If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
I think Lewis is absolutely right. We do not wander into sin because our desires are too strong but because they are too weak towards the One who is altogether desirable. It was Israel’s weak desire that led to their creating the golden calf, for they were willing to abandon their worship of the Almighty Creator for a dumb image of an animal that they themselves had made.
Thus far, although God has relented from destroying Israel altogether, the people are still waiting for their great sin to be resolved. In our previous passage, Yahweh ordered Moses to lead the people into Canaan, yet He refused to go with them. This set before them a perilous but necessary decision: did they want God Himself or only the gifts that He could give them? Thankfully, Israel seemed to somewhat understand how disastrous the thought of being abandoned by God is.
In our present text, we sit in on a dialogue between Yahweh and Moses, and we discover by Moses was the great mediator of the Old Testament and a shadow and type of Christ our Lord. Our text can be divided into two general parts. Verses 12-17 show Moses’ renewed intercession on Israel’s behalf, and verses 18-23 describe Moses’ personal request from the LORD.
DO NOT BRING US UP FROM HERE // VERSES 12-17
In describing how Moses established a temporary tent of meeting outside of Israel’s camp, our previous text ended by describing Moses’ relationship with Yahweh as such: “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” In this second half of chapter 33, we are invited to listen in on one of Moses’ conversations with the LORD.
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.”
In verses 12-13, Moses establishes his first request. He begins by addressing the most recent command that God had given him back in verse 1. The LORD had commanded him leave Sinai and take the Israelites into Canaan, the land of milk and honey that God had promised to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To this command, Moses lays out his first concern: but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Of course, Yahweh had said that He would not go with them but would only send one of His angels before them. Moses was now drawing on that ambiguity and asking for clarification. As we will see, he is ultimately leading up to pleading for Yahweh Himself to go with them, but he begins with this question of who precisely God’s messenger was going to be.
Next, Moses draws the LORD’s attention to what He had previously said of Moses, that He knew the prophet by name and had favor toward him. While God will affirm this in verse 17, we can rightly assume that God previously told Moses this during one of their previous conversations. But regarding this favor towards Moses, Ryken explains:
This means much more than simply that God knew who Moses was. That would be true of anyone, because in that sense God knows everyone by name. But here the Bible is speaking of a special knowledge that is full of love and favor. According to John Mackay, for God to “know someone by name” is to embrace that person in “a relationship of acceptance and friendship.” Moses was an object of covenant grace. God knew him in a loving, saving, and electing way. God knows all his children like this. He knew us in our mother’s womb (Ps. 139:13–16). He knew us even before the foundation of the world. He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3a). Anyone who is friends with God through faith in Jesus Christ is known and loved by the God who rules the universe.
Then in verse 13 Moses seeks to leverage that favor. If he had truly found favor in God’s sight, then he begged to know God’s ways, in order to know God and find further favor in His sight. By this Moses was asking “to comprehend God’s essential personality, the attributes that guide His actions in His dealings with humankind, the norms by which He operates in His governance of the world.” The LORD will do this very thing in the next chapter, where He will proclaim to Moses His name and character. Indeed, Psalm 103:7-8 explicitly ties these two passages together, saying:
He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Thus, while God’s ways to us are certainly mysterious, they are nevertheless clear and plain. Douglas Stuart rightly notes that:
There is little room for mysticism in biblical religion; we do not know God by having some sort of inexplicable ethereal communion with him, in which are feelings are used as the evidence for our closeness to him. We know him by learning his ways (i.e., his revealed standards, revealed methods, and revealed benefits)—in other words by objective, rather than subjective, emotional, means. (701)
Notice also the last statement that Moses throws in at the end: Consider too that this nation is your people. After so heavily emphasizing his own relationship with God, he reminds the LORD again that He has adopted and covenanted Himself to Israel as His own people.
In verse 14, Yahweh answers Moses, saying, My presence with go with you, and I will give you rest. On the surface, this is the exact answer that Moses was hoping for. Although far more glorious than we are, Moses was not content to be led into the Promised Land by an angel; He wanted to the presence of the living God to go with Him. As we said of the bread of the Presence, God is literally saying that His face would go with him. Furthermore, God would give Moses rest. Just as Moses rested in the might of Yahweh throughout the destruction of Egypt, so would he continue to rest in God’s powerful hand as he continued to lead the people.
