Untitled Sermon (3)

Introduction

THREE RESPONSES TO SEEING God’s Glory

Last week we walked through one of the more unbelievable moments in Scripture: Moses asking God to show him His glory and the Lord responding by doing exactly that.

I have a question for you this morning: How do your respond after a moment like that...What happens when you experience this unbelievable moment?

What happens when you come into contact with the glory of God?

This text shows us three separate responses to this encounter: Moses’ Response, God’s Response, the People’s Response

Moses’ Response

WORSHIP and REVERENCE

The first thing that happens is worship and reverence...

Exodus 34:8 ESV

8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.

When we come face to face with the living God, we should expect nothing less than the sort of reverence on display in this verse.

Moses in the presence of this great God is able to see how lowly and ultimately insignificant he is in comparison.

But also another thing happens for Moses, this unbelievable experience only further solidifies his desire and need for God to be with them…So he moves from prayer to petition...

PRAYER AND PETITION

Exodus 34:9 ESV

9 And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

Lord, I’ve seen you in your glory. Now I NEED you to go with us!

Here’s something that Moses said that I love: “O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance...”

I LOVE THIS.

Recall what led to this exchange between God and Moses. We read about it a few weeks ago in chapter 33. God says early on in that chapter: “I’m not going with you. I’ll give you the land I promised you. I’ll take of the enemies that are blocking your way. I’ll put you in a place that’s flowing with milk and honey. You’ll have the provision I promised, but I’m not going,” but Moses and Israel both realize that’s not enough. They know that they need God with them if they are going to survive.

Fast forward to what we just heard in verse 9 of chapter 34.

Moses concedes to God that “yes we are a stiff necked people.” THAT’S WHY WE NEED YOU TO GO WITH US! We’re not going to survive without you! It doesn’t matter what you send us away with…WE ARE A STIFF NECKED PEOPLE.

We will not and cannot last without you.

Moses is making his case for God to go not in the righteousness of Israel but in the truth of who Israel is.

Lord you are right, we are stiff necked. That’s why we need you. That’s why we need you to pardon our sin and iniquity. That’s why we need you to take us as your inheritance.

Rightly so, Moses is making an appeal based on what God has declared about himself. Remember God’s words as He passed by Moses with His Glory:

Exodus 34:5–7 ESV

5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 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, 7 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.”

God declares who He is at His very core. A Merciful God. A Gracious God. A Patient God. A Loving God. A Faithful God. A Righteous God and yet a Forgiving God

Moses is now here saying, Lord we need you to be that for us…

We are STIFF NECKED. We are SINFUL. And that’s why we can’t go without you...

KEY POINT: Some of you think you’re too sinful for God to go with you, but Moses is unveiling the actual truth to us: We’re too sinful for God to NOT go WITH US!

You need this Holy, but MERCIFUL God to go with you…You need this RIGHTEOUS but GRACIOUS God to go with you…You need this PERFECT but PATIENT God to go with you because if the only thing that you take into this journey with you is you. YOU WILL BE DESTROYED.

That’s what Moses understood in this moment. That’s what Israel understood in this moment. And Saints of God that is what we must understand in this moment.

Also notice another very important point in Moses’ prayer. Moses is rooting his petition in the very nature of who God is.

Remember God passes by Moses in Glory and preaches a sermon on the nature of Himself: “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…

So Moses hears that and responds Lord FORGIVE US. PARDON US because this is who you are!!!!

Moses roots His petition to God in the nature of God. Forgive us because you are a forgiver. Be patient with us not because we are worthy but because you are patient. We should follow His example when we pray...

I love what one theologian says about this passage:

Exodus—Saved for God's Glory Moses Prays Again

God invites us to pray the way Moses prayed. We ought to make our intercession on the basis of his gracious promises and glorious perfections. God has promised never to leave us or forsake us. So we say, “Lord Jesus, I know you said that you would stay with me; so as I enter this new situation, I pray that you will go with me by the power of your Spirit.” God has told us that he is a forgiving God in Jesus Christ; so no matter what we have done, we ask him to pardon all our sin. God has also promised to take us as his inheritance. In other words, he has declared that we belong to him in the covenant. We are his possession, and we cannot be taken from him. So we ask God to make us fully his own, begging him to be our God both now and forever. This is the way we should pray and keep on praying.

