Desperate for His Presence
On the golden calf, Moses' bold prayer, and whether the church still believes it needs the Holy Spirit.
Scripture: Exodus 32-33 · Galatians 6:2 · Psalm 80:14 · Adapted from a sermon first preached May 8, 2022.
Here is a question worth being unable to shake: is the church actually desperate for the presence of God? It is fair to ask whether much of the church today has built a whole way of doing church that, in the end, requires little help, if any, from the Holy Spirit. Growth is pursued through marketing rather than fasting. People are brought in through strategy rather than prayer. Revival gets talked about far more than it gets sought on anyone's knees. One uncomfortable claim has to be said plainly, and it is not an overstatement: the greatest hindrance to the work of God in the world is the attempt of the church to do the work of God apart from the power of the Spirit of God. The story that makes the case is the golden calf, and it turns on two men who wanted two different things.
A tale of two men
In Exodus 32, Moses is up the mountain and the people talk Aaron into building them an idol. Watch Aaron closely. Verse 5 says that when Aaron saw how excited the people were, he built an altar in front of the calf. Notice where he was looking. Not toward the presence of God, but toward the desires of the people. He was a people-pleaser rather than a God-pleaser, and when he saw how happy the crowd was with what he allowed, he gave them more of it. As Lecrae has put it, if you live for people's acceptance, you will die from their rejection. This is the danger, and it is not only Aaron's. A Christian who is not seeking God's presence will almost always end up seeking the approval of people instead, and the two hungers cannot both sit at the center. There are many Aarons in the church, people who mean well and know a great deal about God and even serve, and the difference between them and a Spirit-filled believer is not knowledge or effort. It is desperation for the presence of God.
The offer of blessing without presence
God sends Moses down, the judgment is restrained through his intercession, and then God says something staggering. In Exodus 33 he tells Moses to leave and go up to the land he promised, a land flowing with milk and honey, but, he says, I will not go with you. Consider that offer. God is essentially saying, you can have the blessing without my presence. You can have the land, the promise, the comfortable religious life, apart from me. It is worth asking honestly how a person would answer that this morning, because it describes the Christianity many have quietly settled for: pray a prayer, go to heaven, enjoy the atmosphere, and never actually live under his authority day by day. Moses would not have it. If your Presence does not go with us, he says in verse 15, do not send us up from here. He would rather stay in the wilderness with God than walk into the promised land without him, because milk and honey cannot comfort a soul that was made for the presence of God.
The objection: is excellence not just good stewardship?
An honest objection stands here, because the tools in question are not evil. Marketing, planning, and doing things with excellence are not sins; they can be faithful stewardship, and clumsiness is no more spiritual than competence. The problem is not that the church does things well. The problem is the point at which doing things well quietly replaces depending on God, when the machine runs so smoothly that the Spirit becomes optional and no one notices he has stopped being asked for. J.I. Packer said that revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God's near presence and holiness. If that is what it is, then God will not visit a people who are not asking him to come and expecting him to come. Competence was never the enemy. Self-sufficiency dressed as competence is, and it is exactly what makes a church able to run for years without once needing the presence it was built to host.
Three reasons to be desperate
Why be desperate at all? First, because God cannot be fathomed. In Exodus 33 Moses asks for more even after everything he has seen, the burning bush, the plagues, the mountain: now show me your glory. Once a person has tasted the glory of God, it creates an insatiable hunger for more of him, and prayer is what keeps redirecting the heart off the self and back onto God. Second, because there is a family that cannot be forgotten. Moses is not praying only for himself in chapter 33; he is pleading for the people. Carry each other's burdens, Paul writes, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). To take the weight of another person's heart and carry it to God is among the most loving things a person can do. Third, because there is a mission that cannot be fulfilled. Moses looks at the size of the assignment, leading a stubborn people into the promise, and it drives him to desperation. As long as a church believes it can program its way to what only God can do, it will not pray like it means it. Only when it can finally say, this is too great for us, we must have your Spirit, does it begin to understand what it was always for.
How desperate are we
Jonathan Edwards, in the middle of the Great Awakening, said that when God has something very great to accomplish for his church, it is his will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of his people. That is the tell of a church that believes it needs him. It asks. It returns to the plea of Psalm 80, return to us, God Almighty, look down from heaven and see, and it means it. So it comes back to the question it began with, and it is not abstract. It is the one question that actually matters for any church in any season: how desperate are we for the presence of God? A church can have the land without him, the programs and the crowds and the comfortable religion, and lose the only thing that ever made it different, which was that he was with them. Better to refuse the blessing and keep the presence. Better to stand with Moses and say, if you will not go with us, do not send us up from here.