God, Show Me Your Glory

The passage we're going to have read today is another one of those times when

God seems to talk with Moses.

We've been going through Genesis and Exodus, and now we're in the stories of

Exodus as God and Moses are conversing together.

The passage we're going to be reading is another one of those stories,

and so I'm going to ask that Sharon would read Exodus chapter 33, verses 12 through 23.

Exodus 33:12–23

Exodus 33, 12 to 23, Moses and the glory of the Lord.

Moses said to the Lord, You have been telling me, 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.

And the Lord said, 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 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.

So wouldn't it be interesting? Wouldn't it be intriguing?

Wouldn't it be awesome wouldn't be wouldn't it be trembling.

To be standing in the presence of God and have God stand in our presence.

This is an intriguing passage.

At first, we're almost shocked by the audacity of the words of Moses.

Moses seems to stand up to God, and he's done this before, and he seems to boldly

ask God to reveal his glory.

We know that there's been many times where God has said, just stand aside,

Moses, I'm going to destroy these people and start over with you.

And moses has stood up in the face of god

as we've looked in the passages in the past and just

said no lord don't do that because these are your people

what would everybody else say if you did this and so

here's another situation where moses is standing

in the presence of god and he's on the mountain and and he's experiencing god

firsthand and he says to god show me your glory I wonder if Moses really understood

what it would be like to see God's glory.

Can you imagine that? Our first reaction is a shocked amazement.

The second is maybe it's a little bit to condemn Moses for even asking this.

We would never do anything like that. We would never be so bold as to demand

something from God, right? Wrong.

We do it all the time, though we may not realize it.

We either think it or we say it. God, just reveal yourself to me. Show me your glory.

Tell me what you want of me. Show me exactly where to go and what to do.

Give this to me, Lord, so I may know you and know you well.

Show me in no uncertain terms by doing so and so. So, God, if you will do this,

I will follow you all the days of my life.

Or even, we wouldn't admit it, we sometimes think, Lord.

If you would just see to it that I win the $25 million Publishers Clearinghouse

sweepstake, you know that I will be dependable with this, and I will give this

money to foreign missions, and I will do all of this.

You know that you can trust me, Lord. Just think, Lord, how much good could

be done for your kingdom with that kind of money?

And after all, why should the devil have all the good money?

Job did something like that. The scribes and Pharisees did.

Mankind has always been making demands of God, and who are we to make demands of God?

God, just zap me with a divine lightning rod, lightning bolted,

make me instantly pure and holy so that I would never think in pure thoughts

or never do anything wrong again.

God, just Just reveal yourself to me, and I will be your boldest witness in all of the world.

God, just heal all the people I know who are sick.

Perform these miracles, and the world will know, and I will know,

that beyond a shadow of a doubt, you are God.

Just think how strong your faith would be, our faith would be,

if we could just catch a glimpse of God now and then and know that God is real.

But when Moses said something like that to God, the Lord replied,

Moses, this thing, we need to put the first thing straight, and that is that

I'm going to do this my way and not yours.

I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, it says. I will have compassion

on whom I will have compassion.

Then he said, I'm going to pass before you. My glory is going to be there.

I'm going to reveal myself to you, my glory to you, but you're not ready to see it.

It's like that movie, you can't handle the truth, right?

We can't handle the full glory of God. God is saying that to Moses,

you can't handle it. You aren't ready for this. pass.

The moment I pass by, he says, I'm going to take you and put you in the hollowed

out crevice of that rock, or the cleft in the rock, as the song says,

and cover you with my hand.

Then I will pass by, and once I've passed by, I will remove my hand,

and you will be able to see my back.

You will be able to see where I've been, and you will look behind me and watch where I'm going,

flowing but you are not ready to see my

face you are not ready to see the fullness of my

glory and no one can see my face

and live that passage of scripture tells us something

about the way god reveals himself first of all it says that god sometimes passes

as near that week so near that we can feel his presence have you ever been in

a situation where where the it seems like the air The air around you is just

thick with God's presence.

Most of the time it doesn't happen in community. Most of the time it happens in our private times.

But I've been in situations in church services where God's presence is so thick that.

People don't know what to do. I remember several services, but one time in Oklahoma City,

there was a service where we were, I was not the pastor at the time,

but we were in this service, and the pastor didn't even get to preach.

Because the sermon, what the sermon was, is one gentleman about back here in

the service felt the unction of the Lord to come and pray.

