December 2, 2007 Exodus 33:12-21, 34:5-7

Moses said to the LORD, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” The LORD replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” And the LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the LORD said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock.

Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

When the angels appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of their King - they did it in the dark of night with a backdrop of a dark sky. When the Bible says that the "glory of the Lord shone round about them," we can only imagine what a contrast it was for them to go from the dark of night to see the glory of the Lord shining out that night. This is where we need to see the glory of the LORD. It is not through the prosperous breeding habits of the sheep or the thickness of their fur. The glory of the LORD stands in contrast to everything that happens on the earth and against the darkness of the sin ridden world. This is actually where it shines the greatest – where life is in its darkest moments.

Today’s text shows us one of those deepest and darkest moments in the history of the Israelites as they were on the brink of disaster due to their own rebellion. Let me recall the story for you. Moses had gone up Mt. Sinai and entered into the cloud of darkness to see God and receive the Ten Commandments directly from the hand of God. However, this process took 40 days which was a long time for the people to wait. So even while the cloud and lightning remained at the top of the Mountain, the Israelites got the bright idea to set up their own god to worship at the bottom of the Mountain. Before Moses even returned with the written Ten Commandments the Israelites proceeded to break the very first one!

Needless to say, the LORD was infuriated with them. In Exodus 32:9-10 the LORD said to Moses, “I have seen these people, and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” The LORD could have just as easily fulfilled His promise through Moses. He started over with Noah, so what would stop him from doing it again? But notice how Moses responded in Exodus 32:13-14, “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

This doesn’t mean that the Israelites were off of the hook however. There was still retribution for those who hadn’t repented at the arrival of Moses. Exodus 32:27-29 Moses said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. The next day Moses went back up to the Mountain and pled for the Israelites again. Exodus 32:32-33:3 says, “now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” The LORD replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.” And the LORD struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Leave this place . . . I will send an angel before you . . . to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.” Notice that the Israelites were not out of the woods yet. The LORD still said He would still make sure they ended up in the Promised Land as He promised. Yet He basically said that He personally had had enough of them. To put it lightly He still wasn’t happy with them at all.

We can see the tension of this relationship in the following portion of God’s Word. Usually Moses would meet with the LORD in the middle of the camp right in front of the Levites. But notice what happens in chapter 33. Verse 7 literally says that “Moses took a tent and pitched it outside the camp - far away from it.” Moses tried to meet with the LORD on their behalf – but he had to more far from the Israelites. So the people waited and looked to the horizon to see what would happen. Would the LORD descend on the tent? Would He leave them on their own? Verse 10 describes how the Israelites repentantly stood at the entrance to their tents, and when they saw the glory of the Lord descend on the tent they fell to the ground – most likely in humility and prayer for Moses to be successful in his intercession to the LORD to be merciful to them. What good would the Promised Land be to them if the LORD were not with them on the way – if they knew that the LORD had rejected them?

This is interestingly enough a miniature picture what the season of Advent is supposed to be all about. It is about sinners on the brink of destruction, looking to a mediator and looking to the skies for the glory of the LORD to come down from heaven to earth. This is what the Wise Men were looking for. This is what the shepherds were given. All of these sinners were waiting expectantly and hopefully for their Mediator and Savior to come and break into this sinful world. Without Him, they would be doomed to die in the desert of sin – without God and without hope in the world.

Is this why Advent is somewhat overlooked by Christians today? Can you picture yourself at the door of the tent – desperately wondering and waiting to see if the cloud will descend? To get to such a position takes time to reflect on who you are and what you’ve done. Could it be that as a baptized Christian you may assume that you have now done nothing to earn God’s rejection? After all, you haven’t built any golden calves recently. Oh sure, you may have spent more time and money and effort on buying your new golden watch than you plan on giving to church, but that’s just not the same – right? That’s not as big of a deal – not as big of a sin? And yes, you may have had a few youthful indiscretions as you were growing up and you may have been a little out of control, but it wasn’t the same as those dirty Israelites and their blatantly idolatrous acts at the bottom of Mt. Sinai, right? I mean, their actions were worse – they were in rejection of the LORD who was sitting right above them. Yours were just more a part of living in the society we live in. Right? Is that how you reason it out? You don’t need to spend time at the door of your tent – you don’t really need to celebrate Advent, because you really aren’t as sinful as those Israelites? Is that why you don’t need to concentrate during confession of the common service; because you just haven’t really been THAT sinful? Do not imagine that God owes you forgiveness? That is a dangerous and arrogant way of thinking. Every day we are sinners. Every day owe it to our holy LORD to stand at the door of our tents and plead for His mercy – begging for the Intercessor to plead for our sins – desperately in need of the LORD to come from heaven to earth and pay for our sins. This is what Advent is meant to reflect.

