• | Chris McCann
  • Audio: Length: 28:51
  • Passages covered: Genesis 32:30-32, Exodus 33:20-23,9-11, Psalm 34:16, Psalm 68:2, Revelation 6:16,17, Revelation 20:11, Revelation 22:3-4, Psalm 16:11, 2John:1:12,2, John 16:12-13.

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Genesis 32 Series, Study 13, Verses 30-32

Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #13 of Genesis 32, and we will read Genesis 32:30-32:

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank.

I will stop reading there, and that brings us to the end of the chapter.  Once again, it said in Genesis 32:32:

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel…

The word “Peniel” is the same word as “Penuel.”  Do not ask me why the translators spelled it two different ways, but they did.  It is Strong’s #6439, and it means seeing the face of God, and that is what Jacob went on to say under the inspiration of God, in the second part of Genesis 32:30:

… for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

The word “preserved” means “delivered,” and if we get time in this study, we will look at how this word is used in a few places.  It does have to do with salvation.  So we can understand his statement of seeing God face to face because the Bible tells us some very serious things concerning seeing God’s face, as we read in Exodus 33:20-23:

And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And JEHOVAH said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

In these verses we see a couple of statements regarding God’s face.  He said, “Thou canst not see my face…and live.”  And He also placed Moses in the cleft of a rock and covered him with His hand while He passed by, in order that only His back parts could be seen, but His face would not be seen.  And yet, in the same chapter we read earlier in Exodus 33:9-11:

And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and JEHOVAH talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And JEHOVAH spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

This is the same Hebrew word translated as “face” in verses 20 and 23:  Here it says that JEHOVAH spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.  We can see the complexity of the Bible.  The critics would say these are errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions, but none of that is true.  It is not an error or contradiction, but it is faithful and true.  Both statements are correct, and the job of the student of the Bible is to study to harmonize statements.  How can both be correct?  How can Moses have spoken face to face with God as a man speaks to a friend, and then a few verses later it says that no man can see God’s face and live?  Then God went to great length to see that Moses did not see His face by putting him in the cleft of a rock, covering him with His hand, and allowing him to see only His back parts. 

The solution comes when we understand that the phrase “face to face” has a spiritual meaning.  It has a biblical definition that we find when we search the rest of the Bible.  And this is important to us because Jacob has just seen God’s face, and he did not die.  He said his life was preserved.  Again, we can understand why he would say that given this information.  Although it was not yet written down, the Word of God would have been verbally handed down in those generations, including the awesome nature of God and His great terribleness, and the fact that man cannot see God.  And Jacob was delighted that he had seen God face to face, and he called the place “Peniel” because of it.  His life was preserved – he did not die.

But when we read other Scriptures, we learn more about God’s face.  For example, it says in Psalm 34:16:

The face of JEHOVAH is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

Also, it says in Psalm 68:2:

As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

The English word “presence” is a translation of the same Hebrew word for “face,” and it is often translated as “presence.”  So let the wicked perish at the face of God.

It is the same thing in the New Testament if we go to Revelation 6:16:

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

I think that after reading that passage in Exodus where God placed Moses in the cleft of the rock and covered him so he could not see His face, this has some relationship to what it says here: “And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne…”  The Lord Jesus Christ, Eternal God, is seated on the judgment throne in the Day of Judgment.  Then it goes on to say in Revelation 6:17:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

This means that in Judgment Day God is making His “face” known.  He is revealing His “face,” and the wicked will perish at the “presence” or “face” of God.  Again, that happens in Judgment Day, and we are presently living in Judgment Day.  Therefore, we can gather from this information that God has been revealing His “face” because it is a part of Judgment Day.  We are living on the earth in the day of the wrath of God, and God has revealed His “face” and in a spiritual way, and it is as though the wicked are calling on the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them from the face of God who is seated on His judgment throne.  This language ties in with what we read in Revelation 20:11:

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.

Now we understand the reference to the face of God.  The wicked perish at His face.  No man can see His face and live, except for Moses and Jacob, and we could include all of God’s elect.  But again, we understand the elect will not perish because their sins are paid for, and that will permit them to come into the presence of God for all eternity when this world is destroyed.  We will dwell with God.  Or more accurately, He will dwell with us and never leave us.  The Bible tells us in Revelation 22 about this glorious eternal future.  It says in Revelation 22:3-4:

And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

We shall see His face.  The elect children of God will see God’s face, and in this eternal state, we will be dwelling in the fulness of the presence of God, as it says in Psalm 16:11:

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

The word “presence” is the same word as “face.”  So it is clear that it is only necessary to hide His face from His people while this world still exists because we are still in sinful bodies.  We are in bodies that have seen corruption, having the working of sin in them.  And God is Holy God, so we cannot enter into the fulness of His presence, or we would die.  It is a protection for us while we live in these cursed bodies that are still in sin.  It would be bringing sin into the presence of God, and that cannot be.  So God protected Moses by putting him in a cleft of a rock and showing him only His back parts.

But that still does not answer why it said earlier in Exodus 33 that God spoke with Moses face to face as a man speaketh to his friend.  And the answer is that it means that it was not the “fulness” of God’s presence in which Moses encountered JEHOVAH God.  He did not come into the fulness of His presence, but that is language describing something else, and when we search the Bible we discover what is being described.  For example, let us turn to 2John:1:12:

Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.

