The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 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, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions 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 fourth generation."
Exodus 34:5-7
Ever wonder what God thinks about God? Well if you would like to know, just read this passage from Exodus 34:5-7. It begins by telling us that the LORD came down on a cloud to speak to Moses and "proclaimed the name of the LORD." The all-capital letters, LORD, is His name. It speaks of His relatable personality and that He is a God who has a name and is personal toward us. Then the passage moves into the LORD actually speaking. The LORD begins to speak of Himself and proclaim to Moses and us who He is and what He values in Himself. Of course this is not an exhaustive list, but the fact that He would speak these things of Himself should lead us to lend and ear to what He has to say.
He begins by describing Himself as "merciful and gracious." Remember that this is an Old Testament passage. Most people, when they think about God, think of Him as a God who was a God of wrath and anger in the Old Testament and a God who is gracious in the New Testament. Don't be confused! God's greatest display of His wrath takes place in the New Testament when He pours out His wrath for sin on His Son Jesus Christ on the cross. But here in the Old Testament when God meets with Moses on Mount Sinai, He calls Himself merciful and gracious. It is interesting that He begins His description of Himself with these two terms. Mercy is God not giving us something we deserve. In our case, we deserve the wrath of God for our sins, but because of His mercy, He chooses not to punish us for our sins. Grace is undeserved favor, or God giving us something we don't deserve. In our case, God showed us mercy by not giving us the punishment we deserve and He shows His grace by giving us Jesus Christ as a substitute on the cross to pay for our sins and absorb our punishment. The God of the Old Testament is a merciful and gracious God.
He goes on from there to tell us that He is "slow to anger." God is patient with us! That means that God has a long fuse. He is patient with us in the form of not condemning us in our sin, but waiting to the point of our redemption so that His wrath does not have to be poured out on us. While we are believers His slowness to anger is shown in that He sometimes holds back the consequences of our sin. He waits patiently for as to not arouse His anger against us in our sin. This is all because of His grace and mercy.
Then He says of Himself, "abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." The Hebrew word for love here is hasad(with a hard H). This hasad is a loyal love. It is a love that bonds Himself to us. He loves without regret even when we are in the midst of our sin. The Hebrew for faithfulness is emet. In the Hebrew, emet, means Truth. His faithfulness is to Himself and since He is the Truth(John 14:6), He is faithful to Himself. As we learn about His mercy, grace, patience and steadfast love, we see that faithfulness to Himself includes these things and His faithfulness to be these things toward us. What security that brings into the life of the believer! Also, a key word here is "abounding." God's steadfast love and faithfulness is so much that it does not run out. It is a love that is overflowing and we are it's receipients. We can fearlessly know that God will be loving and faithful to Himself and to us forever!
He continues to describe His love by saying, "keeping steadfast love for thousands." The word "thousands" does not describe a number of people, but a number in years. A better translation of this word is to say, "to the thousandth generation." A generation is defined as 40 years. 40 times 1,000 equals 40,000. That is a long time! You may think that it's been a long time since this was written, so it probably has passed by now. God spoke this to Moses about 3,300 years ago. We aren't even close to 40,000 yet! God's love is so steadfast and so unending that it will last throughout all generations. That means that even today, He tells us that His love is steadfast toward us and never ending.
God shows His heart for man when He says, "forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin." There is really no difference between these three descriptive words; iniquity, transgressions and sin. They all describe sin. The idea that God is portraying to us is that His forgiveness extends to all kinds of sin. It does not matter what your sin may be, His forgiveness is enough. In James 5:20, James speaks of God's forgiveness as "covering a multitude of sins." This means that God's forgiveness covers any and all sins no matter their severity. This should bring the believer to a place of worship to think that God would cover all of our sins and forgive in ways that we do not deserve.
Now God shifts into "wrath mode". He says, "but who will by no means clear the guilty." God will punish the unrepentant sinner who does not believe in His Son Jesus Christ. This part of the passage should also evoke praise in our hearts that God would forgive our sins and that we do not have to suffer the consequences of our sin, but that we receive His grace and mercy and love. John 3:36 says, "whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." That is a scary thought to imagine that the wrath of God looms overhead as He patiently waits for the sinner to repent and turn to Christ for salvation. For those whom He has not chosen, that wrath will find it's satisfaction in the judgment and death of the sinner. For the chosen, that wrath was already satisfied on the cross.
He tells us of the result of the sin of all men by saying, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation." By speaking of the closeness of a child to the sinner, God is telling us that our sin affects those who are closest to us. This part of the passage is NOT telling us that God will puposely inflict our children and our children's children because of our sin. God does not keep track of sin as to repay our sin with his wrath one for one. Though God certainly knows each of our sins, all he needs to keep track of is whether or not you are connected to Christ. The idea that is being presented is that our sin affects us and even those closest to us like our children. When we are caught in sin, that sin gets naturally transfered to our children. Part of the reason is because we in some non-cognitive way inpose our sins on our children because that sin is such a close part of our lives. When a father is wrapped up in sin, there is no doubt that his child will see that sin and most likely manifest the same stuggle in it's life, therefore affecting the future generations of the father. Don't get caught up in the logic here, the idea is clear; when you sin, it affects those who love you and whom you love.
