We finished a series forward through the entire series we were talking about the life of Joseph. It ended with Joseph bringing his family from the land where they were starving into Egypt and while they’re in Egypt he cares for them. His father passes, we studied this all last week, but the nation of Israel is then residing in Egypt and after a while a few generations, the Bible says this, that a Pharaoh, there was a Pharaoh that didn’t know Joseph. And essentially what happens is he sees all of these Jews in Egypt.

He goes these aren’t Egyptians. I mean they don’t even walk like an Egyptian. Man I was getting worried there for a second. Thank you.

I’m gonna hear that little bangle song in the head my head the rest of the day. I mean they don’t walk like us, they don’t talk like us. They eat this different food. So what they decide to do is enslave all of them.

And the Israelites are enslaved for the next 400 years. 400 years they’re in slavery throughout this entire time. And this is where we pick up. Moses comes, takes the children of Israel out of the land. He pulls them out God’s power, pulls them out.

After all of the plagues, after everything they’re out of the land of Egypt, they’re in the wilderness. God is leading them through the wilderness. Here’s how he’s leading them. A pillar of fire by night, a cloud by day.

And God is leading them to a land that he’s promised them. That he promised Jacob years and years and years before. So God’s leading them to this place of promise. They’re in the wilderness and God has provided food for them.

Remember just before he led them out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea. They walk across on dry ground. Someone once said well you don’t understand it was the Red Sea and not the Red Sea. No it was the Red Sea.

They said well the Red Sea you could kind of walk and just get your ankles wet. No no this was dry ground. Besides all of that after they crossed through, God closed the waters on Pharaoh and his army and they all drowned. So God is leading them through the wilderness.

He’s feeding them with manna from heaven water from rocks and God is leading them day after day by a cloud by a pillar of fire. In every step of the journey it’s a testimony of his presence and his power and then God brings them to Mount Sinai. It’s that Mount Sinai God reveals himself in this consuming fire and it’s there that Moses receives the law. That Moses receives the covenant of God.

It’s where God gives Moses the plans for the tabernacle away for his people to see his presence continually. While Moses was meeting with God on the mountain the people were losing their faith at the bottom of the mountain. They wanted something tangible. They wanted gods like the Egyptians.

So why would they want gods like the Egyptians? Because sometimes we fall in on our sin nature and we want things that are tangible rather than wanting the presence of God. This is what’s happening to the people of Israel. God’s chosen people they’re wanting something tangible that they can see, that they can feel, that they can touch.

And all through this time they bring their gold and they melt it and they make this golden calf. And all while they’re making the golden calf the pillar of fire is still there. The presence of God is still there. The cloud is still there during the day.

While they’re looking for something tangible they’re ignoring the presence of God that’s still right there. When Moses comes down from the mountain he sees what they had done and God’s judgment falls. 3,000 people died that day and sin fractured the fellowship of the people in God. But the story doesn’t end there because God wasn’t finished with his people. And all of that leads us to Exodus 33 where we’re gonna be this morning.

One of the most honest intimate revealing conversations between God and man in all of Scripture. And here’s how it starts. The Lord says to Moses in Exodus 33.1, “Go up from here you and the people you brought up from the land of Egypt to the land I promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying I will give it to your offspring.” Now I want you to catch what’s going on. God’s saying, “Hey listen go to the land.

The land that I promised you. The land that’s always been yours. I want you to go to it right now. Look what happens next.

I will send an angel ahead of you and will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hithites, the Pheasurites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. These are all the people occupying the land. God’s plan was for the people of Israel to follow him in battle and he was going to give them victory after victory after victory after victory. And now God is saying, ”Just go take the land.

Go take the land and I’m gonna send an angel before you.“ And that angel is going to destroy everybody that’s in the land and you can just have the land. You can have the promise. Look at verse 3, ”Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey.“ Look what he says, ”But I will not go up with you because you are a stiff-necked people. Otherwise I might destroy you on the way.“ Do you see what God just said?

He said, ”I’m gonna give you the land that I promised you. I’ll give it to you. I’ll send my angel before you to destroy all the enemies. And you can have my promise.“ Get this, ”But you won’t have my presence.“ Three different times he says, ”I will.“ He says, ”I will give you the land.

