God Our Friend

4:15 The thesis of the series is that God is a complex character, like any real person. And the Bible says he's father and friend and lover and king. And if we elevate any one of these images, any one of these metaphors that God himself uses to describe himself, if we elevate one to the exclusion of the other or even to greatly favor one over the other, we end up with a one-dimensional God, a cartoon God, a God we can't really have personal engagement with. Now, today we're looking at this fascinating spot in verse 11 where it says, The Lord would speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend. What's friendship with God? Why would God dare call himself our friend? And let's ask the question of the text like this.

5:10 Why is friendship with God so important? So why is it so important? Then secondly, what it is? And thirdly, what it brings? And lastly, how we get it. Why it's important, what it is, what it brings, how we can get it. Now, number one, why is it important? You have to understand this incident here where Moses goes out to the tent of meeting and gets things from God. You see, for example, it says, whenever Moses would go out, all the people rose and stood at the entrance of the tent. Anyone inquiring of the Lord would ask Moses, and then Moses would go into the tent, what is this all about? It's very simple. When God first brought the children of Israel to Mount Sinai, he gave Moses the plan for the tabernacle. And the tabernacle was to be a tent, the dwelling of God in the midst of the people. All of the tents were around it.

6:04 It was right in the midst of the people. And the cloud, what is this cloud, this cloudy pillar? It's the glory of God. At daytime it looked like, in the sunlight it looked like a cloud. At night it looked like a fire, a pillar of fire. And it was the signification of the presence of God. And it was supposed to be right in the midst of the people. But when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai, he finds the great feast of the golden calf. And God says in the beginning of chapter 33, right before this passage, he says, I've got an alternate plan. He says, you're stiff-necked. You're too stiff-necked for friendship. You're too stiff-necked for me to dwell in your midst. You don't have the loyalty and you don't have the heart that is necessary for access to my presence. Here's what I'm going to do. He says, first of all, and this is in chapter 33, right before this printed section. It's not printed.

6:55 is I'm going to send an angel with you to Canaan and I'll drive out your enemies. I'll make you successful. I'm going to give you military power. I'll give you economic prosperity. And he says, if you want to know something from me, if you want guidance on some personal problem, if you want, if you need, what is the right way to do something? If you need ethical guidance or personal guidance, very simple. Go to Moses. Moses will pitch a tent outside the camp, Not in the middle of the camp, see? And that tent will be a place where he can meet with me. He can have access to the glory cloud. He can have access to my presence. So if you've got a need, you talk to him and he'll tell you. Now, this is incredible. This is exactly the religion we've all been waiting for. First of all, on the one hand, right, everybody says, this is what I want. First of all, God says, I'll give you power. I'll give you prosperity. I'll give you success. And I'll give you a religious professional to deal with me so that you don't have to deal with me personally. In other words, I won't be right in the middle of your life, you know, where you have to kind of arrange everything around me. Oh, no. When you need me, you can get me. When there's a crisis, when there's a bind, Moses, a religious professional. So it's his job, you know, to be meeting with me all the time.

8:14 So if you have a need, you go to him. And this is the religion that all kinds of people want. This is a religion that people want. God's power, God's success, and not actually have to deal with God right smack in the middle of your life where you're always having to deal with him all the time. instead God when you need him. And there's a professional, Moses. He can get in touch with Superman when we really need him. And so there it is. And what's the response?

8:42 What's the response? Moses comes in in verse, look at 14 and 15. You have to read it carefully. The Lord replied, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest. But who's the you? Moses. The presence, the glory, the cloud, the meeting. You'll have it. and Moses comes back in verse 15 and says, great, great, great, great, presence goes with me, but if your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. You see, if you read you in verse 14 as a plural, then verse 15 makes no sense. If he says, my presence will go with you, and then Moses turns around and says, but if your presence won't go with us. See, if the you in verse 14 is plural, verse 15 makes no sense, but if the you in verse 14 is singular, then it makes perfect sense what Moses is saying. Here's what Moses is saying.

