Exodus 33:1–23
1. Travelling Alone (33:1-6)
33 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.”
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.
God will fulfill His promise to Israel, However, do to their great sin, He will no longer be in their midst. This also means He will not allow Israel to build the Tabernacle.
Exodus 25:8 (ESV)
8 And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.
For now there will be no tabernacle. It is important to note that the Tabernacle would be build and the place where God would be with His people. They instead build a Golden Calf and declared that these were their gods.
Yahweh will now distance Himself from them. Now they are Moses’ people. Now, an angel will lead them. God will fulfill His promise but only from a distance. This is for their protection.
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.
2. Moses’ Tent of Meeting (33:7-11)
7 Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. 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. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
Here we see Moses’ response to God’s distancing Himself from the Hebrews…Moses Goes out to God. He builds his tent. He is not willing to miss out on meeting with God just because Israel is sinful and stupid.
Think about the image here. Israel watches as the real God descends in a cloud and speaks with Moses. They settled for an idol when they could have had Yahweh.
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.
When Moses went out of the camp to meet with God Israel watched from a sad distance. Because Moses had interceded for them it seems they have a greater respect for him. They have gone from this Moses 32:1 to a respect for him and a sadness for what their sin had cost them.
Moses would meet with God in a tent (tabernacle) outside the camp.
God met with Moses face to face. This phrase face to face is a figure of speech. It means God actually appeared in a theophany a cloud and spoke to Moses in normal conversation. The same way one would speak with a friend.
When Moses would return to the camp, Joshua was left at the tent to guard it from being profaned by the Israelites.
Paul uses this same idiom to explain how it is we will behold God one day…face to face.
In Exodus, of course, Moses could not behold God actually face to face. God would descend in a cloud and speak to Moses one on one we might say. The important part here is that God actually spoke to Moses not in a vision or a dream but two meeting together and speaking to one another.
1 Corinthians 13:11–12 (ESV)
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
One day, because of all Christ has done for us, we who were once alienated from God by sin will behold His glory face to face. Our sin will be gone and we can look upon God, face to face and see Him as He really is.
3. Moses Intercedes for the Hebrews (33:12-17)
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.’ 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. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “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?”
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.”
Moses begins his great and powerful intercessory prayers on behalf of Israel. When Moses goes out to the tent which is outside of the camp to meet with God, Moses has intercession in mind. What a great man of faith Moses was.
First, Moses was inquiring from God exactly who this angel was going to be that would lead them to the Promised Land.
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.
Moses’ intercession is reverent and bold at the same time. He is reminding God of His past promises…See You said…
You said…
Bring up this people,’
I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’
Consider too that this nation is your people.
“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
What’s important to note here are some very unique things about Moses and his relationship with God…
Nowhere else in the Bible can you find another person where God has said I know you by name. This is true only of Moses. God had a very special relationship with Moses. Also, there is only one other person in the Bible in which God said, you have also found favor in my sight. Only Moses and Noah.
Moses asks God To show Him His ways so that he can continue in His favor…
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.
After Moses’ continual prayers of intercession God relents of His judgement and tells Moses…
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.”
The thing Moses prayed most heartily for was that God’s presence would go with them. Moses did not want an angel leading them, he wanted God.
For now, at least, God provides full restoration to the people of Israel. God will go with them even though they had sinned greatly against Him.
God will reside with His people and they will build the Tabernacle, the place where God would dwell with them as they travelled through the wilderness.
4. Show Me Your Glory (33:18-23)
18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 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.”
Back in verse 13, Moses asked God to show him His ways. Here he meant, show me Your essential being and how You created all things.
Exodus 33:13 (ESV)
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. Consider too that this nation is your people.”
Now Moses is wanting more of God. He asks Him to show him His glory.
18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”
Please in Hebrew is a deep yearning for something not just being polite. Moses desires this more than he desires anything else. He has experienced God on so many different occasions and wants more of Him.
Moses is like the drug addict who needs more and more all the time. Here his deep longing is for God.
The word glory here is translated from a Hebrew word that means weighty. Before, Moses was asking God to show him his ways more in general terms. Who are You and how do You do what You do?
Now, Moses is asking God to show him His glory or the weightiest or the most critical part of who He is. In other words, Moses is asking God to show him the most essential quality of His being…God’s name.
Moses asks to see God’s glory. God proclaims to him his name. In other words, if you grasp the name of God, you have seen his glory. God is not playing games with Moses when Moses cries out, “Show me your glory!” and God answers, “This is my name!” The names of God are the manifestations of his glory.
The name Yahweh comes from the Hebrew word for “I am.” When God met Moses at the burning bush and commanded him to go back to Egypt and lead the people out, Moses asked who he should say has sent him. “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I am has sent me to you.”’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “The LORD [YHWH], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations’” (Exodus 3:14–15).
Therefore, I would draw out this doctrine for us this morning: it is the glory of God to be gracious to whomever he pleases apart from any constraint originating outside his own will. Or another way to put it would be that sovereign freedom is essential to God’s name.
God is utterly free from the constraints of his creation. The inclinations of his will move in directions that he alone determines. Whatever influences appear to change his will are influences, which ultimately, he has ordained. His choice to show mercy to one person and not to another is a choice that originates in the mystery of his sovereign will not in the will of his creature. And Exodus 33:18–19 teaches us that this self-determining freedom of God is his name and his glory. If God ever surrendered the sovereignty of his freedom in dispensing his mercy, he would cease to be all-glorious, he would no longer be Yahweh, the God of the Bible.
This is an astonishing request. For God had said in Exodus 33:3, “I will not go up among you, lest I consume you in the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” In other words, God had said that if he goes up with them, he will wipe them out along the way. But Moses says that if God will not go up with them, he won’t go either. Moses is holding out for something unspeakable — that a holy God will have so much mercy upon a stiff-necked people that he will not only go up with them to the promised land, but also, as it says in Exodus 33:16, that God would make them distinct among all the peoples of the earth.
If Moses’s request was unthinkable, God’s answer in Exodus 33:17 was doubly so. He simply says, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” In other words, God says yes, he will go up with this stiff-necked people. He will let the grace that he gives Moses flow over onto this rebellious people.
To this, God responds in verse 19, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name Yahweh; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” In other words, when Moses asks to behold God’s glory, God reveals as of first importance his name, which he explains with the words, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.”
So, in its Old Testament context the declaration of God’s absolute freedom to be gracious to whomever he pleases is intended to give Moses hope and assurance that God indeed can and will be gracious to the stiff-necked people of Israel and go with them to the Promised Land.
So, God does not lead Israel to the Promised Land because they are worthy. He leads them to the Promised Land because He is worthy and its for His namesake that He shows mercy to sinners.
What Application can we draw from this passage for us?
Resources Used:
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/i-will-be-gracious-to-whom-i-will-be-gracious
Exodus by John Currid
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