God and his Glory
(Exodus 32-40)
It works as a piece of dialogue partly because ‘glory’ is one of those words that we’re all actually a little bit vague about the meaning of. It’s a deceptively familiar concept – we use the word in hymns and songs and prayers all the time – but it’s one that we don’t often stop to think about the meaning of.
When we turn to the bible and dig around to find what it means, it turns out to be quite a complex concept. We find that kabod in Hebrew actually comes from a word that means ‘to be heavy’. And there’s a whole string of contexts in the Old Testament where it has exactly that meaning. If something is glorious it’s solid and genuine and permanent and valuable, like gold or granite or cedar. It’s not flimsy or fake or hollow.
And then along with that original, basic meaning, connected I guess with the images of wealth and gold and so on, along with that there is a second dimension of visible splendour and magnificence - the glory of Solomon; the glory of God that descends on the tabernacle, and so on - as well as heaviness there is that second element of visible radiance and brightness. And then thirdly, in the Old Testament as well as the new, there is the third, more metaphorical use of the word, to mean something like honour or opinion or reputation or a good name.
All of them are aspects of the meaning of the word as it gets used in the book of Exodus, and it’s a concept that occurs quite frequently at important points throughout the book.
It occurs, for example, in chapter 24 at Mount Sinai. God has gained glory – as in reputation and name – God has gained glory over Pharaoh, chapter 14, in the way he has broken Pharaoh’s hold over the Hebrew slaves and liberated them through the waters of the Red Sea. The Israelites have gathered at the shore in chapter 15 and sung his praises: “Who among the gods is like you, O LORD? Who is like you — majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?”
And now, chapter 24 they arrive at Mount Sinai and God makes his covenant with them, and the glory of God descends in visible form on the Mountain. Exodus 24 verse 16: “and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. 17 To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.”
That same glory that descends at Mount Sinai is also associated with the tabernacle that God tells the Israelites to build as a dwelling place for him. So God says about the tabernacle itself, in chapter 29 verse 43: “there also I will meet with the Israelites, and the place will be consecrated by my glory.” And he uses the same language to talk about the clothing and the regalia of the priests. Chapter 28 verse 2, for example: “Make sacred garments for your brother Aaron, to give him dignity and honor – kabod, glory.” So the garments are rich, magnificent, heavy garments, woven and embroidered and loaded with gold and precious stones.
A place for God’s glory (Ch. 35-40)
The whole tabernacle is set up in order to be a place for God’s glory. So we get told at length about the precious, costly materials that are used to produce it, and the artistry and skill with which it’s made. You get that all the way through the instructions in chapters 25-31, and it recurs in chapters 35-40 when Moses gets the Israelites to make it. So the whole section begins, at the start of chapter 35, with the Israelites piling up this huge stockpile of gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and scarlet yarn, onyx stones and other gems, and so on, and so on – all of them donated in order to build the tabernacle and make it glorious.
They pile up all this precious stuff and as they start to put it all together, you get this chorus line emerging, more and more frequently as you get into the last couple of chapters. They put it all together, piece by piece, section by section, and as it’s all described, each paragraph ends, “as the LORD commanded Moses”, “as the LORD commanded Moses,” “as the LORD commanded Moses”.
And then at the very end, when it’s all finished, at the end of chapter 40, the book concludes: “Then Moses set up the courtyard around the tabernacle and altar and put up the curtain at the entrance to the courtyard. And so Moses finished the work. 34 Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. 35 Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. 36 In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; 37 but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out — until the day it lifted. 38 So the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their travels.”
IT all seems so neat and so satisfactory. God shows Moses (chapters 25-31) how to build a dwelling place for his glory; his glory that can be visually represented in gold and silver and precious stones; and Moses and the Israelites get organised and build it (chapter 35-40), compliantly and co-operatively and enthusiastically, exactly according to the instructions God has given; and then the glory of the LORD turns right on schedule at the end of chapter 40, just as the project is finished, and fills the place with splendour. It’s all so perfect.
Except that there’s this great, ugly, fracture line running through the middle of the story in chapters 32-34, interrupting the whole sequence and spoiling it completely. Right there in the middle of the tabernacle sequence, between the plans and the execution, there’s an episode in chapters 32-34 that sits there completely subverting that whole picture – completely subverting that whole picture of God’s glory and human religion meeting and harmonising together in the tabernacle.
It begins, chapter 32, with a story of glory exchanged. Moses has gone up the mountain, he’s receiving all the instructions from God – all the details about the gold and the silver and the purple fabric; the lampstands and the curtains and the burnt offerings and the incense – Moses is up there on the mountain, going through chapters 25-31 with God, and meanwhile, down at the bottom of the mountain, the Israelites are sitting around getting sick of waiting for him to come down.
So they say to Aaron, chapter 32 verse 1: “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” And Aaron has a bright idea: “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
Israel has just received the law; the covenant has just been made; Moses is still on his way back down from the mountain, and the Israelites have already decided that they would rather have a god in the form of a golden calf, to look like the gods of the nations.
The writer of Psalm 106 describes it like this: ‘At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. 20 They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass. 21 They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt.” And so God’s anger burns against them and they are almost destroyed, and Moses has to stand before God and plead for them, and ask God to be merciful to them.
