Brothers and sisters, if you could please turn with me to the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 3. We will start in verse 6.
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and that the tree was desirable to make one wise,
she took from its fruit and ate;
and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.Then the eyes of both of them were opened,
and they knew that they were naked;
and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.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.Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
Please turn to Psalm 73:28.
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Thy works.
Psalm 91:1.
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
Please turn forward to John chapter 14, verse 2.
In My Father’s house are many dwelling places;
if it were not so, I would have told you;
for I go to prepare a place for you.And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again, and receive you to Myself;
that where I am, there you may be also.
Brothers and sisters, please pay attention to that last line: “That where I am, there you may be also.”
Finally, John 17:24.
Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.
Let us bow for a word of prayer.
Our Lord, we are so thankful to You this afternoon that we can gather together in Your presence. Lord, we thank You because we know that You have already spoken to us. And Lord, we also know how much You desire further to speak to us.
So, Lord, this afternoon, we acknowledge that all of us—from the speaking, the listening, and the translating—we all bow before You. We are longing to hear from You, and we are waiting for You. So, Lord, may You cover us all.
Lord, You are the great One, and we are waiting for what You have to say. Lord, we are all dependent upon You. So thank You, Lord. Please meet us. We pray in Your precious name. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, is it not interesting in our theme verse for the conference that, when the enemy was able to cause Adam and Eve to fall, the very first thing that he did was to cause them to hide from the Lord?
Our enemy is an extremely formidable foe. He knows exactly how to separate us from the testimony of God. So the first work was to cause men and women to realize that they were naked. Because they saw that they were naked, they hid in the trees and made leaves to cover their nakedness. Then, after that, they hid themselves from the Lord.
There is something about the presence of the Lord that is so critical to His testimony, and the enemy knew it. So the very first work was to have men hide from the Lord Jesus.
You see, brothers and sisters, the presence of the Lord is what gives us life. We all know it and recognize it, but the enemy knows it too. His work has always been—from the beginning until now, and into the future—to cause us to be separated.
He moves in us, even as Christians, to cause us to hide from the presence of our Lord. There is something not normal about a believer who hides from the Lord, but this is exactly the life that the enemy wants us to live.
When our brothers sent us the conference topic, “God’s Testimony and His Way,” the Lord had already been putting a thought in my mind.
The Lord reminded me of a radio broadcast that I had heard probably in the late 1990s. The journalists were describing the memorial service for the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, after he had been assassinated.
They described all the great people who had assembled. The President of the United States was there, the Prime Minister of England was there, the Prime Minister of Australia, and even the enemies of Israel—the King of Jordan. They were all there: a phenomenal collection of phenomenal people.
One by one, they stood up to bear testimony of the man’s life. They spoke of his courage, of what a great military leader he had been, and of his self-sacrifice. As we listened to their eulogies, we realized that this man had done amazing things in his life.
But what I remember is that, at the end, the last speaker of the memorial was a twenty-something-year-old young woman. She walked to the podium with no secret service around her, no entourage. She lowered the microphone to where she was, and her name was Noah Rabin. She was the Prime Minister’s granddaughter.
Basically, what she shared about him was this: “Grandpa, after you passed away, everyone in our family has been in tears—especially Grandma. She cannot stop crying. We all miss you. I particularly miss you, Grandpa, because I remember all the times that you embraced me and held me. In my life, you gave me guidance, and I always knew that I could come and ask you how I should go. But now, what am I going to do? To whom am I going to go?”
The journalists described the scene and said that there was not a dry eye in the entire service. Everyone had been in tears.
What everyone realized was this: whereas those other men were able to speak of the great things this man had done, there was really only one person who really knew him. When she testified of him and gave testimony of his life, she testified of the person. The others had borne testimony of the wonderful things that he had done—and they were wonderful—but this young woman showed us who he was.
Brothers and sisters, when I received the conference topic, the Lord confirmed something in my heart: the Lord is longing for people who know Him.
