Even that didn't quite happen, even if you struggled just to quiet your thoughts, even if there are still things that you couldn't bear to face, again I plead with you, do not give up. You have the rest of tonight, you have tomorrow, you have next week, you have next month, God willing. Do not be satisfied with just words from people’s mouths, glimpses from a distance.
That's what I want to talk about tonight, distance. Now that we've begun dealing with the fact that yes, God is real to me, the next question we need to dare ask is, well, where am I with Him really?
There are so many examples that describe where people are with God in the scriptures, OT and NT. And we've heard so many sermons on each of those instances, but have we seen the completed picture? Are we walking in the full invitation that God has for us today?
We're going through the whole bible pretty much, looking at the different relationships that God had with people, and perhaps somewhere along the way you might recognize that's where your relationship with God has somehow gotten stuck, and I hope He will reveal to you that there's so much more And as we conclude the night in praise and worship, I really pray that we might begin stepping into and operating on a whole new level of the fullness of what God has planted in us
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8)
Of course we start with Adam and Eve. Let’s notice for a moment that God walked in the garden. He wasn't just some vapour that floated about, He had legs, He literally walked beside those 2. That’s originally how it was supposed to be, Adam and Eve get to have a stroll on the beach with God. But as this verse already alludes to, something had gone horribly wrong.
So the end result of that trespass was that God kicks them out of the garden, and if you notice it's not like Adam and Eve could bear being there anyways. The fruit, the trespass had changed them forever and before God they felt nothing but fear and shame. So God removes them from the garden, removes them from his now terrifying presence.
And mankind pretty much goes straight to hell from here (no pun intended). The next chapter Cain kills Abel, not because they were in conflict over anything, but just because Cain was jealous. It got so bad that God reboots the whole thing with Noah and the flood. When that too went south, God creates a nation for himself in Israel, with a set of laws, the ten commandments, that when you think about it seem easy enough. When you come home, can your sheep still be your sheep? When you come home, can your husband/wife still be your husband/wife? Not exactly the world's highest moral ground is it?
In this era of the law you see a really clear description of what God's relationship with people had become. Here Moses had been speaking to God, face to face as with a friend, and he was trying to get the rest of Israel to come with him to the mountain to meet with God, and this is what they say to him:
Deuteronomy 5:25-28 Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? Go near and hear all that the Lord our God will say, and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’
“And the Lord heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken.
So here we have it, enter into God's presence, and unless you're really really special like Moses, you die. This wasn't even an irrational fear by the Israelites, God affirms that it is indeed the case.
In fact, the Jew today still don’t dare say yahweh, which is the correct pronunciation of God in Hebrew. They have to intentionally mess with the vowels and accents and say adonai or elohim as substitutes.
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