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Good morning, my name is Constance St. Clair and I'm part of the Christ Church Youth Group.
A reading from the book of Exodus, chapter 34, verses 1 to 14 and verse 29.
The Lord said to Moses,
Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones,
and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.
Be ready in the morning and then come up on Mount Sinai.
Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain.
No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain.
Not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain.
So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones
and went up to Mount Sinai early in the morning as the Lord had commanded him.
And he carried the two stone tablets in his hands.
Then the Lord came down in a cloud and stood there with him,
proclaiming his name, the Lord.
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming,
The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,
maintaining love to thousands,
and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.
Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.
He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents
to the third and fourth generation.
Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped.
Lord, he said, if I have found favor in your eyes,
then let the Lord go with us.
Although this is a stiff-necked people,
forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as your inheritance.
Then the Lord said, I am making a covenant with you.
Before all your people, I will do wonders never before done
in any nation in all the world.
The people you live among will see how awesome
is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you.
Obey what I command you today.
I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites,
Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land
where you are going, or they will be a snare among you.
Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones,
and cut down their Ashereth poles.
Do not worship any other god, for the Lord,
whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai
with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands,
he was not aware that his face was radiant
because he had spoken with the Lord.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God stands for it.
Today we are continuing in this sermon series.
We're about 10 weeks into this sermon series on revival
and the simple prayer,
Lord, revive us.
And in Exodus 32 through 34,
we're learning to pray from Moses.
Just like Jesus and the apostles teach us how to pray
and what to pray in the New Testament,
so this first and greatest of all the prophets,
Moses, teaches us how to pray and what to pray.
And we notice that he prays in a way
that's different than many of us pray
because he prays with a persistent urgency.
Moses, as we've seen these past weeks,
he argues with God.
He makes a case.
He piles up evidence.
He claims the promises of God.
And when God answers one prayer,
he doesn't stop.
He's not satisfied.
He just keeps going,
asking God for more and more and more.
We remember Jacob, right?
This great character in the Bible
and how God changed the name of Jacob
to the name Israel.
And why did he do that?
Because Jacob was a man who prayed
and he grabbed hold of God
and he said, I will not let you go
unless you bless me.
And we're told that Jacob,
he struggled with God
and he wrestled with God
and that he overcame.
And isn't that what it means
to be the people of God,
to be the children of Jacob,
to be the new Israel
and to be the church?
It's not to say,
you know, God has already chosen me.
God already knows everything.
So I'm just going to sit back
and relax and let go
and let God know
to be the people of God
means to struggle with God in prayer,
to wrestle with God in prayer
and to say like Jacob,
I'm not going to let you go
unless you bless me.
And that's what Moses is doing.
He's arguing with God.
He's like a lawyer who goes to court
to wear out the judge with his case.
And so my question for us is,
have we begun 10 weeks
into the sermon series
to pray like this yet?
I hope that maybe we've started.
This kind of prayer
is what calls down
the reviving presence of God
and the reviving power of God.
But Moses doesn't just pray persistently,
he prays persuasively.
And again, this is different
than how many of us pray
because many of us chit-chat with God.
How many of us chit-chat with God?
We say, Lord, bless him and bless her
and give us a good day
and keep us safe, et cetera, et cetera.
And that's good.
If that's where you're starting out,
that's great.
But it's kind of boring.
You know, it might just bore God to tears
with these vague sort of,
you know, indefinite general prayers.
And that's why we're studying this prayer of Moses.
What does he pray for?
Well, we've seen so far
that he's praying for the revival
of the people of God.
He's saying, Lord,
have mercy on your compromised people.
Lord, cause your presence to return among us.
Lord, give us an assurance of your love.
Lord, cause us to be distinguished
by your holiness.
And we see Moses in prayer, as it were,
rising from one step to the next step
to the next step in prayer
until he finally gets to this highest step
where we looked last week.
He says, Lord, now show me your glory.
And this is really how Jesus prays.
When we look at Jesus' great prayer
in the Gospel of John chapter 17,
Jesus says, Father,
I want those you've given me
to see the glory that you've given me.
He says, now, Lord, show them your glory.
And that's what the people of God
are meant to pray.
That's how we pray for revival.
God, manifest your glory.
God, cause your glory to pass by us.
Show us your glory.
Are we praying this yet?
Like Moses, are we advancing step by step in prayer,
rising from this argument to that argument
to that argument before God
with an ever-increasing boldness?
Like Moses, do we have that longing
and that desire for more and more from God?
