« “Holy Chutzpuh!” | Main | “There Is Only One Gospel” »
October 19, 2008
“The Glory of God”
Exodus 33: 18-23 & 40: 34-38
John 1: 1-2 & 14-18
October 19th, 2008
Last Sunday I talked about the Golden Calf and the sins of the Israelites in constructing and worshipping it. We also looked at Moses’ role as mediator between the angry God and the sinful people of Israel.
Moses mediation did not keep God or Moses from punishing Israel, it just kept God from totally destroying Israel.
When Moses came down the mountain to the Israelites who were worshipping the golden calf, he broke the tablets containing the 10 commandments. This may have been in anger, it also may have been a symbolic act, portraying the fact that the commandments had been broken by the Israelites.
Moses then ordered the Levites to take their swords and go through the camp killing many of those who had worshipped the golden calf. About 3,000 were killed that day. Then God sent a plague on the people as further punishment.
When God was ready to move the people away from Sinai and closer to the promised land, he informed Moses that he would not be leading them any longer with the fiery cloud. He would send an angel to accompany them. Moses begged God to reconsider and continue to lead them personally with the fiery cloud. God said that because He was pleased with Moses, He would continue to lead them.
Then Moses, evidently counting on God’s being pleased with him, made a bold request of God. He said “Now, show me your Glory”.
This seems at first sight to be a strange request in the light of the relationship that Moses already had with God. In the first part of chapter 33 we read that Moses had set up a tent outside the camp of Israel where he would go to meet with God. When Moses went there, the cloud of God would come down and stay at the entrance to the tent and Moses would meet with God there, “And the LORD would speak to Moses, face to face, as a man speaks with his friend”.
Now it seems that even though Moses had spoken in the tent and on the mountain to God “face to face” Moses understood that there was more to God’s glorious presence than he had seen. And he wanted to see it all.
God’s reply is, “Sorry, No can do”.
Because of Moses’ sinful humanity, he was unable to experience the full glory of God in person and still live. So God offered a compromise. He offered to put Moses into a cave on Mt Sinai and to block his visibility of God’s entire glory until most of God’s glory passed by. He would then allow Moses out to see the back part of God’s glory. So Moses would experience more of God’s glorious presence than he had, but still not the complete glory of God.
At the end of the book of Exodus, there is another mention of the Glory of God and Moses inability to be directly involved with it. Moses had followed God’s instructions to have the Israelites build the new tent of meeting, the Tabernacle. When it was complete, God moved into it with all his glory. And the passage tells us that Moses could not enter the tabernacle while God’s presence was so complete in it.
Part of God’s glory continued to rest on the tabernacle whenever it was set up in the camp of the Israelites. When God lifted up the cloud of his presence, it was time to dismantle the Tabernacle and move to a new place. This fiery cloud of God’s presence, called the Shekinah, continued to lead Israel and alternately fill the Tabernacle until Israel occupied the promised land.
But the point that is made in these passages is that the entire Glory of God was too much for any human, even Moses to experience and survive.
With that in mind, I now want to move to our NT passage, two snippets from the beginning of the gospel of John.
You have probably noticed that John’s gospel does not begin as the other 3 gospels. They all begin in the same period of written history. Matthew and Luke begin with the events surrounding the birth of Jesus in 6 BC. Mark begins with the ministry of the adult John the Baptist around 24 AD.
John starts further back. All the way back in the beginning. Both Genesis and John start with the words “In the beginning.” But John sort of takes us further back. John introduces us to someone he refers to as the LOGOS or Word, or Speech or Speaker. And he tells us that when creation occurred, the Speaker already was. This stress on speech beautifully parallels the beginning of the genesis account of creation because in genesis 1: 3 and several times shortly thereafter we read “And God Said…”
In the first verse John tells us that the Word or Speaker was with God at creation and that the Word or Speaker was God.
There is a part of God or a quality of God that John identifies as the Speaker or communicator.
Then in the 14th verse he tells us that the part of God previously identified as the Speaker became flesh. This Word or Speaker made flesh is Jesus.
Flesh is a bit of a strange word to use in this context, but it fits John’s purpose well. At the time John wrote his Gospel, there was a heresy starting which when fully grown would be known as Docetism. Docetism taught that God or the living Word of God could not become so degraded as to become fully human. Docetism taught that Jesus only appeared to be fully human but that he was really much more of a spiritual being than a material being. John deliberately used the most basic and material word he could think of to describe the humanity of Jesus. He became flesh. He had a physical body with all the limitations and problems that entailed.
John wrote that the Word became Flesh and lived among us, but that is not exactly what he wrote. The word that the RSV translates “lived” actually means Tabernacled or Dwelt, or pitched his tent with us. But the use of the word “tabernacle” is interesting in the light of the OT passage where God’s Glory inhabited the tabernacle. In the OT times the Glory of God dwelt among God’s people in the Tabernacle. In the NT times The Word of God dwelt in human flesh.
And then John finally gets to the point I have been trying to make since I started this sermon. Let me read the entire 14th verse for you again: “And the Word became Flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his Glory, the Glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
As Moses and the Israelites saw a portion of the Glory of God in the fiery cloud, So the Apostles saw a greater portion of God’s Glory in Jesus. Sometimes they had to look for that Glory, but it was always there, and it broke out on some occasions so many could see it. The Glory of God in Jesus was clearly seen in his miracles, it was heard in his teachings, it was seen in his transfiguration, it was seen in his resurrection and in his ascension.
The religion that is based on the teachings of the Apostles is greater than that which is based on the teachings of Moses because a greater degree of God’s glory was revealed to the apostles in Jesus than was revealed to Moses in the fiery cloud. Or as John wrote in the 17th verse: “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”.
The law of Moses is but a summary of the grace and truth that was revealed more completely by Jesus.
If you want to experience the Glory of God, read the gospels. In those words describing the words and deeds of Jesus you will find the Glory of God. If not, read them again.
I told a few of you about my last trip to Niagra Falls about 7 or so years ago. We went in the one of the boats that takes you up the river right to the bottom of the falls. Three quarters of the way around us was a curtain of falling water. The sight and the sound was incredible. In the midst of this experience I glanced through the open door of the wheelhouse of the boat. There was our pilot or captain reading his newspaper. I wanted to go into that wheelhouse and rip that paper from his hands and say, “You need to look at the water again my friend”.
Folks, if you want to experience the glory of God, put down your newspapers, turn off your computers and your televisions, and read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, The Glory of God that is in Jesus is clearly presented in those pages. Enjoy, and be thrilled.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at October 19, 2008 05:43 PM