1027. Moses: A Servant Chosen and Equipped

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina today on The Daily Platform were continuing a study series from seminary chapel called Old Testament servants today speaker is Dr. Mark Minnick, pastor of Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina like to invite you open your Bibles this morning. The 33rd chapter of the book of Exodus we portion here that has a little bit of links to its 11 verses but I would like for us to carefully read it together this morning.

Exodus chapter 33 and this is following the terrible event at the foot of Sinai. When the people so defile themselves and Moses absence verse one then the Lord spoke to Moses, depart from here.

You and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob saying to your descendents I will give it. I will send an angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanite the Amorite the Hittite the parasite. The Hivite and the Jebusites brought to a land flowing with milk and honey for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way when the people heard this sad word.

They went in the morning and none of them put on his ornaments for the Lord said to Moses, say to the sons of Israel. You are an obstinate people, should I grew up in your midst, for one moment I would destroy you, and therefore put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what I shall do with you. So the sons of Israel stripped themselves in ornaments from out horrible onward that Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp.

A good distance from the camp and he called it the tent of meeting and everyone is sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp that came about whenever Moses went out to the tent all the people would arise and stand each at the entrance of his tent and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would to send and stand at the entrance of the tent and the Lord would speak with Moses all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent all the people would arise and worship each of the entrance of his tent, lost the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face. Just as a man speaks to his friend when Moses returned to the camp.

His servant Joshua the son of nun, a young man would not be part from the tent. I like to raise the question for our really earnest consideration this morning. If we have anything like this in our lives at this time you could put it in the words of the tax that it's a little quaint to do it in this way, but do we have a tent of meeting, you have a tent of meeting. I would like for such morning to explore that.

Not in a fully expositional way but using what we have here by way of context as well as example of Moses, what is he referring to is most certainly not the ark that later was constructed and still become a little bit confusing when you read Exodus because the tabernacle later on was also called the tent of meeting. This was something that Moses set up. That was not his residence tent erects this outside the camp and it's clearly some set apart designated small definable space which he evidently frequently retired for no other purpose than to seek the face of God. Now that when you stop for a moment and contemplated is surprising because of there was anyone on the earth at the time that you would assume did not need such a place, or habit.

It would be Moses, of all people on the earth. He is the individual whom God initiates fellowship and verbal revelation with regularly really does put in perspective the whole issue of whether or not it is critical for people to have such a place to which the retreat or whether the busyness of our schedules. The immensity of our responsibilities. The magnitude of what's been entrusted to us. If all of that really would argue for our being people who just learned to do are praying on the run in the midst of course of sermon preparation role of uterine seminary. Right now all that you do and getting ready for your classes and so much of it is right in the biblical text itself.

It does raise that critical question as to the necessity of this kind of thing.

What is it that Moses was thinking that would cause him to feel that he had to resort to a place like this regularly. Alexander white Scotch Presbyterian, more than 100 years ago was dealing with our Lord's words in the sermon on the mount that you go in your closet shut the door and white said that of course you don't do that to try to shut God in it is that God isn't everywhere present.

He is with the point of that is that you do that in order to shut everything else out. Moses is living in the middle of a vast city of people something like 2 million of them just like the noise of that we have the distraction of all of those individuals. What really Moses is doing here is what men and women through the centuries of really found to be very necessary thing. It actually is the very busyness and the complexion of all of that.

That argues for the squeezing out of your life into someplace that has some distance to it from all that you regularly required to do and give attention to any read the biographies and journals of many of these people of the past. They were very very busy in ministry easy for us to argue for the busyness of our ministry is just a possibility of this but those people who are the very busiest in church history saw the tremendous necessity of this. Spurgeon their last home on the hill above London south side of the Thames River had a little place. I suppose we call it a gazebo and was back out on the lawn behind his home and it was referred to by Spurgeon's out of this world you may know something of the works of AW Koser. I do highly recommend those to you and Koser. As you may know, was pastor of the Southside alliance church in Chicago.

He lived the distance from the church and he would get on the train in the morning and ride into the church. Go to a study, which was behind the platform of the church and then he would take off is very carefully plastic trousers with the sharp increase and put on a decrepit parable pants. He called his praying pants, and he would get down to literally prostrate on the floor of the study and take out a little Hager chief and bury his nose in it. She did breathing particles from the carpet and just stretch out his toes would refer to it sometimes is just gazing on God I never read that account. In his biography without having just a little bit of a smile first on Navarrette. I think I probably just chuckled, you know, at that but I think I really understand that you probably due to close it was an extremely busy man for his day.

He was pastoring a large church in immensity. He was editor of what was called the alliance weekly wrote a weekly column for that.