9:34 You can keep your success. You can keep your power. You can keep your guidance. You can keep the whole thing. If we don't have access to your presence, if the whole people of God don't have friendship with you, if they don't all have access to your presence smack in the middle of their lives, if they're not all actually able to meet you, meeting, meeting the tent of meeting, we don't want anything else. And if you think that's just Moses' idea, you have to, again, the passage was so long as it was, I had to show you the whole thing. But if you go immediately before in verses 4, 5, and 6, you'll see all the people, when they heard God, when they heard God say, I'll drive out your enemies, I'll make you successful, I'll give you Moses to answer your questions, but my presence will not go with you. They all mourned and threw off their ornaments. Now, you know, the children of Israel are kind of like the apostles. The children of Israel in the Old Testament, the apostles in the New Testament, are sort of like the three stooges, the keystone cops. They never get it right. You know, the apostles are always, duh, you know, all the time.

10:42 And the children of Israel are always being foolish, and they learn a lesson, and then one day later they've forgotten it and they're just going back and forth. So they're, you know, they're not spiritual giants, right? And yet they know that to have God's power, that to have God's teaching, to have all that and not have his friendship, to not actually know him personally. It's not to have anything.

11:06 Now, let me ask you a quick question. Do you see? Even the children of Israel at this stage in their life, and certainly Moses, there's nothing more important in this than knowing God personally, meeting him. Jeremiah 9, 24, famous place where it says, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, but let him who glories glory in this, that he knows me, that he knows me personally, not just knows about me, knows me. And what's that mean? God is saying there in Jeremiah 9.24, if you win five Olympic gold medals, the mighty man or woman, if you are, if you, you know, your Wall Street partner, you're making 30 million a year, year after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, the rich man or woman. If you're the great public intellectual of the country and you're, you know, professor at large at all the Ivy League universities and the president's asking you to come in and reads your books and asks your advice.

12:02 Think of the approval. Think of the honor. Think of the satisfaction. And God says, oh, rich, oh, mighty, oh, wise. That's nothing compared to what it's like to know me. Now, let me ask you a quick question. Have you settled for this kind of religion, the kind of religion that the children of Israel rejected? Have you settled for a God that you only need when you're in trouble? That's when you go get him. He's not in the middle of your life. more than that, have you settled for a God? You follow his teaching, right? You study, you try to do the best thing, and you pay professionals like me to go meet with him and come back and tell you what to do, but you yourself never have a sense that you're really meeting him, really conversing with him, really touching him. Is there an exchange? Do you feel like you're personally dealing with him? Do you have a personal interaction with him? Have you settle for the kind of, don't you see why it's so important? It's so important. It's astounding.

13:00 What is Moses saying? He says, if we don't have access to you, if we don't have friendship with you, if we don't all have friendship with you, you can take all your money and all your power and all your success and everything else. You just have it. We don't want it. It's amazing. Now, secondly, what is it? If that's so important, what is it? Well, there's three things you see here. What's interesting, and you can take out a lot of principles, but I'm only going to give you three. Verse 12 and following, this dialogue, one of the reasons we read it, is an example of verse 11. 11 says, God spoke to Moses face to face. They were friends. And verse 12 and following is a case study of friendship. And here's what we learn. Three things. There's a deep analogy between human friendship and divine friendship. Human friendship and divine friendship works very similarly. Not completely, of course, but very similarly. Friends, here's three principles for building a friendship with God or anybody, actually. Friends often come around, always let you in, never let you down. Often come around, always let you in, never let you down. Okay, Let's go through those three. First of all, often comes around. Moses' whole issue is, I want your presence. But every place the word presence is used. Every place God says, my presence will go with you. And Moses says, but if your presence does not go with us. And Moses says, I've got your presence. I can go to the tent of meeting and get your presence. I want them to have the presence. What is this word in Hebrew? In Hebrew, it's always the same.

