📖 Bible Characters — Unit 6: Moses — The Man Who Asked to See God’s Glory

Of all the figures in the Old Testament, none stands taller than Moses. He was the deliverer who led Israel out of Egypt, the mediator who received the law at Sinai, and the friend with whom the LORD spoke "face to face." Yet the man God used so greatly began with a list of excuses, and the height of his story is not a miracle of power but a glimpse of God's goodness. His life carries us from a burning bush in the desert to the cleft of a rock where the glory of God passed by.

Subject: Moses — the deliverer who saw the glory of God.

Proposition: The God who calls the inadequate and gives His law also reveals His goodness as His glory.

We will trace four movements in the life of Moses.

I. The Burning Bush

Moses had once been a prince in Egypt, but after killing an Egyptian he fled into the desert of Midian, where he spent forty quiet years tending his father-in-law's sheep. He was eighty years old, his dreams long behind him, when he saw a bush that burned and was not consumed. As he turned aside to look, God called to him from the fire: "Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground."

There God commissioned him to deliver Israel — and Moses did not run to obey; he ran through a list of reasons he could not. Who am I that I should go? God answered, "I will certainly be with you." What is Your name? And God gave the name above every name:

They will not believe me. So God gave him signs — a rod that became a serpent, a hand that turned leprous and was healed. And at last the real objection:

God did not argue about Moses' ability. He simply asked, "Who has made man's mouth?" (Exodus 4:11). The God who made the mouth could surely use it. When Moses still begged, "Send someone else," God gave him Aaron to speak alongside him. Here is a lesson for every believer who feels unqualified: God is not looking for ability, but for availability. He delights to use the inadequate so that the power may plainly be His.

So Moses returned to Egypt and stood before Pharaoh with the word, "Let My people go." Pharaoh refused, and God sent plague upon plague — until the final and terrible night. On that night every household of Israel was to kill a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts, and where the blood was seen, the angel of death passed over. The Passover lamb, slain so that the firstborn might live, points forward to Christ, "our Passover," whose blood shelters all who trust Him. Pharaoh let Israel go, then pursued them to the edge of the Red Sea. There Moses told a terrified people, "Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD," and God opened the sea, brought Israel through on dry ground, and closed the waters over Egypt's army. The deliverer had led his people out.

II. The Stone Tablets

At Mount Sinai, God came down in fire and cloud, and the mountain trembled. There He gave His law to Israel through Moses — the Ten Commandments, written by the finger of God on tablets of stone. The law is holy, righteous, and good, but it could not save; it could only reveal the standard and expose our sin. Even as Moses received it, the people below grew impatient and made a golden calf, and when Moses came down and saw their idolatry, he broke the tablets at the foot of the mountain — a picture of a law already shattered by sin. Centuries later John would draw the great contrast:

Moses stands as the mediator of the law; Christ comes as the giver of grace. Paul calls the law a schoolmaster, or tutor, sent to bring us to Christ. The law was never God's last word, but a guide pointing forward to the One who alone could keep it and fulfill it. At Sinai God also gave the pattern of the tabernacle, for the same God who gave the law desired to dwell among His people — and that longing would find its fullness when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

III. Show Me Your Glory

Moses, who had once spent forty quiet years tending sheep in the desert, was now given a privilege granted to no one else: he spoke with God face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. And yet he wanted more. He made the boldest request in all of Scripture:

God's answer is full of wonder. "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live" (Exodus 33:20). So the LORD hid Moses in the cleft of a rock, covered him with His own hand, and let only His back be seen as His glory passed by. But notice carefully what God said He would show. Not His wrath. Not His raw power.

God's glory is His goodness. And as His glory passed, He proclaimed His own name: "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth." The brightest revelation of who God is comes not in thunder but in mercy. As Bengel put it, "Holiness is hidden glory, and glory is holiness shining forth" — glory is simply God's holy goodness unveiled.

We see that goodness now only in part, the way a blind man waits for sight. There is a widely told story of an Englishman named William Montague Dyke, who lost his sight at the age of ten. As a young man he fell in love, and before his wedding he underwent surgery that might restore his eyes. As the story goes, he insisted that the bandages remain in place until the ceremony, so that the very first face he would ever see would be the face of his bride. At the altar the surgeon cut away the bandages, his sight held, and looking at her he said, "You are more beautiful than I ever imagined." True or embellished in its details, it pictures something wonderfully true: one day the bandages over our own eyes will come off, and we will see the face of Christ.

IV. The Promised Land

For forty years Moses led a stubborn people through the wilderness, bearing their complaints and interceding for them again and again. God fed them with manna from heaven and brought water out of the rock, providing for every need along the way. When the people were bitten by serpents, God told Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole, that everyone who looked to it might live — a picture the Lord Jesus would later claim as His own: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Even so, Moses himself was not a perfect man. At the waters of Meribah, when the people demanded water, God told him to speak to the rock; instead, in anger, Moses struck it twice. The water came, but because he had not honored God before the people, he was told he would not lead them into the land. So Moses spent his last years leading them toward a land he himself would never enter.

From the top of Mount Nebo he was permitted to see it stretched out before him, but he died there, in the land of Moab, with the promise in view rather than in hand, and God Himself buried him. And yet his story did not end on that mountain; centuries later he stood with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, inside the land at last, in glory. The earthly Canaan was only a shadow of the true and lasting home:

From the burning bush to the cleft of the rock, the life of Moses tells one story: God meets the inadequate, gives them His word, and unveils His goodness. What we now see only in part, we shall one day see face to face. The God who showed Moses His back will show us His face in the person of His Son.