Intro: [upbeat music] Welcome to the Spoken Gospel podcast. This is our attempt to speak the gospel out of every corner of scripture. We believe every part of the Bible, Old Testament and New, is about Jesus, and this podcast is our experiment to publicly test that belief. Let's jump in. [upbeat music]
Seth: Hello, Spoken Gospel friends. Uh, this is Seth. You know my voice from previous podcasts.
David: [laughs]
Seth: Uh, um, I'm moving to Kansas City, uh, so we thought we'd do a special episode, a little interlude today. David actually preached, uh, at our church for the first time on our pulpit.
David: Yeah, after eight years of coming to church here.
Seth: After... And so it was, he preached from Exodus 32 and 34. Um, and so we're gonna play you, I think, just a clip, potentially the whole thing. We haven't decided yet.
David: We haven't decided yet.
Seth: But you'll get to find out after the break.
David: [laughs]
Seth: And, uh, it's really just w- how do we see Jesus in Exodus 32 and 34? But more particularly, it's like why do we believe all the Bible is about Jesus?
David: Mm-hmm.
Seth: Why do we think that one of the most important things you can do for your Christian life is to open your Bible and say, "Oh, look, there's Jesus-
David: [laughs] Right
Seth: ... in Genesis, and in Exodus, in Leviticus, and in Numbers, and in John, and in Revelation"? Why is the Bible good news? And this is David doing a great job explaining why. [upbeat music]
David: Well, uh, I would encourage you to have your Bibles open to Exodus 32, 33, and 34. I'm gonna try to cover a lot of text. I really wish I could dive into certain aspects of what, uh, Lashon just read for us and other parts of this passage, but I wanna give us a grand, sweeping narrative of what is happening at this crucial moment in Israel's history and, and try to show us, um, what's happening with regards especially to the presence of God.
We talk a lot about the presence of God. We, we ask for it to come. We ask to see it. We want God's glory to come among us. And, and this is one of those moments in the Bible that God's presence and glory are palpably seen, and there's a lot that we can glean from these texts, and so we're gonna try to do so today.
I want us to catch us up to where we are in Israel's story. You might remember that Israel was imprisoned in Egypt. They were enslaved there for 400 years. In that time, they, they went from about 70 people all the way up to m- maybe even 2 million people in 400 years under oppression. And God came and rescued them because, uh, He had made promises to this people, rescued them out of Egypt through miraculous wonders, through plagues and, and, um, and parting the Red Sea.
He brought them through the wilderness, feeding them miraculously with manna and quail. And then they showed up at this mountain called Sinai, and when they get to this mountain, God's glory shows up. And you can read about the, the detail of this account in Exodus 19, and it's absolutely wondrous to behold.
Y- you hear descriptions of the glory cloud of God descending on top of the peak of this mountain. It's described as a thick, dark cloud. You, you, you read about peals of thunder and, and, and, and lightning, and you read about the sound of trumpets as the voice of the Lord speaks. And, and if you kinda have that picture in your mind a- and you imagine that you're Israel surrounding this mountain, you'd be a little afraid.
This is an absolutely wonderful and terrifying sight to behold. A- and so the people don't even wanna come near this mountain and this God. In fact, they don't even wanna listen to the voice of God that sounds like a trumpet. They're absolutely terrified. And so they're like, "Moses, you've been the mediator so far. You've been representing God this whole time. Why don't you go up?"
And God calls Moses up into the mountain, and at one point in the story, Moses actually enters up into that glory cloud on top of the mountain. He goes into it, and that's where him and God talk, and we get the Ten Commandments, and we get the plans for the tabernacle. We get some of the laws that we know about today. A- and Moses is in this thick, dark cloud for 40 days and 40 nights.
Now, I want you to think, if you're Israel at the base of the mountain, watching this little tiny man walk up this mountain and enter into this thundering cloud, and then he's gone for 40 days, what conclusion would you come to?
He's dead. He's dead. He's dead. I mean, he, i- i- i- if God didn't kill him, if the big, scary cloud God didn't kill him, he starved to death. There's no food up on the mountain. So he's dead.
They are, they are very concerned at what is going to happen, uh, to, to Moses. And then that concern turns to themselves. They're like, "Moses has been the one representing, uh, us to this cloud God, and the God who brought all those plagues in Egypt, and the God who overwhelmed the armies of Egypt, and so, uh, we kinda need some protection here."
And so they ask Aaron, Moses' brother, they ask Aaron, uh, to make gods for them. And, uh, we, we read this request here in Exodus 32:1. "Up," the people say, "make us gods who shall go before us." They want gods to go before them, to represent them, to be their mediator, "Because as for this Moses, the man who brought us out, out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."
They think he's gone, and so they want new mediators. They want new protection. They want new shelter.
And so what I want us to think about for the rest of our time together, as we think about the glory and the presence of God, is two things. I want us to think about shelter, and I want us to think about sight. Shelter and sight, these are gonna be the themes that we're gonna trace throughout these three chapters.
And the first one we come up to is shelter. The people wanted a mediator, someone who could represent them and protect them from this God on the mountain, and so they ask for an idol. And then they, they not only want shelter from this God, they actually want more sight.
Of this God. You see, in Egypt, in Egyptian culture and a lot of pagan culture in that time, Israel had picked up on the fact that the invisible gods are really hard to worship when you can't see them. And so they would make physical representations of them known as idols, and these were visible versions of the invisible gods that they represented.
And, and so they say, "Okay, that, that big, scary god on the mountain is a little too much for us to wrap our heads around, so let's make an image of him that we can kind of, um, relate to. You know, it'll still be shiny and gold and, and, you know, beautiful, and we'll be like ooh and aah, but it's, you know, it's a farm animal. It's a golden calf."
So there's that, like, relatability to it. So they make this idol, and they're trying to manufacture these two things, shelter and sight. They're, they're trying to create a mediator for themselves, and they're trying to create a god that they can look at and be satisfied with.
But ultimately, both of those endeavors fail miserably. God is speaking with Moses on the mountain, and he tells Moses the people are worshiping an idol down at the foot of the mountain, and God's anger burns hot against them. And Moses goes down, and he gets angry, and the idol gets destroyed. And then the people who requested that the idol be made, they are destroyed as well. They are put to death.
And this is what happens when we try to manufacture our own shelter and our own sight. I mean, don't we do this? We, we try to manufacture our own shelter. When we think about coming into the presence of God, if you kinda had that image in your mind of, of that thick, dark cloud and the thunder and the lightning, and you think about entering into it, or if you wanna think about it like maybe the final judgment day when you stand before the throne of God, what's gonna be in your mind and in your heart and on your mouth whenever you think what right you have to stand before this God?
What's gonna be on your mouth? I know for, for me, so often, um, I, I just kinda list out, almost subconsciously, all my merits that I've earned, you know? "Well, God, I, I run a Christian nonprofit, and, uh, I make poetry that preaches the gospel to people online. And, and I'm, I'm a, I feel like I'm a nice person, and I, I feel like I treat people with equity, and I, and I feel like I champion the rights of, of the, the disenfranchised. And, and I'm a, I'm, I'm just a kind person."
You know, and that's kind of what we think our shelter is sometimes, is our behavior and our, our, our moral, um, our moral qualifications. And, and what we try to do is we try to form a shelter out of these. We manufacture an idol of mediation between us and God.
I don't know if you've, if any of you have ever seen the show The Good Place on NBC. If you're too embarrassed to raise your hand, you're not. I love it. Well done. Um, I, I, like, refuse to watch it, uh, because I was like, "This just looks so sacrilegious, and it's just gonna make me mad."
And then in fact, Seth got really into it, and he was like, "Dude, you gotta watch it." And so we start wa- I started watching it. It was actually, like, really interesting. It did make me mad often about how religion was portrayed, and the main reason is because of the main premise of the show is that there's a good place and a bad place, and the good place is Heaven and the bad place is Hell.
And the determining factor of which, uh, uh, of which one you get into is the score you earn on Earth. Every action you do is tabulated by a score system, and if you get enough points by doing enough good things, you get into the good place. But if you do too many bad things, you go to the bad place.
