The Glory of Knowing God (Exodus 33:1-23)

Invite you to stand, if you're able, for the reading of God's

word. We're reading Exodus 33, the

whole chapter. First one, the Lord said to

Moses to part. Go up from here, you and the

people whom you've brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the

land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying

to your offspring I will give it.

I'll send an Angel before you, and I'll drive out the

Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the parasites, the

Hivites and the Jebusites go up to a land flowing with milk and

honey. But I will not go up among you,

lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff necked

people. When the people heard this

disastrous word, they mourned and no one put on his ornaments.

For the Lord had said to Moses, say to the people of Israel, you

are a stiff neck people. If for a single moment I should

go up among you, I would consume you.

So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with

you. Therefore the people of Israel

stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horib

onward. Now Moses used to take the tent.

And pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp.

And he called it the tent of meeting.

And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of

meeting, which was outside the camp.

Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise

up, and each would stand at his tent door and watch Moses until

he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the

pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the

tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses.

And when all the people saw the pillar of clouds standing at the

entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship

each at his tent door. Thus the Lord used to speak to

Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the

son of none, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

Moses said to the Lord, see, you say to me, bring up this people,

but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.

Yet you have said, I know you by name, and you have also found

favor in my sight. Now, therefore, if I've found

favor in your sight, please show me now your ways that I may know

you in order to find favor in your sight.

Consider to that this nation is your people.

And he said, my presence will go with you, and I will give you

rest. And he said to him, if your

presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.

For how shall it be known that I found favor in your sight, I and

your people, is it not? And you're going with us so that

we are distinct, I and your people from every other people

on the face of the earth. And the Lord said to Moses, this

very thing that you have spoken, I will do, For you have found

favor in my sight. And I know you by name, Moses

said, Please show me your glory. And he said, I will make all my

goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name

the Lord. And I'll be gracious to whom

I'll be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

But he said, you cannot see my face, for a man shall not see me

and live. And the Lord said, Behold,

there's a place by me where you shall stand on the rock.

And while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the

rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.

Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but

my face shall not be seen. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God, you may be see them.

I don't know what you brought with you this morning, but I can

imagine that some of you see a title like Knowing the Glory of

God, and you just think that does not connect with my life

this week. And I get it, if you feel that

way. Talking about glory is like.

Trying to bottle the ocean. It seems too big, impossible.

And yet it does connect with the little moments in our lives.

Because the Lord made us for glory, made us to seek glory, to

find meaning in something bigger and brighter than ourselves.

And if we take time to reflect, we'll see this search for glory

all over our lives and all around us.

I just took time this week to think about the last few months

in my life and the glory that I've seen.

Seen Academic Glory. My nephew Luke graduated from

high school, Seen athletic glory.

My son Will was on a baseball team that won a championship.

Got this big old fake ring from Dick's Sports.

I've seen Artistic Glory as my wife Ann brought a creative

project to completion. Seen Recreational Glory as we

just went on a trip as a family to the beach.

And I've seen Relational Glory right here without the pulpit

standing here multiple times. For bride and groom coming

together to be married, that moment glorious.

And so all these glories have been deeply satisfying.

For me, it's the presence of glory that brings great joy in

our lives. And some of some of you may not

feel that presence right now, and that absence perhaps brings

you sadness. But these are little glories in

our lives. They're like rays of light from

the sun, Not the source. But they point us to the source.

And in his book Quest for More, Paul Tripp writes the

transcendent glory that every human being quest for, whether

he or she knows it or not, is not a thing.

It is a person, and his name is God.

And so the glory of knowing God is absolutely connected to our

daily life. Because you could say we've

actually all been searching for God and his glory all week, just

that some of us don't know it. And all of us struggle because

we look in the wrong places for it.

So what is the glory of God? That's an impossible task.

But I'm going to try to give you some rails to run on.

The glory of God, you could say, is the goal of all that God is

doing in history. In Romans 1136, Paul says, For

from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever. Psalm 19 One says the heavens

declare the glory of God, and so creation is shouting His glory.

And sometimes we hear it and sometimes we don't.

But there's this connection between God's beauty and His

glory. We obviously see it in His

creation, but even more, we see it in His perfect character.

In Isaiah 6 three, the angels are crying Holy, holy, Holy is

the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His

glory. The Lord is holy.