I will send my angel and I will not go with you.“ It’s how he is describing to Moses what he is going to do. It’s as if God is saying, ”Go ahead. You can still have what you wanted and you can have what I promised you just without me.“ And Moses is at a crossroads. You see, God just offered him the fulfillment of his promise.

Everything the Israelites had been waiting for, for decades upon decades, they could have it, but without God’s presence. They could have it all. They could have the land. They could have the victory.

They could have the security. Everything they’d been waiting for with no difficulties. No struggles. No trials.

No fighting. No one occupying the land that was theirs. They can have everything that God promised in an instant, in a moment, but without God’s presence. And I think this is the real test of the heart, isn’t it?

Let’s bring it to our world. Would you take the promises of God without the presence of God? Let me think about all the things we pray for. We pray for success and comfort, security, health, wealth.

But would we take all of those things without the presence of God? Would you take success? Would you take comfort? Would you take security, health, and wealth?

I mean, all the things that our hearts are always desiring after, the things that we fill our prayer list with, would we take all of those, but without the presence of God? I mean, if you could go through life and have all the things that you’re praying for without needing God, would you want them? Would I want them? The reality is that most of us are tempted to live this way.

We’re so used to doing everything in our own strength without depending on the presence of God. We sing about the presence of God. But do we depend on the presence of God? We’re so used to doing our own thing.

We’ve got our plan. We plan, we perform, we serve, we try to move forward. But we rarely ever stop and ask, ”God, are you with me? God, is your presence with me?“ Maybe look at Samson and Samson, with the Lila, and she wraps them with the chords, and she wraps them with all the different things and tries to get him to reveal the secret of his strength.

After multiple attempts, finally she shaves his head. The Bible says that Samson got up as he did before. In Sunday school class, they always said, ”Well, he didn’t realize that his hair was gone.“ No, no, no, no, hear me. The Nazarite vow is that he never cut his hair.

You don’t go from never cutting your hair to then having no hair and not noticing a difference. When it says he got up and I will go out as before, it means I’m going to do this just like I’ve done it every other time. So many times we get up and we do what we do spiritually, just as every other time, not realizing the presence of God isn’t with us. So we read this narrative in Scripture and we go, ”No, no, no, I would want the presence of God.

I don’t want to take one move in my life without God.“ But so often we plan, we perform, we serve, we try to move forward. We don’t ever think about whether he’s with us or not. See the people of God, the Israelites, they could have taken the easy road. The angel would have done all of the fighting.

They could have entered the land, received God’s promise without the struggle. But that would have meant walking without God and Moses. Moses knew that wasn’t an option. So this is what I want to focus on Moses’ prayer right here.

Verse number 12, Moses said to the Lord, ”Look, you have told me, lead this people up, but you have not let me know. Whom you will send with me.“ You said, ”I know you by name and you have also found favor with me. Now if I have indeed found favor with you, please teach me your ways.“ Look at that, teach me your ways. ”And I will know you to valuable things in that verse right there, so that I might find favor with you. Now consider this nation is your people.“ The Lord says to Moses, Moses says to the Lord, ”You’ve given me the command, but you haven’t given me yourself.“ Moses says, ”I can’t go without you.“ God, I can’t go into that place.

You can fight all the battles for me. You can do all the things for me. You can give me the promise, but Lord, I don’t know a lot, but I know I don’t want to go anywhere without you. Hey, what if that was our prayer?

What if success? What if wealth? Good health? The new car, the new promotion, the new house, what if all of that fell to the bottom of the list?

And what we prayed for was God’s presence. Him. Let me dial it in for you just a little bit deeper. I know some of you in this room, you are going through it right now.

And I know some of you have emailed me, ”Hey, I’m not trying to sidestep, but I want to walk through it. I want God to take me forward, and I am so thrilled for you, and my heart is just overjoyed.“ But don’t do it without His presence. Don’t try and go forward without Him. Moses says, ”I know I can’t go without you.“ So God replies, verse number 14, ”My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.“ Some of you right now, you’re looking at what is in front of you on your path of life, and it feels heavy, and you don’t know which way to turn, and what you’re looking for is rest.

