Exodus 33:20

The face speaks of the full disclosure of a person. The time had not yet come for the Son to declare the Father, or for the Son to be sent. God let Moses see and value all that He had made known so far — the back parts. But God could not reveal the "face" at that time. Yet the face was there. The Father was there, waiting for the Son to come and make Him known.

Moses wanted the perfect light of God. That is what His "face" means. God answers him, "You cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live." No one could meet God in the revelation of Himself. If God had revealed Himself to Moses, He must have made Moses know His hatred of sin. How could Moses have stood before Him if He let loose His wrath against sin? But God showed him His back parts. Moses never saw His face while on earth. But even the sight of His back parts made the skin of his face shine.

God wanted the issue to be plain, so that no one could be deceived about it for a moment unless he chose to be. So He lets Moses know, as the people's representative, that no one can see His face. God is unknown: there is no way to clear the guilty, and therefore no way by which man may stand before Him.

We are not told what the Lord said to Moses, but He spoke to him as to a friend, face to face (v. 11). This does not mean that Moses saw God's face (Ex. 33:20), but that there was a close intimacy.

God did not grant Moses what he asked. What He then revealed was not of the "face" of God, but His "back parts" (v. 23). It was not the Light in the full power of its shining, showing God in the fullness of what He is in moral nature and life. It was one ray of that Light, revealing in part the One it was reflected from.

God put Moses in a cleft of the rock, and covered him with His own hand. This is a beautiful picture of our position in Christ, and it is God Himself who gives us that place. As believers, God no longer sees us in the first man, Adam. Just as He put Moses in the cleft of the rock, He has united us with Christ. So we stand in perfect safety before God, covered by God's own hand.

We need no hiding-place now that would make the showing of the glory of the Lord only partial for us. There is no hiding in a cleft as the glory passes before us in John 17. Every ray of it falls on that face — the face once marred more than any man's. And we can look on the glory in His face, for it is the face of Him who gave Himself for us.

Then comes that glorious statement, "they will see his face." His face is connected with His glory in the revelation of Himself. Under grace the contrast is great. We can say, "God … has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." But what is still to come far exceeds that. Brought into favour, we shall live in the full light of the knowledge of God, perfectly revealed in Christ.