Senior Pastor Damein Schitter continues our Advent series on the name of God in Exodus 34.
Thank you, atie. Well, good morning. My name is Damian, I'm the senior pastor and I'm grateful to get a continue on in our Advent sermon series this year. If you've been with us this fall, you know that we're in the second part of a series through the book of Exodus, and we'll actually end Exodus the last Sunday of the year. And for our Advent series we decided that we would linger on this passage that we just heard read.
Damein:In this passage, as Ben showed us last week, we have a secure foundation to stake two really important things. The first thing is our view of God, the way we understand who God is. We can stake that view on this very foundational passage. But the other thing we can also stake on this particular passage is not only our view of God, but also God's view of us. How does God look at us? In fact, from one perspective, we actually could say that the entire Bible serves to slowly but decisively strip us of our skewed thoughts of who God is. To say it another way, the Christian life is the lifelong shedding of our skewed thoughts of God. And this shedding happens when we actually encounter God in our lives, not merely the idea of who God might be, but when we encounter God himself In particular, you might ask yourself and I want you to think about this how does a holy God respond to our waywardness and weakness? And we'll come back to this. But it'd be interesting to know, after you answer that, how do you respond to your waywardness and weakness, or how do you respond to others' waywardness and weakness? Is there a disconnect between how you would answer, how God responds, and how you respond?
Damein:One author puts it this way we expect the bent of God's heart to be retribution to our waywardness. And then Exodus 34 taps us on the shoulder and stops us in our tracks and tells us the bent of God's heart is mercy. So today we're going to explore this wonderful truth together in two points, that is, mercy and grace revealed and mercy and grace received. So today, the two things that we're looking at in that passage are mercy and grace, the Lord. The Lord, a God merciful and gracious. So first, mercy and grace revealed. Now I want to quickly remind us of what's happening. Remember, moses is on the mountain with God and in response to this conversation that Ben walked us through last week in Exodus, chapter 33, now we see in chapter 34, god is revealing himself to Moses, and I choose the word reveal intentionally.
Damein:This word reveal is very important because to reveal is to make something previously unknown known, or to make something previously not very well known more well known. We have a language like this, for example we're going to the big reveal, and why would we do that? Because there's something unknown to us that we want made known to us. And this gets all the more interesting when we talk about a person revealing themselves. There's something unique and special about that. It's not just a thing is revealed, but a person is revealed.
Damein:Now, if we think about why you or I would reveal ourselves to another person, or why any person would reveal themselves to another person, we understand that revelation of who we are is for one primary reason, and that is to be known. We reveal ourselves so that we can be known by others. If I were to say what are the first two things that you would tell about yourself to someone, if someone said, tell me about yourself, what are the first two things you would say? Now, this might change depending on who it was and where you were, but if I asked you that question, I would think the first two things you said would be important to you that if I said, tell me a little bit about yourself, that I should pay attention to the first thing that comes out of your mouth.
Damein:And here, in God's self-revelation, the first words out of his mouth after he says the Lord, the Lord, his very name, are merciful and gracious, the very first two words. Not the Lord the Lord exacting and precise, or the Lord the Lord tolerant and overlooking, or the Lord the Lord disappointed and frustrated. His first words his heart, merciful and gracious. But here's the thing about these particular words we can't think of mercy and grace only in the abstract. That's the easy thing to do is to come and hear me talk about what God says about himself and think only in the abstract Even beautiful things like mercy and grace. But in order to understand these things, we have to understand them in light of an actual response to our waywardness, to our weakness and to our wickedness. There's no way God's mercy and grace can become real to you unless you actually experience it in a time where you need it.
Damein:For example, in the book of Nehemiah, nehemiah is leading the people through a prayer of confession. They've come out of exile, they're returning back, they're rebuilding the city, if you remember the story, and later on in the book of Nehemiah, in chapter nine, nehemiah leads the people through a confession, a public confession of sin, and when he does that, he actually mentions this particular chapter, these two chapters. In Exodus, nehemiah says this they refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. If you remember last week, who were they talking about? They got tired of waiting for Moses, so they appointed Aaron the new leader, melted a bunch of gold and built a calf and worshiped it All while Yahweh was confirming his love and covenant for them been used a visceral illustration last week, saying this would be like committing adultery on your wedding night. That's what Nehemiah is talking about.
