Old Testament Reading: Exodus 33
The Old Testament reading in our sermon text is Exodus chapter 33, and this is God’s inerrant and infallible Word. Let’s hear the Word of God. The Lord said to Moses, depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, to your offspring I will give it. I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people. When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, Say to the people of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people. If for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you.
So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you. Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb onward. Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.
Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up and each would stand at his tent door and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship each at his tent door. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.
When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. 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.
New Testament Reading: 1 John 3:1–3
And now let’s turn to 1 John 3 for our New Testament reading, 1 John 3, 1-3.
1 John 3, 1-3. See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
Introduction to the Text
You can turn back to Exodus for our sermon text this morning. We are continuing to work our way through the book of Exodus. And last Lord’s Day, we looked at the terrible consequences that came upon the people of Israel because of their idolatry and sin, because they made this golden calf and worshiped it. And those consequences included Moses coming down the mountain and in anger, shattering the two tablets of the covenant that God had given to Moses to give to the people of Israel. 3,000 Israelites were killed by the hand of the Levites at the command of the Lord. And on top of that, the Lord sent a plague upon the people of Israel.
And in our passage this morning, we learn that there was one more consequence, one more evil fruit that was born because of the idolatry of the Israelites, a consequence that was potentially the worst consequence of all, and that is the Lord would no longer be with his people. His presence would no longer go with them. In verse one in chapter 33, the Lord commands Moses to lead the people to the land of Canaan, the promised land. And in verse two, the Lord says that He will send an angel before them. He doesn’t say that He will go before them, but He will send an angel before them to drive out all of the Canaanites who inhabit the land.
But then the Lord says this to Moses in verse three. He says, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” This was the worst thing that the Israelites possibly could have heard from the mouth of God, that the Lord, the Lord their God, the Lord who mercifully heard their cries of distress when they were under the tyranny of Pharaoh and rescued them from Egypt. The Lord who delivered them through the parting of the Red Sea and destroyed all their enemies after them. The Lord who provided for them the manna in the wilderness. The Lord who protected them in the wilderness. He would no longer be with his people.
From this point on, the Israelites were on their own. Verse four says that this was a disastrous word. And indeed, it would be a disastrous word: “I will not go up among you.” And when the people heard it, they mourned.
Perhaps this was the first time that the Israelites really began to understand the magnitude of the evil that they had committed. Perhaps now, for the first time, they’re really coming to grips with what they had done, how they had sinned against God, how they had forfeited any claim or right to His presence with them. Perhaps now, like the prodigal son in the far country, this was the point at which the Israelites came to themselves, or came to their senses, and realized just how foolish and evil they had been.
If the Lord left them, from now on they would be no different from all the other people in the world, all the nations around them. As Paul put it in Ephesians, speaking of Gentiles apart from Christ, the Israelites would be without hope, having no hope and without God in the world. So this was a disastrous word. And rightfully, the people mourned.
But at least they still had Moses. They still had Moses, their leader, their mediator, to intercede for them, to pray for them before God. And as we look at this chapter, we’ll see that the Lord not only answers the prayer of Moses when he pleads to him that he would not forsake his people, but the Lord also answers a personal prayer of Moses to give him a far greater experience of his presence that he had yet known before. And this morning, we’ll walk through this chapter together, we’ll take a section at a time, and as we go along in this chapter, we’ll draw some lessons from it that apply to us today as believers in Jesus Christ, as the people of God today.
The Threat of God’s Absence (Exodus 33:1–6)
So first, we’ll look at verses one through six. Again, in these verses, the Lord tells Moses that he has to lead the people to the promised land. Notice how the Lord refers to the people of Israel. In verse one, he calls them “the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt.” And so at this point, the Lord is not even claiming the people of Israel as his people. They are your people, Moses; you are the one who led them out of Egypt.
