I am going to start you off with a couple of “Who am I?” riddles this morning. “I dig out tiny caves, and store gold and silver in them. I also build bridges of silver and make crowns of gold. Who am I?” A: a dentist.
Here’s another one. “I can shave several times a day but still have a beard. Who am I?” A: a barber.
If you had to write a “Who am I?” riddle with God as the answer, what clues would you include? Descriptions of his power? A hint about his triune nature? In our sermon text this morning, God revealed himself to Moses. As we study this description and unravel God’s identity, we’ll also discover our own identity. (Read text.)
Our sermon text takes place soon after the Israelites made a golden calf and worshipped it while Moses was on top Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments. Moses pleaded forgiveness for the Israelites, and God agreed. Moses seemed to be feeling pretty good about himself about this—like an employee who has just gotten his boss to agree to a raise. And so Moses pressed further. He said to God: “Now show me your glory!” (Exodus 33:18)
If you’re on a tour of the White House led by the president himself, would you say midway through the tour: “Show us your bedroom, Mr. President”? I don’t think you would. The president’s bedroom is his sanctuary. Not even his advisors get to meet the president there. So when Moses said, “Lord, show me your glory!” how did God handle this bold request? Like he handles every request from his children: he offered Moses something better than what he had asked. God said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence... [But] you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:19-21)
Rather than giving Moses a visible portrait of himself, God was going to offer a verbal portrait (Tom Nass). Don’t dismiss this important point because it means that if you want to understand God better, study him with your ears, not your eyes. Is this perhaps also why we don’t have a physical description of Jesus? We don’t know if he had curly hair or strait. We don’t know if he could have dunked a basketball or was more the size of a horse jockey—short and compact. We don’t know those details because they are not as important as knowing what Jesus said about himself, about us, and about our heavenly Father.
So what exactly did God say about himself to Moses? While Moses was hidden in the cleft of a rock to protect him from the divine glory, God “proclaimed his name.” He said: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin…” (Ex. 34: 6-7)
What God wanted Moses and us to know about him first and foremost is that he is a compassionate and gracious God who is slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, who maintains love to thousands and forgives wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Oh my. This is like sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s. There are so many delicious things on offer, where does one start?
Let’s start with the word “compassionate.” You may remember from our Bible study on the book of Lamentations that this word is related to the Hebrew word for “womb.” When God says that he has compassion for us, he wants us to know that he thinks of us the way a good mother thinks of her 18-month-old who is running towards her for a hug only to catch the edge of the carpet and does a belly flop a couple of feet short of her intended destination. The mother does not laugh. Instead, she scoops up the child and coos words of encouragement to distract from the pain.
Likewise, the God of the universe is not like an AI-equipped computer that can answer any question it’s given, but does not feel anything for you. No. When you suffer, God suffers. When you rejoice, he rejoices. God feels this way even when we do things that are foolish and sinful. For he is also a “gracious” God who is “slow to anger.”
Tell me, how long do you wait before beeping the horn at the driver in front of you who doesn’t see the green light? Do you politely wait for him to finish the text he’s pounding out? Do you even count “one Mississippi” before laying on the horn? We are usually quick to anger and annoyance. Not God.
Can you think of any instances of God’s long-suffering patience? How about with the Canaanites? Although they were engaged in a putrid form of idol worship at the time of Abraham, God gave them 400 years to repent. That’s why the Israelites did not return to Canaan for 400 years after Jacob and his sons left for Egypt. 400 years! Why, we don’t even usually give our children four chances to behave. Three chances is the usual limit.
God is patient with sinners because he is “abounding in love and faithfulness, 7maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” (Ex. 34:6-7) God “abounds” in love. One Bible student (Reed Lessing) compared God to our federal government. Whenever there is a need, God just prints off more love like the government often just prints more money to pay its bills. Thankfully, God will never go bankrupt doing this. For the book of Lamentations tells us that this faithful love of God’s is “new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)
God’s love is new every morning in the sense that it is always full to the top. His love for you never hovers above “Empty.” But not only is his love always full, it’s also new as in just the kind of love you need for that morning and for the rest of that day. It’s a steadfast love that’s fitted for your trials, for your temptations, and for your heart-crushing disappointments (R. Lessing) the way a tailor custom-makes a dress or a pair of pants to fit you.