And during the opening songs and during the time he came up to the altar and

began praying and another one came up with him and another one and another one

and we had and there was several people at the altar during that service and

basically that was the message.

People seeking to find God's face. I wonder what would happen if the glory of

the Lord were to shine itself upon us.

We understand these scriptures and we see later in

this passage and or in this in

the scripture where moses comes down from the mountain and he has seen the glory

of god and it says his face shown his countenance shown with the glory of god

so bright people could not look at him because they were blinded by the light

that sounds like another song,

but the glory on moses's face was so bright that he had to cover his face with

a veil or people couldn't stand to be in his presence.

Can you imagine what it would be like in Richland Center, in Richland County,

in southwest Wisconsin.

If the people of God experienced the glory of God so much that people couldn't

look on us without seeing the presence of God? I can't imagine it.

And yet God says in Ephesians that now to him who was able to do You imagine

it will be more than all you ask or imagine.

God can do these things. First of all, we see God doesn't sometimes pass us

by, and we are aware of it.

But at the same time, there is a dimension to God that you and I will never

be able to fully see or comprehend with our puny little human brains.

As Adam was talking about this eternity, we cannot comprehend.

Never a beginning or never an end.

We are finite human minds. we can only think about when it started and when

it ends for us here that's our life,

we can't even imagine what it means to go on forever and ever and ever and never have a beginning.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Fosdick's once compared this.

He compared our understanding of God to our understanding of the sea.

He said, I know the sea, but I don't know the vastness of the sea.

There is a part of the sea that washes up on the sands of my life.

I can bathe in it. It allows me to sleep with its waves.

And yet I know a very little part of that sea.

Just stand on the seashore. If you've ever been to the ocean and you've stood

on the beach and looked out at the ocean, it seems like it goes on forever, right?

Until it drops off the end of the earth. Everybody knows that,

right? We have a flat earth. I'm just kidding.

But it seems like it goes on forever and it just seems to almost arc out there.

You look at the horizon, the horizon seems to arc in a shape that way.

But you stand on the seashore and you watch the waves coming in a little bit by little bit.

You see the bubbles in the sand where the crabs and the clams are in the sand.

And you see the waves breaking over and over and over.

And you look out there and all of a sudden you see a little dot appear on the

horizon and it gets closer and closer and closer. And you see that's the ocean liner.

And you look at this and you see, I can only see a very small portion of this.

That's the way it is with God.

We could only see what's happening right now or in our past.

We can imagine what's happening in the future, but we don't know.

We cannot possibly comprehend the vastness of God.

It's the same way with God, isn't it? He's so close, we can almost reach out

and touch him, and yet he's so magnificent that we'll never completely understand him.

There are times when God reaches down and helps us in special ways just to let

us know he sees us and we realize beyond any doubt that it's the Lord doing it.

I love a story told by Ralph Craddock. In one of his lectures,

he tells about a time when he says that God revealed himself in a very special way.

He said that he was riding in the non-smoking section of an airplane,

that's when they used to have those, where he always sat.

While he was sitting there, a man across the aisle from him lit up one of those

long black cigarillos and started puffing away and blowing clouds of smoke into the air.

Just then this lovely stewardess came

by that's when you could still call them stewardesses and

not flight attendants but anyway she was a stewardess came by and ralph craddock

motioned to her and it ends asked isn't that man isn't this the non-smoking

section and she said well yes sir it is he said well the man across the aisle

is smoking she looked over and she said well Well, sure, he is.

Craddock asked, well, could you do something about it?

So she went over and politely said, sir, this is the non-smoking section.

Would you mind moving back to the smoking section?

There are plenty of seats back there. The guy just took a big drag on his cigarette,

blew smoke right into her face, and defiantly stayed in the seat.

She turned back to Craddock and shrugged her shoulders like, what do I do now? out.

Socratic shrugged his shoulders like, I don't know what you do now. You're in charge.

And it seems as they communicated with each other by shrugs of shoulders.

You know how that goes. He said that then this very beautiful stewardess turned

around and headed to the back of the plane.

He thought maybe she was going to check with her supervisor or something to

find out what they could do next.

However, she didn't come back for quite a while.

But when she did come back, she had

a full tray of soft drinks and peanuts and was passing them

out to all of the passengers it was obvious

that she had decided not to do anything at all about this stupid guy who was

smoking and there he was still puffing away with the smoke billowing in the

air and just as she but just as she got even with crotic and this fellow who

was smoking the plane hit an air pocket All of a sudden,

all of the drinks that were on her tray heaved up into the air and spilled themselves

all over that guy, extinguishing his cigarette,

splashing all over his expensive suit and tie, and ending up in his lap.

