Monday, October 17, 2022

A Kingdom of Priests (13)

 Intercession (8)


Moses desired to know the ways of God, to see the glory of God; Moses wanted more than to see the acts of God, he wanted to know God intimately. Yahweh promised Moses that when Moses returned to the mountain that He would reveal Himself, in a measure (Ex. 33:20 – 23), to Moses. Thus we read:

 

 “Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed by the front of him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:5 – 7).

 

Let’s note three things before we continue with 34:5 – 7:

 

“Then Yahweh said, Behold, there is a place with Me, and you shall stand there on the rock…” (33:21). This “place” and this “rock” speak to us of our Lord Jesus Christ – it is ever and always in Jesus Christ that we have koinonia with God. Moses experienced a measure, a dimension, of this koinonia and its glory, but a greater glory was coming.

 

“So be ready by morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to Me on top of the mountain.” (34:2). Our lives are to be a continuing offering to God, and this should be an earmark of every morning of every day of our lives (Romans 12:1 – 2). We are not our own, we have been bought with a price, and every morning we should be “ready” and “present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice,” not “conforming ourselves to this age,” but rather we ought to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds," so that we may live out the "will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

 

Carnal Christians, those who live according to the “flesh,” get up in the morning and do what they want to do, setting their own agendas and trajectories. However, those sons and daughters living and led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14), acknowledge every morning that their lives are not their own but belong to Jesus Christ, presenting themselves – heart, mind, soul, and body – to God every morning, as living sacrifices in the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ, proclaiming that by the Cross of Christ they are crucified to the world and the world is crucified to them (Galatians 6:14).

 

The third thing to note, is that in Jesus Christ we receive the fullness of God and we “see” the glory of God (John 1:14 – 18; 14:6 – 9). This fullness is ever expanding within us, ever growing, ever transforming us (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18). This means, among other things, that as glorious as Moses’s experience and understanding was (see Exodus 34:29 – 35), that compared to the glory of Jesus Christ and His Gospel, that it has no glory:

 

“For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.” (2 Cor. 3:9 – 11).

 

The life of Moses is a pattern of “greater things” yet to come, as is the history of Israel (1 Cor. 10:11).  If we are not learning to see beyond the history, then we are not reading and understanding what we call the Old Testament as it is meant to be read and understood (Luke 24:27, 44 – 47), for the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings reveal Jesus Christ.

 

Are we content to just know the acts of God? Or do we hunger to know God and His ways? Are we looking for exhilarating experiences, or are we seeking His Face so that we might know Him intimately? Is our knowledge and relationship with God based on externalities, or are we living in union with Him? Consider the dynamics of the New Covenant:

 

“After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Hebrews 8:10).

 

“Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:23).

 

O that we would know what it is to cry, “Abba Father!” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6)

 

 


No comments:

Post a Comment