Pillar 2: God According to God, Exodus 34:5-7

God According to God in Exodus 34:5-7

Exodus chapter 34, but just be reading verses five to seven.

Hear the word of the Lord.

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 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 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.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, have you ever wanted something to be true so badly that you fool yourself into believing that it must be true? I so wanted Tua to return for another year at Alabama that I actually exaggerated how likely it was to happen, but it's not to be, much to my disappointment.

Some people wanna sell their house for just so much that they will set a price that no one will buy it for. Some people so wanna have a job in whatever it is they wanna do that they'll study something that there are no jobs doing.

No, you're not gonna get a job as a philosopher, sorry. American Idol always started out with loads of people, if you remember, who believe they can sing, who will embarrass themselves trying, and they'll get mad at the guy who tells them they can't.

Some people so believe their children are just these little darlings and they don't discipline them to make them little darlings. If someone else does, like a teacher or a coach, they'll think there's something wrong with the teacher or coach.

That's their problem.

My little darling would never do anything bad. People are so attached to the way they want things to be, they will believe that that's the way they are. Perhaps they are, quote, in love. Everyone else can tell that it isn't gonna work out, the other person isn't good for you or just plain isn't good, but they so want it to be right so they see their loved one with rose-colored glasses and they will deny the obvious and then won't come to terms that this is wrong until maybe the spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend, whatever, walks out on him or her.

Or if we're talking about a woman, sometimes one admit that he's no good until he beats her badly. Maybe not even then. Today, people believe that if they want it to be true,.

Then it must be true.

If they believe they're female, but the biology says they're male, what they want, not what is, is the reality, they think. And we're all supposed to enable that. We're all supposed to go along with it.

In some Western countries, they are making it illegal to call someone who wants to be the sex they aren't by the sex they are. We think our desires, our self-identification can override reality. Some women so want children that they will convince themselves that they are pregnant even when they're not.

There's a condition known as false pregnancy, clinically termed pseudosiesis, the belief that you are expecting a baby when you're not really carrying a child. Women with pseudosiesis have many, if not all of the symptoms of pregnancy, even the distended abdomen, with the exception of an actual baby.

They are so want a child that their mind fools their body that they have a baby until it comes time to deliver, of course, and then there's nothing there. That's the one thing their mind is unable to manufacture.

So that leads to the question of today. How do you like to think of God? Do you so want God to be a certain way that you're just gonna imagine him to be that way? Maybe until it comes time to meet God face to face.

After all, if when people have a deep emotional attachment to the way they want things to be, they think they can sing, they wanna sing so they just think they can, they want the boy or girlfriend to be the one when he or she's really a loser, they just believe their little darlings are little darlings when they're really brats, they convince themselves they're pregnant when they're not, then if that's the reality, if that's just the way people are, then how much more will we be attached to what we dream God to be like?

People believe that if they want it to be true, then it must be true, but eventually reality will catch up to us, usually crashing down on us. Maybe Simon Cowell will tell us bluntly that we're just atrocious with an English accent, of course.

Maybe when you have to bail your kid out of jail, you realize your little darling is not such a darling after all, or when the divorce papers are served or when you have to go to the emergency room for being beaten, or when you're not able to deliver a baby because there's just not one there.

Reality can be very painful, but it's still better to face up to it than to deny it because it will catch up to us sooner or later. But with God, we could go our entire lives just fantasizing that he is as we want him to be, and unlike those other things, we're not gonna have a no-show baby, or there's not gonna be some other tangible piece of evidence to tell us otherwise with God.

We have the Bible, of course. We have his description of what he said he is like. The question is whether we are willing to put aside the fantasy God that we so much want to believe in and embrace the true one who has spoken in his word.

The Church Must Teach God as He Has Revealed Himself

How do you like to think about God? A few years ago, a major denomination put on commercials with a voice claiming to be God, a sentimentally appealing for people to return to him, saying things like, please come back to me.

I've been waiting for so long. God sounds so desperate and lonely and needy. I mean, you have to be heartless not to have pity on that. I mean, how could you just stay at home and not have pity on that poor old God.

