Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.

For those who know me, it's no secret that my all time favorite hymn is Rock of Ages.

There are a multitude of reasons why I love this hymn, but today I saw an even deeper connection between the hymn and a story about Moses found in Exodus...I had an "ah-hah!" moment, if you will.

In Exodus 33 Moses is talking with the Lord (which is NUTS, by the way...he's literally just having a convo with God...) about his next move as the leader of the Israelites. In verse 18 Moses asks God to show him His glory. What an odd request. I mean, this is the same Moses who is talking with God in a pillar of cloud a few verses beforehand (Ex 33:9), not to mention the same guy who saw God bring the plagues upon Egypt (Ex 7-12) and who witnessed God split the Red Sea (Ex 14), and yet he's asking for the Lord to show him His glory. Weird. It's almost as if Moses could sense that he was still not in full and complete fellowship with God, despite all of the ways he had seen and interacted with Him.

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So how does the Lord respond? "'I will make all My goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you My Name 'The Lord.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy'" (Ex 13:19). So He agrees! Oh how elated Moses must have been in that moment, that the Lord said He would show mercy toward Moses and reveal Himself to him! But, there was a catch. The Lord would show Himself to Moses, but not fully, because He knew that Moses was a sinful man and that the Law was not enough to grant Him complete access and fellowship with Him. So instead, in His mercy, God offers a cleft for Moses to hide in as He passes by. "And the Lord said, 'Behold, there is a place by Me where you shall stand on the rock, and while My glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My hand until I have passed by'" (Ex 33:21-22).

Example of a cleft in a mountain

The Lord provided Moses with a way to behold His glory, to have access to Him. Why? Because He chose to be merciful toward Moses!

So, here's how this ties into my favorite hymn. The first verse of the hymn says,

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee; let the water and the blood, from Thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure." 

It's the first time that I connected the magnitude of the fact that Christ is our cleft! He is what the Lord has given in order to grant us full fellowship with Him! (1 Timothy 2:5 says, "For there is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus...") On our own we are unable to have fellowship with God because of our sinfulness (1 John 1:5-6) or walk in obedience and righteousness (Gal 2:16), but with Christ and because of Christ we are able to not only have fellowship with God but continually grow in becoming more and more like Him. Thus the second verse of Rock of Ages:

"Not the labors of my hands can fulfill Thy law's commands; could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone."

Thou must save and Thou alone. After Moses encountered the Lord, he wore a veil over his face because it shined so brightly that the Israelites couldn't bear to look directly at him (Exodus 34:33). When Paul talks about this veil that kept the Israelites from beholding the glory of God in Moses, he says, "...because only through Christ is it (the veil) taken away" (2 Cor 3:14). 

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So, here's the greatness of the gospel. Are you ready? Under the old covenant and the law, Moses needed a cleft to hide in and a veil to cover his face because he (along with Israel) could not bear to have full access to the glory of God. "But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed...And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor 3:16, 18). Did you catch that? Because Christ is our cleft, our Mediator, we have access to God and we no longer have a veil over our faces; instead we have the opportunity to have full fellowship with Him and to grow more and more like Him each day. We've not only been transformed, but we are being transformed!

So, what does this mean for us?
        We have freedom (2 Cor 3:17) to walk boldly in the presence of the Lord because He has mercifully given us access to Himself through Christ and is now purposefully transforming us into His image. Meaning, even though I can look at my life at this very moment and see ways I have failed to walk in obedience to Christ, I can look at myself and compare where I am now to where I was 4 years ago, when the Lord revealed the gospel to me, and see that He has been continually transforming me to His image each day. I am different, I am transformed; I can see this in the way I spend my time, the way I treat those around me, where my priorities lie, etc, etc. And the beauty is, I will continue to be more and more transformed until the day Christ calls me home. This is why I can boldly sing,

"While I draw this fleeting breath, when mine eyes shall close in death, when I soar to worlds unknown, see Thee on Thy judgment throne; Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee."