ANNOUNCER: Is it true that the Bible says you can’t see God and live? What about Moses seeing God face-to-face? Did he or didn’t he? Let’s have a discussion and see if we can clear up this apparent contradiction in Exodus and we’ll do that next right here on Grace in Focus. Thank you, friend, for being here today and for being involved in this ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. We want you to go there, learn more about us, find our bookstore, because the Grace Old Testament commentary, Volume One, is ready for pre-order. Pre-order ends on May 1st, but if you get in before May 1st you get a discount. That’s on volume one of the Grace Old Testament commentary; we’ve been waiting for this for a while and it’s almost here. Secure yours by pre-order today at faithalone.org. 

As now with today’s discussion here is Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob, no question for today, but we’ve got something that this, this actually came up from your commentary, or not your commentary, Geoff Steven’s commentary on Exodus that is going to be part of the Torah that’s coming out soon.

BOB: Yeah, it should be ready for the conference, right? May 18th through 21 and you can pre-order it now, by the way, if you pre-order before the end of April, it’s a significant savings of $25 instead of the $35. So you might consider that, but yeah, the question came up, do you have the Bible there? Look at Exodus 33:11. 

SAM: Verse 11 says, “So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.” So the important part there is the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, and then if you skip ahead to verse 20, it says, “But He,” God,” said, You cannot see My face for no man shall see Me and live.” 

So this came up while you, Ken, and Philippe were doing some last read-throughs of the commentary, and I think you pointed out we need to address this apparent contradiction where he says he met face to face, but here it says, no man can see God’s face. So what is happening here in Exodus?

BOB: Right. In verse 11, it uses what’s called the Tetragrammaton, the four letters, YHWH, Yahweh. This is God’s covenant name, Yaweh the Lord, “and he saw Him face to face,” and yet in verse 20, it says, “No one can see My face”. What’s kind of strange about this is afterwards, God hides them in the cleft of a rock, puts His hand over his face until God has passed, and then He allows them to see His back. It’s kind of bizarre, and this relates to a number of Scriptures. For example, in John 1:18, we’re told no one has seen God at any time, but His only begotten Son has revealed him. 

So any Old Testament appearance of God, and that’s called a Theophany, or an appearance of God, is also a Christophany. That is an appearance of Christ, the second member of the Trinity. We call this the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. So when Moses sees Yahweh face to face, he’s not seeing God the Father, because God the Father’s invisible. John 1:18 says, No one has seen God the Father. So Moses didn’t see God the Father, but he did see God the Son. 

There are many Old Testament people that saw the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. Remember before God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18, Abraham is met by three angels, and it turns out one of the three angels is the Angel of the Lord, and He tells him that He’s going to be destroying Sodom, where Lot’s nephew is, and so he starts bargaining with Him. If there are 50 righteous people, will you spare the city? Finally, they get down to if there were 10 and there weren’t, and so God spares Lot and his wife and his two daughters, but that’s it. Nobody else gets to leave. 

SAM: Yeah, and you have Jacob wrestling with, some people, I guess there’s debate on that one, whether that’s a pre incarnate Christ or an angel.

BOB: I would agree that’s the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. So the question is, did Moses see God face to face? And my answer would be absolutely. And if you look over at 2 Corinthians chapter 3, we’re told that every time that Moses would meet with the Lord in the tabernacle, his face would shine. And he started wearing a veil over his face because he didn’t want them to see the fading glory. Can you see those verses? It’s around verse 18 where he says, we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image. And the idea is, we see the glory of the Lord, and we don’t need a veil over our face, but we also don’t have our faces shining. But do you see those verses about Moses’ fading glory? 

SAM: Well, verse 13 says, “unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away.” Not passing away is talking about the glory. 

BOB: Right. And also there’s a couple of examples in Judges. In Judges chapter 6, Gideon saw the Angel of the Lord, and when he saw the Angel of the Lord, he realized his life was in jeopardy. 21 and 22 of Judges 6?

