Morning Light – Exodus 33

[Exodus 33] Show Me Your Glory. In this chapter, God offers to send the people into the land of promise – but refuses to go with them. The people genuinely repent, and God agrees to accompany them. In the aftermath of these events, Moses desires to see God’s face and experiences, perhaps the most profound revealing of God’s glory in human history up to that moment.

[Exo 33:1-23 KJV] 1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, [and] go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it: 2 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: 3 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. 4 And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments. 5 For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye [are] a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. 6 And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb. 7 And Moses took the Tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, [that] every one which sought the LORD went out unto the Tabernacle of the congregation, which [was] without the camp. 8 And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the Tabernacle, [that] all the people rose up, and stood every man [at] his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the Tabernacle. 9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the Tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood [at] the door of the Tabernacle, and [the LORD] talked with Moses. 10 And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand [at] the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man [in] his tent door. 11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the Tabernacle. 12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. 13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation [is] thy people. 14 And he said, My presence shall go [with thee], and I will give thee rest. 15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not [with me], carry us not up hence. 16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? [is it] not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that [are] upon the face of the earth. 17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. 18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. 19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. 20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. 21 And the LORD said, Behold, [there is] a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: 22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: 23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

The chapter begins seemingly on a very positive note with a promise from God. The Lord gives the green light to Moses and the people to see all His promises come to pass. He will even send an angel before the host of the people to drive out all the nations before them that they might possess the land flowing with milk and honey. At first blush, this must have seemed a great relief to Moses and the people because they were under great stress in the wilderness and experienced mixed results in their journeying with the Lord. On the one hand, there was manna on the ground every morning and water from the rock. On the other hand, if they got out of line, the earth would open up and swallow them, or plague would break out and kill them by the thousands. Surely if God is now saying He will fully make good on the promise, what could be wrong with that? Here is where the fear of the Lord comes in. The problem at hand is not that God is saying no but that He is saying yes – but on His terms and not theirs.

There are times in our lives and places in the word where God makes unqualified faith statements. This touches on the power of God’s word and the open-ended faith statements found throughout scripture.

[Jhn 15:7 KJV] 7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

[Mar 9:23 KJV] 23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things [are] possible to him that believeth.

[Mat 7:7-8 KJV] 7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

When these verses are taught on usually caveats, and exceptions are brought in that don’t exist in the text because leaders don’t want people to think that God will actually and unconditionally answer their prayers. We have to see that by making such sweeping promises as found in the scriptures above and in our chapter, God is putting Himself under tremendous constraint as to what He will and will not do. What does this mean? When God promises you an outcome based upon His word’s promise, He is constraining or limiting Himself as to what He does next. You see, God limits His sovereignty, where answered prayer is concerned. He will not go back on His promises. When it comes to God’s promises, the devil is not in the details. He promises, and if we meet the conditions, there will be an outcome – but be careful how you pray. Let the fear of the Lord in your life be based not on the supposition that God might not answer your prayer – but rather that He will.

In the matter of answered prayer, God will answer as He promised to respond and move in behalf of the Israelites, but there are times that His response comes with unexpected outcomes:

[Pro 10:22 KJV] 22 The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.

[Psa 106:15 KJV] 15 And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.

Remember Peter when He asked a question that there was only one answer to:

[Mat 14:28 KJV] 28 And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.

Be careful how you ask. There is no indication in Mat. 14:28 that Jesus had any plan for Peter to walk on water. Likewise, there may be times that you ask the Lord a question there is only one answer to. For instance, “Lord if you love me … do thus and so…” That is a prayer that God may answer, but you might not like the resulting situation that arises from that prayer. In the case of Moses and the children of Israel, God says yes, He will make good on bringing them into the land of Promise, but He will not go with them.

How would you respond to such an offer? God shows up in your bedroom one night and promises to make all your dreams come true and your vision in life to be fully realized. He promises to commission an angel to accompany you through life and see to it that your enemies will not be able to stand before you and that everything you put your hand to will prosper. There’s only one catch, God Himself will not go with you. What are we driving at? I remember a minister once said he believed God for $2000, and it came in miraculously. He jumped for joy, but in mid-air, the Lord asked him, “are you rejoicing because you got your answer or because you don’t have to believe me for it anymore?”

