Exodus 33:12-17 English Standard Version

12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

We are supposed to be unique. We are different because we have God’s favor.

The life we live should show outwardly that God is with us.

John 14:17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

Living this life of faith is one where the truth leads the way and there is no lie in us.

The worst thing we can do is to lie to an unbeliever.

Matthew 10:22a and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. 

Matthew 24:9 Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.

We are not here to win friends, we are here to show grace because grace has been imparted to us by God’s good favor. Every good thing that has been granted us by our loving God is meant to be a witness of His abiding presence.

Acts 10:28 And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.”

Matthew 9:10 And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

Matthew 9:11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Psalm 139:8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Sheol:

(Heb., “the all-demanding world” = Gr. Hades, “the unknown region”), the invisible world of departed souls. (See HELL.)

No matter what you call it, common thinking is heaven or hell. It is one or the other.

What of those who believe neither exist? They do not believe in final judgment, God or Satan?

When arrested, tell the police they have no authority over you. Do you expect them to just take off the cuffs? When the judge sentences you to prison and they drag you off in handcuffs do you expect them to take you home? 

Life itself teaches us about death. That is physical, not spiritual. You can be physically alive and spiritually dead.

The majority of mankind believes in some form of God or gods. Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto and a myriad of pagan worships believe in something beyond this physical life even if they do not agree on what that means or how to attain access. What is the point without access?

The three major faith based religions all began with Abram. He is identified as the father of faith.

Abram heard God, believed God and obeyed God. Those are the three basic issues of faith for access to something other than this physical life. Even so, none of the three agree on exactly what this access point means for their supplicants.

2 Corinthians 1:20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.

Two of those faith based religions never read this truth about God, He wants to say yes to us.

I don’t know about the others, but I hear Yes and I say Amen.

For His glory, not mine.