Brother Gary Sunday Evening 10/7/12

Brother Gary Sunday Evening 10/7/12

Exo 34:1  And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.

Exo 34:2  And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount.

Exo 34:3  And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.

God spoke to Moses.  I know that God speaks to boys, to girls, to young people, to all individuals in whatever season of life that they may be in.  We certainly thank God that He speaks to souls.

This reading encourages me every time that I read it, “God prepare my heart to hear from God.”  This eternal God has treasures in His scriptures to write on the fleshly tables of our heart.  Right now the eternal God of heaven has plans that are beyond our comprehension of what he wants to give us this next week.

We must prepare our hearts to receive what God wants to give us.  God told Moses to be ready in the morning.  I don’t know what the hour is that God wants to speak to you, but it is of utmost importance that you anticipate God wanting to speak to you and prepare for it. 

He told Moses to come up and present himself in the top of the mountain.  The song, “Wonderful Words of Life” left the thought of the word of God: there we are sanctified and what wonderful words of God those are.  Sanctification cleanses us from the carnal nature that we inherited and sanctification sets us apart.

When we come before God to pray, God wants us set apart so that when we speak to God and He speaks to us we are not in the place to be distracted.

It is important that we acknowledge our need for each other.  We need each other.  But in this account God told Moses to come up by himself.  He didn’t want Moses to bring any one with him.  I believe Moses was a people person.  He felt inadequate, he wanted someone to speak for him and go with him.  He was people oriented.  But there are times when God says, “Son or daughter, this is a time for me and you; I want you to come up all by yourself.” 

God didn’t want anyone to even be able to see Moses.  There are times when you must be alone with God.  There cannot be anyone there coaching you or pouring oil in your wounds.  God wants you to be without seeing anyone or anyone seeing you.

No flocks there:  place yourself in a secret place of prayer where everything is shut out.  It isn’t necessarily a dark closet, it is a place where you feel a call and invitation from God, “prepare my heart to be alone with God.” 

Prepare me to not be absorbed with others, not having my prayers and thoughts with lots of things that have come into me from whatever resources, but prepare me for a time when God and I meet in a secret place.  It is not a time to look over the fields, to look at poverty or prosperity.  It is not a time to make financial decisions or figure them out for yourself or anyone else.  It is a time to have a spiritual atmosphere and God come down and speak to you.

Exo 34:4  And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.

I often visualize Moses with these two tables of stone, in the Gospel Day that is talking of the fleshly tables of our heart.  Take our heart prepared, our heart instructed and our mind instructed, our obedience to God.

Exo 34:5  And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.

God stood there with Moses.  One of the highest callings that you will ever have is to be invited to be in the presence of the Lord.  I think of Moses or any in this audience tonight going up on the mountain and God coming and standing there with Moses. 

I have an identity with this scripture in the natural realm.  I like to take our grandchildren and just look at them.  To think that you and I in the spiritual realm can have God come and have Him let us have His undivided attention.  We are the subject that He wants to visit about.  To think of knowing God like this!

I think of the god’s of this world, this God the eternal God stood there with Moses.

This is what the Lord proclaimed:

Exo 34:6  And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

Exo 34:7  Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

For all of us that have come to the age of accountability and have lived a season in sin, think of the mercy of God!  He had such mercy.  When I think of the life of sin that I led and I think that I could have spent eternity lost, then I understand He had great mercy.

The Lord is so gracious.  We understand His correction.  But even in His correction He is so gracious.  When He comes and there has been a failure, when he comes and there has been in my case anxiousness, when he comes and there has been worry, (worry is a terrible thing; not trusting in God), then He is so gracious.  To not trust God is terrible: to let our minds and emotions and the worry hounds chase us until we are exhausted.  And then God comes and says, “Son why are you worried, I am in control and I am God.”

When I hear the requests of the Saints of God I recognize the graciousness of God.  I see those that are present tonight and I think, “God has been so gracious.”  I think of your families and how your pain could be excruciating.  God over and over again has spared us. 

God had such graciousness that He gave His only begotten son.  For a world that turned on Him and rejected him, that told Him that they wanted Him to get out of their coast.  He so wanted to heal, to save, and to mend those in the world.  They chose to allow the hounds of unbelief to chase them in such a way that He could not do many mighty works.

The longsuffering of God:  If you and I could leaf back through the pages of eternity that would show the requests that this congregation have brought just since the fifties.  Some chose to be lost, but God suffered long, and long, and long.  Oh the longsuffering of God! 

There are backsliders that are under conviction because God has been longsuffering to them and given them an opportunity to build a bridge.

God is abundant in goodness.  There are times that we need to get alone with God and let Him reveal to us how good He is. 

He keeps mercy for thousands. We could know tonight that for all of those souls that God has burdened your heart for He is keeping mercy for them.

Exo 34:8  And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.

God will speak to you this week.  He probably will not tell me what He wants you to hear; He will probably speak to you.  Then He may have me come along and back up what He has already spoken.

Moses worshipped God.

Exo 34:9  And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

It is a wonderful thing that this holy man of God, this humble man of God pleaded for his people and for the needs of his people. 

God spoke:

Exo 34:10  And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.

When it deals with a thought of something being terrible, it means that God will work in a mighty way.  We will not dictate to God how to work.  He will choose how He will work.

Exo 34:11  Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

Exo 34:12  Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

Exo 34:13  But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:

Exo 34:14  For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

It is easy to get distracted by what is going on around us.  Don’t make any agreements with the worshippers of idols.  Destroy their altars: there is no worship acceptable to God except the worship of those that worship God in spirit and in truth. 

Let us keep the true God as the center of our worship.  You and I are here because He made us.  We were created to worship Him, to love and to serve Him.  We were created to depend on Him.  He made us for His very own and then He purchased us with the blood of His own son.

The God’s of America are for the most part the God’s of self love, the God’s of the flesh, the pride of life; don’t worship any of those things.  If you worship those things, if you get too close to the gods of the world, the very things that God has blessed you with the world will take away from you.

Exo 34:15  Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;

Exo 34:16  And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

Know God, worship God and yield not any of your affection to the gods of this world.  They are destroyers every time.