Show Me Your Glory

Imagine every prayer on our list answered. The diagnosis clears, the job comes through, the kid comes home. But God is not with us. Would we be okay with that? In Exodus 33, that is exactly where Israel stands. After the golden calf, God has mercy and tells them they can go on into the land he promised, with an angel leading them and their enemies driven out. But he will not go with them himself. The people mourn, because they understand that the land without God is not the gift.

Moses refuses to go without him. He pleads not only for himself but for “I and your people,” because the only thing that set Israel apart from every other nation was God with them. That is still true of the church. We can have good music, good teaching, and good people, and still go on without God and never notice he is missing.

God says yes, and Moses asks for more: “Please show me your glory.” A holy God is about to live in the middle of a stiff-necked people, and Moses needs to know whether this holy God also forgives. God answers by making his goodness pass by and speaking his name, the very sentence we read together each week: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious.” A blinding light would show us that God is holy. Hearing God tells us that he forgives.

So we ask ourselves whether we want God’s presence as much as we want his provision. In Exodus, only Moses spoke with God like a friend while everyone else watched from the doorway of their tent. Then Jesus tells his disciples, “I have called you friends,” and he laid down his life to make it true. By his Spirit he keeps his promise not to leave us. We do not have to watch from the doorway. We are his friends.

To go deeper, BibleProject’s visual commentary on Exodus 34:6–7 walks through the sentence God spoke when Moses asked to see his glory.