If Your Presence Does Not Go with Us

Mary Lee and I are part of a large family that has three homes in Sawyer, Michigan. If you've ever been to Warren Dunes State Park, it's about a mile south of there, right off the lake, and some m- many of you have actually been there. And about 10 years ago, uh, being an old gardener, I worked as a gardener on a filthy rich estate during seminary, and my mother was a gardener, my dad was a gardener, and we bought a third house, and the people in the house had never trimmed the shrubs around the house, and so the shrubs were all up at the at the gutter, you know, blocking the windows, blocking the walls, and I looked at it, and I did the same thing when I moved into our first house in Bloomington, it's the same thing.

And as I moved into that house in Bloomington, all those shrubs were a metaphor for the church that I had just been called to. It had lost 2 to 300 people in the years before I came. It was in desperate straits. So I took out my Felco number 2. How many of you know what a Felco number 2 is? Oh, you do, yeah. Anybody else? Well, if you, if you want pruning, get Felco number 2. All right. And I've owned them my whole life.

So I took my Felco number 2s out, and I just hacked, hacked those shrubs from, you know, up here to here. And as I did it, I just kept thinking to myself, "Will they live?" And I kept thinking about the pruning that needed to be done at the church, and I kept thinking, "Will it live?"

Well, those shrubs all lived, but when I started doing this at this house, I hacked them from about up here down to about here. That was it. And so for 10 years, they've all been sitting there with just a few little needles at the top of the, you know, and and just ugly as sin. And I hated the looks of that house. It's also ugly in that it has the bricks where instead of cutting off the, what's it called, the, you know, the what's the stuff you put between the brick? Yeah, instead of cutting off the mortars, it allows it to squirt out. It used to be a feature. It's, it's ugly as sin.

And so I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, and I, I've been waiting for years, and I thought, "I'm going to deal with it." And so I went to a landscaper up there and asked him to give me a bid on pulling out 18 bushes. The bid came in at 1,700 dollars. And so I called up Pastor Abasara. And Dave's been up there before, cut down some trees. We also had a huge maple tree that was hanging over the big house, and it needed to be cut down. And he said, "Well, I think I could do it in October." So we, we, we promised him a good price for his work. Well, he came with his family on spring, on fall break, and we worked together for three days, and then they had a couple days at the house to go to the beach and to do things like that.

And I want you to know that it was a joy to me to be with Dave, and I want you to know that I did what I say to Dave every single time I see him now. I said, "Dave, I am angry at you." And so I wanted to bring greetings from him. I know his sons are here. I don't know if they heard me say that to him, but I've said that the last three times I've seen him, and Dave gives me this sort of look, you know, Dave's sort of smile.

And, uh, we need to love those who have been our fathers, and we also need to say no to them as we get older. I've thought long and hard about the fact that you're going to be voting on a man who has sons in this church. And those sons are going to be tempted to return to their childhood with their father instead of him being a pastor to them and them being a congregant.

And so this is a very weighty day. We do not turn our backs on those who have been our fathers, right? But as we get older, we see their failings. And you know something? Have you ever read the Bible? I mean... You, you read the whole thing. Okay, good, good, good. Listen, Calvin has a wonderful section where he goes through all the patriarchs of the Bible and shows all their sins, and he says it to make us see that God is graceful to sinners.

And so you're at a very, very sensitive point where you have said goodbye to your pastor of 16 years. Uh, you have been pastored by a number of people who have come in. You've been pastored by Eric and Timothy. You're now about to embark on a vote as to whether or not you have another pastor who's going to come. And at this critical junction, I want to say to you something that's very, very important.

And that is, do not be presumptuous about the presence of God in your marriage, in your home, with your children, and in this church. Probably the most sobering thing that happened 4 years after I went to that church is that one day, the woman who had had more to do with building that church than anybody other than the 2 previous pastor, Rita Cuffee, she said to me one Sunday, she said, "I have left that place and I will never enter it again."

