A GLIMPSE OF THE GLORY OF GODSeeking the greatest incentive to Christian service
by Rev Maurice Roberts, FROM SWORD & TROWEL
2000 No 3
Minister, Free Church of Scotland [Continuing], Inverness, and editor of
the Banner of Truth magazine
How can we stir ourselves up to serve the Lord better? This is a theme of
universal application to all the people of God, whether preachers, missionaries or
ordinary church members, and surely this is a biblical way of thinking. We hear the
apostle Paul say to Timothy - ‘Give thyself wholly to these things: that thy profiting may
appear to all.’
Timothy was a young servant of God and a man called to serve with the
apostle, but even he needed to be given incentives to serve God better.
Or again, Paul puts it in these words - ‘Study to shew thyself approved unto
God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.’
We are to grow not only in grace and sanctification, but also in our obedience
and faithful, useful service to Him. So we confront ourselves with this question - How
can we stir ourselves up? A significant part of the answer to that question is - by our
devotions.
It is this devotional incentive that we find in the prayer of Moses, ‘I beseech
thee, shew me thy glory’ (Exodus 33.18). Moses was one of the mightiest of
God’s servants, and here we see his devotional concern to be close to God and in
fellowship with Him. He utters this prayer in secret to the ear of the Almighty.
Where was this prayer uttered? If we glance down to Exodus 33.7
we notice these words:
Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off
from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to
pass, that every one which sought the Lord went out unto the tabernacle of the
congregation, which was without the camp.
We know that this was not the tabernacle where the Israelites worshipped God
because that tabernacle was not yet constructed. It is only as we come to the final five
chapters of this book of Exodus that we have an account of the construction
of the worship tabernacle, with its boards, pillars, coverings, altars and the candlestick
and all those other pieces of furniture which God Himself revealed by direct inspiration to
Moses.
So what is this tabernacle in which Moses prays his famous prayer? It was a
special tent which Moses was called upon to pitch outside the camp of Israel and ‘afar
off’. They called it ‘the tabernacle of the congregation’. What was this for, and why was it
set up? The answer takes us to an explanation of what had just taken place in the history
of the people of God in the previous few hours and days. In a word it was this - the
people of God had sinned against Him, and grieved Him.
They had grieved God. God says to them Exodus 33.3 that He is
going to take them - ‘unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the
midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.’ Because
they had angered Him, His blessing was removed and His presence was not visibly with
them.
You may recall that God’s presence was symbolised by the pillar of cloud
which resided in the camp by day, and a pillar of fire at night. Because they had
dishonoured God and sinned against Him, the pillar of cloud had removed and no visible
emblem of the presence of the Lord remained.
Moses was therefore commanded to make this tent and pitch it at some
distance from the camp, so that here every Israelite who wished to have communion with
God would have to walk. It was rather like the situation in Britain today. The time was
when there was a church almost on every street corner, but now to get the Gospel and the
Truth you have to go a long way - surely a judgement upon us for offending our great
Creator and our Lord!
When Moses himself made this journey to the tent where he would speak with
God, two things happened. First, as he reached the tent the pillar of cloud came down
symbolising the presence of God, and Moses went in and there he held close communion
in his devotions. At the same time the Israelites, thousands of them, whenever they saw
Moses making the journey on foot toward this tent, threw down their tools and spades and
ran and stood in their tent doors to watch the glory of the Lord appear in the door of the
tent. Moses would go in, and the glory would remain while he was there.
It was in that tent in solitary devotions with God that Moses prayed the words,
‘Shew me thy glory.’ And here is the first lesson of true servanthood - devotion to our
Master. The true servant loves his Master for His own sake, not for anything he gets out
of it. He does not serve the Lord even for blessing, but because he is devoted to Him as a
servant, even a slave, and he seeks the Lord for His own sake. This is the heart of all true
devotion.
Listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ said - ‘Blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.’ Devotion is a desiring of God for
His own sake. You may know the famous words of Augustine, which have never been
improved upon outside Scripture in the way they express the desire of a true man or
woman of God for this holy communion: ‘Thou, O Lord, hast made us for Thyself, and
our heart is restless until we find our rest in Thee.’
I say, therefore, that this is the first and basic incentive to service of every true
servant of God. What is the proof of this? It is simply that everyone in the Bible as well
as out of it who has ever done anything worthwhile for God has started here with this
desire for communion and fellowship with God Himself.
Samuel as a child had this experience, when he saw something of this glory.
Isaiah saw it and records it in chapter 6 of his famous prophecy. Paul had it on the road to
Damascus, and fell down before the Lord in prostration and adoration. This is to
experience a consuming vision of the mastery and lordship and control and authority of
God over everything and everyone and over ourselves.
The great John Calvin tasted this when at Geneva, just passing through with no
intention of staying, but that tall French preacher, Farel, went to his lodging and
threatened divine judgement upon him if he did not stay for the work of the Reformation,
for which he was so much needed. And Calvin tells us how God, in that experience,
subdued his heart and made him teachable. He saw the glory of God with his soul, and
that is what true religion is, and where true service to God must begin.
Have we - as those who would serve the Lord - seen the glory of God? Have I
had this soul-moving experience? I am not speaking about external phenomena, but about
seeing the Lord with the vision of the soul through faith.
Let us consider some reasons why the servant needs to have this devotional
relationship with God. Why is this so fundamental and central? Surely, the first answer
must be that we must grasp the glory of God to be ever reminded that God has chosen us
to be His people and to be His servants. This vision of the glory of God (and even the
desire for it) is a mark of election, possessed only by those who belong to the blessed,
chosen people of God.
Moses had many reasons to bless God for his eternal election. He would
remember his own, extraordinary childhood, at the time when baby boys were to be
thrown into the river and drowned. But Moses’ parents, looking into his face as a baby,
recognised something unusual. The Bible says, ‘they saw he was a proper child’. There
was a divine mark on him from childhood.
They hid him at great risk to themselves, and when they eventually exposed
him on the river in an ark of bulrushes, as every child knows, he was rescued, taken to the
palace, and brought up with a royal education. As someone has well put it, he spent 40
years in Egypt learning to be something. And then he spent the next 40 years in the back
side of the desert learning to be nothing. And when he had learned both, he was then
prepared for the great work that God had mapped out for him in this world.
It is so with all who are true children of God. We must recognise that all our
experiences in life, before conversion, at conversion, after conversion, are not random,
haphazard, or accidental, but are appointed for us for whatever sphere of service God has
marked out for us in this life. Our election includes everything to do with our whole
person and service to God, and it is the personal apprehension of God’s glory that fixes
the wonder of election, in all its aspects, in our minds.
The second reason why we need to see the glory of God to be motivated for
His service is that every true servant of Christ will go through some hard and painful
experiences in connection with his service. If you have had any time at all serving Him
you will not need me to tell you this. In such times, how are we going to endure? The
apostle says - ‘Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.’ ‘Fight the good fight
of faith.’ How are we to do that?
One of the great secrets of continuing through hardship is to have this vision of
the glory of God in the soul. What was it that kept William Carey going when his wife’s
mind was so deranged? What was it that kept John G Paton going when he buried his
wife and their child in the New Hebrides, gazed into the open grave, and wished he could
throw his own body in too? What made these men go on in spite of the intense hardships
of the work? It was their vision of the glory of God; they had seen the Lord in their soul
by faith, and that is what led them to go on.
Moses too had suffered a very harrowing experience in the recent past. When
he was in the mountain getting the ten commandments the people cried out to Aaron his
brother, ‘Up, make us gods . . . for as for this Moses . . . we wot not what is become of
him.’ They made the golden calf, you will remember, and they stripped off their clothes
to their great shame, because impure religion quickly leads to impure behaviour. (The sort
of god we have affects even the way we dress.)
They danced round the golden calf, and - ‘The people sat down to eat and to
drink, and rose up to play.’ When Moses returned he broke the tables of stone, and three
thousand people had to be disciplined with the sword. The people of God had to learn
afresh that they must be a holy, sin-hating people. The second of the commandments
which Moses had been carrying, written by the finger of God on tables of stone, gave the
words - ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.’
