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Than I am, and if you've got it figured out, I would love to talk to you because I'm still working on it. Um so this message is as much for me as it is, I believe, for us today. Um but it's encouraging because the call to abide with God, to uh experience his presence and invite his presence into our life is super accessible for us, and it's incredibly life-giving, and we're gonna see that it's invites rest. And who needs more rest, right? I definitely do. I've got, yeah, I saw, I see that hand. I've got three kids, uh, eight, seven, and three. Um, and then on top of that, for some insane reason, we decided to add a puppy a few weeks ago. I need rest, right? The Lord's presence can provide that for us, and he is continually inviting us to experience his presence and his rest. So we're gonna look at a little vignette um here in Exodus 24 that can be easy to look, uh, to overlook if we're just reading through our Bible, because it's kind of a transition piece. It gets us from one part of Exodus to another. Um, I call those things drive-by-like drive-by statements, things that we can learn as we're passing by, right? It's like if I begin a story and I say, I was headed to McDonald's, but I had to stop and get gas because my light had been on for a few days, but then this really crazy thing happened. The moral, the point of the story is whatever crazy thing I'm about to tell you about. But you can also learn some things about me through that, namely that I eat trashy food and I'm a procrastinator, right? Some simple things you can learn that aren't the point of the story, but you get there driving by it, right? Um there's a good drive-by statement right in this text. Um, the point of this text, again, is to tell us about how Moses came to be on the mountain with God. Um, this is after the Ten Commandments. You'll see a pattern throughout the book of Exodus, where Moses is up and down and up and down, and the Israelites do crazy things, and Moses has to like beg and intercede on their behalf. Um, this is one of those transition pieces, again, that gets us to another point of Moses being on the mountain. But there's something really interesting that we can learn about God and the way he desires for us to approach him here. So again, we're gonna be in Exodus 24, it'll be on the screen if you have your Bibles. We're gonna read in verse, uh, starting in verse 12. So the Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and stay there, so that I may give you the stone tablets with the law and commandments I have written, for there, that's the Israelites' instruction. So Moses arose with his assistant Joshua and went up to the mountain of God. He told the elders, Wait here for us until we return to you. Aaron and her are here with you. Whoever has a dispute should go to them. When Moses went up the mountain, the cloud covered it. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day he called to Moses from the cloud. The appearance of the Lord's glory to the Israelites was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop. Moses entered the cloud as he went up the mountain, and he remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights. So just to catch up, where we are in the story here, Moses has led the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. They're now in the wilderness. We call that the Exodus. There's a whole book about it. You should read it, highly recommend it. The people have been wandering through this wilderness. That's right, Terry, it's this one. Uh to get to a safe place to be with God. And God has appeared to them as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and led them to Mount Sinai. We've seen water come from the rock. We've seen God provide through manna and through quail to meet their needs. There's lots of complaining. You get the gist. It's really the whole theme of Exodus, right? God delivers, people complain, God provides, people complain. Ten Commandments, right in the middle. God delivers, people complain, God delivers, people complain. That's, and then you're in Leviticus, okay? That's if you want to sum up Exodus in a few sentences, there it is. God has brought the Hebrew people to Mount Sinai. He's given the Ten Commandments, He's given a few other regulations and ordinances for how they are to operate with one another. As they're, you put several hundred thousand people up to a million, depending on uh the numbers that you can put together in a place together, there's gonna be some things happening, right? You put ten people in a room, and there's gonna be some things happening, okay? So God starts giving some instruction, okay, when you encounter this, do this, when you encounter that, do this. Um and in uh and then he calls Moses again up to the mountain. In Deuteronomy 9, verse 9, we see that God supernaturally sustains Moses while he's on the mountain, which is pretty cool. Moses doesn't eat or drink, God provides, God sustains him. And then the Lord asks Moses to go down and tell the people everything he's taught so far. That's the Ten Commandments, that's these that's these other rules and regulations. Hey, if somebody steals your sheep, what should you do? All that kind of stuff. And so he teaches that, and he's told to get the 70 elders from among the Hebrew people and bring them back up part of the way to the mountain so that they can experience the presence of God. Um, and they're gonna experience something pretty