The Glory of God | Exodus 40:32-38
Brian Hedges | March 26, 2023
Let me invite us to turn to Scripture. We’re going to be in Exodus 40 primarily this morning, so turn in your Bibles there—Exodus 40. Today is the final message in this series where we’ve been working through the book of Exodus.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism famously asks the question, “What is the chief end of man?” and answers, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” To glorify God; to live for the glory of God and to enjoy him forever.
We’ve sung this morning about the glory of God, about gazing on the beauty of the glory of God. His glory is so beautiful. But what does it mean when we talk about the glory of God and we talk about living for the glory of God and that our chief purpose in life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever? What does that mean?
The glory of God often in Scripture represents the presence of God, as God’s presence is with his people and they have some kind of vision or sense of his glory. But chiefly the word “glory” carries the idea of weightiness, of worth, of value. When we talk about living for the glory of God it means that we are living to show how valuable God is to us; to live for his honor and to show his worth in our hearts and in our lives.
I think today’s message will help us answer the question, “What does it mean to live for the glory of God?” This passage is all about the glory of the Lord. It is the climax of the book of Exodus in Exodus 40.
Let me remind you of where we’ve been. Exodus is the story of redemption in the Old Testament. If you’d asked any Old Testament believer if they had been redeemed they would have said yes, and if you’d asked them when they would have pointed you back to their redemption from Egypt, when God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt through the blood of a Passover lamb. Then he brought them to his holy mountain, he gave them his law, and then he dwelt among them in his tabernacle.
We’ve said in this series that Exodus shows us first the God who delivers and then the God who dwells. Those are really the twin themes of this wonderful book.
You may remember if you were here a few weeks ago that we looked in detail at the tabernacle, the instructions for the tabernacle in Exodus 25-31, and we saw that the tabernacle was really all about a return to the garden of Eden. There are all kinds parallels between the garden of Eden and the tabernacle, and it was about coming back to the presence of God, coming back to the dwelling place of God, where human beings could live in fellowship with their Creator.
Today we come to that moment in Scripture when the tabernacle is actually constructed and the glory of God descends in a cloud and fills the tabernacle, fills this tent. That’s what we’re going to read about this morning in Exodus 40, and I’ll reference some the previous chapters, Exodus 34-39. But let’s begin by reading God’s word in Exodus 40:32. I’m going to read verse 32 through the end of the chapter. It says,
“When they went into the tent of meeting, and when they approached the altar, they washed, as the Lord commanded Moses. And he erected the court around the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the screen of the gate of the court. So Moses finished the work.
“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.”
This is God’s word.
So the glory of the Lord fills the tabernacle, this glory cloud comes down, and this happens when the tabernacle has been completed, when it has been finished, when it has been built.
What does this have to teach us? This may seem to some of you as kind of an obscure and irrelevant passage of Scripture from the Old Testament, but I want to try to draw the connections to the gospel this morning and also show the relevance of this and some of the practical things that this teaches us in our lives. So I have four main points, and then I want to end with just three brief takeaways from this whole series on the book of Exodus, since today’s the last sermon. So the main points this morning are the gifts of God's people, the faithfulness of God's servant, the glory of God's presence, and the certainty of God's guidance.
We see those four things in this passage. Let me just look with you at each one of those briefly.
1. The Gifts of God’s People
The first things we need to note are the gifts of God’s people, or we might call this even the devotion of God’s people. That’s because it involved the people of God contributing of their wealth in order for the tabernacle to be built.
Now, when you look at the book of Exodus it is amazing how much space is taken up with the tabernacle. I’ve only given a little bit of time to that in this series, but we did one sermon on Exodus 25-31 and now coming to the end of this book. But I just want you to see in a chart that the tabernacle takes up a tremendous amount of space in this book. You have the instructions for it given in Exodus 25-31 and then the construction of it, the building of it, in Exodus 35-40. In many ways these two passages mirror one another.
It shows us something important. It shows us that God’s commands are now being fulfilled, that the instructions that God has given are now being put in place. One of the most significant aspects of this is the freewill contributions of the people of God. The tabernacle would not be built unless the people of God actually gave of their wealth in order for this to take place.
In fact, in Exodus 35-36 seven times we read about the contributions of the people of God. That word appears seven times. It probably gives us a sense of the completeness of their giving.
I want to just read one passage to you from Exodus 36:3-7. It shows us something about the heart and the devotion of the people of God as they gave freely to this building project. Exodus 36, beginning in verse 3. It says,
“And they received from Moses all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary. They still kept bringing him freewill offerings every morning, so that all the craftsmen who were doing every sort of task on the sanctuary came, each from the task that he was doing, and said to Moses, ‘The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do.’ So Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp, ‘Let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution for the sanctuary.’ So the people were restrained from bringing, for the material they had was sufficient to do all the work, and more.”
