Seek the face of God

Have you ever been in a place where you felt that God is so angry with you that the situation is completely unsalvageable? Well, Israel was at that exact place. Where God had blessed them with His presence while He led them out of Egypt, yet there came a day when He said to them that He will not bless them with His presence anymore.

Exodus 33

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.”

These harsh words God spoke after they had made the golden calf and worshipped it. God had had it with them. In this chapter, when God speaks about the people with Moses, He calls them “the people you (Moses) brought out of Egypt. He says He will send “My Angel” before them - but in essence He is saying to Moses that God Himself will no longer travel with them. He will no longer bless them with His presence.

What a terrible, terrible place to be – when God Himself says I am not going with you anymore, I will send an Angel, because I made a promise to Abraham to bring his generations into the promised land, but it’s over, I am done with you.

Meanwhile, in the same chapter, we read how God does not make a secret of the fact that He will be with Moses. He meets with Moses in full view of the people. Every time Moses enters the tent of meeting, the cloud descends, stands at the door and God speaks to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

In one of these discussions Moses one day said to the Lord 12“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 grace in My sight.’ 13 Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.”

Moses pleads with God that God would remember that this stubborn, stiff-necked nation is His People. But God is relentless in His answer to Moses:

14 And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” The ‘you’ in this sentence is a singular “you” because God maintains that He will go with Moses, but not with the nation.

But Moses is unrelenting in his intercession for the people when he pleads with God on behalf of an unfaithful, rebellious and stiff-necked people. He makes it clear that if God’s presence does not go with “US” – all of us – the whole nation – then rather do not let us move one step from this place.

15 Then he (Moses) said to Him (God), “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.”

And then God relents and grants Moses his request:

17 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.”

God says to Moses He will grant him his request – because he found grace in His sight – and He knows him by his name.

When I read the news and hear everything going on in our country, I wonder if God is at that same place with us where He was with Israel after the golden calf incident. Is God at a place with us where He is saying, “I will no longer be with you, for you are a stiff-necked, rebellious people, filled with lies and corruption and hatred and murder and violence against each other.” We are much like the congregation of Sardis where God said to them:

“You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Revelation 3).

And yet in the midst of all this we can be encouraged that God relented when Moses interceded.

In Romans 8 Paul encourages us that Jesus Himself is interceding for us:

“It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

Jesus prayed for us in John 17: 20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who [j]will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

With such powerful intercession going on in the throne room for us – are we stubbornly remaining stiff-necked, or are we willing to bow in repentance, worship and adoration?

 Let us pray with David in Psalm 27:8

Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice!
Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.
8 When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

Let's join Worship Central NZ as they seek the Lords's face