33:20 "NO ONE MAY SEE ME AND LIVE."
Sooner or later it comes to this:
Conversation with God leads to the desire to see God. To hear the words of life
is to want to see the Speaker. That is where Moses is in this text. Hymn writer
Frederick Faber was thinking thoughts like Moses' when he wrote:
How
wonderful, how beautiful,
The
sight of Thee must be,
Thine
endless wisdom, boundless power,
And
awful purity!
But
no one can see God and live: We may see his goodness, but not his face (see
33:19-20). The expression in verse 11 - "The Lord would speak to Moses
face to face, as a man speaks with his friend" – means that God
communicated with Moses directly – but without visually showing his "face."
Moses
asked to see God, and God said no. However, there is a sense in which God
answered Moses’ prayer in a special way hundreds of years later on the Mount of
Transfiguration. Jesus was there, and "his face shone like the sun"
(Matthew 17:1-5). Moses was able to witness this miraculous display.
St.
Augustine preached a sermon he titled, "On the Pure Love of God." In
his message, he proposed a Faustian kind of offer from God: You can have
everything you want, nothing will be held back from you; there will be no
negative consequence for anything you do, and you’ll live forever. The price?
"You
will never see my face." Would you, make that exchange: everything –
without God? If your answer is "NO," you have the pure love of God.
Augustine asked, "Did a chill arise in your heart when you heard the
words, "You will never see my face?"
That chill is priceless; it is the pure love of God?
In Christ,
Playwright Janet Irene Thomas
Founder/CEO
Bible Stories Theatre of
Fine & Performing Arts
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