As wonderful as this promise is, Moses finds fault with it. You see, it is for him alone, not for the people of Israel. Thus, Moses presses on further in his task as mediator, saying in verse 15: If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. Notice how Moses begins by speaking only of himself but ends by tying himself to Israel. He then continues to do so 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?”
Again, Moses is attaching himself to the people of Israel, saying, “I and your people” and “us.” We should also note that Moses in no way argues that the people were morally upright; instead, he simply argues that they belong to God, that they are His treasured possession among all the earth. Indeed, notice how Moses notes that they are marked as God’s own people:
Moses’ argument insists that one of the marks that Israel is God’s chosen people is the continued presence of God among the people. If God is not with the people, there is nothing to set them apart as God’s people. Here, Moses’ language sounds quite similar to that in Deut 4:7: “What great nation is there that has a god so close to it as YHWH our God when we call upon him?” What marks God’s people as God’s people is not their greatness or even their goodness… What sets Israel apart as God’s people is the intensity and intimacy of their relationship with their God; it is God’s presence among the Israelites that alerts the nations that Israel is God’s people.
Verse 17 records God’s answer 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. Yahweh finally relents to going up among all of Israel once more. The plans for the tabernacle will be continued, and God Himself will go with His people in the land of Canaan. Yet notice that the LORD again places the emphasis upon Moses, saying that He will go with Israel because Moses has found favor in His sight and He knows Moses by name.
This is a marvelous picture of what Christ has done for us as our Mediator. Like Israel, we deserve the judgment of God and are unworthy for His presence to be with us. However, Christ found perfect favor in the Father’s sight because Jesus is the Son, whom the Father has loved for all eternity. And the good news of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is that we are now in Christ, which means that what Christ has through obedience He now gives to us through imputation. Indeed, Paul rejoices that in Christ we have received the Spirit of adoption, who testifies within us that we are children of the Father and co-heirs with Christ. And as we are baptized with Christ into His death and resurrection, we now share in receiving the same pronouncement that Christ received at His baptism: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
ALL MY GOODNESS // VERSES 18-23
Again, in verse 17, Moses’ intercession is successful at last. He can now cut off his conversation with the LORD and go back to the Israelite camp. But that is not what Moses does. His immediate need has been answered, but the prophet still wants more. He has God’s pledge to go with him and with the people of Israel, but Moses’ original request is still lingering: please show me now your ways, that I may know you… Moses now makes a similar but even more audacious plea: Please show me your glory.
Of course, Moses had already seen God’s glory. He had seen God’s glory in the burning bush, where God first revealed His name to the shepherd-prophet. He had seen God’s glory in each of the signs and plagues that Yahweh commanded him to bring upon the land of Egypt. He had seen God’s glory in the parting of the sea and the drowning Pharaoh and his chariots. He had seen God’s glory in daily giving bread from heaven and water from the rock. He had seen God’s glory descend in fire, cloud, thunder, and lightening upon Sinai. He had spent forty days and forty nights within the cloud of God’s glory, receiving the instructions for the tabernacle. Why then does Moses still ask to see God’s glory?
Stuart argues that Moses was looking for a fresh display of God’s glory was an assurance that God’s presence would indeed be with him, and that is likely quite true. However, I believe that Moses is also simply asking to see more of God’s glory. He is not merely looking for another vision of God’s glory but a fuller vision of it.
And I believe that this is exactly what makes Moses the greatest human figure in all of the Old Testament. Moses is here giving us a polar opposite image of what Lewis described in the opening quotation. Rather than being far too easily pleased, Moses’ hunger to know more of God was insatiable. Though the LORD spoke with him face to face, Moses had a kind of holy discontentment. He was not content with what how much he knew God; He wanted to know Him more. Of course, we already saw a glimpse of this back in chapter 20, for when all of Israel fell back and begged God to stop speaking to them, Moses drew nearer to Him.
And here is how God answers Moses’ desire:
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.
