The God of Second Tablets // Exodus 34:1–8

Church, would you please welcome Pastor Josh?

Good morning, church.

You guys doing okay?

All right, we're gonna try to do a couple things here.

Uh well, first off, uh welcome.

We're glad that you joined to worship with us on this Sunday.

This is not our normal uh setup, as you can see.

Uh it is kind of nice though.

I mean, some people are like, this is like a picnic, like we're outside, and especially those of you who have shade, you're like, this is actually really nice.

Um, but uh I've got SPS-50 on, so we're good to go, okay?

And um if I run that way, you'll know something's happening here, you know.

Um, but we're going to try hard to work through all of the traffic noise.

So be ready for airplanes.

Perfect cue, helicopters, uh, police cars and uh ambulance and firefighters, all the things coming.

And uh I have to try and shade my iPad here to make sure this thing does not shut off uh technology, the sun.

But nevertheless, we'll be in Exodus chapter 34 in our Bibles if you want to turn there.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

And we've been working through a series I've titled Leaving the Darkness.

We've been looking at Moses walk the people out of Egypt, really in the direction of the promised land.

He's trying to bring them into relationship with God.

They are leaving the darkness and entering into the light.

They are leaving slavery and entering into freedom.

They are leaving worshiping other gods and starting to worship the true God Yahweh.

And it has been a wonderful story to work through verse by verse, chapter by chapter.

This is sermon number 86 through the book of Exodus.

Um, I will encourage you again throughout the sermon to try and bear with me and stay focused, as it will not be easy to work through the sermon together, as already I am overwhelmed, distracted by all of the noises.

But we will get through it, okay?

We're gonna cover verses one through eight in the text today.

And again, title of the sermon today, if you're taking notes, is The God of Second Tablets.

Yes, the God of Second Tablets.

Um you will see God give Israel a second chance, but he also encourages them to make a second pair of tablets.

Yes, the Ten Commandments.

Uh maybe something you didn't know.

Heard of a story, maybe you heard this one.

One day an ice fisherman drilled a hole into the ice and peered into the hole, and a loud voice said, There are no fish down there.

He walked several yards away and drilled another hole and peered into the hole again, and the voice said, There are no fish down there.

He then walked about another 50 yards away and drilled another hole, and again the voice said, There are no fish down there.

He looked up at the sky and asked, God, is that you?

And the voice said, No, you idiot, it's the ice rink manager.

Thank you.

It still worked outside.

This is good.

The God of second chances, picture the scene at the bottom of the mountain of Mount Sinai, broken stone everywhere, for Moses has picked up the Ten Commandments and smashed them on the ground.

Uh, the Ten Commandments scattered in the dirt, the covenant thrown in the trash that they had with God.

And this chapter begins not ultimately with glory, but with the wreckage of Israel worshiping, remember the golden calf.

We looked at this a couple weeks ago, the moment where they uh turn away from the Lord, they build, they take their jewelry, they build a golden calf, and they start worshiping it while Moses is up on the mountain trying to get the Ten Commandments, trying to get the covenant from God.

They're breaking the first and greatest commandment.

It's wild to see.

And Moses, again, in in frustration and just being overwhelmed, but also a picture, he smashes the tablets that he brings down that mountain.

And it looked like their relationship with God was completely over.

But God doesn't walk away from broken things.

Uh, he steps back into the relationship and he introduces himself all over again to the people.

This is a question I have for you today.

Have you ever wondered if you've broken something with God too badly for him to be able to fix?

Uh you messed it up.

The relationship is damaged.

You know, it's like he can't forgive me of that, or I've gone too far.

Um what does God do when our relationship with him feels ruined?

That's what we're going to look at today.

We're going to read verses one through eight in Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

Can we stand for the reading of God's word?

It's also pretty wild if you think about it.

We are standing in the public of Studio City and reading God's word.

Pretty special, man.

Exodus chapter 34, take a look at verse 1.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

We always stand for the reading of God's word to pay honor to him.

Remember whose word we're reading.

Not my words, not my message, not my opinion.

It all belongs to him.

We stand to honor him.

Look at verse one.

It says, Now Yahweh said to Moses, Carve out for yourself two stone tablets like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you shattered.

So be prepared by morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain.

And no man is to come up with you, nor let any man be seen anywhere on the mountain.

Even the flocks and the herds may not graze in front of that mountain.