Damein:So how does God respond to that? How does God's mercy and grace in real life, in concrete ways, meet our wickedness and our waywardness? Well, this is what Nehemiah says but you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding. Instead fast love, and you did not forsake them. He's quoting this exact passage. Now we get this beautiful picture, in this reality, of God's mercy in action. We see it over and over through the scriptures. In fact, in our call to worship, it was the exact quotation from the Psalm. The Psalmist quotes this particular passage because this is fundamental to who God has revealed himself to be, one more later on in Israel's history, in a really particularly dark time.
Damein:In Isaiah 49, god's people are in exile. They're so discouraged, they believe that God has left them, that he's forsaken them. And as they're lamenting this, this is what God says to them. He says can a woman forget her nursing child? That she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Compassion is the same word for mercy. Even those may forget. That is God is saying. Even a nursing mother might forget her son, but I will never forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. And so, when God reveals, he compares himself to a mother full of compassion and mercy toward her infant.
Damein:And so, in summary, what we see in these two words coming together is an emphasis on God's tender and generous character. Basically, when God sees need, he responds benevolently. So often we think that if someone sees our need, it's something to be ashamed of. So often you and I wanna hide our need because we don't know how other people respond and maybe, most of all, we wanna hide our need from God. Somehow we wanna look impressive, somehow we wanna trick ourselves into thinking that we're farther along than we really are. And then, when we live in that way, true need shows itself and we experience shame instead of love. But what we see here in this fundamental or foundational revelation from God, is that when he sees your need, he responds with mercy and grace. In fact, your need moves him to the very character that he has Mercy and grace. And listen, this is so true and universal that when God sees need and people turning back to him, that he always responds with mercy and grace, that it can actually frustrate our sensibilities and our preferences. And this is what I mean.
Damein:You guys remember Jonah. Jonah the prophet. God tells him to go where? To Nineveh. To do what? To call them to repentance, this Gentile pagan nation. God sends one of his prophets there and, if you remember, jonah decides he doesn't wanna go, and so he tries to escape, and you know that doesn't go well. A storm comes and in order to get the storm to stop and save everyone on the ship, what does he do? He jumps in the water and he's swallowed by fish. Now do you remember what happens in the fish?
Damein:Eventually, jonah sings or writes this beautiful, responsive prayer of confession and praise, and he actually quotes God for his steadfast love. He quotes God particularly for his mercy and grace. He quotes this passage In the belly of that fish. Why? Because God had mercy to his wickedness and waywardness. So eventually, the fish spits Jonah out on the beach and he walks in and he does faithfully what God told him to do.
Damein:He starts preaching, he starts calling this wicked nation and people to repentance, to the goodness of God. And what happened? They did, they repented. And so at the end of chapter three this is what the text says when God saw what they did, that is, the Ninevites repented, how they turned from their evil way, god relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them. And he did not do it. Why? Because he had mercy and grace.
Damein:The very next verse. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry and he prayed to the Lord and said oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was getting my country? That is why I made haste to flee for Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding. Instead fast love and relenting from disaster. Oh the irony Steadfast love, when extended to Jonah, filled him with thanksgiving chapter two, verse eight but when it extended to the Ninevites, it filled him with anger. You see, our view of God shapes the way we view the world and other people in it, and in this we see how we're so different from God and why our hardness of heart leads us to remake God in our image. We make him like us, except bigger and stronger. And then we think God must be like us and he must love the people that we love and he must hate the people that we hate. And certainly he won't bring his mercy and grace on those people. They don't deserve it like we do. Isn't it interesting, so interesting. But what we find is that God is merciful and gracious to all who respond to his call. I love this.
