Exodus 33:4-9, 15-23, 34:1-7 (NIV)

⁴ When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments.  ⁵ For the Lord had said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people.  If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you.  Now take off your ornaments and I will decide what to do with you.’”  ⁶ So the Israelites stripped off their ornaments at Mount Horeb.

⁷ Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting”.  Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.  ⁸ And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent.  ⁹ As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses.

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?”

¹⁷ And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

¹⁸ Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

¹⁹ And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, Yahweh, 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 The Yahweh 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.”

^34:1 Yahweh said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.  ² Be ready in the morning, and then come up on Mount Sinai.  Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain.  ³ No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain, not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain.”

⁴ So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the Lord had commanded him; and he carried the two stones tablets in his hands.  ⁵ Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord.  ⁶ And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, ⁷ maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.  Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.

We will follow Moses’ experience in helping us find God (Jesus) in his life.  How do we find God, and how do we find God when it seems we’ve lost Him?

How does a person who has gotten the fire of God at one point, let it burn out, but then how do you get going again?  (How do we do it as an individual and as a church to serve God?)

God says, “You are a stiff-necked people.”  God had done amazing things for the people; 10 plagues, they got their freedom, parting of the Red Sea, the Passover their homes, manna, lead them into the promised land.

Moses is called to the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, and the people built a golden calf and began worshipping it.  The problem is not of unbelief or disobedience; it is the people do not know God.

We humans have amazing encounters with God, we are on top of the world, we believe we will never be afraid again, hopeless, or discouraged.  The reality is we will have all these negative emotions and losses that we are still with us.  We have lost God’s presence. 

We expect the experience with God to continually shape us, when we stay in that space with God, confident in Him, trusting, delighted that He knows us and loves us.

Because we are human, it just fades away.

When we have a sense of God’s heart for you, the reality of God’s love for you, and then there is a sense, a void, when God is further away.

There is a misery that comes with having a taste of God and then have pushed him out or let him step away (that misery is a gift).  It is God’s faithfulness in action.

Once you have experienced God, you want it again.  God has enlarged your heart to include Him and created a space only He can fill.

There is a God-shaped hole in the human heart that only God can fill.  ~Augustine Bishop of Hippo

We need to be renewed; the people in your life need God.  We need to go to God in prayer for God to intercede for them; ask God to be real to them.  Which means you and I will radiate God’s love to everyone around us.

God is radiating through our lives will show Christ’s love and people will see His love.  This is the reason why we need it to be renewed.

How do we get renewed?  Pray for glory, pray for yourself to become on fire again for God.

Moses wants more of God’s presence he is charging after God.  Moses requests to see God’s glory.  We need to continue to seek God out, a desire to know Him better.  Since He gave us life, we want the Giver more.

We need to pray for ourselves that we would desire God more; to ask for more of Him, we need and want God as the center of our lives.  We need to develop our hunger for God, to see God’s glory, His importance in our lives.

We were built for glory; created to live forever, but we always are slipping back (entropy), falling apart.  Because of that we have a desire to do something lasting, even though sin is pulling us back, away from God.

How we spend money is a quick and clear way to see what our idols are.

It is easy to want things from the Lord and yet not want the Lord Himself, as though the gift could ever be preferable to the Giver.  ~Saint Augustine

Moses says, “Show me your glory” and God replies, “I’ll show you goodness.”  And when that happens Moses sees truth.

Jesus is our rock; He is our hiding place when the glory of God comes close.  In Christ only then we see how holy God is.

Thou shall not covet.  What that means is that we love God so much and recognize His goodness and His glory so completely that we are never unhappy, but always grateful and confident.

We will pray for His glory to light a fire in our lives, we strip away whatever we think brings glory outside of God, and we need to see His glory through the truth of the Gospel, depends on God’s spirit to help us see even more clear.

Do not settle for too little.  Ask God to become bigger, more real, more the absolute center of who you are.  I promise life, if you do this consistently, you will change for the better.

Psalm 62:6  Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

God bless.  Think about Moses in his challenges and how God was faithful to him, in spite of his own human frailties.