And can we say with the Apostle Paul,
I haven't already obtained this.
I haven't already arrived at my goal.
But what I'm doing is I'm straining forward
and I'm pressing on that I might gain the goal
and win the prize of Christ.
And friends, where is that straining
and where is that pressing among us for revival?
Like Moses, are we striving and seeking
and rising on the wings of faith
where we get to the point that Moses gets
where he says, God, I'm no longer seeking your gifts.
I'm seeking your glory.
Lord, I no longer am after your blessings.
I'm just after you.
This is what the psalmist says in Psalm 42.
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
Psalm 63, it says, you, God, are my God.
Earnestly, I seek you.
I thirst for you.
My whole being longs for you
in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
This is how the people of God pray in the Bible.
And I just wanna begin by saying,
week 10 of the sermon series,
are we praying like this yet?
Because these are the kind of prayers
that call down God's glory and lead to revival.
Well, to get into this text today, Exodus 34,
this passage is one of the greatest passages
in all the Bible.
And it teaches us that God wants to show us
his glorious name and character and ability.
That God is wanting very deeply
to show us his glorious name and character and ability.
And I wanna start by how God wants to show us
his glorious name.
Perhaps you are here and you're exploring Christianity today
and you're wondering, you know,
who is God and what is God like?
Well, today is your day because this is the high point
and the center point of God's revelation of himself
in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.
And he answers that question directly.
Who is God?
And if you're a Christian today,
I'd like to suggest that 99% of our troubles
as Christians are that we don't know God,
that we don't know his name,
we don't know his character, his attributes,
his person and his goodness,
which here in this text is like a diamond
shining in all of its facets.
If only we knew God as he is,
we would be like the Lord Jesus himself.
He lived in this world as we do.
He faced the same difficulties, the same trials,
the same temptations that we have,
although much, much worse.
And yet how different his life is from mine
or perhaps from yours as well.
That he knew God.
Jesus knew the name of God
and the character of God
and the ability of God.
And that is our greatest need.
And how does God meet our greatest need?
Well, he says here in this text,
I'm gonna give you a deeper insight,
a deeper understanding into myself,
into what I am.
Of all that you need to know,
this is the greatest of all possible knowledge.
And think about that for a minute.
Think about all the goodness of God
that he's already revealed to Moses
up to this point.
And now he says,
I'm gonna give you a deeper view.
I'm gonna display it before you
in a way that you've never experienced it before.
And that's what happens in revival.
God gives us a fresh
and a deeper experience of himself.
And what does he say in verse six?
He says,
well, it says,
and he passed in front of Moses
proclaiming,
the Lord, the Lord,
the compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger,
abounding in love and faithfulness,
maintaining love to thousands
and forgiving wickedness,
rebellion and sin.
Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.
He punishes the children
and their children for the sin of the parents
to the third and fourth generation.
Now notice that God is not mumbling here.
He's proclaiming.
That God is not suggesting.
He's not hinting.
He's not implying.
That God is declaring.
God is preaching, as it were.
And this is a plain, clear,
simple revelation of who God is.
It's not hard to know
what God has revealed about himself
and about salvation
and about doctrine and ethics
and the way that we should live.
It's not hard to understand it.
In fact, people understand it so well
that they just don't like it very much.
Because when God reveals himself,
what happens
is that he removes us
from the center
and puts us over here on the margin
and says that he's in the center.
When God reveals himself,
what we realize is that
we are not the creator.
We're just mere tiny little creatures
that are dependent upon him.
And when God reveals himself,
we understand that
it's not we
who get to decide
what's true and what's false,
what's right and what's wrong,
but that has in fact
been decided for us
by someone much greater than us.
And this revelation,
if we're honest,
it hurts our pride.
It hurts to be de-centered
and to be so humbled.
And this is what happens to Moses
in verse 8.
Moses bowed down to the ground
and he worshiped.
God's preaching of himself
is plain, it's clear, it's simple,
and when it's rightly received,
we fall down on the dirt
and we worship.
That's what happens in revival.
You guys with me?
Okay.
Well, what does God preach
about himself?
What does he say about himself?
We get these two names here,
Lord and God,
or Yahweh and Elohim,
and a name reveals
the essence of a person.
So what do these names mean?
Well, Elohim,
our word for God,
it means the all-powerful creator.
The God who said,
let there be light,
and there was light,
let us create human beings
in our own image,
that's who this God is.
There's no limit
to his eternal power,
his infinite power.
He is almighty.
He's God.
He's Elohim.
But what about this other name,
Lord, or Yahweh?
