Title: Exodus 33
Content Exodus 33:1-6
God said to Moses, “Leave from here with the people you brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go up to the land that I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give to your descendants” (verse 1). And God says he will not be with them. If God is with us, the God of life will have no choice but to annihilate those who worship idols. Because Israel is a stiff-necked people (verses 3, 5).
Here, “your people” has the same meaning as the words of 32:7 and 32:34, meaning the people who broke the covenant. Although such a people, the covenant promised to the ancestors will be fulfilled by sending God's messenger ahead of them and leading Israel to the land of Canaan. In other words, the covenant is given by the grace of God through a mediator.
When the people heard the word of God, they mourned and said that they did not adorn their bodies (v. 4). In Genesis 34:1-4, when Jacob buried all the foreign gods and the rings in his ears under an oak tree and went up to Bethel, it can be thought that the removal of the decorations was a sign of repentance.
To the people of that time, ornaments had the meaning of idolatry, that is, they made a golden calf, so removing the adornment meant that they would give up idolatry and serve only Jehovah God.
God tells Israel to remove the adornment because this is not a one-time thing and it is something that needs to be repeated over and over again (v. 5). “I beat my body into subjection, lest after I have preached to others, I myself will be rejected” (1 Corinthians 9:27). Daily Repentance It can only spring from the saints by itself.
Exodus 33:7-11
Verse 1 says, “Moses always took his tent, and pitched it outside the camp, away from the camp and the camp, and called it the Tent of Meeting. What is the reason for the sudden mention of the tent of meeting here? Some biblical scholars claim that Moses inserted this text here due to an editorial error. However, the Bible is not a revelation given out of nowhere.
God had already said in verses 1-6 that he would not go up with Israel to the land of Canaan. But he said he would send his messenger to lead them to the promised land. The form of sending messengers to be with Israel is the way of dwelling through the tabernacle. However, the tabernacle has not yet been erected.
For this reason, Moses pitched his tent outside the camp of Israel and named it the Tent of Meeting, indicating that God dwells in the tabernacle and meets with Israel, but is separated from sinners. That is, until the tabernacle is built, the tent of meeting has been prepared as an intermediate base where you can hear and meet God's Word. In this respect, the tabernacle was already referred to as a tent of meeting (27:21; 28:43; 29:42-44).
Exodus 33:12-23
In the Tent of Meeting, Moses pleads with God as the people's mediator. “For the Lord has said before, I know you by name and you have found favor in my sight. If I have found favor in your sight, I pray that you will show me your way, that I may know you, and that I will find favor in your sight. ' and consider this nation to be Your people'" (verses 12, 13). This is Moses' request.
Moses knew that God had already forsaken Israel. In other words, if God would fulfill the covenant, he was seen as a God who could give grace to the people of Moses as it was because of the covenant that he established Moses himself, and if he showed grace to Moses himself because of the fact that he led him to Mt. Sinai.
So, just as Moses enjoys the grace of meeting God face-to-face, he prays that Moses' people will receive the same grace as Moses through Moses, and that the people of Moses will be accepted as the Lord's people, not the people.
God answered Moses, “I will go by myself” (verse 14). Is God a fickle man? If God Himself would go, He said so from the beginning. Why did He say that He would not be with Israel and why did He Himself say He would go? We have to think here in relation to Moses' mediating role.
To sum up, God cannot be with Israel, who has an Egyptian heart that worships idols. Nevertheless, God has no choice but to fulfill the covenant God gave to Israel, and the way to fulfill the covenant is to provide a space (area) where we can meet sinners and God. That is through a mediator named Moses.
That is why God wants to save Israel by setting Moses as the representative of Israel and using his life as collateral (32:33,34). Therefore, Israel has meaning not as Israel itself, but as Israel belonging to Moses. In other words, it must be Israel, which contains the Mosaic Covenant.
Likewise, we must know that today we ourselves are sinners, so there is no point. For this existence, the Lord took up the cross and called into His covenant. Therefore, God's interest is not in me as an individual, but in Jesus Christ because I am in God's interest. In the end, God's covenant interest was in the mediator.
To say that Job was a righteous man, his concern was only with the mediator, in the agony aggravated by the misunderstanding of his friends. “Because God is not a man like me, I cannot answer him, neither can I judge him face to face, and there is no judge (mediator) to lay his hands between” (Job 9:33).
It was also revealed through the prophet Isaiah: “Seeing that there was no one, he wondered that there was no intercessor, so he saved himself with his arms, relying on his own righteousness as his breastplate, and putting salvation on his head, as a helmet, and his reward as a garment, zeal. He will wear them as a robe, and he will repay them according to their deeds. He will be angry with his enemies, avenge his enemies, and avenge the islands. Fear the name of the Lord in the west, and his glory on the part of the rising sun, because the Lord will be rushing through them He will come like a river” (Isaiah 59:16-19).
God will be gracious to the people of Moses according to the standard he gave to Moses, the representative and mediator of the covenant. God said to Moses, who wanted to show God's glory as evidence. “I will make all my good images pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; I will give grace to whomever I will give, and I will show mercy to whom I will have mercy” (verse 19).
Jehovah means that he works sovereignly according to his will. In other words, God will give grace and mercy to those whom he desires. With this evidence, God showed how He was protecting Moses, and that is, when God's glory passed, he left Moses in half, covered him with his hand, and then removed it. At that time, Moses said that he would see only the back of God. In other words, even though Moses was a sinner as a human being, God would give him the same grace and mercy that would allow him to survive even if he met God.
It is because of the grace and mercy of Christ on the cross that we can believe in God and speak of Him. We should know that we are living only because of the grace of the cross. Therefore, just because a believer and an unbeliever are living cannot be seen as the same life.