Prepare for the Presence

A day originally established to remember a man, Saint Valentine, who tradition says, so believed in the importance of marriage that he risked death to perform weddings.

That is he believed in the Biblical view of marriage which is one man united to one woman for life.

The view expressed in:

Hebrews 13:4 (NLT) Give honor to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will surely judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery.

But that Biblical emphasis has been abandoned and Valentine’s Day has been corrupted into a soppy Hollywood romance that bears no resemblance to real life.

A day to buy stuff.

For those who are married, I encourage you to use the day to reaffirm your commitment to marriage.

To those vows you made on your wedding day.

To be faithful for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and in health,

to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

Seek God’s presence in your marriage, in your family.

Which will not be an easy thing.

The devil does not want you to have a sense of God’s presence.

In our marriage, in our families, in our churches, on our jobs and certainly not in the public square.

I think that when he saw Adam and Eve walking and talking with the Lord in the cool of the day, he determined to stop it, the end that communion with God.

So he came to Eve and sabotaged her and Adam’s relation ship with God by tempting them to sin — to think, to speak, to act contrary to God’s commands.

No, the devil doesn’t want us to experience God’s presence and he will do everything he can to prevent it.

Why do you think he does everything he can to distract you from God.

On Sunday mornings why is it such a battle to get to church?

And if you do get here, to have gone through such a battle that keeps you from being able to worship, to pray.

He doesn’t want any of us to experience God’s Presence.

Because he knows that in God’s Presence:

We find salvation

A renewed understanding of God’s call on our lives

Peace, joy, love

In God’s Presence is:

Healing

Provision

comfort

In 2 weeks we will begin 4 days of special services where we will believe God every day for a greater outpouring of His presence, power and anointing.

But don’t doubt that the devil will do everything he can to keep us from God’s Presence.

But if we can learn a few lessons from our text this morning, we will experience all God wants to pour into our lives.

Text: Exodus 19:10-25

We’ve Been Delivered

One of the important things to know is that before we can experience God’s presence, we need to remember we were once slaves to sin.

But by the grace of God, we like ancient Israel, have been delivered.

Deuteronomy 5:15 NASB95

15 ‘You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.

Deuteronomy 15:15 NASB95

15 “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.

We need to remember we have been redeemed by Jesus.

That He died on a cross.

That He shed His blood.

We need to remember and be thankful.

We’ve Been Protected and Provided For

We need to remember that not only have we been delivered by God’s mighty hand, but that God has protected us and provided for us along the way.

God protected Israel from the Pharoah and his army by granting a miraculous deliverance through the Red Sea — the same Red Sea that God used to destroy the Egyptian army.

But that wasn’t the end of God’s watch-care over His people.

He provided food and water all along their way — all throughout their journey.

God has and will do the same thing for us.

Battles Come

Before this encounter with God’s Presence that we read about here in Exodus 19, we read about a battle that Israel fought against Amelek in Ex. 17:8-16.

Before experiencing God’s Presence Israel faced a battle.

The same thing happens to us.

It may not be a physical battle with physical weapons and the shedding of blood — but it is just as real.

I know that I have been fighting a battle lately.

Have you?

I have battled Confusion, Chaos, Fear and Deception

But the devil does not want us to experience God in a spectacular way, so he is doing everything he can to sabotage this service and the special services we have coming up.

He does that by stirring up confusion.

Tonight I hope to dispel some confusion about some things that have occured lately.

But the reality is that there is a constant temptation to be confused about many things in life and in church.

The answer to that confusion is to pray.

To ask God for clarity.

He may not give you every detail — the Holy Spirit may just give you peace in the storm of confusion.

The devil also sabotages a move of God’s presence with a battle against chaos and fear.

We are NOT in a position to receive God’s presence if we are not walking in the Peace of Jesus.

Chaos is opposed to the Peace Jesus gives.

If we walk in fear, we are NOT in a position to receive God’s presence.

For 2 years the devil has been stoking fear.

Fear leads us to want to remove its anxiety from our lives — we are desperate for a solution, a plan for removing fear.

Escape from fear comes from putting our trust in Jesus.

