In verse 18, Moses said, I beseech thee, show
me thy glory. Everything that the Lord shows
us about Himself is His glory. He shows us His glory. You think
of what Moses had seen at this point. Moses saw the Lord in
the burning bush. Moses had seen all the Lord's
dealings with Pharaoh, the plagues. He had seen the Lord's deliverance
in the Passover lamb, how He brought him out of Egypt. He
saw His deliverance at the Red Sea. He saw His power upon Amalek
and how he defeated Amalek when he came up from behind and attacked
the children of Israel. He had seen manna fall from heaven
to feed the children of Israel. He had seen the cloudy pillar
that led them by day and by fire at night. He had been in the mount with
the Lord. Moses had gone up into the mount with the Lord and spoken
with the Lord. He had received the Ten Commandments
from the Lord. You hear people say the Ten Commandments
are the glory of God. Moses had been given those Ten
Commandments. But of all that, Moses says now,
Lord, if you will, if you are willing, I beseech you, Show
me thy glory. When you see what Moses had seen,
it makes you want to see more of God's glory. All that was
God's glory. But when you see God's glory,
it makes you want to see more of God's glory. So he wanted
to see more of God's glory. So he says here in verse 19,
And the Lord 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 show mercy
on whom I will show mercy.' And he said, Thou canst not see my
face, for there shall no man see me and live. And the Lord
said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon
a rock. And it shall come to pass, while
my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock,
and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And I will take
away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face
shall not be seen." God's glory is His Son. His glory is the
Lord Jesus Christ. And we see God's glory through
faith in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where we
see His glory. That's what we see here when
the Lord put Moses in a cleft of the rock, the place by the
Lord. It's going to be in Christ that
we're going to see God's glory. Now, we only see God's glory
in Christ by faith. We see Him by faith. While we're
in these mortal bodies, we can't see God. We can't look upon God. He said there in verse 20, Thou
canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live.
One, God is spirit. He can only be worshipped in
spirit and in truth. Two, our mortal capacity can't
handle seeing God. If we saw the brilliance of His
glory, we couldn't handle it. If we look at the sun, it'll
blind us. We can get shocking news and
it will make you pass out. Imagine if you saw God's light,
which gives light to the sun, which makes the sun look like
a candle. Imagine if you beheld that glory. But even when we
stand in heaven glorified, when we see God's glory, we are still
going to see Him in a man, in the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man.
That's how we're going to see God. The fullness of the triune
God is in Christ, in a body. Even when we're glorified in
heaven, we're going to see Him. And that's how we're going to
see the glory of God. 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's only in Christ that we see
God's glory. That's what he says here, verse
21, the Lord said, there's a place by me. Christ is that place by
God our Father. Thou shalt stand upon a rock,
and it shall come to pass while my glory passes by, I'll put
thee in the cliff to the rock. Christ is the place by God. He's
the one by God. He's one with God. And He's the
rock that we stand upon. He's the cleft of the rock. He's
that safe refuge that we're in, so we're encompassed by the rock.
We're in Christ. He's the shelter. He's the refuge. He's the place of safety for
His people. We're going to sing, He hideth
my soul in the cleft of the rock. That shadows a dry and thirsty
land. He hideth my life in the depths
of His love. and covers me there with His
hand. God's provided a place of refuge and salvation and strength
for chosen sinners, and that place, that rock, is Christ.
There's an old hymn that says, Rage as you will, O ye portal
of hell, safe in the rock do we ransomed ones dwell. That's
where He's put us, is in Christ the rock. He gave Christ the
honor, He gave Him the honor, to manifest His glory. John said,
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. We're going to see Christ Jesus,
the man that people call Jesus and they have pictures of what's
supposed to be Him and we don't know what He looks like. That One who is a man is God
in human flesh and He is the glory of God. He is where you
are going to see the glory of God. If He gives you faith, you
are going to see God's glory in Him. Go over to 2 Corinthians
3. You remember when Moses came
down from this mountain, at the end of all this, his face was
glowing. from seeing the glory of God.
His face was glowing and he put a veil on. And the picture there
is that he says here in 2 Corinthians 3, it was a picture of the veil
being on the heart. They couldn't see the glory on
Moses' face. And the picture there is we can't
see the glory in the law as long as we are in our sin. It says
here in 2 Corinthians 3, It says, verse 7, it says that it was
the ministration of death written and engraved in stones and it
was glorious so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly
behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance.
But that glory was to be done away with, the glory of that
law. But the ministration of the Spirit is much more glorious
than that. Now look here down at verse 13. It says, Moses put a veil over
his face so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly
look to the end of that law which is now abolished. But their minds
were blinded. For until this day there remaineth
the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament,
in the reading of the law. That veil's done away in Christ.