special. The presence of God descends. These elders are allowed to see the presence of God and his glory, and it says that his feet are standing on pavement of uh kind of depends on what translation you have, but sapphire, lapis, lazuli, just a really shiny blue, pretty gem is kind of their visualization of that. This doesn't contradict Exodus 33.20 when Moses asked to see God, and God says, You can't see me and live, because for one, God can do whatever he wants, and if he wants to protect these people supernaturally, he can. But the author here of Exodus tells us in verse 11, God did not harm them. So the author is aware that you can't see God and live, and he goes out of his way to remind us, hey, God didn't harm these people. You don't have to look for because sometimes if I'm having conversations with unbelievers, they'll point to things like this and say, Look, these people saw God, but over here it says that you can't see God and live, therefore the Bible's wrong. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. That's unnecessary because the author itself himself said, Hey, look, we understand that to see God is volatile, right? God pure, we're not pure, doesn't work out, right? It's oil and water. But in this sense, or in this instance, God did not harm them. Um, that one's free. All right. Back to the narrative. So Moses ascends the mountain to be with God. And then the narrative is like a little messy. You see Moses ascend three different times in like five verses. It's not uncommon for ancient Hebrew literature, really ancient literature of all kinds. There wasn't as much of an emphasis on making sure everything was technically like linear and precise. It would have been abnormal if they had written that way. In fact, they would write things like that in order to emphasize certain things. So we see Moses ascend three times. That's to emphasize three different things. Moses' ascension, God's descend, being condescension, whatever, there's a word for that. Um and then the relationship of God's glory with us, okay? Um that's okay. If I were to organize this text, uh just rearrange some of the verses to make it a little more straightforward, maybe a little more linear so we can see what's happening. It'd be something like this Moses went up the mountain of God. When Moses went up the mountain, the cloud, which is the glory of the Lord, covered it. Moses entered the cloud as he went up the mountain, and he remained on the mountain for forty days and for forty nights. The appearance of the Lord's glory to the Israelites was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day, he called to Moses from the cloud. What really sticks out to me, especially when you put the narrative together in a linear fashion, you see Moses ascends up into the presence of God, literally the weight of God's glory. We'll get into more of what that word means here in a moment. But he abides in the presence of the Lord for six days before the Lord speaks. So sit with that for a second. God tells Moses to go meet with him on the mountain to receive the law, and when he gets there, nothing. Nothing happened. We don't know that nothing happened. He was in the presence of God. Something good happened, right? We believe that. But he just sits there, nothing but God's presence for six days before God speaks. And I'll be honest, for me, I have a hard time waiting six minutes for God to speak sometimes. It's like, come on, can we get to this? I've got things to do, I've got puppies to take care of, I've got kids to feed, you know, insert thing, right? Uh that's hard. So raise your hand. Are you like me? Are you busy? Yeah, two hands. I see that. Yeah. I get it. Me too. Moses, he understands what it's like to be busy, which brings me to my first point. God's presence is worth making space for. God's presence is worth making space for. I know you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, sue me. It's an antiquated rule. Um, you didn't come here for grammar. I want to bring attention to Moses a little bit. By our standards, he's not really qualified for leadership. Okay? He's hot-headed, he's impulsive, he's not confident in himself at all. If you were to read like the metrics of a good leader, he doesn't fit many of them. Okay. Um Lord appoints him to this special task. He leads the Hebrew people, and really because of his failings, God is magnified. The miracles of God are magnified. God's leadership through Moses is magnified, and that's intentional. We're supposed to see God more clearly. One of the things I love about the story of Moses is when we do see his weakness on full display, because he's a man of action. One of the ways that I am very much like Moses is I it's way too easy for me to jump in and say, You're doing it wrong, just let me do it myself, right? And Moses does that a lot. Um, that's why ultimately he doesn't end up getting to go into the promised land because he kind of tells God, yeah, you're doing it wrong, let me do it myself. And he whacks a rock, water comes, right? And then he changes the whole trajectory of his life. I'm the same way. It's not a good thing. I'm not proud of this, neither is my wife. Um, but I'm totally like, guy, I get it. If we rewind all the way back to chapter 18, a few pages to your left, we see Moses doing everything. He's taken everything on his shoulders, says that day and night he's judging uh between these different disputes that people have. And anytime anybody has a dispute, again, you think about