Now, if you know Rita, Rita didn't say things like that. She said Ichabod is written over it. God can write Ichabod over this church. All it takes is for you to quench the Holy Spirit. The fact that you have forms and liturgies and ceremonies and sacraments and lots of children. It doesn't mean nothing. What you need is the presence of the Lord.

When I turned 40 at that church, they had a celebration, my 40th birthday party, and and a rock band played "Presence of the Lord." You know, Eric Clapton does it, Traffic originally. Anybody here ever heard of Traffic? You've heard of Traffic. Anybody else? You've heard of Tra- yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, buddy. Oh yeah. And, uh, if you get a chance, listen to it. I'm not going to vouch for the words, except the central words. Uh, and and it goes, "I have finally found a place to live in the presence of the Lord."

And so that's what I want to speak to you about. Our text is Exodus 33, verses 1 to 17. Aaron and the Israelites were at the foot of Mount Sinai, and they were waiting for Moses to come down, and they got tired of waiting. And so what did they do? But they built a golden calf. They were going to have their sacrament, their ritual, their ceremony, and they got...

Well, I don't know what they, whether they, I- I'm not exactly sure what went on, but it was immoral. Whatever went on as they danced around that thing was immoral. And God's anger burned against them for the idolatry, and he threatened to consume them, all of them. But Moses pled for mercy, and God didn't consume them, although thousands lost their lives by the swords of the... Come on, but who said it? Yeah, that's right, the Levites, yes, by the swords of the Levites and the plague of God.

Sadly, though, the painful consequences of their idolatry weren't at an end. No sin is small, either in the eyes of God, who is perfectly holy, or in the destruction it brings into our lives. Your elders have watched this over the course of this past year in a number of different situations, and some people are taught by the Lord and fear God, and some people have no fear of God.

The only thing they fear is that other people won't think that they're riding the waves of current opinion. That, oh, they fear that, you know? They they don't want to be left behind with the curl of the wave, you know? They want to show they can surf the internet and the socials, or that they have the latest styles in their dress, you know, or that they drive, it used to be a Tesla, I don't know what it is now, um, maybe an E, uh, Mustang.

So the Israelites have escaped the all-consuming fire of God's wrath and punishment, but now in our text this morning, another unexpected consequence of their wickedness appears. This is the word of the Lord, and it's eternally true. "Then the Lord spoke to Moses, 'Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, "To your seed I will give it."'"

Now you'll notice the word, if you're using NASB there, is "descendants." When you read the NASB, always look at the footnotes because they give you the literal word. It is not helpful for them to remove the word "seed" and to replace it with the "descendants." "Descendants" is antiseptic. It has no power. "Seed"? Oh boy, that'll wake you up. "To your seed I will give it. I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hitt- the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Go up to a fland blowing- to a land flowing with milk and honey, for I will not go up in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked people, and I might destroy you on the way."

If you're reading NASB, it says "obstinate," but the literal word is "stiff neck." Can't we understand the word "stiff neck"? Where does it come from? It comes from an ox that's in a yoke with another ox. Ox doesn't want to take the yoke, so what does he do? You know? What a horse does is fill up its tummy with lots of air when you cinch on the saddle, and then it lets it out, and if you're like me, you go falling off the side of the horse when he wants you, when he wants you off. Stiff-necked is refusing to take the yoke of God, and it is a yoke, but the yoke is easy and the burden is light.

"You are a stiff-necked people, and I might destroy you on the way. When the people heard this evil word," that's the actual word, "evil," okay? And I'm sure they were trying to protect us from thinking that God speaks evil words, but the word is "evil." "When the people heard this evil word, they went into mourning, and none of them put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, 'Say to the sons of Israel, "You are a stiff-necked people. Should I go up in your midst for one moment, I would destroy you. Now, therefore, put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what I shall do with you."'"

It's amazing how many people come into an elders meeting where they're going to receive a rebuke and they're wearing their ornaments. "So the sons of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb onward. Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting, and everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

"And it came about whenever Moses went out to the tent that all the people would arise and stand, each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent. Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship, each at the entrance of his tent. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face by face, face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

"Then Moses said to the Lord, 'See, you say to me, "Bring up this people," but you yourself have not let me know whom you will send with me. Moreover, you have said, "I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight." Now, therefore, I pray you, if I have found favor in your sight, let me know your ways that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.' And he said, 'My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.'

