At this point I would like to say to all the saints, especially the young people, that to serve the Lord is not simply a matter of a way or a method. Serving the Lord is something very personal. If we would serve the Lord, we must be a person who has an intimate relationship with Him. Otherwise, we may be good Christian workers, but we cannot be those who are able to touch God’s heart.
Moses was a man greatly used by God. In previous messages we have seen how Moses was raised up by God and trained by Him. Moses was raised up by God during the first forty years of his life, and he was trained by Him during the next forty years. When Moses was eighty years old, God came in to call him and use him. God gave him a vision of a burning bush (3:2). Although the fire was burning in the bush, the bush was not consumed. Through this vision God seemed to be saying, “Moses, you are like this bush. I intend to use you, but I shall not burn you. I shall not consume you. I shall burn in you according to what I am.”
When Moses was called by God in Exodus 3, there was not yet any intimacy between him and God. Moses was new to God. Their relationship can be compared to that between an employer and a new employee. God, the employer, spoke to Moses, the new employee, and asked him if he would accept the job. We know that eventually Moses was convinced to take the “job” the Lord offered him.
The period of time from the day Moses was called in Exodus 3 to the conversation between him and God in Exodus 32 and 33 was probably not more than two years. During the course of this period of time, Moses became intimate with God.
According to the record in Exodus, Moses twice spent a period of forty days alone with God on the mountaintop. During the first forty days, God gave Moses the design of the tabernacle and the furniture. This is described in six chapters, Exodus 25 through 30. Do you think that the content of these six chapters occupied God for those entire forty days? This certainly would not seem to be the case. What were God and Moses doing all that time? They may have been enjoying intimate fellowship.
The children of Israel may have tried to excuse themselves for making the golden calf by the fact that Moses was gone so long. Some of them may have said, “We have not heard from the Lord or from Moses for a long time. They have left us here at the foot of the mountain, and we have been here for nearly forty days. The Lord and Moses brought us out of Egypt and led us to this place. But we don’t know what has happened to them. We can’t see God, and we can’t see Moses either. Therefore, we must do something for ourselves.” God, of course, did not give the people a chance to excuse themselves. Likewise, Moses did not allow the children of Israel, especially Aaron, to make an excuse. If Aaron and the children of Israel had been allowed to excuse themselves, they probably would have blamed Moses for being gone too long. They may have said, “Moses, where have you been? You have been gone too long. Does the Lord intend to have us for His people, or does He plan to have only you? It seems to us that you and God have forgotten about us.”
We may say that the Lord and Moses stayed together so long because they were intimate with each other. They had a happy time together on the mountaintop. But that pleasant time was a time of testing to the children of Israel. Later God asked Moses to go up to the mountain again, and they were together for another forty days. Moses and God simply liked to stay together. They loved each other, and they wanted to be together.