the amount of people in the wilderness. Anytime anybody has a dispute, they come to Moses and he fixes it. His father-in-law comes for a visit, in-laws coming for a visit. Seems to be good for Moses, happy for him. Uh, he takes one day and says, Hang on, you can't keep doing this. This is not good. You're gonna burn yourself out, you're gonna burn your people out. It's not healthy for you, it's not healthy for the people that God has called you to lead. You have to ask for help. You have to invite other people into this. Moses then was in danger of being burned out. The people were in danger of being burnt out because Moses couldn't figure out proper balance. For someone like that, imagine how hard it would be to pause for six days and wait for the Lord to act. He's probably a much better person than I am, right? He's a little further along in the spiritual journey than I am at this moment. Uh, but I can imagine how antsy I would have been. Hey, Cameron, I've got this mission for you. You're gonna come up the mountain, I'm gonna give you these tablets, it's gonna be awesome, and then you're gonna go lead the people into promised land. Sweet, I'm ready to go. So when do we start? Right? He's waiting. Um, it doesn't tell us one way or another what Moses thought, but again, for me, after maybe an hour, I thought, okay, I probably misunderstood something. I maybe I had bad eggs for breakfast, I don't know. Uh, but this is not what I was bargaining for when God said, Meet with me on the mountain, so that I can give you instructions for how to leave your lead your people. But in Psalm 46, 10, the psalmist says, Be still and know that I am God. Most translations render it that way. And the CSB, which you'll see on the screen, says, Stop fighting and know that I am God. You know who wrote Psalm 46? If you were to turn there, you would see at the top of that Psalm it says, the sons of Korah. Korah goes all the way back to the time of Moses. It was this guy that was an antagonist to Moses. He created this rebellion and stirred up all of this strife and wanted to overthrow the status quo and the leadership. But in Numbers 26, it teaches us that his sons were faithful. They didn't follow their dad into his sin and into his rebellion. They remained faithful and their lineage remained faithful, we see in the Bible. All the way down to writing several Psalms. Many of them are attributed to the sons of Korah. So when someone of their lineage, hey, our patriarch was a fighter, was somebody who rebelled against God and rebelled against God's leadership and rebelled against Moses, when somebody with that parentage says, Stop fighting and know that I am God, we should probably listen, right? Why do some translations say be still and others say stop fighting? The immediate context of Psalm 46 describes some acts of war, and the word there for be still can also mean withdraw or retreat. So in times of struggle and times of strife, withdraw from that and be still and know that he is God. How hard is it to back away from a fight, especially when you feel like it's a good fight? I love a good fight, right? I've been confessing some things this morning. Withdraw, be still and know that he is God. So Psalm 46 asks us to do that, to withdraw from the struggle, withdraw from the fight. Friends, our lives are rarely structured to retreat and be still in the presence of God. Our culture does not invite that sort of lifestyle. Every single thing about our life right now is strategically engineered to prevent withdrawal, to prevent retreat, to prevent stillness. When we walk out of these doors, we're gonna be right back in it, right? At least I am. Three kids and a puppy. I don't know why I do that to myself. The kids are great. Puppy, yeah. It's almost like we have an adversary that's seeking to take us as far from the Lord and as far from obedience as possible. Imagine that. I feel like I read that somewhere. We hear all these things like seize the day, carpe the diem, you know, grab life by the horns, all these mantras are really about us being on the offensive, and to some extent that's a good thing. We don't want to be lazy, right? In Ephesians, Paul tells us to make the best use of our time, and we should do that. But if we really take a step back and really take a look at our lives, is are we spending our time the best way when we're not abiding in the presence of God? That's the question that I want to ask. This isn't new. This again goes all the way back to the earliest days of humanity. We've always struggled with it. Moses himself had to be told to slow down. You can't do it all on your own. It's worth making space to be in the presence of God. So that's my encouragement to you: slow down. Ask for help if you need to. God's presence is worth slowing down for. Resting in God's presence is vital to our spiritual health. If we can't do that, we're not going to be able to. In fact, when it comes to God's presence, I would wager to say, this is our second point, God's presence is our purpose. God's presence is our purpose. And I want to be very careful here, because if we don't explain what we mean by that, it can take us to some weird places theologically, and there are some counterarguments. Some might say, hang on, I thought our purpose was evangelism, or I thought our purpose was to make disciples, or some may even think back to a creed or catechism, right? What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. So to glorify God is our purpose. Maybe we look at