So he carved out two stone tablets like the former ones, and Moses rose up early in the morning and went to Mount Sinai as Yahweh had commanded him.

And he took those stone tablets in his hand.

Then Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood there with him, and he called upon the name of Yahweh.

Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and called out, Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.

Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children and on the grandchildren of the third and fourth generations.

And Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for your word today.

We thank you that we get to worship you outside in this city, in this town.

We can do it freely.

And we're grateful for this opportunity.

We're grateful we still get to.

We pray that we would continue to get to for generations to come.

God, we pray for your mercy and grace in our lives that as we study your word, as we look at your text, that it would change our minds, it would change our hearts, it would bring us into a closer relationship with you.

You would bless our time together.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You can be seated.

Okay, let's talk about it.

So 40 days, really, that's all it took.

While Moses again was up on the mountain receiving the covenant from God's own hand, the people at the bottom were melting their jewelry again into a calf and calling it the God who brought us out of Egypt.

So again, the same people who walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, remember they saw the ten plagues.

Um, the same people who have eaten manna from heaven.

Um when Moses came down and saw it, he throws the tablets on the ground, he breaks them.

And again, this wasn't a temper tantrum.

Um, that was a picture.

Those tablets were a covenant document.

It was a contract that God had made with his people.

It was a wedding vow.

And they had already broken the wedding vow.

Moses was showing Israel with his own two hands exactly what they had already done in their hearts.

They were worshiping another God.

So he breaks them in front of them.

He says, You're breaking the covenant.

They had broken the covenant relationship with their God.

So chapter 34 opens with this broken relationship, a pile of broken tablets, and God does three things to make this right.

Three points I have for you here today.

Point number one, if you're taking notes, God hands them a chisel.

God hands them a chisel.

It's verses one through four.

It says, Now Yahweh said to Moses, Carve out for yourself two stone tablets like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you shattered.

So again, if you look at verse one again slowly, notice what God does not do.

He does not open with an interrogation.

He does not say, Do you understand what you've done?

He does not make Moses recount the offense.

He does not demand a plan or probation period with a written apology.

He simply gives them an assignment.

And notice something else, the last five words of verse one, uh the last words of verse one, which you shattered.

So God says it right out loud.

He's not pretending that this didn't happen, he's not being polite about it.

The breaking is named plainly, and then God moves straight past it into instructions.

So oftentimes when people offend us or people sin against us, we start digging into them, right?

And then not only do we dig into them, we want them to start to respond, and we want this entanglement of conversation for hours, right?

I mean, we get into it.

But God doesn't do this with Moses, He moves straight past it into instruction, and this is really interesting because that's the whole gospel in a single verse.

God names your sin honestly, and then he hands you something to do.

You gotta look closely at this because who does the carving this time?

Do you remember who did it the first time?

The first time God provided everything.

He provided the stone, he wrote the Ten Commandments down.

This is chapter 31, verse 18, stone tablets written by the finger of God, and God supplied the whole package deal of the Ten Commandments.

This time he now gives it to Moses to do.

He says, Carve out for yourself.

This is really interesting.

Moses had to find stone, he had to shape it, he had to haul it up the mountain on foot, and that is not a simple job for an 80-year-old man.

Moses is 80 right now, and he's got to take the stone tablets up to God.

Scripture doesn't say out exactly why, but the pattern is definitely there.

The broken tablets, again, were Israel's doing.

So this time the guilty party carries some of the weight in return.

It's not God being petty, it's it's him requiring real repentance, action from the people.

Coming back to God must cost them something.

And they have to do something about it.

I think oftentimes we like to say, I'm sorry, God, but then we don't do anything about it.

The truth is we need action to our apology, action to our confession.

Look at verse 2 and 3.

They are set boundaries.

Ready by morning, he tells them.

Uh he tells Moses to come alone.

Nobody is to be on the mountain, no person, not even the flocks or the herds are to be on the mountain.

So only Moses.

Um, it might look a little bit cold from God, but it's not there.

It's protection.

God's holiness has not softened just because his mercy is showing up.

Uh, he is not safe to approach casually.

And the fact that Israel got a second covenant does not mean that they got a smaller or different God.

Uh, he is both just as holy, just as powerful, just as awesome.

And by his grace and his mercy, he is offering them a second pair of Ten Commandments.

He could have been the whole thing is off.

No more Ten Commandments for you.

I'm done with you people.

