Outside the camp, Moses lay on his face before God, continuing to plead for mercy. Would the Lord – could he – go forward with his plan to dwell in the midst of this people? Would he even remain with them at all?

That’s the stark place where we left Moses in the post, One who stands in the gap.

It’s a place we too might find ourselves at times. Even when we’re sincerely seeking God, we may wake up one day to a nightmare situation where all hope seems lost – for us, and for people we love.

Here’s what happened next in Moses’ story. Here’s what it can mean for your story and mine.

The shattering

In the space of a few weeks, Moses had climbed a mountain six times to meet with God. Each time, the Lord revealed a little more of himself and his ways. He entrusted Moses with authority and responsibility. He talked with Moses about the people on both their minds, the people encamped at the mountain’s base.

They were Moses’ people. And God had brought them out of Egypt, to bring them to a new land, yes, but more, to bring them to himself.

Lord, our Lord, show us how key this is to everything you did next.

With Moses as go-between, the Lord introduced himself to them. He invited them to make covenant; they, to be his people; he, to be their God. He told them in detail what that would involve.

When the people responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said,” Moses led them in a covenant ceremony. Then, 70 elders, along with Moses and Aaron and his sons, climbed partway up Sinai to eat a covenant meal with God.

Immediately afterward, God called Moses up Sinai for the sixth time. His purpose? To make a way to dwell among his people.

Forty days and nights later, Moses would descend the mountain, with instructions for building the tabernacle, the place God would inhabit in their midst.

And also:

When the Lord finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, written by the finger of God. (Ex. 31:18 NLT)

As Moses took those sacred tablets – as he stood, feeling the weightiness of all that had been entrusted to him – God abruptly announced:    

Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Ex. 32:7-8)

Stunned, Moses hurried down, tablets in hand – to find everything he had worked for shattered. All the time he had spent confronting Pharaoh; all the intensity of bringing an entire nation out of Egypt, across the Red Sea and into a vast desert; all the trips up and down the mountain to establish a covenant between the Lord and the people – all seemed lost.

In anger and despair, Moses shattered the tablets of God.

The intimacy

But then, desperately, tenaciously, Moses fought to undo the damage. He confronted the people. He dismantled their idol. He pled with the Lord.

In answer, God reminded Moses that his justice and mercy coexist. Mercifully, he would spare the people from the full weight of the judgment their behavior deserved. Yet he would continue to act justly too.

Then God said:

Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, “I will give it to your descendants.” I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.

Go up 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. (Ex. 33:1-3)

“I will not go with you.”

Imagine yourself making a plan you hate – a plan that flies in the face of everything you have wanted and sought. Your heart’s desire was relationship – with those who have wanted something from you, but not intimacy with you, not faithfulness to you. And now, their choices have left you contemplating choices you have no desire to make.

Maybe you don’t need to imagine it. Maybe you’ve been there. God has been there too. He was there at the very start of his covenant relationship with Israel.

Though the people had repeatedly said they would obey him, they had not answered at all when he offered them relationship with him. When he spoke directly to them, they had asked that he not do that again. And when he didn’t behave the way they wanted, they had made an idol from their own jewelry, and called their false god by the Lord’s covenant Name.

Now, the Lord was offering them what they did want – to get to a new land, to conquer it, to enjoy its abundance.

The only thing lacking from the picture would be … him.

They might have thought, “That would be better, actually. Far less … constraining.”

Yet, as Moses knew: We cannot escape the consequences of our choices by distancing ourselves from God. And what we forfeit by going on without him is huge.

It’s also invisible, and intangible, and past finding out. So it may seem trivial and not worth the risk.

Unless we know HIM.

Moses knew him. Moses knew he is worth it. Moses knew that settling for anything less than his Presence would not work at all.

Repeatedly, for days, perhaps weeks, Moses met with the Lord in a tent he had pitched some distance outside the camp. And then, one day, this happened:

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.” (Ex. 33:12-18)

And thus, Moses asked for the impossible, and when he prayed for God, as fervently as he prayed for the people, the Lord said yes.

And then Moses pressed in to ask something even more impossible. And because the Lord knew the man, he knew that this request, too, came from a pure heart.

Again, the Lord said yes, and then he qualified his answer.

“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence … 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.” (Ex. 33:18-23)

With that said, God told Moses to chisel out two more stone tablets, to replace the ones he had shattered. And God called Moses to come up the mountain for the seventh time.

The goodness

Moses went. He climbed Sinai, carrying two tablets of stone. For the second time, he stayed on the mountain 40 days and nights.

Scripture tells us much about the first 40-day encounter. Seven chapters in Exodus describe it.

Just 23 verses summarize this visit. Much remains a mystery. But we do know some things.

Moses saw God’s glory.

Three verses describe that experience. But they cannot begin to capture it.

While Moses stood in the cleft of a rock atop Sinai, the Lord “descended in the cloud, stood with him there and pronounced the name” – his personal, eternal, covenant Name.

