Sermon Text: Exodus 34:5–9
Date: August 26, 2023
Event: Proper 16, Year A (The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost)
Exodus 34:5–9 (EHV)
The LORD came down in the cloud. He took his stand there with Moses and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6The LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and overflowing with mercy and truth, 7maintaining mercy for thousands, forgiving guilt and rebellion and sin. He will by no means clear the guilty. He calls their children and their children’s children to account for the guilt of the fathers, even to the third and the fourth generation.”
8Moses quickly bowed to the ground and worshipped. 9He said, “If I have now found favor in your sight, Lord, please let the Lord go along with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our guilt and our sin, and accept us as your possession.”
Who Is the LORD?
Earlier this week, I got a somewhat surprising email. It was inviting me to a speaker at a Christian conference in London in November. That would be interesting and a new experience, but I had one major question before I could even begin down the path of thinking about doing such a thing. The invitation was sent by a pastor whom I had never heard of before. Who was this person?
As I dug into the information, it became clear that this was probably a group that we were not in fellowship with, which would have made participating in such a thing probably a non-starter anyway. But as I dug in more and did some more reading, it appeared that this, like so many things anymore, was a complete scam. If I had expressed interest in participating, they would have let me know that I would need a temporary work visa to come and present, and time was running out to get that done before the conference, but if I would just pay a $400 fee to expedite it, they could get it set in time. If I were to send them $400, I would likely never hear from them again—unless they were trying to get more money from me.
When it comes to communication of any kind, you want to know who you’re working with. When PG&E calls and says there’s a problem with your bill—is it really PG&E or someone trying to take advantage of you? The more important the situation, the more sure you want to be who you’re dealing with right? What if your utilities were going to be cut off? What if a loved one was in physical or legal trouble? Was the information you were getting valid? Are you talking to who you think you are talking to?
This morning, our worship focuses on wanting to know who Jesus is. The crowds were confused as to who Jesus was and what he had come to do, Peter’s confession clearly professed Jesus as the promised Savior. In our First Reading, we hear God describe himself, and Moses’ reaction to it. When we’re dealing with God, who are we dealing with? What can we expect from him? What has he promised? What has he not promised? Who is the LORD?
The context of our First Reading is important. Moses had just been up on top of the mountain to receive the law from God. God cut out two tablets of stone and inscribed his words on both sides. He gave them to Moses to deliver to the Israelites to give God’s commands to them.
But as Moses and his assistant Joshua were coming down the mountain, they heard a commotion in the camp. Joshua initially thought it was the sound of war, but Moses’ ears noted that it wasn’t the sound of victory or defeat, but the sound of partying.
And sure enough, when they came down the mountain some more, Moses found many of the people going wild worshiping a calf statue made of gold that Aaron, Moses’ brother, made at the people’s request. God had just rescued the nation from slavery in Egypt working tremendous miracles including the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, but the people almost immediately jumped to worshiping a god they had just made—and Aaron, supposedly the religious leader of the group, was complicit in facilitating this idolatry.
Moses is so angry at what he sees that he takes those stone tablets that God made and carved his words into and smashes them on the ground. He took the golden calf, burned it, ground it up, and made the people drink it in the water. The next day, Moses announced that he would go up and plead for the people to God, “Now I will go up to the LORD. Perhaps I can gain atonement for your sin” (Exodus 32:30b). When Moses went up to meet with God, he told them to go on their way to the Promised Land, but God said that he would not be going with them.
Moses continued to plead the people’s case and appealed to God’s promises to be with them and take care of them as well as his reputation before the other nations of the world. God then promised that he would go with them as planned, and Moses made a bold request: “Please show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18). God is clear that Moses cannot see his full-fledged glory or else Moses would die, but he would give Moses a view of a lesser version of his glory.
And that’s what we have here. This is God showing Moses his glory. Before that could happen, though, God told Moses to cut out of the rock two new stone tablets for the law to replace the ones Moses had destroyed in anger—a bit of a chastisement and consequence for Moses’ sin in front of the people.
So, who is the LORD? We can find no better definition than God’s own description of himself. As the pillar of cloud and fire descended next to Moses and stood at his side, God defined himself: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and overflowing with mercy and truth, maintaining mercy for thousands, forgiving guilt and rebellion and sin. He will by no means clear the guilty. He calls their children and their children’s children to account for the guilt of the fathers, even to the third and the fourth generation.”
What do we learn here? God leads with his primary driver—his compassion and graciousness, slow to anger, overflowing with mercy and faithfulness. The word mercy that God uses to describe himself is very similar to the concept of grace that is fleshed out in the New Testament. This is God’s free and faithful love. This is love that forgives people who are not worthy—which is everyone, including you and me. First and foremost, God wants Moses, the Israelites, and you and me to know that he loves and forgives you.
However, it’s not all gospel. God is both loving and just. He will by no means clear the guilty. That sounds a touch scary, doesn’t it? Because who is guilty of wrongdoing? You and me, right? We are sinners. Does this unwillingness from God to clear the guilty mean that we are still in our sins? Is there no actual way to get out from underneath God’s justice, to avoid the punishment we deserve because of our sins?
