Exodus 33

In 1981, a film entitled simply Roar! was released. This film followed a man named Hank and his family living on a nature preserve in Africa, where they raised hundreds of big cats: mostly lions and tigers. What made this nature preserve unique was that the animals were totally free to go wherever they pleased—including inside Hank’s house. They’d camp out in the living room, wander the halls, get in the beds.

The movie itself isn’t very good; but the making of the movie is legendary. The director and lead actor, Noel Marshall, and his wife, actress Tippi Hedren, were passionate conservationists. They filmed this movie with real, untrained lions and tigers, in their real home, with their real kids. They loved these animals so much they wanted to make a film showing that humans and big cats could live together in harmony.

The problem is that lions and tigers are wild animals. Put them together in a house with human beings, and it’s not going to go well. Of the 140 people working on the film, 70 of them—including the lead couple’s own daughter, Melanie Griffith—were seriously injured, many of them multiple times. I’ll spare you the details, but Google it if you want—it’s gruesome.

Although this couple felt they couldn’t live without these animals, it became clear very quickly that they couldn’t live with them either.

Oddly enough, this is very close to the situation in which the people of Israel find themselves in Exodus 33.

If you were here last week, you’ll remember that while Moses was on the mountain receiving instructions for the tabernacle from God, the people of Israel grew impatient, and demanded that Aaron make an idol for them that they could worship, that would stand in for the God who seemed to be absent. Aaron, despite having received the commandment that they must not make any graven images or worship any other gods, built this idol for them.

God tells Moses what’s going on, says he’s going to go down and destroy them. Moses prays that God wouldn’t do this, and God answers his prayer. Instead, Moses comes down off the mountain and shatters the tablets of stone on which God had written his commandments. He sends the Levites out to kill the perpetrators, and 3,000 people die that day.

Essentially when we pick up the thread in chapter 33, Moses is talking to God and they are discussing what will happen next. But in order to get a feel for the situation in this chapter, I’d like us to skip down a bit.

What They’ve Lost (33.1-3)

In v. 7, we learn that Moses took a tent and pitched it outside the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. It was sort of a precursor to the tabernacle, and apparently anyone could go out there to pray and seek God.

But when Moses went out to the tent, things were different. V. 8:

8 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. 9 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. 10 And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. 11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

Think about this picture. When Moses went out to the tent, people would stand outside their tents in the camp and watch him go. When Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud that guided them would come down and stand at the entrance. And when the people saw this, they would stand up and worship.

This was probably a joyous sight before Moses went up to the mountain, before the golden calf. But can you imagine what that “worship” must have been like after? The people of Israel stood there, watching Moses go into the tent and benefit from everything they think they’ve just lost. V. 11 says that God would speak to Moses “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” And this intimate relationship was accompanied by a sign of great power: the pillar of cloud.

That’s what the people stand to lose, now that their covenant with God—their relationship with God—has been fractured.

So the question is, what will God do with this sinful people who have broken covenant with him?

We Can’t Live With God (33.1-3)

Chapter 33, verse 1:

The Lord said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have 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.’ 2 I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 3 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.”

Already this is a grace. God says he will make good on the promise he made to the people, to bring them into Canaan—not for their sake, but because it is what he promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He does, however, establish a significant consequence. He will send an angel before them to drive out the people of the land, but God himself will not go with them.

Why?

Because, he says, “you are a stiff-necked people.” You are obstinate. You are unruly. And if I were to go with you, I would destroy you.

A lot of people might read this and think God is setting up guardrails for himself—like those people who decide not to have kids because they’re afraid they’ll be too impatient with them. Our reflex to this passage is to find God kind of childish; sure, the people are difficult, but he’s God—can he not hold his temper?

That’s not how we should be reading this.

God isn’t afraid of losing control of his own anger if he goes with the people. He’s a just God, and none of this is a surprise to him. He’s not worried. He’s saying that in the normal state of things, no matter how bad the people feel about their sin right now, eventually they will turn against him again. Which means that in his justice, God would have to consume them, because that would be the just punishment for their rejection of him.

In other words, in the current state of things, God with them would be dangerous for them. For the people to have God dwelling in their midst would be a foretaste of what hell will actually be.

