And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.

Exodus 33:2-3

When Moses carried up the people of Israel from Egypt, and they came to the Jordan river, the company of men all chose to disobey God and not enter, rather than to continue on into their promise.  God was angry, and would no longer go forward with them, and told Moses that He Himself would not go with them, but that He would send his angel instead to defeat the enemies.

But Moses was not content with this.  Moses interceded earnestly with the Lord, until finally the Lord said that He would not take His presence, that He would go with them.  They would have His rest.  Moses spoke to the Lord,

And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.

Exodus 33:15

Moses would not settle merely for a demonstration of the Lord’s power, separate from God Himself.  Moses did not find it to be enough, simply to be equipped with the power of God, without His presence.

This is the critical juncture of our age.  The generation before may have been willing to be content with some measure of God’s gifts and power, but not all have had the fullness of His manifest self.  Many of course have had the Lord Himself, but many have grown up in church systems that merely have a form of what used to be, long ago having lost the dynamic interaction of the Lord’s presence.

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

Psalm 137:5

For, if we forget the things of God, if we lose His presence, we are nothing.  Or, worse, if we have grown up in a system of Christianity that bears no mark of His presence, because the generation before us did not have it or teach it or whatever failing there was, then we are a people most to be pitied.

There is no Christianity without the Holy Spirit.  There is no church without God in its midst.  Jesus’ name was Immanuel, “God with Us”, and without God being with us, it is not what His heart wants.

We must not be content with just His angel.  We must never be satisfied merely with the defeat of our enemies, the plunder of their goods, or the occupation of cities we did not build. Whether we had it at one time and lost it, or whether we have never known the sweet presence of the Lord, we must at all cost have it Him alone our churches, and in our daily lives.  We simply must.

There is no point to this life except in His presence.  The wicked seem to flourish, the evil men seem to abound.  Yet, it is in His sanctuary, in His house in the Spirit, that when we are made whole, that we see things made right.

Evil will have its day, and we will have our reward.  But, without His presence, we are nothing at all.

We must never be content with only the angel of His presence.  We must continue to hold fast, and cleave to Him always, regardless of consequences.  For, in Eternity, His opinion is the only one that matters.