We know the term justification or justified is a courtroom term where the judge announces that someone is not guilty. In the context of God’s promises and the faith he gives, God is announcing to you and me that though we have sinned, we are not guilty; though we deserve punishment, he does not hold us accountable. Why? Not because he ignored the sin or pretended it didn’t happen or somehow ceased to be a just God. No, but in his mercy, he sent Jesus to be our Savior. We are not guilty because Jesus took the responsibility for all our sins on himself. You might compare it to a credit card—you and I racked up the debt, and Jesus paid the bill. We owe nothing because Jesus paid it in full.
So then, the person who is guilty is not the person who simply sins (as we all do every day), but the one who rejects this forgiveness from God. Jesus died to pay for the sins of the whole world. We were reminded last week that there is no human being on the face of this planet for whom Jesus did not die when we saw and heard Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21-28). But if I reject God’s forgiveness, if I ignore it, if I tell God, “Thanks but no thanks,” I stand in my sin. I stand before God guilty of every wrongdoing because I’ve thrown away his free and complete solution to my sin. In that state, God has no choice but to hold us accountable. The guilty who spit on God’s forgiveness will not be cleared.
And what disastrous consequences this attitude has! It can trickle down the generations. If Mom and Dad value God’s forgiveness and teach his promises to his children, there’s a good chance that the children will grow up valuing these things as well. If, however, Mom and Dad don’t value these things, there’s an even better chance that the children won’t either, or perhaps, won’t even know about them. And so, the parent’s rejection can lead to the generations that follow to also reject God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Do you hear Moses’ concern, maybe fear, in what he does next? Moses quickly bowed to the ground and worshipped. He said, “If I have now found favor in your sight, Lord, please let the Lord go along with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our guilt and our sin, and accept us as your possession.” At hearing this description of the LORD, hearing God declare his glory in front of him, Moses’ reaction is to throw himself on the ground in God’s presence and plead for himself and the people.
And I want you to pay careful attention to the text in your service folder or your Bible this morning for our First Reading. Notice how when God uses the word “LORD” it is in small capital letters and how when Moses uses it in vv. 8-9, it is capitalized like a normal word? This is not a formatting quirk or mistake in the printing. This is an attempt to show us what is going on in the original Hebrew text.
When you see the small capital letters LORD in your English Bible, that is a special, personal, covenant name for God. It marks him as unique among anything else that someone might consider a “God” or “divine.” This is his reputation, what he longs to be known for. This name, likely pronounced Yahweh, is derived from the conversation God had with Moses at the burning bush where God told Moses that his name is “I AM WHO I AM.” (Exodus 3:14).
But when Moses pleads before God, he doesn’t use this name. He uses the more generic term translated as “Lord” with regular capitalization in our English bibles. This would be the term someone might use to speak to a governmental leader, a boss, or a parent with whom we might be very formal. In modern English, we might even say something like “Sir” instead of “Lord.”
This is not Moses being disrespectful to God—really, just the opposite. As he pleads for the people and for himself, Moses doesn’t even dare to address God by that beautiful, important, covenant name. Moses recognizes they don’t deserve good from God, but they need good from him. They need his forgiveness, and they need him to go with them to the Promised Land. They will never survive here or in eternity without him.
We throw ourselves before God in a similar manner. All of us gathered here are all too familiar with our sins. Not one of us should be here because we think we’re so much better than other people; we should be here because we know that we are not. We know that our sin is a stench in our Creator’s nostrils and that while we may not have run wild worshiping a gold statue of a cow, we certainly have our own idols in our lives. What things do we love more than God? What things in our life often take priority over him? Our work? Our money? Our children? Our schooling? Our social life? Our intimate relationships? Our entertainment? Our favorite sports teams? Truly, we too are a stiff-necked people.
Jesus asked his disciples “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13), there were all sorts of answers, all of them complimentary, but not of them complete. Peter’s faith-spurred answer was a bright spot in what was kind of run of floundering faith for the disciples, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). In other words, “You are the Savior that was promised.”
It is appropriate that Jesus’ name literally means “The LORD Saves.” Not “Our Boss Saves” or “My Master Saves” but “The LORD (Yahweh) Saves.” Who is the LORD? Who is Jesus? Who is he that saves? The compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and overflowing with mercy and truth, maintaining mercy for thousands, forgiving guilt and rebellion and sin.
Yes, our sin seems to know no bounds. Yes, given the opportunity, we would dive headlong into sin and debauchery that make even the most morally loose person blush or be filled with disgust. Yes, we deserve nothing but punishment from our God. But the LORD saves. The one who did not destroy the Israelites in the wilderness for their unfaithfulness will not destroy us for our unfaithfulness, because he forgives our sins. Though we do not deserve it, he has mercy on us; he gives us his undeserved love, his grace.
Our plea to God is the same as Moses’ was, “Pardon our guilt and our sin, and accept us as your possession.” “Please,” we pray, “take ownership of us. Rescue us from sin and death and hell and make us your possession, your inheritance. Without you we are lost; with you we are safe.” And to this plea, God replies, “You ask for my forgiveness? I am the LORD. That is who I am: your God, your Creator, your Savior.” Thanks be to God, who frees us from sin through Jesus Christ! Amen.
