Seeing God as He Truly Is (Exodus 34:6-7)

Big Idea: We must see God as He truly is––a merciful, gracious, patient, loving, faithful, and forgiving God.

Growing up, what was your picture of God? One way I viewed Him was like Santa Claus, the jolly, white-bearded dude who gave people cool gifts. Another picture was like a Pez Dispenser of blessing in the sky. I would only go to Him when I needed Him. What was your picture?

And how about now? What is your picture of God now? Do you see Him like Santa Claus or the Pez Dispenser? Or do you see Him like the dad who left you as a kid? Maybe you see Him as your angry and critical grandma, always correcting you. Maybe you see Him as your disappointed mom with tears running down her face after you lied again. Christian therapist, Dr. Craig Cashwell, says, “We project our caregivers onto God. He is like what they’re like.” Reflect honestly, what is your current picture of God?

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we all have a picture of what God is like. And the implications of this picture are far-reaching. If God is the dad who bailed on us, we won’t bring our needs to Him because He doesn’t care. If He’s our angry and critical grandma, we’ll strive to earn His acceptance and feel shame when we fail to do so. If He’s our disappointed mom, we’ll always timidly approach Him with fear and guilt. Pastor and author, A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” This is because how we picture God affects every aspect of our lives. So, it’s important to ask, “Is my picture of God what He’s really like?”

I want to take us to a passage in Scripture where God has every right to not care, be angry and critical, and feel disappointed toward His people. But I want us to see how God describes Himself in this situation. It’s different from what we might assume. Turn to Exodus 34:6.

As you turn there, some quick background. God has just rescued Israel from a 400-year slavery stint in Egypt. God performs a bunch of miracles, consistently providing for and protecting Israel. Through amazing acts over a forty-year period, God continued reinforcing His commitment to them. Our passage picks up with Israel in the desert, camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

But after all of this, Israel messes up big time! In Exodus 32, Israel gets antsy while waiting for Moses at the bottom of Mt. Sinai. So, they throw what some commentators call a “perverted celebration.” They build a golden calf idol, worship it, eat and get drunk, and have a big orgy. They do this as a way to thank the golden calf for taking them out of Egypt. Not a good look for God’s people. If you were God, how would you respond here? How would you respond to your people having an idol-worshipping, drunken orgy? What would we assume God’s response would be? Let’s look at it together, Exodus 34:6-7:

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Pray.

Wow! Is that how you would have responded? Is that how you’d describe yourself at this low moment with your people? I don’t think any of us would respond this way.

This passage is extremely important for many reasons. I want to highlight two. The first is that this passage is God’s self-disclosure. It’s how God sees and expresses Himself. One pastor calls this passage, “the ground zero for a theology of God.” One author says, “Exodus 34:6-7 is not a one-off descriptor, a peripheral passing comment. In this text we climb into the very center of who God is.” The God we see here with Israel is the same God we have today.

The second reason these verses are so important is that they are the most quoted verses in the Bible by the Bible. Based on my research, it’s between 20-30 different passages that quote verses 6-7. And how many of us know that repetition is important?

I don’t know about you, but my parents had repeated sayings in our house. Things said over and over. Sayings like, “If you misuse it, you lose it” to encourage responsibility. Or “kind, benefit, build” to remind us how to use our words. Parents don’t do this to annoy us. They do this because what gets repeated gets remembered. It’s the same with Scripture. The Holy Spirit inspired this passage to be repeated over and over in the Bible. Why is that? Because what gets repeated gets remembered. That’s why these verses are the most repeated passage in the whole Bible. The Holy Spirit wants us to see God as He truly is. As we talked about earlier, how we see God deeply affects our lives. This is why it is so important that we see God as He truly is.

Now, that we understand a couple things about these verses, let’s look at the content of the passage. Verse 6 starts with His name, “The Lord, the Lord” or “Yahweh, Yahweh.” This is God’s relational and salvation name. In proclaiming His name, God is committing to save Israel and maintain relationship with them.

Then God starts His characteristics with “merciful and gracious.” “Merciful” here can be translated “compassionate,” communicating God’s tender-hearted attitude toward Israel. Many of us know God is gracious, but to refresh, it means “give what is undeserved.” God cares deeply for us and gives us undeserved grace and favor.