He's different. There's no one like him.

So now we see a connection between His Holiness and his

glory. John Piper sort of puts it

together and says the glory of God is the manifest beauty of

His Holiness. It's the going public of His

Holiness. So an example would be Moses

encountering the Lord at the burning Bush in Exodus 3.

The Lord was going public with His Holiness, revealing his

beauty and his glory to Moses. And Moses saw that and he knew

this. God is different from any other,

an experience of the glory of God.

Now in Hebrew the word for glory has an interesting meaning.

It has a sense of weightiness or heaviness, real solid, but also

significance. Idols are nothing.

They have no glory. But God is glorious.

He has weight, significance, He's real, and there aren't many

words that capture that whole range.

But several preachers have suggested a word.

I think it's a good one. It's the word matter, because

matter has both a physical and more of a spiritual meaning.

So physically, matter is anything that has mass and takes

up space. Maybe you remember that from.

Middle school science. Spiritually, we all want to know

that we matter, that we're significant.

So you take this Bible, you say this Bible has matter, It has

mass and takes up space. It's solid.

It's real. But what it says actually

matters so much, Moses says in Deuteronomy 3247.

It is no empty word for you. It is your life.

So the glory of God is a weighty and significant subject, because

nothing matters more than he does.

In his book Knowing God, Ji Packer wrote What were we made

for? To know God.

What aims should we set ourselves in life to know God?

What is the eternal life that Jesus gives knowledge of God?

What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and

contentment than anything else, the knowledge of God.

And in Exodus 33, what we see is the glory of knowing God on full

display. And so I pray that the Spirit

would help us to see it. The first thing I want you to

see is the glory of knowing God's presence.

The 1st 6 verses of the chapter. If you look at the 1st 3 verses,

consider what the Lord is proposing.

He's offering to bring Moses and the Israelites into the Promised

Land. Give them success and

prosperity, everything they wanted, right?

There's just one catch. The Lord says he's not going

with them. Now, I don't know how that falls

on you, but it fell really hard on the Israelites.

If you look at verse four, it says this was a disastrous word

for them. So what happened?

How do we get here? We had the golden calf incident

next to this 32 and now the Lord appears to be distancing himself

from the people, his covenant people.

They've already betrayed him before Moses could even get back

down the mountain with the 10 commandments.

And the so the Lord sounds harsh, but there's actually a

gracious element to this in verse three says, But I will not

go up among you, lest I consume you on the way.

For you were stiff neck people. Have you ever had a stiff neck

friend, a parent or spouse or child?

Don't name names, don't look at somebody.

But if someone is stiff neck, it's impossible to be close to

them. That's just human relationships.

How can a holy God be close, live with a stiff neck people?

So what does the Lord do? He proposes basically a long

distance relationship to protect the sinful people from their

holy God. He doesn't want to consume them.

And so in these verses the Lord offers the Israelites this

arrangement where they can have what they want without his

presence. Think about that, the glory of

success and prosperity, A land flowing with milk and honey.

And no God at the center of it all.

It's the arrangement for honest that most people want all the

benefits of a relationship with God without God.

All the benefits without the cost, you could say.

So think about this. If God offered you success and

prosperity without his presence, would you take that deal?

And if that's too general, let's get specific.

What glory are you chasing right now?

To try to give your life weight and significance, to try to make

you think that you matter. Another way to see that would be

think about what's your promised land in life.

Maybe that's in school or sports, or in recreation or

entertainment. What's your promised land at

work? What's your promised land with

money and possessions, or politics and power or even

things that seem. You know nothing bad about

church and ministry or family and relationships.

What glory, what success and prosperity are you looking for

in these areas? Or do you ever catch yourself

saying, if I could just blank, what goes in that blank for you?

If you can locate that, and then you can say if God gave you

that, ask yourself, could you do it without His presence?

Would you take it without His presence?

And I'm afraid that many people would actually take that deal.

And that says that we don't know the glory of His presence.

So what is so significant about God's presence?

Just think about the story of the Exodus.

What have we seen so far? The Lord heard his people crying

out in Egypt. He he responded and he rescued

them. And they crossed the Red Sea on

dry ground and Pharaoh's army was wiped out in the in the

waters. It swallowed them up.