the book of James and say, no, to do good works is our purpose, to uh do the right thing is our purpose, to be moral is our purpose, and I would say to some extent, yeah, to all of that. But it must be grounded in God's presence, and we're gonna illustrate that here in a moment. But our uh evangelism is fueled by wanting others to experience the presence of God in their lives the way that we've experienced the presence of God in our lives. You'll never find a more effective evangelist than somebody that believes in their core and has seen what God has done for them and wants other people to experience that, right? Our discipleship is fueled by wanting others to experience the transforming power of the presence of God. Our good works are fueled by experiencing God's love for us through experiencing his presence, through reflecting on what he's done for us and what he allows us to have. And then we begin to love others in a like manner. God is glorified most when his people enjoy his presence. I'm not making this up. There's a verse that's gonna say that here in a moment. But I want to be clear that I'm not speaking of some sort of experiential, mushy gushy, feel-good, whatever, okay? And I don't want to knock the genuine emotional impact of experiencing God's presence. I tend to be fairly stoic, and it would be inappropriate for me to say that everybody else needs to adopt my kind of stoicism. It's okay to feel. Um, I tell that to my seven-year-old all the time, it's okay to feel. I just need you to feel a little less, okay? Anyway. But God's presence is not just feeling good or sensing something supernatural. It's not glittery stardust or some sort of intangible, vaguely spiritual whatnot, okay? The presence of God is more than something than you can get when you mix spicy food and ice cream. Okay, you feel good for a little bit, but you feel it in your stomach too, right? That's not what the presence of God can be boiled down to. When I'm speaking about presence, when the Bible is speaking about presence, it's way more about one of two things. It's our heart's desire to abide in God and the very real spiritual discipline of resting and being still in Him. In places like Psalm 27, we see wonderful statements about the most important thing on the psalmist's mind is to dwell with God, to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. In John 15, Jesus relates abiding in his presence to being a branch grafted into the vine of Christ. He goes as far as to say, we can do nothing if we are not abiding in him. And then in verse 8, he says that God is glorified in this, when we are proven to be his disciples. So how do we prove to be his disciples? We remain in his love. We abide with him. Abiding with Christ is the focal point of all of this. So, in other words, the presence of God must be central to our lives. Back to this passage in Exodus 24. In verse 11, one verse before where we started reading today, the elders have seen God, and in his presence they ate and they drank. Side note, pay attention to feasts and meals in the Bible. It's important from the beginning to end. God uses feasts, and we are to operate within feasts. If you are not making a practice of sharing meals with other believers, you're missing a huge point of what it means to follow Jesus in biblical community. I could preach a whole sermon on that, not going here, go into you guys probably have somewhere to be. Okay. Anyway, the elders are allowed to experience and enjoy God's presence. There's a cloud, there's fire, it's they see his feet standing on this gemstone-like surface. And then God calls Moses to be higher into his presence so that he can receive the law and the commandments. When Moses ascends into God's presence, he abides there for six days, and on the seventh, God speaks and begins his work. By the way, if you were to take some time and read the next six chapters, I encourage you to do so. Of these laws and ordinances that the Lord is preparing Moses to receive, they are all about how we should make ourselves ready and prepare ourselves for the presence of God. These laws aren't the like jumbo popcorn shrimp or the tribal end t-shirt laws that we get later on in Leviticus and in Numbers. These are consecration of the priests, consecration of the tabernacle, instructions for the tabernacle, instructions for the ark. It's the one where you get to all the measurements and you're like, I don't know what any of this means, but sounds kind of cool, right? But these are all ways that God himself God is saying, This is how you are to approach me. And we'll get back to that because that's important. But tabernacle is the word that is used there for what they are to build first. Um it was a big tent, it was where they were to meet. Tabernacle itself means dwelling place. It is where God's presence will be. I'm gonna keep driving this until you tell me to stop. God desires for us to enter into his presence, and that's what he's after, more than anything else. And everything else we are called to do and be flows out of our abiding in him. In fact, if we do all that he requires without abiding in him, we're just guilty of empty religion. We're basically moral people looking for something, but we don't have the Spirit. Jesus has some uh special things to say about that, but there's no substance in that way of living. And look at this, in verse 16, it says, The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. The word there for glory is a Hebrew word that means something