The phrase, “Be ready in the morning” is found in Exodus 34:2. Moses is told to be ready in the morning to come to the top of Mount Sinai with the tables of stone. The first 9 verses of Exodus 34 contain some good principles for our quiet time with God.
In verse one Moses is told to hew two tables of stone so God can write His commands on them. Today God writes, not in tables of stone, but tables of the heart. We come with open hearts and minds on which God can write His commands. In verse two Moses is told to be ready in the morning. The morning is, for most people the best time to be alone with God. The mind is less cluttered than during the day.
In verse three Moses is told to bring no man with him and also to leave the flocks and herds behind. God wants a personal fellowship with us. We are to come alone. Also, we must not come with a lot of other business on our minds. The “flocks and herds” must be left outside.
In verse four we read that Moses goes to the top of the mountain and in verse five we see that God comes down to Moses. It is a meeting between the Infinite God and finite man. Also, in verse five God tells Moses Who He is. “He proclaims the Name of the LORD”. This is Who He is. It is His Person. Verse six explains what He is; or His character. He is “The LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth”. In verse seven He tells what He does: He keeps mercy for thousands, forgives sin and punishes iniquity. He warns against the long range consequence of sin. These and many other things God can teach the one alone with Him.
In verses eight and nine we see the contrast between a holy God and sinful man. Moses acknowledges that he is one of a “stiff necked people” and in need of pardon. Moses went to the top of Mount Sinai, the mountain of law and judgment. According to Hebrews 12, we are already in Mount Zion, the city of the Living God. This is the mount where we meet God.
In First John we read that our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son. The really staggering thing is that God is more anxious for the meeting than we are. God is inviting us to come. We are the ones dragging our feet.

We see in the Bible a perfect balance. We also see this in the life and teachings of the Lord Jesus. The Bible, written to fallen man emphasizes two things. They are God’s hatred for sin and at the same time His love for fallen man. It seems that Jesus’ denunciation was primarily for the leaders. The concern He seemed to feel was towards the common people, even those who were led astray by false teaching. The same thing was true of Paul and the other apostles. Here we must be careful not to excuse the laity, (so called). This is what the Bible is for, written very simply, (the common people “heard Him gladly; the same people who were “baptized of John”) but often confused by the hierarchy. Remember the illustration of the blind leading the blind. They didn’t have to follow, you know.
When confronted by the religious leaders, Jesus told them that He had not come to call the righteous but sinners. He told the woman in John 8: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more”, On the other hand Jesus told the leaders that not only did they not enter the Kingdom of heaven themselves but also kept their followers out: Matthew 23:13. We must remember that the followers went to the same hell that the leaders did, but the heaviest punishment is on the leaders.
There is another example in Galatians 1:8 and 9. Here Paul pronounces a curse on the one who brings in the false doctrine. The curse is not on the one who believes it. If one has sincerely received Christ he is not necessarily lost because he adds on some false teaching, but the teacher is denounced. He is causing much harm even to the point of causing some to be lost. Another passage along the same line is in Revelation 3:1-6. This is about the church in Sardis which had “a name that thou livest, and art dead”. There was much activity but no spiritual life. But “even in Sardis” there were those who had “not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white”. They did not follow the blind.