When we bear testimony of Him, can we say, “This is who my Lord is”? There are many who can describe the great things that He has done. But, brothers and sisters, who is He to us?
If we are to have a testimony in our life, is it only of the things that He has done? Is it a description of a lifestyle? Or can we bear testimony of a Person who is near to us and close to us?
The Lord’s heart is for a people who know Him in such a way that they understand His heart and His purposes. We understand why He has done what He has done, what He is doing today, and the things in His heart for which He longs.
The enemy is actively at work to distort this. He would have us be satisfied merely to talk about the Lord, always dancing around Him, but never coming to the center of where He is.
Today, the Lord would be gracious to us. He would like to remind us of His heart and His longing for people who understand Him, who know His person and His personality, and who know His embrace. It is only those who know Him in this way who can stand and bear a testimony and witness for Him.
We remember Psalm 119. All of us who try to read through one psalm a day, when we come to Psalm 119, we often think, “Oh no.” But as we read through it, and the psalmist writes, “I love Thy testimonies, O Lord,” we may think that he must really love the Ten Commandments, the laws, and the ways of God.
But the psalmist is not describing a love for a creed, a lifestyle, doctrines, or dogma. He is describing a love for a Person. The testimonies that he loves are the standard of his life. He is saying, “I love this Person—You, O Lord. You are the love of my life.”
How can we know the Lord in this way? How can we move beyond the peripheral things of the Lord and draw near to know Him more intimately?
My wife and I adopted a little girl about a year ago. Her name is Lily, and you might meet her. Before we adopted her, we received a dossier. It described her height, weight, that she was playful, what her special need was, and what had been done to correct it. I read that dossier many, many times.
Then we flew to China, picked her up, and I held her. Everything in the dossier was true, but it could not come near to holding her.
Lily and I play this game. Sometimes I pick her up and say, “Lily, do you know that Daddy loves you?” She knows that if she says, “No”—or “Mo,” because she cannot say the ending sound yet—I will tickle her. So now, when I ask, “Lily, do you know Daddy loves you?” she says, “Mo,” and immediately covers her eyes because she thinks that if she covers her eyes, I cannot see her.
When I go back and read the dossier, it never described that game. It described that she was playful, and yes, that is true. But, brothers and sisters, life is so much more. I meet her, I see her, and it is thrilling.
The enemy’s work today, especially for my generation, is that all the life that was seen in revelation can become tradition. To one generation there is life, filled with revelation; then that revelation gets passed on, can be transformed into tradition, and the spark of life can be lost.
Many of us fall into a rut a little bit. We feel as if we have heard everything already. But what we have heard, honestly, no mortal man should ever have heard. Yet it needs to be coupled to the presence of God.
Then we begin to see the life of the Lord again, and it causes us to look forward to every day that we can spend with Him.
We remember King David. David was surrounded by all the emblems of the Lord’s presence, but when he sinned, his cry was, “Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord.” David knew that the presence of the Lord was everything.
The Lord is calling us to live a life in His presence and to know Him.
Adam, when he was hiding from the Lord, represents so many of us. We are saved, and we believe in Him, but we would like to live our life here and have the Lord have that part. There is a natural separation. We may be comfortable with a little overlap, but we would still like there to be some separation.
The damaging thing is the Christian who hides from the Lord. Yes, we are saved, but we will never know the life and preciousness of being before Him and knowing His embrace. The Lord is calling us to more. He would like us to share our life with Him.
Brothers and sisters, in the Bible there are two aspects of the Lord’s presence. Now, before you throw me out, let me explain.
In Hebrews and Matthew, the Lord told us and promised us:
I will never leave you.
I will never forsake you.
Lo, I am with you always.
This is one of the most wonderful promises of His presence. How many of us have walked in some crazy way and ended up in the darkest part of the sea? Then we realize, “Lord, what am I doing here?” We turn around and discover that the Lord is with us.