This refers to fulness of joy, does it not?  And that because John is likened to “the elder” as the Epistle begins in 2John 1:2:

The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth;

So John the elder is a picture of God, the Ancient of days, God is “the elder,” is He not?  He is older than all because He is from everlasting.  And  John is writing to the elect lady and her children, just as God has written the Bible to His elect, or we could say to Abraham and his seed, or Christ and His seed.  It is using John as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ addressing the elect.  Again, it says, “Having many things to write unto you,” and God is saying, “I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.

Remember the parable of the lost coin or the lost sheep, and we are told that when it is found, we are told there is “joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.”  So there is joy in God’s salvation, and the fulness of joy would have to do with all the elect becoming saved, and that would be fulness of joy from God’s perspective.  And then we will enter into His presence, and that is fulness of joy from our perspective as the people of God.  But here, this is really a reference to what God has done in writing the Bible.  He completed the written Word by the close of the first century A. D.  It is estimated that it was about 95 A. D. when the Lord moved John to write the book of Revelation, and that completed the whole book of the Bible.  It had been in progress from the time of Moses all the way to John, which was about 1,500 years of God moving holy men of old to write down the thing He would have them to write.  It was the Word of God from the mouth of God.  And yet, God had more to say, did He not?  He had more information to impart, but once the Bible was complete, He placed Himself under the Law that He gave in Revelation 22:18, which says, “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.”  There cannot be anything additional in writing after the book of Revelation.  There cannot be any additional dreams or visions, or tongues given to anyone either because if that were the case, it should be written down, just as Isaiah wrote the vision that God gave him, as well as other prophets that wrote the dreams that God gave them.  Any supernatural revelation cannot be added to the Bible.

That presents a problem because this verse in 2John 1:12 indicates that God will come and speak face to face with the elect so that our joy will be full.  And, yes, this does tie into the book that was sealed until the time of the end.  Then at the time of the end, it was unsealed, and knowledge is increased, and this was happening simultaneously with the sending forth of the Latter Rain in which God saved the great multitude and completed His salvation program.  He saved everyone He intended to save.  And that would involve the fulness of joy toward all the elect that were chosen to receive God’s grace and mercy.  We read similar things the Lord Jesus said in John 16:12-13:

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Almost all theologians mistake this reference to the Spirit coming to what happened at Pentecost in 33 A. D., and they assume the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is what then guided the people of God into all truth.  But we know that their thinking is not correct because the Bible indicates that during the church age, the churches had only partial understanding.  They saw “through a glass darkly” over the course of that 1,955 years.  But there was a second outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the Lord accomplished beginning in the Jubilee year of 1994, and when John 16:13 tells us, “howbeit when he, the Spirit of the truth, is come,” it is not telling us which coming of the Spirit is in view.  Is it the first outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost?  Or is it the second outpouring of the Spirit in the Jubilee year of 1994?  And since it also tells us, “he will guide you into all truth,” it can only be the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit that started in September 1994.

And just look at what has happened since then with all the wonderful doctrines God has brought forth from His Word: 1) saving faith is the faith of Christ; 2) the Sunday Sabbath; 3) baptism as the washing away of sin; 4) the end of the church age; 4) Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; 5) Hell is not a place, but a condition, and the earth is turned into “hell” (death) over the course of this prolonged judgment period; 6) May 21, 2011 was the beginning of Judgment Day, a spiritual judgment on the world; 7) the prolonged nature of Judgment Day; 8) the elect are left on the earth to go through it; 9) God’s delayed drawing of the elect after saving them; and 10) during the prolonged Judgment Day, no one is being saved in the churches or in the world.  All of these things keep coming forth out of the Bible, giving us more and more information.  And they are truths that were never previously known.  It is progressive revelation.  It is information that was sealed until the time of the end.

And this is what Christ had in mind when He said in John 16:12:

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

Of course the Holy Spirit would not have revealed to the church the knowledge of its “end” in the 21st century because the churches had a task to perform throughout those centuries (since 33 A. D.), and it would have been an unnecessary burden to weigh down the churches with that, or to even give them the knowledge that the world would continue for all these centuries, almost 2,000 years.  You know, in the past during the church age people experienced troubles, afflictions, tribulations and persecutions (sometimes even unto physical death), but God wrote the Bible in such a way so that practically every generation could have had expectation or hope that Christ could come at any time, in the second, the eighth or the fifteenth century, and so on.  And as we look back, people like to say, “Well, people have been saying that Christ is coming for hundreds and hundreds of years.”  Yes – God allowed that understanding to develop because it served as kind of a “release valve” from the pressure, and people could pray, “O, Lord, come quickly!  Come quickly!”   And God knew the time when He would come, which was almost two thousand years later, but it was not necessary to weigh down the saints of the past with that knowledge.  The Lord sealed up these things until the time of the end, and then He revealed that the time was near, and He revealed the timeline of history, the timeline of the Great Tribulation, and the time of the beginning of the Day of Judgment, May 21, 2011, because it is necessary for the saints living at the time of the end to possess that information.  It is not unneedful, but very needful for us.  So God arranged things in this way to open up the information at the time of the end of the world.  In doing so, as we read in 2John, it will produce the proper affect: Again, it says in 2John 1:12:

Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.