The gracious words were spoken, “I will make all My goodness pass before you.” Moses was called to the mountain summit; then the hand that made the world, that hand that “removes the mountains, and they do not know” (Job 9:5), took this creature of the dust and placed him in a cleft of the rock, while the glory of God and all His goodness passed before him.
To Moses, this experience was an assurance that was worth infinitely more to him than all the learning of Egypt or all his achievements as a statesman or military leader. No earthly power or skill of learning can substitute for God’s abiding presence.
Moses stood alone in the presence of the Eternal One, and he was not afraid, for his soul was in harmony with his Maker. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (Psalm 66:18). But “the secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant” (Psalm 25:14).
The Deity proclaimed Himself, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty.”
“Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.” The Lord graciously promised to renew His favor to Israel and to do marvels such as had not been done “in all the earth, nor in any nation.” During all this time, as at the first, Moses was miraculously sustained. At God’s command he had prepared two tablets of stone and had taken them with him to the summit; and again the Lord “wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” (See Appendix, Note 4.)
Moses’ face radiated with a dazzling light when he came down from the mountain. Aaron as well as the people “were afraid to come near him.” Seeing their terror, he offered them the pledge of God’s reconciliation. They heard nothing in his voice but love and appeal, and at last one man dared to approach him. Too awed to speak, he silently pointed to the face of Moses and then toward heaven. The great leader understood his meaning. In their conscious guilt, they could not endure the heavenly light which would have filled them with joy if they had been obedient to God.
Moses put a veil on his face and continued to do this whenever he returned to the camp from communion with God.
By this brightness, God intended to impress on Israel the exalted character of His law and the glory of the gospel revealed through Christ. While Moses was on the mountain, God presented to him not only the tablets of the law, but also the plan of salvation. He saw that all the types and symbols of the Jewish age pointed forward to the sacrifice of Christ. It was the heavenly light streaming from Calvary, just as much as from the glory of the law of God, that caused such radiance on the face of Moses.
The glory reflected in the face and expression of Moses testifies that the closer our communion is with God and the clearer our knowledge of His requirements, the more fully we will be conformed to the divine image.
As Israel’s intercessor (Moses) veiled his face, so Christ, the divine Mediator, veiled His divinity with humanity when He came to earth. If He had come clothed with the brightness of heaven, sinful human beings could not have endured the glory of His presence. So He humbled Himself, and was made “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3), that He might reach the fallen race and lift them up.
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