What Does Spiritual Enlightenment Really Look Like? Here God Points the Way.

If Google has anything to say about it, lots of people are looking for this.   I put these three words into Google, and got 2.6 million results!  What were the words?   I put in seeking spiritual enlightenment.  By the way, in checking out a few results, I found some pretty interesting suggestions.    Of course, you had the old stand bys, meditation, prayer, spiritual books etc.   But the most popular site also recommended LSD and other drugs, even a near death experience.   I don’t know those two might actually go together sometimes.

But why would you want spiritual enlightenment anyway?   Honestly, what do you need to have enlightened in the first place?  Why is is so important that the most popular site even suggests you risk death to get it?    Yet, here’s the truth.   It is important. As far back as human history goes we’ve been looking for it.  Even the first art we have, cave paintings, are probably related to this seeking.   But what are we seeking?    What do we need to have?   What does spiritual enlightenment even look like?  In this mysterious conversation that God has with Moses, God shows us.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Genesis 33:12-23, 34:5-8

For as long as human beings have existed, we’ve yearned for something beyond, for spiritual enlightenment or experience of God or whatever you want to call it.  But what exactly are we yearning for?  What does it even look like?    In this conversation, God shows us.  God shows you that what every human being yearns for, what every human being needs is the beauty found in the face of God?   Now what does that mean?  Let’s look at the words here, for here God tells us what that means. 

First, to understand this conversation, we need to see it in context.  Have you ever walked into a conversation between two people in mid-stream?   It can be hard to figure out what is going on unless you get clued into what has happened before.

You see, after God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God told Moses that he wanted to dwell in the midst of the people, to use the Hebrew word to mishkan or tabernacle there, which simply means to dwell.   Yet as Moses and God were laying out the plan for God’s new home, something went seriously wrong.   God and Moses were having this conversation on a mountain called Sinai, and their meeting had been going for days and days.   So the Israelites had begun to get a little nervous about this new God that Moses represented.   So they came up with a plan.  They said, “Hey, since we don’t know about this new God, heck, we don’t even know if Moses is even still alive, let’s go back to what we do know.  Let’s ask the gods of Egypt for a little help.  So they melt some gold and make themselves their own version of an Egyptian god, one called the Apis bull.”   

And in doing this, they break God’s heart.   Think about it.   Say, you’ve met someone who finds themselves with a terrible partner, who abuses them and doesn’t care for them in the least.   And out of your love, you help this person break free. And you begin to really build something together, something good and beautiful.   Then you go out of town for a few days.  And you find when you come back, that your new beloved has gone back to have a fling with the abusive boyfriend.  That has to hurt. And that’s how this betrayal feels to God.  

So what does God do? God asks for a sort of amicable divorce.  God basically says, “Ok, here is what I will do.  I will watch over and protect you in this new land I’ve promised you.  I will take care of your needs, even bless you with more than you need.  But I won’t be present with you like before.”  

Now for many folks this plan sounds like a good deal.  They want a God who takes care of their needs; blesses them a bit, but they don’t want him in the middle of things, just available for emergencies.   But does Moses leap at the offer?  No, Moses refuses it.   He says. If you go with us like that, it’d be better if we just stayed in the desert and died.”    Why would Moses rather die than lose God’s presence, God’s glory?  

He says to God.  It’s because if you don’t go with us, what will distinguish us from everyone else?  What does Moses mean? 

In life, all of us look for something to distinguish us, to give us our own unique value and identity.  Some look to achievement or wealth or popularity.  Others look to some relationship to get this.  But all of these things that people look to, are just types of glory.  What do I mean?   The word for glory in Hebrew, Kabowd, has two meanings.   It means something that is weighty, and also something that has significance or importance.   The closest word in English is the word, matter (Tim Keller).   Matter not only means how much weight something has, but it also describes significance as in you matter to me. 

And every human being needs this, to know that they matter.  Every human being needs this glory.  And people come, up with a lot of ways to get it, political glory or financial glory or fame or achievement. They think.  If I accomplish these things, then I know that I matter.  But these types of glory are empty ultimately, they don’t fill you up, at least the way you need to be filled.   And in the end, they all fade away.   Moses knows that.  After all, at one time, when he was a prince of Egypt, he had all those forms of glory. 

On the other hand, people can look to a relationship to give them this glory. They think.  If this person really loves me, then I know that I matter.   It’s why the singer Liz Phair even wrote a love song called glory.  In that song the same line repeats again and again, “you are, you are shining some glory on me.”  Everyone wants someone who will shine glory on them, to show them that they matter.  But no relationship can carry the weight of that wanting.  It’s not meant to.  

But still everyone needs this glory, but this glory you need, no achievement, no love no matter how great can give it to you.    Moses knows the one place that it can be found is in God. 

