God Manifesting Himself To Moses [12]

Friday 16th August 2019 Prayer Devotion

Scripture Reading:- Exodus 34:1-35

Text:- Exodus 34:29

9. The urgency of Moses is well worthy of special notice. How strongly he insists upon God’s giving him the blessing he asks for. On one occasion the Lord put his serious earnestness to the test most fully. Moses could not let the Lord alone. He seemed to seize right hold of his hand and insist that God should spare and forgive the guilty people.
The Egyptians will hear of it and will say, for mischief did he bring them out and to slay them. What will become of thy glory? Blot out my name, but blot not out the name of thine Israel. Thus did Moses hold fast upon the hand of the Lord as it was uplifted to smite the nation. And what was the secret of his power with God? His disinterested love, and his zeal for Jehovah’s honor.
Let this be our example. Surely it is most worthy of all imitation. How noble to be thus swallowed up and filled with zeal for the glory of God.

10. The great faith of Moses constitutes another point worthy of distinct consideration. Where every body else’s faith would fail, that of Moses remains firm. Yet he had his sore trials. Once he cried out. But remark that under this great trial he runs at once to God and hence is safe. So every man should do. If a man only has such faith as to run at once to the Lord, he cannot fail to get strength for all emergencies of trial.

11. His implicit obedience also was wonderful. He knew no law but the will of God. This spirit of universal obedience was one condition of those remarkable manifestations. He could not have had them without his obedient spirit. When first appointed to his work, he felt great reluctance to go. He pled that he was slow of speech. But God overlooked the objection; Moses yielded and seems never afterwards to have shrunk from duty.

12. Moses seems always very careful to do all that God required of him, so that he could always have near access to God. It was very common before the Lord made any manifestations to the people, for him to say, sanctify yourselves, ye are now unfit to meet me. But Moses seems to have been always in a state of readiness to meet God and receive any manifestations.
It is of infinite importance to maintain this state of sanctification–to abstain thoroughly from all iniquity and never fall into such a state of defilement as to feel your need of penitence, pardon, and cleansing before you can meet God.
I once knew a Christian who had been eminently a man of prayer, who had lived for years so that he could pray daily with acceptance before God, and whose conversations and prayers had created quite an interest in the subject of the prayer of faith.
Yet this man sadly declined from this state and the Lord at length recalled him in the following way. I had, said he in his diary, an intimate friend who was impenitent, and who in raising a building was suddenly crushed with a fatal blow.
I rushed to him. The dying man begged me to pray for his soul. That is all, said he, that you can do for me; pray for my soul lest I sink at once into hell.
But I could not pray if it had been to save my own life. I was away from God and I could not get near Him to pray a word. O my agony of soul was perfectly inexpressible. But that was the last hour of my quiet in such a state. I could not live so.

Moses could not get away from God. His circumstances demanded ceaseless watchfulness and permanent sanctification. Only once afterwards was he overcome and then by the sin of impatience. For this sin the Lord took him up on Mt. Nebo to let him view the land of promise and then die without ever going over.
This was a sore affliction; yet for one sin the Lord sent it upon him; yea for one sin only. But this in Moses was a great sin. His light had been so great and the sin itself had been so public; God could not do less than to put His mark of intense displeasure upon it.
So, beloved, must you keep your heart pure and your hands pure, if you would be always ready for communion with God, and if, having enjoyed these seasons of communion you would not fall under the marked displeasure of a jealous and holy God.
But if you are content to live so that you must go and repent and cleanse yourself from present sin in order to be prepared to commune with God, of what use can you be to the world?

Prayer Point:- Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight, in the name of Jesus Christ.

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