glory

"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, you cannot see my face, for no one may see Me and live."
~Exodus 33: 17-20 [NIV]

I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen: Moses could only see God's back (a unique term never used for anatomy). The idea is that Moses could only see behind God, not God Himself.

i. "The word . . . could just as well and more accurately be rendered 'the after-effects' of his radiant glory, which had just passed by." (Kaiser)

ii. Poole puts it like this: "Thou shalt see a shadow or obscure delineation of my glory, as much as thou canst bear, though not as much as thou dost desire."

iii. "These four things are happening at the same time, whenever God draws near to his people - revealing and concealing, blessing and protecting, all happening together at one and the same time. You cannot separate these things." (Lloyd-Jones)

iv. With these special protections, God rewarded the desire of Moses to see His glory as much as humanly possible. This demonstrates that God rewards the seeking heart. And as marvelous as this experience was for Moses, it still cannot compare to the revelation of God given to us in Jesus Christ.

• And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
• But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

~David Guzik

seek

"Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon".

~Isaiah 55:6-7

Seek the Lord while He may be found: The prophet Isaiah impresses a sense of urgency on God’s people. “This is the time. God can be found now. Seek Him now.” It isn’t that God is hidden, and can only be found infrequently. It is that He can only be found when our hearts are inclined to look for Him, and that inclination itself is a gift from God!

Let the wicked forsake his way: The prophet impresses the need for repentance among God’s people. Repentance is turning away and walking in the opposite direction...turning to God’s way. Simply, this is what it means to return to the Lord, and we can never walk in God’s way until we reject our own way. The Lord’s glorious restoration works in and through our repentance.

Isaiah makes an important point when he says, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Wickedness may be demonstrated by our actions (our way); but unrighteousness can be found in our very thoughts. The battleground for a righteous walk with the Lord is often found in our minds, in our thoughts. Paul knew this also when he wrote of bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), and how we must not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2).

And He will have mercy on him: What a glorious promise! When we turn to the Lord, He will have mercy on us! In fact, He will abundantly pardon! The problem is never that we turn to the Lord and find that He rejects us. The problem is that we fail to return.

~David Guzik, Blue Letter Bible

the becoming One

"Also inherent in the idea behind the name I Am is the sense that God is "the becoming One" God becomes whatever is lacking in our time of need. The name I Am invites us to fill in the blank to meet our need - when we are in darkness, Jesus says I am the light; when we are hungry, He says I am the bread of life, when we are defenseless, He says I am the Good Shepherd. God is the becoming One, becoming what we need."

~David Guzik, theologian

Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary,

and His understanding no one can fathom.

He gives strength to the weary

and increases the power of the weak.

~Isaiah 40: 28&29 [NIV]