There were a lot of people in the Christian missionary alliance and other denominations as well who subscribed alliance weekly for no other reason than to be able to read posers editorials every week constantly and demands a conference speaker and when Koser began his first column in the alliance weekly.

He entitled it quantity or quality.

And he wrote it will cost something to walk slow in the parade of the ages, while excited man of time rush about confusing motion with progress, but it will pay in the long run in the true Christian is not much interested in anything short of that, I think you'll find those kinds of testimonies right throughout the literature of the past that to this day is classic and still really moves with inspiration upon the hearts of Christian people.

It raises this question again. Do we have such a tent of meeting with a be a small room room closet you read of preachers and church planting yourself surrounded by live in such a maybe just a little single trailer of 500 ft.˛, three children know where to get a loan they're getting in the car driving to a park or parking lot where they can face the side of a brick building just to have a space alone with the Lord.

We have such a tent of meeting in our lives and that brings me to this verse one through five things really remarkable in this instance is that this was a place whose very location, testified to a very grievous situation and you have it recorded here for us and that is that the Lord was saying emphatically that he would no longer accompany these people not folks here here is the real danger. There was a great possibility that the average Israelite would've never even known that. And the reason is because the Lord said, I'll send my angel and I will drive out all your adversaries.

The Lord was telling Moses. This is going to be a completely successful conquest. It's all going to happen. I just cannot be with you anymore. I think there's a very great possibility that the average Israelite with mistaken the outward success is an indication of God's pleasure and presence, but most of us consider this to be a truly terrible prospect that the nation would experience success, but that it's gross misbehavior before God had so offended him that in the very midst of all their material blessings and the advance of their conquest, they would be without his manifest presence and might never realize most how do you measure the presence of the Lord. One of the surest ways is whether there is such a supernatural power being exerted in the midst of God's people that they leave off their sitting apart from that, how would you know that the holy one of Israel is present what do we say of churches in individual lives. When there is the appearance of a great deal going forward, but people are not being empowered to forsake sin and to grow in personal sanctification and when their love of the world is at such a level that they are increasingly comfortable with the things of the culture isn't the real sign of Lord's power that there's a change in their appetites. James is so emphatic about this, he would be a friend of the world is talking about the worst part of any culture in any particular age, she would be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. We cannot ever allow ourselves to become cozy with uncomfortable with the culture.

If we want the presence of God. Moses erecting this tabernacle was really a visible display that something catastrophic is about to happen. Do we have a tent of meeting people are really hungry in their hearts for God and cannot be satisfied with anything else. Do we have such a place.

They were erecting and nourishing in our lives. When Moses did this were told in verse seven, eight, nine, there's a tremendous effect upon the people and I like to take us to that. Thirdly, there's a place deliberately set aside for meeting with the Lord is very location signified great disaster about to happen, but it's a place for Moses practice was influential seventh verse tells us that the tent was also for the people. Last verse of that last sentence of that verse. Everyone sought the Lord would go out to that attempt, verse eight, nine and foremost of Moses on practice was observed by the people, and it created a response and many of them of worshiping.

They were moved toward the Lord in that way, folks, this is this is for us when we go into the ministry. Certainly one of the most critical and eternal effects, and that is that our own example. Over the years and it takes years. Truly it takes years for most people to develop a really rich, satisfying devotional life and I'm not talking about just the morning time or whatever time of day it is that we set aside for reading the Bible and praying and were literally in a location talking about that just being basically the moment of recalibration that we carry with us right through the day takes years to develop that and don't be discouraged at this point in your life if you just find yourself struggling with consistency having difficult really getting something from Scripture when you read that is just the that is the common experience of all of the Lord's even best people but if you'll work at it. If you'll keep going at it if you'll develop the habit if you cry out to the Lord about if you complained of the Lord will tell the Lord what I got up and I'm getting nothing. Help me please leave my soul I got to have something nursing today the Lord will hear you cry, you will find it more and more. There will be a consistency and you get to the place really where having this in your life will be something that you have to drive yourself to do and it will be a matter of feeling guilty because you don't get to the place where you can't live without it you really will feel like Job said this is more than life necessary food and those will be just words to you. It will be like no question about this if I don't have this I can exist today and when we take a ministry and many of you will be doing that in the relatively near future. When we first take a ministry even if it's just a little church plant with a few families, you will discover that there will be some they won't be a problem with the majority, but there will be some who have a deep heart hunger for an enlarged and consistent experience of the Lord himself. They will be the people were not just satisfied with having church that's friendly, welcomes visitors has activity going that is aggressive evangelist likely something down their own heart. That is, foremost of all that all of those other things are basically the means to the end of the and is knowing the hard and when you find those people. One of your greatest ministries in that church, be it large or small, will be the nourishing and the fanning of that flame in the spirits of those God hungry people and that kind of thing is infectious and when you have it doesn't take many when you have just a few people and they began to burn with that inside. It typically is a very quiet thing. It's not a big external explosion in office combined with a little bit of grief or melancholy.