God promises Moses that he will send an angel before them to drive out all the inhabitants of the land. And then in verse three, as we saw, the Lord tells Moses that he will not go with the people of Israel, and he tells him why he will not go with them. Look again at verse three, he says, “I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people”—lest I consume you, destroy you on the way. The reason why the Lord would not, at this point, at least, the reason why he says he will not go up with his people into the land of Canaan was because they were so stiff-necked, they were so rebellious, so stubborn in their rejection of God, that if he was with them, even for a single moment, he would consume them in his wrath because of the sin in their hearts.
And that’s because God is holy. He is righteous. Just like oil and water cannot mix, so God in His intrinsic, inherent holiness cannot abide with anything that is less than perfectly holy and righteous. He cannot abide with sin. Evil cannot dwell in His presence. Habakkuk 1:13 says, He is of purer eyes than to behold evil; He cannot look at wrong. And so, He could not go with His people; He would destroy them.
This is a reminder to us, as the sons of Adam, as the descendants of our first parents who sinned against God in the garden, as those who live in a world that is cursed by sin, and as those who are fallen from the good graces of God. This is our most fundamental problem: it is our sin. This is our most basic human predicament. This is the most profound dilemma that we face as human beings. Whatever multitude of other problems that plague us in this world, this is it. This is the worst; this is at the bottom of all of them, and that is, by our sin, we are alienated from the God who created us. Because of our sin, unless God intercedes with His grace, because of our sin, we cannot hope to enjoy the presence of God until our sin is forgiven.
And we cannot be forgiven, we cannot make ourselves righteous by anything that we can do. And so by nature, because of our sin, we are helplessly in bondage to our sin and to this condemnation that is ours because of it. And what that means, of course, is that because we cannot save ourselves, we need God to save us. There is only one who can save us from this predicament, there is only one who can deliver us from this bondage that we are under to sin, and that is the Lord.
And of course, that is exactly what God has done for us in His Son, Jesus Christ. When we come to Christ in faith, He forgives our sins, He covers us with the righteousness of Jesus himself, that we may be reconciled to God more properly, that God may be reconciled to us, that his wrath may be taken away so that he may be with us for blessing and good. And this is what God has done for us in the gospel. But here’s an illustration of why we need the gospel: in our sin, if God was with us even for a moment, he would consume us.
Now, when Moses told the people that the Lord would no longer go with them, they were devastated, as they should have been. Verse four, “When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.” The people mourned. And these were not just crocodile tears that the people of Israel were shedding, but their sorrow was genuine. They demonstrated their contrition, their repentance, by putting off their ornaments. The text doesn’t tell us exactly what these ornaments were, but most likely, given the context, they had something to do with the idolatry that they committed when they worshiped the golden calf. And so they showed their repentance by not wearing this jewelry. Verse six, “Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb onward.”
So at this point, things are looking very grim, very bleak, but there is one glimmer of hope in what the Lord says to the people of Israel through Moses. He says in verse five, “So now take off your ornaments that I may know what to do with you.” Perhaps the Lord has not finally determined that he would leave his people as they deserve. Perhaps, humanly speaking, or if we could speak of God in human terms, perhaps he will reconsider what he has declared. God may yet be gracious and merciful to his people and bless them again with his presence.
And as you know, the Lord was merciful. He was gracious. He did not carry out this awful judgment that the Israelites deserved. He did not abandon his people to themselves, leaving them to their own devices. Again, that’s what they brought upon themselves, but God was gracious. He would again take His people to Himself. He would go with them through the wilderness; He would lead them into the promised land.
And this demonstrates one of the wonderful promises that God makes to you and me in Jesus Christ, and that is He promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us. If you belong to Christ, that is God’s assurance, His guarantee to you: He will never leave you nor forsake you. We can rejoice, we can be glad that God does not deal with us on the basis of justice. We have this instinct within us, and sometimes people will say they want God to be fair, they want God to be just. Do we really want that? Do we really want God to deal with us according to what we deserve? No, and He doesn’t deal with us according to what we deserve.
