"When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord." (Exodus 34:29) Moses doesn't know there's visible proof on his face that he's been with the Lord but it's the first thing the Israelites notice when he returns to camp. "When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him." (Exodus 34:29-30)
I was thinking about today's passage of Exodus while I washed dishes yesterday evening and I realized I'd never stopped to consider why Moses' face was radiant after his second visit with the Lord but not after his first visit with the Lord. I think the answer is that it was during the second visit that he caught a glimpse of the Lord as He passed by. Last week we studied about the Lord placing Moses in a cleft in the rock and covering his face with His hand as He passed by so that Moses would only see Him from the back after He removed His hand from Moses' eyes. God's glory is so great that no one in a mortal human body can look on Him and live, but God mercifully answered Moses' request when he said, "Show me Your glory!" by letting Moses see just as much of Him as he could stand in his frail human weakness. The little bit of God's glory that Moses saw was so great that for a while afterwards his own face glowed with reflected glory.
The Israelites are filled with reverent fear when they behold him. If the reflected glory of Almighty God is this bright and overwhelming, how awesome must the full glory of God Himself be? They instinctively cower away from Moses and this is when he realizes he looks different to them. I can't help being reminded of a passage from Acts 4 when the people marveled at the boldness of Peter and John as they fearlessly preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in a time of duress and persecution. The people were astonished by their courage and then came to the correct conclusion as to the source of their power. The Bible says they "took note that these men had been with Jesus". (Acts 4:13) Right now in Exodus 34 no one can help but take note that Moses has been with the Lord. The proof of such a glorious and indescribable encounter is written all over his face.
Moses reassures them that it's safe to approach him. "But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai." (Exodus 34:31-32)
Moses begins to wear an extra item of apparel while his face shines with the glory of God. "When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the Lord's presence to speak with Him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord." (Exodus 34:33-35)
Why does he cover his face? Is it because the people are afraid of its radiance? On the surface that seems like a logical answer but the Apostle Paul states that the veil served a different purpose, as we'll see in a minute. I can't think of anyone in the New Testament who would have had a better understanding of the Old Testament and of the law and commandments than Paul (other than the Lord Jesus, that is). A Jewish man of the tribe of Benjamin, before his conversion to Christianity Paul was a member of the very strict and religiously legalistic Pharisee sect. He adhered so closely to the law and the commandments that while still a young man he received the great honor of becoming a member of the Sanhedrin council. Paul was not perfect in keeping the law but he grew up under one of the best and most famous teachers of the law (Gamaliel) and he spent the majority of his time as a grown man studying the law and meditating on it. Because this was the focus of his life, Paul is a man who would have known the Old Testament inside out and he tells us that Moses put a veil over his face "to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away". (2 Corinthians 3:13) Paul says that Moses veiled his face not to hide its glorious radiance but to hide the fact that the glorious radiance was already fading.
Paul uses the radiance of Moses' face as a metaphor for the old covenant. Although the old covenant was given with a great deal of glory (fire on the mountain, smoke, lightning, thunder, trumpet blasts, an earthquake, the mighty voice of the Lord, and the astonishing glow of Moses' face after he had glimpsed the Lord) a new and more glorious covenant was on its way. The old covenant involved a set of regulations that no man could perfectly keep and it involved a sacrificial system that continually reminded man that he had fallen short and needed a "stand in" to pay for his sins. But the sacrifices of the old covenant had to be made year after year after year. None of them was capable of providing eternal cleansing from sins. The old covenant was intended to---and likely did----make man long for a new and better way. As the Apostle Paul said in Hebrews 10:1-3, "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming---not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, they would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins."
Paul is telling us that the old covenant, which was delivered to the people through Moses the mediator of the covenant, was like the veil that covered Moses' face. The fact that a holy God would want to make a covenant at all with unrighteous man is a glorious thing, but the old covenant pales in comparison to the new covenant whose mediator is Christ.
Why did Moses not want the people to know the radiance of his face was fading? Was it to retain the sense of awe they felt toward him when they beheld him at his return from Mount Sinai? Did it help him to maintain authority in the camp? If so this makes him appear a bit selfish but perhaps he was selfish, so to speak, on behalf of God. Perhaps he didn't want the people to see that the glory of the first covenant was already fading so that they would not use it as an excuse to lose any of their reverence toward the Lord and toward His laws and commandments. That way they couldn't say, "A new covenant---a covenant of grace---is on its way. We'll wait for that one. This one is too strict. It's too hard to follow the rules. When making sacrifices to atone for our shortcomings we're continually reminded of how often we mess up. We're glad there's a way to atone for our failures but at the same time we can never forget that we daily fall short of perfection."
