with you. So we're going to continue in the Old Testament. Matthew's just started a series in Genesis, and we're going to move to Exodus this morning a little bit, so a couple hundred years later. So turn with me, if you will, to Exodus 34. We'll begin in verse 1, and that's on page 74, if you have an ESV. Before we get into the text, and while you're turning there, I just need to say a note of thanks to a couple of people. I chose this passage and began getting into it, and I don't know if you've ever had a day where you've gone to work and say, this is what I need to accomplish today, and you start and you realize, oh, this is way too much for me, I can't do this all. So I feel a little bit that same way with this passage. realized I needed a lot of help with it to get into some of the intricacies of it. So Matthew helped a lot, and my Hebrew professor at Gordon-Conwell helped a lot as well. So if you ever find yourself at Gordon-Conwell and you meet Dr. Petter, please say a word of thanks to him as well. So Exodus 34, beginning in verse one. The Lord said to Moses, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain. So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first, and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him. And he took in his hand two tablets of stone. 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, 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 fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, if now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading and the hearing of the word. Now many of you have purchased homes, or you've signed a lease on an apartment, or maybe you've been at school and you had to sign a contract for your dorm room. Now when you sign a lease or this contract on your home, you have to sign two copies of it. So you know exactly what you're agreeing to, when the money is due, and what the stipulations of that contract are. It's interesting that you sign two, don't you? So you keep one and your landlord or the previous owner keeps one. And so that if there's ever a problem, you both can look at your two copies and know exactly what you've agreed to. So let's say this is a lease on an apartment. After a year or however long your lease is, you have to renew that lease. So you sign again and normally the price goes up a little bit. So you renew this lease and you keep going, right? So here in this passage, that's why the two stone tablets. God's renewing the covenant and the two of them is to symbolize that I am in a relationship and you are in a relationship with me. And so the idea is that there are two copies being made here. And this passage comes to just after the Golden Calf incident. And so you all know the Golden Calf incident, I'm sure. God makes a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, and then Moses goes up to the mountain and he's there for a long time. And while he's up there, they break this covenant. They worship another god. They say to Aaron, make us gods. And so Aaron makes this golden calf, and they worship, and it's one of the most abominable things that Israel can do. And what they're saying in worshiping this golden calf is that you are the god that brought us out of Egypt, not the one that's just spoken to us, not the one that we've just agreed to obey, But this golden calf, you're the one that saved us. But God's a covenantal God. And we see that already just from verse one with the idea of the tablets. Bring two tablets of stone and I will write the words that were on the first which you broke. So God tells Moses earlier after this golden calf incident that he wants to destroy Israel and start over. But Moses pleads with God and God forgives them. So what does this mean that God is covenantal? We say this often in the PCA, we hold to a covenantal faith. So when a covenant is established, what that means is that a new relationship is being established. So for example, two kings might enter into a covenant, and typically it would be one king that has conquered and the other king that has been defeated. So when they enter into this relationship, maybe the king that's been defeated has to pay tribute. That's the nature of this new relationship. Or perhaps it's two businessmen that are entering a new relationship and they agree to stipulations on how the business is to be run and how they're going to split the profits. So God establishes covenant with Israel. He establishes a new relationship. His chosen, his elect relationship. But he's established this relationship before. We've seen this pattern. He established it first with Adam, and then with Noah, and Abraham, and now, through Moses, he's building this relationship with Israel. And what's more about these covenants that God has created is that there's an eternal aspect to them. We see with Noah that he gives them the sign of the rainbow, that God will never again destroy the earth. There's something permanent and eternal to his covenants. But what's evident about this relationship, about this covenant, is not God's side of it, it's that Israel can't keep it. They make this covenant for the first time as a nation, just out of Egypt, God's provided a way out of Egypt, and they've already broken their side of the relationship. We see it in their history all throughout the Old Testament, over and over again, that Israel cannot keep their side of the covenant. Imagine