EXODUS 33.
FOR a long time, probably a year or more, the camp of the people of Israel had been standing at the foot of Mount Sinai. Here in the first verse we find God telling- Moses to start again with the people for the country He had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He speaks about the people as those whom Moses had brought up out of the land of Egypt, and calls them “stiffnecked”—stubborn and self-willed, disobedient. An angel would be sent with them, and God would drive out the wicked nations which lived in the country that was to be theirs—the land flowing with milk and honey—but He would not go up in the midst of the people, because of their wickedness. Indeed, God speaks twice, in the third and fifth verses, of the possibility of His making an end of them, killing them all because of the bad hearts they had shown themselves to have.
Surely they deserved to be punished, and when they heard through Moses this message from God, the people took off their rings and bracelets, and other ornaments, at God’s word, and they were very sad. All this was very different from the shouting, and having a good time about the golden calf, was it not? Many people, and young folks too, think they can have a very nice time without giving God a thought, but when He speaks to them in perhaps some dear one’s death, like a mother or father, or someone else, you will notice the gay look and the big talk are gone for a while.
The tabernacle, which was a temporary one till the proper one was made, Moses took outside of the camp and set it up, far off. It was to be the place where God might be found by all who wished to seek Him, and that could not be among a people who had offended Him in breaking the very first commandment.
Yet in the face of their dreadful sin of worshiping as God their gold calf, God makes Himself known more fully than before to Moses. All the people went to their tent doors to look after Moses as he went over to the tabernacle, and as they looked, the cloudy pillar, which was the mark of God’s presence, came down to the door of the tabernacle, and there God spoke to Moses “face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.” Then Moses went back to the camp, but Joshua, the servant, stayed behind in the tabernacle.
It is good for us to carefully read what Moses said to the Lord, and His answers, in the verses beginning with the twelfth. It was a great care for Moses to carry, to look after all those thousands of people, listening to their complaints, and arranging everything for them, and he asked to know who God would send with him. The answer to that question is in verse fourteen, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” Moses asked too that if he had found favor with God, he might be shown God’s way; that he might know Him, and please Him in his ways from day to day. “Consider,” he said too, “that this nation is Thy people.” Moses always called the children of Israel God’s people, and without overlooking any of their badness, he counted himself one of them and pleaded for God to go with them: “If Thy presence go not with me carry us not up hence.” “I and Thy people.” In the seventeenth verse, the Lord graciously adds, “I know thee by name,”
Then Moses asks that he might see God’s glory, the brightness of His presence. God is a Spirit, we read in John 4:24,24God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24) yet He has made Himself seen at different times by the eyes of men. There was a cleft in the rock where Moses might stand, and then God would make all His goodness to, pass by. Moses might look after God, but as someone has said, he could not meet God on His way, as independent of Him. After He has passed by, we learn about what He has done, and Christians see all the beauty of His ways.
ML 09/24/1922