• While there’s no one-to-one correlation between Israel and the United States, there is throughout Scripture an unbroken call to corporate prayer. When Paul says, “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people” (Eph 6:18), he isn’t speaking to you, he’s speaking to the Church, to the people “called by my name.” So do it: throw off every encumbrance and sin that so easily entangles. Don’t let the enemy dissuade you. Join us for Selah tonight, 7p in the sanctuary. We will be praying for the many discouraged folks (among us and everywhere), for the work of the officers, who will be meeting during prayer, and we will begin to pray about the Equality Act and similar legislation that violates Gen 1:27 and what it means to bear the image of God.
• A last thought. Reading this morning in Exodus (33 & 34) I came to the passage that I find compelling for its courage and honesty. God tells Moses he won’t be going with him into the land, “lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” A little time slips by. There’s an explanation of Tabernacle worship. Then Moses gathers his courage to speak the prayer that’s been building inside him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.” So the Lord agrees to go with Moses and Israel, which is both a mystery of human vs. divine will and the most astounding exhortation to prayer you’re ever going to get. Then, probably encouraged by that victory, Moses reveals an even deeper longing: “Now, show me your glory.”
• The exchange between God and Moses is set in the context of concerns about Israel’s faithfulness to God, her fatal attraction to the good life, and her tendency toward pagan worship (which was about pleasing minor deities so they wouldn’t mess with you). Israel was the definition of being prone to wander. But people don’t change much: the third kind of seed in the parable of the sower is choked out by “the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things” (Mk 4:19).
• This creates a stark contrast. In the midst of a people compelled by “the desire for other things,” Moses wants God. But if you pause for a moment, take a breath, and reflect on what that means, you’ll hear an even deeper message: God wants you. As long as our hearts are chasing a certain quality of life, not a certain Person, he does not have us. And be careful of thinking you can pursue the Person in order to have the life. All that we need and will ever need, all that we want and will ever want, is found in the person of God himself. Only in seeking him will you find the good life you’ve been pursing down a million dead-end streets. He wants you. Lewis wrote: “Christ says, ‘give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.’” —