Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2811
“If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.” Exodus 33:15.
THIS is a prayer which has been used hundreds of times and which is found quite in place on many different occasions. Moses was in the wilderness when he uttered it. He was about to lead the people into Canaan, the land that flowed with milk and honey, yet he felt that he would rather continue to endure the inconveniences of the tent and of the wilderness, with the Presence of his God, than enjoy the rest and the fatness of the land of promise without Him. God had made the desert to become to Moses like a garden, but he felt that all the gardens of Canaan and the vineyards of Eshcol would be as nothing to him if God should withdraw His Presence.
Throughout the history of the Church of Christ, there have been particular places where men of God have been compelled to fall on their knees and pray this prayer of Moses. I can conceive of our Puritan forefathers, when they first left this spot, Southwark, to seek in another land the liberty which they could not find here, bowing their knees before they entered their little vessel, “The Mayflower,” and crying to God, “If Your Presence go not with us, carry us not up hence.” I can imagine John Bunyan—after he had been 12 years in prison and had become almost habituated to it, before he crossed the threshold, when the time of his imprisonment was over—looking upon the cold, damp walls of the prison on Bedford Bridge—and saying to his Lord, “If Your Presence go not with me, carry me not up hence.” The immortal dreamer would rather abide in his “den” with his God than go forth into the world and leave his Master behind him!
Many a time, dear Friends, in your experience and mine, we also have had to feel the force of such a prayer as this. When, rather more than seven years ago, I left my kind and loving little flock at Waterbeach to come and preside over this great assembly, I could not help crying out to God, from my inmost soul, “If Your Presence go not with me, carry me not up hence.” When you, Beloved, have to pass through any changes in life. When, in God’s good Providence, you are removed from one sphere of service to another, I think that you, also, may look up to God in prayer and say, “If Your Presence go not with us, carry us not up hence.” And at last, when you and I shall be about to die, when the hour shall approach for us to leave this world behind us and to wade through the cold stream of death, what prayer can be more appropriate than this, “If Your Presence go not with us, carry us not up hence”? To go anywhere without our God is terrible—but to die without the Presence of God would be awful beyond expression. To go down into death’s dark river with no kind helper, with no loving voice saying to us, “Fear you not, for I am with you; My rod and My staff shall comfort you,” would be sad, indeed. It would be, indeed, a solemn thing to meet death alone, to have no Presence of God to cheer us in the last dread conflict!
I have thus mentioned various circumstances in which we might pray this prayer and expect a gracious answer to it. But I think, as a church and people, such a text as this is peculiarly appropriate at this time. We are about to leave this place, which has, to many of us, very hallowed associations. When some of our older friends left Carter Lane Chapel, which once stood on the site now occupied by the London Bridge railway, I have no doubt that they felt it to be a very dreadful thing to leave the old place. Yet, perhaps, it was one of the best things that could have occurred to the church— that they were obliged to come out and build a larger structure—although it is built, I suppose, in as bad a place as they could have found by a microscopic survey of this entire metropolis.
There are, doubtless, many who will always cherish great love for this place because here Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth before their eyes, crucified among them. I think all of these will join with us, who are younger, and therefore less subject to pain concerning changes, and we will all unite—despite all the advantages which we hope will follow our entering upon a larger and more public place of worship—despite the fact that three or four times as many will be able to listen to the Word of God as can listen to it here. Despite all this, we will unite in saying to our Lord, “‘If Your Presence go not with us, carry us not up hence.’ Here let us abide unless You, who are the true Shekinah, will go with us, and still shine forth from between the cherubim.” I feel inclined to stop my sermon and to bow my head and ask you to bow yours, that we may together present this petition to our God. But, as you have already prayed by the mouth of two or three Brothers, I spread it before you and “stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance,” and urge you to plead it in secret, and at your family altars, before your God—“If Your Presence go not with us, carry us not up hence.”