This is the name
on which we should focus
our attention
because it's the name
that God has always chosen
to reveal
what's most vital
about himself.
And notice he repeats it twice,
the Lord,
the Lord.
This name means I am.
I am the self-existent one.
When God comes to Moses
at the burning bush
in Exodus 3
and Moses says,
well, Lord,
who am I to tell them
sent me?
He says,
well, tell them
I am who I am.
That's who sent you.
And he is.
He always was.
He forever will be.
He has no beginning like me,
no end like you.
And this is the name
that the Lord
has always used
when he makes a covenant
with human partners.
And think about that
for a second.
This self-existent,
independent God
who has absolutely
no need for me
and no need for you,
he humbles himself
and he commits himself
to protect
and to redeem
and to save us.
So here's Elohim,
the almighty creator
and here's Yahweh,
the self-existent,
covenant-keeping redeemer
who says to Moses
at the burning bush,
I've seen the misery
of my people
and I'm coming down
to rescue them.
That is the gospel.
The Lord descending.
The redeemer coming down
to save.
And I wonder
as we're seeking revival,
is this what we're praying?
Lord, come down.
Lord, descend upon us.
Lord, show us
the glory of your name.
Show us the glory
of our omnipotent,
all-powerful creator God
for whom nothing is impossible.
Show us the glory
of our self-existent,
covenant-keeping redeemer
who parted the Red Sea
and who raised Christ
from the dead.
In revival,
these names of God
become a precious treasure
of his people
so that we're praying them,
we're singing them,
we're talking about them
with all the richness
and beauty
of their meaning.
This is what God
wants to show us.
He wants to show us
his glorious name.
But he doesn't just want
to show us
his glorious name,
he wants to show us
his glorious character
as well.
Look at verses 6 and 7
where God is preaching
to us this list
of his own attributes.
And what's the first
in that series
of attributes?
It's compassion.
It's mercy.
That's what's given
emphasis and priority.
And if the first
in the series
of attributes
is compassion,
what's the last
in that series?
It's that he will not
declare the guilty
innocent,
that he punishes
the guilty.
Now in Jewish thinking
you build up
to a climax,
you save the best
for last, right?
And so what's the crown jewel
of all these attributes?
It's that God
is a holy God.
God is a righteous God.
God is a just God.
And that means
that he does not
wink at wickedness.
He does not
respect rebellion.
He does not smile
at sin.
And it's important
for us to ask
the question,
is this holy God
of the Old Testament
different from the God
of love
in the New Testament?
Well, Jesus,
when he prays
in John 17,
what does he pray?
He prays,
Holy Father.
And he teaches us
over and over
that God,
in fact,
does not clear
the guilty.
He does not declare
the guilty innocent,
but he punishes evil.
And why does he do that?
Because he's a righteous God
who has an eternal hatred
for sin.
Because his wrath
burns
against all that
would spiritually
and morally
degrade
and destroy
the creatures
that he's made.
In fact,
if he doesn't
feel those things,
if he doesn't do
those things,
then he's not
a good God.
He's not a just God.
He's definitely
not a loving God.
If we look at
the teachings of Jesus,
the most loving person
who ever walked
planet Earth,
we hear it right here
in Matthew 13.
He says,
Just as the weeds
are gathered
and burned with fire,
so will it be
at the end of the age
the Son of Man
will send his angels
and they will gather
out of his kingdom
all causes of sin
and all lawbreakers
and throw them
into the fiery furnace
and that place
there will be weeping
and gnashing
of teeth.
So this first attribute
of God,
his compassion,
it does not mean
that God neglects
the moral order,
that he forsakes
just judgment.
In fact,
we should not expect
to escape
the consequences
of our sins.
God's compassion
does not mean
that people can do
whatever they want,
that in fact
he punishes
the children
who perpetuate
the sins
of their parents.
He will not put up
with a generation
of people
in their impenitent
rebellion
that continues
what their parents
and their grandparents
were doing.
No,
they're going to get
what they deserve.
That's the high point
of the revelation
of God
in the first five books
of the Bible.
And you say,
that's terrible.
This is awful news.
I mean,
how can you love
this sort of God?
How could Moses
bow down
and worship
this kind of God?
Well,
listen to God's
whole sermon
about himself
because what does he say?
He says,
I'm the Lord,
the Lord,
compassionate
and gracious,
slow to anger,
abounding in loving kindness
and faithfulness,
forgiving wickedness,
rebellion,
and sin.
His compassion,
that first term,
is like a mother's
tender feelings
for her vulnerable
infant child.
