The Bible Binge: Advent Kindness (Exodus 34:1-9)

Random Acts of Kindness

February 14th is Valentine’s day. February 16th is the beginning of the rodeo here in Los Fresnos. February 17th is not one of those days circled on our calendars. February 17th is Random Acts of Kindness Day, a day first observed in Denver, Colorado almost 30 years ago. Since then, millions of stories have been told about strangers helping strangers. One such act was picked up by a local television station in the Atlanta area about an estate manager who hired an Uber ride from a soccer match, striking up a conversation with the driver. Kevin Esch learned that the driver was a single mom who became an Uber driver to pay off a college debt so she could return to school and get her associate’s degree. A few days later, Latonya Young got a phone call from Georgia State telling her she could enroll in school… her debt had been paid. By the Uber rider. She re-enrolled and since then, not only got her associate degree, but her bachelor’s degree. A random act of kindness.

Kindness is in short supply. What’s funny is that most people believe themselves to be kind. A study done by a San Francisco health system found that 95 percent of Americans feel that they themselves are kind. They think themselves to be, but the next guy isn’t. That same survey found that almost half of Americans feel that society is unkind and more than half believe kindness is not valued in our culture. In other words, I’m kind, but you’re not and you don’t care. Is it any wonder that our culture is so polarized?

What is Kindness?

What is kindness? Summarizing the dictionaries,

“kindness is a type of behavior marked by acts of generosity, consideration, rendering assistance, or concern for others, without expecting praise or reward in return or the quality of being gentle, caring, or helpful.”

Is God kind? I find that to be a fascinating question. We talk about God being good. In fact, our American Christianity has a creed of sorts. We say “God is good”. And the response comes back, “all the time”. We talk about God’s love and God’s grace. But is God kind? It is an important question to ask, especially when kindness seems to be lacking even among Christians.

The Book of Exodus

The passage we just read moments ago will help us answer that question. We’re in our Bible Binge… making our way through the Bible over the next year. And our Bible reading this coming week find us in the Book of Exodus. The Book of Exodus is about Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. Here’s a snapshot of the Book of Exodus:

Author – Moses

Written during the time of Israel’s 40 years of wandering.

Israel’s historical, theological, and redemption origins

Big Idea: God rescues His people from slavery, makes them a nation, dwells with and among them as their God and they his people.

Themes: Dwelling, Nationhood, The law, God’s glory

That’s what you get with the book of Exodus. All of the stories in Exodus are going to orbit around the idea that God has chosen Israel as His people, he has rescued them from Egypt and saved them through the Red Sea, and at the end, is dwelling with and among His people just like He promised. It’s not all hunky dory.

When we get to Exodus 34, Israel has disobeyed God in the worst way possible. After leaving the Red Sea area, they head toward the Promised Land and end up at Mount Sinai. At Mount Sinai, God gives Israel the law, the 10 commandments, and then they covenant with God. God promises to be their God and they will be his people… on the condition that they obey the covenant. And they give their promise to obey it all. And no sooner have they given their promise to obey and they break the very first commandment… have no gods other than god and don’t make an image of god to worship. They build a golden calf and worship god through the calf, after he explicitly said this is rule number one. Don’t make idols. Don’t have any gods in front of me. I’m not only numero uno, I’m the only one.

They break the rule with a festival. Moses, who was up on the mountain see what’s going on, has a meltdown, and breaks the 10 commandment tablets in anger. People are executed as a result. God threatens to abandon them and Moses intervenes on behalf of the people. And God again promises to go with them to the Promised Land. And we come to chapter 34. In the wake of what has transpired, all the sin, all the guilt that is now a stain on Israel… how are they to think of God?

What is God like?

I mean, this is a really big question. What are you thinking when you hear this story? God has these rules and Israel can’t even keep the first one. God is angry? God is vengeful? God is jealous? What if all you knew about God was the commandments? What if all we knew about God was the judgment he exacts on Egypt and now Israel? You worship other Gods and now your life is on the line. When it comes to the law and God’s commands and the way Israel acts and God responds, you begin to think that God is just another in the long, long line of gods who just get spiteful, mean, and angry when you don’t do what they say, when you don’t toe the line, when you don’t give them what they want. After all, this is exactly what God promised Adam and Eve: disobey and die.

How is that for a god to be worshipped? And as if to make that point abundantly clear, God has Moses come back up the mountain and as the chapter opens, God’s giving a replacement copy of the commandments. The stone tablets 2.0. Let’s make sure we are clear that the law will be obeyed… here’s another set of tablets as a reminder. Yeah, that’s the kind of God we serve, always making rules, always ready to smite us down.

If you don’t think that’s what Israel may be thinking up to verse 5 in chapter 34, it’s certainly the way Christianity talks about this God in this chapter. I grew up not even knowing verse 6 and the first part of verse 7 existed. A Bible verse that was hammered over and over and over again in Sunday School when I was growing up was the back half of verse 7 and in fact, that’s how it started:

He will not leave the guilty unpunished. (Exodus 34:7b)

Be afraid of God. He’s quick with the trigger finger if you step out of line. You disobey, you are likely to get what Israel got after worshipping the golden calf: a strong whipping from God. And another set of stone tablets. Because that’s who God is. If you’re guilty, be sure you will be punished.