Now, that’s an amazing passage. This had to be the most successful capital campaign in all of history. People were bringing so much that Moses said, “Quit bringing stuff! We can’t take any more.”
What’s going on here? The passage emphasizes—you see this also in chapter 35—that these were freewill offerings. They were voluntary offerings. People were voluntarily, willingly bringing of their wealth to contribute to the tabernacle, and it was so much that there’s an abundance, there’s more than enough, there’s a sufficiency here.
I think this is an indication of something that had happened in their hearts. Do you remember—those of you who were here last week will remember this—do you remember what had just taken place in Exodus 32-34? In Exodus 32 they had sinned a great sin. They had built an idol; they had built the golden calf, they had worshiped the golden calf. It had provoked God’s wrath and God’s judgment and on his people, and it was only through the intercession of Moses, the mediator of the covenant, only through his prayers that the children of Israel were spared and that the covenant was renewed.
I think there must have been such a deep and profound gratitude in the hearts of God’s people when they realized their sin, when they saw how much they had been forgiven, that they could not help themselves in bringing gifts to the Lord as a part of their gratitude, a part of their thankfulness.
Listen, brothers and sisters: a real encounter with God and his grace will always lead to such a heart. It’ll always provoke a generous heart, where we want to devote ourselves to God, where we will want to give ourselves to God and give of our abundance to the Lord.
I read a story a number of years ago from Stephen Olford in his book on giving, and he talks about a Christian businessman who was traveling in Korea, and he noticed a field where a farmer was plowing, but he was struck by the sight. What he saw was an old man who was behind the plow, holding the reins, and not an ox, not a horse, not a donkey who was pulling the plow, but a young man who was pulling the plow.
The businessman commented to the missionary who was his interpreter and said, “I suppose these people must be very poor.” He took a photograph of it.
The missionary replied very quietly, “Yes; those two men happen to be Christians, and when their church was being built they were so eager to give something to it that they sold their ox and they gave their proceeds to the church. So this spring they are pulling the plow themselves.”
The businessman was silent for a few minutes. He said, “That must have been a real sacrifice for these men.”
The missionary said, “They didn’t call it a sacrifice; they rather thought it was fortunate that they had the ox to sell.”
When the Christian businessman went back to his home church in the States he showed his pastor the picture of those men plowing, he doubled his giving, and he said, “I want to do some plow work. Up until now I’ve never given God anything that involved a real sacrifice.”
Now, let me just clarify. Today is not the beginning of a capital campaign, okay? I’m not telling you this so that you’ll give more, but instead to provoke some thought, because I think this is part of what it means to live for the glory of God, is to be so devoted to God that we count it a privilege to use our resources for God’s kingdom and for God’s glory.
We all need to check our hearts. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Our use of money is often an indicator of our spiritual condition. All of us have self-examination to do, and I think what we will see is that our giving does not reflect how deeply we have been touched by God’s grace. The greater we cherish the grace that’s been given to us, the more we should want to give to the Lord’s work.
Living for God’s glory, then, involves devoting ourselves and what we have to God. The gifts of God’s people.
2. The Faithfulness of God’s Servant
Secondly, let’s consider for a moment the faithfulness of God’s servant. When you get to Exodus 39-40 the focus is on Moses’ faithfulness to do all that the Lord commanded. You see it briefly in verses 32-33. It says, “When they went into the tent of meeting, and when they approached the altar, they washed, as the Lord commanded Moses.”
Underline that phrase. If you go back and read Exodus 39-40 and you underline that phrase, you’re going to see that, in addition to some summary statements in the actual narrative of this, it says seven times in chapter 39 that Moses did “as the Lord commanded Moses.” It’s all about the consecration of the priests and of their garments to the Lord. Then seven times in chapter 40, “As the Lord commanded Moses.”
Then when you get into the book of Leviticus and the actual consecration of the priests in Leviticus 8, seven times, “As the Lord commanded Moses.” It’s really clear when you read this that this is something that the author here—and the Holy Spirit behind the author—wants us to see. Moses finished the work of constructing the tabernacle, and he did everything as the Lord had commanded him. He was faithful in his obedience.
There probably are some echoes here of the story of creation, the seven days of creation, and then God finishing his work and blessing it. In Exodus 39:42-43 we read, “According to all that the Lord had commanded Moses, so the people of Israel had done all the work. And Moses saw all the work, and behold, they had done it; as the Lord had commanded, so had they done it. Then Moses blessed them.”
