The God Who Is Loving

Exodus 34

What are the attributes that make someone a great friend and person to be around?

If you remember from last week I talked about this reality that a Holy God relates to His undeserving people and in the middle of providing a means to be rightly relate to Him, Israel strays after another God. And in Ch. 33 we see moses pleading with God to be merciful and to not remove His presence from Israel. The Lord grants Moses request to remain in the presence of His people and to show Moses his glory.

This chapter opens up with the Lord who is going to rewrite the laws that were given the last time Moses was up on the mount Sinai.

v.3 “No one shall come up…let no one be seen…let no flocks graze”

God gives specific instructions to Moses that remind us of God’s holiness. God can not be treated as common or casual and nothing unholy can enter his presence

God in His faithfulness to his promises, meets Moses on the top of the mountain and the text tells us that he stood with Him there and proclaimed His name. This proclaiming of his name is not just God telling Moses his name again like he did back in Ch. 3, its not like God had amnesia and forgot he told Moses His name. God is going to give us what is behind the name Yahweh, He’s going to tell us with his own words what his character is.

God reveals himself to be

Merciful & Gracious

Slow to Anger

Abounding in Steadfast Love & Faithfulness

Keeping Steadfast Love for Thousands

Forgiving Iniquity, Transgression, & Sin

Righteous & Just: “will by no means clear the guilty”

A Holy God, Love Us

Last week we saw a God who was gracious and merciful, who granted a relationship and his presence to an undeserving people. Ultimately we see God say this of himself.

It’s no coincidence that God is saying this of himself after he has already demonstrated it.

God shows his character before he reveals his character

Remember when the sons of Jacob sold their brother Joseph into slavery only to be rescued by him years later, such that Joseph can say God intended their evil deeds for good

Remember when Israel was groaning under the harsh conditions of slavery in Egypt and God heard their cry and freed them, even though they didn’t believe

Remember when after delivering Israel from Egypt, they complained against God and instead of punishing them satisfied them

Remeber when after Israel said that they would obey all the commands of the Lord they went on to make a god of their own hands, and instead of cutting these people off God is here again dwelling with them and covenanting with them

Yeah, that’s why God can say of himself he is Gracious and merciful and slow to anger

God has been patient with a people not so patient

This same God reveals himself to be abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness

Abundant Steadfast Love for Thousands

The idea here is that God’s love really is limitless and its devoted/enduring

God’s love is not wavering or changing based on loveability of His people

Israel hasn’t been all that loveable throughout Exodus, they have been quite pitiful at times if we’re honest

That may be hard to wrap our heads around because a lot of what is conveyed as love is really just circumstancial, like if its convenient and beneficial then I’ll love you

God loves because He is where love come from, it is his nature & character

1 John 4:7–8 ESV

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God loves because He is love.

And God loved Israel and he delivered them from slavery, and he kept them from experience the weight of judgment their sin deserved

And this same love has been poured out on you, when God says that he keeps this steadfast love for thousands the idea here is to the thousandth generation, in otherwords this love of God is going to extend far beyond just this people Isreal that he is dealing with. Its going to extend to all that fear Him.

Abundant Faithfulness

This abundant faithfulness is the idea of God’s limitless credibility, He never gives reason to question His integrity

God has been fulfilling his promises since the beginning of time and this people Israel experienced this, though they didn’t always believe it

God kept every promise he has made to this people, delivering them out of Egypt, sustaining in the wilderness, giving them victory over their enemies, and dwelling in their midst

And as we discussed about before, God has kept and will keep every promise to you

Forgiving

God has proven himself to be a forgiving God, recount all the sins of the God’s people up until this point and yet God is still honoring their repentance as they turn back to him and he still dwells with them

If God is not a forgiving God who we can count on to forgive then we have no reason to ever have assurance of our right standing with God, but just as Israel knew that they could be right with God as they turned away from their sin and cried out to God for his forgiveness, we also have the same confidence because of Christ

Its because of Christ that we can be sure that we are forgiven we we confess and turn away from our sin

1 John 1:9 ESV

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Righteous & Just

God is Holy & Righteous and Just, and that means he deals with sin, this truth is a cause to rejoice for Israel as they reflect on the furious judgement God brought upon Egypt for their wickedness against God and His people, but this same truth is a cause to tremble in fear as they consider their own sin against a Holy God

God couldn’t just look past the sins of Israel because these were the people that He chose and made a covenant with

See we understand this all so well, in our context, we love when the big time criminal gets justice, but we don’t like being held accountable for our wrong doing. And yet God is not partial, to who gets justice, otherwise that wouldn’t make him righteous

This creates the great dilemma the points us straight to the cross

As we come to realize our sin as we look upon this Holy God, we realize we stand guilty before Him, and the appropriate punishment for that guilt is death and eternal separation from God, and the grim reality is that there is no way I can pay this debt on my own.

But God so loved us that He sent His Son to be the payment for our sins

1 John 4:10 ESV

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Such that...

The cross is where God’s love and justice collide.

God desires relationship with His people but He can’t look past their sin, until its paid for, and that’s exactly what Christ accomplished out of obedience to the father and love for us

Worship the God Who Loves You

The only right response to the glorious God who has loved His people is Worship (v. 8)

Moses was clear that at hearing and beholding the very glory of God in all his wonderful attributes, immediate worship was the only appropriat response

At hearing who God is Moses was brought to see just how sinful his people were and their need to be forgiven by this gracious, merciful and loving God. And that was his request, that they would be forgiven and that God would still be with them.

Well just as Moses, as you hear the Lord speak of himself through these scriptures the right response out of a heart that has seen witnessed the glory of God is to worship, its to surrender your lives in submission to Him, because He’s worth it and we owe it to Him. All of creation sings the praises of the Lord and its his rebellious image bearers that have the hardest time figuring this out

This is the God whom you should run to, that you may be cleansed from the stain of sin, guilt and shame

This God is the one whom you should want to cling to

This is the God that we should be desiring to be in the presence of and to belong to

The God who loves you, is worthy of worship!

Questions:

This incredible God that we have been studying for the past couple months actually loves us, have you experienced the love of God? Describe your experience.

Tonight we see God’s holiness and love collide, how is God’s love magnified by the fact that he is also righteous & just (meaning he punishes sin)?

Moses’ response to hearing the glorious character of God was submission & worship, have you come to believe that the God we have been studying is worthy of worship? If so, what is the proper response to this passage of scripture?