All of us have met the promoter of some cult and found the frustrating thing is that, although they claim to base their doctrine on Scripture in reality they don’t Scripture must always be twisted to fit their doctrine. Their doctrine is never adjusted to fit the Scripture, regardless of how plain and simple it not only seems to me but actually is. The underlying problem is that their particular doctrine is more important the Scripture. The result is that their doctrines have closed their minds to the plain teachings of Scripture.
It is very easy to see this failing in others; not so easy to see it in myself. I saw an interesting illustration of this in Uganda. Although many people were saved through our Bible studies, not one single seminary trained priest was. There were some fine born again priests that we knew, but they had become priests because they truly wished to serve God. This was in the Anglican church. I suppose their church doctrines had closed their minds to the simple gospel.
Show a catholic that in I Timothy 2:5 Paul writes that there is one mediator between God and man and he will insist that the priest is also a mediator. Let a Calvinist and a non Calvinist get into an argument and each will have his favorite versus which will always trump the Scriptures. Someone I know recently heard his Sunday School teacher say that God enjoys watching the people in hell suffer. In Ezekiel 33:11 God says: “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his evil way and live”. It will be another case of a man sticking to his guns. The Word of God will have to be reinterpreted to fit his belief.
There is a real problem that Paul is addressing in the church of Corinth. They were not unconcerned liberals. They were sincere and concerned people. But it causes division as each sees spiritual truth from his perspective. This not only closes the mind to another but even more importantly, it closes my mind to the Scriptures themselves. There is some good practical advice in Philippians 2:3 “let each esteem other better than themselves” and in I Corinthians 14:30: “If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace”. The deeper reason is that I may not hear the voice of God. Revelation 2:17: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna”.
And still the cry goes on “I am of Appolos”. Whatever ism is mine will keep from the deeper things of God.

Daniel requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he not be required to eat of the king’s rich food, which was definitely not kosher. His overseer was afraid that Daniel and his friends would look less healthy than the others due to the insufficient diet. He was afraid, as he said, of losing his head: Daniel1:10.
In this same verse the prince of the eunuchs says: “I fear my lord the king”. It’s interesting that this same Hebrew word for fear (YAWRAY) is used in connection with the believer’s fear in God, which Daniel had. His fear of God was greater than his fear of the might of Babylon. In Malachi 4:2 we read: “But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings”, and in Psalm 115:13: “He will bless them that fear the LORD, both small and great”.
We find the same thing true in the New Testament. In Luke 12:4 and 5 we are told not to fear those who can only kill the body, but to fear Him who “after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell”. The word fear is the same in both. It is the Greek word PHOBEO.
The teaching common today in evangelical circles is that the word fear really means something else like reverence, awe, high regard, etc. It’s greatly watered down. We are also told that the unbeliever is afraid of God even though the Bible states clearly of the unbeliever that “there is no fear of God before their eyes”: Romans 3:18..
This is the result of the relativistic age in which we live. In 1991, a letter written by James Dobson quotes from a survey taken by researcher George Barna : In the survey, interviewees were asked: “Do you agree strongly with the following statement: There is no such thing as absolute truth”. Only 28% of the respondents expressed strong belief in “absolute truth” and more surprisingly only 23% of evangelical Christians accepted this idea.
If there is no absolute truth then by definition nothing can be said to be absolutely true. To the majority, it’s all relative. Nothing is certain. Might be, might not be. Who knows for sure? Take your guess and hope for the best. Once you have done away with the belief in absolute truth you have lost the fear of God. It is absolutely true that someday I will stand before God to give account of all I have done. Whether or not I believe this will never alter the fact, but it removes the fear of God. The fear of God is a very healthy thing. Satan is using evangelical preachers to remove it.

At the burning bush the LORD asked Moses: What is that in your hand”? Moses replied that it was his rod. God told him to throw it down on the ground. Moses did so; it became a serpent and Moses was frightened and ran from it.
Forty years before Moses decided to save the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, but caused more harm than good, killing a man. Now God wants to use Moses to do exactly what he wanted to do in the first place. But first the rod must be dealt with. It has within itself the potential to do harm as well as good. Moses proved that. When God tells Moses to throw it down Moses sees it’s potential for evil and flees from it.
Every talent or ability I have is a potential serpent. My best and most well meaning efforts have the potential of causing harm, either to myself or others. I must understand that, as Paul said, In me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. As Moses threw down the rod at God’s command, so must I.
God tells Moses to pick up the rod. Moses does so in perfect obedience and now it is once again a rod. But it is no longer Moses’ rod. In Exodus 4:20 we read that Moses returned to the land of Egypt “and the rod of God was in his hand”. Now he is fully able to save the people of God from the oppressor.
There are two verses I want to bring here. Psalm 12:4: “Our lips are our own; who is lord over us”? This is perhaps the great contrast between the man of the world and the follower of Christ. The question here is the same. Whose rod is it: mine or God’s?
Another verse that would apply here is John 7:18. Jesus is speaking: “He who speaks of himself seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of the One Who sent Him is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him”. The important thing is that leaders in the church and also the followers seek, not there own glory but the glory of God. I suppose we all have this tendency to cling to our rod, not seeing the serpent on it.