"Then he said to him, 'If your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. For how then can it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not by your going with us, so that we, I and your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?' The Lord said to Moses, 'I will also do this thing of which you have spoken, for you have found favor in my sight, and I have known you by name.'"

This is the word of the Lord. So look, the center thing here is that the Lord has said he's going to leave his people. He's going to leave his people. "Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, for I will not go up in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked people, and I might destroy you on the way."

And what was the reaction of the people? "When the people heard this sad or evil word, they went into mourning, and none of them put on his ornaments." It was a day of terrible sadness and grief in Israel, a day of mourning, a day to take off all your jewelry. Israel knew in a very concrete way how dependent they were on God. The people of Israel were aware it was only because of God's mighty arm they had not lived out their lives in slavery as their fathers had before them down there in Egypt.

These people had watched God break the rod of iron of Pharaoh by the plagues that he had sent. They knew God who had brought them up out of Egypt, that he was their savior and defender. In the nick of time, he had opened a dry path for them through the Red Sea, and then he had dumped all of the water on the Egyptians. They got stuck, and then they died.

God had led them through the desert. He had fed them manna and quail. He had provided them water. He'd even sweetened the water for them. And it was God who had given them a man of God to lead them, to pray for them, and to love them. Isn't that sweet how he says, yeah, yeah, you know, you, you, I'm yours, and then he says, "and your people, and your people."

And remember before he said, "If you're going to consume them, I'm willing to be condemned eternally if you will be merciful to your people." The only other person in Scripture that says that is... And whom does he say it about? About the Jews. Yeah, it's wonderful. So the people are publicly grieving. As awful as the thought of God no longer being with them was to the people, it was even worse to Moses.

You remember that God's command that Moses lead his people was not an opportunity that Moses had jumped at, putting it lightly. "Oh, Lord, finally," you know. "Oh, but I can't speak well." You know? "I don't have the gift of speaking well." And you remember it says that Moses protested so much that God got angry with him. And so Moses says what? Do you remember? I just love the statement.

It wasn't what Isaiah said. What did Isaiah say? Huh? "Here I am, send me." What did Moses say? "Send someone else. Please send someone else." He didn't want the responsibility, and yet now he's in it up to his neck. Here the nation is camped in the middle of the wilderness, and God has told him he'll no longer accompany them. He will no longer travel with them and personally lead them.

You know, uh, we are a presumptuous people. I have for months been putting off publishing, uh, an article I'm writing on the sin of presumption. And I started thinking about it and writing it months ago after reading the account of Nadab and Abihu. You remember who were struck dead? And they were struck dead because they had been ordained by God to lead God's people in worship. But instead, in the leadership of worship, they presumptuously did what they thought would be helpful, and by the way, would also grow their reputation in front of the people.

Always a temptation of us as pastors. And so God knew that they intended well. You know, God knew that that they had good motivations and that they were good men, that they were God's men, that that they were fathers and brothers and sons. They were the sons of Aaron. And God said, "Well, you know, I have to look at the underlying motivation they had and not just whether they were keeping the rigmarole and the rules."

And of course, that's what we all think about religion. "Forget doctrine. I just love to sing about Jesus and how much I love Jesus. I don't need to know anything specific. I just need to have a heart that oozes love for God, and I'll be the one to decide whether my heart..." And you remember that the guys that were, um, that were carrying the Ark up to Jerusalem with David and the 30,000 men, you remember that?

And it just really didn't matter. It was going to be a long trip. It had been out of Jerusalem for 20 years, you know, and it was such a celebratory day, and doesn't God honor celebratory days surrounding the Ark of the Covenant? And so they put it on a cart behind oxen, and then the cart struck something such that the Ark was in danger of falling on the ground.

What could be a more honorable motive than trying to keep the holy Ark of Covenant from touching the ground? I mean, we do that with flags. And so Uzzah reached out, he was dead, just like that.