14:42 It's the word panim, which means face. Every place in the Hebrew scriptures where you see the word presence, it's just the Hebrew word face. God is saying, I've got a face. Now, one of the things that's very important to realize is that if you want to have a friendship, you've got to actually be face to face sometimes. You've got to come around. You often have to come around. You often have to hang out. Email is nice, but I've heard many people say, I met somebody online, I want to meet him personally.

15:11 Oh, what's the difference? Why is phoning, why is emailing, why is letters as nice as that is, why is it nothing like face-to-face? And here's the reason why. Face-to-face relationship engages all the senses. The other person is someone who fills your sight literally because you're face-to-face, fills your sight. You hear, you see, you touch, you can hug, you can kiss, you can shake hands, you see. Whereas every other way of relating to somebody, they're okay, they're good. In fact, they're very important for maintaining friendships. But they only ever engage one sense, right? Email, you know, or phoning. Even television might have, you know, if you have the, eventually you have the video phones, you can't hug. You can hug the monitor, but it won't work. So what are we talking about here? First of all, you're not going to really have friendship if you never see each other. There has to be physical proximity. You've got to often come around.

16:08 You've got to often come around. But what we learn here is that God, though he is everywhere, right? God is everywhere, and yet God has a face. God has a face. Now, this boggles the mind a bit Because since God is a spirit, it's not a physical face. We say, what other kind is there? All right, well, here's, just think about it. What we just said. Why is face-to-face relationship so much better than any other kind? Because when you're face-to-face, all the senses are engaged, and the relationship moves ahead so much faster than any other way. What is the presence of God? Well, God is a force. He is everywhere. And yet he's also a person, which means he has a face. It means that God has a presence. where you can relate to him. What is that? Let me put it like this. The presence of God is when and where the presence of God is when and where he fills up your senses.

17:02 The presence of God is when and where things that you were just intellectual, things that you just knew about come down on your heart. Touch your heart. Press down on you.

17:58 Now, see, for example, I have 40 or 50 good examples of this, but my favorite is this one. And some of you have been around, you've heard it before. If you haven't been around, you need to hear it. Here's something from the journals of Jonathan Edwards. He says, once in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, I walked around for divine contemplation and prayer as I usually did. Now, listen, he says, but on that one time, I had a view that for me was extraordinary. The glory of the Son of God appeared so calm and so sweet. He appeared so great above the heavens. It overwhelmed me, and I continued in this state near as I can judge for an hour, which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. Now, what happened? He saw, he says. It appeared. Did he have a vision? If you know Jonathan Edwards, no, he did not have a vision. I don't think he believed in visions. Well, what is he talking about? What is he talking about is this. He got into the presence of God. The presence of God is the place where things that you knew about, like the glory of God or the grace of God or the holiness of God, you sense. Now, what do you mean sense? We don't know exactly. You have to use sensory language to describe it. It's one thing to know that sugar is sweet. It's another thing to taste it, right? To sense it. It's one thing to know that somebody's strong. It's another thing to feel him lift you up with one arm, right? Wow. It's one thing to know God's holy. It's another thing to meet him, to sense his holiness on your heart and on your life. And that's, there's no other way to put it. The Bible talks that language all the time. And that is the presence of God.

19:38 There is a place. There is a, there is a, there is a means. There is a situation. There's a situation in which things you knew about become real to you and he becomes real to you. You're talking with them face to face. Now, the first thing is, if you are a friend of God, you know that there's such a thing as the presence of God. See, what's the difference between a friend of God and just a general person who believes in God, comes to church, gets us religious professionals to tell them the truth and all that? What's the difference? Friends of God know that he has a face. Friends of God know that there's the presence. Friends of God do everything they can to get into that presence. You can't always have it. Just like friends can't always be with you. Right? Friends are not always with you all the time. Not usually. Friends often, though, come around in the same way. Number one, if you're a friend of God and he's your friend, sometimes you sense his presence. Sometimes you meet him. Number one. Number one. Number two, friends often come around. Right? Number one. Number two, always let you in.

