Series: Exodus
Title: Show Me Thy Glory
Text: Exodus 33: 18-23; 34: 5-9
Date: October 4, 2020
Place: SGBC, NJ
Exodus 33: 18 And he said, I
beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
Everything of himself that the Lord had shown
Moses only made Moses want to know the Lord more. Moses saw the Lord in the burning bush. He had seen all the Lord’s dealings with
Pharaoh. The Lord had shown Moses deliverance
in the Passover Lamb and at the Red Sea and the Lord’s defeat of Amalek. He saw the Manna fall from heaven. Moses had seen the Lord in the cloudy pillar
by day and the fire by night. He had
been in the mount with the Lord and had received the ten commandments from the
Lord. But all of that glory made Moses
want to know the Lord’s glory more.
Believer, do you find it to be the same way with you? The more you know of our God the more you want
to know. Moses desire was by the operation
of God's grace; put into his heart by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Exodus 33: 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.
Proposition: God’s glory is his dear Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ; God reveals his glory to his people in the face of Jesus
Christ through faith.
GOD’S GLORY IN CHRIST
Exodus 33: 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,
We can only see God’s glory in Christ by
faith. While in these mortal bodies of
death we cannot see God and live. One,
God is spirit: he can only be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Two, our mortal capacity cannot withstand beholding
eternal God; if we look directly at the sun it will blind us; if we get
shocking news it will make us pass out; imagine beholding God whose Light makes
the sun look like a candle. But three, even
when we stand glorified in heaven, we shall behold the glory of God in the
person of the God-man.
John 1: 18 No man hath seen God
at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he
hath declared him
It is only in Christ that sinners behold God’s glory. The LORD must reveal Christ to us. He said, “Behold there is a place by me”; Christ
is “the place by God”; Christ is “the Rock”; God put Moses in the
“clift of the rock”; that Rock was Christ; the Rock of Ages!
He hideth my
soul in the cleft of the rock,
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life in the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
God
has provided a place of refuge, salvation and strength for chosen sinners in his
only begotten Son. In Christ, his people
are safe and secure by Christ’s finished redemption of his people.
Rage as ye will. O, ye portal of hell,
Safe in the Rock do we ransom'd ones dwell.
God the Father gave Christ the honor of
manifesting him fully in this gospel age
John 1:14: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of
grace and truth.
By the Spirit of the Lord taking the veil off our hearts and turning our
hearts to Christ,
2 Corinthians 3: 18: we
all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed
into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Only the Spirit of the Lord can turn the heart
in a sinner, remove the veil, make us behold God’s glory. Therefore, we use great plainness of speech
2 Corinthians 4: 3: But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are
lost: 4: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe
not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God,
should shine unto them. 5: For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the
Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6: For God, who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7: But
we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may
be of God, and not of us.
Brethren, this was a great thing Moses asked
of God. But when I enter the study seeking
a message from God for you, this is what I ask God, “I beseech thee, show me
thy glory.” In order to preach any
passage of scripture in spirit and in truth, God has to show us his glory in the
passage, that is, God must show us Christ.
The only way ruined sinners like us can understand and be spiritually edified
is for God to shine his light and reveal his glory in the face of Christ Jesus.
Christ is “the brightness of his glory,
the express image of his person” (Heb 1: 3).
God speaks of his glory in three headings: God’s goodness, God’s name,
and God’s sovereignty.
THE GLORY OF GOD’S GOODNESS
Exodus 33: 19: And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee,…
In Christ God makes all his goodness pass before us. Everything God reveals about himself shows us
his goodness. The glory of God is his
goodness.
The glory of God’s goodness is seen in Christ Jesus. The rich young ruler thought Christ was only
a sinful man. He came calling Christ “good
Master.” The Lord said to him, “Why
callest thou me good; there is none good but one, that is God” (Matthew 19:17).
In Christ we behold God is altogether good; only
good comes from God; everything God does is good—"God is light and in him
is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God
is eternally good, immutably good, continually good. And everything God does in the salvation of
his people is “good.”
Ephesians 1:5: Having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself,
according to the GOOD pleasure of his will,…9: Having made known unto us the
mystery of his will, according to his GOOD pleasure which he hath purposed in
himself:
Philippians 1:6: Being
confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a GOOD work in you will perform
it until the day of Jesus Christ:
It is Christ’s goodness toward us, his chosen people, that saves us. Christ speaking said to the Father,
Pslam 16: 2: O my
soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord: MY GOODNESS extendeth not
to thee; 3: But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in
whom is all my delight.
Romans 2:4…the GOODNESS
of God leadeth thee to repentance?
Jeremiah 31:14 And I will satiate the soul of the priests
with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with MY GOODNESS, saith the
LORD.
