Bold, Not Like Moses
So one thing abundantly clear about the apostle Paul is that he suffered for the sake of the gospel. In 2 Corinthians Chapter 11, he gives the most detailed list of what he experienced, which included …
labors and imprisonments,
countless beatings, often near death;
five times he received beatings of 39 lashes;
three times he was beaten with rods;
once he was stoned;
on three different occasions he was shipwrecked, and at least once he adrift at sea for a night and a day;
he was constantly on the road where he was vulnerable to all kinds of dangers and hardship;
he also didn’t sleep well;
and he was often hungry and thirsty and cold
— that was typical apostle Paul, just living his best life now.
But then on top of all his physical suffering, he said he had a daily pressure and anxiety for all the churches, and there’s no doubt that this had to do with the false teachers and critics who both verbally attacked him and tried their best to undermine him.
— look — when we think about all that Paul had against him, it’s astonishing that he had a fruitful ministry. How did that happen? Why didn’t he just quit? What encouraged him to keep going?
In short, it’s because he knew the ultimate meaning of Exodus 34.
To be more exact, we could say it this way: one reason the apostle Paul was able to keep hope throughout his ministry is because he understood what the shining face of Moses was ultimately about in Exodus 34, which he tells us in 2 Corinthians Chapter 3. We’re going to look at both today.
And this matters for us because if we want to have the same hope as Paul, then we need to have the same understanding of Exodus 34 as Paul. So that’s the goal of this sermon. We want to have hope like Paul, so how did his understanding of Exodus 34 help him?
There are three steps we need to take:
First, we’re going to see what is happening here in the second half of Exodus 34
Second, we’re going to see why it matters to Paul in 2 Corinthians 3.
Third, we’re going to see how we can apply this to our lives today.
Again, that’s: 1) Exodus 34; 2) 2 Corinthians 3; and 3) What difference does it make for us … tomorrow, this afternoon, right now?
Let’s pray:
Father in heaven, because of your mercy and grace, because your Word is open before us, we ask by the power of your Spirit, accomplish in our hearts all that you will. Your kingdom come, your will be done, in Jesus’s name, amen.
1. What is going on in the second half of Exodus 34?
Remember last week we saw in verses 1–9 that God proclaimed his name to Moses. This is the high-water mark of the Old Testament where Yahweh shows his glory as a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, but who will by no means let sin go unpunished (verses 5–7). This is the truth of who God is, and it’s a truth that’s repeated constantly from here out in the Old Testament. What God reveals about himself in Exodus 34 changes everything.
And it’s the reason why, in Exodus 34, verse 9, Moses has the confidence to ask God to pardon Israel’s iniquity. In order for Israel to move forward to the Promised Land, and to be Yahweh’s inheritance, they need his forgiveness. That’s verse 9.
And then verse 10 starts a new section.
From verses 10–28 Yahweh is re-instituting the covenant with Israel that he started back in Chapter 19 — which was the first time Moses went up on Mount Sinai.
Remembering the Context
So let’s back up for a minute. I want to remind you where we’ve been:
In Exodus 19 Moses is on Mount Sinai with God who is making a covenant;
In Chapter 20 God gives the Ten Commandments;
In Chapters 21–24 we read the covenant code (elaborating the Ten Commandments);
In Chapter 25–31 we have the instructions for the tabernacle;
and then in Chapter 32 we hear the screeching stop —
That’s when after 40 days and 40 nights God sends Moses down from the mountain to find the people worshiping a golden calf. And remember in Chapter 32 when Moses came down from the mountain, he was holding the two tablets of stone that had the law written on them, but when he saw the people’s sin, he was angry and he threw the tablets down and broke them (32:19).
Now here in Chapter 34, verse 1, God tells Moses to cut two new tablets of stone and bring them back up to the mountain. God says he’s going to rewrite the law on the new tablets.