Because if He did, every single day we would forfeit any claim or right that we might have to the presence of God, to God’s blessing. We would forfeit it because of our sin, because of our unbelief, because of our idolatry. But God doesn’t deal with us like that in Christ. And as a believer in Jesus Christ, God deals with you on the basis of His mercy, His grace, not what you deserve, but what He wills, how He wills to bless you and to love you, to forgive you. God sees you not as you are in yourself, but He sees you as you are in Christ.
And in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. God does not see them; He does not count them against you. In Christ, you have been justified; you are proclaimed righteous, perfectly righteous in Christ. In Christ, you have been adopted into God’s family. Not merely forgiven, but adopted. You have God as your Father who loves you; you are the beloved child of God. And so your standing with God is secure. God is not looking down from heaven at you, just waiting for you to mess up. He’s not going to say to you someday, “What, you’ve sinned again? I’m washing my hands of you, I’m through with you.” No, God doesn’t deal with us that way.
He is patient, forbearing, forgiving. He loves you, and He promises that He will be with you always in this life and in the life to come, even though you and I daily provoke Him with our sin. God is merciful. And the amazing thing is, and here we run into some mystery as we consider the ways of God with us, though it is God’s will, of course, that we not sin, and when we sin, we displease Him, we do what is contrary to His will and to His holy character, nevertheless, God uses even our sins, even our failures in His providence, in His sovereign work in our hearts and in our lives, to use them somehow to further us in His gracious work of sanctification, drawing us nearer to Him, conforming us more and more to the image of Jesus Christ. And it’s not the sins themselves that God uses, but it’s the consequences, the way that He works in our hearts when we fail, when we sin, that God uses to work these gracious and loving purposes out for us.
The Provisional Tent of Meeting (Exodus 33:7–11)
Now, in verses 7 through 11, we read how the Lord used to meet with Moses outside the camp of the Israelites, and he met with Moses in what is called the Tent of Meeting. This passage, or this section in the chapter, if this is confusing to you, you’re not the only one. This was always confusing to me. And the reason for that is because, as we have seen, God gave to Moses all of these very elaborate and detailed plans on how the Israelites were to build this tabernacle, and the tabernacle is also called the Tent of Meeting. But at this point, the tabernacle has not been built. In fact, at this point, there’s some question as to whether it will ever be built. And yet here, Moses is meeting the Lord in what is called the Tent of Meeting.
And the key to understanding this confusion is to understand that the Tent of Meeting here is not the same Tent of Meeting that refers to the tabernacle, but this Tent of Meeting is a temporary tent, and it was the place where Moses would meet with the Lord. Moses called it the Tent of Meeting; maybe he should have called it something else, but that’s what he called it. And so this is a kind of second Tent of Meeting, but not the tabernacle.
And these verses explain how Moses would go outside the camp, he would meet with the Lord there. If you read between the lines a bit, he intercedes for the people in this Tent of Meeting. The people see the Lord—well, not the Lord himself, they see the pillar of cloud above the tent—and when they see that, they worship God. We’re introduced to Joshua, as Joshua is mentioned here as a young man who guards the tent when Moses is not there.
But what made this tent a necessity was the fact that the Lord had said that he would not go up among his people, because the tabernacle was the place where the Lord was going to dwell with his people. That’s where his presence would be. He would dwell above the cherubim, above the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies in that holy tent or tabernacle that the Israelites were to make after the pattern that God had showed to Moses on the mountain.
But now all those plans for the tabernacle have been shelved. The Lord would not be with his people, and if the Lord would not be with his people, then what point was there in making a tabernacle? What point would there be in a tabernacle that was empty, with no presence of God there? But Moses had this provisional, temporary tent of meeting.
And so this was one way in which the Lord was giving a visible demonstration of what he had said, that he would not go up among his people. Only Moses could meet with God in this tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. And not only was it outside the camp, but in verse 7 it says that Moses pitched it far off from the camp. It was far off from the camp, as if to underline this sad truth that the Lord would not be among his people, he would not even be near his people, but he would meet with Moses far off in this tent of meeting.
