A true man of God who is afraid to die? Do you think that Moses would have been afraid because God said to him, "If you see My face in a deeper way than you have seen before, you're going to die"? Moses said, "Wonderful, let me die. I am satisfied to see Your face and die." He was even willing to die for the sake of the Israelites. You think he wouldn't be willing to die for the sake of God? If God said to me today, "If you see My face, you will die," I will say, "Lord, let me die. I'm happy to see Your face." That is exactly what Paul wanted to do. Do you remember? That's what Paul wanted to do in Philippians chapter 1. He said, "I'm ready to die. I'm happy to go to be with my Lord to see His face. Just let me die." Do you think Moses was scared to die? Of course not.
But he didn't ask to see God's face. He has been talking with God face to face. He wants to see His glory — not as a spectator, but as a participant. And how do you see God's glory? By following Him. "I want to follow You, Lord. All the way You go. Every step You go." Discipleship, my friends, is not a New Testament teaching. It's an Old Testament teaching that is there also in the New Testament. Take your concordance and look at the word "follow" and "lead." Two words — follow and lead. God leads, we follow. Take your concordance and see how many times it occurs in the Old Testament. Discipleship is not an invention of the New Testament. It's not something the Lord Jesus invented in the New Testament. God's people always follow. And when you follow God, what do you see? You see His back. And that's what we read in this passage. Let's read on, and then with that we have to close.
What do we see here? As we read on, it says in verse 23: "Then I will take My hand away and you shall see — you shall see My back. Not My face. You will see My back." And Moses was satisfied. That's what he wanted to see. He wanted to see God's back. That's why God said, "I will answer your prayer. You want to see My glory? I will show you My glory. Where will you see it? You will see it when you see My back." It is in following Him that you will see the goodness of God.
Can you see goodness? Can you take off your glasses and take a look? Can you see what goodness is? Is there a piece of something that's called goodness walking by? And it says here, "I will cause My goodness" — verse 19 — "to pass before you." What is Moses supposed to see? "And I will show you My goodness." Well, goodness is not something that you can see with your physical eyes. It's something that you experience. And how do you experience it? It's by following God. You follow after Him, and then you will see His goodness. Wonderful.
And that is what happened. Moses followed God. Moses followed God, and the people of Israel followed Moses. So they followed God by following Moses. Moses saw the back of God, not the people of Israel, because they didn't want to see it. But they saw the back of Moses. And then Moses became the bearer — the bearer of God's glory. Not the spectator. The bearer.
Read in chapter 34, the next chapter. His prayer is answered. His prayer is answered. Now he becomes the bearer of God's glory. Read it from verse 29 of chapter 34. Let me read it very quickly to you and we must close. "And it came about when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai, and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses' hands as he was coming down from the mountain, and Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone — shone because of his speaking with God."
And then it reads in the next verse, verse 30: "So when Aaron, the high priest, and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone with the glory of God. And they were afraid." Notice — they were not only afraid of God's glory. They were afraid of God's glory manifested in Moses. Even though it's now Moses, not God, that they are seeing, they were frightened of Moses, because now he was bearing God's glory.
As you read on, in verse 35, the whole passage is about Moses bearing the glory of God. Verse 35: "The sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone with the glory of God." And so Moses would replace the veil over his face until he went in to speak with God again.
Let us close. What did you come to this camp for? Are you willing to say, "Lord, let me participate in Your glory"? Like Moses, your face will shine with the glory of God. And that, incidentally, of course, is the passage that you were doing in your Bible studies in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 18. Do you remember? That there the comparison between the Old Testament and the New is made, in which God's glory shone from the face of Moses. But Paul says this: you and I are bearers, not spectators. Bearers of God's glory in a way that can be even greater than Moses, because we are being transformed from glory to glory as we look at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
What is your decision? What is your choice? Are you willing to follow God, whatever the cost, and see His glory manifested in His back, and experience His goodness, His saving power? There are too many things in this passage I could not touch upon. Very important passage. Because, you see, to start with, there had to be forgiveness. And this passage — chapters 33 and 34 — ends with the forgiveness that God grants to Israel, His lovingkindness, His goodness, in which He pardons. The first step in following God, in seeing the back of God, experiencing His goodness, is to experience His forgiveness of your sins.