And then, Craddock said, that beautiful stewardship fell right into my lap.

He said, it was then that I thought, and people tell me there is no God.

Going to talk this morning about the glory of God, and I want to share with

us five areas that I think we can sense the closeness and the glory of God.

The first area we can see God's glory in nature, many passages of Scripture

come to mind, and let me read just a couple of different ones to you from the book of Psalms.

The first is Psalm 8, verse 3. It says.

Psalms 8:3

With all of that that's created, can you imagine that the God of this universe

has time to even think about us?

What is man that you are mindful of him? What is man that you even care to think about us?

Us here's the psalmist out on some moonless night moonlit night start staring

up at the sky he experiences the serenity of the evening and realizes that it

is god who had made all of that,

the sun moon and stars in their proper places and yet he thinks about us all

the time and then in psalm chapter 18 verses 1 and 2 it says this the heavens

Psalms 18:1

declare the glory of god the skies.

The psalmist is saying that when we look into the heavens, we see the glory of God.

The sky itself proclaims the work of his hand. Day after day, God is talking to us.

Night after night, he's revealing his glory and knowledge in us.

And yet, we are so busy in ourselves that we don't see it.

Sometimes I think we need to do like, I think his name was Andy in the movie,

a widower who went out onto a bench that he had built up on a hill,

and he sat there and began to sing to God.

We need to stop and look and see what all God has done.

The Israelites did this. They would repeat to themselves over and over what

God had done to them and for them.

And then listen to the words in job chapter 12

Job 12:7–10

verses 7 through 10 says but ask the

animals and they will teach you or the birds of the air and they will tell you

or speak to the earth and it will teach you or let the fish of the sea inform

you which of all these does not know that the hand of the lord has done this

in his mind is the life of every creature in the breath of all mankind mankind.

And then in Romans chapter 1, we see this, I am not ashamed of the gospel because

Romans 1 · chapter mention

it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes,

first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

For in the gospel of righteousness, a righteousness from God is revealed,

a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written,

the righteous shall live by faith.

For the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the godlessness and

wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,

since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities,

his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen,

being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Excuse from the beginning of time when God has created this.

God has revealed himself in all of this so that we are simply without excuse

to deny that there's a God.

The first thing we see, as we've said here, is we can see God's glory in nature.

Secondly, we can see God and experience his glory in the moral order.

There are certain rules and regulations that govern life. Whether we like it or not, they are there.

They have always been there and will always be. For example,

Galatians chapter 6 says this, a man reap what he sows.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

In Numbers chapter chapter 32, verse 23, it says, you may be sure that your sins will find you out.

There is a moral order to this, and we see this from the very beginning of eternity in God's past.

But the word today stands in defiance of the rules and regulations of God.

It says, we'll live life the way we want to, as some of the commercials talk about. Go for the gusto.

Look out for number Number one, we're going to do what we want to do,

and then we ask God to do what we want him to do.

But the more order stays in its place, and man is powerless to change it.

You still reap what you sow. You still harvest the results of your sin.

Your sin still finds you out.

Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings produce actions. Actions have consequences, right?

The other side is also true. If you sow good seed, you harvest a good crop.

God formed you and he knows you

inside and out since he is the manufacturer of

the project he actually wrote the operator's manual

this is it by the way the

operator's manual for your life is written

right there and it's in the words of God inspired by the Holy

Spirit for us which to live life if

a farmer were to go out into his field and plant

seed that had not been properly inoculated had not been properly treated maybe

was several years old could he expect an abundant harvest he would probably

get something but it might not be the best you reap what you sow.

Says, live life the way I have designed it to be lived, and you will find that

everything just goes better for you.

The Ten Commandments were not just suggestions.

They were Ten Commandments God gave to us, and he said, basically,

if you live according to these things, these are my operating rules.

You will get along with me, and you will get along with everybody else very well.

But if you violate these things, you have to understand there's going to be

harm. Thoughts produce feelings.

Feelings pursue actions. Actions have consequences.

So we can also experience God and his glory in the worship of God.

We ought to experience him all the time when we come to church together to worship.

We should always be in the presence of God.

In fact, I remember as a child, we used to hear this in church,

that we should come to church prayed up and ready.