And that's how our world sees whether or not you'll enter into God's presence. Whether or not you'll spend eternity with God or away from God is if you do enough good works. And it might seem fanciful and, and kind of ridiculous, but if we're honest, our heart of hearts, we often tabulate like this, and we wanna, we, so we feel the need to manufacture these false gods to get us into God's presence.
But they don't work. In fact, when the idol was built, it did not protect them from God's wrath. It actually earned for them God's wrath. That's all manufacturing mediators will ever do for us.
And then let's think about not only shelter, but sight. Can you pick up on the irony here? The, the God of Israel is on the mountain in full display of glory, and they melt down some jewelry to make a tiny, little calf. Like [laughs] you could almost picture the, the, the glory cloud of God mirroring off the back of this idol, off of its gold, shining.
And it's like the real thing's up there, and they're worshiping this false one down here. And we, it's, I, I just think it's because we're far too easily satisfied. Our sight is far too easily satisfied.
We, we're, we're happy to not look at God because we can fill our eyes with all kinds of other things, little idols, little, tiny gods that, that satisfy us for a second. Maybe it's a show or a hobby or a game or another human being. Maybe it's a number scrolling across your bank account.
We, we, our, our sight is far too easily satisfied by little, golden idols. We need to rip our eyes off of those and be satisfied with nothing but the God on the mountain.
And so God, in His wrath, He comes, and He punishes those who built these, this false god, who broke some, like, one of the Ten Commandments He had just given. And you might be wondering at that point in the story, i- is Israel toast? Is the covenant God made with them completely over?
And we find out, no, God is exceedingly merciful. He comes to Moses in, um, Exodus 33:1, and He says, "Depart. Go up from here, you and the people who you have brought out of the land of Egypt to the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
God, God is saying, "Remember that promise I made in Genesis to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that's been passed down all the way to you? We're still going to the Promised Land." God has not abandoned His people, even whenever they did the worst conceivable sin right in His presence. God is merciful.
And yet with this good news comes some bad news as well. God says, "But I will not come among you Myself. I'm not gonna come dwell among you. That, that plan that I gave Moses on the mountain of this tabernacle that would be made of, of curtains and cloth and would have all these different artifacts in it, and that was the place that was gonna be my tent, and I would dwell with you, and it would be like we were back in the Garden of Eden, where I'm walking with my people in the cool of the day, that is gone. I'm not coming."
And here's the reason God gives in Exodus 33:5. He says, "You are a stiff-necked people." He's saying, "Your neck is stuck in one direction, and if I'm like, 'Hey, over here,' or, 'Hey, repent,' you don't, you don't listen. You don't change. You just stay stuck in your hard-hearted ways.
And so because of your sin, because of your stiff neck, if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. If for a single moment, if for a second, I just showed up really quickly, everyone in the camp of Israel would die because of their sin."
And so we immediately run into this tension in this text that, that the, the sight and the presence of God cannot come near people because they do not have an adequate shelter. The sight of God that we most long to experience cannot come because we do not have an adequate shelter.
The sight of God that we most long to experience cannot come because we do not have an adequate shelter. There's a tension between the presence of God and the presence of man. They cannot share the same space, because if they did for a moment, [snaps fingers] we would be consumed.
This is bad news, and the people react to it as if it was bad news. The text says that they mourned and wailed when they heard that God would not come among them and dwell with them. The lack of God's presence is really, really bad news, because there was something that they had come accustomed to.
A- and it's explained in, uh, Exodus 33:7 and onward. I'll, I'll read a section of it, 7 to 10. This is what would happen whenever God would speak to Moses. If you can picture the camp of Israel, outside the camp was this other tent, and, and Moses called it the tent of meeting, and it's where Moses and God would talk.
And listen to this description in Exodus 33:7 and 10. "And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting," which was outside the camp, "and whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up. Each would stand at his tent door and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent.
And when Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud," which is what was on Sinai, the glory of God, the pillar of cloud, "would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when 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 own tent door."