Who's begging you for just a little time?

What's wrong with you hard-hearted people?

God needs you, don't you know?

Starting several years ago, about a decade or so ago, billboards began to appear with quotes saying they were from God. They were put up by a group called God Speaks, except God didn't speak, at least not in the Bible, any of those things.

They were made up by advertising people. I saw some of them on a trip once.

They're usually cute stuff,.

Like all I know is everything, God. Let's meet at my house before the game, God.

I love you, I love you, I love you, God.

Now, while none of that is directly unbiblical and was not contradicting a biblical statement, I wonder why do they think they can make up quotes from God? You know, I'd be upset if people went around making up quotes for me.

Why do people think they can make up quotes for God? If you really want quotes from God, you could go to where he has spoken. This book is not hard to get. Why do they think they can fabricate their own?

And where do they come from? I guess from how they like to think about God. How do you like to think about God?

You want to share?

How about if we just arrange our chairs in a circle and we all share our opinions about God and we affirm each other's opinions. And if your opinion works for you, it's true for you. And if mine works for me, it's true for me, isn't it?

Want to do that?

Maybe not. How do you like to think about God? A pillar of a biblical church is that it teaches about God what he has revealed about himself. Not what popular opinion says, not what people embrace today, but they just assume, or what gets the results that you want, what manipulates people to come and give the response you want them to give, or what tradition says that we should say about God.

It is the one where the God who is worshiped, the pillar of a biblical church is where the God who is worshiped is the true God who has spoken for himself. In Exodus chapter 34, verses five to seven, God reveals himself.

Here's God according to God. Here we have God describing himself. This is an opinion among many opinions, something, you know, someone, this is what Moses shared. This is what I feel about God, Moses said, you know, when he came down.

No, it's to be placed alongside whatever you or I want to share about what we happen to feel God is like while we celebrate the diversity of each other's opinions. Here we see what the Lord likes to think about himself.

This is the rock solid, absolute truth. Now, first, let's look at the context of this passage. God's weightiness, his glory and power has been vividly seen in the deliverance of his people from what was then at that time, one of the great superpowers in the world, Egypt.

The Lord calls Moses at the burning bush, sends him to Pharaoh, unleashes the 10 plagues, literally blows against Egypt, and finally drowns Pharaoh's army in the sea. Then God's holiness is illustrated by the laws, starting in the 10 commandments in Exodus 20, then all the other laws with their punishments against sin.

The sacrificial system portrays the wages of sin. Every animal that was hauled up to the altar and killed, they were deceived. That is the cost of sin. The tabernacle architecturally portrays God's holiness.

He has set apart, his presence is set apart in a restricted area called the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could go once a year. It's very set apart from the other people.

Then while all of that,.

This is being revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, the people of Israel decide they want to show how they think of God. This is what we think God is like. So they make an idol. That's what idols are. Idols are what we think of God.

In Exodus 32 is the famous story of the golden calf. Aaron declares a feast and he declares the feast, not to some other God that's a made up God, but he says, this is the Lord. This is Yahweh. This is the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, Israel.

This is his opinion of who God was. This is how he liked to think about God. When Moses sees that, when Moses sees how his brother Aaron likes to think about God, he breaks the tablets of the 10 commandments, destroys the idol, pounds it to dust, puts the dust in a stream and makes the people drink it.

And then he calls some faithful men from the tribe of Levi and dispatches them to go and kill the worst of the idolaters in Israel, killing about 3000 men. Then Moses intercedes for Israel. And as part of his intercession in chapter 33, verse 18, Moses asked to the Lord, please show me your glory.

Then the Lord says he will. He will pass before Moses, but to spare his life, God's so holy that without some protection for ourselves, we'll be crushed by his holiness. The Lord will, to protect his life, the Lord will hide him in the cleft of a rock.

And then comes this passage. Now let's go through it line by line where the Lord describes himself. He's not left us up to our guesses to what he might be like, who he might be. In the words of a famous, of a title to a famous Francis Schaeffer book, he is the God who is there and he is not silent.