But why? Why did the Lord do all this?

To bring them out? Why did he keep saying let my

people go? If you ask that question, you

start to see the whole point of this was for God to be with his

people. I will be your God.

You will be my people. I will be with you.

That is the heart of God's covenant promise always from

beginning to end In the Bible, the Lord is working to get

closer to his people from the Garden of Eden, and then that

falls apart. And then to the patriarchs to

Mount Sinai, and then a Tabernacle, and then a temple,

and then Jesus Christ himself and a church filled with His

Spirit, and then a city in the new heavens and the new earth.

The Lord rescues His people so they can know the glory of His

presence with them. Not just His everywhere presence

that He's omnipresent, but His personal presence.

You could say right here, right now, and maybe some of you even

since that this morning to lose that.

Is actually to lose everything. So when the people hear the

Lord's proposal, they strip off their ornaments, their jewelry,

the things they look to for value and significance.

They didn't have banks in the wilderness.

You carried your stuff with you. And so they take off their glory

that they wear to make them feel significant, and they turn to

the Lord in repentance. But after verse six, it's like a

cliffhanger. What's going to happen to this

relationship? So Moses brings it up again in

verse 12. And then you see in verse 14 the

Lord says, my presence will go with you and I'll give you rest.

Great. That sounds good to us in

English, but in but in Hebrew the Lord is saying my presence

will go with you, singular. Moses.

So Moses pushes that. He basically says if you're not

going with us, all of us, we're not going.

We don't want to go. Please go with all of us.

Because Moses has no interest in power and prosperity without

God's presence. And it goes deeper than that

because the Hebrew word for presence is panin, and it means

presence, but it also means face.

So when you see presence, you can also think face.

Moses is saying, Lord, we want your face to go with us.

What does someone's face mean? When you have someone's face,

you have their attention, you have their their, their focus,

their relationship. There's intimacy there.

Moses doesn't want the Lord's hand of blessing without his

face. And I wonder, is that our heart?

Could we really say, Lord, whatever we're doing in life,

whatever we're going through in life, if you're not going with

us, we don't want to go. Do we love the Lord's face?

You could say more than his hand, a blessing and notice

Moses reasoning. It's not just about him and the

Israelites, it's about their mission to the world around

them. Look at verse 16.

He says, For how should it be known that I found favor in your

sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us

so that we are distinct, I and your people from every other

people on the face of the earth? What made the Israelites

distinct among these nations? Other nations were bigger,

wealthier. Other nations had more culture.

You could say more land. What were the Israelites?

They were former slaves now wandering in the wilderness.

What did they have that was so special?

They had the presence of God, He had graciously chosen them, and

he had been going with them. Moses pleads for the Lord to go

with them because he knows it's the glory of his presence alone

that makes them distinct from the people around them.

And only when God's people are are distinct can they be salt

and light, as Jesus says in Matthew 5.

So church what makes us. Distinct.

What do we look to to make us distinct as people and even as a

church? Because it's not our land or our

wealth or our possessions. It's not our righteousness or

even our church programs. As great as they may be, what

makes us distinct is the presence of God with us and

because of Jesus. Think about this, we know so

much more. About the glory of his presence

than Moses, because Jesus was the Word who became flesh and

dwelt among us. He was right here as Emmanuel,

God with us He lived, died and rose again for us here on earth.

And before he ascended he said in Matthew 28 the last thing he

said in that gospel, Behold, I am with you to the end of the

age always. And after he ascended, the

Father then sent the Holy Spirit so that Paul could say in First

Corinthians 316 that we are God's temple and God's Spirit

dwells in us. It's God's presence that makes

us distinct. But in Dallas, the glories of

this world are more real than the glory of God's presence, and

we think these other things matter more than the Lord.

And that's why so many people feel weightless and empty.

Because when we chase all these things to make ourselves feel

like we matter, we're actually trading the rock solid glory of

God for the shifting sand glories of creation.

But the Lord left heaven and earth and came to be with us.

Don't we see the glory of being with Him?

And think about Acts 413, the beginning of the church that

says talking about the religious leaders when they saw the

boldness of Peter and John. Remember Peter and John?

They had already abandoned Jesus, and it didn't look good.

But they saw the boldness of Peter and John.

They perceived that they were uneducated common men.