He's deeply moved.
When Israel was
in bondage in Egypt,
it was the compassion
of the Lord
that compelled him
to come down
to the rescue.
That's the first word
he uses to describe himself.
But what's the second key word?
The word is grace.
Grace is this beautiful gift
of favor
given with delight.
It's what Moses prays
when he says,
Lord,
look upon these
golden calf
worshiping people
and don't give them
what they deserve.
Give them what they don't deserve.
Give them grace.
And that third key word,
he's slow to anger,
it means that he's patient
with human evil
and that he gives us
lots of time
to come to our senses
and to change.
That when he's with
his wandering people
in the wilderness
and they're grumbling
and they're complaining
and they have hard hearts
and stiff necks,
we see that God
is long-suffering.
And he's slow to anger
with his people.
But what about
the fourth and the fifth
key words
of God's preaching
about himself?
That fourth word
is that he's loyal
in his love.
He's got a promise-keeping
commitment
where he displays
his generous,
steadfast loyalty
to the promises
he made
to weak
and helpless
covenant partners
like us.
And it's that kindness
of the Lord
that softens us
and leads us
to repentance.
And that fifth word,
his faithfulness,
that's his truth.
That's his stability,
his reliability,
his trustworthiness
that he can always
be counted on.
And when you take
these words,
his emet
and his chesed,
his love
and his faithfulness
and you combine
those terms together,
what you get
is the expression
of an absolute
and eternal
dependability
of the Lord
to dispense
his goodness
upon us.
How can he maintain
his love
and his faithfulness
to wicked
and rebellious sinners
who are guilty
like me
and like you?
Well, what's the sixth word?
He's forgiving.
He's forgiving
for those who
humble themselves,
for those who
repent and turn away
from themselves.
For those who cling
to all these attributes
of his compassion
and grace,
the Lord is forgiving.
And you see,
in revival,
we experience
the glory
of all of this
character of God
passing before our eyes.
That's what revival is.
Lord, come and show us
the glory
of your character
in a fresh way.
And so I wonder,
friends,
have you been tempted
to say,
you know,
God is love
and he's nothing else?
many people,
many churches,
many Christians
are tempted
to say that.
You know,
in order to be relevant,
we need to stop
preaching the way
that God preaches
about himself.
And to attract people,
we need to tone down
his holiness,
we need to extract
his justice
and his wrath,
and we need to let people
know that God
just declares
everybody innocent.
He just accepts
everybody without demands,
without expectations.
He's not a troublesome God.
He just,
you know,
he doesn't punish
the guilty.
He just declares
everybody great
without any need
for genuine repentance
or costly forgiveness
or real faith.
But my friends,
that's not true.
That is to cut
the very heart
or attempt to cut
the very heart
out of the living God.
A church in revival
like Moses
bows down
before this God
and worships
the glory
of his goodness
in all of its paradox,
right?
His compassion
and his holiness,
his mercy
and his justice.
A church in revival
is reveling
in verse 7
where it compares
this massive number
of maintaining love
to thousands
of people
and yet he punishes
three or four generations.
we delight
that God
has put a limit
on his just judgment
and that his kindness
actually seems
to know no bounds.
Thousands
upon thousands
is the idea.
You see,
in a revived church,
the glorious character
of God
is made manifest
so that we are
believing
and we are praying
and we are singing
and we are experiencing
and we are living
not just a few
of these attributes,
not the ones
we like the most,
not the ones
that make us
the most comfortable
and fuzzy inside
but all of them
and we delight
in the full truth
of God's preaching
about himself
and we say,
Lord,
make us like you.
Make us more like you.
Help us to know you
and make us like you.
All right,
I'm preaching now.
Here we go.
God wants to show us
his glorious name
and he wants to show us
his glorious character
but he also wants to show us
his glorious ability,
right,
his glorious ability
and I'll end with this.
You know,
this text is so important
that it's referenced
and repeated
over 20 times
throughout the rest
of the Old Testament
and it becomes
kind of this
confessional statement,
this short list
of God's,
Israel's basic commitments,
her basic convictions
about her God
and when people read it,
you know,
over the centuries
they've said,
well,
wait a minute,
wait a minute.
This is impossible.
There is a tension here.
There's a conflict here.
There's a contradiction here
in the very heart of God.
There's an either or
in his character
and you can't have it all,
right?
God,
either you're going
to forgive everyone
or you're going
to punish everyone
but you can't do both.
So what's it going to be?
Is it going to be
the forgiveness of sinners
or justice for sinners?
