March 24 - Exodus 33
The people had committed an egregious sin and Moses had pleaded with God for mercy towards them in spite of their sin. God had heard the prayer of Moses and relented of His thought to wipe them out. The consequence of their sin was broken fellowship with God as noted in verse 3. God was good on His promise to get them to the promised land but what they lost was His presence as they went. You see, the covenant with Abraham and then with Moses was not broken. God is a promise keeping God! Again, the thing lost was the intimacy of His presence along the way. It is no different for us today.
When God seals a true believer with His Holy Spirit, that bond can never be broken. When we are adopted into the family of God, from that point and forevermore He will be our heavenly Father and we will be His children. The relationship cannot be broken. What can be broken is the fellowship. We can literally be left to make it through this fallen world on our own all the while missing out on all that God intended for us in this life. Remember what God had said in 23:20-23, that He would send an angel with them who would fight against their enemies and guide them safely onward – if they would obey. Blessings follow obedience!! They did not obey and what we find in 32:10 is that Israel wasn’t “consumed” but she was, because of her sin, “plagued” (32:35) Brothers and sisters, God does not wink at our sin and we are foolish to think that we can enjoy sweet fellowship with Him or even be allowed in His presence with blatant sin in our lives. You cannot lose your salvation (once you truly have it), but you can surely lose the joy of being saved and the amazing benefits of it in this life.
Now, Moses realized a truth here that I don’t want you to miss. He knew that the very thing that set Israel apart from all other peoples was the presence of God in their midst. God genuinely makes a difference in a person’s life when He is in it. Without His presence, they would not be a people who are set apart at all. They would look just like other nations around them. Moses is asking God, “What’s the point of going if You don’t go with us?” Does this sound familiar? Children of God looking exactly like the world around them today. The church has lost its distinctiveness because of this unfortunate reality. God hates sin and will not be a part of it. Is He a part of your life today or has sin driven Him away from you? Are you struggling to get through and feeling like the world is winning? Maybe it’s because He has literally pulled away from you.
May it be the passion of all of us to want the presence of God to rest on each of us and our church as we serve Him. Like Moses, may we plead with God to “go with us.” Notice what Moses said in verse 16b, “Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth.” God is the reason that we are to look different and live different. Like Moses, may we come to realize that if God doesn’t go with us, then we are wasting our time and frankly aren’t the church at all. Oh that the light of Christ would shine clearly in our lives “that they might see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).