That veil Moses put on is a picture of not being able to see the
glory in the law. A man that's natural can't see
the glory of the law. He can't see the glory in the
Ten Commandments and the glory of the ceremonies and all the
law. He can't see the glory in it. But what's the glory of it? It's the end of it. Christ is
the end of the law. They couldn't see to that end.
They couldn't see Christ in the law. They couldn't see the end
and the glory of God in the law. And men today can't see it. Men
today look into the scriptures. They look into the law of God.
They don't see God's glory in the law. They can't. But look
at this. Verse 15, Even unto this day,
when Moses is read, when the law is read, the veil is upon
their heart. Nevertheless, when the heart
shall turn to the Lord, that veil shall be taken away. Now
the Lord is that Spirit. He is the only one that can turn
you. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,
there is liberty. And here is what we all do, every
believer, with open face. Not as opposed to a veil being
on your face. With open face. beholding as
in a glass, like looking into a mirror, we see the glory of
the Lord. He was the glory of that law.
Everything we're going to see with Moses, we're going to be
in these chapters for a while now, to get over to where Moses
comes down with a veil on his face. Everything in there is
picturing Christ. Everything about it is picturing
Christ. But I'm just showing you here now, He's the glory
of God. He's the glory God was declaring
and giving that law. Christ is that glory. But it
takes Christ coming in spirit and turning our hearts to Him,
to want to see Him and see He's the glory, and that's when we'll
see the glory of God in Christ. Look, when we behold it as in a glass,
the glory of the Lord will change into the same image from glory
to glory by the Spirit of the Lord. And so we have this ministry. He said in verse 2, we've renounced
the hidden things of dishonesty. We're not walking in craftiness.
We're not handling the Word of God deceitfully. But we're preaching
the truth. By manifestation of the truth,
we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God. That's what I was trying to do Thursday night when I said,
if you've got a preacher preaching to you, telling you to keep the
Sabbath, he's not keeping the Sabbath. He doesn't keep it.
Christ is the Sabbath. He's kept it. Why do you preach
direct like that? I'm trying to speak to a man's
conscience. I'm saying, hear this truth in your conscience.
Don't you understand that you've never kept the law? Christ is
the glory of the law. He's the one that gives the glory
for establishing us and making us rest in Him. Now look down
here. But if our gospel is hid, it's
hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world has
blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of
the glorious gospel, the glory of God and the gospel of Christ,
He's the image of God, lest He should shine unto them. For we
preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves
your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, where? In the
face of Jesus Christ. That's where we're going to see
His glory. That's what this picture putting Moses in the cleft of
the rock. We're going to see God's glory in Christ. And we
can't make anybody see it. We have this treasure in earthen
vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not
of us. But if we see Him, that's where we're going to see His
glory is in Christ. I was thinking about this when
I was studying this. I was reading these commentaries.
They were talking about what a great request this was for Moses to
ask to see God's glory. And it was. It was a great thing
to say, Lord, I want to see Your glory. But you know, when I sit
down to study every week, trying to find a message from God for
you, and I read a passage of scripture, that's essentially
what I'm asking God every time I pray. He says, Lord, show me
your glory in this passage. And by that I mean, show me Christ
in this passage, because He's the glory of God. If you don't
see the glory of God in a passage, you don't see Christ in a passage,
you can't preach that passage in truth, because He's the glory. He's the brightness of His glory.
He's the express image of His person. Now, go back to our text
in Exodus 33. What's the glory God makes us
behold in Christ? Well, I'm going to divide it
into these three things here that God divides it into. He
said, first of all, verse 19, I will make all my goodness pass
before thee. And all of these three things
here, they're all interfolded. You know, one is the other and
the other is the other. You know what I mean? They're
all one. This is His glory. I'll 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
show mercy on whom I will show mercy. In Christ, God makes all
His goodness to pass before us. That's His glory, His goodness.
Everything God reveals about Himself is His goodness. It's
His goodness. Everything He does is His goodness. That's the glory of God, His
goodness. The rich young ruler thought
Christ was only a man, just another sinner like anybody else, a master
in Israel. He comes to him and he started
off and he said, good master, what must I do to inherit eternal
life? I said, why do you call me good? There's none good but
one, that's God. He's the only one good and that's
true. He is the only one good. He's
the only one that's good. He's altogether good. Nothing
comes from God but good. And everything He does is good.
