And now if you would turn in our sermon text this evening back to the Old Testament, the 34th chapter of Exodus, and our sermon text will be taken from the last paragraph of that chapter, verses 29 through 35. Exodus chapter 34, verses 29 through 35. I am preaching through the book of Exodus on Sunday evenings, and this was the last sermon I preached in Exodus, so this warmed-up, reheated sermon from the book of Exodus is what y'all get tonight. By God's grace, I'll preach it better than I did last time. And if I do, y'all tell our congregation out there. From which, incidentally, I bring you greetings this evening from your brothers and sisters, neighbors to the north. Exodus 34, verses 29 through 35. This is God's word, church. Would you give your attention to it? When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 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 Moses called to them and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him and Moses talked with them. Afterward, all the people of Israel came near and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. When Moses went in before the Lord 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, 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. I discovered not long ago an old urban legend that comes to us apparently from the western Pennsylvania foothills. It is concerning a man that they called Charlie No Face, the green man. Well, Charlie No Face, the green man, had the reputation circulating in that area of the country that he was a hideous creature, somebody that you would fear to even look upon. Charlie No Face had no nose. Charlie No-Face had no ears. He was even missing a few of his fingers. And it said that any hitchhiker that made the mistake of picking up Charlie No-Face in the middle of the night, walking up and down the rural roads was never heard from again. But he was also called the Green Man because the reputation was going around that Charlie No-Face was not only hideous, but he glowed in the dark. Now where this story comes from actually has some historical basis, in fact. While there was actually no man named Charlie No-Face, there was a young man named Raymond Robinson. And when Raymond was but a boy of eight years old, he was playing out somewhere near an old abandoned railway. And there was an old trolley car still on it, and it had a light line still attached to it that was still live. And young Raymond saw up on the top of that trolley car a bird's nest that he wanted to climb up on top and get his hands on. And so he did. He climbed up on top of it. And not knowing that that power line was still alive, he touched it. And when he did, he was electrocuted. In fact, the boy had done that just a year earlier and it killed him. And it knocked Raymond off the top of that trolley car. He ended up losing some of his fingers and he ended up losing some of his appendages. And it disfigured his face and his skin somewhat. And it was even said that sometimes it appeared like the way his skin changed colors, his tone changed colors after he got electrocuted, it's almost as if he glowed in the dark. Raymond Robinson became Charlie No-Face, the legend. Now, Charlie No-Face, of course, wasn't real. But we could say, if I could put it this way, Moses' glow face was very real. It's recorded in the passage, tonight Moses' face is seen as he comes down off of Mount Sinai to be shining. His skin was glowing in such a way that it disturbed Aaron and the people of Israel when they saw him. Moses is bearing, as it were, glory's glow, something of the radiant beauty and splendor of God in whose presence he had been up on top of the mountain for some 40 days or so. But let's consider firstly tonight Moses' shining face conveyed. How is it given to him? Look back in verse number 29. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. And verse 28 informs us as to particularly what it was that he was talking about. God had again given him a record of the Ten Commandments graven on two tablets of stone. In verse number 28, you find something most interesting, that the moral law of God is given a technical name, literally in the original, the Ten Words, or here, the Ten Commandments. This speaks to us, incidentally, that the moral law of God, even in the theology of the Old Testament, seems to take precedence over that which we would categorize as the civil law of God and the ceremonial law of God. The ceremonial law of God are those laws that govern Israel's worship. concerning things like sacrifices and what kind of lamb you were to bring and what the priest was to wear and how the tabernacle was to be arranged. Those ceremonies that prefigured the coming of Christ that, like your gallon of milk, have an expiration date on them, they expired as they were fulfilled in the coming of Christ. And therefore those ceremonial laws the New Testament makes clear are gone away, fulfilled, and no longer binding upon those who name the name of the Lord. There was also a civil code that guided Israel's governance as a body politic. Things about how to mete out justice, how to punish crime, how to make sure that everybody has a fair hearing, how to establish a truth in the mouth of two or three witnesses. Those things that guided Israel, not only as a church, but a state as well, a theocracy. And just like the ceremonial law, the civil law is fulfilled now as the church is no longer contained, primary to one nation in the Middle East, but now the gospel has gone to the ends of the earth. And you can read, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 5, how the civil law has changed in terms of what was once a crime that was executable is now excommunicable. When Paul quotes from the civil law of Deuteronomy regarding immoral relationship in the church and he said now what you are to do is to remove this person by excommunication. That is the civil law that is fulfilled in the power of the keys that is possessed by the church. So the ceremonial and