Exodus 34: Moses The Glow Worm

Moses comes down the mountain glowing and it’s not a metaphor. Exodus 34 gives us one of the Bible’s most unforgettable images of what happens when a human being spends time in the presence of a holy God, and it also gives us a hopeful reminder when we’ve blown it: the Lord is still the God of second chances. We pick up after Israel’s idol worship, and God calls Moses back to Mount Sinai to chisel new stone tablets, rewriting what was broken and rebuilding what seemed lost. 

Along the way, we slow down and listen to God describe Himself in His own words: compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, full of unfailing love and faithfulness, forgiving sin while still taking sin seriously. That tension matters for real life. We talk through the covenant commands that protect Israel from sliding back into idolatry, and we trace the practical worship rhythms God gives them, from Sabbath rest to festivals and offerings, all designed to keep their hearts anchored. 

Then comes the moment that changes the room: Moses’ face becomes radiant, the people recoil, and the veil becomes necessary. That picture turns into a personal question for all of us: can people tell where we’ve been? Not because our skin shines, but because our character does. We also share a story of someone coming to Jesus, what repentance really means, and the kind of joy that looks a lot like a glow. Subscribe for the daily Bible breakdown, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the Word and dig in with us.

Transcript

Welcome And Daily Bible Plan

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Exodus chapter 34, and today's title is Moses the Glow Worm. Moses the Glow Worm. I don't know if you were old enough to know these, but when I was a kid, my sisters had this toy called a glow worm. And it was just a regular toy, but then you could hit a button and the whole thing would just start to glow. And it would completely change. And to be honest with you, it was a little bit freaky because it just would start to glow. And we are going to read about, first of all, how God is so amazing. He is the God of second chances. And also, as Moses' relationship with God has grown stronger, God is revealing more and more of himself to Moses. And it is having a physical effect on our friend Mo. And it is quite amazing. And I'm here for it. I love it so much. Moses has got the glow in it, and it's awesome. So we're

Moses Returns For New Tablets

SPEAKER_00 1:20

going to dive into that. But before we do that, while you're getting your Bibles out, while you're getting ready for that, make sure you also take just a moment, like, share, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job. And you can get all that information at thebiblebreakdown.com because the more we dig, the more we find. Well, if you've been with us over the past few days, the people of Israel did not wait for Moses to come down off the mountain. They began to worship an idol. And God had to fix that. You know, and it was, it was a bad day. And then after that, God just said, Hey, listen, I don't know if I'm going with you or not. You've got to give me some time. And finally, Moses just asked God, hey, God, if if you're not with us, I don't want to go. And God said, No, I'm going to be with you. I'm going to go with you. We're going to make this right, and it's going to be okay. And so we get into today where God is going to tell them, hey, I'm in. Let's still go to the promised land. You, you messed up. It's not as, it's not as innocent as it was. We now realize we got to be careful, but I'm I'm here for it. So if you're ready, let's dive into God's word and let's see what happens and let's see how Moses starts to glow. Okay, here we go. Chapter 34, verse one says this. The Lord said to Moses, chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed. You can almost hear God going, Come on, come on, Moses, don't smash these. Okay, verse two. Be ready in the morning to climb up to Mount Sinai and to present yourself to me on top of the mountain. No one else may come with you. In fact, no one is to appear anywhere on the mountain. Don't even let the flocks or herds graze near the mountain. So Moses chiseled out two tablets of stone like the first ones. Early in the morning, he climbed Mount Sinai as the Lord commanded him, and he carried the two stone tablets in his

God Reveals His Name And Mercy

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hand. Then the Lord came down in a cloud and stood there with him, and he called out his own name, Yahweh. And the Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out, Yahweh, the Lord, the God of compassion and mercy. I am slow to anger, filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfaithful love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin, but I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and their grandchildren, the entire families affected, even children of the third and fourth generations. In other words, that once you start a cycle of sin, that cycle of sin will continue. So you have to be careful not to fall into that cycle of sin. Verse 8. Moses immediately threw himself to the ground and worshiped. And he said, Lord, if it is true that I have found favor with you, then please travel with us. Yes, this is a stubborn and rebellious people, but please forgive our iniquity and our sins. Claim us as your own special possession. And the Lord replied, Listen, I am making a covenant with you in the presence

Covenant Commands Against Idolatry

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of all your people. I will perform miracles that have never been performed anywhere in all the earth or in any nation, and all the people around you will see the power of the Lord, the awesome power I will display for you. But listen carefully to everything I command you today. Then I will go ahead of you and drive out the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Be very careful never to make a treaty with the people who live in the land where you are going. If you do, you will follow their evil ways and be trapped. Instead, you must break down their pagan altars, smash their sacred pillars, and cut down their ashera poles. You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you. You must not make a treaty with any kind of any kind with the people living in the land. They lust after their gods, offering sacrifices to them. They will invite you to join them in their sacrificial meals, and you will go with them. Then you will accept their daughters who sacrifice to other gods as wives for your sons, and they will seduce your sons to commit adultery against me by worshiping other gods. You must not make any gods of molten metal for yourselves. You must celebrate the festival of unleavened bread. For seven days, the bread you eat must be made without yeast, just as I commanded you. Celebrate this festival annually at the appointed time in early spring in the month of Habib, for that is the anniversary of your departure from Egypt. The firstborn of every animal belongs to me, including the firstborn males of your herds of your cattle and your flocks of sheep and goats. The firstborn donkey may be bought back from the Lord from by presenting a lamb or a young goat in its place. But if you do not buy it back, you must break its neck. However, you must buy back every firstborn son. No one may appear before me without an offering. You have six days each week to do your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working, even during the seasons of plowing and harvest. You must celebrate the festival of harvest at the first crop of wheat of the wheat harvest. Celebrate the festival of the final harvest at the end of the harvest season. Three times each year, every man in Israel must appear before the sovereign Lord, the Lord, the God of Israel. I will drive out the other nations ahead of you and expand your territory, so no one will cover to conquer your land while you appear before the Lord your God three times each year. You must not offer the blood of my sacrificial offerings, together with any bait goods containing yeast, and none of the meat of the Passover sacrifice may be kept over until the next morning. As you harvest your crops, bring the very best of the first harvest to the house of the Lord your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother's milk. Pause. Remember, we don't really know why that's there, but God has now said it twice, so it's a no-no. Verse 27. Then the Lord said to Moses, Write down all these instructions, for they represent the terms of the covenant I am making with you and with Israel.

Forty Days Without Food Or Water

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Moses remained there on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. And all that time he ate no bread and drank no water. Wow. The Lord wrote the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments, on the stone tablets. When Moses came down Mount Sinai carrying the two stone tablets inscribed in the terms of the covenant, he wasn't aware that his face became radiant because he had spoken to the Lord. So when Aaron and the people of Israel saw the radiance of Moses' face, they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called out to them and asked Aaron and all the leaders of the community to come over, and he talked with them. And then all the people of Israel approached him, and Moses gave them all the instructions the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking with them, he covered his face with a veil. But whenever he went into the tent of meeting to speak with the Lord, he would remove the veil until he came out again. Then he would give the people whatever instructions the Lord had given him. And the people of Israel would see the radiant glow of his face, and he would have this veil, so he would have the veil over his face until he returned to

Moses’ Face Glows And The Veil

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speak to the Lord. Wow. So what happened was God calls Moses back up on the mountain again. And he's like, hey, listen, you smashed the first two tablets, bring me some more. So he brings him some more and he writes it out again and he gives him a basic synopsis of what he had said the first time. And what's amazing is he's up there again and he doesn't eat and he doesn't drink. Like complete total miracle. And he comes back down again. And when he comes back down again, Joker's glowing. He's a glow worm to the point that it terrified people. And before we get too out of shape on that one, imagine. Imagine you walked up on somebody and they look like a flashlight. They look like, you know, they they got some radioactive material in their soup that morning, you know, and they are they are glowing. That's gonna make me feel just a little bit nervous. And that's what happened to Aaron and all the people. They were like, now, now Moses, listen, we we we get that you are close to God, but um, you're glowing. And that's freaking us out just a little bit, to the point that Moses had to put a cover over his face because he was so distracting. Then they could talk to him. Now, I don't know about you, but someone having a mask over their face would only make me slightly more comfortable, but slightly. And at the end, it would say when he goes back in the presence of God, he was finally able to just be himself, take that back off again and just be normal because he was able to be himself in the presence of God and come back out again and talk to the people. And it is absolutely amazing that they could tell that Moses had been in the presence of God. I wonder about us,

