“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.”
Exodus 34:6-7 (NIV)
Our view of God, our perception of who He truly is has profound implications on how we live our Christian lives. We see this so clearly in the parable of the bags of gold (talents) recorded in Matthew 25. The wicked lazy servant believed God was a ”hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed” so he hid what God gave him and wasted his Christian life. Moses knew that traumatic events - especially sin and the effects of sin on those we love- can distort our view of God, and so after Moses dealt with the golden calf disaster, he asked God to show Moses God’s glory- Moses needed a true view of God. God graciously covered Moses in a cleft in a rock and proclaimed His glory- He described Himself in Words. God’s Word is the only place we can get a true view of God, and there is no better place in Scripture than this record in Exodus 34 of what God said to Moses. You will see a portion of this declaration of God’s glory in many prayers and psalms in the Scriptures, including the prayer of Nehemiah 9, and the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, personified these Words.
May we read it, memorize it, speak it, and above all pray it- often!
No comments:
Post a Comment