If that sounds shocking, it’s because we’ve long heard that hell is the absence of God. That’s not true. God is omnipresent: he’s everywhere, all at once. God is present in heaven and in hell, and he is the Lord of all things—of both heaven and hell.

Hell is not the absence of God. It is the absence of union with God.

If we are united to God, God’s presence is a blessing for us. It is the presence of a benevolent and loving Father.

If we aren’t united to God, his presence is eternal condemnation and punishment for us. It is the presence of a righteous Judge, who hates the sin we have allowed to be our master.

What God is saying here, essentially, is simple: because of sin, God and human beings have become incompatible. God made man in his image, but man rebelled against God and became infected with sin. Sin and God’s holiness are fundamentally incompatible—like oil and water, like lions and people.

In the normal state of things, there is simply no way for man to live with God and survive. Sooner or later we will sin against him, and God’s justice would require him to punish that sin.

But even if this is true, its opposite is also true. We can’t live with God, but we can’t live without him either.

We Can’t Live Without God (33.4-6)

V. 4:

4 When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. 5 For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked 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.’ ” 6 Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

This is interesting. The people of Israel have seen these incredible manifestations of God’s power, rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, and guiding them into the wilderness, and coming down on Mount Sinai… And now they’re realizing they were ready to give all of that up!

So they mourn. They strip off their party clothes, the “ornaments” of their idolatry, and they mourn.

Now that is not to say that this is actual, true repentance. For some of them it probably was, but Israel’s history will show us that plenty of them weren’t repentant at all. They’re mourning over what they stand to lose, and not necessarily mourning over their sin.

The one person who seems to have fully understood the situation is Moses himself, even though he didn’t participate in their sin. Skip down to v. 14 (this is God speaking to Moses):

14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

One thing that we can’t see in our English translations is really important. The “you” in verse 14 is singular, not plural. God is talking to Moses, and Moses alone here. He says, “Okay, I can’t go with them; but I’ll go with you.”

15 And [Moses] said to [the Lord], “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have 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?”

Listen carefully to what Moses is saying. First of all, he’s saying he can’t take God without God’s people. His response in v. 15 might seem strange, because God has just said he’ll go with him, and then Moses turns around and says, “If your presence won’t go with me, don’t bring us up from here.” But v. 16 explains what he means. He says, Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people…?

He’s telling God that Moses and the Israelites are a package deal.

And he’s not saying it for his own sake, out of loyalty to his people. He’s saying it for God’s sake. It’s exactly what we saw last week, when God threatened to go down and destroy them after they made the golden calf. Moses pleads with God not to do it, because God made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and if God doesn’t do what he promised, then he will be maligned by enemy nations. It is for God’s sake that he’s pleading with him.

Here’s the second thing, that I find even more remarkable. God has promised them a beautiful country, “flowing with milk and honey”, with unlimited resources, incredible produce, all the good things they’ve been desiring for centuries. And God has just told them that he’ll send an angel ahead of them to get them there.

Even if I’m not with you, he says, you’ll get to where you’re going. You’ll get what I promised. But I won’t be there.

And Moses says, “If you’re not going to be there, keep us in the desert. That would be better than getting everything you promised us, but without you.”

So there is a natural tension to their situation. They can’t live with God, because they’re sinners; but they can’t live without God either, because he is their Lord and their Creator, their very life.

How can this tension possibly be resolved?

The Tension Resolved (33.12-23)

There’s only one way, and we see it in the following verses. V. 12:

12 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.’”

Just to clarify: when God told Moses, “You have found favor in my sight,” he’s not saying, “Moses, I’ve looked at all humanity, and you’re the best. You’re the guy I want to work with.” He’s saying, “I have decided to give you the grace to belong to me and to lead my people.”

Keeping that in mind, look at what Moses says in v. 13—it’s really interesting:

13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.”

Do you see what he’s saying? He’s saying, “If I have received your grace, show me your ways that I may know you, and continue to benefit from that grace.”

In other words, Moses is very lucid about his own situation. He knows that the only reason he’s here speaking to God, and not down there with the people worshiping idols, is because God has given him grace. And he knows that if he doesn’t know God, if he doesn’t know what God expects of him and what God’s character is like, even if he’s here talking with God today, he’ll run the risk of drifting away from him tomorrow.