Thankfully, the LORD came down to the tent of meeting and listened to Moses’ plea. Moses said to the LORD, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” The LORD replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” I find it interesting that Moses – who spoke with the LORD face to face – as with a friend – and who had direct revelations from the LORD on Mt. Sinai, still sought to know the LORD MORE. Think about what He is praying for here. Just getting to the Promised Land was not enough for Moses. He did not want the identity of the Israelites to simply be a group of people who made it through a desert together. He didn’t want them to be identified with their prosperous land or conquering Canaan. He wanted their identity to revolve around the LORD’s ATTITUDE towards them – that the LORD was pleased with them. He wanted their identity to come from the fact that the LORD was present with them.

Think about how important that is. As we travel through this desert of life – what good is it to establish a prosperous home in the fertile valleys of Canaan? Will people remember you for that? Is that what you want to be known for – a fighter or a survivor? So many people in this world work towards getting enough to retire and having the house or steady job or family in life. But none of those things will get you to heaven. What good will it be if you survived some great tragedy and thrived through it? What good will it do you to leave your children and grandchildren a huge inheritance? Will you earn extra points with God if you leave a great legend behind in the eyes of men? Is that going to make a difference on Judgment Day? That’s not what matters – how prosperous you are or what you did in the desert. What matters is whether the LORD is with you. Without Him, all things are lost. It’s like Peter said to Jesus, “to whom else shall we go? You have the words of ETERNAL LIFE!” Moses wanted to be assured the LORD would go with them, so twice the LORD reaffirmed His promise to Moses that He would come with them – He Himself and not just a created angel.

And the LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” Moses was overjoyed at the response of the LORD. In his feelings of joy he then says to the LORD, “Now show me your glory.” Think about this. Isn’t this a strange request? Hadn’t the LORD talked with Moses prior to this? Sure he had. Hadn’t he in fact just eaten with the LORD up on Mt. Sinai earlier with the 70 elders of Israel? Sure. So why does Moses request this? This seems to be almost a Peter like moment on the top of the Mount of Transfiguration – where he was so ecstatic and excited he just suddenly blurts this request out – wanting to enjoy the moment all the more.

But the LORD doesn’t chastise Moses. In His mercy answers His request in two ways. Not only does He give Moses a vision of Himself, He also gives Him a description of Himself, helping Moses to have a great revelation of who the LORD exactly is. Let’s look at what the LORD does. And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the LORD said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” This physical response of the LORD has all kinds of implications – again on who we are and who HE is and HOW He reveals Himself to us. If He were to show us as He truly is and in all of His glory we would all die because of our sinfulness. He can only show us His back side – where He doesn’t seem to be as glorious.

Think about how this plays out in history. By directing Moses to see His “back side” the LORD is also training us to look for Him in places that His glory is hidden or clothed. The last place you would expect to see the LORD is in a crib through a lowly virgin being born in a stable and placed in a manger. Yet this is where we see the back side of the LORD. The last place you would expect this Messiah to go would be to a cross. Yet there he hangs, being accused and blamed and punished for the sins of the world. Here we see the back side of God. And so the LORD continues to work throughout the history of the Church. Instead of working through the powerful and successful and self confident, He tends to work through the weak and the powerless and the guilty. Instead of revealing His most beautiful glory through thunderstorms and earthquakes, His most beautiful glory comes hidden through bread, wine, water and Word. The greatest glory of God is revealed to us through weakness and suffering and not through success and power – as if we were looking at the back side of God. God says to us, “if you want to see my power and my glory – here – look at my back side. See it in places you don’t expect to see it. Find it in the foolishness of a crib and a cross and a person called Jesus Christ. See me hang there all bloody and beat up. Watch me go through hell at your expense. If you want to approach me I must first of all condemn you and kill you with my law and then fill you with my Christ. This is my glory.”