But what is this glory that God only has?   What does it even look like?  To get that, you need to look at what Moses does next.   God does agree to stay with the Israelites.  But then Moses goes further.  Moses says.   I want to see your glory, up close and personal.   Now, what is Moses looking for? 

We know that Moses isn’t looking for anything like power or wealth.  He’s already made it clear that he doesn’t want that.  So what is he looking for?  The Bible talks about this a number of ways.  But one way to see it is that Moses is asking to see God’s beauty.

This past week, I was at a family reunion on the beaches of North Carolina.  The home we rent sits right on the ocean.    In the morning, I love to go out and simply look, watch the waves crashing in, the water going on as far as I can see.   But why do I love that?  Looking at the ocean has no practical use.   But I’m not looking for what it can get me, I’m looking for what it is, for the sake of its beauty.  Just seeing it is enough.  I don’t need anything else.  That’s what beauty is, whether it be the ocean or a mountain scene or whatever. It is something whose value is simply in what it is, not for anything it gets you.

Sadly, we rarely look at God that way.   Usually we come to God asking for things or to simply share our anxieties, get a little shoring up for the day.   And if things in our life go seriously wrong, we can even get distant with God as a result.  Essentially most of the time, we act as someone who married God for his money so to speak.

But Moses has gone beyond that.  Moses just wants the beauty nothing more, and nothing less. For beauty does give you something.   When I look at the ocean, I feel a fullness well up inside me.  The closest words I’ve seen to describe it call it an overwhelming meaningfulness.   And that does get at it a bit.  Beauty, real beauty, just fills you like that, with a richness that often inspires you to share that fullness with others too.  

So imagine what it would be like, to gaze at the source of all beauty, of which the ocean is just a faint echo.   Imagine gazing at that.   That’s what Moses wants.    And that’s what God tells Moses, you can’t have.  God’s says to Moses.   When it comes to the beauty of who I am, it’s too much for you.   It would destroy you.  

So here’s the quandary.    You need this glory, this beauty of God because only in the face of that beauty can you find the significance you need, only then will you truly know that you matter, not simply today but forever.   But God says here to Moses, what you need, I can’t give.

But God does go halfway, and in that half way measure, God not only shows why this beauty is so dangerous, God hints at how this beauty has now come to us.    What is the half way measure?

God tells Moses.  You cannot look at my face, but I will hide you in a cleft in this rock, and allow you to see the back of my glory as it passes by, the outskirts of it basically.  But instead of glory God says instead you will see my goodness.  God is telling Moses that what his glory is.  It is my goodness.   And God even describes it as the the glory passes by.   God says:  

 “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

What? Do you see how these words seem to contradict each other?  On one hand, God says.  “I am merciful and gracious, forgiving to all.”  But then God says, “I will never let wrong go unpunished.”   What is God saying?  God is showing us what God’s goodness is, a goodness defined by this tension between justice and love.    For God to be good, he has to be just. He can’t just let wrong go.  But also for God to be good, God has to be utterly loving, showing mercy to all.  But how can those two things exist together?  

God can’t be both these things.  Either God has to be good as in just, and punish evil.  Or God has to be good as in loving, and forgive everyone.   But God says, No, I can be both, and I am.  That is my goodness, my beauty, that in me justice and love dwell together.     Now Moses doesn’t understand how this can be.  He just has to accept it.   But that is because Moses only sees the back parts.   Moses couldn’t look full face into the beautiful goodness of God. 

But we can.    In the first chapter of the gospel of John, John writes that: the Word (Jesus) became flesh and lived among us.  But the word he uses is the word tabernacled.  He is pointing to this story.  And then he continues.  And we have beheld his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  Do you see what John is saying?  In Jesus, we look full face into the beautiful goodness of God.   How?

On the cross, what did Jesus cry out?  He cried out.  “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  On that cross, he was utterly abandoned.  He lost all significance, all glory.   He suffered the cosmic justice of God’s goodness, the justice that should have come to us.   He experienced utter and complete insignificance.  How terrifying is that.   And why did Jesus do it?  He did it for love of you and me.  He lost the glory so you could gain it, so you could gaze full face into the glorious beauty of God, so you might know your significance now and forever.    And that is beautiful.

Sure you can believe in a God who just loves everybody, without dealing at all with evil.  Now that sounds nice, but is it beautiful.  Does it fill you up?   Or you can believe in a God that is going to deliver payback for every wrong.  But is there beauty in that?    But when you look at a God who takes the justice you deserve because he so passionately and joyfully desires to give you the love you need, well, that is beautiful.   Do you have that beauty?  Do you want it?   It is there waiting for you right now.