They were astonished, and they recognized what that they had

been with Jesus. What if it was the glory of his

presence that made us distinct? That's the first thing.

Let's talk now about the glory of knowing God's friendship.

We've got the Lord's proposal. But then in verse 7, the Lord

goes. Moses goes out to his own tent

of meeting his own personal tent.

It's not the Tabernacle. That whole project is on hold at

the moment, and the Tabernacle would be a place for God's

presence to dwell in the midst of the people, right in the

center of the camp. But Moses pitches his tent

outside the camp, away from the sinful people, and you can

imagine him wearing out the path to that tent.

As he went again and again to meet with the Lord.

So just think about being an Israelite and watching Moses

walk out to his tent and you watch him, and he goes in and he

shuts the door and the pillar of cloud comes down, representing

God's presence. And you're just sitting there

thinking, wow, Moses is in there meeting with God.

What do I do? Well, I'll try to meet with God

right here in my tent. Do my best.

Not many people are called God's friend in the Bible, but Moses

is. And this friendship is more

amazing because of the context. The Lord's distancing himself

from the people, but there is one person who still knows the

glory of his friendship. Moses is God's friend, and

that's really good news for all these people who seem unfit for

friendship with God, because in this moment of redemptive

history, Moses served as a kind of mediator between the Lord and

his people. And So what we see in Moses

points us forward to Jesus Christ.

Let me try to explain. Moses was a friend of God and an

imperfect mediator between God and his people.

But Jesus was the Son of God, you could say, the ultimate

friend of God, and the perfect mediator between God and his

people. You go back to Exodus 32, the

last chapter, and we saw that Moses was willing to be killed,

blotted out to save the people from the wrath they deserve for

sin. He wasn't qualified to be that

kind of sacrifice, but Jesus was.

And these Jesus didn't just offer.

He actually was killed to save his people from what they

deserved. And then did you notice why the

Lord agreed to what Moses requested?

Look at verse 17. This very thing that you have

spoken, I will do Why? For you have found favor in my

sight. And I know you by name.

So the Lord was gracious to the Israelites, not because he was

pleased with them. But because he was pleased with

their mediator. And the Father is gracious to us

not because He's pleased with us in ourselves, but because he is

pleased with our mediator, the Lord Jesus.

Salvation is never about what we can do.

It's about trusting what Jesus has done for us as our mediator.

And in that role in John 15, before going to the cross, Jesus

told his closest friends greater love has no one than this, that

someone lay down his life for his friends.

That's what Jesus did. He laid down his life for his

friends. We were enemies, and he made us

friends by dying for us. And in that passage he calls us

friends and he says, I want to talk to you and tell you

everything I'm doing, and that's friendship.

Exodus 3311 says the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face.

As a man speaks to his friend and that's amazing and it seems

like, well, that was just what Moses enjoyed.

But what I want to tell you this morning is because Jesus was the

ultimate friend to us, the friendship Moses enjoyed in the

tent of meeting is available to every believer in Jesus even

today. And we don't need a tent or a

Tabernacle or a temple. It is wonderful for us to be

together in this sanctuary. On Sundays the Lord calls us

together come under the means of grace, word and sacrament.

But this room is not the temple. We are the temple, His people,

and the Lord wants to meet with us as his friends.

Do you know the glory of his friendship, A friendship that's

consistent and focused? Think about Moses returning

again and again to the tent. Now we can walk with the Lord

all day long, Practice His presence as we say.

But when and where do we make time to hear from Him in His

word and speak in response to Him in prayer?

Are we battling all the distractions so we can be still

and know that he is God? I know you're busy.

Moses was busy too. Just think about it.

He had a lot on his plate, but he didn't bring his phone or his

To Do List into the tent. He needed undistracted time with

the Lord, and so do we. If we want to grow in our faith,

we need to cultivate our friendship with God.

There's no shortcut around that. So it's beautiful to read in

verse 11 that the young Joshua would not depart from the 10.

Do we have a hunger to be with the Lord like that?

So a friendship that is consistent and focused, but also

personal and vulnerable. And I think about the phrase

face to face. Face To face is incredible.

Think about your best friends. You might text them, you might

e-mail them. We don't call a lot anymore, but

maybe you call them. Nothing beats face to face.