20:42 Transparency. You're not a friend unless both of you are vulnerable to each other. In fact, you're not friends unless both of you are telling secrets to each other. Friends tell secrets. On the one hand, there's two men in the Hebrew scriptures in the Old Testament that are called friends of God, Abraham and Moses. And in both cases, you have these spots. Both of these, you have spots where you see Moses and Abraham going at God a little, you know, in some amazing ways, being extremely frank, being respectful, but being very frank. You know, this place right here where Moses comes and says, I am not satisfied with this situation. Where did you get that kind of frankness, huh? Go back to Abraham, who's another one who's called friend of God, and we have an astounding example of this, where he knows that God is on his way to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham says, well, you wouldn't judge Sodom and Gomorrah if there were 50 people, you know, 50 godly people there, would you? And God says, no, I wouldn't. How about 45?

21:42 No, God said I wouldn't do it for 45. What about 40? How about 30? How about 20? That's in Genesis 18. And you go, what is this? What kind of prayer is this? It's a prayer of friends. See, here's the thing. When you go to a friend, you don't have to be too varnished. You don't have to be too polished. You trust your friend to accept you. You trust your friend to put the very, very best construction on what you're doing, don't you? When you see Abraham and you see Moses, they don't know how a holy God could love them this much and accept them this much, but they are utterly secure before the face of God. Utterly. Enormous security, complete frankness. They're vulnerable. They let it out. But on the other hand, you're not a friend if you are the one who's always talking and your friend listens and that's all that ever happens. You've got to listen.

22:36 you've got to listen and the bible tells us you can see it right here where does moses get his understanding of who god is he doesn't just think it up he listens to the word of god he goes after the prophetic word of god and in psalm 25 verse 14 if you look at it most modern translations it won't it won't go literally and like in the niv translation it says that god God confides in those who fear him. But literally, in the Hebrew, Psalm 25, 14 says, the secret of the Lord is with those who fear him.

23:12 What that means is if you fear, which means, don't forget this, if you come before him in awesome wonder and you submit and say, I'm going to listen to you, I'm going to accept what you say, God will tell you secrets. What does that mean? Well, something like this. When do you really feel you've met somebody? If you've ever had a talk with a friend, have you ever felt when there was an amazing connection, a deep connection? It's not usually only when you sit down and you tell a secret, you say, blah, blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. And the other friend sits there and goes, ah. Well, you know, accepts you, but doesn't say anything back. It's not a real connection. I mean, you might feel a little better that, gee, this is the greatest person didn't come down my throat, and very warm and all that. But where the real deep connection is when your friend, after you've revealed something about who you are, your friend reveals something about who he or she is.

24:06 When your friend says, well, let me show you something about me. And what a connection. And it's exactly what you needed to hear. And it speaks right to your point of need. And that is what happens in real friendship with God. In friendship with God, you are completely honest. You repent. You're open. You just lay it out. and when you listen through the Holy Spirit, the Word of God turns on, lights up, and God shows you secrets. What secrets? Well, they're open secrets, of course, but they weren't these things you saw before. The language of someone who is really engaged with God at the moment goes like this. You're reading the scripture and it lights up and you say, how did I ever see? If he's like that, why am I worried? If he's like that, why am I angry? If this is true, why am I scared? If this is true, why am I tempted? If this is true, why am I despondent? And why haven't I ever seen this before? He's telling you secrets. He's showing you things that are secret to you. You've never seen them before. So the second part of friendship is you tell each other things. You're completely open with each other. And he speaks back through his word. And thirdly, we said there's three things. Friends, what? Often come around, always let you in, completely vulnerable, open up, and never let you down. Now that's interesting. People say, never let you down. Here's God, and God is doing what? He says, okay, I'll stick with you. All right, I will go with you.