In the same way as God completed the work of creation, he saw all that he had made, and then he blessed the seventh day, he blessed the man and the woman in the garden, he blessed his creation; so there is a blessing now on this tabernacle, which is something of a symbol of a new creation.
It’s highlighting for us the necessity of living in obedience to God’s word. Moses was faithful as the servant of God, faithful in obedience.
Friends, this also is part of what it means to live for God’s glory. It means to live obediently. It means to live faithfully. It means to live under the authority of the word of God.
Think for a moment about your own obedience this morning. Is there anything in your life that you know that our Lord has commanded you to do and you’ve not done it? Is there anything that he asks that you have omitted or neglected? Is there any aspect of obedience that you’ve put off? Is there anything that he has forbidden that you have done anyway? Where is there disobedience in your life? Maybe it’s a sin that needs to be put to death. Maybe it’s getting serious about your prayer life, your devotional life, or some spiritual discipline. Maybe it’s a matter of forgiveness, letting go of resentment or bitterness. Maybe it’s embracing a call to service or some aspect of self-denial or some other sacrifice. You know what God’s word says, but have you obeyed?
One of the keys to living a life that is centered on the glory of God is committing ourselves to obeying him and to living under his word, and this is what Moses does. Moses finished the work. He did everything that God commanded. He completed it. He did as the Lord had commanded him. And so also are we commanded to obey the Lord. Let’s search our hearts for that this morning.
3. The Glory of God’s Presence
It’s only as the people then bring their gifts and then Moses completes the work and actually builds the tabernacle exactly as God had said, it’s only then that the cloud descends. That leads us to point number three, the glory of God’s presence.
You see this in Exodus 40:34-35. “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”
So two times it says, “the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” What is the glory of the Lord? It is his glorious presence. It is God with his people; it is God present with his people. God descends in a cloud. We’ve already seen this cloud in Exodus. This was the pillar of cloud that went before the people in the wilderness when they were led out of Egypt (Exodus 12). This is the thick cloud that descended on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 and again in Exodus 24, a cloud that covered the mountain, so that the glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai. It is the Lord descending in a cloud and proclaiming his name in Exodus 34, as we saw last week, when God came and he renewed the covenant with Israel, even though they had broken it, and he declared himself a God full of mercy and steadfast love and faithfulness for his people.
This same glory cloud now descends on the tabernacle and fills this tent. But there’s something mysterious here. You see it in verse 35. It says in verse 35 that “Moses was not able to enter the tent . . . because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”
This is really curious, because Moses has been on the mountain, where he’s seen the glory of God; Moses has been there, hidden in the rock, when the cloud descended and God passed by; but now he cannot even enter into the tabernacle. Why is this?
The text itself doesn’t say, some of the scholars say that this leads directly to the opening words of the next book, which is Leviticus. It’s the one book where most of us check out in our Bible reading plans. You don’t get all the way through Leviticus. But listen, Leviticus is important. Leviticus answers the problem that is raised here: why can’t Moses and the people of God enter into the tabernacle? The reason is because of the holy presence of God, and something more is needed.
In Leviticus 1:1-2 this is what we read. These are the very first words of the book of Leviticus. “The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting—” this is where God dwells, the tabernacle “—saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord . . .” and then what follows is chapter after chapter after chapter of details about the whole sacrificial system.
What this is teaching us is that God cannot dwell with his people—the holy, glorious God cannot dwell with his people—unless there is atonement, unless there is sacrifice, unless there is covering for their sin. This is the only way that we can live as a people of God with God dwelling among us.
There’s a wonderful hymn—I love this—by Thomas Binney. This isn’t really sung today. I heard this first from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, actually, quoting it in a sermon, but it struck me, it grabbed my heart. The imagery here is so profound as it talks about God’s glory and God’s holiness, the eternal light of God’s presence. I want to read these words to you—you can see them on the screen—and I want you to hear the tension that is raised and then the resolution of the tension in these five stanzas. Binney says,
Eternal Light! Eternal Light!
How pure the soul must be
When, placed within Thy searching sight,
It shrinks not, but with calm delight
Can live and look on Thee.
How pure someone has to be to be able to look on the eternal light of God’s glory! In verse 2 he says,
The spirits that surround Thy throne
May bear the burning bliss;
But that is surely theirs alone,
Since they have never, never known
A fallen world like this.
Then he asks a question. He’s personalizing this in verse 3.
Oh, how shall I, whose native sphere
Is dark, whose mind is dim,
Before th’ Ineffable appear,
And on my natural spirit bear
The uncreated beam?