Then God proclaims his name in verses 5–7, which we saw last week, and now we’re at verse 10, a new section where God says, verse 10:
“Behold, I am making a covenant. …”
So what’s he doing here? He’s making a covenant
— and rather than God start this by referring back to Israel’s rescue from Egypt, he starts by pointing forward to their future conquest in Canaan. And from verses 11–26 here, God basically just repeats the end of the covenant code found in Chapter 23, verses 11–19. God has said these things before, and in fact, everything he says in these verses parallels the Ten Commandments. So it’s like these are an expansion of the Ten Commandments divided into two sections:
Verses 11–17 are warnings against idolatry;
Verses 18–26 are instructions on true worship
And the reason that God focuses on these two things is because these would be Israel’s biggest problem.
Idolatry and compromise are the big outward sins of Israel, but they both come from the deeper sin of their unbelief.
What are root-sins?
There are categories of sin here we’ve talked about before: it’s that there are branch-sins and then there are root-sins.
Branch-sins are the sins out in the open. They’re the ones that people can see; they’re the ones that get most of our attention, but every branch-sin is drawing its life, as it were, from some root under the surface. We call these root-sins. And it’s good and right that we keep chopping branches — kill your branch-sins — but we also need to dig out and kill our root-sins. Here’s an example of how this goes with Israel:
In verse 17 Yahweh prohibits making a god out of cast metal. That is a branch-sin. It’s idolatry, and Yahweh says do not do that. Hard stop. Kill your branch-sins.
But now consider: why would Israel do that?
It’s because at root, they fail to trust Yahweh. They do not believe him. Their root-sin is unbelief, and if unbelief is down here, refusing to honor Yahweh’s rightful place as their God, then they have to find something else to fill that void. So they cycle through idols; they give all these false gods a try — Ashtoreth and Baal and Marduk, the list goes on. The idolatry is out here, but unbelief is what drives it.
And God prohibits the branch-sins, but he also goes for the root. This is why so many of the positive commandments are really about faith. I think that’s what’s behind all these feasts and the Sabbath mentioned in this passage.
Think about this: In verses 18–25, Yahweh is telling the people to feast! He tells them plainly in verse 21 to rest on the seventh day. Why would this be so hard?
Well, it’s because if they’re feasting and resting and appearing before Yahweh three times a year, it means they are not working, which means that their fields and their fruit are just left where they are. For Israel to obey these commandments means that in those moments of obedience they are not making themselves stronger or wealthier or better-suited to conquer other nations. And that’s the point!
In commanding Israel to observe the feasts and the Sabbath, Yahweh is calling them to trust him. That’s why he grounds these commands in verse 24. He says:
For I will cast out nations before you [Me, God says! I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna] enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land …
Do you get that? It’s like God is saying: Hey, you can walk away and leave your field alone for a day because I’m the one who’s gonna take care of you and provide for you and protect you.
To obey these commands Israel has to trust God, and the root-sin is that they don’t. They are a faithless people. Even after all that they’ve seen, they still think it’s up to them; they do not believe God will do what he says.
— Do you get their unbelief? And do you see that faith is what God wants?
This is true for us.
Whatever it is that you have going on in your life, God is calling you always, mainly, to trust him.
And if we dig down beneath our branch-sins, we’ll find that often times it’s because we don’t trust him. We have unbelief in our hearts.
And unless we begin to consider our root-sins, we will miss both our need for and the power of the gospel. Because here’s the problem if we only focus on branch-sins: it’s that can manage branch-sins by willpower and appearances. That is how people “play church.” But that’s not what we’re here for. We want to be overcome by the gospel of Jesus Christ! Every part of us, down deep — Jesus, help me!
Coming Down the Mountain (Again)
Okay, back to verse 29. Moses came down from Mount Sinai, and this is for the second time. Remember the first time he came down was back in Chapter 32, and now we’re supposed to compare these two scenes. We’re supposed to compare Moses coming down in 34 to when he came down 32. Here’s the similarities:
In both cases it was after 40 days and 40 nights
Both cases Moses held the two tablets of stone in his hands
And in both cases there was a stunning encounter …
In Chapter 32 it was Moses’s reaction to the people; and in Chapter 34 it’s the people’s reaction to Moses.