this situation, you're at Fenway Park and someone's just hit a home run and you're beyond the part of the wall that you can actually hit a home run over at Fenway Park and all these people are clamoring to catch the ball as it comes down and children are in the midst of this crowd. They're wearing hats and gloves that are too big for them and they're kind of looking up wanting to catch this ball, but there are all these rowdy adults around them that are so much taller than they are. They have no chance to catch this home run ball. The children could never do it themselves. And that's Israel. Israel are those children. They could never keep the covenant. but God still desires this relationship to continue. Despite their break of the covenant, despite worshiping another God, here in our passage, he chooses to renew the relationship with them. So when God wants a second set of tablets to be made, he wants this symbol of their relationship to be known to his people. He's saying, I still want to be in this relationship with you. But notice the way that God commands Moses to come up the mountain. No one is to come near the mountain, not even any flocks. We see in verse three, no one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain. Only Moses is to come close. God does this because he's holy. He's holy and Israel has sinned greatly. So not only is he a covenantal God, a relational God, but he is a holy God. Moses has been so moved by God's grace and his mercy that he pleads with God just before this passage. He says, God, please show me your glory. And God says, okay. He says, come up the mountain a second time. And God passes by him. And part of this scene is not just Moses seeing, but God says, I will declare my name to you. And it's in his declaring his name that God is saying, this is how I will renew the relationship. See, people can't come near to God because of their sin. The text calls Israel a stiff-necked people, and it's a very evident image. If you're stiff-necked, slow to turn, and you can't move quickly. Israel is slow to obey, and we're slow to obey. Maybe we tell a little lie or commit some other sin because it's easier, it's quicker. We're slow to obey, we're stiff-necked. And Moses is a sinner too, so he can't fully see the glory of God. Moses here, I think, is acting as sort of a mediator, an intermediary. But if you recall, Moses only gets to see part of God's glory. He's insufficient as this mediator. We need a better mediator. We need a way to come to God and have this relationship renewed. So what we need is forgiveness. So then Moses on the mountain, God says to him, I will declare my name to you, and he begins in verse six by saying Yahweh, Yahweh, or as the ESV translates it, the Lord. He names himself twice here, and that's to narrow the focus. He wants all of the attention. He says, pay attention, Yahweh, Yahweh. He wants everyone to know that this is me, this is the God, not the golden calf. this double naming is not insignificant. The first thing he says, a God merciful and gracious. Hasn't God already been merciful and gracious to Israel? They make a covenant and Israel breaks it just a few days later and he didn't destroy them. That's pretty merciful. And he says, I want this relationship to continue. I want to bring you into the land that I promised your fathers. I want to be your God and be with you. I think we have this idea of this judgment and this punishment of God smiting us, or there's lightning and thunder, and a lot of that comes from Sinai because God is so great and so holy that even nature reacts to his presence. He does punish sin, yes, but he also forgives. He is merciful. And he's already been gracious to them by this point in Exodus as well. They've been going through the desert and they're hungry, so he provides them manna. And then they want meat, so he provides them quail. He's given them things they don't deserve. He hasn't just left them to fend for themselves. He's given them something that they don't deserve. So he's been merciful and gracious already. And I also think it's important from this passage to notice that his mercy and his grace triumph over his judgment here. He is well within his right to destroy Israel, but he doesn't because he is gracious and merciful. And the next thing that the text says here is that he's slow to anger, and the Hebrew in this passage is one of my favorite idioms in all of scripture. The Hebrew literally translated would say long of nose. How do we get slow to anger from this? If we think about it, when you get angry, you get frustrated and you get big, and if you look like me with fair skin and red hair, your face gets red and your ears get red, and as you get really angry, steam starts to come out your nose, right? But God has a long nose, so it takes him a long time to get that angry. And the next piece that we get in this statement of God's character, the statement of who God is, it says, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. And I want us to get to the depth of this statement. So imagine you're standing at a well. And you know that a well is deep. That's the nature of a well, all right? So you drop your bucket down, and you pull it up, and you expect it to be fresh, drinkable water. That's what a well is for, but you pull it up, and it's salt water. So getting to the bottom of this statement is realizing