The people were used to seeing the presence of God come among them, and speak to Moses, and guide them, and tell them what was what and what was next, and God is saying, "I'm no longer coming among you." And this was bad news for the people.
And so we come again to this extremely important tension in this text. God's presence and man's presence cannot dwell together because of our sin, for if it did, we would be consumed. If the sight we long to see came in within seeing distance, we would not have the proper shelter to stay there without dying.
But Moses, the, uh, the great intercessor of Exodus and Numbers, he, uh, he goes to God, probably in this tent of meeting, and they have a conversation. That's what LaShawn read for us a moment ago.
And Moses begins pleading with God to make good on His promise to come and dwell with the people. And amazingly... I mean, that's not really amazing if you think about how gracious God is, [laughs] but amazingly, God agrees.
And He says in Exodus 33:14, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."
Have you ever seen those moments in, like, a movie or TV show or something where someone is so adamantly trying to convince someone to do something that the, the person they're trying to convince agrees, but then they just keep talking and keep trying to convince them? They're like, "Please, come on, you gotta do this for me, you gotta do this for me." And they're like, "Yeah, okay." He's like, "No, please, why won't you? Come on." And they just, like, keep trying 'cause they, they weren't expecting to hear a yes.
That's what happens to Moses here. God's grace catches him off guard. God says, "Yes, my presence will go with you," but for Moses, it seems too good to be true, so he just keeps begging God to be with him.
And, uh, it, it's so funny what he, what he keeps saying. Uh, God says, "My presence will go with you," and then in, in verse 15, Moses just keeps berating Him with requests. "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known?" And he goes on and on and on and on, begging God to give him what He's already promised to give him.
And I love that God's grace is so good that it often catches us off guard. And, like, I'm guilty of that for, so often. Like, God has already told me because I've put my faith in Jesus that His presence will never leave me or forsake me, that He will be with me, that He will bring me home, that He will sanctify me because He has justified me, and I will see Him in glory.
And all this is true, and yet when I hit my knees in the morning to pray, I always feel like I have to, like, be like, "Oh, God, y- y- seriously, though, you really gotta forgive me." [laughs] You know? Like, and I feel like I've gotta earn what He's freely given all over again.
His grace is too good to be true sometimes.
But God then bears with Moses, and He repeats the promise again in 33:17: "The Lord said to Moses, 'This very thing you have spoken I will do.'" God will dwell with His people. He will come and fill the tabernacle with His glory and His presence. He will personally take them into the Promised Land.
And now Moses shifts focus. He has figured out and pleaded with God a- a- and, and God has agreed to come and dwell with the people. He's secured God's presence for Israel.
But now Moses takes it and he, he has a personal request. It becomes immensely personal. In fact, how God will answer him, we'll find out that no one else was allowed on the mountain here in a little bit. Even across from the mountain, no animals were allowed to graze. This was a completely personal thing that Moses asked of God.
And I think it is the most audacious request in maybe the whole Bible. Moses comes to God and he says, "Please show me your glory." Moses says, "Please show me your glory."
Moses would not commit the sins Of the idolaters who made the golden calf. He would not be satisfied with a representation or an image or a facsimile. He wanted the real thing. He wanted to see God face to face.
But when I read that, I, I, I have a little bone to pick with Moses, because I'm like, "Dude, you've seen God's glory a lot. Like, aren't you the guy who in Exodus 3 talked to God in a burning bush? Aren't you the guy that God gave a staff that would turn into a serpent, and then you could grab it by its, its tail and it would turn into a staff again?
Aren't you the guy that could ha- have a clean hand and put it into his cloak, and then you would take it out and it would turn leprous, so you would put it back in your cloak and it would be clean? Like, aren't you the guy who went to, to, to Egypt and you spoke the word of the Lord, and almost by your word it seemed like plagues would come that defied all logic?
A- and aren't you the guy who stood at the Red Sea and held out your staff at the word of the Lord and you saw all of natural science defined as the waters split open, and what should've been muddy ground became dry, and you saw hundreds of thousands of the congregation of Israel pass through on dry ground while the enemies, their, the Egyptians were killed behind them?