But again, there’s still hope here. The Lord had not utterly abandoned the people of God, the Israelites, because he would still manifest his glory to them in this pillar of cloud. He would still meet with Moses and Moses would still intercede for the people of Israel. The Lord would still hear him. And so this is another indication that God was not ready to utterly forsake his people.
Moses Intercedes for God’s Presence (Exodus 33:12–17)
As we move on in verses 12 through 17, we see one way in which the Lord pleaded with his people, that Moses would plead with the Lord for his people to bless the Israelites with his presence. And that is Moses, if we can put it this way, Moses would remind God of who the people of Israel were. He says in verse 13, “Consider too that this nation is your people.” Remember God, you have chosen this people, you have loved this people, this nation, as wayward as they are, as stubborn and stiff-necked as they are, these are your people.
Basically, Moses says in a shorthand way the same thing that he says back in chapter 32 at verse 13. He says, “Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I promised I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever.” And so Moses is telling the Lord, “Lord remember, remember, these are your covenant people. You have promised to be with them. You have made them your own; they are yours, you are their God.”
And thanks in part to this faithful intercession by Moses, the Lord did not give up on his covenant promises to Israel. He says to Moses in verse 14, “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.” And so God would remember his covenants; He would not abandon His people in the wilderness, He would not leave them to themselves, but He would be with them to bring them into the Promised Land. And He would do this gracious thing despite the sin, despite the failures of the people of Israel.
And this demonstration, the grace of God here, that He willed, that He committed Himself to be with His people despite their failure, despite their sin, this shows us a glorious truth that is at the very heart of our hope in Jesus Christ, and that is this: that God is leading us. As believers in Christ, He is guiding us, leading us, taking us to our promised land, which is heaven, the glory that is to come. In the new age, with the new heavens and new earth, God is taking us there.
And what will get us there is not our own faithfulness, our own steadfastness, our own obedience, our own consistency in serving God, but what will get us there is the faithfulness of God, His mercy, His steadfastness, His lovingkindness. Philippians 1:6 says, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” I have no doubt when Paul wrote those words, he did not write them thinking about how godly and holy and righteous the Philippians were; he knew them. He knew they were sinners; he knew their failures.
And the Holy Spirit speaks these words to us, not because He sees how godly and righteous and faithful we are, but He speaks these words to us because they are a reflection of God’s grace, His mercy, His loving purposes for us to bring us to heaven, bring to completion that good work that he has begun in us. And here in Exodus 33, the Lord is bringing to completion the good work that he started with the Israelites. Despite their sin, he is going to bring them into the promised land.
Now in verse 16, we see another way in which the Lord petitions, or that Moses petitions the Lord, not to withdraw his presence from them. He says in verse 16, “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?” So Moses here gives expression to a truth that the Israelites had forgotten, or at least they did their very best to erase, and that truth is that the people of God were distinct. They were set apart from all the other peoples, all the other nations in the world. There was something utterly unique and different about this people, and it was that God was with them. That’s what made them special and distinct: the Lord was with them. Verse 16, “Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct?”
And so when the Israelites made this golden calf, this idol, and worshiped it, what they were doing was they were acting like all the other nations around them, all the other nations of the world. They were worshiping the idols of their hearts that they made with their own hands; they were exchanging the glory of God for the creature. And why is that? It’s because they did not know the true God—well, they knew Him, but they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. They did not know Him in truth; they did not know the Creator of the universe, the Lord of all, because he had not appeared to the peoples of the world.
God had not taken the nations of the earth and made them his possession. He had not made a covenant with them as he did with the people of Israel. He had not promised any other people of the world that he would be their God, that they would be his people. That was a promise given only to the people of Israel.