Hey, it’s found in His presence. Getting relief from your circumstances, there’s going to be more circumstances that come later on. What I know about finances is you can be great financially right now, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way. If you’re raising a teenager, it might be good today, but it won’t be by the end of the week.

What you need is His presence. You need Him. God says, ”My presence will go with you, I will give you rest,“ and this is the turning point. I mean, isn’t this the heart of prayer?

Not that we get what we want from God, but that we get God Himself. Did you hear me? Isn’t this the heart of prayer? Not that we get what we want from God, but that we get God Himself, that He would teach us His ways, that we would know Him.

Now watch what happens next. Verse number seven, ”Now Moses took a tent and pitched it outside the camp at a distance from the camp, and he called at the tent of meeting, and anyone who wanted to consult the Lord would go to the tent of meeting that was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would stand up in each one at the door of his tent, and they would watch Moses until he entered the tent. The cloud would descend,“ the Bible says in the next few verses, ”the visible presence of God, and the people would stand in awe as Moses was meeting with God.“ Can you imagine that?

I mean, thousands of people watching one man as he enters into this tent, and the cloud that’s by day literally descends upon the tent, and Moses is meeting with God. I mean, we look at that and we say, ”Wow, that’s incredible.“ I’m going to tell you what it is, it’s intimacy. That’s relationship. I want you to see the gravity of this verse.

God is speaking with man as a friend. Look at verse number 11, ”The Lord would speak with Moses face to face, just as a man speaks with his friend.“ It’s not literally face to face, it’s figuratively, and we’ll clarify that in the verses to follow here in just a moment, but that’s prayer. It’s spending time with God. See, sometimes our trials and our troubles and our struggles and all the things that we need God to do, they have this way instead of them leaning us leaning into a relationship with God, we start just trying to fulfill our need.

If I have more money, if I have the better job, if I have the better house, the better wealth, the better health, if I have all the things, then I’ll be okay. When the circumstances that you’re walking through right now, it’s not for you to try and fulfill some list, it ought to drive you closer to spending more time with God. It’s not about getting what we want from God, it’s about a relationship with Him, and here’s what’s incredible, because everybody thinks, ”Wow, wouldn’t it be awesome? Wouldn’t it be great if we had a tent, we set it up out back and then we can all just meet with God in that tent.

I’m quite sure I’m going to get an email and somebody’s going to want a tent out back, because then it’ll be like in Exodus 33 and we’ll have God’s presence in that place and it’ll just be awesome. Hear me, if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit resides in you. I want you to catch this, you’re the tent, I’m the tent, and what we end up doing is we end up chasing a whole bunch of things of this world, tangible things that don’t bring joy, that don’t bring peace, that don’t bring happiness, and we keep trying to fulfill ourselves and then we think, “Oh, if I can find this physical place to go and to be with God when He’s right here,” and we don’t recognize His presence. Our bodies have become the tent, the meeting place of the Holy Spirit.

We don’t go outside to meet with God, He dwells within us, and every time you bow your head and every time you whisper His name, you can enter that same presence that Moses had. He hears you and you say, “Well, what else do I need?” It’s found in the next verse that we’re going to study in just a minute, that He hears you. Every time you whisper His name, every time you speak to Him, you can enter the presence of God and He hears you in your heavenly Father. He already knows what you need.

Jesus said this, “But when you go and pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Two verses later it says this, “Because your Father knows the things that you need before you ask.” He said, “Well, if God already knows what I need before I ask, then why pray? Because what you need is not the basis of prayer. He already knows what you need. Hey, He knows your list.

He knows my list, and I’m not telling you that it’s wrong to pray for the things that you need. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m telling you it’s not the basis of prayer. The basis of prayer isn’t what you need.

It’s Him. It’s who He is. And so often we get lost by our needs and we forget it’s all about Him. Because prayer isn’t about getting something from God.

It’s about God teaching you His ways that we would know Him. The reward of prayer is God Himself. You can’t buy it. You can’t borrow it.