Like, haven't you seen enough of God's glory? Aren't you the guy who on your way to Sinai you saw, you saw flakes of bread come off the ground with the morning dew in the form of manna? Aren't you the guy who saw quail rain from heaven?
Aren't you the guy who came to Mount Sinai and you saw the glory cloud of God thundering and lightning on the mountain? And aren't you the only one who God called up to come and dwell in it? Haven't you seen enough of God's glory?"
[laughs] Maybe save a little for the rest of us. Yes.
But there's something here in Moses' seemingly selfish request that should completely change the way that we think about our very lives. It's that we will not be satisfied until we see God face to face.
There is the actual presence of God that each of us in our heart of hearts, in our longing of longings, is dying to see, and nothing except the real thing will ever satisfy us. And we try to satisfy ourselves with lots of other things, lots of idols, but Moses had it right [laughs] when he asked to see God's glory.
Uh, maybe you can think of it like this. Let's say that each of us is a 10-ounce cup, and, uh, satisfaction, fulfillment would be that cup being filled to the brim.
And at one time in your life, um, hopefully, you've had an experience where you just felt really close to God. You felt really satisfied in His presence. There was that moment when you were like, "Oh, there He is," and it was the sweetest moment that you can remember in your entire Christian life.
Let's say that that was the time that God filled you 10 ounces full, right? Your cup is full. And then you come back to that same environment. You, you, you do the same things. Maybe you pray the same prayers, go to the same camp, hear the same speaker, do the same Bible study, and you feel about half full, and there's all this emptiness left in your cup.
And you're like, "What is going on? Is God giving me half of what He used to give me of His presence? Is He only giving me five ounces?"
And I don't think that's what's happening. I think what's happening is that God has given you a bigger cup. He's given you a 20-ounce cup, and so the 10 ounces of His presence that used to fill you to the brim are now not enough.
You want more, because God has increased your capacity and your desire to enjoy Him.
And I think that's what's happening all throughout Moses' life. He saw glory of God after glory of God after glory of God, and he realizes as he's standing in the glory cloud of God, that it will never satisfy him. He wants to see God face to face, unmediated, uncut, just him and the Lord. That's what he wanted.
And guys, that's what each of us want more than anything else in the world, whether you will admit it or not. Nothing will satisfy your heart. Nothing will satisfy your eyes until you see God.
And what happens is, that space of emptiness in your cup, what it starts to feel like is absence, and it starts to feel like longing, and it feels like desire, and you just... It causes you to press in more and more to God until you start making ridiculous requests like, "Show me your glory."
And like, that's the place God wants to get us.
And so Moses gets there and he asks this prayer, and then God says yes, but. [laughs] He says yes, but.
The yes i- is, is beautiful. He says in Exodus 33:19, "I will make all my goodness pass before you." And then He adds to the yes. He gives something Moses didn't even ask for.
He says that, "I will proclaim my name, the Lord, to you." He's gonna give Moses even more than he asked for. Not only will he see a sight, he'll hear the words of the Lord.
But then in verse 20 we hear this. This is the but. "But," God said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live."
Guys, this is bad news. If, if the one thing that will finally and fully satisfy us is the face of God and His actual presence, it is bad news to learn that we cannot see that face without dying.
So we are in a conundrum. We have the tension of all tensions, that the only thing that will satisfy us, the only sight that will satisfy us, the face of God, we do not have a proper shelter to enter into it.
So what are we to do?
Well, God provides Moses with an answer. Exodus 33:21-23, "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 a rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I'll take away my hand and you shall see my back But my face you shall not see.
So God comes up with a solution. God ordains a shelter for Moses. He says, "I've got a rock on the mountain. I'm gonna put you behind it, and there's this crack in it, and I'm gonna pass by, and you're not gonna see my face. You're gonna see my back."
Which is, this is not God's anatomy. This is a metaphor to saying not the full-on, unmediated presence of God, but some kind of echo or, like, an afterthought or, like, an illumination.
You can think of it like the, the actual presence of God being the flame on the wick of a candle a- and the backside of God being the room which it illuminates. He gets to see part of it, and he only gets to see it through a crack, through the cleft of the rock.
