D - God's Character Pt. 1

Over the next few weeks we are going to spend some time looking at God’s character. I love God, I hope you do too, so in my pursuit to worship God I want to get to know God as well. Thankfully, there is a Bible verse that teaches us what God’s character looks like:

Exodus 34:6 NIV

6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,

Indecently, this verse is going to be our memory verse for this month. Now, this is really long. So I’ve shortened it a little bit to say:

Exodus 34:6 (NIV)

6 … “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness”

Now, I want to put into practice something that some adults in the room may practice at church or at home but we haven’t done a lot of it here. It’s something we like to call:

Small Groups

Over the next few weeks we are going to have a small devotions, and then our adults are going to pair up with each other and those 2 adults will grab 2-3 kids but no more, and they will for a group. What kind of group? a small group, so it can’t be more than 5 people.

In that group I will give the the adults a few questions for you and your group to talk about for AT MOST 10 MIN. No longer, and afterwards we will join together and potentially discuss our questions and answers.

But let’s read today’s text:

Exodus 34:6–7 NIV

6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. 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.”

Exodus 34:6-7 is the first description of God’s attributes found in Scripture, and it’s the most referenced passage in the entire Bible. Here, we learn that all of God’s actions are an expression of his compassion, grace, patience, loyal love, and faithfulness. This passage has been carefully designed to help us see the meaning and importance of each trait in relation to the others and understand how these five traits relate to God’s justice.

Exodus 34:6-7 tells us that God’s core character traits are rooted in generous mercy and loyal love, which means that God’s anger is not a primary attribute. It’s a divine reaction to selfish and destructive human decisions, and it’s rooted in God’s love.

Just like you would be mad if someone destroyed the things you loved most, God’s anger is a response to evil done to or by humans.

God’s anger and judgment are really important themes in the Bible, but they’re not the whole story. God’s core character is one of generous love that created the world, and he plans to rescue and restore his creation from human evil.

Let’s start by understanding the significance of the characteristics listed in Exodus 34:6:

Compassion

Grace

Slow to anger

Loyal love

Faithfulness.

Over the next couple of weeks we will look at all 5 of these characteristics.

I’ve posted up on the screen our discussion questions, and I will hand out

1. What do you think it would be like to live in a world that had compassion but no consequences for wrongdoing?

2. What do you think it would be like to live in a world that had consequences for wrongdoing but no compassion?

3. Why is it good to have both compassion and justice?