Exodus 33:13. Now therefore, I pray Thee, if I have found grace in Thy sight, show me now Thy way, that I may know Thee, that I may find grace in Thy sight.
Taken with editing from The Christian’s Daily Companion. Mackay (1793-1873) was parish minister of Dunoon when he wrote this piece.
Moses had indeed been called to an arduous as well as a great undertaking. He had already experienced its difficulties. But at the time here referred to he could also say, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”; “The Lord will give strength unto His people”. According to their day, so shall their strength be. It is a salutary exercise to consider the walk, the trials and the hardships of those who now through faith and patience inherit the promises. When we consider the difficulties which Moses had to encounter and realise them in our mind’s view, we will also realise that his faith in God must have been particularly strong, appropriating and firm. Yet was it not the grace of God – that very grace of which he now so earnestly seeks increased manifestations – that made him what he was? And so also the same grace shall be made sufficient for everyone who has been truly turned to seek the Lord and to walk before Him in newness of life.
No believer – perhaps not one in the Church of Christ to its last day – may be called to as arduous an undertaking, outwardly, as that to which Moses was called. Yet every one of them shall feel, whatever their outward lot, that they are in themselves indeed insufficient, and that they can be sustained, delivered and comforted by grace alone. They shall have their own burden to bear in the path of spiritual obedience, their own cross to take up, their own anxieties and fears to endure and to overcome. And, in their experience, they must realise their own individual dependence on the grace of God, just as certainly as Moses here is seen realising his need of more grace.
We see in the history of Moses a parallel to what must occur with every soul whose face is truly set Zionward. How stiff-necked, rebellious, unbelieving and earthly-minded were the multitude of those whose care and guidance had been laid upon him! And when saving grace comes to the soul and awakens it, it will experience that there are multitudes of evils, even within itself, truly unsubdued, rebellious and disobedient – affections, passions, thoughts, imaginations, all of which are evil continually. Were the believing, awakened soul, even alone in a desert, surrounded by no evil communications from without, its experience would be: “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do”. But the believer will also have to say, with the prophet of old, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”.
The believer’s relations with the world become snares and trials; they interrupt the soul’s communion with God; they weaken the impressions made by divine objects. Alas, the evil affections inherent in the heart itself are awakened, called into unholy exercise, and felt to be strengthened by that exercise. And the soul’s spiritual views are felt to be darkened and clouded: iniquities, it must confess, do prevail against it.
The soul may have to say, “Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts”; it may have expected that more deep and abiding impressions would have been made by what it had spiritually seen and felt and learned. Yet such expectations are grievously disappointed too frequently; the world from without and evil principles from within have cast down the soul and leave it in heaviness and in fear. But where grace reigns – where it has been given – it will teach the soul still to wait upon God for more grace.
Now, my soul, what hast thou, this very day, experienced and learned? How have the manifestations of God’s own goodness, mercy and grace, which the Lord gave thee in days past, drawn thee to Himself this day? Has the world not indeed prevailed? Has it not been turning thee aside? Has it not been weakening thy spiritual life? And what hast thou drawn from its communications and pursuits but spiritual apathy and insincerity of purpose toward God?
Let me not remain for another hour in this backsliding condition. Let my soul not let go its view or its hold of God, revealed in Christ Jesus, as my God. Where is a remedy to be found for these evils but in God Himself and in His abounding grace? Let me draw near to His throne of grace now and let me seek in the same spirit as animated the soul of Moses: Lord, “show me now Thy way, that I may know Thee”. Let Thy grace so come to me that I shall not lose sight of Thee, in my daily conversation and walk. O make that grace sufficient for me, in my soul.
Grant it although I am so altogether unworthy of the least of Thy mercies. Yet through the blood of atonement shed for remission, take away my sins, and let Thine own glory be so revealed in my heart, the believing view of it so implanted in my spirit that it shall prevail to subdue and crucify my sinfulness, and to keep my soul “unspotted from the world”. Let me feel, in that blessed revelation according to Thy grace, the greatness of that end to which Thou hast called me in Thy glorious gospel. Quicken me now to call upon Thee, and preserve my soul in the habitual attitude of waiting on Thee as the God of my salvation, that I may know Thee in truth, that I may find grace in Thy sight, and that Thy grace may reign in my soul through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ.
Where this grace does reign, the fulfilment of God’s gracious promises in Christ will be found necessary, the one thing needful. Moses was promised that an angel would go with him, but he seeks to know this, to have the experience of it in full reality. Blessed be the name of God, there is a greater promise: the Angel of the covenant, the Lord Jesus, to abide with His people. And they, abiding in Him, shall not faint or fail. He is “the way”. O my soul, know this way and walk in Him and in communion with God through Him.
Many a man may have light enough to show others the way to heaven, and yet never walk therein himself.
The Lord will not reject your faith, though there are many doubts mingled with it; nor will He cast off your desires, though they have a great deal of deadness and lack many further degrees of life and fervour. He will remember His covenant though you forget your duty.
Timothy Rogers