Damein:One commentator, when reflecting on this idea, says this the Old Testament speaks of God being provoked to anger by his people dozens of times, but not once are we told that God is provoked to love or provoked to mercy. And you might think why? What does that mean? Well, because his anger requires provocation. His mercy is already pent up, ready to gush forth. We tend to think divine anger is pent up, spring loaded, and divine mercy is slow to build. But it's just the opposite. Divine mercy is ready to burst forth at the slightest prick. You see, it's actually fallen humans.
Damein:We learn in the New Testament where it's reversed we have to provoke one another to love, according to Hebrews, chapter 10. But Yahweh needs no provoking to love, only to anger. We need no provoking to anger, only to love. You see, once again, the Bible is one long attempt to deconstruct our natural vision of who God is. And our natural vision is skewed and what we see is that, because we are so prone to anger and we must be provoked to mercy, we think God is the same way. But when God has the opportunity to set the record straight, we see no, no, no.
Damein:What God has welling up, ready to spring forth, is mercy and grace, not anger. You see, as believers, we worship the Lord who loves even the most sinful people, who forgives those who have failed, who rejoices in giving people second chances and never ceases to search for those who are lost or rescue those who have been hurt and left behind by life. You see, our God is full of grace, and that stands in sharp contrast to the vengeful, unpredictable, intimidating and often arbitrary deities of other religions and even of our own mind. So what we see in this passage is that God has revealed himself, and it's beautiful. God is merciful and he's gracious. And if this is what mercy and grace looks like revealed then what does it look like received? Because, you see, it's not enough simply to accept this as revealed. We have to receive it, and that's not as easy as it sounds. So my final point mercy and grace received. It's not enough for us to have God's mercy and grace revealed, we need to receive it. Listen, I can describe someone to you. I can even tell you stories about them. You can believe that it's real, you can believe that I know them. You can tell other people those stories because they're so amazing. That's a certain type of knowledge, but it's not the knowledge that's required in order to truly receive God's mercy.
Damein:A. W. Tozer, who been quoted last week, says this we have substituted theological ideas for an arresting encounter. We are full of religious notions, but our great weakness is that, for our hearts, there is no one there. Do you find yourself in that place. So often you have religious ideas, even true ones, of who God is. You can declare them to other people. God is merciful and gracious. It's been revealed to you. You believe it. You believe what I'm saying.
Damein:You see it in other people's lives, but my question is have you ever encountered it in your life? Because in order to truly receive it, it must be encountered. You can believe it in one sense, but to truly accept it and receive it, you have to encounter it. You see, any authentic spiritual journey must grow from direct personal experience of God and his mercy and his grace. There is no substitute for genuine encounter with God's mercy and gracious love for you. Nothing, there's no substitute for experiencing God meet you in your darkest thoughts and in your darkest moments, like when you lose your temper and say incredibly harmful things, things that would bring you such shame if we were to put them on the screen that even now you feel it in your body.
Damein:What about when you slandered someone and then it was found out? You were talking about them and they walked into the room and you didn't know it. And it's revealed and you're seen for what you've done and it's horrible. Will there? Will you encounter God's mercy, will you encounter God's grace? Can you receive it? What about when you're unfaithful to a friend or to a spouse there? Can you receive mercy and grace from God? Because unless you can encounter it, in those and worse, you haven't received it. You don't know what it's like to experience God's mercy and his grace.
Damein:And in these and many other types of scenarios, many hearing might think well, knowing that God is unequivocally gracious toward us, shouldn't it be easy to receive? Well, I would ask you, is it, is it easy to receive? I don't find it easy to receive. In fact, so often I find I feel things welling up in me, different emotions, different experiences, different thoughts that actually, in those moments, keep God at arms bay, thank you. When we think about this, I think it's because our fallen psychology is fundamentally at odds with mercy and grace. We have such a tendency to run our own lives and pay our own way that we find this type of mercy and grace unbelievable, actually, and sometimes undesirable.
