Who is the Lord
By Terance Clark March 15, 2025 7 Minute Read
Week 21
This Weeks Passage: Exodus 30:11 – 34:35
This weeks lesson is a little longer than normal and may be the most difficult of all because the passage is filled with so much information. This week the people make a golden calf and worship it when Moses is delayed while talking to God. Moses throws the tablets of stones representing their covenant with God and breaks them in an act showing this newly formed covenant has already been broken by the people. Moses then chastises the people and even sends out the Levites to destroy the offenders. He now has to carve out new stones and bring them to God for him to once again write out a new covenant. With all of these stories compacted into one weeks passage it’s a lot of information, but there is one aspect of the story that unless understood will keep you from understanding not only the rest of this weeks passage, but it will keep you from understanding all the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. I will focus this weeks lesson on that.
Negotiating a Solution
After Moses broke the tablets and had a conversation with Aaron to see what had happened, death came to the offenders by the sword of the Levites, but then repentance by the people and Moses needed to go back to God and try to get him to forgive Israel for their wrong. How does one fix this? It’s like just finishing a wedding ceremony and then coming to the reception banquet where you find your newly made spouse in the back room consorting with someone else. What do you do? How do you recover, you just made promises and it hasn’t been five minutes and you’ve already forgotten and moved on to someone else. Try fixing that.
“The word favor in Hebrew is the same word
as grace in the New Testament“
It’s in the midst of this that Moses negotiated a solution with God. The details of this conversation found in Exodus 33 may be the most important of any in scripture as they set the precedent for what Jesus would do for all humanity in years to come. We must pay attention to the words used in this conversation. After the golden calf incident God no longer called Israel His people instead He called them Moses’ people. So he told Moses you take your people into the land I’m not going with them, my angel will lead you. Moses says, you have told me to take them, but you have also said that I have found favor in your sight. This word favor in Hebrew is the same word as grace in the New Testament. He says if I have grace from you then how can I go alone without you leading us. At this point God relents and says yes you have earned my grace therefore I will go with you and He says this in the singular form meaning He would just go with Moses and not the people. Moses you are my servant who has my grace or favor I will only go with you and give you rest.
Moses rejects Gods offer and instead uses the plural form to say no you need to go with us. He says, take the grace you have for me and because I identify with the people apply my favor to the whole nation and be with us (Ex. 33:16). This is a huge shift because it’s the first time that Moses doesn’t appeal based on Abraham, Isaac and Jacobs covenant, but uses his own favor with God to be given to the nation. God agrees in Ex. 33:17 saying since you have found favor, I too will give it to the nation. Why is this so important? Because this becomes known as tzaddikism which means the merit or favor (grace) of a single righteous person can be extended to others. This becomes the foundation for the gospel, as Jews would now accept when Jesus comes and suffers and dies on behalf of all mankind. His righteousness gains Gods favor (grace) and then is granted to all who accept it by faith.
“Every aspect of the gospel exists and
was formed in the Old Testament“
Not only this, but it also illustrates what the true meaning of grace actually is. Most Christians teach that grace is God’s unmerited favor, but that is not true. Grace is merited favor, meaning someone had to earn it first and then through sharing their identity with others allowed them to share in their favor. I know this may come as a surprise but salvation by faith through grace is not a New Testament invention. It couldn’t be, God had to established it within the context of Jewish faith. It’s important to note that every aspect of the gospel exists and was formed in the Old Testament. There is still one last important piece to finish this weeks lesson.
Why Ask to See His Glory
Once Moses had received favor for the nation he asked God to show him His glory. He was not trying to get a look at God, he was trying to understand who He is and what is His character. That is the question everyone really wants to know. Who is God? God then promised to tell him and gives him a revelation of himself. God reveals his thirteen character traits to Moses now known as the thirteen attributes. I have not seen very many Christians take the time to understand them but they are the answer to who God is as far as a human can understand (Ex. 34:6-7).
Here is what He told him: “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.“
Who is the Lord
When you and I look at that list it is the only description God ever gives of who He really is, and the one thing that sticks out is how loving and kind He is and willing to forgive and cleanse His people. Our Father God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He did not just become good in the New Testament He has always been good. He has gone great lengths to show us that He loves us and wants to be with us. Who is the Lord? He is a covenant-keeping unchanging merciful being with unlimited power and with a great capacity for mercy. He has compassion like a mother, showing favor and grace to the undeserving, patient and abundant in love. He is fair, intergenerational and bears intentional, rebellious and inadvertent sins and cleanses them all. That in a nutshell is who He said He is. That is our God!