We might ask, “Lord, how long have You been here with me?” And the Lord says, “I promised you I would never leave you.” This promise of His presence is precious, and we can never let it go.
But there is another aspect of His presence. This is the presence that was prayed for us, and it is different. It is the presence we read of in John 14 and John 17:
That they may be with Me where I am.
The first aspect can be stated this way: “I will be with you where you are.” We thank the Lord for that promise.
But the second is this: “Lord, now I look to You, and wherever You lead, I will follow. I would rather be with You than go where I want to go myself.”
This may initially seem like a subtle difference, but it makes all the difference in the world in understanding the Lord’s heart. When the Lord follows us, we often do not even know He is there, though He is there.
But at some point, the Lord captures us enough that we realize, “Lord, I want my entire attention to be upon You. I do not want to be distracted by all the other things in the world. I want my eyes fixed upon You, and where You go, Lord, I will follow.”
This is when we start to see Him. We see His ways, share our life with Him, and allow Him to lead in the decision-making and determination of where we go. It is His headship over us that we follow.
Both aspects of His presence are precious. We do not mean to say that one is better than the other. But when we follow Him and are with Him where He is, the Lord is able to reveal His heart to us.
So the Lord asks us, “Where are you?” And when we say, “Lord, here I am,” can we follow Him?
It is hard, brothers and sisters. This is easily said, but many of us have stumbled along in life. How can we adopt this following after Him?
The Lord reminded me of two reasons why it has been hard for me to live a life fully in His presence.
The first is that the enemy has convinced us that living in the Lord’s presence is perhaps only for the spiritually mature.
I remember being tasked at a West Coast conference many years ago to help one of the speaking brothers. My job was to bring him British cookies and tea. I went to his room, put them by his door, and was about to knock when I heard, in this baritone British voice, “Lord, what dost Thou have to say to Thy servant today?”
I thought that I should not interrupt their conversation, so I did not knock. But I left thinking, “What a spiritual person.”
Somehow, the enemy has convinced us that living a life in His presence is only for older, spiritually mature people. It is not for those growing in life, struggling through difficulties, or facing the challenges of college, high school, or daily life.
But consider this: if I asked you now what it means to be attached to your parents, and then went back to when you were four years old and asked the same question, I assure you that the four-year-old you would have had a better understanding of what it means to be attached to your parents.
When we are younger, there is a natural inclination to be dependent. But as we grow older, we somehow equate maturity with independence. In the world, that is true. But in the Lord, it is just the opposite.
I see it in the brothers who have helped me in my life. As they have grown older, we see a greater dependence and a greater nearness to the Lord.
The notion that we must be spiritually mature for this to be true in our lives is simply not true. Wherever we are, whatever journey we are going through, the availability of our Lord is full. We can find Him, lean upon Him, and find our dependence in Him.
The other stumbling block is very real: to practice the presence of God is a spiritual life, not a fleshly or physical life.
The flesh and the Spirit are diametrically opposed to each other. They do not function well together. Our flesh is always trying to capture our heart—the temporary pleasures, the rhythm of the world, the sound bites, and quick satisfaction.
But the Spirit is real and true. Whether times are good or bad, that life is always going on. Even if we are not all jazzed up, spiritual life is still near to the Lord.
The flesh is strong in all of us. It grabs hold of our life and tells us that we should live according to how we feel in the moment. The flesh and Spirit are at odds as we seek to enter into His presence. Yet the Lord longs for us to live a spiritual life before Him.
How do we do it? The hint is in Psalm 73. Psalm 73:28 links three things:
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Thy works.
Who goes to a hiding place?
In the middle of the night, my wife is the hiding place for my kids. If they hear a noise, they run immediately to her. I sometimes wonder why they do not run to me—I am just as good—but they love to run to her. She is their hiding place.
How many of us do not go through life facing difficulty? Whether it is in our work or in the environment in which the Lord has placed us, there is always a challenge. The Lord has created the challenges around us in order to cause us to run into His presence.
