Show Me Your Glory

If you have a Bible, I invite you to open up with me to Exodus 33:12-23. Many years ago, a magazine went to Los Angelas, California to write an article on Grace Community Church, and this publication went to write on the pastor of this church, a man many of you have likely heard of and if you have heard me preach at any time, you have heard of him, a man by the name of John MacArthur. The magazine went to interview and write about MacArthur but what blew them away was not necessarily John MacArthur, it was the church itself. So, the entire article changed from being about one man, one preacher, and the article was titled, “The Church with Nine Hundred Ministers” because this magazine saw that this church was on fire for the Lord, they were moving and grooving and every member had something that they contributed. Now I believe that we are a church that wants to see revival ongoing and be a church where everyone plays a part in it. I believe that if we want to be a church that is at the front of the pack in terms of how serious we are about the revival and the proclomation of the Gospel, we need to all boldly approach the throne of Grace and ask God to not just do remarkable things but to use us to do remarkable things. By purely human methods, what we are about to embark on is impossible. Revival purely by our own power and our own hands and our own methods is impossible. God has to do it all beginning, middle, and end. But not just revival on a large scale, the salvation of one sinner is an impossible thing for man on his own to accomplish. What are we to ask then? I believe we find that answer in Exodus 33:12-23

Exodus 33:12–23 ESV

Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” 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.”

I want to break down these verses into 4 headings: Moses’ Task, Moses’ Request, God’s Answer and Reveal, and finally Our Task and as we go through these headings, you will hopefully be able to see how they relate to revival.

Moses’ Task

Let’s look at the task that lies before Moses. To understand the gravity of the situation, we need to know what happens just prior to these verses. In Exodus 32, we see one of the greatest blunders of the people of Israel, which is saying something because we see blunder after blunder, throughout the book of Exodus, really the whole Bible, but Exodus 32 is significant. As Moses is up on Mount Sinai receiving the 10 Commandments, the people of Israel are falling into sin. Aaron has been called on by the people of Israel to make gods for them that shall go before them because Moses has been up on the mountain a long time and they are starting to panic. Aaron gathers gold and he makes a golden calf and he proclaims, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” And the people worship this golden calf and they basically take part in this sexual ritual as a type of worship and as this is happening, the Lord tells Moses to go back to the people because they have corrupted themselves and turned away from God. God threatens to pour out His wrath on all of the people and make Moses a great nation but Moses intercedes on their behalf but 3,000 men are killed that day. God’s wrath has been poured out on the people but Moses still has a job to do. Moses is to still lead these people to the Promised Land. In light of what happens in Exodus 32, Moses is feeling the pressure. How is Moses to lead this people? This is what he wants to know in verse 12 as he says, “See, you say to me, Bring up this people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.” Moses is facing an impossible task. The sheer number of the people, the sheer sinfulness of the people, it’s overwhelming and Moses recognizes that it is impossible to do alone. What does he do then? He makes a request.

Moses’ Request

Moses actually makes 3 requests but we will focuse mainly on the third. The first one is found in verse 13 which reads, “Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider that this nation is your people.”

Show me your ways

Moses’ first request is, “God, show me your ways.” This is Moses’ way of saying, “God I don’t want to just know about you, I need to know you intimately. I need you to teach me your ways.” I think he is saying, “God I need you to help me make sense of this.” Moses is likely finding it hard to understand how God is able to threaten the total destruction of the nation in one moment and then offer grace and mercy in the next. Moses was trying to understand how the presence of God would continue to be a good thing when the people continued to fall into such grave sin. Like so many of us, I think Moses just really wants to know what God’s plan is and what He is doing. He wants to know that God is for him and not against him. How then does God respond to that request? Exodus 33:14 “And he said, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’” God is telling Moses, “Moses, I myself am going with you and I myself will give you rest.” God is reminding Moses that He Himself will see to it that He will fulfill His promise. He is reminding Moses of what John Knox would later say, that one man and God always makes the majority. God is reminding Moses of just how much the Lord loves Him by reminding him that his presence will never be removed from him. But Moses wants more and that leads to his second request.

Do not depart from us

Moses says in Exodus 33:15-16 “And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”” Moses’ next request starts to look outwards. Moses is leading a people and not just Himself so He says to the Lord, “God if your presence will not go with me, don’t bring us up from this spot.” Now Moses doesn’t forget that God just said His presence would go with him. Instead, Moses links himself directly with the Us of Israel. He’s saying, “God if you are not for us and with us, there’s no point in us leaving this spot.” He’s saying to God, “Lord, don’t leave us” and God answers by saying that the very thing that Moses has spoken, He will do. Finally we get to the third request which is the boldest and I believe the most pressing of Moses’ three requests.

