Show Me Your Glory
Devotional Contributor: Lance Borden
When Moses asked God to show him His glory, God responded to him by saying “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you …” (Exodus 33:19). Note that Moses had just previously asked God to show him His way that he may know God. So God answered both requests by proclaiming His name AND His nature. This is God’s first real self-description in the Bible, and according to the principle of “first-occurrence”, it establishes how we are to understand what God is like in all succeeding occurrences in the Bible. This is both an awesome and fascinating description of our God! Remember, in the ancient Hebrew tradition a person’s name was typically understood as related to or revealing their nature and identity.
Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him [Moses] there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” - Exodus 33:5-7 NKJV
Let’s reflect on how God has invited us to know Him through His very own self-description.
The LORD God – the highest Supreme Being who exists! Not only Creator God, but the LORD Who presides over the justice of Heaven (implied in the word LORD when all caps in KJV).
Merciful and Gracious – a wonderful expression of loving kindness and good will from a superior being to an inferior or subordinate being. God is Love.
Longsuffering – lovingly patient to the extreme.
Abounding in Goodness and Truth – God is the plumb-line, the standard, the very definition of both Goodness and Truth. There is no goodness or truth apart from God and His ways.
Keeping Mercy for Thousands – in Deut 7:9 (KJV) we are assured He keeps covenant and mercy for thousands of generations of those who love Him.
Forgiving Iniquity, Transgression, Sin – God has always provided a means for our forgiveness through blood sacrifice in both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus is now our forgiveness!
By No Means Clearing the Guilty - There has never been an excuse to remain guilty before God. He has always provided a means to release our sin guilt to Him, if we seek him for it.
It is so good to be in covenant, through the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ, with the merciful, loving, Almighty God! His loving-kindness and mercy endure forever! His mercies are new every morning!
Father God, we love You and we adore You. We are in awe of You. We ask, as Moses did, that You show us Your way and Your glory, that we may know You and love You more, every day, than we did the day before. We pray this in Jesus’ mighty and wonderful name. Amen.