When you pray are you praying this way? Are you going to God and reminding Him of His nature? Reminding Him of His promises towards those who love Him?

So Moses Sees God’s Glory and in response He worships and He prays again for God to join Israel again on their journey to remember who He is and remember what He said and to accept their pleas for mercy.

How does God respond?

God’s Response

Exodus 34:10 ESV

10 And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

God responds to Moses’ plea by telling Moses that HE IS ABOUT TO DO SOME SPECTACULAR THINGS for ISRAEL. His presence rejoining Israel is going to produce marvels the world has NEVER EVEN SEEN BEFORE!

So this is great news!!!

But there are two other things that I want to be sure you hear at the very beginning of His response:

GLORY

First, “And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you”.

Herein lies the deeper motivation for the work that God is preparing to perform: That He may be glorified.

God is going to honor His promises despite the faithlessness of the people.

He is going to honor the reminders that Moses gives Him about His own nature of mercy, grace, love, and patience.

He is going to forgive Israel and be present with them.

He is going to do marvelous things among Israel

And He is going to do all of it not simply for Israel’s sake but in order that HE MAY BE GLORIFIED!

It is for this reason we can take great confidence that God will honor His word towards us. He will never leave us. He will perform mighty works through us and for us and He will do it all in order that His name might be glorified in the earth!

COVENANT

Here is the second thing I want you to notice about God’s response to do marvels. He is doing this marvelous thing because He is reestablishing His covenant with Israel! At the very beginning of His response, we hear these words:

“Behold, I am making a covenant.”

God is reaffirming and reestablishing His covenant with Moses and Israel.

And in so doing, God is making something very clear with Moses and we would do well to pay attention to the point He is driving home.

It is this.

KEY POINT: We don’t get to enjoy God’s presence apart from relationship with Him. We cannot invite God’s presence into our life while remaining committed to the worship of other things.

The God of the KNOWN AND UNKNOWN Universe is not interested in playing backup to any other idol.

So, when Moses invites Him and His presence, he is by default recommitting Israel to pursue faithfulness to this God and the covenant He has established with them.

You see this in verses 11-13

Exodus 34:11–13 ESV

11 “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. 13 You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim

God says now that we have reestablished our covenant together I’m going to drive these enemies of yours out of your midst, but don’t get too close them

Don’t enter into covenant with them.

Don’t preserve their temples and altars. Tear them down.

Why? Verse 14

Exodus 34:14 ESV

14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),

Because you are in covenant with me! Because you are to exclusively worship me!

What are we to make of the use of the word Jealous to describe God. He goes as far as saying MY NAME IS JEALOUS!

We have to ask ourselves what type of jealousy is he referring to...

There is after all a such thing as a healthy jealousy and an unhealthy jealousy.

An unhealthy jealousy is what we see when someone who is not in covenant relationship with another person but operates as if they are. Perhaps a friend is jealous that one of their friends who they are found of has rejected their advances but accepted the advances of another person...

An unhealthy jealousy is what we see when someone despises another person because they have what appears to be a much more enjoyable life than they do. Perhaps, they have cars, houses, clothes, and a lifestyle that jealous person craves.

An unhealthy jealousy can even be found even in marriages where a person makes unfounded accusations against their spouse. Claiming infidelity where there is no legitimate proof or history that any other reasonable person would use to make the claim. Refusing to allow your spouse to engage or interact with other people without accusing them.

However, when we speak of God being jealous, we aren’t referring to any of those things. Theologian A.W. Pink helps us make sense of it.

“First, God is ‘jealous’ of His own glory. Through Isaiah He has declared, “I am the Lord: that is My name; and My glory will I not give to another” (6:8)...Second, God is “jealous” of the affections of His people. He is grieved when our love is given to another. “My son, give Me thine heart” (Prov. 23:26) is His appeal. “Set Me as a seal upon thine heart” (Song 8:6) is His call to each of us. Third, God is “jealous” of His people: “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye” (Zech. 2:8) is His own avowal.”

- Pink, A. W. (1962). Gleanings in Exodus (p. 357). Chicago: Moody Press.