Show me your glory

Exodus 33:18 we read, “Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’” This is a big request. Notice that Moses isn’t making demands here. He doesn’t command God to show him His glory, but he really puts forth a plea of desperation. In a sense, Moses is going all in because he knows that if he can see the Lord in His glory and live, then he can truly have hope. But hang on, Moses had already seen the glory of God! He had seen the Lord’s glory in the burning bush, he had heard the voice of God declare that the place he was standing was holy ground, he had seen the signs done in Egypt, he had seen God lead the people through the Red Sea, he has continued to see God lead the people with a cloud by day and fire by night, he has seen bread from heaven and water from the rock, he has seen the glory of God as he had previously stood on Mount Sinai and received the Law, in many ways he has already seen the glory of God, so what is he asking? Is he asking for more of the same? No, he’s hungry for more! He wants a greater revelation of God! Moses had tasted and seen that the Lord is good but he was still hungry for more, he was desperate for more! Moses, the man of God, had seen great things of the Lord, but even of those things, he had barely even scratched the surface. In order for Moses to do the task that he was called to do, he needed to know the Lord to an even greater degree. How does this happen? By seeing the glory of the Lord of Hosts! What a request! God’s glory is no small thing! Later in verse 20 says that if man were to see His face and to see the full weight of the glory of God, man would drop dead on the spot. If you were to fly to the sun and stand on the sun’s surface, the brightness and the heat would pale in comparison to the glory of God. If Russia and the U.S. were to unload all 12,000+ of their nuclear warheads directly on top of you, that power would pale in comparison to the power and glory of the Lord God. If the entire weight of the known universe could somehow be placed on top of you, that weight would be nothing in comparison to the fullness of the weight of the glory of God. Isaiah had a vision of the Lord in His temple and the glory of God shown all around him and he cried out in desperation and fell flat on his face. As Christ was being arrested, He says, “I AM He” and this very declaration causes the entire band of soldiers to fall flat on their behinds, John on the Island of Patmos had received the revelation and had seen the glorified Christ and John fell down like a dead man. If the glorified Christ were to walk into this room at this very moment we’d all be on the ground. Until we are in our own glorified state, we will not be able to behold the glory of God in full. Moses is begging for something that he knows that he cannot have but that does not stop him from asking. He knows that if the Lord desired, he could see the glory of God and live so he is bold enough to ask for more. Are you? In an argument from the greater to the lesser, if Moses asked to see more of the glory of God, what’s our excuse not to? Should we not desire to know more about the Lord? Should we not desire a greater intimacy with Him? Should we be content with what we have? A.W. Pink said that when God draws man to Himself and bestows on him mercy, there is a holy longing in that man to know more of the Lord. The more we know of God, the more we desire to know God. How then does God answer Moses’ last request? Look again in verses 19-23.

God’s Answer and Reveal

Exodus 33:19–23 ESV

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.”

How does the Lord answer? He answers positively and graciously, He answers in goodness and in mercy! He answers, “Moses, I will give you what you are able to bear.” He tells Moses that all of His goodness will pass before him and He will proclaim His name, The Lord. The culmination of God’s glory is in His goodness. Charles Spurgeon said, “If God could be beheld by the human mind and his perfections unfolded to our creature apprehensions, we would perceive that the chief splendor of His majesty lay in His infinite benevolence. This is the prominent point of the divine character. Though all excellent qualities beyond measure or degree, surpassing thought or reckoning, could be found in Him, the whole might be summed up in such words as these: Your Goodness.” It is the goodness and love of God that creates man, it is the goodness and love of God that makes the way of salvation, it is the goodness and love of God that endures the cross for your sin and my sin. What does this world need? What does revival need to proclaim? The goodness of the Lord Almighty! Man needs to know that the Lord is good. No one gets to Heaven because they are afraid of going to Hell. No one has ever been terrified into Heaven. Man is saved because God reveals His goodness to them through Christ. Salvation is a gift of God’s grace and His goodness! In Exodus 34:2-7, we see the Lord answer. “Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”” Here is a moment between the man of God and God Himself. This was a personal and intimate encounter with the Lord of Hosts and God’s glory descends and He preaches His very name! How does Moses respond? He worships but not only does he worship but 40 days later as he descends from Mount Sinai, his face shone because he had been talking with God. What do we learn from this? A man and a church that desires to see the Lord’s glory and desires a greater manifestation and knowledge of God will reflect the glory of the God that they worship. What is our task then?

