Show Me Your Glory!

These verses are just knocking me right off my feet this morning! In our Behold Your God study last week, we talked about Moses asking God to show him (Moses) His (God's) glory. I decided today to go back and dig into that a bit more. Wow!

In Exodus 33:11, the Bible says that "the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." What a thought!

Then in verses 17-23, after Moses has asked God to assure him that His presence will go with him as he leads the people, God assures him that He will, saying, "you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name."

Moses replies, "Please show me your glory."

Such a simple request, and yet it seems it should have an exclamation point at the end, and be in all caps or fancy lettering or something. *grin* Moses is asking the God of the universe to show him His glory.

And God says yes.

It's a qualified yes, but it's yes. He says that He will make His goodness pass before Moses, and He will proclaim His name before him, "The Lord." However, He says that Moses cannot see His face, because no man can see His face and live.

The next part is what has blown me away this morning. He tells Moses to stand on a rock, and then He tells Him that before He passes by, He will put Moses down in a cleft in the rock and cover him up with His hand until He has walked by. Then when God has safely passed by, He will uncover Moses so that Moses can see His back.

I've read these verses so many times, and always been amazed at the thought that God's glory is so great that Moses couldn't look on anything but God's back, but today I was struck with the fact that God deliberately withheld a portion of His glory, hid Moses from it, in order to protect Moses, because of His grace and mercy.

Despite the unfathomable awesomeness of the glory that God has shown us of Himself, it's only a portion. As Job 26:14 says, we only see the mere edges of His ways, and we hear only a whisper of Him.

And He withholds the rest, those things we don't understand, and the things that we don't even know of to realize we don't understand!, because of His great mercy and grace.  He hides those things from us because of His great love and goodness.

But He shows us just the back of His glory. He will show us what we can stand of His glory if we will ask. Ask with me today?

Lord, please show me Your glory. 

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