civil law is fulfilled. But what about the moral law of God? as summed up in the Ten Commandments that Moses received. What you find actually when you turn to the New Testament is that every one of the Ten Commandments are reiterated and recapitulated and applied to New Testament believers and that is this 10 commandments, this set of 10 words that Moses had as he comes down now the second time from the mountain with the law of God renewed as it were in his hands. And as he comes down with those in his hands, the text says in verse 29 that there's something Moses was not aware of. His skin was shining. He was incandescent. I'm from Hilliard. I don't even know what that means, but I think it has something to do with shining. Incandescence. He had been in the glorious presence of God. And as a result to his exposure to this divine radiation, his face was glowing. He was luminous. His countenance was radiant. It's a real life incarnation of the words of Psalm 34 that those who look upon God are radiant, and their faces will never be put to shame. The nature of this glow, I think, understandably, has often puzzled Bible commentators. The Hebrew actually says that Moses had horns. Horns coming out of his hand, or maybe better, beams or rays. But that's why Michelangelo, if you've ever seen his painting of Moses coming down from the mountain, Michelangelo literally painted like animals' horns coming out of his head because of a mistranslation of the idea of verse number 21. But it's better understood as rays, like rays that radiate out, beams that come out from the sun. Moses' face was glowing because he was reflecting the glory of God, which is a direct answer, isn't it, to the petition that he makes earlier in the chapter. In chapter 33, Lord, show me your glory. And it's answered in chapter 34 as the Lord passes by and he proclaims his name, the Lord, gracious and merciful. God reveals God's own glory, not so much by what Moses saw, but by what Moses heard. God recounts all of his attributes, merciful, gracious, long suffering, forgiving, iniquity, transgression and sins by no means clearing the guilty. That is all just and holy. And that is God's glory. It's the sum total of all of his attributes compiled together. God's. Attributes taken together are his glory and the heaviness of that glory had landed square on top of Mount Sinai. And it was reflected now off of Moses as he comes down. Moses had this tangible glow on his face and he shone because he had been talking with God. It struck me as I thought about this that we ought to also desire like Moses to carry the glow of the gospel, shouldn't we? The glow of glory. I mean, in the New Testament, you see these people as they listen to the apostles preach and they surmise, man, these are uneducated men. These are ignorant men. But they took note of them because, Acts says, they had been with Jesus. There was something about the way they carried themselves, something about the way they presented themselves, something about the way they spoke and proclaimed and preached the gospel that caused people to say, now those people have been with Jesus. To what extent we shine for Jesus is going to be predicated on if we have been spending time with Jesus. If we have spent time with Jesus in prayer, If we have spent time with Jesus, hearing his word, those are the things that the spirit is pleased to use to cause this glow of glory to radiate from us to shine the light of Christ wherever we might go. There was a little girl who, and I'm not advocating this, but there was a little girl who went to a cathedral and there were stained glass pictures of saints on the windows. And it was her first time there. And being the curious little girl that she was, she asked her mother, what are those pictures of the people on the windows? And her mom said, those are saints. She said, I've heard that word a lot of time, but now I know what a saint is. A saint is somebody who lets the light shine through them. Now that really should be the case. Saints of God are those who have the light of the glory of God shining through them. And, you know, sometimes living that kind of life will cause people who know you to be afraid. And that's kind of like what happened with the people of Israel when they saw Moses, it frightened them. So you have, as you move forward in the text, Moses' shining face concealed after it is conveyed. Look at verse number 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. I bet they were. I think I would be too. If I saw somebody whose face was glowing, I would wonder if they were an extraterrestrial. They would come from outer space or something. But Moses has to calm them, and he calls them in verse number 31, and Aaron and all the leaders, and they came to him, and he spoke with them. And afterward, all the people of Israel came near, And he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken him to him on Mount Sinai. And when he had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. Apparently, Moses could conclude. that after he had come down from the mountain, these people were scared of the glow. And so the text says he put a veil over his face. Now, shouldn't this indicate something to us about the glory of God? I mean, just think about it. Moses was bearing not one one millionth of the actual radiance of the glory of God. And yet just this small little hint, just this small little whisper that he bore down as he came down from the mountain, terrified the people. Now imagine being in the unmitigated presence of the infinite glory of God. You know what we call that? We call it hell. Hell is being in the presence of God without a mediator. Heaven is being in the presence of God with a mediator. And that's why, friends, Jesus Christ is everything. that you cannot die with Jesus Christ and have any hope because there is only one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And to stand in the presence of God without a mediator in whose righteousness you have been