Introduction
Open your bibles, if you would, to the 33rd chapter of the book of Exodus. God willing, I am going to do my best to get us from Exodus around to Christmas. The two principal characteristics of God that will make this connection for us are his mercy and his glory. It will also help us to remember once again the purpose for the incarnation, that is God becoming man. There are perhaps many reasons we could come up with as to why God indwelt flesh and for the sake of time I won’t trace those lines. I will say that the bible points to two primary reasons. The manifestation of his glory in and to creation, and his mercy in saving us from himself.
These are the fundamental reasons why God became man, to show us his glory for his glory, and in his mercy to save us from himself. We will explore that a little more as we go from Exodus to Christmas but I want you to begin to think about how Moses and his experience with God on Mount Sinai points us to or reveals to us Christ. As we begin and read this section in Exodus, start to look for the connections to Christ. The books of Moses, the law, the prophets, and the Psalms were all written about Christ right? So let us, this morning, reach all the way back to Sinai and the giving of the law where we hear Moses ask a question that God will not fully and finally answer until one evening centuries later in the little town of Bethlehem. The question: “Please, show me your glory”
Stand with me once more as we read
Exodus 33:17–23ESV
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.” Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
Moses in God’s Presence
I will set the stage as we begin by getting you up to speed on where we are with this story. Moses has already been on the Mountain previously and received from God the Ten Commandments a first time. You know the story, while he was up there the Israelites became very agitated at the delay and decided that they wanted Aaron to make for them gods to worship and lead them since obviously Moses and his God had abandoned them. So Aaron did what they asked and made them a golden cafe and built an altar around it and they worshipped this idol as their god. When Moses returns from Sinai with the tablets of the law and sees what the people have done, in his anger he throws down the tablets and breaks them.
What follows is a lot of blaming, a lot of fear and anger and a plague from the Lord thrown in for good measure. I don’t have time this morning to spend too much on that but all of it leads to Moses back on Mount Sinai to receive from the Lord a second set of tablets that contain the law (10 Commandments). So, Moses is interceding on behalf of the people not only that God would reveal to him his glory but that he would show him his ways and plans for his people and that his presence would go with them wherever they went as a sure sign that they had found favor in his sight. If your ears are tuned to the gospel this morning you can already hear some of the themes beginning to take shape.
The first major statement by God to note here is that he tells Moses again that he knows him by name. Seems like an odd thing for God to throw in there right? On the surface yes but what have we talked about many times with respect to a name. A name is an identity, representative of who you are not just what you are called. So what God is really saying here is not that he knows Moses’s name but that he knows who Moses is. He knows him, better than he could ever even know himself. Put a pin in this thought because I am going to bring it back up again a little later.
The reply from Moses is, as we have already said, “Please, show me your glory.” Moses is desiring to know God in perhaps a similar way that he is known by God. This is a very interesting and a very bold request, especially coming from Moses who has already seen a hint of God’s glory in the burning bush. In Exodus, Chapter 3, God shows up to Moses in a bush that is burning but not being consumed by the fire and this is so terrifying for Moses that it is recorded that he hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The presence of God struck such fear in him that he had to hide his face but now he asks God, “Please show me your glory.”
What are you asking here Moses? Do you really desire to see the unveiled glory of God face to face? As God tells Moses, such a request is not possible because no one could live through such an experience. Humanity, in its fallen state has no hope of looking upon the pure glory of God anymore than the darkness of a room has any hope of withstanding the light when you flip the switch. There is an incompatibility of nature such that one dispels the other. We get a sense of this when Isaiah beholds the glory of the Lord sitting on his throne in
, and his response is “Woe is me, I am undone.” The revelation of God’s glory breaks him apart, he is lost, unclean, helpless.
So we see then that this request from Moses is honestly as bold an ask as any can make from God. Could there be anything more terrifying for a person than to behold the pure glory of God. I hope you know this morning that apart from his saving grace nothing would cripple you in fear more than the glory of God. But because he is a gracious God, who is full of mercy, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness; Because he does forgive iniquity and transgression and sin while at the same time will by no means simply clear the guilty he has made a way to both reveal his goodness, his glory, to man and at the same time maintain his justice. This is summed up in his declaration to Moses, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” We know that this statement by God is used by the Apostle Paul in
to defend any charge of injustice that could be levied against God. God is gracious and merciful and compassionate and at the same time he is just. If he was justice lacking compassion he would have simply revealed himself to Moses just as Moses asked at which time that would have been the end of Moses story. But because he is justice filled with mercy he revealed himself to Moses in a veiled way so as to show Moses his goodness but also saving Moses from himself. This is where Moses’s story connects to Christ.
Christ is God & Cleft
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.
Our first week in Hebrews we read, “Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” In many ways, perhaps in all ways, speaking to man is the revelation of his glory so we certainly can say Christ is not only the final word of God but he is the pinnacle of the revelation of his glory. We might even say that Christ is the radiance of the glory of God. Christ is the full and final answer to Moses’s question, “please show me your glory.” In Christ, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, including the full revelation of his glory.
As incredible as that truth is, it’s actually much deeper and more profound than the reality that Christ is the full revelation of the glory of God. If it was just that, then Mary, Joseph and everyone else who looked up the face of Christ would have perished for who can look upon the face of God and live? Who can look at pure glory and pure goodness and not be undone? Thanks be to God in his mercy and compassion, Christ was not only the revelation of God’s glory he was and is also the cleft of the rock.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate Deity!
Pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus our Immanuel.
