For the LORD had said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites, 'You are a stiff-necked people. If I should go with you for a single moment, I would destroy you. Now take off your jewelry, and I will decide what to do with you.'" Sermons
I. THE CONDITIONED PROMISE (vers. 1-4). God has consented to spare the nation. They are to set out forthwith on the journey to Canaan. But his presence is no longer to go with them. He would send an angel. Notice - 1. Everything, in one sense, remains the same. The people are to be conducted to Canaan. They are to inherit the promises. God will drive out their enemies before them. The land will still flow with milk and honey. It will still be able to be said of them, that there is no nation on earth so favoured as they are. Yet, 2. Everything, in another sense, is different. Blessings without God in them are not the same blessings. They want that which gives them their chief value. See below, on ver. 15. II. THE SUMMONS TO REPENTANCE (vers. 4-7). A command is next given to the people to strip off their ornaments. They are to humble themselves before Jehovah that Jehovah may know what to do with them. This command they obeyed. From this time forward they ceased to wear ornaments. On this observe, 1. Repentance for sin is an indispensable condition of restoration to God's favour. It was required of Israel. It is required of us. There can be no salvation without it (Luke 17:5). "Cease to do evil; learn to do well" (Isaiah 1:16, 17). Had Israel not repented, Moses would have interceded in vain. 2. Repentance, if sincere, must approve itself by appropriate deeds. - "Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance" (Matthew 3:8). The people put off their ornaments. Ornaments do not become those with whom God is displeased. This act of the people was a first step in obedience. 3. A very imperfect repentance is sometimes accepted by God as a reason for forbearance with the sinner. The people mourned; but their repentance, as events showed, did not amount to a real change of heart. They mourned for "the evil tidings." It was the consequences of their sin which distressed them, more than the sin itself. Yet do them justice. The "evil tidings" was not the loss of any material blessings, hut, solely, the loss of God's presence. There is still good in a heart which feels the withdrawal of God's presence to be a loss to it. 4. It is well that the remembrance of great sins should go with us all our days. Those who have committed them should go softly ever after. III. THE WITHDRAWAL OF JEHOVAH'S PRESENCE FROM THE CAMP (vers. 7-9). Moses, we are next informed, took a tent, possibly his own, possibly one which had hitherto served as a sanctuary, pitched it "without the camp, afar off from the camp," and called it "the tent of meeting." Thither came out every one that sought the Lord. The act was, 1. A symbol of Jehovah's formal withdrawal from the midst of the people. 2. A token that a final decision had not yet been come to as to how God meant to deal with them. Communications were not wholly broken off. Space was left for repentance. God might still be entreated of them. Learn (1) iniquities separate between man and God (cf. Isaiah 59:2); (2) the withdrawal of God's presence is not necessarily the end of the day of grace. There is an "accepted time" during which, if the sinner repents, he will be forgiven, and God's presence will be restored to him (2 Corinthians 6:2). Meanwhile, even God's keeping back from him has its side of mercy. God's near presence would consume (cf. ver. 5). (3) The day of grace which sinners enjoy is won for them by the intercession of another. Israel's "accepted time" was based on the intercession of Moses. Ours, as the passage above referred to implies, rests on the intercession of Christ. "I have heard thee (Christ) in a time accepted" (cf. Isaiah 49:8) - "Behold, now is the accepted time" - for men (2 Corinthians 6:2). (4) it is our duty to seek the Lord while he may be found, and to call on him while he is near (Isaiah 55:6). IV. THE TOKEN OF FAVOUR TO MOSES (vers. 9-12). The cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle. There the Lord talked with Moses, as a man talketh with his friend. This was (1) a mark of favour to Moses himself; (2) an honour put upon him before the people; (3) an encouragement to further intercession. - J.O.