“How can I, a creature of darkness, bear the light?” That’s what he’s asking. “How can I be in the presence of a holy God?” Verse 4 gives the answer. He says,
There is a way for man to rise
To Thee, sublime Abode;
An Offering and a Sacrifice,
A Holy Spirit’s energies,
An Advocate with God:
These, these prepare us for the sight
Of holiness above;
The sons of ignorance and night
May dwell in the eternal Light,
Through the eternal Love.
Where do we see that eternal love? Israel saw it in the sacrifices, and we see it at the cross, where the supreme sacrifice is made, where God in eternal love for his sinful people sends his Son, and the Son in eternal love for us gives his life an atoning sacrifice once and for all complete, to completely wash away our sins.
What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
This is absolutely crucial if we are to gaze on the beauty of God’s glory. This is part of what it means to live for God’s glory. It means to live in conscious, constant dependence on Jesus and his priestly sacrifice for us, to give us a relationship with God, to trust in him. That means you’re not trusting in yourself, you’re not trusting in how good you are, you’re not trusting in your morality, you’re not trusting in your law-keeping, you’re not trusting in your church attendance, you’re not trusting in your baptism—you’re not trusting in any of these things that you’ve done, but you’re trusting in what Christ has done for you; his sacrifice, his blood, his cross alone. It’s only through the eternal love that we can dwell in the eternal light, the glory of God’s presence.
4. The Certainty of God’s Guidance
There’s one more feature of this text for us to notice here in Exodus 40, and this is the fourth point, the certainty of God’s guidance. You see it in verses 36-38.
What’s interesting here is how Exodus 40 and the whole book of Exodus actually ends with an emphasis on the mobile nature of this glory cloud and the tabernacle. It shows how God would then direct his people by his presence. Look at verse 36.
“Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.”
The very last word of this book is “journeys.” It reminds us that we are a pilgrim people; that is, we are a people who are on a pilgrimage, we are on a journey directed, guided, led by God himself. The old spiritual says,
This world is not my home,
I’m just a-passin’ through.
I think one of the things that living a life devoted to the glory of God means is that we recognize that we don’t belong to this world, not as it is. Someday it will be renewed, a new heavens and new earth, and it will be our home. But right now we don’t belong. We’re a pilgrim people. We’re searching for a city whose builder and maker is God. We’re on a pilgrimage, we’re on a journey. We have found that this world cannot satisfy our deepest heart longings. We’re looking for something better.
We’re like pilgrims in that great Christian allegory—I just reread it—John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. We’re like Christian and faithful and hopeful, and we’re on this journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. We face many dangers along the way, but together we lock arms and we walk as God guides us and as he leads us.
This also is what it means to live for God’s glory: it is to follow his guidance in our lives as we make our pilgrimage from this world to the world to come. Just keep our eyes always set on him, and we follow his direction, his guidance in our lives.
We’ve seen this morning the presence of God’s glory filling the tabernacle, as this tabernacle was completed through Moses’ faithfulness, enlisting the gifts and devotion of God’s people, and how this then would lead them. This would be God’s way of leading them through the wilderness.
Of course, all of this points to the greater realities that will come later in God’s word. The tabernacle not only looks back to Eden, it looks forward to the temple. If you read 1 Kings 8, where Solomon builds the temple, once again you will see the glory of the Lord coming down and filling the temple.
But it looks beyond that, actually, to the work of Christ our mediator, who is himself the replacement of the temple and who now is building a new temple for the glory of the Lord.
I want to end by pointing you to a couple of New Testament passages, just drawing the connections, and then just give you briefly three takeaways from this study in Exodus. There are two passages I want to read. The first one is from Hebrews 3:1-6. You can follow along on the screen. The writer says,
“Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house.”
When he’s talking about God’s house he’s talking about the tabernacle. Notice how he draws out the contrast in verse 3.
“For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
You see what the writer’s doing there? He’s telling us that while Moses was faithful in all of his obedience to construct the tabernacle, there’s someone who’s even more faithful than Moses, and that someone is Jesus. Moses was a servant; Jesus was a son. Jesus is worthy of even greater glory.
Listen, while obedience is always important in the Christian life, the gospel tells us that it’s not our obedience that counts with God, it is Christ’s obedience that counts with God. Sometimes we sing the song,
I will glory in my Redeemer;
My life he bought, my love he owns.
I have no longings for another;
I’m satisfied in him alone.
I will glory in my Redeemer,
His faithfulness my standing place.
Though foes are mighty and rush upon me,
My feet are firm, held by his grace.
Can you say that this morning? His faithfulness, his obedience is my standing-place. I’m trusting in him.
