“The only way to recoup our spiritual losses is to go back to the cause of them and make such corrections as the truth warrants. The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them” (A. W. Tozer).
“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.” 14 And He said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 Then he said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. 16 “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?” 17 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.” 18 Then Moses said, “I pray You, show me Your glory!” (Exodus 33:13-18).
Exodus 33 shows us how to seek God. Moses desired the glory of God above all things. He also saw no point in going on if God did not go with them. Such the Church should learn. There is no point in doing church if God is not there. Each church is to be the gathered people of God who are each in one sense the temple of the Spirit and as a corporate body are being made into a dwelling place of God. What is the local church if God is not there? The very life, power, and reason of the church is gone. The majesty of God cannot be replaced by anything and the only reason the church should meet is to seek the glory of God to be manifested in and among them. The Church is a useless enterprise apart from the glory and majesty of God.
The Church must learn from Moses to seek God before it tries to go anywhere or do anything. It must seek to learn the ways of God in order that it may know God better. It must learn to cry from the heart like Moses for God to show it His glory. It must begin to seek God in such a way that it will begin to desire His presence before it will do anything. The Church in our day must learn that the rediscovery of the majesty of God is utterly vital. It must seek that if it is to do anything in the world of any value at all. What does the Church think it is doing when it does so much and yet has no sense of the majesty and presence of God?
What are the distinguishing signs of the Church? What is it that separates the Church from a social club of perhaps a philanthropic group? As Moses noted in verse 16, it is God’s being with His people that distinguishes them from all other peoples on the face of the earth. The Church must wake up to this truth! The Church is nothing but a social club or a group of people carrying out benevolent causes without the presence of the majesty of God. We have gotten so used to doing church without God that it appears normal. This is one reason the statistics show that the people in the Church live pretty much the same as those outside of it. Why is that? Because Scripture teaches that only God being with a people in His glory distinguishes one group of people from another. Isn’t that also true in the New Testament? Jesus Christ came and was the glory of God in human flesh. People who have Christ have His Spirit and they are different people who love their enemies and are known by their love for one another.
Unless the Church begins to seek to rediscover the majesty of God and to have His presence with it, the Church will continue its descent into the world. But since the Church is to be the salt and light of the world, the world will also slide into the ways of the pit. When will the Church wake up and see that all the user friendly ways of the world are hostility toward God? When will the Church wake up and understand that unless God is with it all of its efforts are useless in real terms? How our hearts should burn within us as we get a glimpse of what the Church has left behind in order to make gains in numbers and prestige.
Our hearts should ache within us when we see that the activities going on within the Church are really an attempt to fill the void of the absence of the majesty of God. The Church is crumbling from within because the pillars of the majesty of God are not there to sustain the truth of what the Church is. Eternal life is to know God (John 17:3) and yet the Church has virtually forgotten that fact. Instead, the Church thinks that God’s time is consumed with helping people. So the Church now thinks that God is simply all about people and their so-called needs. In focusing on people instead of God, people are led astray from the waters of eternal life which is knowing Him.
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