that I'm really pulling from an ocean here. I'm not just pulling from a well. That's the depth of this statement of God saying abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. So I will try to unpack this word and this phrase a little bit. So steadfast love, the word in Hebrew is hesed. It's often used in a great many circumstances, and largely it's when a covenant is involved is when we see this word. There's the peculiar story of Mephibosheth and Jonathan. David asks, if there's anyone left of the house of Saul that I might deal kindly with them, that I might show them hesed. Now David and Jonathan had made a covenant. They had a very deep personal friendship. And so because of this relationship, because of this covenant, David wishes to honor that and to show chesed to Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan. So this idea of kindness is very much wrapped up in this word, along with the love that we see. But the idea of loyalty is also incredibly prominent here. It's not just kindness, nor simply love, but it's loyalty, but specifically loyalty to a relationship. And this is particularly true when it's attributed to God. And when Chesed is applied to God, it's this immense statement of his generosity in dealing with a stiff-necked people, in wanting this relationship to continue. Because here in our passage in Exodus, the covenant's already been broken. And he says, I am abounding in hesed, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness and loyalty and kindness. And the list could go on of all these attributes. I am abounding in this relational love for you, and I want that to continue. We read from Psalm 118 this morning, and I think that psalmist sums it up very well. He says, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His steadfast love, his hesed, endures forever. So in the same way that we see that his covenant is eternal, so is his loyalty to that covenant relationship. So he is a God who's covenantal and he's holy, and his holiness is evidenced just by the greatness of who he is and who he has declared himself to be in this passage. But God doesn't just stop with who he is. He now moves to his actions. So in verse seven, we get a statement of his actions, but his statement of actions are based on who he tells us that he is in verse six. So he is steadfast and loving and faithful, and he will keep his covenant, and most importantly, I think, he will forgive sin for thousands. And thousands is a strange way to make this kind of a statement, isn't it? When I first read it, I thought, thousands of what? Thousands of people? But even at this time, there were far too many Hebrew people to be encapsulated by the idea of just thousands. And so I think the idea, as several commentators do, is that this is tied to the idea of generations. So when it says, I'll visit sin upon the third and fourth generation, and we'll deal with that more fully in a moment, but I think this means thousands of generations. So he will forgive sin for thousands of generations. He'll forgive eternally. So his covenant is eternal. His loyalty to that covenant is eternal. And his forgiveness is eternal. And he says he will forgive iniquity and transgression and sin. And if we were not sure what all he forgives, he makes it very clear right here. That kind of covers the spectrum. And this threefold repetition makes it certain that God is saying, I am one who forgives, and I do forgive. But we often struggle with believing that our sin is forgiven. Maybe we're caught in some pattern of sin. Maybe we're driving and it's New England and so we get frustrated and thoughts and words enter our minds and are out our mouths before we can stop them. Or maybe we spend too much time on our phones or our computers and we say time and time again, this is the last time, I'll look at that. We doubt that God can forgive us because I've just sinned too much. But when we do this, we are doubting that God is who he says he is. He tells us plainly here that he will forgive sin and iniquity for thousands of generations. But maybe you all have read ahead or you remember what comes next. And immediately following this, he says God will by no means clear the guilty. So how do we reconcile all of this? Because we know that if we examine ourselves, we know that we are all guilty. We're all guilty of sin and of disobedience the same way that Israel is. So does this mean we'll have our sins visited on us to the third and fourth generations? What I think is getting at here is, and I think the difference in the timeframes can help us, God's forgiveness is eternal. But we are not free from the consequences of sin. So Israel sins, and there are consequences to their actions. When they disobey, eventually, after a long time, because God is long of nose, after a long time, God exiles them. We're not free from the consequences of our sin here and now, but we are free eternally from the consequences of those sins. So does this mean we don't have to worry about obedience? No, but our salvation is not dependent on that obedience. See, Christ fulfilled the covenant. He was obedient. He lived perfectly. And let's go back to the baseball analogy where the small children, we can never catch that home run ball that's coming, but Christ is there in the crowd and he reaches up and as that ball comes down, he grabs it. and he turns to us, his children, and