So Hebrews exhorts us to “hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” What is that? It is our confidence in Christ. It’s our boasting and our hope in him. It’s not boasting in our own obedience, it’s boasting in his obedience. His faithfulness is our standing-place. If we do that, we are his house, we are his temple.
The second passage is Ephesians 2. I already read in our assurance this morning this prayer of Ephesians 3, and it’s a prayer that we would be filled with all the fullness of God. But I think for us to really understand that prayer you have to read it in light of Ephesians 2:19-22. Listen to what Paul says there. He says,
“So you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
Paul here is telling us that we are the temple, that God dwells in us by his Spirit. It’s in light of that reality that we pray, “Oh God, would you fill us with all the fullness of God?” God’s glory dwells in us as he fills us.
This has been called the “Emmanuel principle,” God dwelling with his people. In the Old Testament he dwelt with them in the tabernacle and the temple; in the incarnation Jesus himself became God with us, as the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, literally tabernacled among us, so that we have seen his glory. Now, following Jesus’ ascension and the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, we are God’s temple, as God dwells with us through his Holy Spirit. Friends, the day is coming when the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, when we will be in that new city, that new heavens and that new earth, where there will be no temple, for the Lord himself is the temple—the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. This is our hope, God dwelling with us.
What should our takeaway be as we finish this wonderful book of Exodus, as we conclude this message today? Let me just give you three brief applications. I promise this is just three minutes, then I’m done.
(1) Here’s the first thing to take away: ask yourself, “Whom do I serve?” The book of Exodus is all about whom you serve. At the beginning of the book, the children of Israel are serving Pharaoh; they’re slaves in Egypt. It’s a picture of our bondage to sin, it’s a picture of idolatry, it’s a picture of slavery to all that is evil. God redeems them, so that by the end of the book they’re serving God. That’s the same word; they’re serving God.
You remember that Bob Dylan song?
You gotta serve somebody.
It may be the devil
Or it may be the Lord,
But you gotta serve somebody.
Every single one of us is serving somebody. We’re serving something. There’s something in our life that controls us, that directs us, that we give our love, our affection, our time, our attention to. Whom do you serve? Are you serving some idol, enslaved to some addiction, serving some base desire? What have you made the chief end of your life? Whom do you serve?
(2) Second application: let us learn to see the Story in the stories of the Bible.
One of the reasons why we do this at Redeemer Church—take an Old Testament book and teach through it and try to show the connections to the gospel and to Jesus and to the New Testament—is to teach you how to read your Bible. The Bible is not just a book of wise principles to apply, it is a book of stories that all point us to the greater story, the story of redemption.
As you read the stories of the Old Testament, I want you to see the big Story, the story of a God who in love for his sinful people came down to redeem them so that he could dwell among them. We’ve seen those connections again and again in this wonderful book. Let’s learn how to read the Bible like this, to see Jesus as the hero of the story.
(3) The final application is simply this: make God central in your life. God was literally at the center of Israel’s life. When they pitched the tabernacle, the tribes of Israel were symmetrically camped around the tabernacle, so that right in the middle of the people was the tabernacle and the presence of God dwelling with them. They were God-centered. It’s teaching us something: that we also are to be God-centered, where God dwells in us and our whole life is built around him.
Think of a wheel with a hub and many spokes and the rim of the wheel, and ask yourself, “What’s at the hub?” What’s at the center of your life? All the spokes of family and work and money and time—all of those things center around something. What do they center around? What’s at the center?
The only life that is really complete and full and satisfying is the life where God himself is at the center. Make God the center of your life and live for the glory of God. Let’s pray together.
Gracious, merciful God, thank you this morning that you in love and in grace and mercy have sought to dwell among your people. You’ve done that supremely through your Son, Jesus Christ, who came among us as one of us, became incarnate, taking humanity, living then the life we should have lived, dying the death that we should have died, and rising in triumphant victory over all of our enemies, sin and death and the grave. Lord, how we thank you. This is grace that we do not deserve, but it is grace that we cherish, it is grace that changes our hearts and that brings us into relationship with you. May we learn to live in the light of that grace and may we center our lives around you and your glory.
We ask you, Lord, to search us in these moments as we prepare our hearts for the Lord’s table. Help us to see where our own obedience is incomplete. May we trust in Christ’s complete obedience for us and then by your Spirit may we repent of our sins and resolve to live in new obedience to you. Lord, we humble ourselves before you. We need you. We need your grace, we need your presence with us. We want you to dwell in our hearts. So we ask for that reality this morning. So we ask you to draw near to us in these moments as we seek your face. We pray that you would be glorified. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