Put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. Lent is a season with a likeness to Jewish ordinances, because man in his nature and wants is ever the same; it is a Christian season, because its one object is to make us know more of the nearness of God to man, which is the great fact of Christianity. In the text we have one of God's most explicit statements of the need of such observance; and we ask the meaning of that reason which He assigns for a season of special penitence and humiliation.1. God wishes to know what to do with us. If the putting aside of ornaments, no matter how valuable or brilliant, is the condition of that process, it ought to be done; for God's action must be full of power and love; and to be told that His hand is to be felt in our life, must imply that a blessing is to be bestowed upon us far beyond anything that can come from any other addition. 2. Never at any stage of His revelation has God ceased, in one form or other, to prescribe temporary and voluntary relinquishments, in order that He may enter. The ornaments, or God's voice — that is the simple form of choice. 3. The object of God's dealings with men is, that He may destroy their sin. And there is no more fruitful source of sin than those ornaments which He tells us to put away. The things which gather about our lives are causes of separation from our brother. The innocence or the desirability of the ornament may make no difference in the result. Learning, applause, and culture may make us just as forgetful, or unsympathetic, or even cruel towards others, as the more material possessions of life. 4. We can see, therefore, that this command is like the call of a John Baptist: Make the way plain, the path straight and level, for the coming of the Lord; remove the stumbling-block which has been in thy own or thy brother's path. Men must learn to see their oneness as brothers, before sin can be done away; lives very different from each other must be placed side by side, and then new modes of thought and comparison will at once enter. How often one word, which gives us a glimpse into the real condition of another's heart, makes us ashamed of some feeling which we have been cherishing toward him! 5. But the sins against our brethren are not the only evil that our ornaments work, and do not constitute the only reason why they must be abandoned before God can do His work for us. Those very sins spring from a deeper injury which has been done to our souls. These things that have attached themselves to life come to be regarded as its substance, and to regulate its whole movement. What the text says to us, then, is this: Cease to depend upon the present condition and surroundings of life. Think of yourself as an immortal soul. Try to imagine yourself as cut off from all these pursuits and surroundings, for so, in fact, you must be at some time; then count over the treasures of your life, and see whether there is enough to support an immortal soul. 6. The Lenten call is a call to greater moderation in the use of the things of this life, so that they shall not become our masters; it is a call to exalt the true Master of our life, so that every ornament of our being shall be discarded for ever, which is got worthy to minister to His glory, or which attempts to fight against His supremacy, so that all which remains shall be used in obedience to His commands, and in subservience to His purposes. It is by this test that innocent and sinful indulgence in the things of this life is to be discriminated, that the line of the too much and the too little is to be drawn, and that we are to be made men and women worthy and fit to use the world rightly. 7. But why does God need that the ornaments of men's lives should be put off before He shall know what to do unto them? Is it not limiting His power to say that He cannot deal with us as we are, with all our ornaments upon us? The work which God is to do for us has for its greatest mark that it is dependent upon what we are. It is the work of overcoming sin. God, when He made man, gave him all he needed for full development and growth. His course was forward and upward, ever increasing in power and glory, while obedience and dependence upon God ruled his action. No redemption would be necessary for such a being. Man's sin, his desire after the things of this world, his willingness to build up his life with those, created the great necessity. The self-will of man called upon God for new action — action which His Divine wisdom could alone create, and which His Divine power could alone execute. That He may know what it shall be, He asks some indication of man's desire. There is nothing to do but to punish, to let the life which persistently holds to what has been its destruction, go its own sad way of separation from God, if there is no relaxing of the nervous grasp on earthly good and ornament. But at the very first sign of a willingness to put such things away, to bridle life's passion, and to restrain life's desire, the way of redeeming love is open. Man is ready; and God knows what to do, and He is able to make him His child once more. 8. Let us, then, rejoice at this season for putting away the mere ornaments of life, and in it open our ear anxiously, constantly, eagerly, to hear the word of His gracious intention. God's treasury is full of the true ornaments of life. He readily offers them to us. Receive them as readily, and the world's ornaments will lose their false glitter; our hearts will cease to desire them with that eager covetousness which conceals all the better impulses of the soul, and God will be able to do for us all the deep purposes of His wisdom and His love. (Arthur Brooks.) 