Download Note - The Bridge Community Church

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Exodus Part 16 – God’s Presence
June 26, 2016
Bo Weaver at The Bridge in Wilder, KY
Have you ever walked into a room or a building that at one time
held special memories for you – but now was just an empty shell?
Last year I attended a high school class reunion that was held in
the cafeteria of the greatest high school in the entire world,
Boone County High School.
I left the cafeteria in search of a restroom and came across my
homeroom from my senior year.
I peered inside the room and saw where I sat at the start of each
school day.
It was not difficult form to conjure up the images of at least some
of people I had known so many years before.
I wasn’t sure exactly which locker was mine, but I was in the
general vicinity.
I could recall conversations I had with classmates around that
locker – but now the hallway where I stood was, except for me,
completely empty.
The voices from those conversations were now all silent.
I had a similar experience a few months ago when I attended the
funeral of my great-aunt, Mary Bell Noe.
SHOW PHOTO
Mary Belle was 100 years old when she passed away.
She was an amazing lady.
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She passed away in the same house where she was born on Mt.
Zion Road in Union.
She started teaching Sunday School at Union Baptist Church, less
than half a mile from her home, when she was 17 and continued
teaching for the next 83 years.
She never flew in an airplane and she never had air conditioning.
Her funeral was held, of course, at the church where she served
for so many years.
This was also the church I attended for a short time when I was a
kid.
During the visitation at Mary Belle’s funeral I found the old
sanctuary where I attended church with my family and where I
was baptized when I was 10 years old.
The room had been cleared of all the pews, there was no pulpit or
piano or organ.
The choir loft was gone.
It appeared that the sanctuary had been turned into a room for a
children’s service.
About the only thing that let me know I was even in the right
place was the window to the baptistery above what once was the
altar.
The room seemed so small.
When I was a kid it seemed like a good sized room, but seeing it
as an adult I’m not sure it could have ever held more than 100 or
so people.
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Standing there in that empty room my mind flashed images of
seeing my sister Cheri walk out with the choir at the start of the
service, her blond hair in a flip that bounced with each step.
I remember standing next to my Dad and listening to him sing
the low parts of the hymns.
I remember the sermons, well, not the sermons themselves, just
how long they were.
Some things never change!
This was a room that at one time was full of life – but that was
now just an empty shell.
It struck me that this is what is going to happen to this place.
In just a few weeks, this place that was once filled with
conversations and singing and preaching will soon grow silent.
If you were to come back to this room a year from now, it too will
seem so small and it will be hard to imagine that this place was
once alive with music and voices.
The thought of this brought an analogy to mind.
People are to a building what a soul is to a body.
It is people who give life to a building, the way a soul gives life to
a body.
When people leave a building, the life of the building goes with
them.
In a few weeks we will conduct our final service in this building.
SHOW A FEW PICTURES: PEOPLE IN THE LOBBY, THE BAND,
PREACHING
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We will sing our last song.
We will hear our last sermon – and then we will walk out the door
one last time.
When we leave – so too will the life that was in this building.
This building will grow dark.
IF POSSIBLE – SHOW A PHOTO OF A DARKENED ROOM
This would be a little sad if not for the fact that when we leave
this place we will be taking the life that was in this building with
us and will be putting that same life into another building that will
come alive with conversations and laughter and singing and
preaching.
SHOW RECENT PHOTO OF NEW CHURCH FROM FACEBOOK –
FRESHLY PAINTED WITH NEWLY SEALED PARKING LOT (NOT THE
WEIRD SHAPED PHOTO WE HAVE BEEN USING
But there is one more thing that is equally important that we will
put in that building located at 7906 Alexandria Pike in Alexandria,
KY and that is the presence of God.
We will take the presence of God with us because it is the
indwelling presence of God that sets the New Covenant apart
from the Old Covenant.
We have been in a study of Exodus and in Exodus chapter 33
God says something rather odd to His servant Moses.
I should point out that this passage follows the Children of Israel
worshipping the golden calf.
We read in verse 1 of Exodus 33:
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Exodus 33
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, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’
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And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out
the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the
Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. 3 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.”
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V. 14
And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give
you rest.”
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Then he said to Him, “If Your Presence does not go with
us, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how then will it be
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.”
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So the LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that
you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and
I know you by name.”
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Note that God told Moses:
“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
God is talking to Moses in the singular.
Moses picked up on this and replied:
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“If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up
from here…”
Moses implores God to give His presence to all of Children of
Israel and to bring them all into to land of promise.
God relents and grants Moses’ request.
The point I want to make from this is that Moses understood that
God’s presence was the key to everything.
Having God’s manifest presence is synonymous with having His
favor and blessing, but it is more than that.
It speaks of enjoying relationship with Him.
This is how Moses had come to live.
Moses had grown to desire God’s presence more than anything in
this world.
Verse 7 and following of this same chapter speaks of this.
Exodus 33
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.
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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. 9 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 the LORD talked with Moses.
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All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the
tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshiped, each
man in his tent door. 11 So the LORD spoke to Moses face to
face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to
the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young
man, did not depart from the tabernacle.
