Part 2: Now show me your glory

‘Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”’  Exodus 33:18 (NIV)

A man can know about God by looking at creation, but it takes divine revelation to know God. Unless God reveals himself to us there is no way we can know him. Yet God is eager to reveal himself to the man who seeks him. As we said last week, Moses’ hunger for God led him to ask for and to receive a revelation of God. Here is how the Bible records God’s response to Moses’ request:

“And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord! the Lord! a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth,

“Keeping mercy and loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation” – Exodus 34:6-7 (NIV)

Divine revelation is another thing often misunderstood among us. We are often awed by the Bible teacher with a fresh insight into God’s Word, and we say he has revelation. Yet divine revelation is much more than acquiring insight, information or knowledge. For example the fact that I can understand and explain what God revealed to Moses in this passage does not guarantee that I have a revelation of God.

Divine revelation is what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ASV);

‘But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit’

Paul is saying that as we behold (look at) God’s glory we are changed. As a man receives a revelation of God’s glory a transformation happens in him. He is being changed into the very glory he is beholding (or seeing). A revelation of God does something to a man. It is not just enlightenment that he gets, he gets a deposit of the very thing that is revealed to him. So when God revealed his glory to Moses, Moses did not just receive knowledge, he received a deposit of God. That was why his face was glowing when he came down from the mountain. Revelation rubs something off on us. So the test of a man’s depth of revelation is not how much he can explain truth, but how much of that truth has rubbed off on him. May the Lord help us understand this, so that we may not be content with pursuing anything less than a true revelation of God.

Simply put, true revelation works a transformation in the life of the recipient. And in the light of this truth, before we go on to examine the meaning of what God revealed to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7 next week, I want to encourage you to go through the text prayerfully.  Find a place you can be alone, acknowledge your desperate need to taste God and ask God for a revelation of the truth he revealed to Moses. You may need to do this several times this week and it is worth it.

I believe this was what David did. You cannot read Psalm 103 without coming to that conclusion. David must have gone aside with God and received a personal revelation of God through Exodus 34:6-7. You see him expanding on it in this Psalm, but beyond his exposition, you see the manifestation of that glory in his life. David knew more than most men about the loving kindness of God. So I encourage you to go through Exodus 34:6-7 prayerfully yourself until something of God rubs off on you.

“And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord! the Lord! a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth,

“Keeping mercy and loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation” – Exodus 34:6-7 (NIV)