God's Heart is Still Gracious
Notes
Transcript
Warren Brosi
April 14, 2024
Dominant Thought: God looks with favor on us even when we don’t deserve it.
Objectives:
I want my listeners to understand the gracious character of God.
I want my listeners to feel encouraged by God’s grace.
I want my listeners to extend grace to others even when they don’t deserve it.
I have good news for you today. God looks with favor on us even when we don’t deserve it. As we continue through this bicentennial year, we want to come back to our theme verse of Hebrews 13.8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
This month, we want to focus on the word same from Hebrews 13.8. God’s heart is still the same. Last week, we saw how God is compassionate. Today, we’ll see how God is gracious.
Let’s read our text for this series from Exodus 34.6-7. As we look at God’s favor, we’ll ask three questions: 1) What is it? 2) What should we not do in response to God’s favor? and 3) What should we do in response to God’s favor?
Question one: What is God’s favor? The word, “gracious” in Exodus 34.6 is found 13 times in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. 11 of those 13 times it is paired with compassionate, the character trait we studied last week. The compassionate word was the motherly love from a form of “womb.” So, compassionate may help define gracious and gracious may help define compassionate.
Another way to look at this word gracious is with favor or delight. Sometimes we look at things with favor because they are graceful…like a deer or a necklace. It’s delightful to the eyes.
Another way favor is used is in human relationships when someone is seeking the favor of someone more powerful. We see several examples in the Bible and it usually reads, the person “found favor in the eyes of..” Ruth found favor in the eyes of Boaz (Ruth 2.2, 10, 13). David found favor in the eyes of King Saul and his son Jonathan (1 Samuel 16.22; 20.3). Esther found favor in the eyes of the king numerous times (Esther 2.15,17; 5.2, 8; 7.3; 8.5). People will ask the one greater “look with favor upon me....”
God looks with favor upon His people in Exodus 34.6-9. Don’t forget the context of what is happening. In Exodus 19, God’s people come to Mount Sinai. They receive the 10 commandments in Exodus 20. In Exodus 24.4, the people “responded with one voice, ‘Everything the LORD has said we will do.’” Later in Exodus 24, Moses went up the mountain to meet with God for forty days and forty nights (Ex. 24.18). While on the mountain God gives instructions for the tent or tabernacle complete with a table, lampstand, and curtains. They’ve entered a covenant relationship and now God’s setting up His home with them. While Moses is receiving the instructions on setting up God’s home with them, they people grow impatient.
The people pressure Aaron, Moses’ brother to “make us gods who will go before us” (Exodus 32.1). He fashions a calf out of gold, “These are your gods who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32.4). What happened to “everything the LORD has said we will do”?
Three thousand people are executed (Ex. 32.28) and God sends a plague (Ex.32.35). Then, Moses meets with God. In Exodus 33.11, “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”
In Exodus 33.12-23, we listen in on a conversations between the LORD and Moses. In their conversation, Moses says to the LORD, “You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me’…teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you” (Exodus 33.12-13). Two more times in this section requests God’s favor (Exodus 33.16-17). The God says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Ex. 33.19).
So on the heels of one of the greatest corporate sins in Israel’s early history, Moses and the people will still experience God’s favor. It doesn’t really make sense. “God’s grace is thus finally rooted, not in what people do, but in his disposition to be gracious in ways beyond any human formula or calculation (Exodus 33.19; 34.6)” (Terence E. Fretheim, New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology, 2:205).
Moses brings some new stone tablets to replace the broken ones that represented the brokenness in the covenant. God passes by and proclaims His name to Moses.
In Exodus 34.9, Moses worships the LORD and prays, “Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.”
Friends, I have good news for you. God looks with favor on us even when we don’t deserve it.
But let’s be honest. We think we have a pretty good sense of justice and we think we know what people deserve. If someone wrongs us, then we want God to get them. If they hurt someone, then God should hurt them. We want the balances to add up and everything to be even.
That’s what Jonah was feeling.
Question two: How should we not respond to God’s favor? God calls Jonah to go to the capital city of Assyrian Empire. The city was Nineveh and Assyria was the big bully of a nation in the ancient world. They were known to flay the skin of a defeated king and spread it on the wall of a city (John Mark Comer, God Has a Name, p. 135). God calls Jonah to preach to Nineveh. Jonah refuses. God gets Jonah’s attention by sending a huge fish. Jonah reconsiders and goes to preach at Nineveh, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3.4). The people believe God. They proclaim a fast. Even the king took off his royal robes. He decrees, “Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything;…Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3.7-9).
God responded with favor to the people of Nineveh. My friends, I have good news. God looks with favor on us even when we don’t deserve it. In Jonah 3.10, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not bring on them the destruction He had threatened.”
You would think Jonah would be happy. “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong and he became angry” (Jonah 4.1). Then Jonah prayed to the LORD, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (Jonah 4.2). Jonah leads with our word for today, “Gracious” or “favorable”. I knew you are “gracious.”
In short, don’t be angry at the favor of God. Instead, rejoice when people experience God’s grace and compassion, His mercy and His love.
Question three: What should we do in response to God’s favor? In Mark 6, the disciples are straining at the oars of their boat on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night. Jesus comes to them walking on the water. Notice how Mark describes Jesus’ actions as He approaches the boat in Mark 6.48, “Shortly before dawn He went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them...” Remember what God told Moses before He proclaimed His name? “When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by” (Exodus 33.22). Mark is wanting us to know that God is walking on that lake in Jesus.
Later on in Mark 10.46-52, Jesus meets a blind man name Bartimaeus. Two times Bartimaeus shouts, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” In other words, Bartimaeus was shouting to Jesus, the king, “Have favor on me.” The Lord, the Lord gracious or favorable and compassionate.
Jesus does have mercy on him by granting him his sight. Jesus replies, “Go, your faith has healed you” (Mark 10.52).
Good news, God looks with favor on us even when don’t deserve it.
The apostle Paul said it this way in Ephesians 2.4-10.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
I hope you are feeling the love our Father has for you. I hope you understand that He loves us and shows us favor even when we don’t deserve it.
So, where do we go from here?
1—Maybe you need to be reminded of God’s grace and compassion to you even when you break His heart.
2—Maybe you need to rejoice with someone who’s experiencing God’s favor even though you don’t think they deserve it.
3-All of us need to extend God’s favor to those who don’t deserve it. There’s a cultural term called, “Hollowing the middle.” We live in a world of extremes. Algorithms have fed us a steady diet of things we like. If you are not like us, then you are the enemy. We live in angry and anxious times. What would it look like to extends God’s favor to someone who opposes your opinions, your view points? How can you show God’s grace and compassion to your neighbor this week?