Sermon Notes

AN EPIC CONVERSATION IN A TENT

Intimidated

Underqualified

Highly Motivated

MY BURDEN

The current cultural moment has many Christians consumed by their circumstances, causes, and callings rather than their worship and adoration of God.

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me…

MATTHEW 15:8

MY BURDEN

For many Christians, God is more useful than He is beautiful.

WHAT WE NEED

A grander, more glorious, more Biblical vision of God.

EXODUS 33:12-34:8

THE CONTEXT

10 Commandments

Golden Calf

Angry God

Frustrated Moses

An Epic Conversation in a Tent

Message outline

What did Moses ask?

How did God answer?

What does this mean for us?

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.”

Exodus 33:12-13

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. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” Exodus 33:14-16

And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” Exodus 33:17-18

3 HUMBLE PRAYERS

Show me your ways. 

Give me your presence.

Show me your glory.

3 HUMBLE PRAYERS

Show me your ways. (Not will) 

Give me your presence. (Not power)

Show me your glory. (Not goodness)

Message outline

What did Moses ask?

How did God answer?

What does this mean for us?

UNTAMEABLE GRACE

I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.  Exodus 33:19

As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Romans 9:13-15

So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. Romans 9:16-18

God is utterly free from the constraints of his creation. The inclinations of his will move in directions that he alone determines. Whatever influences appear to change his will are influences, which ultimately he has ordained. His choice to show mercy to one person and not to another is a choice that originates in the mystery of his sovereign will not in the will of his creature.

John Piper

God is not answerable to man for what he does.

1. Kent Hughes

UNTAMEABLE GRACE

God saves some. God doesn’t save others. God doesn’t owe us an explanation for why. 

We just trust that You are too loving to be unnecessarily unkind, too wise to make a mistake, too just to be unfair and too holy to tolerate sin.  And we do not reason from our own minds back to You.  O God, save us from creating You in our image. 

John MacArthur

Help us to understand that You are the sovereign God who does according to His own good pleasure and yet mysteriously in no way does that violate the volition of a man who can choose life or death, heaven or hell.  And how those two seemingly opposite things are harmonized is for You to determine, not us.

John MacArthur

UNSEEABLE FACE

But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” 

Exodus 33:20-23

This means that while God would let Moses see a portion of his glory, he would not show him his face—not the essence of his being. To be exposed to the unfiltered glory of God on this side of eternity would be like entering a nuclear reactor or traveling to the sun; the divine holiness would consume us. 

Tony Evans

 If Moses were to see a complete revelation of God in his eternal being, it would be so overwhelming that it would destroy him. God is absolute in his perfection. Moses was a finite, fallen creature, and as such he could not see God and live. No one can. As Augustine said, “No one living in this life can see him as fully as he is.” 

Philip Graham Ryken

UNSEEABLE FACE

God’s holiness, if seen in its entirety, would kill you. 

UNDENIABLE LOVE

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. Exodus 33:5

He is a great God, and no matter how 

high we reach, he still has to stoop. For us to have an encounter with God at all requires 

his infinite condescension. He is the Creator; 

we are only creatures. He is enthroned in Heaven; we dwell on earth below. He’s God; we’re not. So if he relates to us at all, 

he must come down.

Philip Graham Ryken

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Exodus 34:6-7

UNTAMEABLE GRACE

UNSEEABLE FACE

UNDENIABLE LOVE

Message outline

What did Moses ask?

How did God answer?

What does this mean for us?

APPLICATION

Repent 

Receive

Return

3 HUMBLE PRAYERS

Show me your ways. 

Give me your presence.

Show me your glory.