Exodus 34:6-7. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on December 29, 2024.
Today, we move to the second aspect of God’s character that is revealed in these verses. He is Gracious! What does that really mean?
The concept of God being gracious is closely connected to the previous word, compassion. In fact, they are often connected as pairs throughout the Old Testament. God is compassionate and gracious!
They are somewhat synonyms, but they have different connotations. Much like comparing Nacho Cheese Doritos with Cool Ranch Doritos. They are both Doritos, triangular chips, and made of corn meal. However, they have a different flavor. Similarly, synonyms can point to the same thing, but with a different flavor, connotation.
The word compassion has the connotation of an inner softening to the plight of another, which leads to helping them. The same act can be described with the words grace and gracious. Yet, the word for gracious here begins in a different place. It has the concept of favor or delight. The giver of grace favors the recipient, may even delight in them. This leads to some action on their behalf, which is intended to delight the recipient.
Like compassion, the noun form, grace, can refer to what is happening in the giver, i.e., God has favor for us. It can also focus on the act itself. Jesus is the grace of God. Yet, it may focus on the resultant effect upon the recipient. Salvation is the grace of God.
In fact, grace does not require a context of the recipient needing help. It may simply be a gift for the sake of causing delight in another. This is typically what is behind gifts that we give around Christmas. The recipient may or may not have asked for the grace. The situation may or may not involve needing help. Yet always, the response is about favor and delight rather than merit.
In the immediate context of Exodus 34, we were told in chapter 33, verses 12 and 17, of God favoring, having grace for Moses. It is clear that God’s favoring of Moses is not so much about the job he is given. Moses does not seem to delight in leading 6 million plus stubborn people through the wilderness. Rather, the grace is seen in the relationship that God has with Moses. God is with Him. God reveals Himself, His character, His designs and purposes, to Moses.
We must be careful that we don’t narrow God’s grace only to powerful works. You see, God favored Moses, and he did powerful works by obeying the Lord. But, Exodus 34: 6,7 shows us that this is part of His character. His favor is not just for Moses, but extends out to the Israelites God sent him to. However, His favor is not just for Israel, but extends to the nations before whom Israel is to be a witness and bring forth the Anointed One who would fix humanity’s sin problem.
Just as Moses found grace in the eyes of the Lord, so we read the same of Noah in Genesis 6:7-8. In this situation, there is an immediate threat. Humanity has become so wicked that the chosen line of the “serpent-crusher” (see Genesis 3:15), is being threatened, which threatens the salvation of humanity. There is an irony in the Flood passage regarding this. God has to bring destruction upon humanity in order to protect His plan of saving humanity. This is how horrible sin is. God must judge humanity, but Noah found favor, grace, in the eyes of the Lord. God delights in Noah, and leads him to make an ark that allows his family and many animals to be spared the devastating effects of the flood.
This irony crops up in the lives of individuals as well. Sometimes God allows the destruction of certain things in our life to protect the possibility of our redemption.
These stories are not about Noah and Moses being the “teacher’s pet.” He does see a faithfulness to Him within them and it draws His favor, but His work of grace in their lives is all about His larger desire to help, favor, humanity in our current problem of sin.
We see a similar thing in the story of Abraham. We don’t end up with a statement, “Abraham found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” However, Genesis 18 implicitly says it. The LORD and two angels have approached Abraham in the heat of the day. He sees them and runs out to them. “My LORD, if now I have found favor (grace) in Your sight, please do not pass Your servant by.” We then see that they come and eat a meal with Abraham. The LORD even reveals to Abraham that the time for Sarah to finally conceive has come. Within a year, she will give birth to a son! On top of this, the LORD also reveals to Abraham the coming destruction upon Sodom. Abraham intercedes for the cities of the plain. He is pictured as the man of God’s favor interceding for a people who are in the dark about His coming judgment. The intercession doesn’t save the city, but it does save Lot and his family. The whole passage is dripping with the answer to Abraham’s conditional, “if I have found favor…” Abraham has found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
Thus, the description of God as gracious has been highlighted throughout the passages leading up to this and continues on throughout all of the Old Testament. Genesis three and the Fall of Humanity doesn’t have the words grace or gracious in it. Yet, it is absolutely clear that Adam and Eve were dwelling in the favor of God in the garden. It was His gift to them, a paradise. Yet, the serpent tricks them into distrusting God and taking hold of their own benefit. In the scene where all three of them are being judged before the LORD, it is clear that God favors humanity against the serpent. Even the punishment upon Adam and Eve bears a grace in teaching them the goodness of God even in their unfaithfulness.
Thus, even though grace is simply a gift and doesn’t require the concept of help, this is and has been the true condition of humanity from the Fall to this day. We are a world full of sin and distrust of God. We are a world trusting in our own wisdom and our own ability to benefit ourselves. If God doesn’t help us, then we are not going to make it. The good news is that God has help us, is even now helping us, and will help us even more in the future.
