Exodus 33:17-18, “17 So the LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.” 18 And he said, “Please, show me Your glory.”
The other day I was reading some comments posted online in response to a certain article about Christianity. Most of the comments were hard to read, God is hated out here. I remember back in the day where even if people did not serve God, at least they had a little reverence for Him. Today we have God haters.
We have a generation that has lost the fear of God, and we can see by what people are embracing and making it seem like the Almighty God is fine with their sin. Its been made to appear that God’s main job is to make man happy. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Jesus came on the face of the earth to die to make man happy. If that is the case, why not embrace the sin we love the most as long as we are happy and God will indeed bless us? Is God is a means to an end? No fear of God because most have not had a glimpse of the glory of God. I would categorize this group as God accommodators.
When God was leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, in the previous chapter, they made idols for themselves to worship and even concluded that that their golden calf was their deliverer from Egypt. In Exodus 33:3, God tells Moses to go and tell the Israelites that they are stiff necked people because of their rebellion, stubbornness, complaints (sin). Today Moses would be labeled judgmental, cruel, unloving, unkind, and insensitive.
God even said, “I will let you go to the promise land but without my presence going with you” some would have been happy with that, and so are people who want to go to heaven today, they want to be partakers of God’s blessings but don’t want God. As Paul Washer always says, “These are people who want to go to heaven; they just hope God is not there when they get there.”
God called Israelites stiff necked people. Moses may have wondered, “how are they stiff-necked people, yes they complained, but they were not that bad” and if anything, God shouldn’t get worked up because these are His people He brought out of Egypt by the hand of Moses, but God knew them better. Are we not in the same state today that even some Christians find it hard or don’t believe that man is wretched, stiff necked? Again it boils down to, loss of fear of God because people have not had a glimpse of God’s glory.
God would have brought them under the yoke of His law, and into the bond of His covenant, but their necks were too stiff to bow to them. God would have cured them of their corrupt and crooked dispositions, and have set them straight; but they were willful and obstinate, and hated to be reformed, and would not have God to reign over them.
However, Vs. 4 “When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments” NIV. Those whom God pardons, must be made to know what their sin is, and what they deserve. God calls sin as it is, that is why we must preach the law to the lost, it magnifies God. God reveals Himself in the spirituality of His law. That is where His righteousness and perfect purity of character are revealed for men to learn it there. The beauty of God’s holiness will not allow Him to gloss over sin. His law magnifies Him, and for sinners, “Having thus removed the mask and shown the desperate case of the sinner, the relentless law causes the offence to abound yet more by bringing home the sentence of condemnation. It mounts the judgment seat, puts on the black cap, and pronounces the sentence of death. With a harsh unpitying voice, it solemnly thunders forth the words, “Condemned already.” It bids the soul prepare its defense, knowing well that all apologies have been taken away by its former work of conviction. The sinner is therefore, speechless, and the law, with frowning looks, lifts up the veil of hell, and gives the man a glimpse of torment. The soul feels that the sentence is just, that the punishment is not too severe, and that mercy it has no right to expect; it stands quivering, trembling, fainting, and intoxicated with dismay, until it falls to prostrate in utter despair. The sinner puts the rope around his own neck, arrays himself in the attire of the condemned, and throws himself at the foot of the King’s throne, with but one thought, “I am vile”; and with one prayer, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Charles Spurgeon.
Man must have knowledge of self as stiff necked people; otherwise he will never bow before the just and holy God. Only God’s glory displayed through the law can bring him to that state, and thereafter God haters become God lovers, and God accommodators get done with themselves, dethrone themselves and submit to God’s righteousness, Blessings Ev
He Has Magnified His Word 