Our Task

A.W. Tozer said that God is looking for men in whose hands His glory is safe. We are to be bold proclaimers of the Lord our God. We are to be big Goders and not little Goders. What do I mean by that? Many years ago there was a preacher by the name of Donald Gray Barnhouse. He was the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, the predecessor of another great preacher, James Montgomery Boice. Barnhouse was an outstanding preacher and he was asked to return to his alma mater, Princeton Theological Seminary, to preach at one of their Chapel services. As Barnhouse began to preach, he noticed that one of his heroes was sitting in the front row, a man by the name of Robert Dick Wilson, one of Princeton’s greatest professors. Let me put it to you this way, Wilson was a genius. The man could read close to 50 languages, was a tremendous Old Testament scholar, and he could read any translation of the Bible that was made prior to AD 600. Barnhouse preached an amazing sermon but about 10 minutes into it, Wilson got up and left and this shook Barnhouse up so badly that he felt like he couldn’t continue. At the end of his sermon, Barnhouse walked to Wilson’s office and he knocked on the door and he said, “Where did I go wrong?” Wilson said to him, “You didn’t do anything wrong. When one of my students comes back to preach, I only need to listen to them once to tell if there God is a big God or a little God and I can tell from that what kind of ministry that they are going to have. Do they have a big God that is sovereign over all things and towers over the affairs of man? Or do they serve a puny God that is insignificant and unable to bring forth much of anything. You sir, have a big God and I only needed to hear you preach for five minutes to know that you are faithful to the glory of God.” Do you serve a Big God or a Little God? Because the way that you live out your life will reflect the size of the God that you serve and our task is to proclaim the glory and goodness of God. How do we do this? We ask that the Lord would show us His glory. We ask for more. We pray for more. We long for more and we trust God to give us what we are able to bear. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18 “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.” If you are a Christian, you have been brought from death to life and if you are a Christian you are in the process of sanctification. You are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, you are becoming more like Christ in word, deed, and to your inner most being. If you are a Christian, you have been brought face to face with the glory of God through the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ and if that experience has not changed you, then I would be bold enough to argue that you have not truly been saved and changed. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Just as you would be able to tell the difference between a corpse and a living and breathing person, we should be able to see a difference between a saved and unsaved man or woman. If we want to see revival happen, we need a big God and we need to boldly ask God for a greater helping of His glory. If we want to be able to carry on the task of revival after the services are over, we need to boldly ask God for a greater revelation of His glory. If we want to be faithful witnesses in a world that is growing more hostile to God by the second, we need to boldly ask God for a greater revelation of His glory. How does revival happen? By God showing us His glory and by revealing to us that glory and His goodness through His Son, Jesus Christ. If we are to be faithful, we need to taste and see the glory of God and if you want to thrive in your faith, you need to ask the very thing that Moses asked, that God would reveal even more of Himself to you, that you would know more of Him. Far too many Christians are content where they are at. In order for revival to last, man needs to be caught up in the glory of God. Revival happens and continues when Christians come before the God of the universe and desperately ask that He would reveal His glory to them and we know that He has. 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, very God of very God, put on flesh and dwelt among us. The author of Hebrews writes in Hebrews 1:3 “He (Jesus) is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” The very glory that Moses asked to see is found in the person of Jesus Christ and Moses would see this many years after his mountaintop experience at another mountain. In Mark 9, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to the top of a high mountain and he is transfigured before them and His clothes become radiant, intensely white, and the apostles see 2 other men with Him: Elijah and Moses and the apostles hear and see the glory of God. Moses could now see the face of God and live because he saw it in the Son of God Himself and one day with our glorified bodies, we Christians will see and worship the very same. In closing, if we want to see revival happen and if we want to be able to take on the impossible task that comes with it, we must boldly go before the God of the impossible and ask that not only we, but all would see His glory and His goodness. I would also say this, we do not need to wait for Roger Roller to get here in order for Revival to happen. Revival could start this day with you. Have you asked to see the Lord’s glory as it is revealed in His Son? Have you asked that God would have mercy on you a sinner? Have you realized that you need to be born again? Have you realized that maybe you have not truly been changed by the saving power of the Gospel? You can be very moral and very religious and not be totally changed by Jesus Christ. If you have not been saved, or I would even say if you think that there is even a small change that you are not saved, then today is the day of your revival. Don’t wait another moment, don’t wait for Roger to get here. Look, we are one grumpy Russian and a button away from nuclear annihilation right? But we may be even closer to the Lord coming back in glory and I would beg of each and every one of you that you find yourself ready for that moment. The Lord is coming soon and we will see His goodness. Are you ready? Are you right with God? You can’t be unless you have come to faith in Christ Himself and if you haven’t made that step yet, don’t take another step until you do. Today is the day, Lord let revival come now and I beg that you would show us your glory, show me your glory! We are going to worship and if today is the day of your salvation, if you have questions, if you need prayer, I will be at the back of the church ready and willing to talk to you and of course the altar is open and deacons are here. May we all ask for a greater knowledge of the Lord our God and a greater degree of His glory as we go about the task that lies before us. Let’s pray.