He can speak for himself and he has. Then the Lord descends to the cloud. Cloud portrays his holiness in a way that we cannot pierce with our own perception, our own mind. And he proclaims there first his name, proclaims it twice, the Lord, the Lord.

God's special revelation of himself, Yahweh. This was the name given at the burning bush. Yahweh, I am who I am here now simply I am. And we see in this name, at least three vital truths about God in the name I am.

First, he is transcendent. Second, he is eternal. And third, he is absolute. Transcendent, eternal, and absolute. First transcendent means that God is over us, he's above us, he's beyond us. And in a way that can never be overcome by us.

We can't bridge the gap between us and God. We can't become God. Now, some of the cults teach that God is of the same species we are. He's just like us. He's just more evolved. He's just a little further down the road than we are.

But if we do follow his steps, we can become just like him. That's how they like to think about God. But it's an idol, because it's not how the Lord has revealed himself. He is the I am. And that he is the one who eternally is, who is self-existent.

He is derived and dependent on no one else. You know, we name ourselves by where we come from. Our family name is passed down to us. Whatever your family name is, it shows where you came from. This is the family name I was derived from.

I am derived from the carpenter family. In their culture, one was named after their father. So Moses was Moses' son of Amram. I would be John's son of Walter. Our names show who we are derived from,.

Where we come from.

But the Lord reveals himself as the one who was named after no one else. He's a come from anyone else. He's not derived from anyone else. He is the I am. As the I am, he is eternal. He's not the I was or the I will be, as though he is under time.

He's not subject to time. He's not aging and changing. He's not subject to forces that are outside of him, that are shaping him. There never was a time when he was not, and there never will be a time when he is no longer.

He's not changed by time. He created time. He's over time. Because he is the I am, he's under-derived, he's eternal. He is the absolute. That is, he's the standard. His opinions are the truth. Seems just odd to talk about God's opinion.

God, what's your opinion?

It's the truth.

If he said it, it is true. Because he said it, it's impossible for God to lie, like the Bible says, because when he says something, he makes it true by the fact he says it. He spoke, let there be light, and there was light.

He spoke the worlds into existence. He doesn't just have a view of things, just an opinion, among other person's view of things. His view is the way things are. He is the I am. How do you like to think about God?

God here says he is merciful, and gracious, and slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. God has mercy, grace, patience, and loyalty to his people. Really, all these are several different ways of describing God's overflowing love, his exuberant goodness, like looking at several facets of a beautiful diamond, gazing how it sparkles its different sides.

But let's take them in order. Mercy, grace, slowness to anger, and steadfast love. Again, I think they're each expression to the same thing. Let's look at each of them. God's mercy is his goodness toward those in distress.

You know, two blind men once cried out to Jesus in Matthew nine, they were in great distress. You know, son of David, have mercy on us. Mercy is not receiving what we deserve. We deserve punishment. We deserve blindness or whatever effect of the fall that comes our way.

We get mercy when we don't get it. This is a bad joke. I don't mean to tell anybody. The story is told of an elderly lady going to have her portrait made. First, she wanted to make sure, of course, she looked as good as she possibly could.

Made up well, so she went to the salon, and the beautician did the best she could, but you know, she only had so much to work with. So then the lady arrives to have her portrait painted and says, be sure to do me justice.

But the artist mutters, you don't need justice. You need mercy. Sorry, it's a bad joke, sorry. Have mercy on me. Thank you for the mercy laughter. That's what that is, that's mercy laughter. Then there is God's amazing grace.

Mercy, grace. If mercy is not getting what we deserve, grace is getting what we don't deserve. It's receiving goodness when we don't deserve it. We deserve only punishment. The Apostle Paul, writing in Romans chapter three, verses 23 and 24, says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

In that same context, he said, death is the wages of sins. Wages of sin is death. So we all deserve punishment. We deserve the death. But there's more, in verse 24, because of God's graciousness. And are justified, that is made right with God, freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

He has made a way for us to be right with him, right with God, despite our sin. And that is an act of sheer grace. Then there's God's patience. He's slow to anger. Even though he's perfect in his standards.

