Face to Face,
As With a Friend

This verse describes the most remarkable relationship in the Old Testament: the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. Let's recall the context of when this was happening. The calf had just been destroyed, the camp was still under discipline, and Israel's future hung in the balance. Right in the middle of that collapse, God was meeting one man the way friends meet.

Verses 7 through 11 show us how this friendship was carried on. Moses pitched a tent outside the camp and called it the tent of meeting, and whenever he entered it, the pillar of cloud would come down and stand at the entrance while the LORD spoke with him. The friendship had a set meeting place and a habitual form. It was not sustained on occasional mountaintop encounters alone; it was rather forged in a tent that Moses kept returning to, day after day.

We can also hear what this friendship sounded like, because the surrounding chapters preserve the conversations. Moses reasons with God, asks Him questions, reminds Him of His promises, and even leaves a sentence unfinished when his feelings outpaced his words. None of it reads like a subject addressing a distant king. It reads like two parties who know each other working through a crisis together. Such boldness came from the forty days Moses spent in God's presence, which had revealed to him what was in God's heart.

But the most surprising part is that this very standing is now offered to every believer. On the night before the cross, Jesus told His disciples, "I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15). Friendship with God is no longer one man's exception but available to whoever would believe. Friendship with God also grows with the same characteristics it had at the tent with Moses, through an honest, unhurried, and regular time with God.

There is a small detail at the end of the verse worth examining. When Moses would return to the camp, his young assistant Joshua would not leave the tent. Joshua had watched the friendship up close, and he wanted to stay where it happened. Friendship with God tends to spread by nearness. The people around us notice whether our time with God looks like duty or like friendship, and they linger near what's real and genuine.

Today's question is one of lingering: when did I last stay with God after I had finished asking?