And so because the people of the world were without God, therefore they did what we do by nature, and that is we make our own gods, we worship the idols of our own imaginations, the idols we make with our own hands. But Israel was different. They were God’s people; He loved them, He chose them, He would dwell among them, and that’s what made them special, that’s what made them distinct from the world, and it is the same reality that sets us apart as the church of Jesus Christ from the world around us. It is that God dwells in our midst, the living and the true God, the God who sustains all things, in whom we live and move and have our being. This God dwells in our midst as those who belong to Jesus Christ.
This is what makes us distinct as the Church, as Christians: God has given us His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, to indwell in us. He’s made us the new tabernacle, the true dwelling place of God on earth. And this truth, this reality, ought to show itself in the life of the church, in the life of the people of God. There are many ways in which we should be radically distinct from the world.
One way is that we worship God. On a beautiful Sunday morning, we’re not out on the golf course, we’re not at the beach, but we’re gathered here together to give thanks and praise and to worship God. That certainly makes us different from the world. We pursue righteousness; we reject the morals of this world, and we seek to honor God in the way in which we live. We show love for one another.
In all of these ways, we are distinct from the world, but all of these things boil down to this one great fundamental truth that separates us from the world, and that is God is in our midst. He lives among us. And insofar as you and I as believers in Christ, insofar as we live lives that are faithful to Christ, insofar as we are faithful to worship and serve the Lord, to pursue righteousness, to reject sin, to love one another from the heart, to show love to one another in acts of kindness and mercy, then we will be a witness to the world about us. Where is God to be found?
Well, He is the most pure Spirit; we cannot see Him, yet here is a people among whom he lives. He has made himself known to them; they worship him, they serve him, they love him, they love one another. Their God is. And so like the Israelites, as the church of Jesus Christ, we are set apart from the world because the Lord is among us. And to the extent that our collective life as the body of Christ manifests that truth, to that extent we are what God has called us to be in 1 Peter 2:9, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.”
At the end of this section, in verse 17, the Lord reaffirms to Moses that yes, he will go with his people. He says in verse 17, “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’ Request to See God’s Glory (Exodus 33:18–23)
And that brings us to the last section, verses 18 through 23. Moses is still interceding for the Israelites, but he is led to make this bold request in verse 18, a request for himself, really. He says, “Please show me your glory.”
Now, this seems like an abrupt change. I mean, Moses is praying on behalf of the Israelites, and then seemingly out of the blue, he says, “Oh Lord, show me your glory.” But it’s not hard to imagine how Moses came to this point, because he is in the presence of God, and he’s caught up in being in his presence, in the glory, the majesty, the greatness of God. And God has declared to Moses that he will be merciful and gracious to his people, and Moses, his heart longs for an even greater experience of the fullness of God’s presence. And so he says, “Please show me your glory.”
He wants more. And that’s true for every believer in Jesus Christ. The more we experience the truth and the love and the grace of God that he pours out upon us through his son, Jesus Christ, we are never truly filled. We are never truly content and satisfied with what God has blessed us with; we want more of God. We want to experience His grace, His love, the life that He gives us more and more. When we truly taste that, we never get full.
And so for Moses, it’s as though he forgets why he came into the presence of God in the first place, to pray for the people of Israel. He just tells the Lord the longing in his heart: “Oh Lord, I want more of You. Please show me Your glory.” And this is Moses. Remember, of all the people in the world, no one had seen the glory of God like Moses. He beheld that wonderful manifestation of the glory of God in the burning bush. It was Moses alone who went to the top of Mount Sinai and beheld God there. The Lord spoke to him in the tent of meeting face to face, but he wants more of God, so he says, “Show me your glory.”
Now, the Lord cannot answer this prayer, at least to the full extent that Moses would like. He cannot show Moses the fullness, the perfection of his glory, because if he did, he says in verse 20, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” Even Moses could not survive being in the unguarded presence of God in the fullness of his glory and majesty; he too would be consumed because of sin. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:16 that God dwells in unapproachable light whom no one has ever seen or can see.