God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. God is eternally good, immutably
good, continually good, and everything He does in the salvation of His
people is good. It's good. You see this in the Scripture
in Ephesians 1.5. It says, He predestinated us
unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according
to the good pleasure of His will. His pleasure, what He's pleased
to do is good. It's the good pleasure of His
will. It says, He made known unto us the mystery of His will
according to His good pleasure that He purposed in Himself.
We're confident of this very thing, Paul said. He that has
done a good work in you will perform it to the day of Jesus
Christ. Every work he does for sinners is good. It's good. Thou hast said unto the Lord,
my soul, thou art my Lord. This is Christ speaking in Psalm
16, 2. He says, O my soul, thou hast
said unto the Lord, thou art my Lord. My goodness extendeth
not to thee. Christ was in this earth. What
He was doing was not to extend goodness to the Father. The Father
didn't need it. He is goodness. Where does His
goodness extend to? But to the saints that are in
the earth. That's where Christ's goodness goes to. To you and
I who are His people. The goodness of God leads thee
to repentance. It's not just beholding God's
goodness that's going to lead you to repentance. It's everything
God does in granting you repentance and giving you a change of mind.
That's His goodness. Everything He does in it. I will
satiate the soul of the priest with fatness and my people shall
be satisfied with my goodness, saith the Lord. It's the goodness
of the Lord. And everything we're going to
see here, it's God's goodness. This is His glory, His goodness.
And then He says in Christ, His glory that we're going to behold
is this, His name. I will proclaim the name of the
Lord before thee. That's His glory, His name. Now, when you talk about His
name, it means all His attributes, everything God is, that's His
name. We see it in chapter 34 and verse
5. The first thing He shows is His
name itself. Verse 5, the Lord descended in
the cloud, Exodus 34, 5, He descended in the cloud, He stood with Him
there and He proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed
by before Him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God. So you look at Christ. He brings
you to behold Christ. This is where He's going to make
you see. He's going to make you see He is the Lord. Capital L,
capital O, capital R, capital D. He is Jehovah. He's God. That's who He is. That's His
glory. And He's going to make you see
He's the Lord God. That means Jehovah Almighty.
Jehovah Almighty, Jehovah mighty to save, mighty to covenant and
fulfill His covenant and make His covenant with His people.
He's the Lord God. And all these attributes of God
is His glorious name revealed in Christ. Here's His attribute,
verse 6, merciful and gracious. When you see Christ, you see
God's mercifulness. When you behold Christ, you behold
His graciousness, how He's gracious. God in Christ is merciful. What
does that mean? It means when He chose a people
in Christ from eternity, He never looked at His people anywhere
but in Christ. So when we fell in Adam, God
didn't give us what we deserve. He withheld from us what we deserve. He was merciful to His people.
Why? Because we were in Christ. We were in Christ. And in Christ
He gave us grace. He gave us freely what we did
not deserve in Christ. That's Him sending Christ His
grace. And all grace that God has to
give is in Christ. It's the free favor that God
gives in Christ. You know, Moses had the law.
And he had come down with the law. The law had been broken.
And the picture God is, we're seeing here is, it's not gonna
be the law that's gonna make you be gracious and merciful.
The law doesn't teach you to be gracious and merciful. What's
going to make a sinner gracious and merciful? It's going to be
beholding God's mercy and grace to you for the sake of Christ,
such a vile, wretched sinner who deserves no mercy and no
grace. It's going to be beholding Him, His glory in Christ, being
merciful and gracious to you. That's going to make us want
to be merciful and gracious to others. He's the glory of God's name
in verse 6, in His long-suffering and abundant in goodness and
truth. You think about when we sinned
in Adam. I mean that was us breaking every
commandment. That was us worshiping ourselves
as the idol that was us murdering God, committing adultery against
God, coveting God's glory, everything we could possibly do in breaking
the law. We did it all in that one transgression. And yet God didn't destroy the
world right then. He suffered long and waited. He saved His people in all the
Old Testament age. He saved His people until Christ
came. Because in the surety they were
righteous. In their surety they were holy.
And so He saved them and suffered long until Christ came. and brought
in that righteousness and brought in that justification. And He
suffered along with you and me all the days of our rebellion.
He was patient and long-suffering with us. Why? For Christ's sake. It's all in Christ. It's for
Christ's sake. And He continues to be long-suffering
to us, doesn't He? If you know yourself and you
know your sin, you know God is still suffering along with you
and me. And he's going to continue to suffer long until the last
chosen redeemed child is called out into faith in Christ. And then he'll come again. He's
not willing that any shall perish, but that all should come to repentance.