Why? Because when you're face to

face, you're fully engaged. It's not just listening.

It's not just talking. It's not just seeing.

It's the whole thing. It's not just fingers on a

keyboard. You can actually shake a hand or

give a hug face to face. Do you really believe that the

Lord wants a personal relationship with us that He

would describe in the word as face to face and vulnerable?

See how Moses is with the Lord, how honest he is.

Think about who pushes back like this, Who?

Who makes requests like this. These are bold requests to make

to the Lord. But this is the way Friends talk

to Friends. With our closest friends, we can

lay it all on the line. Can you have an honest

conversation with the Lord? Can you plead with him about

what he's doing, what he's not doing?

Can you use your status? As God's friend to stand in the

gap for others. That's what Moses did.

That's what Jesus did. That's what God's friends do.

And amazingly, in this passage we see that the sovereign God

who's ruling the the earth takes his friend's prayers into

account. Do you want to know the glory of

his friendship? Then look to Jesus.

He was the perfect friend and grow in your friendship with

him. And I think it's also incredibly

important to find some friends who can help you and you can

help them grow in your friendship with Jesus.

So all that's amazing. God says God speaks to Moses

face to face as a friend, he says, I'll go with you.

You would think that would be enough, but it's not enough.

For Moses. There's one more thing, the

glory of knowing God's goodness. Moses seen so much of God's

glory. He was adopted in the Pharaoh's

family. That was amazing in and of

itself. The burning Bush, the plagues,

the Red Sea, the pillars, Mount Sinai.

So most of us would look at that and say Moses, if you've seen

enough glory, I'd love to see just a piece of that.

And yet Moses prays in verse 18, Please show me your glory.

And so we see that there are degrees to God's glory.

There's glory in the sunset. There's glory in a burning Bush.

There's probably more glory in a sea parted and a people rescued.

Moses is asking now for a full revelation of God's character.

He doesn't want to get something from God.

He wants God. He wants, you could probably

say, the deepest experience of face to face.

God's people always long for a greater experience of his glory.

It's not just knowing about his glory.

Moses doesn't pray, probably like we would.

Teach me your glory. He prays show me your glory.

For younger worshippers among us, I thought of an

illustration. Like imagine if you said queso

is good but you've actually never tasted it.

My son Will would be offended because queso is probably his

favorite food. He would judge you and he would

say you don't really know that queso is good because you

haven't tasted it. But the Bible says taste and see

that the Lord is good. And some of you have heard the

Lord is glorious but you haven't tasted it.

That's why worshipping or reading the word or praying.

Seems boring. But when the Lord shows us his

glory and brings that down, hits our hearts, it turns things

upside down, we start to talk differently.

Like Psalm 7325, whom have I in heaven but you?

And there's nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

So their degrees to God's glory. And we always want more.

But there's also danger because you think about the Lord's

response. Moses ask the Lord show me your

glory. And the Lord says yes, but it's

a strange response because he asked for glory.

And then the Lord says, I'll show you all my goodness and

I'll proclaim my name to you, which is the interesting

response. He doesn't offer the glory of a

lightning bolt or an earthquake. He says, the glory of my

goodness and my name. And you'll probably hear more

about that next week in Exodus 34.

But the Lord says yes, but he also says no.

Moses can't see the Lord's face, because no one can see that and

live. We just heard Moses met with God

face to face, so that must have been figuratively speaking, It

was an immediate, direct relationship.

But he didn't see the fullness of God's face, because to see

God's face literally is a blazing glory that would burn up

any Sinner, which is really an amazing reality.

To think that what God is doing and saying yes and no is at the

same time he's saying, I will reveal myself to you and I will

conceal myself from you. I'll show myself to you and also

protect you from seeing so much that you wouldn't be able to

survive. How does the Lord do this?

Well, here in Exodus 33, the answer is a rock.

The Lord says it's very interesting.

He'll hide Moses in the cleft of a rock covering with his hand,

and so when his glory passes by, then God will remove his hand

just in time, so Moses can see his backside.

Glory, if you will, because that's all Moses can handle.

The rock will save Moses from the glory of God so that he can

actually see. The glory of God, partially.

But in the fullness of time, the answer would be a cross.

In John 17, Jesus prayed that we would be with him and see his

glory. And then he went to the cross to

win these things for us. But think about how the cross

reveals all of his goodness like nothing else.