However, the Lord does answer his prayer. He will not give Moses a revelation of the fullness of his glory, but he will reveal something of his glory to Moses. He will make his goodness pass before him; He will proclaim his name to him; He will put Moses in the cleft of the rock. He will not see the face of God, but God will remove his hand from Moses and he’ll catch a glimpse of his glory in his back. And that’s just a way of saying that he will not see the face of God, the fullness of his majesty and greatness, but he will see his glory in parts. And that’s what God does for Moses in the next chapter, which we’ll see, Lord willing, next week.
But Moses gives us an example to follow here when he prays to see the glory of God, and that is above all else as a Christian, this ought to be the longing, the desire of our hearts: to know more of God, to behold Him in His glory for who He is as God, as our Savior. Another way to put it would be this: we should want above all else to be in the presence of Jesus Christ. This should be our heart’s longing, to behold Him by faith, to commune with Him, to know Him. And if your hope is in Jesus Christ, one day you will be in his presence forever.
Seeing the Glory of God in Jesus Christ
Notice that for Moses, there was no point in going to the promised land if the Lord would not be with him and the people of Israel. He says in verse 15, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.” Oh Lord, we’ll just stay in the wilderness. It doesn’t matter how many rivers of milk and honey are flowing in the promised land; it doesn’t matter how glorious the promised land is; if you are not there, what’s the point of being there? For Moses, what made the promised land a place worth going to was that the Lord would be there.
And in the same way, what makes heaven a place that we want to be is because that’s where Jesus is. There are many people in this world who think they are going to heaven; they assume they’re going to heaven. They think that they’re going to like it in heaven. They think that heaven is going to be just the magnification of everything they want in this life. It’ll be spending time at the beach all day, free beer all day, it’ll be hanging out with your friends all day. But these same people, they don’t truly know Christ; they don’t love Christ. In fact, for many of them, they want nothing to do with Christ.
Which raises the question: if you want nothing to do with Jesus in this life, then why do you want to go to heaven? What makes heaven heavenly is the presence of Christ, of Jesus. And it is only those who have tasted the goodness of the Lord, who have come to Christ by faith, who have found him to be their heart’s delight and treasure—it is only those who love Christ in this life who will be blessed with being in the presence of Christ forever in the life to come.
Is this the longing of your hearts? Is this where you are in your hearts? Do you want to be with Jesus? I know we all want to avoid the horrors and terrors and agonies of hell, but do you want to be with Jesus? Is that why you long for heaven?
If it is, this is God’s promise to you, that one day you will be with him; you will see him in all of his glory. First John 3:2 says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.” We shall see him as he is.
Again, Moses prayed to the Lord, “Please show me your glory.” And God has given us an answer to Moses’s prayer that far exceeds what Moses experienced when God showed him his glory. In part, Moses would see a partial revelation of the glory of God, but he has given you and me a far greater revelation when he revealed himself to us in his son, Jesus. John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We’ve seen the glory of God in the person of Christ.
Jesus says the most amazing words in John 14:9. He says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Now, sometimes we wonder, “Well, I have an idea in my mind of Jesus, because I read about Him in the New Testament, and His love and His grace, but what is the Father like?” Well, Jesus says, when you look at me, you look at the Father, revealed the Father, because the Father is in me, in my love, my compassion, my grace. This is nothing other than the grace, the compassion, the love of the Father through me.
And so when you, with the eyes of faith, see Jesus, you are beholding in his face nothing less than the glory of God, the very thing that Moses longed to see. And as you look into the face of Jesus and see there, you see there not only God’s glory revealed, but you see the love of the Father, and you also have the guarantee of God’s promise that because He has given you His Son to be your Savior, that He will never leave you nor forsake you. He gives you the promise that He will be with you always, forever. He will bring you into that true promised land, that glory that is coming with the coming of Christ.
Let’s pray.