There is a great conversation between God and Moses after the nation of Israel had been wandering in the desert for years. It was critical that the nation would keep following the leadership of Moses and God had two ways of showing the people that He was with Moses.
The first way God demonstrated His presence was to have Moses put up a tent where the two of them would meet. It was set up far away from the camp and was called “the tent of meeting.” And when Moses would go into the tent a pillar of cloud would stand at the door of the tent to signal to the people a meeting was in going on and all the people would rise and stand by their own tent doors and worshipped.
The second way God demonstrated that He was with Israel was after Moses came out of the tent his face was shining with the glory from being in the presence of the Lord God. However, the longer Moses was out of the tent that glows diminished, and the people would be thinking Moses needed some time with God to brighten up his glow. Kind of like taking your dirty car through the car wash…but I digress…
One day God said something to Moses that both shocked him and scared him. He said that it was time for them to enter this promised land where rumor had it there was milk and honey flowing in abundance. However, what He said next shocked Moses to the bone. God said;
“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
Not a great message to people who had just spent years eating the daily food God provided and drinking water from a rock. Although I think they learned they could use the water to brew some beer they called Rolling Rock. Then He said that if He were to stay with them and go up with them to the promised land He would consume them.
Wow…talk about putting the fear of God into them. But Moses saw a problem with the plan. All along the way, they were grumbling people wanting to go back to slavery in Egypt. They would dismiss Moses as their leader and take matters into their own hands. So, Moses feared for his life and the survival of God’s people.
So, with all this on his mind, Moses goes to meet with God in the tent and he expresses some of his concerns in a meeting with God “face to face”. The presence of God is with His people gave Moses assurance that these stiff-necked people would follow his leadership. But without God’s presence, Moses’s days in office were numbered…because it was the presence of God that kept this nation of a million grumblers together for these difficult years.
So, Moses, emboldened by his fear asks God a question. He asks God if he would be allowed to see God’s face. Not just have conversations with Him but actually “see His face.” To which God replied…
“…you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
To see the face of God was possible but it would be one and done because God is so powerful and holy that to literally see His face would be so powerful an experience that it would kill him on the spot.
Now that sounds awful to me, but it also causes me to be AWE-Filled. The God, who is our Father, is so powerful and holy that just seeing Him would end our lives. There is such an incredible difference between His Holiness and Our Sinfulness we would just be incinerated if we were to see Him.
What does that idea do to you? It certainly filled the Israelites with fear. They lived in great fear of the Lord and were thankful that God created among them a man who could be near Him without disintegrating. Their father was Levi and they were the Levites and they would be the only ones allowed close enough to God to serve Him at the Temple and offer the sacrifices.
So…how do you envision God? What do you imagine God the Father is like? Moses was not allowed to see God’s face, but God did allow him to see something. Moses got down in the cleft of a rock while God covered him with His hand…and the glory and goodness of God passed by him and when Moses could look again he was able to see God’s back.
Does that idea about how Awesome and Holy God is speaking to you at all? Moses was allowed to see God’s back…but not His face. And I think there is a message for us all in that setting. It is improper for us to stand face to face with God the Father. Yes…He loves us with an everlasting and unconditional love but the position of face-to-face is more confrontational than it is submissive.
To stand face to face seems to me to be a position of resistance where we are trying to convince God we have a better plan. However, to be seeing His back means that we are following Him. It is a position of surrender and accepting His will for our life is the most important thing there is about our life. And whether He leads us further into the desert or into a land flowing with milk and honey we can know that He knows the way and if we follow Him and His will for our life His goodness will be poured all over us.
At this point in my life, I no longer think what God my Father looks like. In fact, Jesus said that the Father is Spirit. He does not have a body. However, He has manifested Himself to us through becoming the person known as Jesus the Christ. He snuck into humanity…as a human being…He became one of us. He knows exactly what it feels like to be human…because He became a human being himself and lived among us. Therefore…
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin.
Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we
may receive mercy and find grace for help at the time of our need.”
This is another reason why we should be in AWE of Him…we can be AWE-Filled because He not only knows what it is like to be human…but He calls us to come to Him to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need it.
So how much Tent Time have you had recently…He waits for you to spend time with Him and live in AWE of Him today!