EHP Day 23-In the Tent of Meeting Part 3
Exodus 33:12-15
Moses said to the LORD, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”
And He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to Him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.”
Guilt-stricken in sin, Adam hid in foliage from the presence of God. By contrast, desperate for helping empowerment, Moses plead in the tent for the presence of God. There is an “I need to be sure!” insistence pressing through Moses’ tone. He had no interest trying to lead 2 million people into what God has promised by merely marshaling his own, human and inadequate resources.
His begging powerfully instructs us. “You say you know me, Lord. You say I have your favor. If so, show me now YOUR ways. I want to KNOW you (i.e., thoroughly, as if to say, “I require full alignment with You, Lord!”). This is YOUR people, Lord.” The Lord assures, “My presence will go with you…”, but Moses presses in. “If YOU are not going with me, I don’t want to go anywhere!”
A remarkably dependent posture of Moses shines here. He realizes what Jesus would later remind us, “Without Me, you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5b). Dare we attempt anything—studying, working, loving a spouse, parenting, handling finances, decision-making—apart from time with God? Time in which we say to Him, “If Your presence and ways are not in this, I can’t go forward!”
Journal Notes