There is one more principle, but I have no time to develop it. But I will just mention it to you, for you to think about. I talked about light and power. In order for there to be light, there has to be power. But there is something that we will call bipolarity. The spiritual principle of spiritual dynamics is the principle of dipolarity. What do we mean by bipolarity? It means that there are two poles. All of us who have been to school know that in electricity there is a negative and a positive. You cannot just have a negative or a positive. You need to have both. And it is the charge moving from the electrons to the protons — moving from one side to the other — that creates, that transmits power. And if there is a filament in between, the whole thing lights up and shines forth in glory.
To be a disciple of the Lord means that God is going to do a powerful work in your life so that you become the bearer of that glory. But in order to do that, He has to implant in you His Spirit. And that creates bipolarity — the bipolarity of Spirit versus flesh, the bipolarity of God's will and your will. And the interaction of this bipolarity creates power, which generates glory. Now I am beginning to talk in rather deep language, am I not? It is beginning to be harder to understand. That is why I said I will only mention it without saying much more, just to let you think about it. But it is very important for you to understand this principle.
You see, the power flows from this one polarity — that is, from God to us. And that creates glory within us. The Sermon on the Mount, which was the first message that the Lord Jesus taught — the multitudes as well as the disciples — the Beatitudes, contains the one fundamental principle of spiritual bipolarity. A magnet, you see it in a horseshoe shape, two poles. It creates magnetism. The same is true with electricity. It is true with anything that has to do with power. It is true in the spiritual life. The same God who created the universe is the same God who creates the new life in us. And the principle is the same.
Study the Beatitudes. What does it say in the Beatitudes? "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." They shall see God. They shall experience Him — not as a spectator seeing Him. They shall experience God in their lives. But the purity of heart is what will bring you into conflict with the flesh. Every true Christian experiences the power of bipolarity. Bipolarity creates tension. Tension is power. We speak of high tension cables, for example, in science.
That means to say, you must be willing to let God put His new life into you. And that new life will create tension, because it creates bipolarity — two poles. And that bipolarity will produce power. For example, very briefly, everywhere I go, there is the tension of bipolarity. When I talk, say, to a non-Christian, he senses power. This power, you can say, of the spiritual electrons moving towards his spiritual protons. He senses power coming to him. And if he is an evil man, he is terrified of me. I have met evil men, demon-possessed people, and they are very frightened of me. Other people don't realize it. But they sense the power of God moving forward. And he looks at me, and he sees the glory.
Somebody once said to me, "I look at you, and I see the glory of God." He called it something called aura. You know, those people who mess around in spiritism — and this is something you must not mess around with. But those who mess around with spiritism know what I mean. He said, "I see the glory." He could see a spiritual glory. This glory is not my glory. It is God's glory because of the power flowing through me and impacting on him. And that tension presents glory. And that glory can transform that person if he does not resist it. If he does resist it, it produces agony.
When you, in that bipolarity within your own life, when your will fights against God's will, what do you do? You suffer. Because the bipolarity now becomes an unbearable tension. But when you obey, when you say, "Lord, I will follow You," peace comes in. Because now the power is flowing without the unnecessary resistance. And your life shines with the glory. And people look at you and say, "Ah! There is something different about you. I see the glory of the Lord in your life."
I can only mention this principle of spiritual dynamics in terms of spiritual bipolarity just in passing. There is no time for me to develop this anymore. But I hope that I have said enough to help you to understand that when you leave this camp and you are willing to participate in God's glory, you are going to experience power. Because when you experience that power, you are the bearer of God's glory.
Let us be quiet before God in prayer.