Ultimately, the whole point of this text is that the LORD is describing the LORD. He is telling us plain as day what He wants us to know about Him. This should move us to worship Him for His grace, mercy, patience, love and faithfulness. This should also move us to worship Him because He has chosen us not be objects of His wrath, but that He patiently waits for us as we are drawn near to Him. This text puts to rest the idea that God was merely a vengful and wrathful God in the Old Testament. We need to read and apply this text to our hearts and our lives and let it draw us close to Him as He is the object of our affections. What a glorious God who love us!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Biblical Theology for Transformation - 18th Posting
"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people."
2 Timothy 3:1-5
"The world is going to get ugly!" If that is your response to this passage, you may be in for a suprise. Paul is telling Timothy about the outward sinfulness of many as the end of times comes closer. What may suprise you is that Paul is not talking about the world, he is talking about the church! Scary! Do we know people like this in our churches? As I read through this list, I could probably check off a few for myself. The problem though, is that so many in the church are becoming more and more like the way Paul describes here.
I believe there are many reasons why this will happen and is happening. One is pretty obvious; God is sovereign. People's sinfulness in the end of times is part of the story that God tells. Two, there are so many false teachers out there infiltrating the minds of believers and the minds of non-believers causing false conversions and deceiving the believers. Three, the non-false teachers aren't teaching Biblical exegesis. When a preacher teaches his own ideas and has not examined the text to allow the Holy Spirit to develop the sermon and exhort the text, the listeners will be fed mush and will have stunted growth. Four, there is not enough Christian accountability. There are too many Christians doing things that they ought not to and there is no one to tell them they are in sin. So their sin grows and leads to deeper and greater sin. There are many more reasons for this decline in the church as the end approaches, but we will leave it at that for now. Let me make this clear; as many churches are filled with people who live in these sins, there are also many churches being filled with passionate Christians who are truly seeking to be more Biblical and obedient to Christ and His Word.
The question then becomes...in which of these sins do you participate? Of course, our flesh arises and desires to do all of these things, but according to Paul in Galatians 5:17, the Spirit is within us and is at war with our flesh. So the war continues, but for the Christian, Christ is victorious. So though we fall into sin as believers, we must recognize that we cannot dwell too heavily on our sin. Once we do, we come to close to becoming legalistic. We must recognize that God does not require our perfect lives in order to please Him...He requires Christ's perfect life in order to please Him. Once we realize that we will understand what Paul meant when he said in Galatians 5:18, "but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." What Paul is telling us is that, though we battle daily against our flesh, in the Spirit we are free to live lives that produce the fruit described in verses 22-23.
So a warning and encouragement are in need. The warning: be aware of those who do the things that Paul describes to Timothy. At the end of the passage, Paul says, "avoid such people." We cannot associate with those who practice sin without regard for Christ. The encouragement: Though you too may have some of these sins in your life, you must recognize that your sins have already been paid for. Once we begin to grasp that, we will begin to live in the freedom to serve and love Christ that He purchased for us.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
"The world is going to get ugly!" If that is your response to this passage, you may be in for a suprise. Paul is telling Timothy about the outward sinfulness of many as the end of times comes closer. What may suprise you is that Paul is not talking about the world, he is talking about the church! Scary! Do we know people like this in our churches? As I read through this list, I could probably check off a few for myself. The problem though, is that so many in the church are becoming more and more like the way Paul describes here.
I believe there are many reasons why this will happen and is happening. One is pretty obvious; God is sovereign. People's sinfulness in the end of times is part of the story that God tells. Two, there are so many false teachers out there infiltrating the minds of believers and the minds of non-believers causing false conversions and deceiving the believers. Three, the non-false teachers aren't teaching Biblical exegesis. When a preacher teaches his own ideas and has not examined the text to allow the Holy Spirit to develop the sermon and exhort the text, the listeners will be fed mush and will have stunted growth. Four, there is not enough Christian accountability. There are too many Christians doing things that they ought not to and there is no one to tell them they are in sin. So their sin grows and leads to deeper and greater sin. There are many more reasons for this decline in the church as the end approaches, but we will leave it at that for now. Let me make this clear; as many churches are filled with people who live in these sins, there are also many churches being filled with passionate Christians who are truly seeking to be more Biblical and obedient to Christ and His Word.
The question then becomes...in which of these sins do you participate? Of course, our flesh arises and desires to do all of these things, but according to Paul in Galatians 5:17, the Spirit is within us and is at war with our flesh. So the war continues, but for the Christian, Christ is victorious. So though we fall into sin as believers, we must recognize that we cannot dwell too heavily on our sin. Once we do, we come to close to becoming legalistic. We must recognize that God does not require our perfect lives in order to please Him...He requires Christ's perfect life in order to please Him. Once we realize that we will understand what Paul meant when he said in Galatians 5:18, "but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." What Paul is telling us is that, though we battle daily against our flesh, in the Spirit we are free to live lives that produce the fruit described in verses 22-23.
So a warning and encouragement are in need. The warning: be aware of those who do the things that Paul describes to Timothy. At the end of the passage, Paul says, "avoid such people." We cannot associate with those who practice sin without regard for Christ. The encouragement: Though you too may have some of these sins in your life, you must recognize that your sins have already been paid for. Once we begin to grasp that, we will begin to live in the freedom to serve and love Christ that He purchased for us.
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