Damein:Christian psychologist David Benner said how desperately I want to be able to contribute something to the deal my faith, my effort, my love, my belief. We're often willing to accept measured doses of love, as long as it doesn't upset our basic framework of the world and God. That framework is built on the assumption that people get what they deserve, and that's really what I want. I want to earn what I get and for the most part I'm content to get what I earn, because nothing grates more than a handout. So how do we break free from this? How do we break free from this experience? How do we allow our minds and our hearts to be shaped by God, to receive His mercy and grace with gratitude, to receive Him as he's revealed Himself, to encounter Him in our darkest moments when it really matters?
Damein:Dane Ortlund in his book Gentle and Lowly says this and I find it so helpful. He says the Christian life from one angle is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is over many decades letting it fall away, being slowly replaced with God's own insistence on who he is. And Dane says this is hard work. It takes a lot of sermons and a lot of suffering to believe that God's deepest heart is merciful and gracious and slow to anger. Dane goes on to say the fall in Genesis 3 not only sent us into condemnation and exile. The fall also entrenched in our minds dark thoughts of God, thoughts that are only dug out over multiple exposures to the gospel over many years. Now hear this he says perhaps Satan's greatest victory in your life today is not the sin in which you regularly indulge, but the dark thoughts of God's heart that cause you to go there in the first place and keep you cool toward Him and then in the wake of it. Have you thought about that? Is it maybe your dark thoughts of how God might view you that actually is fundamentally keeping you from receiving His grace? These dark and cold thoughts of God, they twist our motivation for walking with Him and then, rather than joy and peace and freedom, we actually switch it for a motivation of guilt and just a new slavery.
Damein:Paul connects the Christian life and its motivation not to guilt but to God's mercy. Paul did not say in Romans 12, I urge you by the guilt you will assume if you are negligent. He did not say I urge you by the rejection you will face when you fail. He did not threaten and say I urge you by the love you will lose if you falter. He said I urge you by the mercies of God. So many of us don't obey out of a motivation of God's mercy and grace. We're motivated by how our behavior might make us right or keep us good, with an easily angered, never satisfied, always finger wagging God.
Damein:But this is a skewed vision. This is not who God is. God is merciful and gracious. Paul expounds upon this in Ephesians 2. We're faced with this picture of who God is over and over all throughout the Old Testament, all throughout the New Testament. In Ephesians 2, Paul says but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, that's when he made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised. He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us and Jesus Christ. If you read this slowly in all of chapter 2, what you find is that Paul is essentially tripping over himself, trying to communicate the overwhelming abundance of at least two things First, god being rich in mercy, and then later, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us and Jesus Christ. So we see mercy and grace. It's immeasurable, it's overflowing.
Damein:Nowhere else in the Bible is God described as rich in anything. The only thing he is called rich in is mercy. What does this mean? What could this mean? It means that God is something other than what we naturally believe Him to be. He's not short tempered, he's not quick to snap, he's quick to mercy, he's quick to kindness, he's quick to move toward us, especially in our sin. And where do we see this most fully? Of course, we see this most fully in Jesus, who is constantly showing his mercy and his grace, constantly showing his full identities to his disciples, and that they couldn't fully receive it. This season of the year, advent, when we light candles and we sing songs of the incarnation and Jesus coming, why are we so happy? It's because the thing that was really revealed in Exodus 34, god's mercy and his grace and his steadfast love and faithfulness, his moving toward his people in their sin, the thing that was truly revealed is now fully revealed in the coming of Jesus. The shadow gives way to the thing itself. God takes on human flesh.
Damein:Recently I was meeting with a group of pastors. There's a group of senior pastors that an older father in the faith here in Orlando decided that he wanted to get together young pastors and we're not quite sure how long that title young applies. Like I turn 40 next year and I'm the youngest in the group, so I don't know how long young our middle-aged people young, I'm not sure. But right now we call ourselves the Young Pastors Group and the man who leads us is in his mid-60s and he just had this vision to gather pastors, senior pastors, together to fellowship one another, to be known, to be seen, to repent, to encourage, to rejoice, and every now and then we'll bring in an older pastor than us, so 20 years at least, usually. And recently we had one of these pastors in his 60s come in and talk about whatever he wanted to, and we spent two hours listening to him talking, and one of the things he talked about was Mark 6.