Um, but God is now allowing a new covenant to be built.

Is this amazing or what?

After his people has done great wrong.

Nevertheless, he says, You can't touch the mountain.

Only Moses is going up.

Don't let anybody touch it, they'll be struck down.

And then verse 4, I love this line.

And Moses rose up early in the morning.

No hesitation, no processing time, don't let me sit with this.

He gets up early.

Church, when God hands you a second chance, don't sleep on it.

You get up early, eagerly, ready to run to him.

It's the best thing you could ever do.

Some of you might be being handed the second tablet now.

The second tablet people.

Maybe you've been gone for a long time.

You had a first chapter with God, real zeal, real commitment.

You remember what it felt like to be close to the Lord, and then something broke.

Maybe it was a moral failure that still makes your stomach drop when you think about it.

Maybe it was slower than that, a compromise, than a year, then a decade, or adrift, until you look down on one day and the tablets were in pieces at your feet and you couldn't remember exactly what had happened.

Here's the lie that we believe it's that God has finished with our story.

Why do we believe that?

It's because this is the way people often will treat us here in the world.

If you wrong somebody here on the earth, they will off you.

They say, No more, no second chances, no third chances, no fourth chances, forget it, it's over.

But God doesn't do that.

He's different from us, he's far different from us.

And some of us might have been believing that the that God's finished writing your story because of something that you've done, somewhere that you've been.

Or that whatever relationship is still available to God is now like kind of a downgraded version, like a second-tiered version.

Like he couldn't possibly give me the the top-tiered version again.

I can't get back there.

I lost it.

I've done too many things wrong.

Look at verse one again.

I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets.

I will write the exact covenant again on the tablets.

He doesn't change anything.

He doesn't add a little, you know, but or and at the end of that thing.

He just writes it as is again.

Isn't that amazing?

You think the contract would be different?

There's no way God is going to just give us the same exact contract as before.

Same words, same commands, same covenant, not an abbreviated version, no uh probation agreement.

God does not offer Israel a discount relationship because they failed him.

He offers the real thing all over again.

And that sounds too good to be true.

You're saying, God, even though I have built a golden calf and worshiped it, you're gonna let me come back to you in full again?

And you're still gonna use me greater than ever again.

He hasn't lowered the standard.

You gotta understand, and you need to know, church, he has not lost interest in you.

People will, but God will never do that.

That's who he is.

So we gotta stop waiting for the interrogation.

Stop waiting to see what it's going to come upon us and waiting for that all to be over, and you just need to move into obedience.

You take steps of faith to obedience, pick up the tablet, start working on the rack, get the chisel out and get to work.

Forget the other stuff.

There's no conversation to be had.

That's the amazing thing.

God's just like, pick up the chisel, pick up the stone, and let's get on with it.

That conversation you think is going to come is not coming.

Some of you have been sitting at the bottom of the mountain for years, rehearsing your defense, building your explanation, your justification, getting ready for the conversation where you finally have to justify yourself before God.

That conversation is not coming.

You are not justified by your works.

You are not justified by your conversation or by your words.

God isn't asking for any of that from you.

He's handing you a chisel and he's telling you to be ready by morning.

No conversation needed.

Amazing.

Do the next obedient thing, get up early, cut the stone, climb the hill.

Restoration is coming to you.

It's God's gift.

But Moses still had to make the climb.

And a long climb it was.

Me trying to get my kids to confess to the wrong that they did.

It's hilarious.

Wonder where they learned that from.

Daddy.

We dance around.

No, but they did.

We are so quick to blame.

Oh my gosh.

Quick to quick to blame.

I mean, it's like I'll be like, all right, everybody in the living room, clean up this mess.

I mean, you guys are cleaning up everything.

I want every single toy.

I want the pillows put back.

I want everything back.

My little guy immediately.

But they did this, this, this, this, this.

They just did the blame game.

No confession.

The climb back up the mountain, the thing that we must do.

If we confess our sin, what?

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin in all unrighteousness.

All that amazing.

Anything that you confess, he will forgive.

Unbelievable.

You can't get that negotiation with anybody on the earth.

And if they are able to do that in your life, right?

Marriage, the spouse who does that for you for the rest of their life, that is a miracle upon a miracle that we keep on forgiving.

We keep on loving.

We keep on helping.

I can never forget the story when my dad did this for me.

He showed me grace.