Remember in Chapter 32 Moses found the people having their party around the golden calf, and he was angry. Now Chapter 34 the people see Moses’s face shining, and they were afraid.
Does everybody see that in verse 30? Look at verse 30:
Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.
But then in verse 31 Moses calls them anyway and tells them what God said, and then after Moses talked to them, with his face shining, then he put a veil over his face, verse 33. That’s the description of what happened.
Then in verse 34, the narrator steps back and tells us more about this ongoing situation of Moses’s shining face and the veil. Verse 34:
Whenever Moses went in before Yahweh to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, 35 the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
So we need to get this clear: when did Moses wear the veil? When did he not wear the veil?
Verses 34–35 tell us that whenever Moses was hearing from God or speaking God’s word to the people, that’s when he removed the veil and you could see his face. But at all other times, which was most of the time, Moses wore the veil.
And the big question is why did Moses do this?
Well, the text doesn’t actually say. It wasn’t because the people were afraid, because when Moses spoke God’s word to them, he removed the veiled. They saw his face shine. So why did he wear the veil at other times?
Exodus 34 doesn’t say. Moses doesn’t tell us. But, I know someone who does.
All right, now, let’s go to the New Testament. Everybody turn to 2 Corinthians Chapter 3.
2. Why does the shining face of Moses matter to Paul in 2 Corinthians 3?
Remember Paul has suffered for the sake of the gospel. He has received all kinds of attacks and criticism, and especially at the church in Corinth, false teachers have tried to undermine his authority as a messenger of Jesus. And so in this letter of 2 Corinthians Paul defends his apostleship. And this defense is really not just about himself, but it’s about his message — Paul is defending the gospel (which is what he means when he says the word “new covenant”). In summary, Paul says:
Hey, I am a minister of the gospel — a minister of the new covenant — and I keep doing what I do, because this message has unimaginable glory.
And to make that argument, Paul compares the gospel of the new covenant with the old Mosaic covenant in Exodus 34, which is what we’ve just seen. We’re about to read what Paul thinks about it. Look at 2 Corinthians Chapter 3, verse 7:
Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. 10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.
Notice the comparison: there’s the Mosaic, old covenant and then the new covenant.
The old covenant is called:
the ministry of death (verse 7);
the ministry of condemnation (verse 9);
that which was being brought to an end (verse 11).
And that is contrasted with the new covenant of the Spirit and righteousness and permanence.
Now, to clarify: what Paul says here about the old covenant is not a comment on the laws themselves. He’s not trashing the Ten Commandments or saying we should forgot about the moral will of God. He’s saying that the old covenant as in the system ultimately leads to death.
Which is true. Spoiler alert here: Israel cannot keep the covenant. They are a faithless people, and the old covenant cannot change that.
So then, Paul argues, if the old covenant (which led to death) came with glory, then the new covenant (which leads to life) must have even more glory. The gospel, the new covenant, surpasses the glory of the old covenant. Then Paul says, verse 12:
Since we have such a hope — [since we have the hope of the gospel’s surpassing glory], we are very bold, 13 not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.
Okay, let’s track with Paul here: He goes from comparing the old and new covenants, to now he’s comparing his ministry to the ministry of Moses. The “we” in verse 12 is Paul and his fellow missionaries. He’s saying we are different from Moses. How? How are they different? It’s because they are bold.
Which implies that Moses was not bold.
Verse 12: Paul is bold, not like Moses — [because] Moses “would put a veil over his face” — now why did Moses do that?
Remember Exodus 34 doesn’t tell us exactly. But Paul tells us it’s “so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.”
So it goes like this: After Moses would hear from God and speak to the people, reflecting that glory to the people — after he did that — he would then put the veil over his face because he did not want the Israelites to keep looking, or to gaze, at that glory he reflected because he knew that the outcome of them seeing that glory was death.
Moses knew that his ministry of the old covenant was a ministry of death and condemnation and that it was coming to an end, and so Moses was bashful about it. He was protective about it. Moses was not bold to reflect glory in the old covenant because he knew the outcome of that covenant — he knew it would not work. The people were faithless; their hearts were hardened; and the old covenant could not change that. Look at verse 14:
But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they — [speaking of unbelieving Jewish people] — when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.