like a heaviness or the full weight or the full measure of something. So God tells Moses to ascend the mountain, and then the full measure of his presence was poured out on that mountain when Moses rested there for six days. To be honest with you, it's kind of terrifying to have the full measure of the Lord's presence poured out because I know how sinful of a person I can be. I know how many times I get it wrong, I know how many times I miss the goodness of who he is. So it's kind of terrifying. It'd be awesome, but it'd be scary, right? Moses abides in the weight of God's presence within the cloud for six days before the Lord speaks. And when God does speak, it's all of these guidelines for how people are to enter his presence. You're starting to see how important presence is to God. I hope so, but I'm not done. So if not, there's time. Okay? The idea of God tabernacling with his people doesn't stop in the Old Testament. And I can use that word as a verb, I'll explain that later. But turn with me to John 1, several pages to your right. In John chapter 1, verse 14, it says, The word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Can you guess what word is used in this verse for dwelt? It's the exact same word used for tabernacle in the Greek Old Testament, which is the Septuagint. If you have a Bible with a little footnotes, it'll say LXX, okay? That same word for dwelt is tabernacle in Exodus 25 through 30. That's the Greek translation for the Hebrew word. So John is telling us in a very real sense that God became flesh and he tabernacled with his people, and we have seen his glory. So in Christ. We see that God is not done pouring out his presence on us. Christ has made a way for God to tabernacle with his people. Jesus fulfilled what the tabernacle foreshadowed. Do you see that? So Jesus fulfilled what the tabernacle foreshadowed in bringing the presence of God to us. And by the way, if you fast forward all the way to the book of Revelation in Revelation 21, that's right there. If you hit the maps, you've gone too far. We see that God's tabernacle is with humanity and he will tabernacle with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. You probably won't see the word tabernacle in your translation if you turn there. I'm translating that Greek word for tabernacle, but it's the same word as in John 1.14. It's the same word as in the Greek Old Testament. God will tabernacle with humanity, and we are his tabernacle. We are his dwelling place. So from beginning to end, God's presence is the better portion. God's presence is his plan and his purpose for us. God's presence is so important that he tabernacled among his people in the wilderness. He tabernacled with people when he came in the flesh as Jesus Christ, and he will tabernacle with his people for all eternity in glory. It's a good thing, amen. Brings us to point three. Rest invites God's presence. So in our text this morning, we've looked at how Moses enters the presence of God and is there in the cloud, experiencing the full weight of God's glory for six days, and on the seventh day God speaks. This is likely an intentional parallel and an inversion of a familiar commandment. For six days you shall work, and on the seventh day you shall rest. This is a command that God gave to Moses all the way back in Exodus 20. It's almost as if God is modeling, yes, I want you to work for six days and to rest for one, but never forget that the greater portion is my presence. So he flips what we might normally be expected to see. It makes me think a little bit about Mary and Martha. You remember that in Luke 10? Martha, she's slaving away, doing all these things, being a good host, and all of that. Mary is just sitting at the feet of Jesus, and Martha has the audacity to confront Christ. Can you imagine going up to Jesus and saying, hey, this person's spending too much time with you? I'm doing all the work. Make them stop, right? Or make them start, whichever. The audacity. Anyway, what does Jesus tell Mary? Do you remember? He says, Mary has chosen the better portion. So we can do all of this work, we can do all these things. And don't get me wrong, work is good. We're created to work, we're created for work. I highly recommend the book Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller, if that's interesting to you. But never forget, his presence is the better portion. Always. It's super cheesy, but it's been said that we are human beings, not human doings, right? We should be with God, not just do things for him. We should do things, but as a result of being. Does that make sense? Jesus himself said that my yoke is easy and my burden is light in Matthew 11. That's because his yoke is his presence. His burden is his presence. The irony is it's so hard to slow down and actually experience it to experience that rest. But when we do the hard work, when we do the good work, to subtract from our lives, our life becomes so much simpler, so much more peaceful, so much sweeter. So this passage here in Exodus 24 sets the table for a lot of teaching from God about how we ought to approach God. We see how wide the gap is between us and God and the principles for which we are to live set apart as the children of God. But here's the thing: Jesus fulfilled so many of these ordinances about how to meet with him, which is awesome, which is why you don't see us carrying tents around in the wilderness anymore. You don't see us making these golden lampstands or things like that anymore, because