So he is asking God to keep him. He’s asking God for a deeper knowledge of who he is, so that Moses might continue to be faithful.

And then he adds the argument we saw earlier, at the end of v. 13:

“Consider too that this nation is your people.”

He tells God, your presence is what is meant to make this people distinctive. Your presence is what sets us apart from other nations. You have committed yourself to this people, and everyone knows it. Just as Moses and the people of Israel are a package deal, so are God and the people of Israel.

So then in v. 15-16, we see what we talked about earlier: God offers to go with Moses, but not the people, and Moses refuses, saying, “No, I can’t go without my people—and if you’re not with us, leave us here in the desert.”

Now listen to God’s response, in v. 17:

17 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.”

It’s really important to see why God agrees to do what Moses is asking him to do. He says that he will go with the Israelites, despite the fact that they are sinful. But it’s not because Moses has convinced him or changed his mind. God is omniscient—he knows all things. He was not surprised by what Israel did, and he knew exactly how this conversation was going to go.

He is doing all this for Moses’s sake, and for the people’s sake. They need to know, in their gut, not just in their heads, that they can’t live without God. And the idea that they might get the promised land without God needed to be unthinkable to them. Moses understands it, and he will lead the people to understand it.

So God says that he will go with them, not because Moses has changed God’s mind, and not because Moses has been so super faithful. God says that he will go with the people, because he has decided to give Moses this grace, and he knows him by name.

God justifies his decision on the basis of his own gracious will—we’ll come back to this in a second.

Now put yourself in Moses’s shoes. After everything that’s just happened, he hears what God says, and it’s good news: but he’s hungry for more. V. 18:

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”

Remember that at the root of everything Moses has just asked of God is his request that he might know God. He’s saying, I want to make sure that we stay on the rails here. So let me see you as you are. Let me know you fully. He’s essentially asking for a more intimate repetition of Mount Sinai, a covenant validation that God really is still with them.

And to this risky request, God (maybe surprisingly) agrees. Look at v. 21:

21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 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. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

So he agrees, with a small condition attached. You can’t see me in all my fullness and live—you are still a sinner, and I’m too holy for you. But I will give you a glimpse of me, but I won’t show you my face.

It’s easy to get sidetracked by this (which we’ll see next week) and miss the most important part of this passage, which comes just before, in v. 19:

19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’

So Moses won’t be able to see all of God’s glory. He won’t get to see God’s face.

What he will get is God’s proclamation of his name.

This is an idea that shows up over and over again in the Bible: God’s name is a representation of who he is. He will go on to give a longer, more detailed description of what his name entails in chapter 34, but right now he gives the essential, and it hits hard. He says in the second half of v. 19:

And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

The apostle Paul quotes this verse in Romans 9 to show that when God saves a person, it’s not because they deserve it, but because God has chosen to save them. He chooses to save us, not on the basis of who we are or what we have done, but on the basis of his own totally free will to do whatever he pleases.

He is the God who is obliged to do nothing. He is the God who receives no commands, who has no rulers, who is subservient to no one. God is the God whose prerogative it is to forgive or not.

We talked about this tension: we can’t live with God, but we can’t live without him. This is what resolves the tension: it is God’s name, God’s sovereign right to do what he will.

Now obviously we don’t see how God’s right to do what he will ultimately manifests itself. A couple of weeks ago we talked about the limits of the sacrificial system God had already given the people, that they would need more than that. But God tells Moses that he will proclaim his name to him, and his name is “The Lord”—that is, the one who has the absolute right to be gracious to whom he will, and show mercy on whom he will.

And this is exactly what we see, hundreds of years later, when God sends Jesus Christ. This should make our heads spin. Just as God is under no obligation to forgive anyone, he was under no obligation to send Christ.

Jesus lived a perfect life in a human body, a body susceptible to temptation, tortured daily by the onslaught of sin in the world around him. He resisted temptation at every turn, and constantly showed his desire to love the unlovable, to live with sinful people. And ultimately, he suffered the punishment we sinful people deserve when he died on the cross for our sins.

No one was forcing him to do that. The Son of God could have stayed in heaven, and he still would have been God, because it is his right to be gracious or not, to show mercy or not.

But he chose to be gracious to his people. He chose to show mercy to his people.

