If Your Presence
Does Not Go

The verses just before this one record a generous offer with something missing at its center. God told Moses to lead the people up to the land flowing with milk and honey, with an angel going ahead of them, but He Himself would not go, because they were a stiff-necked people (Exodus 33:1–3). Everything God had promised was still on the table, including the land and the protection. The only thing withdrawn was God's own company.

Moses' answer in this verse highlights a line that defines his whole life: "If Your Presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here." "Here" was the wilderness, and "up from here" meant Canaan, the destination his people had longed for since Egypt. Moses was saying that he preferred the desert with God over the promised land without Him.

Verse 16 gives his reason. Moses asks how anyone would ever know that this people had found favor with God, and what would make them different from every other people on the face of the earth, unless God Himself went with them. The distinguishing mark of God's people has never been their numbers, their morality, or how powerful they are. It is God's presence among them that makes them unique, holy, and separated from the rest of the nations. Take that away, and Israel becomes one more nation among many, with nothing to distinguish it from the others.

Today, we could also be in a similar situation to the one Moses faced, receiving the angel and the land without even noticing it. We can have a flourishing career and a growing ministry while God's actual presence is not in it. Blessings without the Blesser are entirely possible, and they can be quite disorienting because nothing looks wrong from the outside.

God's response to Moses is full of comfort. He had already promised, before Moses finished his request, that His Presence would go and that He would give him rest (Exodus 33:14), and afterward He confirmed that He would do this very thing Moses had asked (Exodus 33:17). The New Testament opens by giving this same presence a name, Immanuel, which means "God with us" (Matthew 1:23). Matthew's Gospel ends with His promise to be with His people always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). What Moses insisted on, God delights to give.

Today's question is one of bottom lines: is there any plan in my life right now that I would still pursue even if God's presence were not in it?