Trusting Him completely.

But the devil wants us to look to an alternative escape from the fear HE, the devil, has put in our lives —

He wants us surrender control to those agencies he controls — to trust the government, political figures, the media, a vaccine, therapeutic medicine, hospitals, doctors anything but God.

But the main release from fear is looking to Jesus.

It seems so many have been doing everything BUT looking to Jesus

And, not least of all, the devil distracts us from a desire for His presence anointing and power with deception.

We live in times when people are easily deceived — in our modern society there are so many ways to do so!

The devil is deceiving people about what is important.

It is important that Jesus is coming again — we need to be ready.

Matthew 24:44–46 (NASB95) “For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will. 45 “Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 “Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.

But the exact date, time and way Jesus is coming lives in the realm of speculation and argument.

The devil wants to deceive us into majoring on the minors.

The major thing is be ready, be obedient to DO what God is telling you right now.

Leave speculations and arguments behind — live an obedient, faithful, trusting life for Jesus right now.

May God help us to fight the battles necessary to enter His Presence and find everything we need!

Final Preparations

Not only do we fight battles to enter God’s Presence, but we must also make preparation to enter God’s Presence.

As I said, chaos hinders our being able to enter God’s Presence.

In Exodus 18, just before our text, chaos threatened Israel.

But God sent Moses, the leader of Israel a man to help him.

Probably Moses didn’t expect to hear wisdom from his maybe 100 year-old father-in-law.

But God sent Jethro to show Moses how he needed to set the nation in order — to get other capable, God-provided leaders in place.

And then, in our text we see further preparations:

Washing clothes

Pursuing holiness in all areas of their lives

Setting boundaries.

But once all the preparation was made we see the Presence of God fall.

I Desire God’s Presence

I pray you desire God’s Presence so much that you will:

Remember with thankfulness that you were delivered from the slavery of sin.

In a few minutes we will partake of the Lord’s Supper together.

By doing so we remember the price that was paid for our freedom.

Let’s not only remember our deliverance from sin, but God’s faithful protection and provision along the way.

And if (when!) the devil rears his ugly head to battle us and keep us from experiencing God’s Presence, let’s stand against him and defeat him in the Name of Jesus and through the Blood of Jesus.

Revelation 12:11 NASB95

11 “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.

Let’s respond to the Holy Spirit who leads us to prepare for His Presence.

Let’s approach the Lord in holiness after having washed our lives with the water of God’s Word.

Respond

Altar call.

The Lord’s Supper

A. As I said a minute ago, one of the ways we we prepare for God’s Presence is by remembering what Jesus has done for us.

By partaking of the Lord’s Supper together.

We partake because His beaten body means healing.

Because His spilled Blood means salvation and victory over the devil.

To remember that He IS coming back again.

B. But we ALSO partake to heed the call to lay our lives before the Holy Spirit to examine and call attention to the TRUE status of our walk with Jesus.

1. How easy to not take time to carefully hear what the Spirit is saying about sins we need repent.

2. Of worldliness creeping into our lives.

D. Before we partake we remember there are dire consequences for partaking in an unworthy manner.

1. 1 Corinthians 11:27–31 (NLT) So anyone who eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup. 29 For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and sick and some have even died. 31 But if we would examine ourselves, we would not be judged by God in this way.

E. I pray that we will put our lives before the Holy Spirit and trust Him

1. NOT our trust our hearts or our emotions.

2. NOT trust our minds with their flawed abilities.

3. But trust God.

F. Prayer of Preparation

G. Communion Elements

1. All invited.

2. Worship Team

3. All come, get elements, stand or sit at the front.

H. Bread

1. John 6:48–51 (NASB95) “I am the bread of life. 49 “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

2. Prayer

i. End prayer with prayer from Seder:

ii. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, who brings forth bread from the earth.

3. Partake

I. Cup

1. John 6:53–56 (NASB95) So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. 54 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. 56 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

2. Prayer

i. End prayer with prayer from Seder:

ii. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.

3. Partake

J. Jesus is coming back

1. 1 Corinthians 11:26 (NASB95) For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.