You can think of that... I like to think of it like a bedroom door when it's shut and the light turns on, and you can see that light around the edge of the door. And you're like, "Oh, I know the light's on in there," and I can see kinda what color it is.
And, and that's, this is what Moses gets.
And so the next day, Moses goes up on the mountain. He hides behind the rock, and God's glory passes by, and Moses looks through the cleft of the rock, that tiny little sliver of just the backside of God's glory, and even that is too much for him.
And he falls to his face, and he starts to worship. Moses can't even bear up under the weight of his own request. God is too good. The vision of God's face is too good. It's too beautiful. It's too overwhelming.
So Moses then comes down off the mountain, and something's changed about him. Moses' face is shining with the glory of God. Something that he saw is now imbued on his skin. He has become what he has beheld.
The glory of God he saw through the rock is now imprinted on his face. It's amazing.
And he comes off, and he starts to speak to the people of Israel, and they are terrified at Moses' shining skin. I mean, let's be honest. If any of you came up to me and your face was glowing, I would be scared, too.
And they are horrified at, at this. And so they come up with a solution. They will put a veil over Moses' face to hide the glory because it is too much for them.
So any time Moses would talk to the people, he had to come out with a veil over his face. The only time he would take it off is when he would go back into the tent of meeting to talk to the Lord.
And so this was the solution.
And while Moses had, like, a, a really remarkable experience with the glory of God on the mountain, it, it wasn't the face of God. It wasn't exactly what he asked for.
And in fact, the tension that we've been looking at between shelter and sight, between the presence of God not being able to, to dwell with the presence of men, it, it, it extends through the very end of the Book of Exodus.
I want you to look at some of the closing words of the Book of Exodus in chapter 40, verses 34 to 35. "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle."
This is what Moses begged God to do in Exodus 33. "God, let your presence come among us." Well, God is true to his word here.
And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses, the one who was allowed in the cleft of the rock, could not go into the very presence of God in the tabernacle.
God's presence and man's presence cannot live together. The sight that we most long to see, we do not have the shelter to allow us into that presence. There's not a good enough rock to hide us in to actually allow us to behold the face of God.
And this is our tension, too. We long to behold God. This world beats us down and hides, uh, hides the glory of God from us. And Satan, we have an enemy that's fighting against us to not be able to behold this God.
So what are we to do? How are we going to be able to stand in the glory of God, both now experientially and, and re- and, and in reality when the Holy Spirit dwells within us? Like, uh, what about on the Judgment Day when we go before his throne? Like, how are we going to actually be able to stand in the glory of God?
And the answer comes in another man who came off of a mountain shining with the glory of God. And he didn't come off an earthly mountain. He came off of Mount Zion, the heavenly mountain of God, and he descended down to the depths of humanity.
And he wasn't just imbued in his face with an interaction that he had with the glory of God. He was the glory of God himself because he was God.
And he wasn't just an idol made of gold that was a facsimile of God's glory like the calf that was made by the idol worshipers in Exodus 32. No, this was God's image. In, in a sense, this might offend you to s- if I say it this way, but he was God's idol.
He was the one who was made in God's image, the only one who could represent God to the whole world, and this person is Jesus, who we know is the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ. He is God himself, the glory of God that comes among us.
Listen to these verses in Colossians 1. It says that, "In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." Think about all that glory on the mountain that Moses saw coming to just live in the person of Jesus.
It says that he is the image of the invisible God. Remember when we talked about the Egyptians making the invisible gods visible through their idols? That's what Jesus is for us. He's the image of the invisible God.
He's God's idol to us, but he doesn't stand still, and he's not ineffective, and he doesn't not save. He, he moves and breathes and acts and heals and is present.
Like, Jesus is the idol [laughs] that we all long for, the image of God, and he is God himself. He's not made of stone or wood or gold. He is made of the very glory of God.
And yet this image came. God came to Earth.
And just like the Israelites put a veil over Moses' face because they did not accept the glory of God but instead rejected it, Jesus, too, was rejected.