What did that mean? we should come to work come

to church prayed up and expecting god to

present himself to us to show up and

to show off a little bit god likes to do that in us and through us and for us

but sometimes we don't come with anticipation of god being there you know he's

here he promised he would be here in fact in matthew chapter 8 verse 20 it says

Matthew 8:20

for where two or three gather

in my name, there am I with them.

God is in our presence when we gather in his name, when we gather to glorify

him, when we gather to worship him, when we gather to be in his presence,

God's going to be there. Why?

Because he wants to have relationship with us.

Sometimes I think we need to take the time and just sit back and revel in the

joy of being in God's presence. I kind of thought about doing this,

but we won't. But I would urge you to do this at home.

But I kind of thought that I would just take time and have everybody just close your eyes.

Please don't do it in sleep. But just think about the presence of God.

Close your eyes and begin to think about what God is like in your life.

Where has God interacted with you? How has God taught you? How has God spoken

to you? How has God been with you?

How have you seen his presence and take joy in the fact?

That you're sitting on dad's lap. I don't think we do that enough.

I don't think we take that time to just sit in God's lap and not even speak.

Just look up in his face. I've shared this with you before.

You can open your eyes now. I've shared this with you before,

but I remember a time when I was fasting for God to give me a decision in what

he wanted me to do, not asking what I wanted to do,

but asking what God would reveal himself to me.

And I remember we had our dog. Her name was Angel.

And I was sitting outside in a lawn chaise, one of those things.

And I was sitting out there, and I was just looking up into the heavens and

thinking of God. And Angel was out there with me.

And Angel came and put her head right on my chest.

And looked up into my eyes, just looking to me and saying, I want to see everything.

I want to be with you forever. I want to know that you're going to take care of me.

And I thought, as I am taking care of this dog, the dog doesn't have any words, worries on her part.

She looks up into me at my face for everything.

And I said to God, that's what I want to be with you.

I want to be in your presence, so I simply look up in your face and take joy

in sitting in Daddy's lap.

We need to reflect on those times. So here God is, as He is at all times.

We're privileged to worship Him, praise Him, pray to Him,

acknowledge Him as the Lord and Savior of our lives, and He honors us with His

presence whenever we come together in this place and even in our own in private times.

I remember reading from Jack Hayford. He talked about being in his office one

day, and he was spending, he'd been so busy and overwhelmed with everything

going on, he just needed some quiet time to sit in his office.

And he began to talk to God, and he says, God, what do you want from me?

And he said, it was almost as if an audible word said to him,

I want you to dance for me.

Jack Hafer wrote into this book, he says, Lord, I don't dance.

I can't. It'd be an awful thing.

And he said, God just said, I want you to dance for me.

Got him from his chair, and he began to stumble around and just kind of move back and forth.

He says, whatever you want, Lord, I will be with you and do whatever you want.

This guy can't dance either. But if God wants me to dance for him, I'll dance.

Thank goodness. If he does ask me to dance, it's probably going to be in my

private office, just so you know.

There are times when God comes so close to us that we can always reach out and

touch him. And I remember another service.

Boy, I remember another service where I was sitting over in this area,

and the evangelist was speaking.

And I looked over to a friend of mine. His name was Dave.

That is his name, but you don't know him. So it's okay to say his name.

But I remember looking over at Dave, and I think Dave needs to have some time with God.

I said, God, if you will have Dave go up to the altar and spend some time in

prayer, I will go up there and pray with him and be with him.

But I want him to seek your face.

And it wasn't more than about 20 seconds after that, Dave got up from his chair,

walked up to the altar, and knelt down right about here.

So I got up and walked over, knelt with Dave and began to pray with him.

And he turned to me and he says, I asked God if this was a real thing,

if he would send Tim to come pray with me.

Friends, we can be so in tune to the presence of God that God will reveal these things to us.

I want to be there all the time. I don't know about you, but I want to be there all the time.

We have so few times that it happens that way.

And then there are times when God reveals himself in the life of the church.

We experience the presence of God as we see the church operating as the way

the church should operate.

Willard said, if the church were to really be the church and act like the church

and act like Christ, evangelism would be largely automatic.

People would see us being little Christs or Christians, as the term means,

and they would be drawn into our presence and want to see the Jesus that lives in us.

You feel the presence of the Lord taking place in the fellowship of the saints?

I've seen that many times throughout my ministry, as I've said,

as people reach out to pray for and to encourage others.

I think of the book of Acts when the disciples were all gathered together,

120 strong in the upper room. That had to be a pretty good-sized room.