Israel becomes a picture of God’s larger desire to help humanity in the face of our inability to trust Him enough to make that happen. The chosen line, and then in Israel, the chosen nation, is not about those who obtain grace and those who don’t. It is about God protecting the means by which He will give grace to all of humanity. There are two more scenes of grace in the Old Testament that I want to visit.
In Genesis 33:10, Jacob has returned from what we call northeast Syria after being gone for 20 years. He had taken advantage of his brother’s hunger to obtain the birthright (a double portion of their father’s estate, etc.), and then, through deception, stole the blessing that Isaac was going to give to Esau. Jacob left because he knew Esau was angry enough to kill him.
Here, twenty years later, God has told Jacob to go back “home.” He knows that he has to face Esau if he is to live there. He needs Esau’s forgiveness, but can’t see how that is going to happen. This verse is at the end of all that Jacob does to appease his very dangerous brother (who was coming with 400 very dangerous men). Jacob is asking forgiveness. “If now I have found favor in your sight, then accept my gift from my hand, for I see your face as one sees the face of God, and you have received me favorably.” Notice that Jacob uses language of Esau as his master and lord, even as God. This is how important forgiveness from Esau is to him. Shocker of shockers, Esau gives grace to Jacob, and he is enabled to dwell in the land without fear of reprisals from his brother. However, sin and forgiveness are not always at the heart of the recipient’s need for grace. Let’s look at a part of the story of Esther.
Esther 8:5 has Esther approaching king Xerxes in order to ask for grace for her people. The king has been manipulated by the wicked Haman to empower him to exterminate the Jewish people. The king did not know that his queen was also a Jew. Yet, Esther is not a queen like we might think. She could not enter the king’s presence without a summons from him. To do so carried the penalty of death, unless the king gave his grace, his favor, and forgave the offense.
The king does delight in Esther, and so, he is gracious to her and her people. This gives a picture of the intercessor who approaches the king for the sake of their people, rather than for themselves. We saw this intercession with Moses in Exodus 33.
This becomes a backdrop for understanding the person of Jesus, and ultimately his Church. In Jesus, God has become a part of the human family. Thus, he intercedes before God the Father on behalf of humanity, but particularly those who have put their faith in him. Yet, it may be more proper to see Esther as a picture of the Church of Jesus. Because God’s favor rest upon Jesus, He will grant him his requests, so our relationship with Jesus brings upon us the favor of the Father too. We are to use that favor to intercede on behalf of our people who are in jeopardy of the judgment because we too were under a death sentence.
This brings us to understanding Jesus as the grace of God. John’s gospel presents Jesus as a gift from the King of Heaven. In John 1:14-18, we are told that Jesus is “full of grace and truth.” In verse 16, he is even “grace upon grace.” The sense here is that Jesus is the capstone of a long series of God’s grace. He is both the fullness of grace and the overflow of God’s grace.
In verse 17, the NASB says that Grace and Truth were “realized” through Messiah Jesus. It literally came into being and came through him. The body of Jesus began at a point of time. Prior to this, the Word existed with God and as God throughout eternity past. Thus, we can contemplate the man Jesus as the fulfilling of the grace of God through what he did. However, as the Word, we understand that he was always the fullness of God’s grace set in the heavens where no devil could touch it. Awaiting the moment when the Father would signal the time for incarnating into this world as a human.
When the Word took on flesh and became a human, it opened the door for a new relationship with God the Father that was not available before, at least not in that intimate sense. Jesus is more than a vehicle of God’s grace. Rather, He embodies the graciousness of God.
This leads us to John speaking of the Son being given to the world as a gift in John 3:16-17. Somehow, humanity has drawn the favor of God. Yet, God has given His favor in such a way that we must believe in Jesus, trust in him, in order to receive that eternal life. Imagine this. The Bible presents both Israel and the Gentiles in a sinful fallen state, and yet, He favored us by sending a gift of His Grace, Jesus. A gift is given as opposed to a paycheck. We did not merit it. Any of our works fell woefully short of accomplishing any salvation. Yet, God gives us what we don’t deserve.
The Apostle Paul picks up on this in the classic verses on grace, Ephesians 2:8-10. It says that we have been saved by grace (God delighting to do it) through faith. If you look at the verses, they emphasize that salvation is a gift. The work of salvation is entirely the work of God. “Not by works, so that no one may boast.” Yet, in verse 10, God does have works for us to do.
The point is that we are not to imagine that we can do a work that merits His grace. Instead, we are to do works of thankfulness for His gracious salvation in Jesus.
