Exodus 34.
TWO more tablets Moses was to split out of the solid rock, and bring them up to the top of Mount Sinai, where God would again meet him and write on them the ten commandments which He had written on the plates Moses had broken.
So the next morning Moses might have been seen climbing up the steep mountain side, carrying the new stone tablets. No one could be with him, nor on the mountain at all; even the flocks and herds had to be kept away. We are apt to forget that God is holy and just, and will eternally punish the guilty, who have not come to Him by believing in Jesus, but it is most solemnly true. Psalm 9, verse 17 says,
“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”
Moses had asked, in chapter 33, verse 18, to see God’s glory, —to show Himself to him, as much as a man might be permitted to see, and in verses 5-7 we read of it, for God, in wonderful favor to Moses, came down and passed by him, telling His ways as they would be, not exactly under the law of the ten commandments, which they had broken already, but as He must act toward the people now. So mercy is mentioned twice; “long suffering,” (or patience) and forgiveness are named too, though there was nothing in the ten commandments about forgiveness or mercy. Still it was not the gospel which we know that God now made known. Read Romans 5:6-8,6For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 8But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6‑8) which tells us of God’s love, and of Christ dying for us unworthy sinners; this is the good news we have since been given, and believing it, we are saved forever.
As God passed by him, Moses quickly bowed his head toward the ground, and worshiped, and he said, “If now I have found grace in Thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord. I pray Thee, go among us.” In love to them, Moses joined himself with the people, asking pardon, not for their, but, as he said for “our iniquity and our sin,” though Moses had not sinned as they had; had not had anything to do with the gold calf. which brought such sadness on the people.
So God then made a new agreement, (verses 10 to 27), not with the people, but with Moses on account of them. He would drive out the wicked people who lived in the promised land, but there could be no agreement with them nor marriages between them; their false gods the people of Israel must destroy and everything that belonged to their religions. The Lord alone should he worshiped, and He must be first in the lives of His people.
Forty days and forty nights Moses was in the mountain with the Lord, and he neither ate nor drank, and when he came down with the new stone tablets, his face shone so that the people were afraid to come near him. And Moses called to them to come, and Aaron and all the leaders of the people came: Afterwards all the people came near, and Moses told them all the commandments that he had learned from God in the mountain, but he had to keep his face covered with a vail while he talked with them.
There are verses in Second Corinthians, third chapter, which speak about the vail Moses had to put on. If you will turn to that chapter, and read from the seventh verse to the end, you will find the vail is spoken about again and again. The vail, we are told there, was a picture of this, that the time had not then come when God could tell all that was in His heart to do for men and women and children, but that time has come now. Jesus has died on the cross, making atonement for sins, not His own, and now, “by Him all that believe are justified from all things.”
ML 10/01/1922