“And the Lord said, “Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by.” (Exodus 33:21, 22). This was God’s response to Moses when he asked to see His glory. Like Moses, you and I need to raise our expectations that God will display all His goodness in the midst of us. 

God is looking for a people who are hungry for His presence. Does that describe you? God said, “I will prepare a place for you where you can stand as I show My glory.” That place God prepared for us is the only place where any human being can stand who truly wants to know Him. That place is the Rock of Jesus. No man can come to the Father except by Him.

Stand on the Rock

The devil loves to play with your mind and tell you that you’re too dirty to come into God’s presence. You must recognize it’s not your goodness, but Jesus’. We can’t come to Him on our own merits. We can’t enter His presence based on good works or church membership. The only way is through the cleansing, atoning blood of the Lamb of God. We can never be worthy enough to enter God’s presence (or for God to enter ours). God the Father made Jesus to be sin for us because He longs to be intimate with us. He’s not satisfied with a distant relationship and neither should we be.

The rock God showed Moses to stand on is a gift that He offers just as freely to you and me, so that we too can experience His glory. 

God the Father has never been able to reveal His raw glory on earth because it destroys flesh. When Jesus came, He was cloaked in the veil of human flesh. That’s the only reason men could look upon His face and live. 

God the Father has shape and form like you and me. He is not cosmic dust floating around in outer space. In this encounter with Moses in Exodus 33 and with the apostle John in Revelation chapters 4 and 5, we see He has a face, hands and back parts.

Stand in right-standing

Because you and I have been elevated to a position of right-standing with God through the blood of Jesus, we have the privilege to stand at His side, hide in the cleft of the Rock, and live. That’s also why we can expect His glory to show up here.

What’s so special about the glory of God? Well, when we enter it, everything will change. Suddenly, strife and contention will be replaced by the desire to lay down our lives for one another. Forgiveness will well up in you and you’ll go make things right with those whom you have ought against. You’ll notice a longing to come into unity and agreement with what God is doing in this body. There will be such an impartation of God’s presence, everyone will know it. You won’t have to announce to anyone that you have been in His presence. It will be obvious. 

So please join me in asking Father God as Moses did… “Please show me Your glory.” 

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We see in the very beginning that our God wanted specifically to have fellowship with man, His highest order of creation. You could go so far as to say that God created man so that He could have fellowship with him.

The Book of Genesis is the Book of Beginnings, the seed plot of the whole Bible. In other words if something is presented as a principle in Genesis, it’s a principle that God intends to keep throughout the whole book. It’s called the Law of First Mention.

So from the beginning of time until this day, our main purpose as God’s people is to have a close, intimate, personal, on-going relationship with God. I’m talking about a relationship with the tangible presence of God, not just the “idea” of God.

Yet, for the most part, that has not been the primary focus of the Church today. We have been so committed to serving the God of our salvation we forgot about walking in the cool of the day with Him. That’s equivalent to the Old Testament priests who spent all of their time in the Holy Place right next to the Holy of Holies (the raw presence of God). They lost focus of their whole purpose of being priests, which was to dwell in the presence of God.

If we satisfy ourselves with just serving God instead of dwelling with Him, we will miss the whole purpose of our existence.

It’s not that serving God is wrong. It’s just not the end result. It is just one of the steps along the way in our journey as Christians. Ultimately our direction and purpose is to become a dwelling place for God’s tangible presence. It’s in His presence that everything we hope for, everything we need, and  everything we desire is fully met.

It’s in the Holy of Holies or the tangible presence of God that He equips us to overcome Satan and all his evil forces of darkness and bring the kingdom of God to bear in our lives and the places that He appoints us to.

Let’s look at the tabernacle once again, since we are the New Testament tabernacle of God today. When the priests went into the Old Testament tabernacle, they first entered the outer courts. It was there that the animals were sacrificed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Today, this is the place where we deny our flesh and praise God and give Him thanks. It’s a beginning and not an end. It is a starting point—not a destination.

Yet so many Christians never get beyond developing a life of praise. It’s good but not the finish line. The whole purpose of the tabernacle was to continue on past the outer courts, then into the holy place, and ultimately into the Holy of Holies—the tangible presence of God. God is longing for us to dwell in His presence and to build Him a place that he would be comfortable to dwell in, not just visit. If you build it, He will come.

Who today will go back to the first principles that God laid out in the Book of Genesis and make His presence the focus of his or her life? Who will build a resting place for the Lord God Almighty? Let our answer today be a resounding “I  will, Lord!”…