And now the veil becomes a metaphor, right? This is no longer the literal veil that Moses wore to cover his face, but this is a metaphorical veil that to this day, apart from Christ, keeps people from seeing the glory of God. Verse 15:
Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. [Okay, here it is!] 16 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Remember that when Moses would go to hear from Yahweh, when he turned to Yahweh, the veil was removed. Well, now Paul says that when anyone turns to Yahweh, when anyone turns to the Lord in faith, in the same way, our metaphorical veil is removed.
We are able to see and reflect the glory of Yahweh like Moses did. But how does that work? This is why verse 17 is so important.
Yahweh, the Lord, whose glory Moses saw, is the Holy Spirit. Paul is saying: the God who revealed his glory to Moses in the old covenant is the same God at work today by his Spirit in the New Covenant!
And do you know what Spirit does? He breaks through hardened hearts. He brings freedom. He gives life. And so no wonder Paul is bold with this message!
We Christians are like Moses in that we can see the glory of Yahweh with an unveiled face and we reflect that glory.
But we are different from Moses in that we are bold about the glory we reflect and we’re not trying to cover it up — because we know what the Holy Spirit is up to! We know the outcome of the Holy Spirit’s work! Look at verse 18. Verse 18:
And we all [all of us, every Christian] we all with unveiled face, beholding [or reflecting] the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
The glory of the gospel is a superior glory that leads freedom; it leads to life; it leads to righteousness. This is a glory that is permanent; it’s a glory that will never be superseded by another glory. In fact, this is not just a glory that does not fade, this is a glory that grows. Because we not only reflect God’s glory with an unveiled face, but we are being completely transformed by God’s glory into the image of that glory!
And we know from Paul, just a little bit down here in Chapter 4, verse 6, that the image of God’s glory is Jesus Christ. And so to be transformed into the “same image” is to be transformed into the image of Jesus.
And the Bible teaches us that this will happen on the last day, at the final resurrection. This is what’s called the Christian’s glorification —
It’s when our mortal bodies will put on immortality (see 1 Corinthians 15:49ff);
it’s when our redemption is consummated, like Paul says in Romans 8, when we will be finally conformed to the image of Jesus (see Romans 8:29);
or as John says, this is when Jesus returns and we will be like Jesus because we shall see him as he is (see 1 John 3:2).
That day is coming. Our transformation will be complete. But that coming transformation, that glory that will be ours in the future, is already at work in our lives right now by the Holy Spirit. We are being — actively — transformed into the image of Jesus from one degree of glory to another.
And that is why Paul keeps doing what he’s doing. Do you see his confidence in the gospel?
This is why the shining face of Moses in Exodus 34 matters to Paul — it’s because it points to the greater glory of the gospel that is actually changing real people.
And this is what it means for us, in closing. …
How does this apply to our lives today?
What difference does this make?
All of this means that we can have hope that God will complete in us the work that he began — when he called us from death to life, when he adopted us in Christ as his sons and daughters, when poured his love into our hearts through his Holy Spirit — Christian, he will complete the work that he started in you until you are radiant with the glory of Jesus Christ. So don’t give up. Don’t quit.
He’s still working on me
To make me what I need to be
It took him just a week to make the moon and stars
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars
How loving and patient He must be — or, how merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness he must be —
‘Cause He’s still workin’ on me
I know there are times in the Christian life when it can feel like we’re not getting anywhere. It can feel like we are just spinning our wheels — but look, the glory of the gospel guarantees that is not the case.
Christian, rest in the truth that you are loved and accepted by God only because of the perfect life and atoning death of Jesus Christ; by grace through faith you are saved and are being saved; the glory of God is at work in you. Praise him and take heart!
Father in heaven, by the power of your Holy Spirit, bear witness to our hearts now that we belong to you. By your grace, strengthen us, please, to comprehend more of your love for us in Jesus that surpasses knowledge. We ask this in Jesus’s name, amen.