Listen to these verses that opens up the Book of John, which we're studying as a congregation right now. John chapter 1, verses 9 to 11: "The true light, the true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world."
God is coming off the mountain. "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him." He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
Jesus was rejected, and it wasn't that he was just cast aside or ignored. No, Jesus was murdered. He was put on a cross, and he wasn't just put there by men. He was put there by evil forces, and he didn't just die a physical death.
He also bore the spiritual punishment in his physical body that we all deserve. If you remember, God said that, "If for a moment I came and dwelled with you, you would be consumed."
On the cross, Jesus was consumed by the wrath of God so that us idolatrous people who deserve it don't have to be.
And that's the Gospel story that you're used to hearing. And I l- what I love about the Bible, and what I love about the Old Testament, is it gives us picture after picture after picture of who Jesus is and what he has done.
So I want to look at the, the story we've, we've just walked through and see Jesus in it.
Jesus is the ordained rock behind which we can hide. He's the only shelter that is good enough to bring us into the actual presence of God.
Jesus is the rock behind which we can hide so that what we deserve does not come on us, because it has already come on him. And when it comes on him, he was cleft open. He was cracked open so that we can look through him and not just cower, but behold the glory of God.
And we won't just see the backside. We won't just see an echo, the illumination. We can actually, through Jesus, we will one day be able to see the actual face of God.
And the craziest twist of all in this is when we see the face of God, who do we see but Jesus himself. It is Jesus' face that we behold. It is Jesus behind wh- behind whom we hide. It is Jesus that was cleft so that we might see God.
And one day he will return, and we will see his face.
But that day is not right now. Hopefully, it's today. Hopefully, it just interrupts your lunch. [laughs] Right? The glory of God eats your lunch. I'll lo- That may be a fun colloquial way to say that. [laughs]
So how do we make it through life? [laughs] You know, like, if this, if the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ is the one thing that will satisfy us, that will stop us from wandering, that will actually bring us contentment, that will actually satisfy us, that will actually rip our hearts off of the false gods that we make to try to construe manufactured shelters for ourselves and, and try to create facsimiles and false versions of the God we actually wanna behold, how are we going to make it through this life if we can't see God yet?
Thank goodness for the Apostle Paul, [laughs] because he has answered this question very well.
Apostle- the Apostle Paul gave a really short sermon on this text in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4. Sam read a portion of that in the call to worship this morning.
And in this text, you can read it a- at length later. I would really encourage you to meditate on 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 this afternoon.
Paul says, and he's talking about this whole story that we've just walked through, Paul says that, "You know that veil that was over Moses' face that hid the glory of God? Remember that veil, Corinthians? That veil is still here today.
Now, it's not a physical veil. It's a spiritual one, and it's not over a man's face. Instead, it is over your whole Bible."
He says, "Today, when Moses is read," and that is shorthand for definitely the first five books of Tor- of the Torah, of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy, of which Exodus, which we read in today, is part of, but it's also shorthand for the whole Old Testament.
And he says, "Whenever Moses is read," whenever you read your Bibles, "that same veil remains unlifted."
There is a veil that hides the glory of God from our eyes whenever we pick up the Bible. Have you ever picked up your Bible and just felt like it was stale, and you didn't, you weren't sure what to get out of it? I mean, sometimes it breaks through, and you're like, "Wow, that was amazing."
But a lot of times, especially when you feel like when you read the Old Testament, and you're like, "I don't know what I was supposed to see there." It's because there's a spiritual battle taking place over your eyes and over this text to keep you from seeing the glory of God.
But most, but, but, but, but Paul says that there is a way to take the veil off your Bibles, and it's as simple as this.
He says, "When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed." When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. That's, uh, 2 Corinthians 3:16.
And in verse 17, "Now the Lord is spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
How many times have we heard that verse? The Lord is spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
And how many times have we not understood the context here, where God is saying the Spirit of the Lord brings freedom for a whole lot of things, and really specifically here, he's saying the, the Holy Spirit can come and bring you freedom to see the glory of God in your Bible.
The Holy Spirit can come and fight the spiritual battle that you can't fight for yourself.