The enemy’s work is to cause us to hide from Him, but the Spirit’s work is to cause us to hide in Him. They are opposites.
The Lord is creating a life around us where it becomes very real for us to hide in His presence. Many times, when we were going our own way, the difficulties of life caused us to run back and hide in Him.
The Lord so wanted us to hide in Him that He actually created us this way. In Matthew 6, there is a blueprint of an extra room built in all of our lives. This room has a door. The door closes, and the room only fits two people: us and our Lord.
The Lord is always there. It is the presence of the promise. No matter where we go in life, He is always there.
When we long to be in His presence and go into that room, the door shuts closed, and we can have fellowship with Him face to face. We were created for this. The Lord made us so that we could find our hiding place in Him.
But how frequently do we go there? It is wonderful to have a time of prayer in the morning, and it is precious. But the Lord’s intention is for us to make our living there.
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
His longing is for us to live before Him.
I would like to share three stories from the Bible concerning the practicality and power of living in the secret place. Please turn with me to John 21.
There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples.
Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.”
They said to him, “We will also come with you.”
They went out and got into the boat; and that night they caught nothing.
But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
Jesus therefore said to them, “Children, you do not have any fish, do you?”
They answered Him, “No.”
And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat, and you will find a catch.”
They cast the net, and they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. The disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.”
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in the little boat, dragging the net full of fish.
I do not know how much faster Simon Peter could swim than a boat filled with fish, but I suspect he could swim considerably faster. The boat must have been plodding along with all those fish behind it.
Later, the Lord said to Peter:
Simon, son of John, do you love Me?
Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.
Tend My sheep.
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.
Follow Me.
This was not a good week for Peter. It began before he denied the Lord three times. At the Last Supper, the disciples debated which one of them was the greatest. The Lord directly addressed Peter, so we believe Peter was involved.
When the Lord girded Himself with a towel and came to wash Peter’s feet, Peter said, “You will not wash my feet.” This was logical in human terms: “You are the Lord, and I am Peter. You are greater than I am. You will not wash my feet.”
But perhaps Philip could wash his feet, or Nathanael, Matthew, James, or John. The logic behind Peter’s argument was that the Lord should not wash his feet because the Lord was greater. Yet in Peter’s heart, he still felt, “I am the greatest.”
This is the heart of man, not the heart of testimony.
Later, the Lord said, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” Peter responded, “Lord, I am ready to die for You.”
But where the Lord was going was not only physically impossible for any man to go. It required self-denial. The Lord would become the ultimate sacrifice of Himself, and Peter could not do it. Peter’s flesh was so large that he could not follow where the Lord was traveling.
Then the servant girl said, “You were with Him too, were you not?” Peter vehemently denied it. The cock crowed. The Lord looked over at Peter, and Peter remembered everything.
Peter went away crushed, because what he saw was that he was nothing.
Days passed. Peter and the others did not know what to do, so Peter said, “Let us go fishing.” Then they saw the Lord on the shore. The Lord asked, “You have not caught any fish, have you, children?” They answered, “No.” He told them to cast the net, and they remembered when the Lord had done it the first time. John said, “It is the Lord.”
This was Peter’s moment of decision.
Days earlier, the Lord had said:
Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat;
but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail;
and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.
What exactly was the Lord praying for? He already knew that Peter would fall. But He said, “When you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”
Peter, in his shame, could have hidden himself from the Lord. “Lord, I am naked. I am a sinner. I will hide in the bushes and cover myself with fig leaves. I cannot be near You.”
But this was the moment of decision. The Lord had prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail. All Peter’s good was not in himself; it was in the Lord.
So Peter grabbed his shirt and jumped into the water. Perhaps he thought, “Maybe I can swim faster to shore and have a little time in the secret place.”
He came out of the water with it pouring off his shirt and hair—dripping with failure. But when the Lord saw him, I believe the Lord thought, “Victory.”