1. Be inconsistent with His own perfections. 2. Be ineffectual for the happiness of the persons themselves. 3. Introduce disorder into the whole universe. II. WHERE HUMILIATION IS MANIFESTED, MERCY MAY BE EXPECTED. This appears from — 1. The very mode in which repentance is here enjoined. 2. The experience of penitents in all ages.Application: 1. Consider what obstructions you have laid in the way of your own happiness. 2. Endeavour instantly to remove them. (C. Simon, M. A.) Christian Age. The house of prayer is a poor place to exhibit beads, ribbons, ruffles, gewgaws, and trinkets. The evils of such extravagance are many. It keeps people from worship, when they have not apparel as gorgeous as their neighbours. It loads the poor with burdens too heavy to be borne to procure fashionable clothing. It leads many into temptations, debt, dishonesty, and sin. It causes many a poor shop girl to work nearly all Saturday night, that some customer's fine clothes may be ready for the Sunday show. It keeps people at home in cloudy or stormy weather, when, if they wore plain clothing, they could defy clouds and storms. It consumes the hours in dressing, crimping, and fussing, keeping people from church, and wasting time, hindering the reading of the Scripture, and making Sunday a day of folly. It makes the poor emulous, malicious, and envious, and plants many a bitter thought in the minds of children and others, when they see their neighbours decked in finery — often unpaid for — and feel that people are respected, not for their integrity of character, but for the fashion of their clothes. It is forbidden in God's Word. And yet we seldom find a minister that dare open his mouth against this fashionable sin. Christian people should dress plainly before the Lord, for example's sake at home and abroad, for decency's sake, and for the sake of Christ.(Christian Age.) People Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Hivite, Hivites, Isaac, Jacob, Jebusites, Joshua, Moses, Nun, PerizzitesPlaces Mount Horeb, SinaiTopics Consume, Consumed, Decide, Destroy, Destruction, Jewelry, Midst, Minute, Moment, Obstinate, Ornaments, Single, Sons, Stiffnecked, Stiff-neckedOutline 1. The Lord refuses to go as he had promised with the people4. The people mourn there 7. The tabernacle is removed out of the camp 9. The Lord talks familiarly with Moses 12. Moses prevails with God, and desires to see his glory Dictionary of Bible Themes Exodus 33:5Library The Mediator's Threefold Prayer'And Moses said unto the Lord, See, Thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and Thou hast not let me know whom Thou wilt send with me. Yet Thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in My sight. 13. Now therefore, I pray Thee, if I have found grace in Thy sight, show me now Thy way, that I may know Thee, that I may find grace in Thy sight: and consider that this nation is Thy people. 14. And He said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. 15. And he … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture June the Seventeenth the Invisible Presence Election no Discouragement to Seeking Souls A view of God's Glory Of the Way to Attain Divine Union After the Preceding Ways, There Remains an after Way, Preparatory to Divine Union, in which Wisdom and Justice Make the Passive Purification of the Soul, All Let us Now Examine the Conditions under which a Revelation May be Expected To... Whence Also the Just of Old, Before the Incarnation of the Word... Ninteenth Lesson. I Go unto the Father!' The Blessed Privilege of Seeing God Explained Moses the Type of Christ. The Wonderful. Appendix viii. Rabbinic Traditions About Elijah, the Forerunner of the Messiah Epistle xxviii. To Augustine, Bishop of the Angli . The Personality of Power. An Exposition on the First Ten Chapters of Genesis, and Part of the Eleventh The Great Commission Given. Covenanting a Privilege of Believers. The Winsome Jesus. The Angel of the Lord in the Pentateuch, and the Book of Joshua. Jesus Calls Four Fishermen to Follow Him. The Mercy of God Links Exodus 33:5 NIVExodus 33:5 NLT Exodus 33:5 ESV Exodus 33:5 NASB Exodus 33:5 KJV Exodus 33:5 Bible Apps Exodus 33:5 Parallel Exodus 33:5 Biblia Paralela Exodus 33:5 Chinese Bible Exodus 33:5 French Bible Exodus 33:5 German Bible Exodus 33:5 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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