SAM: It says, “Then the Angel of the Lord put out the end of the staff that was in His hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread; and fire rose out of the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. And the Angel of the Lord departed out of his sight. Now Gideon perceived that he was the Angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, ‘Alas, O Lord God! For I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face.’ ” Twenty-three says, “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Peace be with you; do not fear you shall not die.’ “ 

BOB: Right. Alas, I’m going to die because I’ve seen the Angel of the Lord, which he recognizes is God. Also, Manoah is the father of Samson, and he also sees the Angel of the Lord, and that’s what, Judges 13? 

SAM: It says, “When the Angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah and his wife, then Manoah knew that He was the Angel of the Lord. And Manoah said to his wife, ‘We shall surely die, because we have seen God!’ ”

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BOB: What they understood was basically what we see in Exodus, chapter 33, verse 20 and following, that if any human being saw God’s face, they would die. What I think is going on, and this is what Geoff wrote up, what Moses saw when he saw God’s back was a manifestation of God’s glory. It was, in my opinion, a veiled manifestation of His glory. That is, it was not a full 100% looking at His glory because, according to verse 20, no human could survive that, not a human in a mortal body. Now, once we’re glorified, presumably, we could see God’s glory undimmed and it wouldn’t kill us.

And by the way, this reminds me, remember Peter, James, and John saw the Lord Jesus glorified at the Mount of Transfiguration? That’s Matthew 17, one through about verse eleven. I would argue that what they saw there was Jesus glorified, but not a hundred percent. They couldn’t have survived it if it had been a full manifestation of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

I think what’s going on here in Exodus 33 is that when it refers to God’s hand and God’s face and God’s back, those are all figures of speech called anthropomorphisms, speaking of God as though he’s a man, because God the Father has no hand, He has no back, He has no face. And I think what all that is saying, figuratively, is that Moses caught a glimpse of the glory of God the Father and that he was able to survive that because it wasn’t a full experience of the glory of God the Father. But he didn’t see an actual back. 

Hypothetically, of course, this could be the Lord Jesus Christ and theoretically He could have let Moses see His back, but I don’t think that’s the point because already we know from verse 11, he saw Him face to face. 

SAM: Yeah, at verse 18, he says, Moses says, “and please show me your glory.” So if this is a man at this point, he had already met with the pre-incarnate Christ, but it’s interesting that here he’s asking, please show me your glory. 

BOB: And that could be the glory of the one who’s speaking to him. And if that is the glory of the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, then what this would be is kind of like the Mount of Transfiguration. In other words, he’s seeing a greater manifestation of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in that case, then maybe the hand literally was the hand of Jesus. Although it’s kind of awkward, because how is it? He puts him in the cleft of the rock, okay, he puts his hand over his eye. And then what does he do, jumps real quick? 

So he’s only seeing his back, I don’t know. 

In any case, whether you’re seeing the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ or the glory of God the Father or the glory of the Holy Spirit, you’re still seeing the same glory, because God is one. And even though there’s three persons, their glory is a unified glory. So did Moses see God face to face? We know, of course, that many, many, many people during the ministry of Jesus saw God face to face. And so the only question is, did that also occur in the Old Testament? 

In my opinion, is not only did it occur, but most likely it occurred every single generation. For example, Genesis 3:8, it talks about the fact that Jesus evidently appeared to Adam and Eve routinely in the garden in the cool of the day. 

SAM: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” 

BOB: And notice, it’s the Lord God walking in the garden. God, the Father doesn’t walk anywhere. He doesn’t have legs and feet. And of course, they’re literally seeing someone and they’re literally hiding from Him. He goes on to talk with them face to face. Jesus appeared to them. He appeared to Cain. He warns Cain to get his attitude right. Cain ends up killing his brother. Then he meets with Cain again. 

He met with many, many, many, many people. And I think probably every generation. We need to recognize that people like Moses had a very personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, not just on Mount Sinai, but he met with Him in the tabernacle often, face to face. 

It’s a sort of a mystery how Jesus could meet with all of these people before the incarnation, but He was certainly able to do that. We know that no one has seen God the Father, so all the Old Testament Theophanies are Christophanies. 

Well, I hope that helps you. I’d encourage you to get our Old Testament Commentary, Volume One on Torah. And in the meantime, let’s all keep grace in focus.

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On the next episode: is it wrong for a believer to fear death? Please be sure to join us again. And until then, let’s keep grace in focus.