Transfiguration | Glory Hidden to be Revealed (Exodus 34)

Would you look directly at the sun? Of course not—it would burn your eyes and leave you blind. Similarly, looking directly at God’s glory, brighter than the sun, would be overwhelming. His holiness, which loves good and hates evil, is terrifying for sinners like us. That’s why God told Moses, “No one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). Yet, God longs for us to know him, so he hides his glory to reveal himself. Jesus hid his glory to go to the cross and save us. Now, through the gospel, we see the glory of his love and salvation—a glory most visible when it is hidden.

Transcript

If someone asked you, “What is glory, and how do you get it?” how would you answer? I checked out a website called Quora, one of the worst time-wasting websites in the history of the Internet, and someone posed that very question, “How does one achieve glory?” One responder said, “Go help people in some way you can enjoy and receive acknowledgment for your good work.” Another replied, “Perform heroic action at the expense of self and have lots of people notice and admire your selfless act.” One more, “Set an ambitious and dignified goal. Dedicate your life to it. Don’t quit till you accomplish it.” In other words, transfigure yourself, make yourself more beautiful or elevated, show your greatness to the world and your glory will follow. The Oxford Languages Dictionary defines glory as “high renown or honor won by notable achievements” or “magnificence of great beauty.” Now as you consider Christians now and throughout history is that the look of God’s glory and his people? Is it a performance-based life that brings true glory? Is that how we become glorious like God? Is that how God’s glory is revealed to us? Where can we find God’s glory, especially when he seems to be hiding from us amid the confusing and conflicting pains of life? All these questions will remain hidden and unanswered unless we know where to look.

The prophet Moses discovered this the hard way. Here’s a quick bio. As he grew up in Pharaoh’s home, his heart was shattered by his family’s enslaved status. Moses believed he could achieve God-like glory by singlehandedly rescuing his nation. What started as him stepping in to absorb the blow of a slavedriver’s whip, ended in murder, with refugee status, with loss of everything. It wasn’t until Moses uncovered a strangely ever-burning dried-out bush that a different glory was revealed to him. But as Moses looked at his identity, as he longed to be transfigured from a wannabe Egyptian to a full-throttle Yahweh-trusting Hebrew, he saw such a transfiguration as something only he could produce. He looked for glory in all the wrong places. He looked within to change what was within and the deeper he looked, the more darkness he found. Isn’t that exactly what we do in our sin?

I heard a story once of a pharmaceutical drug addict who dreamed he was 100 feet deep in the ocean. He would look up and see light at the surface, but then he’d look 10 feet down and he’d see an oxygen bubble. So, he’d swim ten feet down, get oxygen, look up and see the light once more, but then he’d look down at another oxygen bubble ten feet down and deeper and deeper in the dark ocean depths he sank. This dream captured how he had approached his addiction. Instead of swimming to the light, he looked to the momentary fix, which only led to deeper darkness. If we buy into the narrative that we need to transfigure ourselves to find glory, looking for pockets of worldly glory, we will sink just as deep. Is that where you are finding yourself this morning? As C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.”

We sink because like Moses we are weighed down by the skin of sin. Our culture asks the question: What’s the path to a better you? Its answer? Discipline yourself! Focus on your dream! How will your kids have a good future? Pack their schedules. How can you calm your life’s storms, the pain points you’ve been processing for so long? Look within for strength! How can you achieve glory? How can your life be back on track? What does our culture say? Dream big, work hard, leave it all on the field, but is that where is glory found? Is that how God shows his glory, his love to you? By giving exactly what you think is best? We’re so tempted to think glory shines through our performance on life’s stage, that if we give it all we have, glory will be ours, as if God owes us. But if we keep going for these pockets of law-oxygen, we will sink deeper in despair when we don’t measure up, we’ll become more lost when life doesn’t make sense, and finally our weakness will break us. We see what Moses saw at first: a virulent veil that hides real glory.

Real glory can only be uncovered in the hidden nature of our God. After Moses witnessed the glory of God’s power in the plagues, and the glory of the Lord embodied in fire and cloud saving God’s people through the Red Sea, he still hadn’t fully realized what his eyes had seen. He still didn’t fully know how God’s hidden glory is found in his saving. If we are truly being transfigured in the image of God will our finances get better? Will our kids behave better? Will our co-workers treat us better? Will we get better life opportunities? Will we heal completely from our trauma? Don’t you see! We are looking for God’s glory in all the wrong places. We enter into the presence of this world and its paradigm for glory, all the while running away from the Presence who alone makes us shine gloriously.

Where God’s glory is uncovered most personally and fully is shockingly hidden. It’s one of the so-called “paradoxes” of Christianity. It’s this marvelous paradox that is how you and I deeply know our God. We are transfigured when we step into God’s presence like Moses did. But for us to see God as He is, the veil of the law must be torn through, so the light of the gospel can shine full force. Is that not what happened when God’s ultimate glory was revealed at the cross? The temple curtain was torn in two, because the Son of Man exposed his love to the world. It makes me think of a stanza in John Milton’s classic work Paradise Regained, “His weakness shall overcome Satanic strength, And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh; That all the angels and aethereal powers — They now, and humanity hereafter—may discern From what consummate virtue I have chosen - This perfect man, by merit, called my Son, To earn salvation for the children of Adam.” Glory is found not in our achievements, but in the hidden, suffering love of Christ. Why does this seem so unnatural to us?