And so what Paul wants us to see here is how do we satisfy our hearts? How do we find contentment for the sight that we so long to see but that won't come until Jesus returns?
He says, "Cleft open your Bibles. Cleft open this rock and see the glory of God in it."
That's what he's begging us to see.
Jesus, just like we saw him in the rock, and just as we saw him as the glory that passed by, there is story after story and law after law and poem after poem and proverb after proverb and prophecy after prophecy in your Old Testament that reveals to you the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The only way that we can see the glory of God in our Bibles is by seeing Jesus in our Bibles.
And that's what the Holy Spirit wants to do.
I didn't share this in the first service, but at the front of my Bible, I keep just a short list of ways that we can see Jesus throughout the Old Testament. I just want to read this to you.
Jesus is the true head of the human race that fully bears the image of God as Adam should have.
Jesus is the true seed of Abraham that brings all nations to himself.
Jesus is the true Isaac whose father did sacrifice him so we would not have to sacrifice ourselves.
Jesus is the true Joseph that was mistreated by those close to him only to come back and save them.
Jesus is the true Moses that leads his people out of bondage and into the promised land.
Jesus is the true tabernacle where God will dwell with us.
Jesus is the true promised land where we will not only find rest and provision but will never be kicked out like Israel was.
Jesus is the true judge who always acts justly and stands as the representative for his people.
Jesus is the true king who sits on the throne of David forever so that his people can live with God.
Jesus is the true temple wherein we find final and complete forgiveness of sins.
Jesus is the true priest who perfectly and once for all mediates between us and the presence of God.
Jesus is the true prophet of God who not only speaks on God's behalf all the blessings and all the curses but takes our curses and gives us his blessings.
Jesus is the true remnant of Israel who is not a collection of faithful people but the one person who was faithful when no one else was.
Jesus is the true word of God who not only reveals truth but fulfills what it commands and transforms our hearts to obey it in a way that we never could.
The whole Bible points to Jesus and if we miss him we miss everything.
So I beg you to do what the Apostle Paul is trying to show us to do in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4.
Cleft open your Bible. See the face of Jesus and his gospel. How he died for your sins. How he is coming back to bring you to himself.
And something amazing happens when we do that. Something absolutely amazing happens.
What happened to Moses on the mountain happens to us in an even more real way. Moses saw the glory of God and his face shone with God's glory.
Paul says that as we behold the glory of God all throughout the Bible we are transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to another.
We become what we behold.
And this journey will ultimately be finished when Jesus returns.
1 John 3.2 says 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.
Jesus is coming back and we will see him face to face.
Only those though who have put their trust in the rock. Only those though who have said I will hide behind you. Let me hide myself in thee as the hymn says.
And when Jesus comes back we will see him and we will become like him. We will be that which we behold.
So cleft open your Bibles. See Jesus in every page.
And as we worship today I would ask each of us to pray the prayer of Moses. God show me your glory.
If you're leading communion for us, if you're serving communion I would ask you to take your positions around the room. This is one of the ways that we can behold the glory of God. As we repeat the gospel to ourselves in tangible ways.
We're about to partake of this meal. And the body, the bread represents the body of Jesus that was broken for you so you would not have to. His body was consumed so yours would not have to be.
And the wine that we drink represents the blood of Jesus. And his blood was spilled for you so yours would not have to be.
This is how he formed the rock for you.
So I ask that as you come and take this you would think let me hide myself in thee. The only way I can get into God's presence is because of this body and this blood.
If you're wondering can I come and be a part of this meal? Maybe you're new here, you're visiting.
There's only one requirement to come to this table and it's not your own good works. It's not the idols that you manufacture.
It's have you put your trust in the rock. Are you hiding behind the shelter of Jesus?
And if you have put your faith in Jesus as your one hope to enter into the presence of God we invite you to come and eat as we worship.
Outro: Thank you for listening to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Spoken Gospel is a nonprofit dedicated to creating free gospel-centered media that speaks the gospel out of every corner of scripture. So to join us in our mission and view our resources we invite you to visit SpokenGospel.com.