25:40 Now, I know a lot of people who complain and say, well, God didn't stick with me. God did not stick with me. You know, I prayed for this and I prayed for that and he abandoned me. Well, let me tell you a secret about friendship with God. if you're God's friend, you stick with him even when it looks like he's abandoned you. Haven't anybody ever, what if you have a really close friend and you hear something very negative about your close friend, what do you usually do? You say, that doesn't sound like my friend at all. You doubt it. Of course, friends are imperfect, human beings are imperfect, but you doubt it. Why? You're friends. You want to find out for yourself. It doesn't square with what else you know about. Now, if you're a friend of God, you stick with him even when he seems like he's abandoned, and you will find eventually that he's not abandoned you a bit. The only way to find out that he's really stuck with you perfectly is for you to stick with him, even imperfectly. That's a friend.

26:37 Now, go to the end here. Lastly, and I'm only going to do the last point. That's why it's so important, and that's what it is. What is friendship with God? Friends of God know there's a presence. They completely open up because they know he accepts. And they listen submissively to his word. And through the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit shows you who he is and relates it to who you are. And then you sense you're meeting. And then you sense you're there. And friends stick together. And he sticks with you. In fact, one of the biggest parts of being a friend is over the years to see that if I really, really assume that he's not abandoned me, I'll find that he has not at all. If I assume he's abandoned me, if I don't stick with him, I won't see the things he's doing in my life and my friendship with him won't grow. Now, how do we receive it? Let me tell you. Moses says, I want to see you. I want your glory. Now, you know, somebody's going to ask me or you're already thinking, how come in verse 11 it says, they spoke face to face. And in verse 20, God says, nobody can see my face and live. And the answer is, he had partly, he had some access, but he didn't have the real thing.

27:46 He didn't have the whole thing. And God says, because I'm holy, you can't be my friend. But I'll put you in the rock, and I'll let my glory pass by, and then you'll be safe. So what gets the heat and what gets the light? What strikes, you know, what protects Moses? What bears the brunt of that consuming fire of God's glory? The rock. And the Bible says, St. Paul says, that in the wilderness, that means the rock of Moses was Christ.

28:19 And Christ actually is, therefore, not just a rock, but the ultimate friend. And here's why. The Bible tells us Jesus Christ did not come as a teacher and save us with his teaching. If Jesus Christ had just come and said, do this, this, this, and this, this. that wouldn't have saved us, would it? Because we could never live up to that. So Jesus did not save us with his teaching. What did he save us with? He saved us with his friendship. Because Jesus did the three things in the ultimate way. First of all, Jesus came around. He was incarnate. He was born in a major. He had to come to us, okay? Number one. Number two, Jesus let us in. He was utterly vulnerable. In fact, we have the only religion, Christians have the only religion that even claims that God became vulnerable, that even claims that God became weak, that even claims that. You know, all around the world, when you come like this toward an enemy, what does this mean?

29:16 Friendship. It's a token of friendship. Why? Because you've made yourself vulnerable. If you walk toward an enemy like this, you are saying, I want friendship, but the only way you're going to show them that you want friendship is you make yourself vulnerable, right? They could nail you. They could nail you. Jesus' arms were open to us. they were nailed open. How much more vulnerable do you want to get? Jesus saves us with our friendship because he came to us personally in the flesh. He was vulnerable for us, and he stuck with us. On the cross, Charles Spurgeon says, Jesus Christ looked at the people he was dying for. He looked at them jeering him, and he looked at them laughing at him, and he looked at them fleeing and denying him and betraying him. And in the greatest act of friendship in the history of the world, he stayed. could have left, but he stayed. Jesus saved us through the ultimate friendship. Because Jesus Christ was our ultimate friend, we can be friends with God.

30:18 And as a result, let me tell you why you need to be in a small group. Because Jesus saved us with friendship, not with his teaching. The main way in which you grow into God. In fact, the main way in which you meet God is through friends. There's a deep symbiotic relationship between human friendship and divine friendship. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean, on the one hand, 99 times out of 100, you find God through other friends. Philip brings Nathaniel, right, to Jesus. Andrew brings Peter to Jesus.

