Moses and the Goodness of God

Exodus 33 has always been a landmark chapter in understanding how God wants to relate to us.  It gives a picture of two sides of God’s nature. It describes the relationship Moses had with God as his friend, but it also describes the people Moses was leading as stiff-necked.  God tells Moses to go ahead and lead them by himself because He is through traveling with them.  He even promises to send an Angel before them to drive out their enemies. I think this was a kind of test for Moses to see how he would handle the situation and the leadership position God had given him.  How would he respond to this news, understanding that God was threatening to destroy His people?  In the meantime, God told the people to take off their ornaments as a sign of penitence until He decided what to do with them.

Moses, as a friend of God who spoke with Him face to face, enters into a dialog with God where he progressively asks for more and more clarity.  He puts a demand on the favor he knows he has with God.  He has already been told that God knows his name and has given him favor, but he desires to know Him more and more deeply.  Maybe he wants the experience of the favor.  Maybe he wants to allow that favor to flow through him, thereby understanding it in an experiential way.  It is interesting that even more favor comes with that request.  Moses then puts the flock that he is responsible for in the same relationship he has with God, by asking God to consider “this nation is your people.”  He wants the nation to experience the same favor he has with God.

God promises His presence will go with them.  That is the same as saying the favor of God will go with them.  It is the favor of God that will distinguish this people.  It is not because of anything they have done; it is just the decision of God.  God honors Moses’ desire to have the nation come under the umbrella of the favor he has with God.  Because of that unselfish request, God states that He knows Moses personally and by name.  He affirms Moses in his request because Moses is showing forth the same attributes that God has.  These qualities of mercy and favor and loving-kindness are the very qualities that make up the nature of God.  God always recognizes Himself. 

As Moses comes more fully into the revelation of just how much favor he has with God and how intimately God knows Him, I think Moses was awed.  As he realizes how he can let the attributes of God flow through him to affect the people around him, and experiences what that can mean, He asks the seminal (game changing) question of Chapter 33.  Moses asks to see God’s Glory.  He was asking to know God in the same way he was known by God.  I think God was especially touched by that request and consequently, He drew Moses into the cleft in the rock and let him know that from that time on, Moses would know God in his goodness.  It was goodness that would be the lens change through which Moses was to see God.  In that exchange, God’s heart was softened toward Moses and He drew him into a place that was designed to change his paradigm for relationship.  Everything from here on in would be processed through goodness. 

It was like God was saying, “You have had a taste of what I am really like.  Because you spent time getting to know Me, and because we are friends, you instinctively know how I operate and what I am like.  You just took the place I would take with these people.  Therefore, I am underlining this experience in a way that you will never forget.  I am giving you an experience that will be a game changer from this time forward.  Now you understand your role.  You are to stand in my place with these people and extend the same qualities of favor to them; that you have with me.  You will be the visual aide and the one through whom I release my nature in a way that is felt and known by them”.  Then, God drew Moses to a place in the cleft of the rock where they could stand side by side in a new and fresh partnership.

There is a parallel with the Song of Solomon 2:14.  The shepherd calls the maiden “my Dove”.  The shepherd is speaking to her persona as the representative of the Holy Spirit in the earth.  She is to be the visual aide to all of creation and to mankind, of one through whom He can express His life.  He is calling up her true identity.  While they are in the secret place in the clefts of the rock, He says, “Let me see your face.  Let me hear your voice.”  In effect, the shepherd is asking the same thing Moses asked of God.  Let me see the real you.  There is nothing God likes better than seeing our truest identity come forth in the likeness of His son.  We become sharers in the Divine Nature, and goodness becomes our defining attribute.

All of a sudden, the maiden’s eyes are opened to the fruit of the love that is developing between them.  Her one desire is to catch the little foxes that could compromise that love and what it is producing.

Goodness is the best soil for fruit to develop.  As we allow goodness to be the lens through which we process life, we can experience a paradigm shift for interpreting whatever comes our way.  Like Moses, He knows our name and his favor is upon us.