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Moses had learned to value this face to face relationship with God
more than anything in this world.
He was not alone in valuing the presence of God.
And it came to pass that everyone who sought the LORD
went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the
camp. (V. 7b)
… his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not
depart from the tabernacle. (V. 11b)
I believe it can be safely said that there is not a person who has
ever lived who saw more of a display of God’s power than did
Moses.
The Ten Plagues on Egypt
The Parting of the Red Sea
Water from a rock
Manna in the wilderness
God’s manifest power and glory atop Mt. Sinai
As incredible as all this was, there was something more
enthralling to Moses than all of that, and that was the fellowship
of God’s presence.
Moses came to understand that it was for this that he was
created.
It is what Adam and Eve enjoyed with God before the fall; face to
face communion with God.
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It is what you and I were created to enjoy, as well.
We were created to live in the presence of God.
Under the Old Covenant, so few ever came to experience the
presence of God in this way.
David certainly did.
In Psalm 16 David said;
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
- Psalm 16:11
After David sinned in the way he did with Bathsheba, once he
came clean and confessed his sin he pleaded with God not to take
His Holy Spirit away from him.
David, like Moses, knew there was something greater than God’s
mighty deeds and that was His presence.
This is what the second person of the Godhead came to make
available to us when He left heaven and entered this world in
human flesh.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.
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And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we
beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth.
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- John 1:1, 14
The word “dwelt” means “tabernacled.”
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The analogy is that of the tabernacle that God had the Children of
Israel pitch in the wilderness.
It was the tent of meeting, the place God came to fellowship with
His people.
When Jesus was in the world He was the presence of God with
the Jewish people.
Jesus said there is something better than My being with you and
that is the Holy Spirit living in you.
Those of us who have received Christ, have the indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit.
We don’t have to go to the tabernacle in the wilderness or to the
temple in Jerusalem (which has not existed since 70 A.D.).
We can commune with God anywhere and anytime.
We never have to be like a body without a soul, or a building
without a people.
We have the presence of God within.
But my concern is that we don’t truly value what we have, or that
we don’t avail ourselves of what we have; for while the presence
of God is not something we manufacture, or earn by what we do,
there are things we can do that will help us actualize the
presence of God in our life.
And though we don’t work to earn or deserve the Holy Spirit –
because you can’t earn what has been freely given, the things we
can do to help us to experience God’s presence in our life, the
things we can do to make God’s presence real in our life, most
people find difficult to do.
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And that is nothing.
I’m talking about being still in God’s presence.
I’m talking about waiting on the Lord, in the same way Moses
would wait in God’s presence in the tabernacle of meeting.
Psalm 46:10 puts it this way;
Be still and know that I am God.
- Psalm 46:10
Isaiah 40
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
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He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
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Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
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But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.
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Wait - kaw-vaw'; a primitive root; to bind together (perhaps
by twisting) to expect:—gather (together), look, patiently,
tarry, wait (for, on, upon).
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Renew – to pass on quickly, to change or exchange
It was used of Laban changing Jacob’s wages, or of David
changing his clothes.
Illus. Pastor Hallelujah Israel – prayer hut
Most every month he spends two-three days waiting on the Lord.
He is renewed in this way.
He meets God here.
Illus. God spoke to him and said that the coming year was
going to be a very difficult year for him financially.
Justin Zauflik was there and so he began to suggest ways
Pastor H. could raise funds.
Pastor H. said, “You don’t understand. God did not tell me
to come up with ways to alleviate the problem. He simply
told me this would be a difficult year financially.”
Pastor sees beyond God’s deeds and seeks to understand his
ways.
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There are times when God manifests His mighty deeds to His
children, but there are other times when He wants to work other
things in us by causing us to know that His presence is enough
for us.
God wants for us, His people, to be a people of His presence.
He wants us to live filled with His Spirit.
To be filled requires being still.
To be still before God is to be filled.
We can’t fill ourselves – and yet we are commanded in Ephesians
5:18 to be filled.
My understanding of this is that we put ourselves in a position for
God to fill us.
We are filled when we wait in His presence.
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In a few weeks we are going to leave this building – and when we
will take the life of this building with us.
But we want to do more than fill our new building with our
presence.
We want to see that new building filled with God’s presence.
How do we do that?
We fill that people with a bunch of people who are full of the Holy
Spirit.
We are filled with the Holy Spirit when we come before God and
wait in His presence and ask Him to fill us.
We have 21 days before we make our new building our home.
Let’s all take some time every day and wait upon God.
Can we give Him five minutes every day?
Five minutes with no phone?
Five minutes with no requests.
There is nothing wrong with making requests of God; in fact, we
are instructed to do so.
But there is a time for prayer and there is a time for quiet
communion.
Being still is not easy, I know.
I read where one person wrote:
“Mediation always starts with me breathing deeply
and ends with my adding people to my enemies list.”
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Things tend to bubble up when we get quiet.
I always think of ten things I need to do when I try to get quiet
before the Lord.
But I resist the urge to write them down – because the priority is
to focus my thoughts on God and let Him fill me with His Spirit.
As I do, I exchange my weakness for His strength.
As I do, I am renewed.