Now, we realize that all of this was not revealed to Moses in the simple showing of His backside. The only way God could really reveal this to Moses was by describing who He exactly was – by using His Word. So the LORD is training us also an important lesson – that if we want to see the glory of the LORD – we need to listen to His Word – especially the Word which reveals to us WHO HE IS. Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

These verses contain a whole series of sermons in and of themselves as they reveal the glory of the LORD. We cannot do justice to them at this time. But permit me to expound on just a few things. Do you notice how they seem to be completely contradictory to one another? First of all the LORD says He “forgives wickedness, rebellion and sin,” but then in the next sentence He says that He doesn’t leave the guilty unpunished. How could He say He both forgives sins and also punishes sins? Yet it’s these two contradictory messages which fill the Scriptures. In one place, God threatens the world with hell. In the next, He promises them heaven. In one place God demands absolute perfection and condemns anyone with even one evil thought. In the next place He demands absolutely nothing at all and promises that He will remember none of our sins. Which is it? Is God going to punish us or forgive us?

It seems all so contradictory until the LORD comes down from heaven in a crib instead of a cloud and reveals the Word to us in the flesh – when the LORD puts these words to action. It is only when we see the LORD descend from the heavens in the flesh that we recognize what it means to both forgive sins and punish sins at the same time. When we see Jesus go to the cross we then understand where and how God both punishes sins and pays for the forgiveness of sins in the suffering and death of His one and only Son. And so it is kind of ironic isn’t it – how God works this whole thing out. At first the LORD says to Moses, “no one can see me and live.” So what does the LORD do to show us His glory? He puts clothes on – flesh as it were – and makes Himself visible to us. The LORD of the heavens comes down from the clouds. While He is on earth we can see Him, hear Him and touch Him. And what do we do when He makes Himself visible and touchable? We find Him to be repulsive – not belonging to our world – too merciful and too truthful about who WE are and who HE is. So in anger and denial our own race crucifies HIM – the author of life! Like Moses – we wanted to peak into heaven and see God as He is. The LORD then says to us, “if you want to see my glory in heaven – you first of all have to see my glory on earth. See me hanging here and dying with the sins of the world on my back. This is my glory.” Ironically, He comes to earth and shows us who WE are by becoming what we were on the cross. We don’t like to look – but there on the cross we see God hanging and dying for the sins of the world. We who couldn’t see the LORD in His majesty are forced to look at the LORD being bathed in our sins.

As we are shown this vivid picture of our LORD, we then understand all we need to know about the glory of the LORD. We know what compassion is – for a holy LORD to enter our world and pay for the hell we deserved. We know what grace is – to be given a righteousness that we had no right to have through faith in Christ. We know what forgiveness is – as we see and hear Jesus scream to us, “it is finished.” It is at the cross that we see the LORD be exactly what He said He was, a God of compassion and justice all at the same time. This is where we see His glory NOW – the Beautiful Savior – light of my soul, my joy, my crown.

At this Advent time, we sinners who were standing on the precipice of hell – deserving the rejection of the LORD – stand at the door of our tents in sorrow and fear over what we deserve for our idolatry. At the brink of disaster we see the glory of the LORD shine at it’s brightest. Two thousand years ago, in an unlikely and small town of Bethlehem God pitched the tent of a great Mediator. The angels declared to the shepherds that in this tiny little manger the Savior of the world would be lying – where God descended from the heavens and entered our world – Christ the Lord.

If you were to compare the two visions – the one of the angels and the one of the baby – to the human eye they would say that the vision of the angels was much more glorious. Yet it is their words and the words of the LORD to Moses that show us where the true glory of the LORD is. The glory of the LORD is in His compassion and His mercy and His justice. The true glory of the LORD is revealed to us by looking at the back side of God – that little infant in the crib – God in the flesh - who had come to die on the cross for sinners who deserved none of it. Amen.