You know, a lot of people, when they have high standards, get kind of, you know, they just get irritated with people that don't have the standards that they do. Back, it was at, I think in 2013, Alabama played Notre Dame.

Sorry, I have to give an Alabama illustration. But Alabama just killed Notre Dame. And they say the hardest hit the Alabama quarterback took was when the center turned around, his own center turned around and shoved him, because they got into a disagreement about when the ball was supposed to be snapped.

And coach Saban, the coach said, you know, I thought he'd be upset at something like that. He said, well, that's kind of the way people of high standards are. They're kind of on the edge, and they don't like things that don't work out right.

Well, God has the perfect standards, but he's also slow to get irritated. God's patience is his goodness to those who continue to sin, who stay in his heart as good as this.

Over a period of time.

He's not a hothead. He doesn't lose his temper at a little irritation. His anger doesn't just flare up suddenly, because he got frustrated by something. In 2003, we got to travel the whole country from shore to shore, starting in Washington State and ending in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

We camp most of the time. Of course, if you camp, you've got to have a campfire. And I noticed a big difference in the wood between the West and the East. Out West, like in Montana, we could start a campfire immediately.

The wood burned immediately, just set fire,.

Just put a batch to it.

It starts to burn, and it burns quickly and brightly, also burnt up quickly. But in the East, once in a campground in Maryland, just outside Washington, D .C., the wood took so long. Just one log is trying to light it on fire.

It took so long to light. I just gave up on it. I figured, oh, can't have a fire. Then after about a half hour to an hour later, suddenly it catches fire. The flames come out of it. It visibly catches fire.

The wood here in the East will sometimes seem to absorb the fire used to ignite it. They'll only show it again later. But once it's on fire, it will burn long and hot. God here says that he's not like that dry tinder out West, easily ignited.

He's not going to be set off suddenly. But don't think, as we'll see, that he can't burn long and hot. Then we see here God's covenant love. That is his steadfast love. There's a special Old Testament word that appears twice in these two verses.

We've talked about it a good bit here, I think. All of you should know it by now. It's pronounced hesed or hesed. Kind of got a gargle when you say it. God is bounding, he says, in this love, in hesed.

It is best translated, I think, like the ESV does, steadfast love. It's often paired, like here, with faithfulness. It's loyalty. True love is loyal. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

It doesn't fail. It doesn't go away because it gets bored with you or because they're finding something better down the road. It's committed relational love. The New English Bible translates it as ever constant and true.

It appears again near the beginning of verse seven. So this is one thing he says twice.

That's for emphasis.

He says his name twice and he mentions his steadfast love twice. Once in the end of verse six, in the beginning of verse seven. It's God's covenant love. The love, in other words, that makes him come into a covenant with his people.

His loyal commitment to be good to his people. And he emphasizes the constancy, the firmness of his committed love at the end of verse six by declaring that he also abounds in faithfulness. Now faithfulness is already inherent in the idea of hesed, steadfast love.

But he's so intent that we understand that his love endures, that it's a loyal love. That he emphasizes this by saying faithfulness, bound in that too. He emphasizes the perseverance of God's commitment to his people.

Which is why we believe in the preservation of the saints. That all those God has chosen to love, he will preserve them to the end. He will hold us fast because of his steadfast love and faithfulness.

The way many people like to think of God as being good, so far up to now, most everything I've said about God, people are very acceptable today. But they say God is good, God's loving like that. But often they think of good as meaning good for me.

Good for me getting what I want. Whatever it is, my goal is whatever I want. I want money, I want health, I want this relationship, whatever. God will help me get that. Maybe every good they think is defined by what works for them.

Maybe you can tell them about all kinds of bad things that so-and-so has done to other people and they'll reply, but he never did me wrong. It's like what's done to me determines whether this anybody, everybody is good or bad.

Like Germans in World War II, okay. Hitler, sure, he's rough on the Jews, but he's okay for me. Means he's all right, right? God has not hurt me. So for them, God is good if he enables them to get healthy or wealthy and he inspires us to do our best, makes me feel good, comforts us when we're feeling down.