robed is not to be able to stand, as Deuteronomy said, and dwell with everlasting burnings. The people were afraid and rightfully so because something of the glow that reflected the holy purity of God caused the people to be stirred that they were not holy, that they were not pure. Last week, for the first time, I wore my new solid white bow tie. The reason that I had hesitated to wear it Now, I didn't think about it when I bought it, but the reason I hesitated to wear it is because I was afraid that if you look at me from a distance, it might look too much like a priestly clerical collar. So I hesitated to wear it. But finally, I broke down last week and wore it, but I wore it with my black suit and I wore it with a black undershirt. And I'll kid you not, when I came in church, three people told me I looked like a Roman Catholic priest. So I don't know if I'll wear that white bow tie anymore. At least I won't wear it with a black suit and a black shirt. I know that. But as I was getting ready, I took what I thought was my white pocket kerchief to put in my front pocket of my suit. Only when I looked in the mirror, the whiteness of this brand new bow tie made the whiteness of this pretty worn out pocket kerchief look not so white anymore. It was dingy. It was beige. And so I took that thing and threw it right in the washing machine because it did not match the white brand new bow tie. You know, you and I can surmise that we're pretty good people, that we're pretty moral people. We measure ourselves against one another. It's easy to find somebody who's worse than you, but when you measure yourself against the perfect purity of God, don't you find you're far more dirty than you ever imagined or realized you should if you're gauging it accurately. And the people were fearful because Moses was reflecting something of the glory of God's holy purity. And they were afraid and they were recoiled such that Moses had to hide some of that. Think what is being indicated among other things here. is that God is giving his approbation that Moses is the true spokesman for God, the true representative, the true prophet of God. He didn't have to convince them. He didn't have to say, no, I'm God's prophet. I'm God's spokesman. All I had to do was look at him. And he, among all the people of Israel, looked most like God were God to appear in visible form. But you know, we have an even better confirmation of who God's true prophet is, don't we? Of which Moses was but a small figure. We have the Son of God himself. Let your mind go to the New Testament for a moment. In Matthew chapter 17, for instance. Up goes Jesus to what we now know of as the Mount of Transfiguration. Up he goes and he takes his three closest friends, Peter and James and John. And they get to the top and the text tells us that as Jesus there is literally metamorphosized, transformed, transfigured, the humble veil of his lowly humanity is pulled back and the Gospels tell us that he began to radiate and dazzle with the intrinsic, not reflected, the intrinsic glory of God Because he is, in essence, God. And do you remember what they hear from heaven as the voice of the father booms? This is my beloved son. Listen. Listen to him. And you could not hear better instruction for your soul this evening, child of God. Then to remember how important it is for you to listen to the voice of your savior. If you are a Christian this evening, it's because and only because God has opened your heart to listen to him. God has granted you the faith to believe the gospel message of the Lord Jesus Christ when otherwise we were in darkness and would still be there today. For God who said, let there be light in the beginning, God who commanded light to shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts, hadn't he? To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, where? In the face of Moses? Oh no, much better, in the face of Jesus Christ. So turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Moses, his glory was concealed because it was reflected. Jesus' glory is also much better revealed. But notice thirdly, Moses' shining face confirmed as we hurry. Verses 34 and 35. When Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove his veil until he came out. When he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, 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. You see the pattern and rhythm of what happens here. He goes out to the people. He puts the veil on. He goes back into the tabernacle and he takes the veil off and he gets his suntan going again. And he comes back out to the people and puts the veil on, and on and on this would go. He's in the presence of God, he unveils his face. He comes out to the people, he veils his face. And the point is, you find where the glory comes from, there's no doubt about it. Every time that Moses goes in to speak with God, to meet with God, to be with God, he'd come out again and his face was aglow. That's something we ought to pray every week when we go into the house of God and the tabernacle of God to meet with God. Lord, recharge my batteries again. Fill me up with your glory again so that when I walk out of here, people can see me glowing with grace. I mean, that's the comparison Paul makes in second Corinthians, after all. He says we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. And this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. What Paul is saying is. Every time you and I hear the message of the gospel, every time you and I have the privilege to hear Christ preach, the spirit is at work to, as it were, allow us to look on God with unveiled faces. And as we do, we are being transformed into the image that we are staring at, being made to be conformed more and more to look and think and behave. Like the lovely Lord Jesus Christ, all the way to glorification, all the way to glorification, God uses the preach word to confirm us where, according to Daniel 12 to in glorification, the righteous will shine like