The story goes, it was Friday night lights, football game.

I'm playing there at Ramona High School.

And uh I can't remember, I don't know if it's junior or senior year, but I think it was junior year probably, but I'm playing, I'm still in my uniform.

We just got done with the game.

And my dad's like, Come on, you're going home.

I'm like, no, I'm going over my buddy's house.

I'm going to stay over there tonight.

And he's like, no, you're not.

You're coming home.

I'm like, no, no, I'm going with my buddy.

And he's like, oh no, you're not.

And uh we got into a little skirmish there in the parking lot of uh of my school.

And uh, and I'll never forget, like, I'm like trying to get away from my dad, and I run the opposite direction with my buddy, and I'm like, let's get out of here, you know.

I'm out.

Like, I'm I'm leaving home, dude.

This thing's over.

And I run into this back neighborhood behind uh the school, and I know my dad's like looking for us, like we're he's gonna he's gonna find us.

And we hide under this motor home in this in these people's yard, and all of a sudden, boop, the cops show up.

I'm like, oh shh, here we go.

The cops come and handcuff us and put it on us on the curb, and we're sitting there.

And of course, who's driving down the street?

My dad.

The lights signal to him.

Here's me, my buddy.

I'm just like, yeah.

And so he's like, it's okay, I'll take him home.

So we get in the car, and I'm like, my dad's gonna kill me.

And he goes, we drop my buddy off, and then we start to drive home, and I'm waiting for him to just rail into me.

He doesn't.

Silence.

I thought he's super angry.

All of a sudden he just says, Hey, you want to go get some hot chocolate?

What?

Wanna get some hot chocolate?

Sure.

We go and get hot chocolate, he never talks to me about it again.

He let it go.

It was wild because from that day forward, even when my brothers would rise up against my dad, I would defend him.

My dad, my father, again, I don't even know if he knew he was doing it.

Of course, he's experienced the grace of God, but the weight of the whole situation was so great that he somehow picked up on the fact that maybe he should just show grace and let the thing go, and he won my heart forever.

It's amazing.

J.R.

Miller says Christ is building his kingdom with earth's broken things.

The fuller thought is that men build their kingdoms with the strong and With the successful, but God is the God, God is the God of those who have failed.

And there is no bruised reed Christ cannot restore to beauty.

You gotta understand the gospel message, what makes it so beautiful and so powerful is that God looks for the broken reed.

He looks for the failure.

And when he finds the failure and he sees the confession and he sees the honesty, he smothers them with grace to which they can't contain.

And he wins their heart forever.

You see?

It's an amazing thing.

Moses, we're not gonna talk about it.

Just pick up, get the stone, get the chisel.

Let's go.

Bring me two new tablets.

We're starting this thing again.

Just amazing.

Point number two, if you're taking notes.

You guys okay?

Lord send the breeze.

God reminds Moses of his name.

Point number two, God reminds Moses of his own name.

Verses five to seven, then Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood there with him.

And he called upon the name of Yahweh.

Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and called out, Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth.

Wow.

Why would God write the same covenant on new stone for people who had shattered the first one?

Verse 5 gives that clue.

Moses climbs the mountain, and God still had to come down to him even at the summit.

God stooped.

He is that high, and we are that low.

Every encounter that we ever have with God, God is lowering himself.

God is condescending down to us.

He's coming down to us over and over.

He comes down to Moses.

And then verse 6, here's what's striking.

The Bible tells us almost nothing about what Moses saw.

I'm sorry, in chapter 33, verse 18, Moses, if you didn't know, if you weren't with us in the story, he asked God, just one chapter ago, show me your glory.

And you'd expect a description, a blinding light, dazzling color, something, but instead the text records what Moses heard.

God passed by, and Moses, God passed by Moses, and God preached to Moses.

So, so God, Moses gets to see a bit, a glimpse of God's back, a glimpse of his glory.

That's all that we get.

We don't get like, come on, there's got to be more description to this.

No, instead, the description is audible, it's what he hears.

Show me your glory, audible.

Amazing.

So Moses asked God for a photograph, a selfie, right?

And God gave him a sermon.

God preaches at him.

And what a sermon it was.

He simply proclaims his name and then defines it.

Here we go.

God's about to pass by and you hear this massive announcement.

Moses just heard the name of God, said by God Himself, Yahweh.

Have you ever wondered what the pure, real, audible voice of God sound like?