Here God agrees to Moses’ request but notice that the LORD rephrases the request by saying that He will make all of His goodness pass before Moses and will proclaim His name, Yahweh. Matthew Henry quite frankly says, “Note, God’s goodness is his glory.” God’s glory, goodness, and name are all interconnected and intrinsically bound together. Although we must necessarily distinguish them from one another, they are, in reality, wholly and completely unified.
But it is also necessary that we behold the glory of God more clearly through the goodness and name of the LORD. Indeed, it is through the gospel that we see God’s goodness and know His name clearly, and Paul affirms that God worked the gospel in order to display the manifold riches of His wisdom, to radiate His glory.
The second half of the verse is a difficult one for many to wrestle with, for Yahweh is asserting His sovereign right to make Himself known to whomever He chooses. Stuart softens this point by arguing that a better translation ought to read: “I show grace in being gracious and I show mercy in being merciful.” While that may be a legitimate way of translating the Hebrew, this verse does not stand in a vacuum. The Greek of the Septuagint is less ambiguous and says plainly, “And I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I have compassion.” But most importantly that is the very wording that Paul uses whenever he cites this sentence in Romans 9:15. In other words, this verse is indeed saying exactly what it appears to be saying.
But how does God’s free and sovereign distribution of His grace and mercy connect with His glory, goodness, and name? Some have argued that God is here justifying why He is making His goodness known to Moses, but I think Piper is right to call this a description of His name and goodness and, therefore, glory. As Piper writes:
It is the glory of God and his essential nature mainly to dispense mercy (but also wrath, Ex. 34:7) on whomever he pleases apart from any constraint originating outside his own will. This is the essence of what it means to be God. This is his name. (Works Vol. I, 382)
We find that reality so offensive because the original lie of sin still wraps itself around all of our hearts. Remember that by eating the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve were attempting to become divinities themselves. They were hoping to unshackle themselves from God’s commands, and we have the same desire within us. We are offended that God is God because we each want to be the masters of our own fate. Yet we should rejoice that God alone is sovereign because God alone is also entirely good.
However, God’s glorious revelation of His goodness to Moses was still necessarily limited.
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.”
Although Moses had a more immediate and intimate relationship with God than any other human on the planet, he still could not see the fullness of God’s glory and goodness and still live. Again, even though God spoke to Moses face to face and even though it was God’s face that would go with him and the people of Israel, those are metaphorical ways of speaking. Like all other sinful men (which is all of us), Moses could not behold the unfiltered glory of God and attempting to do so would be deadly. Therefore, Yahweh would hide Moses under the shelter of a rock. Matthew Henry wonderfully notes:
This was the rock in Horeb out of which water was brought, of which it is said, That rock was Christ,1 Corinthians 10:4. It is in the clefts of this rock that we are secured from the wrath of God, which otherwise would consume us; God himself will protect those that are thus hid. And it is only through Christ that we have the knowledge of the glory of God. None can see his glory to their comfort but those who stand upon this rock, and take shelter in it.
Indeed, notice that Moses would be sheltered within a cleft of the rock, but God would also cover Him with His hand. Yahweh was shielding Moses from Himself, and that is also a wonderful picture of what Jesus has accomplished for us. He shields us from the lethally holy glory of God, while also perfectly displaying God’s glory to us, for “he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). Moses had an insatiable desire to behold God’s glory, goodness, and ways that is now available to us, by faith, in Christ. Let us have the same desire. Whether through our deaths or Christ’s return, we will one day behold Christ by sight, looking fully upon the face and glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And we will know God and be known by God. But we will also perpetually be knowing God. Knowing God is eternal life. Thus, our eternity in the presence of Christ will not be static, for each day of eternity will uncover greater depths and riches in the goodness and glory of God, while infinite treasures still remain. We will see fully and yet still long to see more. Tozer rightly said it this way:
To have found God and still to pursue God is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul:
We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead,
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
May that indeed be our prayer as we come to the bread and cup before us. Through these simple symbols, we set our eyes upon Christ our everlasting joy and treasure. And as we taste of His goodness through this bread and cup, let a hunger and thirst rise within us that only an eternity before the face of our Lord can satisfy.
B. C. Newton 