It’s because our natural minds are hard-wired by law. Law tells us that glory should be seen, not hidden. Glory gained in accomplishments. Glory gained by the visual. Satan loves to twist the blessing of the law. The law is designed to point us to our need for a Savior, to break our hearts only to draw them to the God who alone makes us whole, and then to guide the new person within us. But Satan wants us to misuse the law and focus on appearances and when the appearances don’t match up with what we conceive of God’s glory, we question his hidden wisdom.

Why doesn’t God allow you and I to see his glory like he did for Moses at Mt. Sinai? Why doesn’t Jesus appear to us as He did at the Mount of Transfiguration? Why did Jesus purposefully choose to set aside the full use of his power as he walked our world? Why does God choose the weak voice of human language to communicate eternal, life-giving truths?

Simple. Because in his hiddenness, we truly see Him. It’s only through the hidden God, revealed by the Spirit through the Bible, that we can see what glory truly is, and what magnificent beauty is there. That our God does not intend to wow us into submission, but to gently lead us to his table, where the mundane becomes magnificent. Don’t you long for Him? In all the darkness and ugliness of a world scarred by sin, have you ever longed to be more beautiful? We have this longing because God made us to be beautiful—and gloriously so. We are waiting for the ultimate dawn when something even more glorious than what happened to Moses will happen to everyone who trusts in Jesus. The shadows will flee, we will shine with the undimmed majesty of God, and our faces will radiate his glory with growing brightness for all eternity. Then the promise of the ancient blessing will be fulfilled: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD look on you with his favor and give you peace.” 

Jesus came to open Moses’ eyes and yours to the true beauty of God’s glory. It’s why He embraced his cross, not so that he could win us the best possible life until death, not so that He could win us a life that avoided death, but so that he could win us a life on the other side of death. Think about Moses. Because of a reckless leadership decision, he was barred from entering the Promised Land this side of death. But at the Mount of Transfiguration, there he was, standing in the Promised Land for the first time, because on the flip-side of death, by faith he knew and had stood in authentic glory. It’s when we trust in the hidden glory of God, found in what the world considers to be all the wrong places: an execution device, a foot-washing towel in Jesus’ hands, pain, and suffering, it’s when we see by faith Jesus’ glory, that we are transfigured, we become like Him.

How are we transfigured? Not by outward success, not by recognition, or absence of pain. We see God’s glory revealed at the cross, glorified at the resurrection, and living within you as we speak. Jesus rules in your heart. He’s won for you full access to your Heavenly Father’s heart. He longs to be in every mundane moment of yours, no part of you is insignificant to Him. In other words, you see Jesus, not in blinding rays of physical light, but you see Him as the eye-turning Suffering Savior, who knows every last bit of struggle you’ve endured and are going through now, and who lives and rules so you never forget his undying love for you. His hidden glory is seen in his humility. Here he is, the God who fills the universe and has unlimited power, but he approaches you in the Bible, in baptism, in the Lord’s Supper. The more we stand in these powerful, personal, and deep moments of God’s presence, we can’t help but be changed from the inside out, sometimes without us even knowing it. The more you sit at Jesus’ feet through his Word, He simply won’t leave you the same. It’s to hear his voice and realize you were never searching for you, you were searching for Him. It’s through the radical vulnerability of Jesus on the cross, glory revealed in wounds, that our wounds are healed, and we take up our crosses in joy, because to be like Jesus is to live life to the max.

Exodus 34 says Moses “was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD.” No selfie cams back then, no filters could recreate what was beaming from his face. There is something beautiful about Moses not knowing about his glowing face. When we walk with God in the serene sound-filled scene of the Scriptures, we don’t notice our own radiance because we aren’t looking at ourselves at all. By faith, we cannot help but be absorbed by God’s magnificent grace, nothing can distract us. Work stress doesn’t keep us from being a light of Jesus in the office. Temper tantrums and colds can’t stop us as parents from sharing the legacy of light that Jesus has given us. Wars, high egg prices, and inflation can’t remove the wealth and security of Jesus’ golden light. Trauma and betrayal can’t snatch our joy. When we live in his light other people will take notice and this light won’t cause fear as it did for the Israelites, but like the warmness of a fire on a cool fall night, it will invite darkness dwellers into the warmness of God’s loving, grace-filled, glorious, beautiful presence. And it’s because of his presence that we do the unthinkable. What is that unthinkable? C.S. Lewis said it well, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” We rejoice in our vulnerability, we dare to sacrifice ourselves, to live in the vulnerability and majesty of the cross, because that’s the glory of God!

No one who meets God by faith is ever the same again, because when we see God as He is, we become like what He is. In the same way that the moon shines with the light of the sun, the glory of God shines from us. This is why we were made: to give glory to God by reflecting Him. God’s face shines on you, dear Christian, and grace is all you see in that mirror. We walk in God’s hidden garden of glory even as we traverse this world known as “paradise lost” but one-day “paradise regained” will be yours, you will see God’s face, and you will see clearly that he has always loved you dearly. Amen.