Can Others See God In Us

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do you think people can tell where we've been? Do you think that maybe people could tell if we've been with God or if we haven't? I I know a guy one time who said, I can tell when I have personally been with God by the way I feel the rest of the day. He said, When I spend time with God in the morning, he said, I I get upset, I get whatever. He said, But there's always just that little bit in the back of my mind that reminds me that it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. He said, But if I don't spend time with God, that's not there. And I end up feeling, you know, upset, you know, and whatever. And I I've wondered about that sometimes myself. Do people know who I've been spending time with? That doesn't mean that our faces literally glow. I've never seen that personally, maybe you have, but I can see it in their character, the way their character glows. I love seeing this in new Christians. When someone has has been far from God and then they they come close to God, and

A Salvation Story And Real Repentance

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you can see, man, they still got 99 problems like the rest of us, but they got hope in their in their eyes for the very first time. I remember one time when I was talking to someone after church, and this young man comes up to me and he says, Hey, I never thought about it before, but I realize today I I don't know Jesus, but I want to. Do you think that God would love me? And he started trying to tell me some of the bad stuff that he had done. I said, Hey, buddy, I don't I don't even know all that stuff because it doesn't matter. Whatever has happened in your life, it is not more powerful than God. Of course he wants you. But repentance is turning away from all of that, turning toward Jesus, accepting him, and you know, accepting what he did on the cross for your salvation, repenting of your sin, turning toward Christ. And he didn't hear any of that because he was stuck, he was stuck on Jesus wants me. Yes, he wants you. And he's like, What do I do? And I said, right now. I just I you don't have to tell me everything, but you repent of all your sins. That means you give it everything in your life over to God, turn your life over to him, ask him to be the Lord of your life, to come and live in your life, in your heart, in your life, and that you will follow him the rest of your days. You'll be allegiant to him the rest of your days, and he'll wash away all your sin. Salvation is a whole thing, past, present, and future. And you can have it if you turn your life. I would just tell him the gospel. And he said, Okay, and and I'm one of these that I will lead people in the prayer if they need it, but I prefer them to do it themselves because I want this to be a relationship they have with God, not just, you know, I'm trying to get rid of me as much as possible, right? And so I told him, you know, this is what repentance is, this is what it is, I'm gonna be right here with you, and and we're gonna do this. And he prayed, and it was the most beautiful, simple prayer I'd heard in a long time. And and the reason why I tell you that is when when he looked at me after he said amen, when I tell you the look of joy that I saw in his eyes, I didn't have to ask him if he had been saved. I could tell that the Holy Spirit had done a supernatural work and he had so much joy in that moment. I knew he that was the closest I've ever seen to somebody literally glowing because he knew that he was saved. That is the glow that I want to carry with me. I want people to look at me and go, this guy knows who God is. I I love this old thing. He said, Man, I want to be so saved that if a mosquito bites me, he goes fly, he goes flying off saying there's power in the blood. That's the dumbest thing, right? But just to say, that's what I want. What about you? What if we prayed and said, God, I want to be so overflowing with your presence that everywhere I go, people say this person must know the Lord. Can we just pray and ask for that right now?

Prayer For God’s Presence And Closing

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God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, God, that no matter how much we want to know you, you want to know us even more. I pray today, God, that you will fill us overflowing with your presence. Help us to know you more every day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And anyway, what God's Word says in Exodus 6, verse 6, it says, I will free you from your oppression and I will rescue you from your slavery. I am so thankful to know a God of freedom. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Exodus chapter 35.