Because the sense here
is that God is too merciful
to let sinners just perish
but he's too just
to just let sinners
off the hook
and if he's forgiving
but not punishing
then he's not just
and if he's punishing
but not forgiving
he's not merciful.
So how in the world
can you people
worship a God
of such contradiction?
And how is God able
to reconcile in himself
these apparent contradictions?
Or remember that Moses says,
Lord,
show me your glory
and God says,
well,
actually Moses,
you can't handle that
but let's make a deal.
What I'm going to do
is hide you in this rock,
I'm going to cover you
with my hand
and I'm going to give you
a partial glimpse
of a very small portion
of my back parts.
That's all you can handle.
But you see,
Moses gets the back part
of God's glory
but what do we get?
We get the whole thing.
We don't just get
a partial glimpse,
we get a full glimpse
of not the back of God
but the front of God,
the face of God.
This is what Paul says
in 2 Corinthians 4,
he says,
God gave us the light
of the knowledge
of God's glory
displayed in the face
of Christ.
You see,
in Jesus Christ,
this creator God,
this redeemer God
came down
and he took on flesh
to display his glory.
And in Jesus,
we see the fullness
of the goodness
and the glory of God
passing before
our very eyes.
And my friends,
there's no more
wonderful discovery
that a human being
can ever make
than that this
self-existent God
who is all-powerful
in his majesty
and his glory,
who is light
and in him
is no darkness at all.
For this God
who is a consuming fire
to love you
so much
that in his
holy righteousness
he has put your sins
not upon you
but upon his beloved son.
And he's given
to him to bear
the anguish
and the suffering
of those sins.
He's put upon him
the shame
and the punishment
for all of your sins
that you and I
might be forgiven
and delivered
and that we might be called
the children of God.
How do we see
the glory
of God
in the cross of Christ?
Well, there
in that one place
and in that one time
we see God's
compassionate,
forgiving glory
and we see
his holy,
punishing glory
coming together
to embrace each other.
It's in that place
that God's mercy
and his justice
come together
and they kiss one another.
Right there
where Jesus is crying out,
my God,
why have you forsaken me?
And right there
where he's praying for us,
Father,
forgive them
for they do not know
what they are doing.
And it's right there
in that place
that he yells
at the top of his lungs.
It is finished
that he,
the innocent one,
was declared guilty
so that we,
the guilty ones,
might be declared
innocent.
In Jesus Christ,
our sins are both
punished
and forgiven
all at once.
and it's his resurrection
that tells us
that that cross
of his,
it was not a defeat,
it was in fact
a victory.
So thanks be to God.
Thanks be to God
that he has made a way
to get rid
of my guilt
and my sin
without getting rid
of me.
Thank God
that he's made a way
to get rid
of your guilt
and your sin
without getting rid
of you.
This is the greatest news
in all the world.
It's what the Apostle Paul
summarizes
in Romans chapter 3
when he says,
God presented Christ
as a sacrifice
of atonement
through the shedding
of his blood
and he did this
to demonstrate
his righteousness
so as to be
both just
and the justifier
of the one
who has faith
in Jesus.
And how can you tell
that a person
knows this?
How can you tell
that a person
has experienced
this God
who is both
just and the justifier?
How do you know
that a person
has come to experience
the atoning
of their sins
through the shed
blood of Christ?
Well we get a hint
in verse 29
it says,
when Moses came down
from Mount Sinai
with the two tablets
of the covenant law
in his hands
he was not aware
that his face
was radiant
because he had spoken
with the Lord.
You see a revived church
and a revived Christian
is someone
who so experienced
the presence
and the power
of God
that they're radiant
with the glory
of his name.
They're radiant
with the glory
of his character.
They're radiant
with the glory
of his ability
in Christ crucified
to save us.
And that radiance
of God's glory
just seems to ooze out
of every pore
of somebody
who's really
encountered
this living Lord.
And that person
I think
begins to pray
and to sing
this way
and I'll close
with this.
This is from
Charles Wesley.
They say
oh for a thousand
tongues
to sing
my great
Redeemer's praise
the glories
of my God
and King
the triumphs
of his grace
my gracious
master
and my God
assist me
to proclaim
to spread
through all
the earth
abroad
the honors
of your name.
He breaks
the power
of canceled sin
and he sets
the prisoner
free
his blood
can make
the foulest
clean
his blood
availed
for me
for you
for all
of us
that's what
he wants
to show us
Lord
come show
us your glory
in the name
of the Father
Son and Holy
Spirit
Amen