Commentaries:
No entry exists in Forerunner Commentary for Exodus 33:16.
Exodus 33:12-23
Excerpted from: Where God Places His Name (Part Two)What this does, this really neat conversation between God and Moses, is it brings up a question. Moses raises it to Him essentially. And this question is: How can a holy God, as wonderful and glorious and pure as our God is, be in the presence of a sinful nation? How can these two coexist? One is perfectly righteous, holy character, and He is supposed to be in the midst of these very sinful, very hypocritical, as was explained earlier, up and down people who at times could not care less about God. They showed that through the whole wilderness journey, that they forgot Him, just like that [snaps fingers]. And then He had to kill 26,000 or 22,000 or whatever to get their attention. So how can a holy God be in the presence of a sinful nation?
What God does, in this passage, is that He makes a very careful distinction between His presence and His glory, on the one hand, and His name and His goodness on the other. He kind of divides them into two separate categories. So on the one side, you have His glorious presence and His holiness and everything that is just so profound and awe-inspiring and dramatic when we see it. And on the other side, we have His name and His character typified by the word goodness. Goodness comes from God. God is the originator of goodness. So what is good originally meant what is godly.
We will just break it down. You have glory on the one hand, all this bright effulgence from God, and on the other hand, you have His name. His glory, His presence, is holy, awesome, and unapproachable. What does He say? "No man shall see My face and live." He had to cover Moses' face while His glory passed by and then he could see His back. He could see the backside of His glory, as it were, but not that front side, because no man could see His glory and live.
Sinners, even as righteous a man as Moses was, have to be shielded from exposure to His glory. Moses did not have what it took to see His full glory, even though he asked for it. Moses was really reaching when he asked the question, "Show me Your glory." As if he and God had such a good relationship that God would open that up to him. And God says, "Not yet. No. This is not the time. I'll let you see the backside of My glory. But I have something more important to tell you for the time being." God reassures Moses, though, that as a weak mortal human, he could experience the name and goodness of God, but not His glory, not His full presence. Full presence would be overwhelming and deadly. But you, Moses, He says, "You can experience My name and My goodness."
Exodus 33:16
Excerpted from: The Glory of God (Part 2): In Christ"If You're not going to go up with us, don't even start!" Moses had an understanding of what was ahead of them. They still had to get across the wilderness.
It was God's presence with them that made them a separate people.
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Exodus 33:16:
<< Exodus 33:15 Exodus 33:17 >>
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