Radiance

    One of my favorite relationships in the Bible is the relationship between Moses and Yahveh. They had such a close and genuine relationship, one that I am not ashamed to say that I envy. A story that epitomizes the kind of relationship between the two is found Exodus 33:12-34:35. In this story, Moses is back on the mountain talking with Yahveh just after the Golden Calf incident. While they are talking, Moses asks Yahveh for a favor; he wants to see Yahveh's glory. This seems like a rather odd request, but up to this point, Yahveh had been speaking to Moses from a cloud that veiled his presence. But now, because they have gotten so close, Moses wants to see Yahveh as he is, which is more than a little dangerous. Yahveh consents, to a degree. Moses can see Yahveh's backside, but not his face for no one can see Yahveh's face and live. It is too glorious. So Yahveh passes by and proclaims his name, or his character and identity, which is his glory (another subject). That is when Moses sees the glory of God.

    After spending over a month on the mountain, Moses comes back down from the mountain with a new copy of the Ten Commandments on stone. When he does come down, he terrifies everyone because he is radiant (Exodus 34:30). By radiant, I do not mean like really happy radiant. I mean he was literally glowing so bright that the people could not look at him. In order for him to deal with the people, they made him wear a veil so that they could look at him.

    What made him radiant? The answer is pretty obvious: he had seen Yahveh's glory and that purity had caused his face to literally glow. But there is something deeper than that that was the cause of his radiance. His relationship with Yahveh was so deep and so genuine that he could see the glory of the God of the universe. To my knowledge, Moses is the only one besides Christ who truly saw the glory of Yahveh. (Many have seen visions of Yahveh, but this was seeing the real thing without a veil). There was such a closeness between the two that Yahveh felt comfortable enough to remove the veil that masked his glory. Moses was radiant because he had basked in the radiance of Yahveh; because he had been with Yahveh.

    Are we radiant?

    Do we glow?

    Can you pick a Christian out of crowd?

    Should we not be able to?

    We are Christians, are we not? Did not Jesus call us the light of the world? Why are we not glowing? We have talked in previous posts about spiritually this world is like a place that is covered in a dense, gray fog making right and wrong so hard to decipher. There are millions in this world who are begging for lights to lead them. We are supposed to be those lights, but we are not. Why?

    Could it be because we are not seeing Yahveh? Could it be because, unlike Moses, we do not pursue that deep relationship with Yahveh? Yet for that we have no excuse. In Jesus, we have the clearest revelation of God than before in history. But how much do we devote to cultivating that relationship? What are we willing to sacrifice to stand in the presence of Yahveh and soak in his glory? I think for most Christians, the honest answer is not much.

    But that is what it takes. It is time to step into the light of Yahveh's glory and reflect his character. It is time to devote ourselves to getting to really know him. It is time that we took off the veil, like Paul says in 2^nd Corinthians 3:13, and let the radiance of Yahveh glow around us. It is time we become the light of the world to show the people who are in the fog the way home. It is time for us to shine.