Joshua and Judges: The allotment of the land, part 39 - Predestination

Title: Joshua and Judges: The allotment of the land, part 39 - Predestination - Beholding God's glory.

Announcements / opening prayer:

2Co 3:7 But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was,

2Co 3:8 how shall the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?

2Co 3:9 For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness [justification] abound in glory.

2Co 3:10 For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory on account of the glory that surpasses it.

2Co 3:11 For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

The shining face of Moses and the ritual institutions were done away with or abolished. The ethics of the law were fulfilled in Christ.

2Co 3:12 Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech,

2Co 3:13 and are not as Moses, who used to put a veil over his face that the sons of Israel might not look intently at the end of what was fading away.

The veil hid the glory and also its fading. This veil is akin to all types in the OT which were shadows of the coming Christ (ark, tabernacle, candlestick, etc.).

The glory that shone out of Moses' face was Christ, but the glory faded due to the fact that His revelation was not complete. He was revealed to them in prophecy and in type. He was revealed in the tabernacle, the ark, the incense, the showbread, the candlestick, the altar, the sacrificial animals, the feasts, and so on, but these were not Him. The Shekinah glory illuminated the holy of holies but it was hidden behind a veil and that glory would fade away when Christ came. All of this would be done away with. Christ was hidden in these things yet they could still believe in Him as Abraham and many others had.

Moses wore a veil to conceal the glory just as the showbread or any other article that was a type of Christ concealed His glory. But when Christ came He did not wear a veil. He fully revealed the Father. He fully revealed Himself.

We would assume that the glory on Moses' face faded after his personal conversations with the Lord at Sinai ceased. There is nothing said in Exo 34 about the glory fading, but Paul makes clear that it did, and of course it did, the Law was not to remain over man and Moses would eventually die. As the people who ate the manna from heaven would die so no OT type was to remain.

It is also not stated that Moses veiled his face "because" the glory was to fade. This has been conjectured by some but is not stated. What is stated is that the people feared the glory and so Moses veiled himself when he spoke the words from God to them.

Thus Moses' veil is as any other type in the OT that revealed the glory of God in shadow or outline but actually concealed the very reality of the glory of God that would come in the person of Christ.

Israel should have longed for the day when they could peer behind the veil without fear, and I am sure that there were some who did, but the strangest thing happened; for so many, especially at the time of Christ's ministry, they grew to love the veil to the exclusion of the glory it concealed.

David longed to look behind the veil.

Psa 11:7

For the Lord is righteous;

He loves righteousness;

The upright will behold His face.

Psa 27:4

One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

To behold the beauty of the Lord,

And to meditate in His temple.

But so many in Israel had chose to prefer the veil over the glory that it concealed.

They still looked to the obscure types and institutions of the Mosaic Law rather than on the glory which they were designed to outline and conceal. It was as if they fell in love with and chose to prefer the veil or the feast or the animal over the splendor that they were designed to reveal - the Messiah Himself.

2Co 3:14 But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.

Their minds were hardened because they refused to see the design and the end of their own institutions. They did believe that there was going to be an age of the Messiah

2Co 3:15 But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart;

God removed the veil, tore it from top to bottom when Christ died so that any man can look intently into the glory of God through faith. But so many of the Jews, in Paul's day and throughout the age, had fallen so in love with the veil that they in essence sewed it back together and threw it over the OT scriptures. They look intently at that which has been removed due to the reality of Jesus Christ in the flesh. They look intently into these articles and look for them to point them to someone else other that Jesus.

In Christ, not only is the veil taken away but every other article and ritual that pointed to Him.

2Co 3:16 but whenever a man turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

The obscurity which rested on the prophecies and types of the former dispensation is withdrawn; and as the face of Moses could have been distinctly seen if the veil on his face had been removed, so it is in regard to the true meaning of the Old Testament by the coming of the Messiah. What was obscure is now made clear; and the prophecies are so completely fulfilled in him, that his coming has removed the covering, and shed a clear light over them all. Many of the prophecies, for example, until the Messiah actually appeared, appeared obscure, and almost contradictory. Those which spoke of him, for illustration, as man and as God; as suffering, and yet reigning; as dying, and yet as ever-living; as a mighty Prince, a conqueror, and a king, and yet as a man of sorrows; as humble, and yet glorious: all seemed difficult to be reconciled until they were seen to harmonize in Jesus of Nazareth. Then they were plain, and the veil was taken away. Christ is seen to answer all the previous descriptions of him in the Old Testament; and his coming casts a clear light on all which was before obscure.

2Co 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

2Co 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

We have been predestined to be conformed to His image, from glory to glory. The veils are all gone and we can look intently into Him and walk in His manner.