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Exodus 33:12-17 ESV

12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? 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?” 17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

I. THE FAIRNESS OF GOD
A. Israel deserved to be punished but the person really being punished was Moses.
B. God is always just, which doesn’t mean fair & is best seen at the cross where justice was served but it was not fair.

II. THE FUTILITY OF MAN A. Moses complains God isn’t being fair and is setting Moses up to fail. B. Moses and mankind are not just dependent on God, but dead in the water and destitute without God.

III. THE FEAR OF LIVING BY FAITH
A. Our obsession with safe has made living by faith too scary for too many.
B. God does not call people to do things for Him but rather with Him and these things are rarely safe or certain. (Acts 1:4-5)

IV. NEXT STEPS
A. Without Jesus, life is impossible. With Him and through Him, it is only nearly impossible.
B. We are created to see the glory of God and must be willing to do whatever it takes to see it on full display. (Isaiah 43:6-7)