I don't know.

The sound of a million rushing waters.

I don't know.

But when we hear it, we will know.

And Moses heard it.

And the first thing he hears is the name of God, Yahweh.

Moses hears, Yahweh, Yahweh God.

The Lord, the Lord is God.

Then he hears this after his name.

He is compassionate.

He is moved by our weakness.

The way a father is moved by his crying child.

He hears he is not only compassionate, he is gracious, giving us what we don't deserve instead of what we do.

People say they want God to give them what they deserve.

No, no, friends, you do not want that.

You do not want God to be fair with you.

I want to be fair.

No, you don't.

He will line up everything you've ever done wrong, and you'll be in big trouble.

You've ran a thousand spiritual red lights.

Your bills are through the roof.

You cannot pay them.

Praise be to Jesus that He's paid them for us.

Amen?

Jesus paid it all.

All to him I owe.

He is gracious.

Then He's compassionate.

He's gracious.

He's slow to anger.

This is all the description of his name.

Slow to anger.

Patient, not blind, not soft, but restrained, always making room for repentance.

I mean, every God that we've ever seen in film is always shown, you know, is quick to move.

You're not going to see slow-moving gods.

Slow to anger.

Well, Yahweh is.

It says in the text that he is abounding in loving kindness.

It doesn't just say loving kindness, it says abounding, overflowing.

The Hebrew word here for abounding, this loving kindness is cheesed.

Yes, cheesed, just like I said.

It's a covenant loyalty that will not quit.

He is abounding in truth, not only abounding in loving kindness, but abounding in truth.

God is not a man that he can lie, he only speaks truth.

Truth is defined as every word that comes from the mouth of God.

God's mouth has determined truth.

God's words are not looking to align with the truth.

He is the truth.

He is the way, the truth, and the life.

So when God speaks, he builds truth.

He has defined truth by his words.

Isn't that amazing?

He is not seeking or looking for truth.

He is the truth.

And then it says that he will keep a loving kindness for thousands.

The word emet faithfulness.

Not a trickle of loving kindness, a flood of loving kindness running across all generations.

God's loving kindness is not for a specific people.

It's not for a specific generation.

It is forever.

It touches all peoples in all generations.

Amazing.

He goes on to say he is forgiving of iniquity, transgression, and sin.

Isn't that all the same thing?

No.

Look at the detail here.

He forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.

Notice that's three different words there.

Iniquity is turning aside from what's right.

Transgression is defiant rebellion.

Betraying the king.

Sin is the catch-all.

Any moral failure to know the right thing to do and not do it to him, that is what?

Sin.

God stacks up three categories so that nobody in the room can say, but my kind of sinning isn't on the list.

He can't forgive me.

Yes, he can.

And yes, he will.

There is no sin too great for God to forgive.

Your kind of sin is on the list.

And he is the forgiving king of all wrong.

All forgiven.

You can't be that gracious.

You can't be that merciful.

But here's the thing: it pulls at us as humans now, doesn't it?

Because when someone does that to us, when someone shows us that kind of grace of forgiveness, we kind of don't know what to do.

We're beside ourselves.

It's an amazing love, it's an amazing commitment.

And we we get a little touch of that in the human.

It's like, wow.

Like we're not getting the fullness of God, no doubt.

Humans can't do that.

We try.

It's a miracle if it happens, but man, to get glimpses of that even moves us.

And here's what I want you to see about the timing.

God says all of this just days after the golden calf.

It's not been years, it's not once things have settled down.

It was just days ago that they built the golden calf.

And here he is proclaiming this to Moses and his people.

Colossians 3 13, be gentle and ready to forgive.

Never hold grudges.

Remember the Lord who forgave you, so you must also forgive others.

Amazing, huh?

Saying, love and serve each other in the way that God has loved and served you.

This became Israel's confession of faith.

David praised this in Psalm 86, 15, but you are merciful and gentle, Lord, slow and getting angry, full of constant loving, kindness, and truth.

He says the exact thing.

Jonah, remember Jonah, he ran away from God.

He got on a cruise ship and went to Spain.

Remember?

It even says he paid about 2,000 bucks to get there.

He paid the fee, the text says.

He tried to run away from God.

And they're like, what are you doing out here?

Why is this storm showing up?

Well, I'm kind of a prophet and I'm like running from God.

