Glory and Goodness
Exodus is the second book in the Bible. It picks up right where Genesis ended. Abraham’s family has indeed been created and grown. His great-grandson was sold into slavery and subsequentially rose to second in command of all Egypt. God has started to fulfil the things He promised when He cut the covenant with Abram (Abraham). Abraham now has many descendants, and not long into their time in Egypt, the family is enslaved.
Remember though, God made a covenant with Abraham that He would bring his family back to the very place where God came down as a smoking pot and flaming torch.
Fast forward a few pages and several hundred years, Moses is born. He is raised up to become the deliverer for the people of Israel. God displays His power through plagues and parting the Red Sea for their exodus from the land.
God wastes no time preparing His laws for the people so they can walk with Him in His holiness. Remember, sin must remain separate from a Holy God. But because He wants to be their God, He gives them the gift of laws so they can remain with Him.
Also consider that this group of people have never governed themselves. They have no laws. They are stepping across dry sand as an entirely new entity. No longer slaves, but not yet a nation. God must intervene so they understand how they are to live in harmony with both Him and one another.
The Israelites follow in the footsteps of their patriarchs, walking in a constant cycle of grumbling and disobedience. God casts His judgement, and the people repent and worship. But like clockwork, some new inconvenience buds in their hearts as discontentment and the cycle begins again.
God is graciously showing them that their biggest enemies are not their Egyptian taskmasters left on the other side of the sea. It is the sin encamping in their own hearts.
Our greatest despair doesn’t come from the atrocities committed against us by others. We are shackled by the same slaves’ chains, only ours don’t rattle, echoing our agony in constant reminder of our bondage. Our ultimate brokenness is the sin that burrows like a chain of thorns, gripping our hearts. It looks different, but make no mistake, bound by sin, we are enslaved just the same.
This is where our story will begin today. From Genesis until now, God keeps speaking about His glory. And we wonder how this must sound to a people brutalized under generations of slavery and now wandering in the heat of the desert.
It is a two-word phrase still commonly mentioned in church circles today – God’s glory. We talk constantly of how all things work together for both His glory and our good.
Rightfully so.
Some ask if God is so focused on His own glory if that makes Him selfish or even narcissistic. Which brings to mind the question, “If God is seeking His own glory above all, then could that bring about pain for others, or me, in His pursuit of His own glory?” Does God’s relentless working of things for His own glory bulldoze anything else in His path?
And if so, how could that possibly reconcile with His promise for working all things together for the good of those who love Him?
Moses said, “Please show me Your glory.”
Exodus 33:18
God has already performed massive miracles in the sight of Moses and His people. He has plagued the Egyptians, split open the sea, given the first set of 10 commandments on Mt. Sinai, and spoken with Moses “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” in the Tent of Meeting. Somehow after all these things, Moses still longs to see the glory of the Lord.
God’s response is stunning.
“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. But,” He said, “you cannot see My face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by Me where you shall stand on the rock, 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. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”
Exodus 33:19-23
(Emphasis my own.)
Moses specifically asks to experience God’s glory, which might feel wild to us who look back across Moses’ life and recognize him as a man who witnessed a large percentage of the supernatural events in the Old Testament. This is the man who met God in a burning bush. God told Moses His actual name Yahweh– for the first time in history. Some decades later, He regularly meets God face to face, and He still has this audacity, this yearning to know more of God’s glory.
Because when we finally see God for who He is, the only logical response is to want more of Him.
But the striking part is God’s response. He agrees to put His majesty on display, but instead of glory, God uses the word goodness.
The Hebrew word Moses uses for glory is “kabod,” meaning honor, abundance, splendor, reputation, etc. But God responds with the Hebrew word “tub,” meaning goodness, fairness, beauty, joy, etc.
Why?
It is difficult to read the passage and not wonder if Moses is asking to see the most awe-inspiring, extravagant, dazzling majesty of Yahweh. God answers yes but describes His own glory in a way few of us consciously consider.
God describes this majestic weight of His glory as being His goodness. We see in the following verses that He does equate His goodness with His glory when He switches back to the word kabod and says, “while My glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock…”
This is a quality of God that, if we grasp it fully, can be life-altering in our understanding of Him. We seek to worship the King of kings, high upon His holy throne in all of His luminous wonder. We rightfully see Him as completely set apart from us in the sense of His holiness, honor, and glory.
Could it be possible that in our desire to praise His might and supernatural royalty that we miss a defining quality that He sees as equally impressive as His own glory?
His goodness is what makes His glory so majestic.
When we find ourselves asking God to reveal different attributes of Himself to us throughout different seasons of our lives, perhaps we could consider a slightly different prayer. Instead of always asking God to show us His glory, His miracles, His power, His love, or any other comforting features we believe we need to focus on, what would happen if we asked Him to uncover any of His characteristics He determines to be beneficial in our unique circumstances?
When we begin to question if God’s pursuit of His own glory is somehow detrimental to our lives, we can rest assured that pressing in to intimately know His glory will only push us further into the arms of a God who is good. And if He is good, then His intentions will always happily carry both His own glory and our good.
If God can use the words glory and goodness interchangeably, we can learn a deep truth about Him. He sees His goodness as important as His glory or even possibly the aspect that makes Him glorious.
For people trekking a desert exodus and people navigating 21st century stress, there is immeasurable comfort in this. It’s such a small detail in this story that if we blink, we’ll miss it. But think of the implications for your own life!
If God determined to make His glory known among all generations and all timelines, then you are not exempt from that. How much more eager He is to show Himself to those truly wanting to meet Him! This means that you can pray the same prayer Moses did millennia ago and the VERY SAME GOD who shook Mt. Sinai will show you His goodness too.
Friend, do not grow weary as we wander in the desert of our modern lives.
Running with you until we see His beautiful glory,
What a wonderful way to look at this passage. As we grumble…the tractor has a fuel leak…I have another migraine…goodness, the dogs need to be walked,AGAIN…all these little little things that bother us when all God wants is to be part of these little things. The tractor has a fuel leak and it takes hours to fix but what did you do with that time…grumbling and complaining, but that was all that was wrong at that time. So much more could have gone wrong, and probably will but how we handle the little things determines what happens in the future. And how we face those challenges. The pain we feel and how we ask him to help or understand what we are to learn from it is more important. Asking to see his goodness in our times of struggle, what ever that struggle is, that is what he wants.
It can become a fun challenge to attempt to find God’s goodness in situations that feel hard!
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Hello!!! I’m SO happy to have you here! Welcome, new friend! Feel free to comment freely as you enjoy the site!
<3 Mandy