Next God describes Himself as “slow to anger.” This one is my favorite. This communicates God’s patience, but it’s not simply patience. You could understand this as “persistent” or “long-suffering.” I love the idea that God is persistent, not being deterred by our sin.

Next is “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” God is overflowing with these. Steadfast love is defined as “loyalty.” God is fiercely loyal to His people. The word “faithfulness” here is cool. It literally means “that’s truth!” The Bible Project beautifully explains it as “sturdy.” This means God’s description of Himself is sturdy and trustworthy. By saying He is abounding in faithfulness, God is saying, “everything I’ve said here is reliable and trustworthy.” We can always trust that God is merciful, gracious, patient, loyal, and trustworthy. A theology professor of mine emphasizes the importance of context here. God is not saying, “This is who I am when you’re at your best.” God is saying, “I’m merciful to golden calf worshipers. Gracious to golden calf worshipers. Slow to anger with golden calf worshipers. Abounding in loyal love and faithfulness toward golden calf worshipers.” Like Israel, even at our worst, God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Now, it’s not just our characteristics that reveal what we’re like. The things we’re committed to say a lot about who we are. In verse 7, we’re going to see what God is committed to. God is first committed to “keeping steadfast love for thousands.” Bible teacher Tim Mackie says, “thousands” here means “eternally.” This isn’t just God’s commitment to loving thousands of people, it’s His commitment to love His people for eternity. There is no end to His steadfast love.

God’s next commitment is “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” God is not committed to forgiving only a handful of sins, He’s committed to forgiving the full gambit. There is not a sin that’s unforgivable by God. God does not reluctantly forgive us. He does it eagerly and with delight. This is seen in the life and death of Jesus. Colossians 2 says God made us alive “having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of death that stood against us…nailing it to the cross.” God’s commitment to forgiving all our sin was shown on the cross of Jesus.

Though God is committed to love and forgiveness, He also will not be taken advantage of, “but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” At first glance, this sounds like punishing children for the father’s sin. That’s not what’s going on here. One Bible scholar says this identifies the human tendency to think “sin has no significant consequence.” Sin does have consequences and God is committed to carrying those out. Do our sins impact our children? Absolutely. On multiple levels. We see this in the field of epigenetics today. What happens to us and around us does have a direct impact on our brain development and DNA. There are relational AND biological consequences to our sin that are transmitted from us to our children.

As we read this, it’s easy to see the “judgmental tyrant in the sky” picture of God. But remember, Jesus died for the sins of the world. So, when you think of God’s justice and wrath toward sin, we have to go to the cross. That’s where Jesus bore all the weight and consequences of our sin.

A very interesting piece to notice here is God’s timeline for His commitment to steadfast love and justice. God qualifies His steadfast love as being for “thousands” or “eternally.” But when God qualifies His justice here, it’s “to the third and the fourth generation.” God is disproportionately tipping the scales in favor of His love.

There’s a balance here. We should never take for granted God’s mercy and grace, but we also should never lose sight of the great gift of Jesus’ life and death in our place. You can see that Jesus is central to seeing who God is. This is because when we look at Christ, we see God as He truly is. Jesus is the perfect picture of God’s compassion. The perfect picture of grace. The perfect picture of persistent patience. The perfect picture of overflowing love and faithfulness. The perfect picture of eternal commitment to love. The perfect picture of forgiveness. And the full picture of justice for sin.

We must see God as He truly is. This is what the Holy Spirit wants. He wants us to constantly come back to this truth of who God is. The truth of who God is and what He is committed to. The truth that Christ is the perfect picture of God. But how do we keep these truths on the forefront of our hearts and minds? We have to repeat the truth of who God is over and over. We have to revisit it often. What gets repeated gets remembered. We need to memorize, recite, and repeat the words of Exodus 34:6-7 over and over again. So, do this! Memorize this verse, recite every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to sleep. Cycle this truth through your brain over and over and over again. This is one of the most important passages in Scripture to commit to memory…though we could all do with memorizing more scripture. But at least start with this one!

God is not Santa Claus or the Pez Dispenser of blessing. God is not our flaky dad. God is not our angry and critical grandma. He’s not our disappointed mother with His arms crossed in frustration. He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

This is what God is like. Memorize it. Don’t forget it. Let’s make sure our picture of God is who He really is.

Pray.