He wants me to go to this town, Nineveh, who are the worst people on the planet, who cut out people's tongues and stack skulls high.

And there's no way I'm going to them and preaching forgiveness or repentance to them because I don't want Yahweh to forgive them and be gracious to them.

And he even argues with God about it.

He says, I knew you might do this.

I knew you might be gracious to them.

And that's why I didn't want to go.

That's why I went on the cruise.

But God sent a whale, huh?

Cue the whale.

Amazing.

Cue the whale.

It's remarkable that the timing of the storm in which the sailors threw him off of the boat, he lands in the water and there's a whale sitting right there ready to go.

And then it says that after he was thrown overboard, everything got calm.

Jonah complained about God's grace.

He's like, I don't want you to give it to my enemies.

Give me grace, but don't give it to them.

Give me mercy and forgiveness, but don't give it.

They don't deserve it.

Uh-oh.

Nobody deserves it.

I don't deserve it.

You see it?

It softens everything, it messes up everything in us.

It connects so deeply to us.

One verse spoken on a mountain to one man became the theological spine of the whole Old Testament.

He is merciful and compassionate, gentle, so to anger, full of loving, kindness, and truth.

He forgives.

He's gracious.

And this thesis about God points directly to the one who will show it to us all in real life.

And in his death, burial, and resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ in real time showed up and showed us the compassion, the grace, and the mercy of God.

We got to see it and behold it.

Was he compassionate?

When he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them.

Was Jesus gracious, full of grace and truth, slow to anger?

Ask Peter, who denied him three times, and then he got breakfast on the beach.

Do you remember that?

Faithful, he walked towards the cross, and he could have walked away from it.

Forgiving?

He forgave the men driving the nails while they were driving the nails.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Unbelievable.

Understand what's happening on this mountain.

God did not owe Moses an explanation.

He's God, but he wanted to be known.

God does not merely want to be feared, not merely obeyed.

He wants his creation to know him.

If you would boast in anything, Jeremiah says, boast in this, that you know and understand me, says the Lord.

Thank you for that emphasis.

We have buttons that we're pushing to like bring in, you know, bring in the extra.

And that's why there is a second set of tablets, not because Israel deserved one, but because of who God is.

And he is the God of second chances, third chances, fourth chances, fifth chances.

And some of you day, what about number 53?

Yes, he is.

Pretty amazing.

There's none like him, not in all the universe.

Too many.

Way too many.

He should have been done with me a long time ago.

And that's what people don't understand.

What keeps me is not my holiness and faithfulness to him.

It is his grace and mercy and my life that draws me back and creates holiness and faithfulness in my life.

It's not what I'm doing.

It's what he keeps doing to me that grabs me and pulls me close.

I can't believe it.

He should have pushed me away a long time ago.

Keeps dragging me and pulling me close.

And that changes.

What are you going to do with that?

Where are we going to go?

You alone have the words of eternal life.

What are we going to do?

Seriously, go off into this world and try to figure it out.

What are we going to do?

Once you've met the Almighty, what are you going to do?

We got to stop measuring God by our circumstances and start measuring Him by His own self-description.

Your feelings do not get a vote on the character of God.

His word ultimately determines it.

So when the diet when the diagnosis comes about your sickness, when the marriage strains, when the prayer goes unanswered for four years straight, when you have failed again in the same way you failed a hundred times before, go back to verse 6.

And you can say it out loud until you believe it.

He is compassionate, he's gracious, he's slow to anger, he's abounding in loving kindness and truth.

It's who he is.

His name is Yahweh, and this is who he is.

Don't forget who your God is.

John 1.14, and the word Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory.

Glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Full to the brim.

Some people are not even slightly full of grace, huh?

Kind of sticklers, you know.

You cross them, oh man, they're gonna nail you.

He is full of grace, overflowing with grace.

Tim Keller in the book, his book, The Meaning of Marriage, makes the point that when someone has seen you at your worst, knows all your strengths and weaknesses, all your flaws, and commits to you anyway, that is a consummate experience.

Being loved but not known is comfortable yet superficial, while being known and not loved is our greatest fear.

His conclusion is that to be fully known and truly loved is a lot like being loved by God.

And that's what marriage is.

The deeper you get into this thing, we're only 15 years this year by the grace of God.

But the deeper you get into this thing, thank you, Sean.

I appreciate that.

Who's getting married soon?

Congratulations, Sean and Rachel.

