Quarter 4: week 3: God's presence fill the tabernacle

Exodus 33-34, 40

Some Big Idea thoughts from this lesson:

God has a very special relationship with Moses BUT even with that special relationship Moses was not allowed or able to see God's face.   

The smoke reminded the Israelites that God was with them.  God wanted to remind Moses and the people that He was with them. 

What made Moses and the Israelites different than the other nations?  Exodus 33:16b "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?”  God with them is what made them distinct. 

I have been talking with the 1st through 5th graders about the connection between magnification and glorification.

Here is an explanation of this principle by John Piper (Click HERE for the whole sermon)

How Do You Magnify the Lord?

Well, notice in Psalm 40:16 that those who love the salvation of God have a God-appointed mission: they are to say continually, "The Lord be magnified!" Now "magnify" is an ambiguous word. You can magnify with microscopes and you can magnify with telescopes. If you magnify with microscopes, you try to make something small look large. But if you magnify with a telescope, you try to make something large stop looking small and look more like it really is... 

Now the point is this. The night sky is full of wonders. Just like God is full of wonders. Look at Psalm 40:5:  "Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts toward us; there is none to compare with Thee; if I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count." 

But the problem is that in the night sky the wonders of the heavens do not appear as they really are. They seem small and not very bright or awesome. So we must magnify them. That's what a telescope is for. Not to make them look bigger than they are. But to help us, in our weakness, to stop thinking of them as small and show us how great they really are.