Moses needed the oxygen of encouragement, and as he came into the
tabernacle and viewed the presence of God symbolised in the pillar, he cried out, ‘Shew
me thy glory!’ And dear fellow servant if you have difficult experiences, only in the
presence of God, as you pour out your soul in prayer into His ear, only there will you
know this balm of comfort, and strength to go on, so that you will be more than a
conqueror through Him that loved you.
The question arises - What do we mean by the glory of God? It is a phrase
which requires explanation. The glory of God refers to the sum total of all God’s
attributes as He has revealed them in His Word. In Exodus 33.19, God
answers in these words - ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will
proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be
gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’
In Romans 9 Paul quotes those words to show the character of
God. This is further made clear in Exodus 34.6-7 where the Lord passed by
before Moses and proclaimed Himself, ‘The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious,
longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.’
It is very clear that the glory of God must be defined as the sum total of all that
God is. If you shine a beam of pure white light through a glass prism, the white light is
splayed out into all the colours of the rainbow, and this illustrates the character or the
attributes of God. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and the glory of God
consists of the sum total of all His attributes - His justice, His wisdom, His mercy, His
lovingkindness, His love, His goodness, and the others. That is what is being shown to
Moses.
In other words, in our reading of Scripture we are to spend much time studying
the doctrine of God Himself, and appreciating His Being in all its fullness, because this is
one of the great necessities for His royal service here in this world. If time permitted I
could show that all who have ever accomplished anything for Him in this world have
been great students of this very theme.
Abraham, when he saw the glory of God, fell down upon his face. Moses first
saw Him at the burning bush, hearing the words, ‘Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.’
Ezekiel saw the Being of the Lord in all His attributes figured in his wonderful first
chapter.
Paul was taken up to the third heaven. The eleven true apostles of Christ could
say (as John said) - ‘We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth.’
No wonder B B Warfield said, ‘Calvinism is the vision of God burned into the
soul.’ And it is the realisation of God’s glory that takes men through life serving Him
through hardships, over mountains and seas, through myriad opponents and hosts of
difficulties.
Moses, accordingly, pleaded for a sight of God’s glory. But how did the Lord
respond? I point you to Exodus 33.20, where God is speaking. ‘He said,
Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’ God would show
His glory with this limitation - that he would not see God face to face. What does this
have to say to us? Clearly, it tells us that the full vision of the glory of God is
reserved for us in Heaven, and in this life we must be content with the measure in which
God has revealed it in His Word. These dear American cousins of ours, and the Russians
also, send rockets everywhere, and we love them for doing it, but there is one place I
doubt they will ever send a rocket to and that is to the sun, because anything going too
close to that luminary quickly vanishes into smoke. Yet the sun is but a candle compared
with the eternal God. How then can frail man look upon the glory of God? In the
resurrected state we shall dwell with the everlasting brightness, but for now we must be
content with the Bible, which prescribes the measure in which we are given a revelation
of God. Let us be content with the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible: that
is our religion. Here we see the glory shining.
The greater coming vision of God reserved for the servant when he comes to
his everlasting rest is part of the incentive and the motivation to faithfulness, because the
measure in which we are faithful now will be related to the nearness that we enjoy at last.
There is a final lesson to be drawn from the way God answered the prayer of
Moses, and I quote from Exodus 33.22 - ‘And it shall come to pass, while
my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my
hand while I pass by.’ The clift of the rock is a symbol so clear to us that it shouts from
the text of Scripture. It is, of course, the mediation of our blessed and holy Saviour, Jesus
Christ. We know nothing of God apart from Christ. Says Toplady -
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
It is this very lesson, without doubt, that was in Toplady’s mind.
What happens once we grasp this vision of the glory of God? We become
deeply humbled. We become meek, and Moses was described as the meekest man on
earth. We become self-effacing and we then serve God not for anything we get out of it,
nor because we are promoted to this or that high position, but because it is a supreme
privilege to know, serve and love Him. Allow me to lay this text before you and urge you
all the days of your life to pray this prayer - ‘Lord, shew me thy glory.’
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