We hear much today of everyone having a right to his opinion. Furthermore, all opinions are supposed to carry equal weight. Anything else is intolerant.
Belshazzar was king of the greatest empire on earth. He felt that his ideas and words carried weight. As far as he was concerned, no power on earth could conquer mighty Babylon and also, no power on earth could touch him. Then he saw the hand writing on the wall and trembled like a leaf before an old Jewish prophet who explained to him that the hand on the wall told Belshazzar that he was weightless. Instead of removing the prophet’s head he, in fear and hoping to win the favor of the old man, promoted him. The day before Daniel would not have been invited into his presence.
This is all told in Daniel 5. In Daniel 6 is the record of King Darius making a decree that anyone worshiping any god or man other than the king would be thrown into a den of lions. Daniel continued to pray to his God as before. He was too heavy to move, whether it was by king or empire. In Milton’s “Paradise Lost” we read of everything in heaven and earth shaking except for the unshakeable throne of God. Daniel lived close to God and His Word and as Belshazzer and now King Darius found, carried tremendous weight. Belshazzar lived far from God. He went out of his way to show his disdain for God by drinking out of the golden cups from God’s temple, with a thousand of his lords. Psalm 12:4 would have fit him well: “Who have said, with our tongues will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us”? But when judgment was past on him he was told “you are weightless and found wanting”.
If God is the ultimate Reality, then it follows that the further one is from Him, the less weight he will have. It is said of the unbelievers that they are ”like the chaff which the wind drives away” but the believer will experience an “eternal weight of glory”.
Nietszchie, although an atheist made the observation that when a society turns away from God it becomes weightless. Man has no value in himself. Psalm 39:5 reads; “Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity”.
Perhaps a test of where I stand is the people I am attracted to (or away from). We read of Abimelech in Judges 9, that he hired “vain and light persons”.

LIVING WITH GOD

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have God move visibly into your life? He would be there when you did your housework, when you were busy on the computer and be eating with you at the dinner table. After dinner He would join you in the living room. And when you went to work He would go along, when you went shopping, bought a car or anything else you did.
As you think about this, does it not seem a if it would be a little much? As we would say; “Too much of a good thing”. Would it be a life with no chance to relax? Sort of living under constant tension. Would there be somewhat of a sigh of relief when He finally left? And we would pray that blessing on another family.
We need to see this was how the twelve apostles lived for three years. And to a lesser extent the women who followed Him. How did they find this to be? Was there a sigh of relief when that was over? We must remember that they were not spiritual supermen. Peter was loud and impetuous; one was a zealot who lived to overthrow Rome; James and John wished to call fire down and destroy an entire village; Matthew was a tax collector who loved money and one (Judas) was a thief.
We find the answer in the four gospels. In John 20:4 we read; “So they ran both together: and the other disciple did out run Peter, and came first to the sepulchre”. In this verse we see how quickly they ran to see if the body had been disturbed. In John 20:11 we are told “Mary stood without at the sepulcher weeping”. Jesus, coming up to the two on the road to Emmaus asked why they were looking so sad. It does not seem that they found it restricting to live with God. How could it be that so badly wanted Him back? How could they enjoy living with someone who was perfect?
Again we find the answer in the gospels. Remember that at His arrest and trial one betrayed Him, one denied Him and “all forsook Him and fled”. It would be assumed that He would first of all bring this to their attention, and expect some very sincere apologies. I’m sure that’s the least I would have looked for. But what is Jesus attitude? He never mentions it. He tells Mary to go to “My brethren, and say unto them, ‘I go to My Father and your Father’”. When He does meet them, His first Words were: “Peace be unto you”. He was the perfect Man with absolutely no self pity and no accusation. He
truly enjoyed their company. We read something of this in Proverbs 8:31: “My delights were with the sons of men”.
No wonder they missed Him. They had lived with God and found it the most relaxing time they ever had. This is what heaven will be like.