Seek His Presence, Not His Presents

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a boy named Francis. His birthday was approaching, and his father called him aside and asked him, You’re birthday is approaching and what if I threw a birthday party and just cut one cake and everyone went home? How many of your friends do you think will come? He said, ‘probably a few of them’. Now, what if for your birthday party, I rented out an entire play area, kept a carnival with free food and lots of free games, how many of your friends do you think would come? He said, if that’s the case then, my whole school might come. And the father did the same, on his birthday, he rented out an entire sports area, put up a carnival and everyone was enjoying the food, games and the party and the father calls the son aside and asks him, look closely, how many of you do you think came here for you? And how many came to the party?

Friends, this is our lives most of the time.

I would like to entitle my sermon for today as, ‘Seek His Presence, Not His Presents’

A simple question to ask ourselves, we all seek God, What exactly are we seeking? Are we seeking his presence or just the presents he gives?

Let’s turn our Bibles to Exodus 33:12-17

Now, this is a very common passage, we all know this story. Just to give a little bit more, this is an event that takes place between Moses and God. God’s chosen people Israel, they rebelled against God, not just once or twice, on a constant basis. They forget God’s great deliverance and all the good things he has done for them, and they rebel against God. And Moses intercedes with God in these couple of chapters. This particular one is the Third Interaction of Moses.

There is a lot of things that we can learn from this particular event. But I just want to focus on a particular aspect of it. I would like to look at it from the eyes of Moses. In this narrative, Moses is the central character and let us take a quick look into how Moses desired for the presence of God.

We know Moses played multiple roles in his life and we will just focus on 2 of those. When we look into the title and look at the life of Moses, we can know that he was somebody who lived according to that. He never cared about presents or titles, the book of Hebrews states it to us. He chose none of the great things he could, he chose God! So I am guessing you all figured out what I am going to speak on, for those who didn’t get it yet, I would like to talk to you about how we must desire each day, for the presence of God. And we will look into the life of Moses and take 2 characteristics from his life in light of Him seeking the presence of God.

Two things that I want to bring out from these 4 verses are

1. Moses sought the presence of God as a friend of God

Verses 12-15 we can see the conversation Moses and God are involved in. We can see that Moses had a close relationship with God. He talks to God like a friend. Makes us wonder, are we in that same position of Moses, or we God’s friend just in our songs? Because we sing, I am a Friend of God, he calls me a friend! Question is, ‘Does He? Are you a friend of His?

The relationship Moses had with God was really deep, in verse 14 God says, ‘I will go with you’, it literally means, ‘my own presence shall go with you’ not an angel, not something else. I myself will go with you. And it is a result of the pleading of Moses. He was close to God and his only desire and only interest were God. Moses had his priorities right. He knew that the opportunity he had once a very rare one, an opportunity that usually nobody else could get. He was in the presence of God, talking to Him. He wasted no time. When we also understand this, we will know that the presence of God we should be in, is so glorious and amazing. But unfortunately, we get distracted and get side-lined. Our priorities tend to change as time goes by.

Just imagine that my lifelong dream is to own a luxury car. To be clear, it is not my dream! Say, I worked my whole life really hard for it, earned a lot of money, saved every last penny and when I had enough money I walked into the Lamborghini showroom and I booked the latest car. So when I made the purchase, the company would give me free merchandise. They would give me a Lamborghini cap, maybe a T-Shirt, a keychain, a wrist band or something like that. My question is did I buy that car for the free merchandise. What do you think I will be more excited to see? My dream car or the caps and the keychain.