To them, God is good in that he is a tool under their control to achieve their goal. Is that how you like to think of God? How do you like to think of God? Probably is good, I bet. But it is a goodness defined by you.

Good for you.

Once in a megachurch, I saw a video full of quotes about, they put this video together, all kinds of quotes from the Bible, which is good. They did that part right, about God, which even quoted this passage and then suddenly stopped right at this point.

Bounding and steadfast love and faithfulness, showing steadfast love to thousands. After all the sweet things about God and in the middle of verse seven, stopped right there, just before the but, and then went on to quote other passages about the Lord, other sweet passages, positive things.

But the but is there. Today, many want to think only of God as maybe as their father, of who will love and accept them no matter what they do. Sort of a celestial cheerleader up there, just rooting for us, or a teddy bear, maybe console us when we're down, an inspirer, help get the most out of us, that they can get him, they think they can get to him any way they choose, that broad is the road that leads to life.

And everyone can get there if they're sincere. So it's what some have called moralistic, therapeutic deism. God is pleased by our morality, our being nice. That's moralistic. And he exists to soothe our feelings, to comfort us like Linus's blanket.

He used to inspire us to make us feel good. That's therapeutic. And he's not really in control of all things. No, that would mean he's in control of the bad things, the hard things. He's not in control of all things.

He's a deistic God. He may have created it, but it's kind of left to do its own devices. The universe is. He's emotionally close, but he's effectively far away, out of control. He's not a sovereign God of providence, ruling all things, judging sin.

Certainly doesn't do that. That's how they like to think about God. But the but is there. And it shows us also that God is holy. So holy here. Think of that. Moses has to be hidden in like a little crevice in the rock.

So if he sees too much of God, he'll be destroyed by it. He's that holy. And he's just, he does justice. He's like C .S. Lewis' Aslan and the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. A child asking his last name, a tame lion.

Someone we control. We use him for ourself, domesticate him, have as a pet around the house. No, he's not tame, but he's good. Coming directly from the mouth of God himself. God, according to God, he tells us that he has, he has wrath, anger.

In other words, he's angry towards sin. How do you like to think about God? The passage tells us that God thinks of himself as intensely hating sin, burning long and hot against it. And this is not just an Old Testament theme as though God kind of, that's the way he was back then.

But you know, he kind of grew, he matured over time. He mellowed out by the time the New Testament came around. Now, even in the famous third chapter of John, you know, the God so loved the world chapter.

It says in verse 36, that whoever rejects the son will not see life for God's wrath, God's anger remains on him. God was continuing to be angry at them. Oh yes, he says he's merciful, gracious, loyally committed to his people.

But then there's this. It's a strange but though, isn't it? You know, I bet you, if this passage were divided in half and one part was in another book of the Bible, all kinds of skeptics would be insisting,.

Telling us, look, aha, this is a contradiction.

Yeah, steadfast love towards thousands. There's other passages way over here where he says, but he has, you know, he punished his sin. They would say it contradicts, see? Can't trust the Bible, but there it is right by each other.

So you kind of, people gloss it over. He goes into the space of one sentence to saying he will forgive iniquity, transgression and sin to, but to by no means clear the guilty, by no means.

There was no way that if you're guilty, you're going to get away with it.

Does it matter what you do?

You aren't going to be able to sweet talk your way past the judgment seat. Our sins aren't going to be just swept under the rug. Forgiveness does not mean that God's going to say, you know, it's all shocks.

Oh, you're so cute. I'm going to let you in heaven anyway, despite your sin. Nevermind about it. He will by no means clear the guilty. And the scary part, we're all guilty. So how does God forgive iniquity, transgression and sin without clearing the guilty?

How are both of those truths possible? If we're all guilty and God will not clear the guilty, then aren't we all doomed? How can he both be merciful and still visit our sin on us? Well, the Lord had visited our iniquities on Jesus himself.

The apostles tell us in Acts chapter four, verse 27, that God used Herod and Pontius Pilate to kill Jesus. God did it. God didn't just sit back and kind of let it happen. Just sort of events got out of hand.