Moses himself, when writing the book of Exodus, doesn't explain his motive for hiding the fading glory. Paul doesn't provide us with Moses' motive either. We don't know whether he did it to protect himself, to protect the people, or to protect the reverence that was due the Lord. Paul's point in comparing the veil to the old covenant was to persuade his fellow countrymen to embrace the new covenant mediated by Christ. A covenant mediated by God the Son is far superior than a covenant mediated by a mere human being like Moses. A covenant of grace is superior than a covenant of law. A covenant where the Lamb of God made an eternal once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sins is superior to a covenant in which temporary sacrifices had to be made year after year after year. Paul was saying to his fellow Jews, "The glory of the old covenant began to fade even in the days of Moses. Now that the new covenant has come the old covenant has passed away. Don't cling to what is now old and faded. Turn to what is new and eternal. The glory of the covenant mediated by Christ will never fade. The law is a good thing and it served a purpose---to reveal to us our sinfulness, to show us our need for a Savior, and to point us to Christ who made the only sacrifice we'll ever need from now on. God did a wonderful thing when He provided the first covenant but He did an even better thing when He provided the second covenant. Let's move ahead into what God intended for us all along: a relationship in place of a religion. Let's follow the Lord's will for our lives by forming a real and personal and glorious relationship with the One who paid our debt of sin in full and whose sacrifice is forever able to make us righteous in the eyes of a holy God."
Why does he cover his face? Is it because the people are afraid of its radiance? On the surface that seems like a logical answer but the Apostle Paul states that the veil served a different purpose, as we'll see in a minute. I can't think of anyone in the New Testament who would have had a better understanding of the Old Testament and of the law and commandments than Paul (other than the Lord Jesus, that is). A Jewish man of the tribe of Benjamin, before his conversion to Christianity Paul was a member of the very strict and religiously legalistic Pharisee sect. He adhered so closely to the law and the commandments that while still a young man he received the great honor of becoming a member of the Sanhedrin council. Paul was not perfect in keeping the law but he grew up under one of the best and most famous teachers of the law (Gamaliel) and he spent the majority of his time as a grown man studying the law and meditating on it. Because this was the focus of his life, Paul is a man who would have known the Old Testament inside out and he tells us that Moses put a veil over his face "to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away". (2 Corinthians 3:13) Paul says that Moses veiled his face not to hide its glorious radiance but to hide the fact that the glorious radiance was already fading.
Paul uses the radiance of Moses' face as a metaphor for the old covenant. Although the old covenant was given with a great deal of glory (fire on the mountain, smoke, lightning, thunder, trumpet blasts, an earthquake, the mighty voice of the Lord, and the astonishing glow of Moses' face after he had glimpsed the Lord) a new and more glorious covenant was on its way. The old covenant involved a set of regulations that no man could perfectly keep and it involved a sacrificial system that continually reminded man that he had fallen short and needed a "stand in" to pay for his sins. But the sacrifices of the old covenant had to be made year after year after year. None of them was capable of providing eternal cleansing from sins. The old covenant was intended to---and likely did----make man long for a new and better way. As the Apostle Paul said in Hebrews 10:1-3, "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming---not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, they would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins."
Paul is telling us that the old covenant, which was delivered to the people through Moses the mediator of the covenant, was like the veil that covered Moses' face. The fact that a holy God would want to make a covenant at all with unrighteous man is a glorious thing, but the old covenant pales in comparison to the new covenant whose mediator is Christ.
Why did Moses not want the people to know the radiance of his face was fading? Was it to retain the sense of awe they felt toward him when they beheld him at his return from Mount Sinai? Did it help him to maintain authority in the camp? If so this makes him appear a bit selfish but perhaps he was selfish, so to speak, on behalf of God. Perhaps he didn't want the people to see that the glory of the first covenant was already fading so that they would not use it as an excuse to lose any of their reverence toward the Lord and toward His laws and commandments. That way they couldn't say, "A new covenant---a covenant of grace---is on its way. We'll wait for that one. This one is too strict. It's too hard to follow the rules. When making sacrifices to atone for our shortcomings we're continually reminded of how often we mess up. We're glad there's a way to atone for our failures but at the same time we can never forget that we daily fall short of perfection."
Moses himself, when writing the book of Exodus, doesn't explain his motive for hiding the fading glory. Paul doesn't provide us with Moses' motive either. We don't know whether he did it to protect himself, to protect the people, or to protect the reverence that was due the Lord. Paul's point in comparing the veil to the old covenant was to persuade his fellow countrymen to embrace the new covenant mediated by Christ. A covenant mediated by God the Son is far superior than a covenant mediated by a mere human being like Moses. A covenant of grace is superior than a covenant of law. A covenant where the Lamb of God made an eternal once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sins is superior to a covenant in which temporary sacrifices had to be made year after year after year. Paul was saying to his fellow Jews, "The glory of the old covenant began to fade even in the days of Moses. Now that the new covenant has come the old covenant has passed away. Don't cling to what is now old and faded. Turn to what is new and eternal. The glory of the covenant mediated by Christ will never fade. The law is a good thing and it served a purpose---to reveal to us our sinfulness, to show us our need for a Savior, and to point us to Christ who made the only sacrifice we'll ever need from now on. God did a wonderful thing when He provided the first covenant but He did an even better thing when He provided the second covenant. Let's move ahead into what God intended for us all along: a relationship in place of a religion. Let's follow the Lord's will for our lives by forming a real and personal and glorious relationship with the One who paid our debt of sin in full and whose sacrifice is forever able to make us righteous in the eyes of a holy God."
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