Same thing with the Corinthians. "Oh, the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Supper. It's such a wonderful celebratory event. We get to have the Lord's Supper. We'll let our children and our infants come. Everybody come because it's so wonderful, the grace of God."

And the Corinthians were doing this, and they were allowing even the all kinds of sinners at the Lord's, they were getting drunk at the Lord's table. Getting drunk. And then they had a guy who was like ha- you know, hanging with his his father's wife. What does the apostle Paul say in 1 Corinthians 11? He says, "This is why some of you are sick, many of you are sick, and some have died." He uses the word "sleep" for death.

Don't be presumptuous with God, and discipline presumption in your children. If your children think that all they have to do is show you that they can smile and give you a kiss to get into your presence and interrupt your conversations, you're lying to them about the nature of the universe and its father and its creator, God. God is not impressed with your cute little 10-year-old. Are you 10? She's not? Yeah, yeah, I thought it was a good guess, wasn't it? I mean, you're very pretty, and you're at the very center of the congregation, but you be humble. You be humble.

Now listen, here the Israelites are, and they were just sure that God would understand their impatience. You remember how Saul was impatient waiting for Samuel? And what does it say there? Well, the Bible tells us that God withdrew his Spirit from Saul.

We had an elder at our church in, in, uh, in, in Bloomington, and we would have prayers of confession, and occasionally we would use parts of Psalm, uh, 51, and that's the psalm where David, what? He asks for forgiveness for his sin. You remember it says in there, "Take not your Holy Spirit from me." And this elder came to me and he said, "We should never pray that prayer."

And I said, "Really, why?" And he said, "Because that was, that was the, that's the Old Testament." And that's the way most Christians in America think today. The God of the Old Testament is scary, the God of the New Testament is warm and cuddly. But you've never read the Gospels, especially John, and he, that was written by the apostle of love. I used to think John was a book that I wouldn't relate to, and then I really read it, and I thought, "Whoa"—you know how you get your hair cut, and then as you're driving home, you put your head out the window so all the air, the hair that was cut will...

Yeah, gosh. And that's how I felt reading the Gospel of John. It's like, "Ho, ho, ho, yikes!" You know? It's scary. And so we come here, and God said he would consume the Israelites, consume them, and Moses pleaded with him that he had to see to his own reputation with his people. He could not do that. So the Levites killed, what was it, I forget, 20,000? Yeah, and God commended the Levites for going into the camp and killing their brothers and their neighbors.

And then he says, "I'm not going to go with you. I'll send you up to the promised land. I- I- I'm not going to go with you." And that's the whole, uh, fault line that we're in with this text this morning, okay? And it's so interesting to see that God not only gave them this warning, but that if you read through the Pentateuch, and then you read into Joshua and Judges, what you will see again and again and again is that God deals with his covenant people, and and that's that's all you are.

You're one of God's covenant people. He has called you to be his own. Every single account of the actions of God's covenant people in the Old Testament are salutary. They're helpful to you. And in fact, it says in Corinthians that these things are written down as warnings for us.

And so when we read this in Deuteronomy 31, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers, and this people will arise and play the harlot with a strange god of the land, into the midst of which they are going, will forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be consumed. And many evils and troubles will come upon them, so that they will say in that day, "Is it not because our God is not among us that these evils have come upon us?" But I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evil which they will do, for they will turn to other gods.'"

You know, as you get old, you repeat yourself. But you know, the apostle Paul says, "I'm not a, I- I- I'm not, I'm going to repeat myself." And the apostle Paul does repeat himself, so maybe that's what old men do. I'm going to repeat myself. I don't know more than just a couple people who grew up with a father who feared God. Christians, you know, professors at seminaries, you know, presidents of missions, on the boards of nonprofits, parachurch ministries, and there's no fear of God.

There's none. There's no fear of God. My fa- My father feared God. And that's why I tell you, one of the most frequent things I heard out of his mouth, and all of us did in our home, was, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Can you imagine the joy of growing up with a father like that? And you say, "Well, no, that's not joyful."