They're coming to repentance. He's going to bring them all
to repentance. That's his long suffering. That's what you behold
in Christ. You go through some trial, and
you've messed up, and you know you've messed up, and you need
your brethren to suffer along with you, and God sometimes will
make you see He's the only one suffering along with you. Or
He'll use a brother that suffers along with you. and he makes
you appreciate his long-suffering and you see it in Christ more
and that makes you, that grows you in that fruit of the Spirit.
It makes you want to be long-suffering with your brethren. Law doesn't do that. When we
talk about Christ being, the love of Christ being the constraint
of the believer. This is what I'm talking about.
It's beholding all His glory in Christ. Beholding long-suffering
in Christ is what's going to make you want to be long-suffering
to others. He says there that He's abundant in goodness and
truth. Think about how abundantly good
and true God has been to us. He didn't have to form a church
in this part of the country. He did. That was abundant goodness
of God to give us the truth in this place. He didn't have to
do that. In so many ways, He's just been
abundantly good to us. God doesn't just sparingly shower
His people with good. He gives it in abundance. and
gives truth in abundance. There's so many places that don't
have the truth. And the truth is a rare thing.
If you have a place where the gospel is preached in truth,
that is a rare thing in this world. And when you know that
and you behold that, you see God's, He's abounded to us in
goodness and truth. And how much we see it in Christ,
there's God's goodness. This One who worked out a perfect
righteousness for us, this One who is Himself the truth. Verse 7, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin that will by no means
clear the guilty. This is where we see the glory
of His name right here. In the face of our Lord Jesus
Christ, we see God being righteous and being a Savior. A just God
and a Savior. No man could do this. No man
could have come up with this. He is merciful and He saves.
He sent Christ and Christ upheld His law for His people. We are going to see next time
we look, we are going to see Moses. He is going to say, now
Moses, you came down from the mount and the people had broken
the law. You threw the tablets down. Picture
the law broken by my people. Now He said, now Moses, you hew
two new tables and bring them back up here. And God sent His
Son and told Him, now you restore the law. You repair the law that
was broken by my people. And you come up to me with a
perfect law, perfectly fulfilled. And that's what Christ did for
His people. So the law is honored, the law
is magnified. To do it, He had to bear our
sin, and bear the stripes, and bear the shame, and bear the
ridicule, and the mockery, and the separation from God. I wish we could, that ought to
make us just, our heart break and our heart rejoice at the
same time. And we often hear it and it just, just so lightly do we hear it. I mean, that's, that's everything.
Declaring how God is righteous and how he will not clear the
guilty. And yet because Christ took the
place of His people, because He came and was our substitute
for us, now God reserves mercy for us. He's saving that mercy
for everyone He chose in Christ. And He's keeping it for His people
and He's forgiving iniquity. You know what iniquity is? Everything
we're doing right here today. This is all our good works, our
righteous works. God calls it iniquity because
there's nothing about it righteous. It doesn't equal God's righteousness.
It's iniquity. It's inequitable. And He's forgiving
it. And transgression, that's all
our bad stuff that we think and are and do, our transgression
and our sin. You think about it. For God to
have anything to do with us, the only way He could have anything
to do with us is to be merciful to us and forgive our very best
deeds. Our very best deeds. Filthy rags
before Him. He has to forgive those. He has
to forgive our transgression and our sin. And He can only
do that in Christ. He couldn't just do that and
pretend like you were not full of iniquity and transgression
and sin, that had to be dealt with, that had to be put away.
Christ has put it away. We come to Him continually when
we pray and ask Him, Lord, forgive us of our sins, because He told
us to do that. But we do it because we need
to constantly be reminded He's our forgiveness. He's done it. He's put it away. He's forgiven
us. But He said, I'm going to be inquired of to do this for
you. He's going to have us ask for forgiveness continually. But you see His glory in that
He won't clear the guilty and yet He's cleared us, He's forgiven
us because Christ is our mercy seat. He's the propitiation for
our sin. And then look, now go back up
to Exodus 33 and look at verse 19. And here's the third thing
he speaks of as his glory, it's his sovereignty. He says in verse
19, and he said, I'll make all my goodness pass before you,
and I'll proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and here's
the third thing, I'll be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and
will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. Now you see what
that does right there? That makes God's grace cease
to be national. Because they're all Israel that
he's sitting there in the midst of. But God's telling him, I'm
going to be merciful and gracious to whom I will be gracious in
this nation. That makes his mercy and grace
cease to be just to a nation. That makes it personal. That
makes it to particular sinners. He's telling Moses, I'm not saving
all these people. I'm going to be gracious to whom
I'll be gracious, and I'll be merciful to whom I will be merciful.