Damein:And in Mark 6, one of the things that happens is this is right after the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus sends the disciples in the boat across the Sea of Galilee. And then it's nighttime and they're straining at the ore and you know what happens next. Jesus decides I think I'll just walk, and he starts walking across the water and this really interesting and confusing thing happens. The Mark actually says that as he was walking, they see him and they notice him, but what it says is that he had meant to pass them by. And so this brother who was talking had talked about how often we miss God's sightings. That's what he was saying, he said, and he told us of this 20 year or so practice of every morning in his Bible reading, reflecting on the day before from this passage and saying where did God pass me by yesterday? Where did I miss God and him working in my life and around me? So I'd been thinking about Mark 6 and God sightings and I thought, yeah, that's actually I'd like to do that, I'd like to be more reflective in that way. And then I came to this passage and I noticed that several times, in fact four times in Exodus 33 and 34, the Lord says that he is going to pass by Moses and I thought there's got to be something here. And lo and behold, there is. It's amazing, as one commentator said.
Damein:Now we begin to see why Jesus intended to pass by his disciples who were struggling at the oars on the Sea of Galilee. The text says that he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them, and about the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass them by. Why would he intend to pass by them? Well, the reason is that Jesus does not merely intend to pass by the disciples. The way one car on the highway may bypass others.
Damein:His passing by is far more significant and only understood against its Old Testament background. Four times, in Exodus 33 and 34, the Lord says he will pass by Moses. The Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament, using the same word that Mark uses. The Lord passed by Moses and revealed that his deepest glory is seen in his mercy and in his grace. Jesus came to do in flesh and blood what God had done only in wind and voice.
Damein:When we see the Lord revealing his truest character to Moses in Exodus 34, we're seeing the shadow that will one day yield to the shadow caster, jesus Christ. We are given, we're being given in 2D, what will explode into our own space and time continuum. In 3D, centuries later, at the height of human history. We're being told of God's deepest heart in Exodus 34,. But we are shown that heart in the Galilean carpenter who testified that this was his heart throughout his life and then proved it when he went to a Roman cross, descending into the hell of God for sake, in us, in our place.
Damein:You see, at the cross, what Jesus was showing was his glory. Actually in his goodness, he was made king on the cross. How is that so? It's because when God reveals himself as the Lord, the Lord merciful and gracious, he really means it, that it's not mere words, but it's actually action. God actually takes on human flesh lives, a perfect life, takes on all temptation, but without sin, and then climbs up on a cross to truly enact his mercy and his grace.
Damein:You see, you and I, in order to truly receive and encounter God, must encounter him there. We must encounter his mercy and his grace in Jesus Christ on the cross, first, because in his crucifixion, that's where we receive his mercy and grace, and then, as we receive that, we then share with him in his glory. But it goes in that order If we want to encounter God in his mercy and grace, we must encounter him in Jesus Christ. And the way we do that is to receive him by faith. And so my very practical, particular exhortation to you In a few moments you're gonna have some time that Ben leads us through to reflect. So you can do it there, but even beyond, then, this week will you look for God's sightings, as this older father in the faith said, encouraged us. Well, you.
Damein:And what I mean by that is this Is that when you are moved to shame and to hiding because of your sin which will happen can you encounter God's mercy and grace. There, by looking to Jesus and away from yourself, can you encounter God's mercy and grace and receive it in Jesus this week in very particular ways, because that's where life is found. That's the promise of who God is and that's the promise that all of us are called to receive. Let's pray, Father, we do thank you for your sending of your son, Lord Jesus. We recognize and praise you for your incarnation and Holy Spirit. We receive the application of all of Jesus' finished work. We trust and rely upon you, lord Jesus, wholly and you only. I pray for all of us here, those who know you, Jesus, and those who don't yet know you, that we all would, in these moments, experience, encounter, real and fresh your mercy and grace for us today, wherever that might be needed. In the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, we pray, amen.