And I'm here to tell you it was joyful because in that home, the thing that the one who was to be feared was feared. And we didn't have to walk around on foot, you know, on our toes trying to worry if our dad would, you know, slap us or be irritated at the dinner table. We knew that home had its eyes on God, and that it was God that we should fear.

And my father, you know, you meet him at the airport at O'Hare, and he would get off the plane, and there's all these suits, you know, suits, you know what suits are, you know? And he would come up to me in the concourse, and he'd put his hands on my shoulders, and I'd put my hands on his shoulders. We'd be this far away, we'd just smile at each other.

And then we'd hug and kiss. He feared God. Can you imagine the freedom that created in our home? That we had a father who feared God and wanted us to fear God. And you say, "Well, we're supposed to love God." And maybe the first conference we ever had in Bloomington, the title of the conference was "In the Godly, Fear and Love Embrace." And it's only those who have had a faithful shepherd who preaches them the law of God and repentance, and not simply faith and forgiveness.

You don't know the joy of forgiveness and grace of God until you have been submitting yourself to the tutor, the schoolmaster of the law. There is no way you can appreciate the grace of God until you have seen how horrible you are. You know? And you say, "Oh, well, that's a, you use, you be negative." You know, I can hear your dad thinking, you know? Nick doesn't have much tolerance for negative.

He's the most positive man I've ever known, you know. But listen, you are unbelievably positive when you see your sin and realize that for that Christ died. But instead, what we do is we just take God's presence for granted, and we just run around trying to reassure ourselves by having the false presence of God. We replace the true presence of God, where fear and love embrace, with a false presence of God.

Now, what is a false presence of God? Well, I'm just almost done with Cotton Mather's Great Works of Christ in America. He was a wonderful pastor. He's buried next to Park Street Church in, in Boston, in the little graveyard there, and he was very involved in the Salem witch trials. He came from a godly line of pastors, and what he does is he goes through the first century of, uh, the pastors and the civic leaders in, uh, Massachusetts and the colonies around it after the Pilgrims.

So it's all about the 1600s. It just gives you biography after biography after biography after biography after biography, like 500 pages of them. And... Do you know the thing that is most clear after reading these two volumes? What's most clear is that the Christians of that time were constantly taught and preached to fear and to love God. To fear and to love God. They they had the law preached to them.

They had repentance preached as much as forgiveness and grace. This is what we see in the book of Acts. This is what we see in the Gospels with John the Baptist and Jesus. What has happened to the church that there simply is no preaching of God's law and repentance? And I tell you, it's because there's no grace in the church today. I remember the most graceful service.

I was friends with Joel Belz, who owned World Magazine. We were good friends. He was in the PCA also, and one Sunday we had a man confess the most horrible sin to the congregation as a part of the service. And he asked the congregation to forgive him. Oh my goodness. Goodness. I stood off to the side, and I watched as slowly people got out of their seats and came up, and they hugged him.

Some of them kissed him, and they said, "I forgive you." Some who themselves had suffered. And it was just the most graceful service I've ever been a part of. And I remember calling Joel Belz after the, after the service, and I said, "I have just seen the greatest outpouring of God's grace I've ever seen in my life." And it came because a man got up and confessed his sin and asked for forgiveness from the individuals he had hurt.

Now, do not be presumptuous about the presence of God in your church. False presence of God is sacramentalism. You go through all the rigmarole, and you have the guy doing it who's really good at the rigmarole. And oh, he puts on a robe. Oh yeah, buddy. You know, and he goes a hoopla and a hopla and a fomp fomp and a plop plop and a kab ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.

Oh, it feels so portentous and so dignified and so, so culturally, uh, sophisticated. And you just have truth, beauty, and goodness, and the sacraments, and then the classical music, none of this rot you listen to the rest of the week, you know? And it's just like, who, aren't we something? And now you ain't nothing. You're just a good idolater. It's what, it's what the Reformers consistently referred to the Catholic Mass as, idolatry.