God is good in His sovereign good pleasure to do as He pleases,
that's good. And this is what He's pleased
to do, I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. And
I'll be merciful to whom I'll show mercy to whom I'll show
mercy. You think of Jacob, wicked Jacob, supplanter Jacob, trickster
Jacob, deceitful, wretched Jacob. who was just as bad as Esau.
Esau didn't want the birthright. He didn't care a thing about
it whatsoever. Esau wanted to go out and hunt.
That's what he wanted to do. He didn't care about being in
the house of the Lord. He didn't care about anything that had
to do with God. He didn't want it. Jacob was no different. Jacob was no different. And it
was God's sovereign right to say, Jacob have I loved, Esau
have I hated. That was his sovereign right
to do it. The purpose of God according to election is so that
God is the one who does the calling. It's not of our works. It's not
of anything in us, good or bad. It's God who does the calling.
The purpose of God's sovereign right is to declare it's not
of our will that we're saved. Our will does not save us. If
anybody preaches free will to you, your will is in bondage
to your nature all the time. If all you've got is a sin nature,
all you do is sin. If you've got a new nature, it's
because God's given you a new will. In that new nature, He's
given you a new will. Now you've got a willingness
to please God and to believe God and serve God. But our will's
in bondage to our nature. We don't have a free will ever.
But it's not of our will. It's of God's will. God choosing
whom He will. I don't have a problem or I don't
have to ask how could God love Esau. I don't even really wonder
how could God love Jacob. I wonder how could God love me.
That's what I wonder. It has to be God's sovereign
will. It has to be His sovereign right.
That's no wonder Vile, wretched, self-righteous, proud sinners
hate the doctrine of God's sovereignty. It's God's glory. It's His glory
to save whom He will and pass by whom He will. To save whom
He will and harden whom He will. That's His sovereign right. But
when He makes us behold His glory, what does He do? Here's the last
thing. When He makes us behold the glory in the face of Christ,
look at Exodus 34.8. When Moses beheld this glory,
he made haste and he bowed his head toward the earth and he
worshipped. And he said, if now I found grace
in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us,
for it's a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin,
and take us for thine inheritance. That's only one way we're going
to stop glorying in men. glorying in ourselves and what
we've done and glorying in what we've made other people do. There's
only one way we're going to stop that and that's going to see
the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. Then we'll hit
our face and we'll worship Him. Then we'll start making intercession
for sinners and start begging God's mercy and grace upon us
and ask for His presence with us. We won't stop boasting in
our so-called wisdom. Oh, I'm a wise old believer. I've been in the faith a long
time. You know I know some things. That ain't a wise believer. A
wise believer sees God's glory and says, I'm ignorant. I know
less today than I did when I started. God sees glory. Stop boasting
in our so-called righteousness and our so-called sanctification
and see Christ alone as our righteousness, Christ alone as our holiness.
That's what will make us hit our face in glory in God only,
in Christ only. That's when we'll start singing
rock of ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself. Let me hide
myself. From who? Let me hide myself
from my holy God in you, in you. Oh Isaiah, for six chapters he
was He, woe is them, woe is them, woe is them, woe to them, woe
to them, woe to the other one. And he said, and then I beheld
the Lord, high and lifted up. His train filled the temple.
I heard Him cry, holy, holy, holy is the Lord. And then he
said, woe is me. I am undone. I am undone. Then the Lord said, who will
go forth and declare this glory? And then he said, here I am,
Lord, send me. We'll start talking about His
glory, not our own glory. I pray God will show us that
glory. Let's go to Him in prayer. Father, we beseech You, if You will,
show us Your glory. Make us truly behold Christ. speak into our hearts, Lord,
and hide us in the cleft of the rock
and bring us to really, truly see all Your glorious goodness, all Your attributes, Your holy
name, Your sovereignty. Lord, make us truly worship We do ask You to forgive us our
sins. We haven't done anything but
sin. Make us see, Lord, if Christ
is our righteousness, that means we don't have any or produce
any. If He's our holiness, we don't
have any, we don't produce any. Lord, be the wisdom, make us
behold this. And Lord, go with us. We're a
stiff-necked people. We need you continually to melt
our heart, continually to bend our knee, continually to open
up our hearts to love. We need your presence. We need
you with us. We're so cold and so hard and
so calloused. Make us hear, Lord. Make us see.
Make us follow. Lord, if you do this for us,
there's nothing else we need. We don't have to ask you. You'll
provide everything else you've promised. But if you do this,
we have everything we need. Lord, we ask it according to
your Son, according to his, for his sake, for his blood's sake,
for his righteousness' sake, according to your covenant, according
to your grace, according to all your promises, Father, we ask
you to do this for Christ's sake, if you will. It's in his name
we ask it. Amen.