There's a humility to it. There's an awe and reverence, but these people carry with them, there's you see it often, even in the way they handle a Bible the way they hold the respectfulness that they have about anything. The sacred in nature and younger people in your congregation who really know the Lord and have God's hand on their life come to sense that and they hunger for themselves, and God develops it in them. This is a great calling that we have, to be men and women of God and to stir that sacred ambition in the hearts of those to whom we minister that brings me to this last what was Moses's own experience in this place. The people observing him going what is happening there while it's very apparent that one of the things taking place is what we have in the verses that we did read verses 12 and following that is the Moses is interceding for these people. Just like Daniel did and as we did in our Lord did in his high priestly prayer. I'll call your attention just simply to be us in the last verse that we read. That's the 11th verse, and that is that Moses experience was with the Lord spoke to him face to face.

And yet if you continue on in this chapter, you have the account of Moses leaving with the Lord to show him his glory.

And it's a remarkable thing that Moses is experiencing this kind of communion with God a face-to-face fellowship and it is not enough for Moses. Moses and the verses that follow is demonstrating that when you receive the Lord. It makes you hungry for more of the heart, and his plea is that God would do this for him to remarkable thing. Folks, that's Arnie. That's my need. That's our need. We made the academic knowledge we need to know how to explore such Scripture, we need familiarity with all the good sources we need to keep up with good things that are being written today are great need is what we say and sometimes beyond the sacred page I what I see the Lord.

That's what Moses is wanting. It is just a matter of him interceding for the people and Lord, give us your presence. Moses wants something personal that's unparalleled in history and is bold enough to plead for it, and God does give him a recitation of his attributes. God proclaims he can't display visually but he proclaims all those perfections that Moses was so hungry to know that's the great need. Whitfield had a little saying first of St. and them scholar good one to put on a card.

The card in your Bible, your great Testament, remind yourself that often. First of St. and Van scholar is a subtle trap that we all face and that is of thinking that because were listening to lots of preaching to the podcasts of people teaching because were blogging over theological issues because were repairing Sunday school lessons are sermons ourselves. Subtle trap is to think that were really fellow shipping with the Lord and growing in grace when actually that there may be very little of that going on.

And again, we will know you will know whether it's going on because you will start to think God's thoughts after him involuntarily, you will develop a distinctive recoiling from the things of this world, and there will be a homing instinct and you that grow stronger and stronger. Where the only place you feel safe.

Truly sustainable said the only place I ever feel safe is at the mercy seat and all day long that your refuge that's what you're fleeing to. That's what you carry with you.

This is what caused Moses face to shine when he came down from that mount and whatever Stella continued to. This was how it happened while we view this morning with the greatest example of all, I will you've ever notice this this first came to my attention a little pastor's fellowship that we have here in the state way back about probably over 20 years ago, one of the men came through just five or six of us little reading fellowship. We need every other month and he opened up his Bible to the 50th chapter of Isaiah's admin who is this talking about and we look at the passage and it says this the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned that I might know how to speak a word in season a timely word to him who is weary he way. Kenneth morning by morning he waken with my ear to hear as a disciple and his brother said, who was is talking about and I don't know that any of us that we'd all been in the ministry for some time and never really consider the passage is Isaiah chapter 50 verse four. You look at the next verse, the passage is on, says I was not disobedient. I didn't turn away. I gave my back to the slider. It's a messianic passage. Think of what's recorded in the Gospels about the Lord wending its way up the side of the Galilean Hills above the sea administered like a business trip early in the morning before the crowd slung the end that's what he's doing listening to the Lord God as a disciple. That's what I want. That's what you want. That's what we need and that is what will make a real difference in our ministries and future must offer prayer loving heavenly father, thank you so much for the examples you record your learning. Gracious Lord, take what we have considered briefly this morning and we Ashley, your spirit would bring it back to our minds and that you would help us to probe it and meditate Italy to think on our ways, Lord, we ask that we might be able to turn our feet to these things in a way that truly changes our dispositions are hungers all of our affinities. We truly are more and more changed into the image of your blessed son asking his precious name. Amen. You been listening to a sermon preached in seminary chapel at Bob Jones University by Dr. Mark Minnick, pastor of Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Thanks again for listening.

We look forward to the next time as we study God's word together on The Daily Platform