And it's because the faith of the participant is replaced with the rigmarole. And the Roman Catholics took it so far that they said it literally, when we ring that bell, it literally is transubstantiation, it becomes the body and blood of Christ. And so a priest is given the privilege of sacrificing. That's at the heart of their ordination of their priests. That's the false presence of God. And all through this book, every single Puritan pastor that was kicked out of England, all right, from the act of conformity, every single one of them, their uniform testimony was, "We would not submit to the liturgies and to the ceremonialism of the Anglican Church because that stops the Reformation.

"We want to continue the Reformation." And so we have to go to the wilderness because that's what North America was, it was a wilderness. They had to leave civilization. Lots of them died in the ships on the way over. They went over so that they could have what? Heart religion, the very thing that people mock John Piper for. They went over there so that they would not have ceremonies shutting down their introspection under the holy God.

Oh, but sacramentalists today, they don't, nah, nah, nah, they don't refer to it as introspection. They refer to it as what? Morbid introspection, morbid. And seriously, does anybody know the Puritans? I mean, I'm sure there was probably somebody who was morbid, you know? But oh, they had good times. They had days of thanksgiving and days of what? Repentance. And oh boy, they had lots of children. They must have been having a good time, right?

Come on, people. Come on. Do not punish your next pastor for putting the fear of God in you. Don't ask him to have more formal worship and more liturgy and more ceremonialism. That's wrong. We want our hearts to cry out for God, don't we? That's what we want. We want our children's hearts to cry out for God. Don't make the mistake of thinking that if somebody is your friend or is in your house a lot or that you're really close to them, that they must be close with God.

God's affections and God's grace does not run in the lines of human relationships. That's why Jesus said that you have to hate your father and mother, and of course he's not telling your children to be rude or rebellious. But what he's saying is, "I am so much more important that if you compare your commitment to me to your compet- commitment to your husband or wife, there's no comparison."

Hate your wife, hate your husband. How often women, when they're faced with the decision as to whether or not their husband should submit to the elders of the church in their rebukes and censures, the wife is so scandalized that she's going to lose face in front of the other women of the church that she just seduces her husband into stiff-arming God's elders. And this happens over and over and over and over again.

And so if you have some example in your mind, I say I've got like 50. This is just habitual. Do you want God or do you want religion? Now, you know, everybody makes a cheap point out of "I'm not religious," but you know what I mean. Do you want ceremonies and liturgies? Do you want your pastor to be a chaplain who gets up and knows how to do weddings and funerals and preach a good sermon and then comes out and never says to you in person what he just said in the pulpit?

Is that what you want? There are tons of them. I hope that's not what you want. A lot of us have been working and praying that God will give you a shepherd after his own heart, and that that man will not trade on worship in such a way that he can just reassure you every week, every single week, that Jesus is gentle and lowly. And boy, you can just cuddle up to that.

Now, as it happens, I'm helped a little by knowing the man who is being proposed to you by your elders, knowing him intimately. But you have to look at your own hearts, because they say that in the last days people are going to s- surround themselves with teachers that say what their itching ears want to hear. And the Apostle Paul says in the book of Galatians, "Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?"

And so look at your motives as you go into your congregational meeting, because this vote on a shepherd is a vote on whether you truly desire the presence of God. And you say, "Oh, so you're saying that Stephen Baker will give us the presence of God." And I said, "No, I didn't say that. I said, look at your motives." It may be that you decide that Stephen won't give you the presence of God.

I'm not dying to presume it. I know him very well, you know. Look at your motives. Do you want somebody who's scratch? I tell people that the purpose of a search committee is to come up with where precisely the ears of their congregation need to be scratched. And I'm not saying that about your elders, but again, it's habitual. You go to churches, you sit down, you watch and listen, and you know what's going on there, and it's scratching of itching ears.

The end of the story is that God relents. Moses says, "No, you can't do this." And God relents, and he says he'll go with them. And so, that's what we need to pray for this church. You've been through very hard things, I know that. We've been with you in those hard things. And a lot of those hard things have be- been because of your sin, not other people's sin, your sin. But that's what the church is. And the pastors are supposed to point those sins out and call you to repent of them. And so, the surest way to have the presence of the Lord is to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. And in due time, not when you want it, in due time, he will lift you up.