Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Your Life's Purpose | Torah | Exodus 34:29-35

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Are you living your life for the right things? Is your purpose to glorify God? If so, what does it mean to glorify God? In today's episode, Keith uses Exodus 34:29-35 to discuss the weight of God's glory and how it impacts your life. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 34:29-35

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. My name is Keith Simon, and right now we're going through the Book of Exodus. I personally have always been obsessed with the purpose of life. What's the purpose of my life? What's the purpose of anyone's life? Because to me, one of the saddest things that could happen is to get to the end of my life and realize that I lived my life for the wrong things.

Now, I get that not everyone is obsessed with that question as I am, and yet I think all of us want to live a life of purpose and meaning and significance. So that means that every person must ask and then answer the question, what is the purpose of my life? Well, back in the 1600s, a group of British Christians got together, and they tried to answer that question. They asked it this way. They said, what is the chief end of man? In other words, what's the purpose of every human being's life. And here's how they answered it. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Well, if we're created to glorify God, if that's our purpose in life, we'd better get a better understanding of what that means. Our passage in Exodus 34 will help us do that, but let's start

with what the word glory means. Our English word for glory comes from the Hebrew word for heavy. The word was often used to describe things that were physically heavy. So the Bible says that Eli was heavy. That just means that Eli was overweight. The word was also used more figuratively to describe something substantial or impressive. The Bible says that Abraham was heavy, but it doesn't have anything to do with his weight. It just means that he was wealthy. Eventually, the Hebrew word for heavy was used to describe anyone who deserved honor or recognition.

In modern English, we might call that person a heavy one. weight? Well, the biggest heavyweight of all is God, because no one is more substantial than he is. No one has more influence. No one is more deserving of honor or recognition or praise. Revelation 411 says, You are worthy our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things and by your will they were created and have their being. So when Moses was on Mount Sinai and wanted God to show him his glory, he had no idea of what he was really asking, he was asking the impossible. God told them, look, you cannot see my glory and live. For us human beings, there's something overwhelming, even destructive about the weight of God's

glory. The fact that we're surprised by that shows how little we know about the greatness of God and the seriousness of our own sin. God was gracious to not show Moses's glory, but God did show him the back of his glory. And even that was enough to change the way Moses looked. Exodus 3429, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. So the glory of God is reflected in the face of Moses. This was the afterglow of his mountain top experience. The glory of God lit up his face. The people took one look at Moses and they were afraid. Here's verse 30.

When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant and they were afraid to come near him. All Aaron saw was the reflection of the back of God's glory in the face of his own brother. And yet what he saw was so glorious that he was afraid to look at Moses. It was too magnificent, too heavy. The people had to be shielded from the brightness of God's glory. Even its reflection was too much for them to bear. So Moses put a veil over his face. I think Moses is a pig.

of the purpose of our life. We were created to reflect God's glory to the world, much like Moses reflected God's glory to his community. What does it mean for us to glorify God? Well, earlier we said that glory means weighty, but we can't add any weight or value or glory to God, but what we can do is reflect or show off or display God's glory. Isaiah 43 tells us we were created for God's glory. That means that your life is not about you and your glory. It's about God. As sinful human beings, we have this relentless inclination to make life about us, to put ourselves at the center, to measure our life by our own personal fulfillment.

But if you want to understand why you're here and what your purpose is, you can't look inside yourself. You must start with God. You are born for His glory. So it's not about what I want. It's about what God wants. If I'm going to glorify God, we have to understand that it's not about my agenda. My life is about his agenda.

Not my goals, his goals. Not my purpose, his purpose. What is God up to in this world? And how can I get on board with what he is doing? We were created for God's glory, not our own. Glorifying God also means putting your faith in God's promises. In Romans chapter 4, it tells us that Abraham glorified God when he trusted or believed God's promise to give him and Sarah a child in their old age.

Faith glorifies God because it trusts God's wisdom to know what is best. It trusts God's power to be able to do what is best. And it trusts God's goodness, trusting that he will want to do what is best for me. So you glorify God when you trust in His promises for you. We glorify God when we do good works in the name of Jesus. Jesus said, Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works

and glorify your father who is in heaven. When people see you doing good works, maybe something like caring for the poor or serving others in your family or in your church or forgiving someone who hurt you, they glorify God because God gave you the desire to sacrifice yourself for others to put others' needs above your own.

You glorify God when you're honest about your sin. Listen to what Joshua says in the Old Testament to a guy named Aiken. He says, My son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and honor him. Tell me what you have done. Do not hide it from me. When you're honest with God about your sin, you glorify God,

because you're saying that God is gracious and able to forgive all your sin. You can glorify God in every part of your life, everything you do, big or small. First Corinthians 1031 says, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Everything, whether it's at work or school, in your family, in your free time, on vacation, it doesn't matter if it's something really big and important and significant or something that seems small and minor, like a little detail of life. Even eating and drinking can be done for God's glory if it is the right thing. done with the right motive.

Let me end with a little warning here. It's a sobering story. It's about how Herod failed to give God glory. Here's the story. King Herod, he was putting on his royal robes, and you read about all this in Acts 12, and he was sitting on his royal throne, and he gave a speech,

and all these people were cheering, saying, the voice of a God and not of a man. And then it says this. immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give God the glory and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. It is dangerous to live for your own glory. I said earlier that one of my biggest fears is getting to the end of my life and realizing that I lived a life without purpose or meaning and how living for the glory of God is the purpose I was created for. But it's even more dangerous than a wasted life. It is dangerous to your soul to live for your own glory. God struck down

Herod because he took the glory that belonged to God alone. In 1717, King Louis the 14th of France died. Now, King Louis was very, very full of himself. He insisted that everyone call him Louis the Great. He had the most magnificent kingdom in Europe, and his funeral was absolutely spectacular. So in the church where the ceremony was performed, his body lay in this golden coffin. And to dramatize his own greatness, King Louis had given orders that the cathedral would be very dimly lit with only one special candle that was to be set above his coffin. Thousands of people are in attendance. They're all waiting there in silence, standing before the coffin with King Louis in it and this candle shining right above him.

As the bishop begins to speak, he slowly reaches down, snuffs out the candle and says, Only God is great. King Louis made himself great, but that's not our job in our life. That's not our purpose. Our purpose is to show the greatness of God. I want to be like Moses and reflect God's glory to the world, not like King Herod, not like King Louis, that tried to take God's glory. glory for himself. Your life is not about you. It's not about your agenda. It's about God. Get in line

with God's purpose and you'll have the most meaningful, satisfying life that you can imagine. All glory to God. Amen. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.