Christ fulfilled all of that. We don't have to follow those things anymore because Jesus has already come as a better high priest and a better mediator for us. We can truly enjoy the presence of God because Jesus has made a better way. This is like the whole point of the book of Hebrews, by the way. Jesus is better. Next time you're reading Hebrews, just think about that. Jesus is better. If you're like, I don't know why we're talking about angels or whatever, Jesus is better. Okay? We get off on a thing. But Hebrews directly connects the time that the Israelites were spending in the wilderness here in the book of Exodus with the rest that God provides. Directly connects how God desires for us to enter his rest, that is his presence, to the better and more complete rest and presence made possible through Christ. In Hebrews chapter 4, uh, really all of Hebrews 4, or you can go all the way back to Hebrews 3 if you want to. Um that's your homework. Go read Hebrews 3 and 4. But in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 9 and 10, we see the author of Hebrews look back to this time in the wilderness, and it says, So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his own works, as God did from his. So the author of Hebrews wants to remind us that we rest not just to heal our bodies, although that's important, that's good. God knows our limits better than we do. It's probably worth listening to our Creator, right? But there's so much more to it than that. Entering God's rest is recognizing that we don't work to bring ourselves to salvation anymore. We don't work to earn God's favor anymore. We simply approach God and allow his presence to come to us. The exciting thing is he's more than willing and more than ready to pour his presence out on us. So entering God's rest is recognizing we can't save the world, we can't be everyone's hero, we can't even save ourselves. We desperately need to learn how to slow down, how to pause, how to simply exist in the presence of God. Because it's through the work of God and God alone that we are saved and that we are sanctified. Our works amount to a whole lot of nothing. But rest is relying on God's work to do what we can never do anyway. And it's worth noting that this goes both ways. Rest invites God's presence, and God's presence invites rest. To quickly illustrate this, you need to know that the very next beat in this narrative, so you have Moses encountering God on the mountain. God gives all these rules about the tabernacle and the ark and all of that. And then do you remember what happens when Moses comes back down the mountain? He walks into a mess. They've forgotten God. They've said, Moses probably got lost or something, I don't know, but let's just throw all this gold in the fire and see what happens. And supposedly this calf comes out, right? So they create this idol, this literal golden idol to worship in the place of God. And Moses comes down and sees they've gotten it all backwards. And God is not pleased. Moses is not pleased. We'll talk about that here in a minute. Um, but ultimately God says, you guys can go on to the promised land. I'll even send an angel to help you, but I'm not going with you, because if I go with you, I'll probably kill you. And that's strong language. Sometimes in our culture, we don't like that version of God, right? Like, I like the one that like turns water into wine or whatever, right? Um, but that's what God says. He said, If I go with you, it's not going to end well for you, so I can't. And Moses intervenes, he mediates, he steps in and says, If we if you're not going with us, it's not worth going at all. And then God says this in Exodus 33, 14, and he said, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. When we go in the presence of God, we find rest. It doesn't say, My presence will go with you, and you'll do all these awesome things, which they do, to be clear. Um, but I will give you rest. There's rest in the presence of God. And we so often miss it. Imagine how exhausting the wilderness must have been. You probably don't have to imagine too hard because life is exhausting enough, right? But then throw in carrying all of these tents around every day and going to get quail and manna and whatever. Um, it's exhausting. And then God says, Hey, when you follow me, you will find rest. I will lead you in to rest. The reality is we've cultivated a culture of spiritual wilderness all around us every single day. We are all spiritual, spiritually wandering through life, unsettled, unrested, and unwell. We have to learn to pause and rest in his presence. The Bible uses the word abide to convey that idea. And I want to point out one last thing from this portion of scripture. So in chapter 24, the Lord allows some Israelite leaders to see him in his glory, and then he prepares Moses to learn how to invite God's presence by first allowing him to rest in his presence for six days. After a whole lot of instruction about tabernacles and priestly garments and incense and altars, God diverts and gives probably the most stark commandment regarding the Sabbath that you'll find in the Bible, right before he inscribes the tablets and sends Moses to deal with the golden calf. It's worth reading. It's in Exodus 31. You can flip a couple pages to your right, uh, starting in verse twelve. The Lord said to Moses, Tell the Israelites, you must observe my Sabbath, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, so that you will know that I am the Lord who consecrates