Stephen
Terry, Director
"Please,
Show Me Your Glory"
Commentary
for the September 20, 2025, Sabbath School Lesson
Then Moses
said, "Now show me your glory." And the Lord said, "I will cause all my
goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in
your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But," he
said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." Then the Lord
said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory
passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand
until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back;
but my face must not be seen." Exodus 33:18-23
A memory
I have from my teenage years is the many times I stood out under a night sky
and had my breath swept away by the awesomeness of the Milky Way spread across
the expanse of space like an interstellar freeway inviting humanity to the
stars and fellowship with the rest of Creation. Those were the heady days of
the Space Race when anything seemed possible. I was only seventeen and in Army Basic
Training at Fort Bliss near El Paso, Texas when men landed on the moon. All
assignments were cancelled for the day, and everyone gathered in the Day Room
to watch grainy footage of the landing on a picture tube television. It still astonishes
us today to realize that the landing and return were
accomplished with far less computer power than what we all currently carry around with us in
our mobile phones. Despite that early success and a final landing three years
later, we have not been back in over half a century.
I
remember hearing sermons in the 1960s proclaiming that humanity will never land
on the moon because God would not allow us to contaminate the rest of the universe
with our evil. I have not heard any of those sermons since the landings
happened, but it begs the question, is there a red line in space that keeps us
in check? The story of Noah seems to hint at such an idea. According to that
account, humanity became so evil that God repented ever creating them. (Genesis
6:5-6) A red line was crossed then and a near extinction event was the
result. Much later, Jesus warned that conditions would approach that red line
again with love nearly vanishing from the earth. (Matthew
24:12, 37, Cf. Luke
18:7-8) Daily, if not hourly, we hear of demonically inspired people
filling the earth from one end to the other with the blood of their victims.
The people, in response, flee to and fro like sheep without a shepherd, filled
with fear and unable to calm those fears because even those who claim to know
God are imposters proclaiming peace and safety while being allowed to feed on
the flock in return for not decrying the evil that stalks the earth.
The
prophet Ezekiel wrote of these evil religious leaders, "This is what the
Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable
for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds
can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it
will no longer be food for them." (Ezekiel 34:10) Ezekiel wrote this long
before the incarnation of Jesus, and it continued to be a problem after Jesus'
ascension. The Apostle Paul wrote of it as well, warning the church in Corinth.
"For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as
apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of
light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants
of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve." (2 Corinthians
11:13-15) Do we dare to think that the problem has since gone away? Hardly. If
Jesus' warning was true, it will only worsen with time. All of us will be touched
by evil and feel the pain and suffering it engenders. Paul wrote to his student
Timothy to warn him, "In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in
Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad
to worse, deceiving and being deceived." (2 Timothy 3:12-13) Paul was not speaking
here of the phony persecutions over whether prayer should be allowed in public
schools or the Ten Commandments should be placed in public spaces. Those who
were martyred in the Colosseum in Rome would be shocked at such a ludicrous
idea. They knew from experience that the hardest thing for evil to accept is
not displaying the Ten Commandments in public or standing up in public spaces
to pray as an exhibition of self-righteousness. No, the greatest threat to evil
is the one who continues to live with love in their hearts, even for their
enemies, despite overwhelming fear roiling through humanity like a great tidal
wave sweeping everyone as an unruly and unreasoning mob to their certain
destruction.
The
evil one has worked hard to turn humanity evil and to then cast God in that
image as well. He knows that if horses were to have a god it would be in image
and character like a horse. Therefore, it is easy to manipulate fearful people,
stoking their anger and desire for revenge, into accepting such a character for
the god they follow. Such a god leads people to either reject him as eviler
than humanity or to accept him as endorsing justification for their own acts of
cruelty and vengeance. But this is not God. As Aaron took the gold the people
gave him and made a golden calf in the fire for the people to worship, knowing
it was a false god, so people have taken their corrupt hearts and offered them
in the fires of fear and hatred to create a false god who would allow them to
claim divine favor for the evil they wish to perpetrate on the earth. They do
not understand how short life is, and they do not know the character of God.
Their actions show they have never known God, no matter how nicely they dress
to attend church, no matter how many blessings they claim God has favored them
with as blessings of endorsement, no matter how many little gold crosses,
bumper stickers, and Jesus T-shirts they use to proclaim they are the true
children of God. One day, they will hear the woeful words of Jesus, "Many will
say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in
your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I will
tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'" (Matthew
7:22-23)
When
Moses asked to see God's glory, God did not display his glory in wrath and
judgment. It has never been his desire that any should perish. (2
Peter 3:9) He also has no desire for his people to run roughshod over the
flock to root out those who are still struggling to understand the love of God.
(Matthew
13:24-30, 36-43) Those driven away by such harshness are victims of the
false god of fear that so many professed Christians have made an idol to in their
hearts. But the Apostle John tells us that a failure to love reveals we do not know
God at all, for "God is love." (1
John 4:8) This is the glory that God revealed to Moses. As in our opening
verse, he declared, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will
have compassion on whom I will have compassion." God told Moses that no one
could look upon his face and live. That is because fear and love are
incompatible. Perfect love, God's love, drives out fear. (1
John 4:18) Fear cannot stand in love's presence. This is why we must have
the image God created us to have in the beginning restored that we might once
again walk with God as Adam and Eve did.
Part
of that change involves heart surgery. Living in constant fear has changed our
hearts to stone. We need again the hearts of flesh God intended to beat in our
chests with the harmony of the created universe, the harmony of heaven, the
harmony of love. Ezekiel tells us that it can happen if we let it. Speaking for
God, he wrote "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will
remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel
36:26) I look forward to that day when I can walk with God as Adam and Eve did.
I look forward to the day when fear has ended because the evil that built it as
a tool for manipulating humanity no longer exists. I look forward to a day when
pain and suffering will no longer even be a memory, a day when "God's dwelling
place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his
people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 'He will wipe every
tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or
pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Revelation 21:3-4) What a
day that will be!