30:52 Anybody practically in this room who ever found Christ or is in the process of finding Christ probably is doing it through friends. I'm a teacher. I'm help. But basically, it won't happen without friends. In fact, if you don't have friends to help you process the stuff I'm saying week in and week out, you're not going to get to God. But not only that, not only does friendship bring us to God, but God brings us to friends. Because how are you going to be a great friend? How are you going to be transparent when you're scared of what they think of you? But what if you have the ultimate friend who loves you no matter what? No matter what? then you have the freedom to be transparent. You don't need their approval. Do you see?

31:31 When people kind of let you down, are you a fair-weather friend or do you stick with them? Well, how can you do that unless you see you have the ultimate friend who never will let you down? So then you have the freedom. You're not as needy as you were before. You won't be a great friend until you have the ultimate friend. And you generally won't find the ultimate friend except through friends. And you know, as good as worship is, you've come to hear the paid professional. Moses has gone to the tent of media and comes out and tells you what you need to hear. But I'll tell you where you're really going to learn friendship with God. It's with other people in a group in which you can talk about how has the Lord, through the Holy Spirit, spoken to who you are with who he is. How has that happened for you? Friendship is very personal. Friendship is very deep. Friendship is something that you work on and you learn from other friends, not just through great teaching.

32:22 from the professional who has come out of the tent of meeting and says, you know, interesting. Let me just tell you one interesting thing. The second of the old Boris Karloff Frankenstein movies, there is an amazing, in the second one, it's the Bride of Frankenstein. There's an amazing passage that I saw, amazing scene, that I've never seen before, and it's really odd. Frankenstein monster, of course, he's walking on through, and he's on his way, and he's growling, and that's all he ever does. all the time. And he's running away from all the people who are after him. And he comes into this very remote part of the woods and he sees a cottage. And in it, a blind man is living. And the blind man is on his knees praying to God saying, oh Lord, please send me a friend in my terrible loneliness. And in comes the monster. He can't see the monster. And all he hears is, grr, grr. And he says, oh, you have an affliction. So do I. We can be friends. And he starts to love the monster. And he sits them down and makes things for him and gets him some soup and the monster's never experienced the love of a friend. And there's a brief period. It's like a three-minute thing. It's a three-minute scene where the only time you see in all of the movies, he smiles. He starts using English language. A couple of places he says food. He says good. He starts to humanize. And then, of course, what happens is some hunters come along and they walk in. They see the monster and they begin to try to kill it. And the monster knocks down, of course, some oil lamp. The next thing you know, the whole cottage has gone up in flames, and the blind man is dead, and everybody's dead, and the monster is groping out back into the cold, monstrous again, saying, friend, friend. Now, you know, if you could see your self-image, if you actually saw your self-image, if it was made visible, it would look kind of like a Frankenstein monster, because you get your self-image from what everybody says about you, your family, your friends, your parents, your coaches, your teachers, you know, society, various forms of society, and you, you, it's not coherent. It's the kind of contradictory.

34:23 You know, just like a Frankenstein monster, all these incondiscent pieces have been sewn together. What you need is a friend who will come along with the power of his love, tell you who you are. As Moses says, you know me by name. A friend whose love will completely overcome all of those other verdicts and give you a coherent human face that you'll see in the mirror. So we're all like this guy, groping through the woods saying, friend, friend, if I could just find the friend, then I'd be okay. Well, here he is. Let us pray. Our Father, when we go to the Lord's Supper, we ask that you would help us meet you. This is a table of meeting, a table of meeting, just like the tent of meeting. This is a place where the bread and the cup make your death real to us, Lord Jesus. Make your face real to us.

35:17 We ask, Lord, that you will help us during the Lord's Supper to find you and sense you. And to go on from there. We pray this in Jesus' name.