you. Observe the Sabbath, for it is holy for to you. Whoever profanes it must be put to death. If anyone does work on it, that person must be cut off for from his people. Work may be done for six days, but on the seventh day there must be a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord. Anyone who does work on the Sabbath day must be put to death. The Israelites must observe the Sabbath, celebrating it throughout their generations as a permanent covenant. It's a sign forever between me and the Israelites, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. So do you think God takes rest seriously? You could be forgiven for looking at how the Pharisees responded to Jesus working on the Sabbath, right? Because they had this text in their mind. Hang on, you're not allowed to do that, right? God takes rest seriously, but he takes abiding in the presence as a part of that. That's that's what fuels it, that's what gives it life and makes it possible. Once again, I'll illustrate how this narrative flows. The narrative begins with the presence of God descending, followed by an inversion of the Sabbath command from Exodus 20, verses 8 through 10. Next, we see a lot of technical instruction for how to prepare for God's presence, and then we see a critical and severe commandment concerning the Sabbath for the express purpose that we will know that He is God. Remember Psalm 46, 10, be still and know that I am God. Our Sabbath is designed for that. So this narrative really kind of parallels itself to all demonstrate and show us how important God's presence is when we take Exodus 24 all the way through Exodus 31 in mind. Our ability to truly experience the presence of God must be surrounded by the discipline of rest and abiding in Him. And I truly believe you can't genuinely make a habit of abiding in God's rest until you have enjoyed God's presence. And I truly believe you can't truly enjoy God's presence until you have learned to enjoy his rest. These things have to work together. Or it doesn't work at all. So God's presence is worth making space for because his presence is our purpose, and our rest invites God's presence, and God's presence invites rest. So as we conclude here, I want to make it real for a moment for us. Again, we've seen Moses is a guy who likes to take charge. He likes to just, whatever, I'll just do it myself. I'll do everything. And he's uh compelled by God, or really forced by God, to rest for six days in the presence of God before God speaks on the seventh, right? But then he goes down the mountain and everything has fallen apart without him. I can tell you, in my flesh, I would be like, this is why I don't do that. When I leave, nothing works. I see this happen in my own life all the time. I see it happen with friends who try to take a step back, try to do the healthy thing and the right thing, and pause and rest, refresh, and then come back and everything's falling apart. They're like, Told you, never doing that again, right? Moses would be completely justified in our eyes, in our flesh, in our mindset, in doing that. And I get it. And Moses has his anger moment. Don't get me wrong. There's a whole, you can go read about that in Exodus 35 and beyond, but Exodus 32, whatever. He punishes the people, they deserve it. God punishes the people, they deserve it. We see God say, I'm not going to go with you. Moses does what? He goes before God again, ascends into God's presence on their behalf, and says, Lord, forgive them. Or if you can't forgive them, take whatever they whatever punishment they deserve and give it to me. Does that sound familiar? Right? We see Moses as an archetype of Christ in that moment. So rather than go before the Lord and say, see, this, you you kept me too long. Those six days that we were doing nothing caused them to do all this craziness. No, he doesn't do that at all. He goes back before the Lord and says, I got nothing left, so I'm back. Be with us, please. We can't do it without you. And then the Lord says, I'm gonna pour out my presence and you will experience my rest. Right? That's good. Do you see that? So we see incredible character growth in Moses, which is fascinating to watch. He's one of the best character arcs, I think, we have in all of scripture, maybe besides Paul, from where he comes from to who God transformed him, transforms him into being. My encouragement for you is when we are maybe when we know that we need to pull away, when we know that we need to rest, when we know that we need to pause and seek the presence of the Lord, and we're like, we can't. I got too much going on at work, I have too much going on with my family, I have too much going on at home, I have all these things, and I get it. Guess what? All that's still gonna be there, whether you rest or not. It never ends. You change your water heater, and then your dryer goes out. You fix your dryer, your dishwasher goes out. Like, it's all still gonna be there. Okay? Rest. When you look at life and you feel like there's no way I can stop and I can pull away, do it anyway. Because one of the greatest blessings that you'll ever experience in life is learning to trust God, learning to unplug, enjoy what Sabbath really is, which is trusting Him to make it alright. And by the way, he's pretty good at making things alright. Do we believe that? Yeah. So when you feel like you don't have the time, the time or the margin to make space, um, trust God anyway. I encourage you to ponder this. I want you to consider just a few