As all his goodness passed in front of Moses, the Lord described himself in this way:

[I AM] merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in grace and truth; showing grace to the thousandth generation, forgiving offenses, crimes and sins; yet not exonerating the guilty, but causing the negative effects of the parents’ offenses to be experienced by their children and grandchildren, and even by the third and fourth generations. (Ex. 34:5-7 CJB)

These words tell us something about the Lord. They invite us to know HIM more fully. Yet he alone reveals himself to us – as we press in by faith to seek him, and as he chooses to make himself known.

Moses again showed his heart for the Lord, and for the people.

He received the words the Lord was breathing onto him, and he “bowed to the ground at once and worshiped.”

Then, he made one more impassioned plea.

“Lord,” he said, “if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.” (Ex. 34:8-9)

The Lord affirmed what Moses thought the people had forfeited forever.

Then the Lord said, “I am making a covenant with you.” (Ex. 34:10)

By “you,” God meant all those who had, as one, freely agreed to the covenant. Though they had done nothing to deserve it and much to destroy it, the Lord was still in process of making covenant with them.

And he still expected them to seek from their hearts to do what they had freely agreed to do. Briefly he reminded them of some key things he had already stressed at length:

• Do not make any idols. Do not worship any other gods. Do not make any entangling alliances that will lure you into idolatry and the worship of other gods.
• Know my ways. Follow my ways – even in the seemingly mundane things of life, and especially in this matter of worshiping me.
• Make time for rest, even when it seems impossible. Make time regularly to get away with me.

The Lord restored what Moses himself had shattered.

On the new tablets that Moses had carved out, the Lord wrote the same thing he had written on the two tablets Moses had thrown down – the same covenant words that God had also spoken aloud to his people from Sinai.

The mystery

I wonder what else filled the days and nights of that nearly six weeks. I wonder if Moses rested in the Lord, delighted in him, talked with him, gained strength from him for all that lay ahead.

The Lord didn’t give any more messages to Moses for the people. But I wonder: Did he show Moses things specifically for Moses?

No person can look God’s glory full in the face. Yet paradoxically, even before this encounter:

The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. (Ex. 33:11)

The Lord would continue to speak intimately with Moses for the rest of his life.

Yet I wonder: During their last 40 days together on Sinai, what might the Lord have entrusted to his friend that anchored him deep within, and would continue to fill, and sustain, and empower him for the next 40 years?

Whatever else happened during that most intimate mountaintop encounter, the aftermath was stunningly different from the aftermath of the visit before. This time, when Moses descended the mountain, he found the people waiting expectantly – for him, and for God.

And this time, when Moses came down, the glory did too.

Ultimately: God came in glory to his tabernacle.

On Moses’ return, the whole company continued to camp at the mountain’s base. Moses continued to teach the people to live in covenant relationship with the Lord. And Moses led them to build the tabernacle where God would live among them.

One year after leaving Egypt, Moses and the people completed the tabernacle and its furnishings, and set them up exactly as God had specified.

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. (Ex. 40:34)

From their midst, their Lord would now meet with them and speak with them, lead them and guard them. And the people could go – and stay – with HIM.

Immediately: God’s glory shone in Moses’ face.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. (Ex. 34:29)

The radiance

The same Lord who showed Moses his glory has made the way for you and me to have a radiance story, too.

Yes, it sounds impossible. But pause, and breath, and let the wonder of it sink in. For the Father, Son and Spirit have made it possible for us all.

You [God the Father, Son and Spirit] are radiant with light. (Ps. 76:4)

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. (Ps. 34:4-5)

[Jesus Christ] has given Himself so that He can present the church as His radiant bride, unstained, unwrinkled, and unblemished – completely free from all impurity – holy and innocent before Him. (Eph. 5:27 Voice)

Now all of us, with our faces unveiled, reflect the glory of the Lord as if we are mirrors; and so we are being transformed, metamorphosed, into His same image from one radiance of glory to another, just as the Spirit of the Lord accomplishes it. (2 Cor. 3:18 Voice)

The blessing

When all seemed lost, Moses pressed in: To know the character and ways of God. To live in his Presence, to seek his face, to see and reflect his glory.

And did you notice? The more time Moses spent with the Lord, the more willing he was to spend and be spent for people. Indeed, Moses reflected God’s glory most fully as he interceded for people in a way that reflected Jesus’ intercession for us all.

The Lord bless you
    and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
    and be gracious to you. (Num. 6:24-25)

Each day that lies before you, may you delight to live in his Presence, to know his ways, to seek his face.

And even when you do not realize it, may you become ever more radiant because you have been with him.

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Image by Fernando Latorre from Pixabay

Seven Encounters with God series

Moses’ encounters with God on Sinai reveal remarkable things about who God is, how he relates to his people and how to cultivate intimacy with him. Lord, our Lord, give us eyes to see.

• “Come be with me” – Seven encounters with God
• 1: The purpose of the wilderness
• 2: Prepare to meet with God
• 3: God who loves fiercely
• 4: When your world has changed
• 5: Mystery and life: The covenant meal
• 6, part 1: The place his glory dwells
• 6, part 2: One who stands in the gap
• 7: Radiant! A glory story