In other words, what God is saying here is that he is a jealous God in the same sense of a husband who has observed his wife in an adulterous affair. He will not stand by idly and watch his wife give her love and affection to another when she has pled fidelity to him!

Why won’t he stand for it? Because he’s unreasonable? NO of course not! He is more than reasonable. He won’t stand for it because He loves her and they are in an exclusive covenant.

When we ask for God’s presence, we are asking to be in covenant relationship with God. We are pledging to exclusively worship him! And we don’t live like in light of that pledge, God is saying here that we are like the spouse that just goes out and routinely cheats and then returns home and says “what are you making such a big deal about? I’m here right? Just keep doing everything you’ve agreed to do and don’t worry so much about where I am and what I’m doing.”

“Give me security, give me safety, give me provision, and in return, I’ll go where I please and be with whoever I want to be with...”

KEY POINT: The God of the Universe will not settle for the role of side god in our lives

And so God warns Moses that this covenant makes no provision for the kind of idolatry we just saw.

If you want me, then you must have me ALONE!

Here is another very important part to this covenant…

It is not just a rejection of idolatry. It is a rejection of being joined with idolaters in any way...

Let’s read verses 12-14 again, this time with 15-17

Exodus 34:12–17 ESV

12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. 13 You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. 17 “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal.

The Lord lays out a very important slippery slope in idolatry...

What starts with a covenant with idolaters, leads to tolerance of idolatrous worship, and what continues as a tolerance of idolatrous worship eventually becomes a full giving over of ourselves to idolatry, a joining of our worship with the worship of the idolaters.

CAN YOU SEE ANY OF THIS PLAYING OUT IN OUR DAY?

Without question, we are prone to get to comfortable with idolaters and their idolatry for the sake of security, for the sake of comfort, for the sake of acceptance, in the search of satisfaction and peace and joy.

ILLUSTRATION: How often do we find ourselves creeping close to political idols because we start off believing they best represent our interest, only to find ourselves at their altars, and worshipping in their temples, walking away from our own God and replacing Him with a lesser idol of political expediency.

How often have we subtly replaced our covenant with God for a relationship with an unbeliever…telling ourselves that it is not a big deal. We’re just having fun only to find ourselves eventually accepting their idols, worshipping at their altars and in their temples (those temples can look like sexual immorality and fornication).

KEY POINT: When we compromise in our covenant with God we are on the slippery slope of reneging on that covenant...

This is the point God is making to Moses in verses 16

Exodus 34:16 ESV

16 and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.

This is not a call away from interracial marriage as it has sometimes been suggested. No this is

Israel’s Response

Before we get to Israel’s response…let’s sit on verse 28 for a second...

Exodus 34:28 ESV

28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

So we read that Moses was there with God on the mountain for forty days and forty nights…He fasted. He communed with God. He interceded for the people.

There is another that we know of who’s testimony is very similar to Moses…He fasted for forty days and forty nights and through his very life He interceded for a people who had broken their covenant with God…a people who chased lesser things. That other person was Jesus Christ a better Moses…a greater deliverer…a greater savior because unlike Moses He was able to save to the uttermost.

But moving forward into verse 29…to Israel’s Response.

Exodus 34:29–35 ESV

29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30 Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them. 32 Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. 33 And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, 35 the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

Because Moses had been with God, Israel was able to see and witness Moses shining! How did the people know that Moses had been with God? Because He shined!!!!!

Let me ask you a question: How will they know that you’ve been with God? How will they know that you’ve been in fellowship with God and not bothered with making false covenants with idols? How will they know that you are seeking to see the Glory of God and not chasing after the lesser things of this world. BECAUSE YOU WILL SHINE!!!!

Exalting Jesus in Exodus Will We Long to See God’s Glory, or Have We Seen Enough? (Exodus 33:18–35:3)

For us, when we are with God, we will shine. Remember what they said about Peter and John in the early days of the church? When they saw their boldness, Luke said, “When they observed … they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and knew that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). Do people know you have been with Jesus?

When we look at Jesus we will shine like Jesus…When we dial back the distractions and reject the idols of this world and refuse their covenants, we will shine like Jesus

English Standard Version Chapter 3

15 Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. 16 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 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.