God’s faithful love shows its true colors in the way that God forgives all “rebellion, wickedness, and sin.” (Ex. 34:7) The Hebrew language has three different words of “sin.” When God uses all three of those words here, it’s his way of saying, “I forgive all kinds of sin—even the ones that you are so ashamed of that you haven’t told anyone else about.”
OK, all that is great to hear, but didn’t God reveal another side of himself? After all, he told Moses: “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:7) The God of the Bible is indeed a God of love, but he is also a God of justice. He must punish sin just as water must turn into ice in freezing temperatures. That’s just the nature of water. Likewise, a holy God must punish sin. That’s the nature of a holy and just God.
Ok, we can understand that. But why does God say that he punishes children for the sins of their fathers—for sins they didn’t even commit? If this was the only Bible verse we had on this topic, we would have to assume that’s what God meant. But in other parts of Scripture, God makes it clear that each person is responsible for their own sin (Ezekiel 18). God does not punish us for the sins of others. Unfortunately, when parents set bad examples for their children, the children often continue to commit the same sins as their parents. That’s what God is talking about here.
So what do God’s traits of love and justice teach us about ourselves? It teaches us that we are under the scrutiny of a holy God who will judge and punish us for our sins. It teaches us that we are not free to live any way that we want. But because this God is weighted towards love, like a sailboat that lists to one side because the wind is pushing it in that direction, we also learn and are assured that God still does love us and has saved us from our sins.
This is, of course, where Jesus comes in. Like a bridge that lets us cross a canyon, Jesus bridges the gap between sinners and holy God. And as a bridge bears the weight of the cars and trucks that drive over it, Jesus bore the weight of our sins so that we may run to God and find a full welcome.
One Bible student (R. Lessing) thought of the result of Jesus’ work like this. He spoke about checking his bank balance while he was teaching abroad in Kenya. He was startled to see that there was supposedly $360,000 in his account! Being a poor seminary professor, he knew that he had not left the US with $360,000. The last time he had checked, there was only $4,000 there. Had he received a bonus, a gift, an inheritance? No. It turns out that the ATM was giving his balance in Kenyan shilling which was trading for 90 to 1 against the US dollar at the time. Bummer. This professor really wasn’t any richer than he was before. But do you know that when you check your spiritual balance before God, your balance is astronomically higher than it should be? It is, and this is not a mistake. You see, Jesus’s perfect life has been credited to you.
Moses was overwhelmed when God unravelled his identity for the prophet. He bowed down and worshipped. No, God didn’t tell Moses everything the prophet wanted to know about him. For example, Moses never got to see what God actually looks like without any filters. But God did tell Moses, and now he is telling us, what we need to know about him—that he is both holy and the one who has declared us holy for the sake of Jesus who is the embodiment of God’s love.
In an unravelling God’s identity, we learn our own identity. Although we can’t quite make sense of what God is up to in our lives or where he is leading us, we can be certain of his attitude towards us: he loves us dearly. That’s finally all we really need to know. It’s a reason for us to get down on our knees with Moses and worship this awesome God. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
What notable event in the history of the Israelites immediately preceded today’s sermon text?
God always gives his people something better than what they ask for. How was that true for Moses in our text today?
Explain: The way to see God is with our ears, not our eyes.
Jot down thoughts you want to remember about the following words that describe God.
Compassionate:
Gracious and Slow to Anger:
Abounding in Love and Faithfulness:
Forgives Rebellion, Wickedness, and Sin:
Does not Leave the Guilty Unpunished, but Punishes the Children for the Sins of their Father:
Only in Jesus is God’s love and justice reconciled. What two illustrations made this point?
In an unravelling God’s identity, we discover our own identity. How so?