Peter turned again. He knew that all of his good was in the hiding place.
The enemy’s work is to cause us to think that our good is in ourselves and that, because we have sinned, we must hide from Him. But every one of us has sinned to such a degree that none of us is worthy of being in His presence.
We thank the Lord because He has prayed for us, that our faith will not fail. Even when we have failed, we know that the secret place is open. The door never shuts unless we are inside with Him. We are never locked out.
When Peter came to shore, the Lord asked him, “Do you love Me more than these?” Peter was a different person. There was no strength in himself. He said, “Lord, You know all things.”
The Lord then said, “Tend My sheep.”
What makes a man worthy to tend His sheep? The Lord’s most precious possession is His church. He loves her. What makes one worthy? Is it gifting?
It is the man who has fallen and found his good in the secret place of the Most High. Why? Because when we go on in life and see our brothers and sisters fall, what heart do we have?
We could sit and look at them and determine where they went wrong. But when we live this secret life, we go to their side and say, “I fell in the same way, but the Lord was faithful to me. He will be faithful to you.”
To care for the Lord’s house and bear His testimony, we must live the hidden life in the secret place. This is where we learn His greatness. His greatness is what enables the house to grow.
Please turn with me to Mark 15:42.
And when evening had already come, because it was the preparation day, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea came, a prominent member of the Council, who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God; and he gathered up courage and went in before Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.
Please notice that phrase: “He gathered up courage.”
John 19:38 says:
And after these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission.
He came therefore, and took away His body.
And Nicodemus came also, who had first come to Him by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight.
Joseph was a man who had everything in the world. He had respect, money, business, business partners—he had it made. We would say, “This man has it together.”
But something happened to him. One day, he heard a Man speaking. Perhaps it was on a mountaintop; who knows? But something that Man said captured his heart.
Joseph thought, “All the things that I have—what I have just heard is something more, and it is much more than what I have.”
Perhaps he tried to ignore it for a while. Maybe he went back to work, tried to make more money, or distract himself. But something caused him to go back again. He heard the Lord again, and then he could not stop. He kept going and became a disciple.
A disciple is someone who follows. Joseph began to follow, although he did it secretly because he was afraid of the Jews. Perhaps he feared losing his business and reputation.
But the Lord kept after him in a way Joseph probably did not realize. Then the day came when the Lord entered Jerusalem and everyone thought, “This is it. The King is coming. Hosanna!” They expected great things. They were going to be free—but not in the way they thought.
Then the Lord was crucified. The disciples scattered.
The tradition was to leave a body on the cross to decay as a symbol of shame. Especially Jesus—they wanted Him to remain there so that people could see the fullness of His apparent failure.
This is the work of the secret place. It would have been one thing for Joseph to come out when the Lord was like a rock star, while everyone was shouting, “Hosanna!” But it was not like that.
When the Lord was crucified, the world shouted, “What a failure. You failed us. We spit upon You. You are nothing.”
At that point, spiritual life overcame fleshly life. The Bible tells us that Joseph “gathered up courage”—perhaps little pieces of courage here and there—and he knew what he had to do.
He went in before Pilate. He went in against the forces of darkness because he was declaring openly, “I am His disciple, and I would like to take His body.”
His business partners may have said, “What a traitor. You have lost your business, your respect, your place on the council, and you have no part with us. We will excommunicate you from the temple.”
But Joseph had lived in the secret place one too many days. He could not back out. So he went to Pilate and asked for the body.
The secret place is a place of empowerment. It is where the Lord empowers us for the things of His will. It is not always a place of comfort. Sometimes we know what the Lord wants, but in our flesh we are unable to do it. Yet as we live day by day in His presence, an empowering comes—not for our comfort, but for His will.
Then Joseph encountered Nicodemus carrying one hundred pounds of spices to embalm the body. They bumped into each other: one a Pharisee, the other a respected member of the council. Both had lived in the secret place.
Nicodemus had come to Jesus by night. He had stood up for the Lord once in the presence of the Pharisees. The Lord had been growing something in him.
One of them must have said, “I am going to get the body of Jesus down.” The other said, “I have spices, but I do not have permission. I do not have a tomb.” Joseph could respond, “Wait. I have permission, and I have a tomb. Let us go.”
The hiding place is real for all of us. The testimony of our lives individually is bright, but when we come together, the Lord in you and the Lord in me cause the testimony to burn brighter.
The Lord’s will in you and the Lord’s will in me, when we come together, enable us to move forward in a fuller way. The hiding place is private, but the Lord is working in all of us together for the glory of His church and the lifting up of His name.
When I was fifteen years old in California, I started to drive. This was 1988. My father is a very mild-mannered man, and he had to teach me how to drive.
Whenever I was driving too fast in my youthful exuberance, my father would whip his hands down as if he were shaking dirty water from them and say, “Slow down. Slow down.”
Then he would say, “You are driving five cars. You drive your car, the car in front of you, the car to your right, the car to your left, and the car behind you.”
A number of years later, my younger brother and I took a road trip from Berkeley to Portland. I was driving too fast, a car in front of us braked, and I had to swerve to avoid it.
We were both a little scared. My brother looked at me and said, “Slow down. Slow down.” Then he said, “You drive five cars. You drive the car in front of you, you drive your car—” He did not even finish the statement.
I was laughing so hard. He was not with me when my father said this to me, and I was not with him when my father said it to him. But we had both lived in the secret place of our dad.
I knew my dad, and he knew my dad, in a way nobody else knew. We had never told each other that Dad had said those things to us. But when we came together and this happened, we laughed so hard that I could not continue driving.
What happened was that I became closer to my brother because of it, and together we became closer to our dad.
This is the wonderful thing about our life in the secret place. The Lord does the same things for us. His work in our life is real and unto His purpose. We are growing together.
When we come together in a meeting like this, He is magnified and lifted up. As we share in fellowship concerning the life we live close to Him, there is not only a lifting up of Him, but also a bond between us. It is a life that other people do not know, and it is wonderful.
The last story is from Numbers 20:8.
Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water.
You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock, and let the congregation and their beasts drink.
The people had been complaining to Moses because they were thirsty. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock, and Moses said, “Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?”
Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Water came forth abundantly.
But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron:
Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.
Please turn to Deuteronomy 34:1.
Now Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho.
And the Lord showed him all the land.
Then the Lord said to him, “This is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.”
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.
Although Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died, his eye was not dim, nor his vigor abated.
Moses had a very special friendship with the Lord. We remember him standing before Pharaoh and declaring, “Let My people go,” parting the Red Sea, and standing on the mountain as Joshua battled the forces of Amalek.
But it is interesting: perhaps twelve hours before those moments of glory, Moses was in the hiding place telling the Lord, “Lord, I do not want to do this. I cannot speak in front of him.” There was always this sense of, “I cannot do it,” and yet the Lord gave him instruction to go.
Moses lived an entire life with a hidden life before the Lord. There was a public life, but there was also a very hidden life.
Over an entire lifetime, Moses knew the Lord and spoke to Him face to face as a man speaks to his friend.
When you are good friends with someone, you know their heart. You know what they like, when to be quiet, when to interject something, and how to interject it. This comes from relationship and spending time with someone.
Moses had spent time with the Lord. Their times together were no longer merely sound bites. They were near to one another.
At Meribah, when the people complained, Moses was fed up. The Lord told him to speak to the rock, and water would flow. But Moses took the rod, said, “You rebels,” and hit the rock twice.
We might say, “Is this not a little harsh? Moses had spent so much of his life following the Lord and given up so many things. He made one mistake. Could he not at least walk into the Promised Land and take one step?”