Glory revealed (33:7 – 34:28)
And it’s in that context that the real glory of God is revealed – the glory that is far more important than the gold and the silver and the precious stones of the tabernacle. God relents and has mercy, and he promises Moses that his presence will continue with them, and he will bring them into the land despite their sin.
And then Moses says to him – chapter 33 verse 18: “Now show me your glory.” God replies, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he says, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
So God takes him, as we heard in the reading before, and he hides him in a cleft in the rock, and he covers him with his hand, and the radiance of God’s glory passes in front of him and he sees the back end of it, and then he carves two new stone tablets and goes up on the mountain, and he hears God pass by him proclaiming his name: “The LORD, the LORD [Yahweh, Yahweh] the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” And then he makes a re-stated covenant with the people of Israel that holds together that compassionate mercy and that frightening severity.
The heart of God’s glory in Exodus is not the bright lights or the fire or the gold of the tabernacle; those things are just manifestations, appearances, symbols of it. The heart of God’s glory is his name; his name that sums up his character of mercy and holiness and justice; the kind of mercy that spills over to thousands, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin; the kind of mercy, at the same time, that is not mocked – the kind of mercy that is not to be presumed upon or prostituted or calculated on by the unrepentant. That is the character of the God whose name is Yahweh, and that is the heart of the glory that he reveals to Moses.
Glory veiled (34:29-35)
When Moses comes down from the mountain, from meeting with God, he doesn’t realise that his face is glowing from the reflection of God’s glory. He comes down from the mountain, and his face is radiant, and he ends up having to veil it, to shield the people from even just the dim reflection of the glory of God. The veil over Moses’ face is a little bit like all the curtains that were so important in the tabernacle – it sends out this uneasy reminder that the God who is present among the people has to protect them from the brightness of his glory; he is present among them but he is still profoundly separated from them, and the gulf between God and the nation is in the end going to be a gulf that is going to swallow them up. God is in the midst of the nation, but the nation in their hearts are far from God; the veil will protect them for a time but in the end, the glory of God among them will end up consuming them.
Greater Glory (2 Corinthians 3:7 – 4:6)
That’s the story that Paul reflects on 1300 years later, in the second reading that we heard a little earlier, from 2 Corinthians chapter 3. He talks about the way the ministry of Moses had a kind of glory, but that it was a ministry of death, and a glory that was veiled – a glory that was veiled because of the veil covering the hearts of Israel. He writes about the glory of the ministry of Moses, the ministry that brought death, engraved in letters on stone; and he contrasts it with the greater glory of the ministry of the new covenant – the ministry of the gospel of Jesus.
Unveiled glory (3:14, 16)
SO he talks, verses 14 and 16, about the unveiling of the glory of God that comes when people turn to Christ – when people come to Christ and the veil is lifted from their hearts and they change from being strangers to God and become friends of God – no separation, no condemnation, invited and welcomed into God’s own presence.
In the face of Christ (4:6)
He talks about the unveiling of God’s glory that comes in the gospel, and he reminds the Corinthians that the place where we see it is in the face of Christ. Moses saw only a dim afterburn of the glory of God as he hid there on the mountain in the cleft of the rock; in Jesus, in the face of Christ, we see God’s glory – God’s character, God’s reality, God’s radiance. So Paul writes in chapter 4 verse 6: “God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
Reflected Glory (3:18)
And miraculously, extraordinarily, when we spend time with Jesus, gathered around him, listening to him, gazing at him – when we spend time around him, we begin to reflect some of that glory ourselves. So Paul writes, chapter 3 verse 18: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
Therefore
What are the implications of all this for us? What difference does this vision of God’s glory in Jesus make for the way that we live in the world and do our ministry? Can I suggest three implications, coming out of three “we do not…” statements that Paul makes in the beginning of 2 Corinthians 4.
In the first place, Paul says (verse 1) we do not lose heart. When we feel swamped by the word around us, when we feel the smallness of the church and the weakness of our abilities and the shabbiness of all our efforts, we do not lose heart. We do not lose heart because there is something fundamentally different between the story that we are part of and that sad, tragic story of Israel in the Old Testament that went before us. By the mercy of God, we have a ministry, a job, in the spreading of the gospel that directs people’s attention to an amazing, convincing, confronting, glorious Jesus – a Jesus who will transform us to be like him. And so when we feel discouraged and weak we look back at him and we encourage our hearts by looking back at Jesus and reminding ourselves of him.
Secondly, verse 2, we do not use deception. We don’t dress up the message to make it more palatable, more relevant, more acceptable; we simply find ways to set forth the truth plainly – to hold it out in places where people will see it and hear it, and we commend ourselves to their consciences in the sight of God. We have no need to play fancy tricks – our job is simply to take people to Jesus and let them be convinced by him.
We do not lose heart; we do not use deception; and thirdly, we do not preach ourselves. In the end, the place where God’s glory is seen is not in us and our programmes – at the very best, we are a dim, dim reflection, and at worst a terrible distraction. The place where God’s glory is seen most clearly is in the face of Christ, so we don’t promote ourselves; we promote him, and we show people the glory of God in him.