Is God kind?

Is God kind? We’re back to that question. If this is all there is, we could say, Yes, God is good. Yes, he does good. He does give us good things… but boy oh boy, that goodness sometimes comes with an iron hammer. He’s good, but let’s not call him kind.

But is that what we’re supposed to see here? And as hard as it is for Israel… is that all they are supposed to know about God, especially having just given him the big middle finger in building a false golden idol and giving it all the worship and attention that was due God? They most certainly are guilty.

Against this dark backdrop, God gives Israel a statement for all time, a statement about himself that is both a promise and a blessing, a statement that blows all that he has even promised to that point away… they had to have done a double take when they heard it:

Exodus 34:5–7 The Lord came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed his name, “the Lord.” The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.”

No passage is quoted more often in the Old Testament than this one… 15 times this statement about who God is for Israel appears in various forms throughout the Old Testament. If Genesis 3:15 provides the storyline for the entire Old Testament, this verse provides the context and meaning of that storyline. Just why is it that God is working out his promise to fix the sin problem?

On the face of it, this description of Israel’s God is breath-taking. No gods in the history of the world have this description. Egypt. The Philistines. Babylonians. Greeks. Romans. Native American tribes. Hindu, and Mayan deities. No god outside of Christianity has this description. Gods are to be feared. They are to be appeased. They are full of vengeance and retribution and anger and justice. But forgiving? Compassionate? Loving?

This is a statement for all-time. This is who God is FOR YOU, disobedient Israel. Look at these characteristics:

God is a God of:

Compassion

Grace

(Patience) Slow to anger

(Love) Abounding in Faithful Love

(Truth) Abounding in Truth

(Forgiveness) Forgiving rebellion and sin

You want a picture of kindness? There it is. Compassion. Grace. Love. Patience. Forgiveness. God isn’t just good. God is kind! Why do you think these verses are the most quoted verses in the Old Testament? Because they are so stupendous. And year after year after year, as Israel moves into the Promised Land and then has kings and has a temple and becomes a worldly power, the prophets, the theologians, even King David can’t let go of this fact that God is kind. That you can expect God to provide his compassion, his grace, his love, his forgiveness… even when Israel is at its worst… God hasn’t changed. Is God kind? You bet he is! He’s still the same kind God.

Why do we need God’s kindness?

Why is it that a nation that has absolutely blown to bits any semblance of being able to keep the very first command is told and comforted and reassured that God is kind? That God is a God of grace and compassion and love and forgiveness? Why does God follow up giving the second set of 10 commandments with this amazing statement about compassion and grace?

Paul, the great missionary, has the answer for us.. when he states something totally and religiously incorrect… at least the way we think.

Romans 2:4 Do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

Paul is alluding to this Exodus passage. He’s saying can’t you see… it’s God’s kindness that leads to our repentance. God’s kindness. Not God’s law. The dirty little secret back at Sinai.. God gives the second set of stone tablets knowing full well that those tablets cannot produce the obedience he expects from Israel. Those tablets cannot give life. They cannot bring repentance. Those tablets are only good for showing Israel how bad they are. How bad we are. The tablets show us that we are all idolators. We all break the rules. We all break all the rules. The law telling me I must always make God number 1 in my life can’t begin to provide the first help to make me obey. In fact, Paul says a little later that the law not only doesn’t help me obey, it actually inclines my heart to disobey.

What is it that Israel needs to obey? What is it that we need for repentance? It’s not the law. It’s his kindness. In the wake of giving the second set, God says, this is what you need. You need to hear that I am kind. I’m gracious. I am love. That’s what will sustain you. That’s what will bring you to the repentance and faith that you need. You need the gospel. This is WHO I AM FOR YOU.

The Scandal of Kindness

I never heard that part of this entire paragraph. We are absolutely drunk with the law and obedience, always running to emphasize what God does to those who are guilty of sin. But the true reality is that because God is kind and because God is gracious… He Himself has dealt with the law on our behalf.

You know what the scandal is? We’ve been told that

God will not leave the guilty unpunished.

Yet God allows the guilty to go unpunished.

The guilty suffer no consequences. That’s us. And you know why we don’t? Because Jesus was punished as the guilty party. And he lets us go unpunished. That is the ultimate kindness. Jesus came precisely for this reason. He was born in a manger, and his mission was to provide what the law, what God’s commands cannot.

Christ’s mission was to make sure that the guilty go unpunished.

That’s kindness. That Advent Kindness. That night in Bethlehem was pure, unadulterated kindness. The grand descent from heaven, accompanied by angels, into a cattle feeder… so that guilty people would not face the consequences of their sin. Are you kidding me? Kindness bringing the guilty to repentance instead of hell. What is it that our culture needs to hear? What is our Advent message to an unkind world? Let me show you just how kind God is. Let me show you the kindness of the manger. Kindness came as a baby and went to a cross so that the guilty would go unpunished. Our hope for this Advent or any Advent season is God’s kindness.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

This is scandalous. Right here. This is God’s kindness FOR YOU. Jesus took our guilt. And right here, he provides forgiveness, life, and salvation for guilty people. And as we partake in faith, Jesus makes us “not guilty”. We go free. We go unpunished. This is grace. This is love. This is kindness FOR YOU. And FOR ME.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.