Remember Moses? I'll show you all of my

goodness. At the cross we see the perfect

demonstration of his goodness, his His perfect love, His

perfect holiness, perfect love and sacrificing himself for

sinners, perfect holiness and paying the penalty and and in

the justice for sin. But what did that mean for

Jesus? He'd always known what we're

talking about, the glory of God's presence, the glory of

God's friendship, the glory of his goodness.

But on the cross, when he became the sacrifice for sin, he lost

all that. And in that moment, the beloved

Son of God cried out. My God, my God, why have you

forsaken me? Because his Father, if you will,

turn his face away. Jesus was getting what we

deserve so that we might enjoy what he deserves.

He died so that we can be with him and see his glory and live

to tell about it. I was thinking this week, I've

never really prayed. Show me your glory.

But this is what happens in the presence of God.

The Holy Spirit takes a verse like this that maybe we've

ignored our whole lives, or we haven't really seen it.

And then he lights it on fire in our hearts, like a friend

sharing a secret with a friend. That's how the Lord works.

In his word, He opens up something.

It's like I never saw that before, but now I don't just

know. Show me your glory.

It's like I know it. I've tasted it and now I want to

pray it every day. I'll probably become annoying.

Pray it for you. Pray it for me.

Pray it for the city. And what's interesting is I

actually think we're praying. Show me your glory to something

every day. So think about it.

You look at your phone, or you go to work, or you watch sports,

or you think about money or pleasure, people in your life,

and you're basically praying. Show me your glory.

Show me your glory. All these things around me.

Show me your glory. But it's never enough, is it?

There's this song and the Greatest Showman, the movie

about PT Barnum called Never Enough.

And these lyrics came to mind this week.

All the shine of 1000 spotlights.

All the stars we steal from the night sky.

Will never be enough. Never be enough.

Towers of gold are still too little.

These hands could hold the world.

But it'll never be enough, Never be enough for me.

The glory of this world will never be enough for us.

But the glory of God will always be enough.

And what's amazing is the Lord hasn't even revealed everything

to us yet, but what we see now still outshines by far the glory

of this world. And 1st Corinthians 13 we read

for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Now we know in part, but then we shall know fully, even as we

have been fully known. And friends, we know more than

Moses did. We know what the face of God

actually looks like. In Second Corinthians 46 Paul

writes For God said let light shine out of darkness has shown

in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of

God in the face of Jesus Christ. So if you know him, don't miss

this. He has already shown in your

hearts to give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of

God in the face of Jesus Christ. So as you walk through this Dark

World, open up the curtains of your soul and let his glorious

light come streaming in. And if you're distracted by the

glories of this world, be like the Israelites and strip off

your ornaments and put on Christ.

He's your glory, your wealth, your significance.

He's the one that makes you distinct.

You don't have to chase these glories anymore.

You don't have to wear these things anymore.

Ask him to go with you and give you rest.

Ask him to show you his glory. And if you don't know Jesus, I

encourage you to start praying today.

Show me your ways. Show me your glory.

Open the Bible and behold his glory in the face of Jesus

Christ. Ask him to light up your

darkness and bring you from death to life.

I said earlier that talking about glory is a little bit like

trying to bottle the ocean. I don't know if I like that

metaphor anymore, because. It's not really our goal to

bottle the ocean. Nobody would go to the ocean and

try to bottle it. You you wouldn't want to do

that. You would want to experience it.

You would want to dive into it. And so when we think about the

glory of knowing God, I invite you.

I think the Lord is inviting us to dive in to the glory of His

presence, the glory of his friendship, the glory of His

goodness. And that's where the story is

going. And Habacook 2 we read for the

earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the

Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Let's pray. Father, we are amazed that you

would do all these things through Christ, that we might

know the glory of your presence, the glory of your friendship,

the glory of your goodness to us in Jesus.

So we pray this morning, Holy Spirit, that you would help us

know how to respond to this or that.

You would show us the glories that we chase, that are nothing

in comparison with you, and you would bring us back to you and

turn our eyes upon you. We know nothing in our hands we

bring. Only to the cross we clean.

So Lord, show us your glory. You've blessed us this morning.

Now send us out. Make us distinct for your glory

and the good of the world. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.