And they were meeting together in prayer, and the presence of God was so deep

in them that the Holy Spirit came to in each one of them,

and it says it appears to be tongues of fire on each of their heads.

And what did they do after that, after being presented the glory of God and the life of the church?

It said they went out and they boldly spoke what God revealed them to speak.

Chapter 5 verse 13 through 16

says is anyone in of you in trouble he

should pray let's back up again let

me read that again is any of you in trouble he

should pray is anyone happy let

him sing songs of praise is any one of you sick he should call the elders of

the church to pray over And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person

well. The Lord will raise him up.

If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each

other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Qualifier, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. How are we righteous?

By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because our righteousness,

as the scripture says, is like filthy rags. It's dirty.

We have none of our own. It's only through Christ.

So how beautiful it is to just see the church operate the way it's designed to work.

And of course, then we also see that God reveals himself in the lives of people,

who have lived a faithful life to the glory of God.

Some of my favorite people, our senior saints, you look into their faces and

you'll see there the radiance of life.

One such man was a good friend of mine by the name of Don Mosley.

Don Mosley was an elderly gentleman.

He was a dear friend of ours from Oklahoma.

And the look on his face while he was laying in the hospital bed,

longing to be set free from this life to enter his eternal rest,

was overwhelmingly glorious.

He was not concerned about his coming death. us.

Concerned about his leaving his wife and children behind with no one to lead them.

I said, Don, you've shown all of us the path to follow. Trust your wife and

your children to the Almighty Father.

It's okay for you to go home. They'll be fine.

And I can remember the look on Don's face when he raised his hands up above

his head in that bed and he cried out glory to God and went to be with Jesus.

Oh, to be so much in the presence of God that you see the glory of God here and now.

When you look into the eyes of those dear old saints, you can almost see the

sparkle of the presence of God because they have lived their lives faithfully before him.

I remember a time in the old parsonage here in Richland Center at 537 Sheldon

And when we were there as young kids, and I remember having J.K.

Peckham and Elmer Boilo in our house, they were here for a visit.

And I remember gathering in the living room of that house for our normal time

of prayer at night, and these two guys and my dad were kneeling down at the chairs,

and I remember those guys talking to God as if God was right there in that room.

Oh, to be filled with the presence of God. God—the glory of God—and see it in the lives of faces.

It's a paradox, almost. There's a part of God that is so vast that we can't

possibly understand it,

and yet there's a part of God that is so near and should be so near that we can't possibly deny it.

He's so near that we can't help but know

and hear and see him sometimes we

have to just shut up and listen and see

him and experience him and as i said

just sit on his lap i remember a time when i was in myrtle beach south carolina

a friend of mine had and i had hitchhiked down to southern well down to the

florida keys and we were on our way back and we were in myrtle beach south carolina

we were body surfing in the Atlantic Ocean during our spring break.

Waves were high and were breaking in against the shore in a rhythmic pattern,

being naive college students.

John and I would step out into the water and swim out to where the outgoing

current would begin to pull us.

And then all of a sudden it was at that point that an incoming wave would come

and we would paddle as fast as we could and get onto that wave and let it ride us out.

I remember fighting against the current to get out there and then letting the

current and the wave take us in.

That's the way it is with God. He said, there's a part of me that is close to you, but there's more.

Just step out and surrender. Swim out as hard as you can and then ride the waves.

Let me take you where you need to be taken.

Jesus stood before a lonely world. They looked at him and asked the same thing that Moses asked.

We would like to see the Father. And Jesus said, when you have seen me, you've seen the Father.

So read the gospel. Look at the scriptures. Read about God becoming flesh,

about him breathing our air and eating our food and experiencing our temptations

and coming to live on our streets, as it says in John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

Read about his concern for the lost, his concern for the sick,

for the hungry, for the poor.

Jesus is illustrating to us

what his God is like. He says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

So if we experience this life called being Christians or being little Christ.

We will begin to know what it is to be like God.

Today we stand in the presence of God and we're privileged to see just a little bit of him.

And yet we want to see more and more. right now

we're content to listen and watch and wait and know

that god is near he's there in the rustle of

the leaves he's there in the sound of voices lifted

up in praise and worship he's there in the moral order he's there in the church

as it gathers together he's there in the people who have lived faithfully for

him and our prayer is simply this lord show me your glory and god says this,

surrender to me and I will give you the right of your life.

Let it be so, Lord Jesus, let it be so.