things, maybe a few questions to ask. For me, it's not until I start asking questions and forcing myself to answer them, and it's like, oh, I don't want to deal with that, right? So there's a few questions that'll be up on the screen that I think are worth considering for you. Number one, what is getting in the way of experiencing genuine rest? What's getting in the way? What is stopping you from being able to experience genuine rest? And the second one is tough. What do I enjoy more than God's presence? Because ultimately that's what it is for a lot of us. I know it is for me. I there's a lot of things that get right down to it. I enjoy, I just I just plain enjoy more than God's presence. And it's worth uh worth considering and being convicted about that and repenting and confessing that to God. And then think about this. If if someone were on the outside of your life looking in at just a sliver, put your slice of your life on a micro microscope slide, look in, what would they assume your purpose is at any given moment? Because for me, they would assume my purpose is a whole lot of different things. That has nothing to do with this. Right? So consider those things. If you're not sure where to start, there's some simple ways that you can add some of these breaks maybe to what you're doing. Um we don't want to only add things, our lives are already overtaxed. We can't keep adding and adding and adding. The reality is following Jesus is more about subtraction than addition, a lot of times. So, what do you need to take away? Maybe you need to charge your phone in another room at night so that's not the last thing you see every night and the first thing you see in the morning. You can just take some time and stare at the ceiling. Count the little popcorn speckles that are if you've gotten rid of your popcorn ceilings, God bless you, I still have mine. You can try to make shapes or something, but think about the goodness of God for just five minutes in the morning before you get up, five minutes before you go to bed. If you don't know where to start, just do that. Um, maybe you sit in your car for a few minutes before or after work and stare at the wall in front of you or the car parked in front of you, and just, man, what are some blessings that God's given you today? Um, maybe you should just let the dishes collect in your sink for a day and be with God. I've given you permission to neglect your chores. If that gives you heartburn, go out and buy some paper plates, and there's one day of the week that you're only going to use paper plates. Okay? That's what we do as a family on Sundays. We do paper plates, and nobody has to do chores. Whatever you can make sense, maybe it's driving in the car with the radio off. For some of you, that might stress you out. For me, it's like, oh, it's quiet. There's no crazy sounds, there's no kids, there's no dogs. Anyway. Um, there are small steps that you can take to invite the Lord's presence into your life without just adding things to your already overburdened shoulders. Okay? So as we prepare for the Lord's Supper here in a moment, I really want you to sit with a couple questions. These two questions, in addition to the other three, hopefully you wrote those down. Those are your homework. These are the two that I want you to consider right now. What is God asking me to do, and what am I going to do about it? By the way, a lot of Christian theologians look back to this moment we've talked about in Exodus 24, where we see the elders of Israel eating and drinking and enjoying a meal in the presence of God as a kind of prototype for the Lord's Supper. Obviously, the Lord's Supper is built on the foundation of the Passover that happened in Exodus 12, but they look to this to say this may have been one of the first applications of that after the fact. They were in the presence of God and they enjoyed a meal together. I wouldn't call this a meal. It's where we are in our culture. But because of what Jesus has done, what the Holy Spirit has done in us, his presence can be here with us this morning. So as we ponder these questions, what is God asking me to do and what am I going to do about it? As you prepare your heart to take the Lord's Supper here in a moment, seek the presence of God. Ask, invite him in. Consider what it's like to enjoy a meal at the literal feet of God in the cloud of his presence and the full weight of his glory. I'm going to pray, and then I want you to consider those things, and then we'll uh we'll close out the service from there. God, I'm so thankful that you are near. God, I'm thankful that you desire to be present with us. Um, God, I'm thankful that you invite us uh to your table. God, and as we wrestle with, or at least where I where I wrestle with not spending enough time with you, God, with not abiding in your presence, um, God, being driven uh by efficiency, um, by busyness, God, I pray that you would um teach us to still our hearts, God. Teach us to, as the psalmist says, to be still, to stop fighting, to stop striving, to withdraw, retreat, and know that you are God. God, if we miss nothing else from this morning, from this moment, God is, I pray that we would see you more clearly. God, that we would see your presence more clearly. If that's all that we get, God, we know that that's enough. And we know that that is the better portion. God, so this morning, inhabit us, inhabit this place. Um God, and help us to abide within you. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.