The deeper you get into it, yeah.

You know, when people say, you know, I love you more now than than then, what does that mean?

What's happening is the deepening of relationship.

They are knowing you more, all of your darkness, all all of all of the things, and still choosing to love you and be with you and carry on.

And that's the magic on the other end.

I kind of want to see if I can find somebody on the earth who will do that.

We think we're so great in the beginning.

Don't you know how great I am?

The best thing that ever happened to you.

Hey, buddy.

Given enough time, though, you will find out you are just like everyone else.

We are all the same.

Romans chapter 3, verse 10.

Romans 3:10

There is none righteous, no, not one.

There are none who seeks God.

There are none who go after him.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Every single one of us.

This is what you have to remember.

As we walk with God, again, oftentimes in the beginning, it's okay.

It's all right.

We can uh a lot of distraction.

We'll get through it.

What you have to understand is that as you get into it, we think we're great.

We think we're awesome.

We think there are amazing things and qualities about us.

But the deeper we get into it, the more we realize who we really are.

And that is what you can't escape within the confines of relationships.

And you either choose to keep thinking we're the greatest thing that ever happened to everybody else, or we start realizing I need Jesus just like everybody else.

I cannot do this without him.

I'm not getting along.

And I am shocked that this person has remained with me all these years.

Praise God.

They love me more than anybody in the universe, and I'm grateful.

That's the magic of marriage.

It's nothing else on the other side, I'm telling you.

The magic is that someone has chosen to love you just as you are, regardless of the way that you've treated them.

And that is a glimpse of God.

J.I.

Packer said, It is staggering that God should love sinners, yet it is true.

Augustine said, If you understand it fully, it is not God.

If you understand it fully, it is not God, the one who we cannot fully comprehend his grace.

Point number three, and finally, you guys okay?

God waits for you to get low.

God waits for you to get low.

This is verses seven and eight.

We can't pass this part over, though it's not fun to process, but it's true.

Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren of the third and fourth generations.

We'd love to end in verse seven at forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, but God does not.

And neither can we.

He is merciful and just, yes, he is, but he does not sweep sin under the rug.

Sin leaves a legacy in our families.

It runs downhill through the families, generation after generation.

Anyone who's watched addiction or raise or unfaithfulness pass from father to son knows exactly what that verse means.

You've seen it, some of us have experienced it, and you're trying to break that from happening within your own family.

This is not the fine print that cancels his grace, that he will by no means leave the unguilty punished.

No, this is the framework that makes the grace mean something more.

C.S.

Lewis wrote that mercy detached from justice grows unmerciful.

A God who winks at evil isn't loving, he's negligent.

And that's true.

He somehow has to judge all sin and then remain merciful and gracious at the same time.

The distractions are great today.

But we will get through it, right?

Galatians, yes.

He's saying grace and mercy and justice.

I believe it.

I have to translate dog, you know, for you, you know.

Galatians chapter 6, verse 7.

Galatians 6:7

Do not be deceived.

God is not mocked for whatever one sows that he will reap.

Listen to the New Living Translation on this one.

Maybe you haven't heard it before.

Do not be misled.

You cannot mock the justice of God.

We will always harvest what we plant.

But you gotta watch verse 8.

Moses made haste to bow low toward the Lord, uh, toward the earth and worship.

So consider this man's track record with God, Moses.

At the burning bush, he argues five separate times, and he finishes with, please send someone else.

He's like, I'm not doing the job, I don't want to be Moses, all right?

Then he argues with Pharaoh.

He argues at the Red Sea, he argues in chapter 32, and in chapter 33, he says to God, If your presence doesn't go with us, we're not going.

So 40 years of unbroken commentary, Moses again walking with God for 40 years.

Uh, the man has an opinion about everything, the man who can't talk, right?

Very interesting.

And then God passes by and says his name and gives a description of himself, and Moses says nothing, not a word.

He just bows to the ground.

Is that amazing or what?

Psalm 95.

Oh, come let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the Lord our God, our maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture.

40 years of talking back to God, and the only thing that shut Moses' mouth was finally seeing God for who he actually is.

He was in awe.

No words, just silence.

And maybe even tears.

So God declares, I'm compassionate, I'm merciful, I'm gracious, long-suffering.

He compares all of his attributes, forgiving.

And Moses doesn't say anything, it just says he just falls down to the ground and bows.