This is what God was looking forward to when he told Moses he would continue on with the people of Israel, despite their sin. And this is what God was looking forward to when he gave Moses the grace to intercede for the people of Israel, to (in a sense) argue with God in favor of the people.

That was God, showing his people patience they didn’t deserve, because he knew Jesus was coming. Jesus would cover all the sins of his repentant people—including the sins that Moses himself committed—when he died on the cross. Jesus would stand as his people’s advocate before the Father, showing him proof that our sins were covered. So God could pass over their sins for now, and make his dwelling among them, despite what they deserve—exactly as he does for us.

So here’s what we have to see here:

This story is our story.

This text is a microcosm of the story of all of God’s people, throughout all of history.

We have a sinful, rebellious people, who deserve to be separated from God, as God promises. And we have one man who rightly understands the situation, and who stands as an intercessor for this sinful people. It shouldn’t matter what he says, because the people deserve to be separated from God.

And even so, God stays with them. He chooses to show them grace.

We have a sinful, idolatrous people, who deserve to be separated from God. And we have one man who rightly understands the situation, and who stands as an intercessor for this sinful people. It shouldn’t matter what he says, because the people deserve to be separated from God.

And even so, God stays with them. He chooses to show them grace.

All of us, at some point in our lives, will have an experience that makes us realize the immensity of our sin. We’ll think we’ve made progress, we’ll think we’ve grown up, we’ll look at our Christian lives and be proud of ourselves and all we’ve accomplished. And then in a moment, over the course of a single conversation, we’ll be left thinking to ourselves, I have made no progress at all.

One day we’ll find ourselves on our knees before him with nothing in our hands, nothing to show for ourselves except our sin. We’ll see that all of our accomplishments, all the seemingly beautiful the things we did without him, are just the ornaments of our idolatry.

He’ll remove all that, and we’ll be there, naked in front of him, feeling the shame and the fear of our sin, and we’ll hear him say, “I will show grace to whom I will show grace, and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” And that will feel like a terrifying sentence to us.

And then we’ll hear him say, “But my Son says you’re mine. So I will go with you.”

The fact that God forgives the people of Israel is so astounding that we are almost left with a feeling of incompleteness, because God’s conversation with Moses doesn’t make a lot of sense. That argument shouldn’t have worked. But it did, because God is the God who has the sovereign authority to show grace to whom he will.

And he decided to save us.

So faced with this confusing, incomprehensible, undeserved grace, we have to ask ourselves a question: if we could have everything we have ever wanted without this God, would we take it?

That’s the question the text asks, because that’s what God says to Moses—I’ll send my angel with you, and they’ll drive out your enemies, and I’ll give you the land. It’s everything you’ve always wanted. But you’ll do it without me.

And Moses said no.

I wonder how many of us would be willing to say the same thing. If God promised to give you everything you prayed for, for the rest of your life, but without Christ, would you take that deal?

This is a question we have to ask ourselves, every day for the rest of our lives, because every day the world around us is going to present us with an illusion of happiness, an illusion of perfection. It will give us a million things we think we need in order to be happy, and we might even feel happy for a time. But a day will come when we’ll stand before God and realize that every good thing without God is actually another nail in our coffin, another idol we’ve worshiped, another lie we’ve believed.

But knowing that he is our ultimate good changes the way we see every good thing. Our happiness is no longer idolatrous. We delight in good things, not just because they’re good, but because they lift our eyes to the good God who gave them to us. We delight in the gift, for the sake the Giver.

The Christian life is a life of reordered affections. We want good things, yes—but most especially, we want God. So if we get those good things, we delight in God all the more. And if we don’t, then that’s okay—because we’ve still got God. This is why the apostle Paul can legitimately tell us to rejoice in every circumstance.

This is how the cancer patient can still delight in God.

This is how a funeral can still be joyful and filled with hope.

This is how a broken relationship can not destroy our lives.

This is how our children can not become idols to us.

This is how our jobs can be a good endeavor rather than the purpose of our lives.

This is how we can live sacrificially.

This is how we can be generous even when we have little.

This is how we can resist temptation.

We can do all these things, because Christ has made it possible for sinful people to finally live with God. He has made the choice to show us unthinkable grace. He has proclaimed to us his name, The Lord—he will be gracious to whom he will, and he will show mercy to whom he will. Why would we ever want anything without him?