Establish my footsteps in Your Word ~ Psalm 119:133

A Lesson on God’s Glory

Exodus 33-34

“Let me know Your ways that I may know You”. Moses had already led the children of Israel out of Egypt and through the Red Sea. He had met God on Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments. And now he was in the midst of a long hard journey to the land of milk and honey. It was here that God’s anger burned against the Israelites. After He had delivered them from their bondage in Egypt, they continued in their obstinate ways, culminating in the construction and worship of the Golden Calf. When God told Moses of His intentions to destroy the nation, Moses intercedes in a most interesting encounter in Exodus 33. It is indeed the amazing climax of an amazing story. God’s indicates that He wasn’t going to go up to the land of milk and honey in their midst (33:3). The people went into mourning. They knew that this wouldn’t go well without God being with them.

Moses, in typical fashion, went directly to the Lord in prayer. He prayed for God’s favor, wanting to know God’s ways in order that he may know God.

Q: What does it really mean to ‘know’ God’s ways?
A: We learn of Him. We study Him. We understand His character.

Q: What does it really mean to ‘know’ God?
A: How do we know anybody? It isn’t some sort of mystery. Spending time with them.

J.I. Packer in his christian classic book, Knowing God (page 37), says it like this:
Knowing God involves:
1). Listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit inteprets it, in application to oneself.
2). Noting God’s nature and character as His Word and works reveal it.
3). Accepting His invitations and doing what He commands.
4). Recognizing and rejoicing in the love that He has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into His fellowship.

(Source: J.I. Packer, Knowing God, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, page 37.)

Then Moses prayed to God, ‘show me Your glory’!
What exactly is God’s glory?

The heavens are declaring the glory of God – Psalm 19:1
Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God – 1 Corinthians 10:31

What does this all mean?
God’s glory is the radiance of his holiness, the radiance of his manifold, infinitely worthy and valuable perfections.

John Piper says: “we want to make God’s glory shine. We want to make it visible. “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). So the goal of my life should be to so live that when people know me well enough, they would say, “God is glorious!”

I believe the glory of God is the going public of his infinite worth. I define the holiness of God as the infinite value of God, the infinite intrinsic worth of God. And when that goes public in creation, the heavens are telling the glory of God, and human beings are manifesting his glory, because we’re created in his image, and we’re trusting his promises so that we make him look gloriously trustworthy.

The public display of the infinite beauty and worth of God is what I mean by “glory,” and I base that partly on Isaiah 6, where the seraphim say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his—” and you would expect them to say “holiness” and they say “glory.” They’re ascribing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his—” and when that goes public in the earth and fills it, you call it “glory.”
(Source: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-gods-glory)

Some of the following verses in Exodus 33 and 34 paint a picture of some of God’s glory. His glory is wrapped up in who He is:
Good and gracious (33:19).
Compassionate (33:19).
Compassionate and gracious (34:6).
Slow to anger (34:6).
Loving (34:7).
Forgiving (34:7).
Just (34:7).

God’s Glory in the Face of Moses
Charles Haddon Spurgeon had much to say about the radiant face of Moses:

Gentleness of nature and lowliness of mind are a fine background on which God may lay the brightness of his glory. Where those things abound, it may be safe for the Lord, not only to put his beauty upon a man, but also to make a record of the fact. Moses wrote this record with a reluctant pen. Since he did not write it out of vanity, let us not read it out of curiosity. He wrote it for our learning: let us learn by it; and may God the Holy Spirit cause our faces to shine to-day, as we read of the shining face of Moses!

God is light, and they that look upon him are enlightened, and reflect light around them. The face of Moses was to God what the moon is to the sun.

The light on the face of Moses was the result of fellowship with God. That fellowship was of no common order. It was special and distinguished. Everybody was away; Aaron, Joshua, and all the rest were far down below, and Moses was alone with God. His intercourse with God was intense, close, and familiar. Protracted fellowship brings a nearness which brief communion cannot attain.

What must be the effect of such whole-hearted, undisturbed fellowship with God? He heard no hum of the camp below; not even the lowing of cattle, or bleating of sheep came up from the foot of the mount. Moses had forgotten the world, save only as he pleaded for the people in an agony of prayer. No interests, either personal or family, disturbed his communion; he was oblivious of everything but Jehovah, the Glorious One, who completely overshadowed him.

Thus, you see, the face of Moses shone because he had long looked upon the face of God.

(Source: https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-shining-of-the-face-of-moses/#flipbook/)

We cannot encounter God in a serious manner and remain unchanged! Moses was changed and the people noticed. What will people notice in us that makes them know we were with God?