THE GLORY OF GOD’S NAME
Exodus 33: 19: And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before
thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee;--
In Christ God proclaims the glory of his name—his name is all his
attributes.
Exodus 34: 5: And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him
there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6: And the LORD passed by before
him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious,
longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7: Keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the
guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon
the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
The first thing is his name itself—"And the LORD passed by
before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God.” Beholding Christ, we behold the LORD—Jehovah,
God. Christ said, “He that seeth me seeth
him that sent me” (Jn 12: 45). We
behold in Christ “The LORD God”—Jehovah
Almighty to save by everlasting Covenant (Is 42: 6).
In Christ we behold the glory of God’s mercy and grace. God in Christ is “Merciful”—from eternity God looked to Christ therefore God was
merciful, withholding from his people what we deserved. Christ is the glory of God’s name in his “Grace”—in Christ God freely gives to us what we do not deserve, blessing
his elect with all spiritual blessings in Christ according as he chose us in
him. It is not law that makes the child
of God be merciful and gracious, it is beholding God’s glory in Christ being merciful
and gracious to vile wretches like us!
Christ is the glory of God’s name in his “longsuffering, and abundant
in goodness and truth.” God was longsuffering
toward us when we sinned in Adam for the sake of his Son. God did not destroy us in the days of our
rebellion for the sake of his Son. Even in
current trials God is longsuffering to the believer for his Son’s sake. Christ
is the glory of God’s name in how abundantly good and true God is to us in Christ—he
“hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.” (Eph 1: 8) When we speak of being constrained by Christ’s
love, it is when you have experienced God’s longsuffering to you in the sorest
trial, when you sinned, when you didn’t deserve God’s patience yet he was longsuffering
and abundant in goodness and truth to you for Christ’s sake—that is what makes
you be longsuffering, good and true to others.
In Christ we behold the glory of God mercy and righteousness—"Keeping
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that
will by no means clear the guilty.” In
Christ, God is just. Christ upheld his holy
law for us by bearing the sin of his people, the justice we deserved, the curse,
the shame, the pain, and the death. It
is what I deserved! Can you say that
believer? Yet, for Christ’s sake, since
he upheld God’s justice for us, we behold the glory of God’s mercy. Christ is our Mercy Seat; the Propitiation
for our sins, our Advocate with the Father.
Believer, our rejoicing is the glory of God’s name!
THE GLORY OF GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY
Exodus 33:
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.
In Christ, God shows
us the glory of his sovereignty. God is good in his
sovereign good pleasure. He does as he
pleases and it is good. That includes God
being merciful to whom he will. He says,“I will be gracious to whom I will be
gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.”
Wicked, sinful
Jacob was as wicked and sinful as Esau.
Yet, God exercised his sovereign right to say, “Jacob have I loved but
Esau have I hated.” But I do not ask how
God could hate Esau. I do not even ask
how God could love Jacob. I ask how
could God love me? It has to be, it can
only be, by God’s glory to save by his sovereign choice. He chooses whom so that salvation might be of
God that calls rather than by our works.
It is so that sinners might know that salvation is “not of him that
willeth nor of him that runneth but of God that showeth mercy” (Rom 9: 11-15).
No wonder men
filled with enmity hate this doctrine: it is God’s glory—"I will be
gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew
mercy.” But
when God makes us behold his glory in the face of Christ Jesus, when he shows
you what a vile sinner you really are, then you delight in God’s sovereign
electing grace! I have never heard a
real sinner hate God’s glory to save whom he will! Only the proud, self-righteous hate it.
THE EFFECT
OF GOD’S GLORY
Exodus 34: 8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head
toward the earth, and worshipped. 9 And
he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray
thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our
iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.
This is what happens when God reveals in our hearts the glory of God in
the face of Christ Jesus. We bow and
worship God, begging mercy for ourselves and other sinners. We beg for God’s presence to be with us.
There is only one way we will cease glorying in men—in what we have done
and in what we made others do—it is to behold God’s glory in Christ. When will we cease glorying in our so-called
wisdom—when we behold God’s glory in Christ.
It is not wisdom for someone to boast of being a wise-old believer longtime
in the faith; a wise believer long time in the faith knows he is ignorant apart
from Christ our Wisdom. When will we cease glorying in our so-called goodness? It
is when we behold God’s goodness in Christ.
We cease boasting in our so-called righteousness and sanctification when
the Holy Spirit truly gives us a pure heart to behold God’s righteousness and
holiness is in Christ his glory alone. Then
we cry
Rock of Ages! cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
Isaiah preached woe on everybody else for six
chapters. But when God made him behold the glory of Christ high and lifted up then
Isaiah said, “Woe is me! I am the man of
unclean lips.” Then God said, “Who will
go and declare my glory?” Then Isaiah
said, “Here am I, send me.”
Amen!