You can’t manufacture it. It comes through relationship, and that relationship comes through prayer. And the things that you’re carrying and the difficult road that you’re walking right now and the needs that you have and your heart that aches ought to drive you to Him. But so often it takes us to a place of just trying to figure out how we can get what we need to get through the day and get to the next day.

And the conversation with Moses and God, it continues. Moses says this in verse number 18, ”Please let me see your glory.“ What a prayer. Here’s a man who’s seen the plagues of Egypt. The water turned to blood, focused, darkness, death, frogs.

I mean Moses has seen everything. He’s seen God’s power in tangible ways that would shock many of us. And what does he pray? ”Please let me see your glory.“ ”God, I want you. I want to see more of you.“ He wanted more of God.

But look at what he wanted more of. He wanted more of His glory. And because once you’ve truly experienced God, you’ll never be satisfied with anything less. And so God replies to him in verse number 20, ”You cannot see my face for humans cannot see me and live.“ But then he says this, ”I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name the Lord before you, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.“ God says, ”You can’t see all of me, but I’ll show you more of who I am.“ Hey, would we be satisfied with this?

This is the ultimate purpose of prayer. It’s to see more of him to be drawn deeper into who he is. Let me just tell you three things about prayer. And these aren’t application points.

I’m just going to literally give you three things. Prayer is expressing our need for God. Prayer is experiencing intimacy with God. And prayer is seeing God for who He is.

I know you’re going through it right now. I know you’re walking through a heavy season. You’re walking through difficulty. You’re walking through pain.

I’ve prayed with people who are struggling with their emotions, with their marriages, with their kids. I’ve prayed with people who were going through things that I won’t even mention. What if our prayer in all of that was, ”Lord, the solution to what I’m walking through isn’t some tangible thing that I can see. It’s you.“ I mean, would we be happy seeing his heart if we never saw his hand move in our life?

We just sang it. We all just sang it and said, ”Lord, I just want to see your heart if I never see your hand.“ I don’t know all of the depths of what you’re carrying today, but what if we continue to pray for comfort? What if we continue to pray for healing and success and security and wealth and all the stuff that our hearts wants, but way, way, way, way before that? I said, ”God, I want to know you.

God, I want to be consumed with you, knowing you, learning from you, being in relationship with you. Lord, before you give me any of the things that I’m asking for, could I just have more of you?“ I’m going to tell you that’s not a pastor prayer. It’s not a board member prayer. It’s not a deacon prayer.

It’s not a Northwest staff prayer. It ought to be the prayer of all of our hearts. ”Lord, before you give me any of the stuff, can I just have more of you, more of who you are?“ That I would know you. That I would see you. That I would learn your ways.

This is everything that Moses prayed. And here’s the indicator that something’s wrong with our prayer life. Hey, what if we could have all of the blessings of God, but not have His presence? What would we choose?

Again, don’t misunderstand me. Hear me clearly. It’s okay to ask God for comfort and for healing and success and security. Absolutely.

But our ultimate prayer should be, ”God, I want you. God, I want your presence. God, I want depth with you more than anything. God, I want you to work in me and in my heart if you never change my circumstances.“ What if we prayed that?

And we’ll be honest with you. It’s not an easy prayer to pray. It’s not an easy prayer to pray because when you’ve got a heavy, heavy heart, you just want rest. The problem is that we’ve fixated our minds that rest.

Rest is comfort. Rest is healing. And rest is success. And if I have all of those things and I have rest, then I’ll see God.

No, we need to flip that around the other way. He is rest. He’s what we need. So what we’re going to do this morning is we’re going to take some time in prayer.

If your heart’s heavy, hear me. We want to pray for you this morning. We want to pray that God would work and that God would fix things in your life, but more than anything, we want to pray that God’s presence is clear in your life and that you see Him differently. Heavenly Father, Lord, we love you.

God, I thank you for who you are and Lord, what I believe you’re doing in this room. And Lord, would you just have your will in your way? Would you open hearts? Would you give me the words?

Lord, would you just move? The way I’ve seen you move so many times. I pray this all in Jesus name.