right now!
I think that Moses is very tired. He is disappointed, lonely and he is questioning � again � his ability to lead the Israelites anymore.
He�s been leading this wandering, grumbling, murmuring people for 2 years now and it has worn him to the nub.
Judging the people�s attitudes and behaviors, one could say they hadn�t matured much on their journey.
Seemingly little progress has been made. If you look at chapter 32, just 1 chapter before our text, these people who had been saturated by God, rescued by his power, and cared for by his grace became so anxious when Moses was gone from them for just 40 days up in the mountain that they made a really big bad decision and built the golden calf.
They make another god to worship. They form a golden statue of a cow. And claim that this lifeless human shaped �thing� will lead them.
The people exchange their living God for a dead, golden statue of a cow. When Moses returns to the camp, chapter 32:19 says, his anger burned and he threw the tablets (2-10 commandment tablets) out of his hands, breaking them to pieces . . . he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire."
And then he put the ashes in their water and made the people drink it. Moses is disgusted. And he has every right to be.
I don�t need to ask if you�ve ever been at the end of your rope with people do I?
Disgusted. Lonely. Frustrated with God�s people. Tired of church and churchianity.
We�ve all been traumatized or paralyzed by the circumstances of life. Just like Moses was in this situation.
To be alive is to experience these times. A result of being in relationships with people is to go through these chapters.
I won�t ask you to share your story and I won�t share with you mine, but instead I ask, In those times do you do as the people did or do you do as Moses did?
The people made their own God. Do you make a god? Do you try to create a god to trust in � and end up with restless soul syndrome?
Or do you do what Moses did?
Moses Wanted to See God�s Glory
18 Then Moses said, �Now show me your glory.�
He said �I want to see your Glory.� Moses is hungry for god. He needs a sense of god�s presence.
He hungers for intimacy with God and desires something deeper and richer than promises and names. Moses wants presence!
We want it too. We want to know that we not alone when we are lonely and not forgotten when we are hurting.
Tough question! Are you ready for a real answer? Here is the answer we�ve been seeking�
Experiencing the Presence of God
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.
Experiencing the Presence of God
23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.�
Exodus 33:18-21
Folks, God hears our requests for him, but he may not answer them as we�d like. God�s reply to Moses� request to see Him, to experience Him is found in these verses.
Moses� request to see God was answered but in God�s way, "you will see my back but my face must not be seen."
Though God does reveal Himself to us, His purposes and His ways from my experience it isn�t so neat and tidy.
There isn�t always a neat little formula. If you sing these songs, this way, then God will come to you and you�ll know his presence. If you say this prayer and kneel at this time, then God will appear in your bedroom. If you� no that is not the way it works.
When I am desperately seeking God, my experience is like Moses; I get his back and not his face.
What does this mean? Well, Jewish scholars interpret these words of God to Moses to mean that Moses will only be able to see God where He just was � not where he is.
Moses will see God only where God has already been!
Do you want to See the Glory of God?
You must look at where you have been for this is where God has been.
So if you want to see God�s glory you must look to where you have been to see where God has been.
If you want to see God, experience God, to know God�s presence you must look back and you will see where he has been.
Stop and reflect on what you�ve already been through in this life as you have followed after God.
This, in a sense, is the best we�re going to do. The most we are capable of is seeing God where he just was. Now some of you won�t like this and some of you may well disagree with this.
But if I were explain those times when I felt God revealed Himself, His purposes and His ways it was most often not when I was going through a situation that I realized his leading and guiding but in the aftermath as I looked back over it.
This teaching causes me to find my place is behind God and not in from of him. This text causes me to follow God and not try to create a false one to drag along with me.
This teaching gives me the courage to live in the needs of each day assured of God�s presence because of his faithfulness to me back in the past.
This text is giving me eyes to see and a heart to believe that: Yes, God is always at work. Yes, He pursues a love relationship with me. Yes, He invites me to join Him in His work but the way he reveals Himself, His purposes and His ways to me is when I take seriously my life and begin to see Him and His weavings.
Why don�t we always feel God�s presence? We�re looking in the wrong direction. It�s that simple.
I certainly don�t know!
Does make me a bit nervous/a bit unsettled?
Yeah, a little bit sometimes � at other times a lot, but as I look back over my life and compare the times I�ve been leading with the times I�ve been following His back, I have all the confidence in Him in the world.