the stars and the brightness of the firmament forever and ever. And that's why the hymn asks, who are these like stars appearing? Those before God's throne who stand, each a golden crown is wearing. Woe are all this glorious band. Alleluia, heart they sing, praising loud their heavenly king. Moses' shining face was confirmed each and every time he went into the house of God to behold the glory of God with an unveiled face. But finally, let us consider as we close, Moses' shining face contrasted. Moses' shining face can be contrasted. The Book of Second Corinthians is, you probably already know, Paul's autobiography, his ministerial autobiography. It is among Paul's letters in the New Testament, probably the most self-focused and what I mean is the most revealing about Paul's personal life. that he ever wrote. And the reason Paul writes 2 Corinthians, among other things, is he is defending his ministry from false teachers who had crept into the church called super apostles. He calls them actually super apostles in air quotes. They think they're super apostles. And they were leveling all kinds of false accusations against Paul. They were saying things like he is just in the ministry for power, to leverage authority, to get money, to abuse, His position, he's a false teacher. And it's likely that these could have been the messengers of Satan, the angels of Satan, the false ministers who followed him around, who were like a thorn in his flesh that Paul besought the Lord to take away. But Paul writes Second Corinthians to defend the integrity of his gospel ministry from false criticisms, false accusations. Maybe you've had a similar experience. You ever had a false accusation made against you? Somebody said something about you that was patently false, a blatant lie, bearing false witness. There was a judge I heard about and he was a good judge, a man of character. And there was an arrogant, crooked lawyer who always poked fun at him, always scoffed at him. But the judge never retaliated. And one day, one of the judge's friends asked him, why don't you rebuke him? Why don't you defend yourself? The wife's judge said, I know a man who has a dog and this dog is crazy. Every night when the moon comes out, the dog goes outside and he howls and he barks at the moon all night long and he does it every night. And then abruptly the judge just changes the subject and goes on in conversation about something else. And his friend says, wait a minute, I got to stop you right there. What's your point about the dog and the moon? Where were you going with that? And the judge said, well, the dog went on howling. But the moon just kept shining. The moon just kept shining. And Paul's point in 2 Corinthians 3 is to his critics, I'll just keep shining with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'll just keep proclaiming the truth. He wrote earlier in the letter, do we need letters of recommendation? Do I need to commend myself to you? And in 2 Corinthians 3, he is contrasting between the glory of Moses, a minister of the old covenant, and the glory of Paul himself, a minister of the new covenant. And he brings out something that's not actually in the text of Exodus. It's almost like Paul is inspired by the Holy Spirit to read a little bit between the lines of Exodus 34, and he tells us the why, really, Moses chose to hide his face. The text indicates in Exodus 34 that one of the reasons was the people were afraid. But Moses apparently had a personal reason for veiling his face as well, according to Paul. Paul says Moses veiled his face because like a good suntan on a beach vacation for we Anglo-Saxons, it always fades away. It always goes away. Moses would bear that glory for a little while, but it was a fading kind of glory that was passing away. And Paul says that is just like what the Old Testament in its ceremonies and its civil regulations. That is all of what the Old Testament was designed by God to do from the beginning. It was to be a faint whisper, a little glow, a tiny bit of glory. But at the coming of Christ, the full radiance, the full, sunrise of God has come up. And now now, you no longer need these types and shadows. And Paul says this is not a glory that fades away like that of Moses. This is a glory that only expands forever and ever into eternity. But, you know, Paul points out there is still a veil that people have over themselves whenever they try to see the glory of God and can't. And you know what that veil is? It's unbelief. It's a refusal to believe the gospel. It's a refusal to believe in Christ. Paul lamented because his countrymen, even Jews who knew the Old Testament, said he said when they read Moses, a veil is still over their face because only when one turns to faith in Jesus Christ is that veil taken away and they see the whole Bible is about him. But until that happens, they're dark in unbelief and they're like Moses. They've got a veil of blinders over their face. St. Augustine commented that whereas the Old Testament is a step to glory, the gospel and the fullness of the coming of Christ in the New Testament is the summit, the summit of glory. And so it is in the gospel of Jesus Christ, in his glory and the glory that we have in him, dear church, it is everlasting glory, never fading away. So as children of God and believers in Jesus Christ, are we going for God? Are we growing for God? And per this passage, are we glowing for God? Amen. Let us pray together. So help us, Lord, to always be beholding the face of the Lord Jesus Christ and be transformed into his image by the spirit. And where that spirit is, there is freedom, freedom from the curse, freedom. From death. Freedom from condemnation. Oh, may that spirit, the Holy Spirit, work such freedom within us. To remove the veils of unbelief, if veils there be. Then thank you, oh Lord, for the promise that we shall bask in your everlasting, infinite glory. Until now and eternity. World and ages without end. Hallelujah, in Jesus name we pray. Amen and amen.