In vs. 4-8, the people hear these tidings, and they are deeply troubled. In an instant, they see themselves in God’s eyes for the stubborn and stiff-necked people that they are. In contrition, they strip off their ornaments, and Moses moves the Tabernacle from the midst of the camp to a place very far off making it necessary for the people if they desired to seek the counsel of the Lord to do so far without the camp away from the company of their loved ones.

What about you? Are you willing to go outside the camp to hear from God? This incident in Exodus was not lost on the writer of the book of Hebrews when he wrote:

[Heb 13:13 KJV] 13 Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

To go outside the camp or to seek the Lord beyond the crowd is an acknowledgment of the reproach upon God’s people for idolatry and sin. Many people refuse to go to church, but they do it with the assumption of how spiritual they are, not how sinful they are or how far short they have fallen. They have “come out” not in contrition but the self-assured opinion that they are too spiritual for the crowd. This is by far, not the spirit in which the people responded to God in Exodus 33.

The children of Israel have sinned greatly but are to be commended for their heart of repentance. Even though these people all eventually died in the wilderness, they were unwilling to go into the land of promise without God’s presence with them. Moses tells them to take their ornaments off them – this is an act of humility and an act of removing distractions while they sought the Lord.

Moses goes into the Tabernacle to consult the Lord while the people stand at the doors of their tents – waiting. What an impressive sight. They removed all distractions and focused on one thing – hearing from God. They instinctively knew that while God said he wasn’t going with them, there had to be something they could do. They also understood that hearing from God was not about what God would do for them but about what they could do to align themselves with His purposes.

In vs. 9-11, we see that the Lord responds to the people’s repentance by descending in a cloud once more upon the Tabernacle. God is always drawn to repentant hearts. The Israelites attended a Tabernacle made with hands that had just been completed by Bezaleel, but we are the Tabernacle of God of which Moses’ Tabernacle was just a foreshadowing of. The cloud that descended on the Tabernacle is the same cloud on the inside of us that Paul called “Christ in you – the hope of glory …” (Col. 1:26,27) For us, the voice of God in its greater manifestation is an inward voice. This is why Jesus said, “the kingdom is within you…” Luke 17:21. The kingdom that is not in you is not the kingdom, and outward dependencies constitute idolatry, which we must eschew and shun in our lives.

Amid these seemingly harsh rebukes, we see incongruously in v. 11 that even during these events, Moses communed with God face to face. This is what we want. Dreams, visions, etc., are wonderful, but the goal of all human pursuit of God is a face-to-face relationship – not arbitrated or mediated by anything else – direct contact with God’s presence. It is also noted the conduct by which Joshua distinguishes himself at this time. Moses communes with God face to face and then returns to the camp, but Joshua departed not out of the Tabernacle. He had a lesser experience than Moses but seemingly a greater fidelity. This suggests to us what God saw in Joshua’s heart that caused him to choose Joshua to lead the people after Moses’ demise.

In vs. 12-14, Moses pleads with the Lord regarding his assignment to bring the people into the land of promise. God relents his previous refusal to go with the people and agrees to lead them out of the wilderness and go with them in the way. What changed his mind? It was Moses telling God, “show me your way, that I may know you …” This is a picture for us of a man whose character and posture toward the Father changed God’s mind and brought mercy in place of judgment.

In vs. 15-17, after the Lord agrees to go with the people Moses reiterates the sentiment of the entire nation – “If you aren’t going with us into the land of promise – then take us not hence…” They would rather have died in the wilderness than inherited the promises with God’s presence in their midst.

In vs. 18-23, Moses sees his opportunity to press into a more in-depth experience with God. Moses is bound under the law for grace was not yet given. Even as a man sold under sin, he pushes the envelope, the boundaries of what was available in God in the Old Covenant dispensation by asking to see God’s face. The Lord denies Moses’ request because, under the law, no man could see God’s face and live, but He does show Moses from the cleft of the rock something of His glory. The glory that God showed Moses outwardly is the glory that Christ made provision to be on the inside of you. We are not looking for some outward apparition of the supernatural. You have on the inside of you the “Kabod” glory of God that Phil. 4:19 says is the resource from which all your needs are met, and prayers are answered. (He isn’t going to say no to what He has stored up on the inside of you in the first place.).