In the mercy of God he shows us his glory but he veils it in flesh. In Christ, he gives us both a protection from his glory and the means by which we may behold his glory.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Ultimately what Christ came to save us from and protect us from was not some unseen enemy, nor was it even from ourselves. What we need protection from is God himself. On the mountain, the greatest threat to Moses was not an angry mob of hungry Israelites, or bloodthirsty Canaanites, or even the cunning deception of the enemy. No, the greatest threat to Moses, and what is still the greatest threat to every soul on Earth, is being undone by the glory of God. There is no terror so great, nor mercy so sweet as the revelation of the glory of God.
This is why Christ came to us. To be to us both the revelation of God, his righteousness, and our mediator and protection from God. This is why we can say he was both the just and justifier. Why he was both God and man. Why he is the Lion and the Lamb.
Many times throughout scripture, we see the picture of God the Father or the foreshadowing of Christ as our rock.
“The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” or
“The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.”
These are pictures of God and Christ as our foundation, our fortress, our refuge and our shield. When we picture Christ as our rock, perhaps we imagine being sheltered under a raging thunderstorm, that is the storms of life. Maybe we picture him as our rock that deflects the arrows of the enemy or the stability in an otherwise shifting landscape. Those things are certainly all true but let us not forget the picture given to us here in Exodus, the rocks shelters us from the unveiled glory of God. This child in a manger, this veiled revelation of the glory of God is our protection against the justice of God. To be hidden in Christ is to be protected by his glory, from his glory.
Face to Face with God
I have had the four-fold pleasure of holding my new born children in my arms shortly after their birth. It’s always a bit of a surreal feeling isn’t it? There is so much stress and anticipation and then the pain and the drama of labor. Months are spent trying to figure out how you are going to provide for this child, worrying about all the things. But then you hold them and look into that sweet, innocent face and whether or not you don’t care anymore, or maybe it doesn’t matter anymore but at least for a moment those thoughts are wholly replaced by the joy this little bundle of pure love and innocence.
The first time man beheld the face of God, when God fully honored the request, “Please show me your glory”, albeit veiled in flesh, it was not some grand scene with thunder and lightning on a mountain, rather it was God’s intent to reveal his face first as an infant child. How fitting is it then that the one who offers us eternal refuge, the one who frees us from our doubts, who relieves our anxieties and fears, the one who shows us God’s glory, and brings us unspeakable joy, is first given in a humble bundle of pure love and innocence.
This tell us so much about the character of God doesn’t it? Consider again when he shows himself to Moses how God places him in a cleft of the rock and shields him with his hand. This is tender, thoughtful and personal. Then when he shows himself to mankind in the incarnation, as an infant, we see his innocence and his humility. What kind of God is this who is so full of humility and tender mercy that the fullness of his glory can be seen in a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger? As though the God who receives eternal praise from the innumerable stars has any reason to be humble. Could Moses have ever imagined, having seen the justice and judgement of God, that the revelation of his glory would also look like a baby?
The Christ child grew up though, right? he didn’t stay an infant but the same reality holds that when the world saw Christ the world was looking at the face of God.
“Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” Phillip essentially asks the same question that Moses asks, “show us the father”. To which Christ replies, you have seen me Phillip, you have looked at my face, you have seen the father. How can Phillip ask to see the Father as though Christ himself is not the full revelation of the glory of the Father. Phillip was standing face to face with God.
I mentioned at the beginning to put a pin in the reality that God says he knows Moses, better than even Moses knows himself. This too connects with the New Testament and with the glory of this gospel that we believe and proclaim.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” The glorious news of the gospel is that the glory of God knows us by name. That is, he fully knows us and has always fully known us. Because of the revelation of the glory of God in Christ, we can be assured that we will one day know him as he knows us. That we will behold the fullness of his face in all his glory and will be fully transformed into his likeness. His pure love, humility, goodness, kindness, compassion, and mercy. These will all be ours to share with him.
2 Corinthians 3:12–18ESV
Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
This is the fullness of why Christ came then. In his love and mercy to show us the glory of God, by saving us from the glory of God, that we may become partakers of the glory of God. To that may we all plead with Moses, “Please, show me your glory.”
Conclusion
There are a few points of application that I want to draw out here that are not only applicable during the Christmas season, but should carry us through all year. Reflection of the glory of God must bring us into thanksgiving that in Christ God saves us from himself. We belittle the glory of God when we downplay the fact that without the incarnation and atonement offered to us in Christ we would never and could never see God. Not only that, without Christ the glory of God would have broken us in our sin. God’s glory demanded justice, and Christ stood in our place so that for us, God’s glory was sweet mercy. George Herbert says it best in his poem The Agony,
Who knows not Love, let him assay, And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike Did set again abroach; then let him say If ever he did taste the like. Love is that liquor sweet and most divine, Which my God tastes as blood; but I, as wine.
Oh, that we would be thankful that Christ tasted the bitter that we might know the sweet.
The Glory of God calls us to worship him and to give our lives to him who gave his life for ours. God stepped into flesh to save you, to rescue you from death. He surrendered his whole life on Earth to fulfill all righteousness in order that he may give it to you. He died a brutal death and bore the fullness of the wrath of God so that you would not have to. Surely it is not too much to ask of us our worship and our service to him. It should be our highest privilege to give ourselves to this glory.
The Glory of God calls us to the same humility by which he came to us. He did not come as a king though he is the King of kings. He did not come as one who demanded attention nor did he come as a celebrity as though he was someone special.
“who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,”
Church, if we can be a people who are defined by our gratitude for what Christ has done for us and steeped in humility, considering others more significant than ourselves. If we can be a worshipping people who gives ourselves to the service of our savior, then we will surely be both partakers of and unveiled reflections of the glory of our great God. By the grace of God, and in his power alone, may this be us, church. May we live in the light of the God who has truly shown us his glory. Amen.
The Wicket Gate 
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