Maybe in tears, blown away by his grace, again and again, he just bows down.

How can the God who forgives all sin be the same God who leaves no guilt unpunished?

Both are somehow true in the same breath, in the same verse.

And the answer is the cross of Jesus.

At Calvary, God did not waive sin's penalty, he absorbed it.

Romans chapter 3.26, God set forth Christ so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

So not just or justifier, but both.

The cross is how God gets to be everything he proclaimed on the mountain, all of it at once, without compromising a single attribute.

Justice satisfied and mercy being poured out at the same time.

Jesus is taking the punishment for our sin, and the same moment he is offering the forgiveness for sin at the same time.

I will take your sin on the cross, and now I will forgive you.

The king is doing both in the same moment, all in the same act.

Justice satisfied, mercy poured out, and grace given, all in the same act.

We can't build our theology out of half a verse.

Take God whole, the mercy and his justice, the tenderness and the holiness.

And when you finally see him clearly, we don't need to analyze, all we need to do is do what Moses did.

Just bow.

Get low, bow to your king, lay it all down.

Be blown away by his grace.

Let it impact you.

Don't run, don't talk, just bow.

Get low.

Let his presence, justice, mercy, and grace wash over you.

Again, I think that because people want a great explanation, sometimes we have to go on and on and on about our explanation.

You know what God wants?

He just wants us to bow.

Just get low.

Now we don't bow to anybody except God.

It's a posture we should learn.

And there's something, something that goes on in there.

You know what I mean?

If you actually, by yourself in the secret of your own life, go and you actually bow down to all that stuff.

That's a big moment.

A lot of things come out.

Because we don't bow to anybody ever.

It's an amazing moment.

It is the judge.

It is the judge who imposes the full weight of penalty upon the guilty one.

He declares it, throws down the gavel.

Guilty.

You will give your life, the death penalty, you'll go to jail forever.

He gives the full weight.

And then the judge, I love it.

And then the judge steps down from the bench and says, I will do it myself.

I will pay for it myself.

I will lay my life down and they will go free.

I'm going to jail forever for them.

They'll go free.

How can the judge declare them guilty then take on the penalty at the same time?

This is what Jesus did in the cross.

It's beautiful.

It's unbelievable.

John McCain noted that slow to anger does not describe a God who eventually loses patience and lashes out.

It describes one who is reluctant to act against his creation, waiting long to give the sinner opportunity to repent, yet never forgetting and never condoning sin at the same time.

He is long suffering.

He's waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.

Wade longer than you await.

Our patience is short.

We are not long suffering.

Our patience is quick, especially now, man, with the screen and with the Amazon Prime.

You know, it's just like they said it would be here.

I ordered at 10 a.m.

They said it would be here at 11 a.m.

And it is not here.

Unbelievable, you know?

God is patient towards you, not willing that what any would perish, but that all would come to repentance.

God handed Moses a chisel.

He said, make a new stone.

God told Moses his name.

I'm compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving, kindness, and truth, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

Not because Israel earned a second chance, but because God is simply who he is.

And then God waited for Moses to respond, and his response was no words.

He simply just got low.

And that's the best thing, church, we could ever do.

God's not asking you to say anything.

He's not asking you to do anything.

You get the second chance.

If there's anything that we would do, bow your heart to the Lord.

Turn it over to Him.

Change of mind, change of heart, change of direction.

Make Jesus Lord and Savior over your life again and again and again.

Amen?

And a little breeze, cue the breeze to end the sermon.

Thank you, Lord.

Let's go before the Lord in prayer.

Father, we bless you in this place.

And we thank you that you are the God of second chances and third and fourth and fifth and a thousand chances.

Oh my Lord, you have been unbelievably gracious to your creation.

We are hating and hurting each other, destroying each other on this planet.

And you should have wiped us out a long time ago.

But you keep remaining.

And you keep bringing us close and proving your grace and your mercy to us over and over and over again.

Lord, I pray for every person in this place that we would respond to your grace and mercy again.

And we would just say, Lord, I have sinned, and we would fall down before you, bow our hearts, give our lives over to you, and just walk with you from this day forward.

We need you, God.

We surrender our lives to you again.

And we just want to say thank you for being so kind and so gracious and so gentle and so good and continuing with us all these days.

Thanks for the thousandth chance again.

We gladly give our lives back to you.

We do it in Jesus' name.

Amen.