tosses us the ball, says, here, you have it. We couldn't ever do it ourselves, but Christ could. He lived a perfect life, and he fulfilled the covenant that God set forth. So he claims all of those promises and the blessings that come with that covenant and hands them to us. We couldn't do it ourselves. Israel couldn't do it. because we're stiff-necked people. Even Moses, as close as he was to God, was insufficient as a mediator. We need help. So God, being full of grace and full of mercy, full of patience, full of love, kindness, loyalty, and full of forgiveness, provided a way for his covenant to be fulfilled and that relationship to continue. He provided a better mediator in Jesus Christ, and that's how we get the forgiveness that we need to be in a relationship with Jesus. So just as God says in Exodus that his character, his person, his attributes that he is, that that's the solution to our sin, we see this again in the person of Christ. Christ kept the covenant perfectly, and he's our perfect mediator. He's our means of forgiveness. So I wanna point to Moses' prayer in verse nine. Moses bows down to worship and says, if now I have found favor in your sight, go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance. Moses comes to a deep, deep understanding of who God is. And his prayer is for God to forgive Israel and for God to be in their midst. And that prayer gets fully answered in the person of Christ. So we also read from John chapter one this morning, and I think it's pretty evident that John had Moses' story in mind in this chapter. So in verse 14 of chapter one, it says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. So let's recount everything that Moses has asked for. Before our passage, he says, God, I want to see your glory. And God says, okay, but I'm gonna tell you who I am as well. So he asks for, he has to see God's glory. And then he says, come in the midst of us and forgive us. So God hears these prayers and God shows Moses just a hint, just a little hint of his glory. and then Moses begs for forgiveness, because Moses knows, I think he gets a little piece of this, that without forgiveness, the relationship with God can't continue. John writes that in the person of Christ, we have seen the glory of God, the kind of glory that can only come from the Father. And verse 18 says that no one has seen God, but that Jesus has made God known to us. Moses never fully saw God, but we have seen God's glory through Christ. To know Jesus is to know that all these attributes that God has declared himself in Exodus, that he is loving, and kind, and gracious, and merciful, and slow to anger, and that he forgives, this is all seen in the person of Christ. So from Exodus we get a clear picture of God's character and that he acts according to his character. And we've seen that this characteristic of God led him to send Christ to earth. And this all leads us to a very deep and personal and intimate understanding of who God is. So what should our response be to this? I think it should be the same as Moses. His response after God declares his name to him is that he bows down and worships. So the proper response to a proper understanding of who God is is to worship. Moses falls on his face. So is that what we should do, just constantly fall on our face? Part of me thinks, yes. But that's not practical. But that should be the posture of our heart. The posture of our heart should be to constantly do everything in order to glorify and to worship God. So how do we develop this attitude, this heart posture of constantly worshiping? Well, scripture tells us to pray without ceasing. So pray that God changes the attitude of our hearts to worship him in all that we do. So maybe it means that we teach our children to be kind and loving and forgiving because that's who God is. And teaching others to be like him is worshiping him. Maybe it means giving an employee a second chance when you didn't want to forgive them. Maybe it means singing a song every day as part of your personal devotion to God. So lastly, come and worship. Be a part of a community that worships. How many times on Sunday do we wake up feeling tired and we don't want to come? Or perhaps we haven't spent any time reading our Bibles that week. And so we don't feel connected to God. We don't feel that we've been faithful to him. We don't feel that we can worship because somehow we're insufficient. But we need to remember who God is. God is the one who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, full of loving kindness, and faithfulness, and loyalty, and all those other things. And he is forgiving. So come and be a part of worship. Worship a God who is faithful to us, even when we are not faithful to him. Let's pray. Father, To understand who you are and the depth of your forgiveness and your faithfulness is incredibly humbling. But Father, we are a stiff-necked people, and thank you for coming in the midst of us and offering forgiveness. So Father, today and every day as we go out from here, may we continually worship you. And Father, change our hearts to an attitude that is constantly full of worship to you. So Father, we love you and we thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen. We come now to a table that proclaims to God's people his faithfulness, his love and loyalty to the covenant that he made and his love given to us in the first.