Let’s Try That One More Time
Exodus 34:6,7 … the LORD … said, “YAHWEH, the LORD, is a kind and merciful God. He is slow to become angry. He is full of great love. He can be trusted. He shows his faithful love to thousands of people. He forgives people for the wrong things they do, but he does not forget to punish guilty people.
The nature of God, His very essence, who He truly is, can easily be misconstrued. Because God reveals Himself both as a God of love, and a God of judgement; a God of forgiveness and a God of punishment and, in the end, eternal damnation.
No wonder people are confused. No wonder some ridicule Him on the basis of the apparent incongruence of those two profoundly different aspects of His nature.
Back in the day, at the very time that Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving the tablets with the Ten Commandments, God’s own people were down below, creating for themselves and worshipping a false idol – a golden calf, no less.
God was furious and wanted to bring disaster raining down on them. Moses even smashed the first stone tablets, but then begged God not to harm His people. So God commanded Moses to go back up the mountain a second time … with a second set of stone tablets. When He arrived …
Exodus 34:6,7 … the LORD … said, “YAHWEH, the LORD, is a kind and merciful God. He is slow to become angry. He is full of great love. He can be trusted. He shows his faithful love to thousands of people. He forgives people for the wrong things they do, but he does not forget to punish guilty people.
God is a God of justice. Yes, our sin angers Him. But when we turn back, when we “repent”, He always forgives us. He is full of great love. He can be trusted. But those who don’t turn back to Him, those who don’t repent, well … … he doesn’t forget to punish guilty people.
The Lord is a kind and merciful God.
That’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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