Anything that I allow to get in the way between my soul and the Savior is far too expensive.
Was the Lord having second thoughts about traveling with Israel to Canaan? You lead them, He tells Moses, “and I will send My Angel before you” (Ex 33:2). No question He’ll keep His promise to drive out the godless nations in Canaan. But, He adds, “I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way” (v 3). What a sad predicament! Moses reluctantly pitched his tent “far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting” (v 7). Now, instead of enjoying His nearness, anyone “who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting.” Thus they would realize that their sinful ways had effectively evicted God from their presence. I know this too: when I allow sin in, how can the Lord feel at home in my heart? What a difference is Moses’ relationship. “The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (v 11). It was because of this intimacy that Moses again pled with the Lord to come back into the midst of His people. Oh, the wonderful response, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (v 14). But this is “you” singular, meaning Moses. How does the man of God respond? “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here” (v 15). And for Moses’ sake, the Lord agreed! Emboldened by this, Moses asked, “Please, show me Your glory” (v 18). Such a revelation was too much, but the Lord hid him in a cleft in the rock and let him see His afterglow, an experience so transforming that when Moses returned to the people his face shone with the glory, though it slowly faded away. “But we all,…beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18). Don’t let anything get in between!