But Moses never asked that. In his heart, Moses submitted to the Lord. He knew the Lord so well that there was complete submission. There was no, “Why me?” “Woe is me.” “This is not fair.”
Something happens to a brother or sister who spends an entire life in the presence of the Lord. There is a ministry of friendship, a nearness of friendship, in the hiding place.
At the end, Moses was willing to submit to anything that the Lord wanted. The entire purpose of his life was that the Lord’s will would be done. So he told Joshua, “Be strong and courageous, and take the people in,” so that the Lord’s heart would be satisfied.
This is the story of a man who loves his God. He has no desire in this world other than to choose what his Lord wants.
This reminds us of John 3:29.
He who has the bride is the bridegroom;
but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.
And so this joy of mine has been made full.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
Moses knew the Lord’s longing. As long as the Lord’s longing was fulfilled and satisfied, Moses had the same heart that John the Baptist had: “My joy has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
The law of the testimony of the Lord is verse 30: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” There is no other way.
We would love it if somehow we could make it so that He might increase and I might increase. But that is not how it goes. It is always this way: He must increase, and I must decrease.
But it never goes this way either: I must decrease, and the Lord leaves some vacuum in us. When the Lord works on us in the secret place and begins to show us His greatness, He works on our flesh. Then there is a resurrection of our soul.
The things that we loved according to the flesh do not simply disappear so that we have no loves or joys anymore. There is a resurrection. The soul that once longed for the things our flesh longed for is transformed. In that inner room, we find great joy in His fulfillment.
What a wonderful hope: that one day, when we stand before Him, the Lord will say, “I hardly recognize your flesh anymore, but I see My Son in you. And not only do I see My Son in you, but I see that your soul is all wrapped up in the fulfillment of His will, and you find joy in it.”
The work of the cross is a work of lowering, but it is also a resurrection.
I shared this story in San Diego a couple of months ago, and a brother asked me, “Do you know the ending of the story?” I said, “I think so.” He said, “There is more. Go look for it.”
There is more. Mark 9:2 says:
And six days later, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John, and brought them up to a high mountain by themselves.
And He was transfigured before them; and His garments became radiant and exceedingly white, as no launderer on earth can whiten them.
And Elijah appeared to them along with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus.
Peter said, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to answer, for they became terrified.
Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is My beloved Son, listen to Him!”
And all at once they looked around and saw no one with them anymore, except Jesus alone.
These verses remind us that there is no comparison to the Lord Jesus. He is the only One. He is high and exalted. No one can have a rival throne or a rival altar with Him.
Peter, in his exuberance, said, “Let us build three altars.” But the voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him.” Then the cloud crossed out Elijah and crossed out Moses. They are nothing in comparison to the Son.
But the wonderful thing is that the Lord knows when our resurrected soul longs for Him, and He remembers. Even as Moses was being crossed out, Moses stood in the Promised Land.
The Lord is at work in us for His glory. Jesus alone is the beloved Son; we listen only to Him. Yet, for His bride, we will find all our joy in His being exalted. The fulfillment of His heart will become the joy of our life.
Our Lord is a wonderful Lord. His work is real, and He is longing for people who know Him.
Knowing Him in the inner room is practical. We do not need to be spiritual giants. Exactly where we are along our journey, we can go to Him as we are.
In meeting with Him in the secret place, the Lord will increase. He will do a work in us that we cannot do outside of His presence.
May the Lord help us, brothers and sisters, that we would not hide from Him, but that we would hide in Him. As we go forward in life, may we find, no matter what comes, that our hiding place is in Him.
Let us bow for a word of prayer.
Lord, we thank You because You love us so much. Our longing is that You would have a people who love You too.
So, Lord, we bow before You this afternoon. We thank You for Your greatness and for revealing Yourself to us. We pray that in our lives You would have the highest place. Lord, may You be honored and lifted up, and may Your church be made ready.
We thank You, Lord. Be glorified. In Your precious name we pray. Amen.