The father was not just a victim. God himself acted. He made sure that Jesus would die on a cross. Isaiah 53, 10 says, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. The one human being throughout all history who deserved no punishment, suffered the most horrible punishment.

So God wouldn't have to visit our iniquities on us.

He visited them on the son.

He took our guilt. We were guilty. And he took that guilt and put it on him so that now we're not guilty. So he can let us go unpunished.

He can clear us.

He did that because God is on the one hand, merciful, gracious, loyally committed to loving his people. And on the other, not willing to let the guilty go unpunished. God, we're just merciful and gracious.

Just that's all. Then there would be no need for the cross. He just excuse all sin. If God were not holy, if God were just holy, I should say, he were just a God who just, you know, I will not let the guilty go unpunished.

If that's all it said here, then we would just be doomed. There would be no salvation. There would be no cross because God's not gonna send anyone to save us. But both are true. He accounted Jesus to be sin for us and punished him for us.

He did that so that he could be merciful to us. And without that sacrifice, there remains as it says in John 3, 36, no option except that the wrath, the anger of God abides on us. He visits iniquity. And notice the way that is put at the end of verse seven, visiting the iniquity.

It's an active verb. In other words, he's getting up. He gets into action. He intervenes and he aggressively punishes sin. He visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children. And someone has merely say, well, it's like the sins of drunkenness or abuse kind of being passed down, the habits of family get passed down from one generation to another, and they suffer the consequences of their own actions.

That God just kind of lets it happen. He steps back because they would say, well, it's just free will. And that's kind of partly true, but this passage goes a big step beyond that. It's not just laws of nature outside of his control.

Notice here, he doesn't say he lets generations bear the consequences for their actions. That's biblical, but he says more than that here. He says, he does it. I visit the iniquity, the sin, I punish it.

He takes the initiative.

God intervenes and judges and punishes sin. Is that how you've been thinking about God? How we think about God has a direct impact on how we live together in the church. But this is not just theology for your consideration, just entertaining ideas.

It shapes what we do here, how we worship, how we relate to each other. If we think that God has a reckless love instead of a steadfast love, or probably not very constant, probably not steady. You don't expect steadiness and we're not faithful like him.

We think if we just take love as a gushy feeling, it's refined etiquette. It's just being nice to each other instead of a commitment. Or we think breaking commitments is really no big deal. It's not really a sin.

If you break your commitments, commitments are just words people say. Does it sound good? They like to say about the time. They're not really taking it seriously. After all, we serve a God of reckless love.

That's what reckless people do, right? They say things they don't really literally mean. Reckless love is all about feeling good for us. He's puffing up our self-esteem. He's kind of a divine teddy bear full of reckless love.

If we think forgiveness is excusing and we kind of like to stop in the middle of verse seven, like that megachurch video I saw, we think we're just supposed to casually excuse sin. That we're supposed to ignore it like nothing happened.

We can kind of wink at it. Oh yeah, it's not right, but yeah, okay. Or maybe occasionally we can grimace at it. If it's really bad, we can grimace. But we're never really supposed to actively deal with it, to confront it.

That's not loving, confronting it. So then we won't, the consequence of that, we won't practice church discipline. There won't be any of that. There won't be any meaningful membership because no one wants to say they belong.

It's just a matter of saying words. They don't mean anything. There won't be any real discipleship for that matter. How do you make disciples without discipline? Do people believe for themselves that they have salvation, that God is a God who saves them even if they don't repent?

He just leaves them where they are, but they can have the assurance to go into heaven no matter how they are. Like a woman with pseudosaisis who thinks she has a baby, even though biblical standards show there's no life there.

They self-identify as a saint, right? And so like the world, everyone is supposed to enable them in their self-identification, especially pastors. They're supposed to encourage them in their self-delusion.

So when judgment comes, they think they'll have nothing to fear. They're sure, they're so sure, they even mimic some of the signs of being a true saint. No judgment will be visited on them, they think.

Even if they haven't lived for the Lord, they're sure of it. They're so sure of it, Jesus says they will saunter up to the judgment seat and say, Lord, Lord, look what I did for you. They won't like that what they hear, what comes crashing down on them.