Sometimes people over emphasize that it is faith that is the gift of God. In other words, you couldn’t even trust God if He didn’t give you a gift of faith. However, the gift of God refers not just to faith, but to the whole grace of salvation. It is not just a gift of ability to trust, but of the whole grounds upon which trusting could obtain the grace of salvation. It was the grace of God that created humans in a way that we could be redeemed. It was the grace of God that sent a redeemer who would be faithful to do what we could not (would not, even if we could) do for ourselves. It is the grace of God that our trust in Jesus is acceptable to him in our disqualified state. It is the grace of God that we are able to believe even after a lifetime of being in bondage to sin. This is the mystery of the immense grace of God lavished upon humanity. All of it is grace; all of it is a gift from God.
John presents to us that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is offered as a generous gift of life that is more powerful than our mortality, than death itself. We now have a relationship with the Father through Jesus in which He pours His eternal life into us each day. This eternal life works to displace sin and fill us with the works of true righteousness out of thanks. We can question if it is working, but God’s grace is working in our life. We were saved when we believed in Jesus (from judgment), we are being saved (from sin and its effects), and we shall be saved on that day when He completes our redemption through the resurrection from the dead! You can have assurance now because of the faithfulness of God Himself, not because of your perfect performance in the now.
This grace of Jesus is more powerful than our experience of life. Imagine an Israelite who was a slave in Egypt, and had waited for God’s deliverance all of their life. Imagine that they die the year before Moses comes out of the wilderness to confront Pharaoh with God. Did that person miss out on the grace of God? That is often how we picture it. If such and such doesn’t happen in my life, then God doesn’t love me, doesn’t have grace for me. The same is true for things that do happen. God doesn’t have grace for me because I was born as a slave in Egypt! These are the ways we tend to think about God’s grace.
But, the testimony of scripture is that God’s grace is bigger than our experience of life. Of course, as Americans, we have had an experience of life that is better than most of humanity has ever experienced. Yet, when you are in a problem, that line of reasoning doesn’t comfort you. It is still the truth nonetheless. The promise of the resurrection of the righteous will fill with delight even the most tragic of lives. Countless numbers of people who were martyred via horrible methods will rise and shine like the stars. They will bask in the favor and delight of God while being filled with delight themselves. Their past lives of pain and sorrow will only cause the present glory to be all the more flavorful, all the more glorious!
Another thing we see in this story of God’s grace is that gifts only require a person to accept them. We can also over-emphasize that God’s grace is a gift. “You don’t do anything,” is the mantra of some. Yes, but a gift does require someone to receive it, to take hold of it. It happens every day that God’s offer of salvation is rejected by people. “You can keep your ‘gift!’ I don’t want it.” God is saying to the whole world that He has a gift of salvation for us. However, He will not force us to take hold of it. A person can spurn the gift of God, the grace of God, and miss it, walk away from it. In fact, it is rare for those who do accept God’s offer of salvation to have not missed it throughout their life. Few belief at the first presentation of God’s grace to them.
So, what makes us delightful and favorable in the eyes of the LORD? Yes, Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD, but how will it ever be said that Marty (insert your name) found grace in the eyes of the LORD, to be favorable to Him? We tend to look for merit. Yet, this cannot obtain the grace of God.
In one sense, there is nothing we can do, should do, because we already have the favor of God. He has favored humanity and made salvation possible for all, if they will only trust in Jesus. He has done the heavy lifting and put the salvation of Jesus in front of you. You don’t deserve it, but there it is. God’s favor to you. This is because of who He is and what He made us to be. He made us to be His imagers. He doesn’t crush failed imagers. In His favor, He makes a way for us to be redeemed and image Him in truth!
Yet, in another sense, we do need to take hold of this favor. If His current favor is to effectively bring me to favor at the final judgment, I must properly take hold of it. We do this by owning our sin. We quit making the case for our own righteousness (self righteousness), and we agree that it took Jesus dying on a cross to effect our salvation (my salvation).
Those who insist on their own works, and even deride the idea that Jesus paid the price for our sins, are being proud. Their ego refuses to see the grossness of their sin. Such pride and arrogance in the face of God’s grace is not lovely to Him. But, humbling yourself and recognizing that you do not deserve the grace that He has lavished upon you, this is lovely and beautiful to God. When we surrender and put our trust completely in Jesus and His wisdom, then the current favor of God becomes the same favor that will protect us when we stand before Him on the shores of eternity future.
Like the prodigal son who approaches the father only hoping to be a slave, we come to God knowing we really don’t even deserve to be His slave. Yet, He takes us in His arms and clothes us with robes of righteousness. He slaughters the fattened calf and holds a celebration that, “My son who was dead is now alive!”
Our belief in Jesus is not just intellectual belief that he lived, or that he was resurrected. It truly is a trusting in his work and his teaching to us. Are any of us absolutely perfect in our trust? Of course, not. We often have times of doubt, selfishness, even choosing our way over the top of His. Yet, God’s grace is not about perfect performance. It is about trusting His character even in the midst of our own mistakes and failures. Our goal is not to get away with sin, but to become like Jesus. May God help us to see His great favor in our life despite all the things that we could point to in order to deny its reality.