I Am Just

Well, God's Guide to God has been the name of our eight-week series through Exodus 34:6–7. I wanna invite you to grab your message notes that I hope you're able to get in as you walked into the building if you're joining us in person. And if you're joining us online, you can download these at tlc.org/notes. Really would encourage you to grab those because they not only include the outline for the message but also some follow-up discussion questions you can use for your own personal reflection. You can lead family devotions with those follow-up questions or as you lead your small group, you can use those as well. My name's Renee. Some of you may go, "Who is that guy?" It's Renee and I wanna kick it off by just thanking everybody who spoke over the last six weeks. They were amazing. And I'm talking about Val and Jay and Sarah and Jessica, Adrienne and Mark. Let's put our hands together. Let's thank all of our wonderful teachers.

I have to tell you, I really enjoyed just attending church. I love our church and I love being able to just sit under the teaching and just enjoy the worship as an attender. You know, can I just say this? I love church. You know what I mean? I just love it. Where else can you go to enjoy free live music and positive teaching? I mean, soak in the Word of God and be able to not just sort of ruminate on all the horrible negative headlines, but actually be able to find out how you can do something to help people in all those crises situations all across the world. No place do you get all of that packed into one hour every week other than a healthy local church. And so I wanna thank you for being part of this, whether you're joining us virtually or in person, because this is so important.

Now a little bit of a sneak preview part of the time that I was away, I was working on our new fall series. It's going to be a book and a small group video series and a message series for the fall called Faith Forward. This is a deep dive into one of the richest and most powerful chapters of the entire Bible. It's in the book of Hebrews. It's chapter 11. And this part of the Bible was written to people who were tired of waiting for things to get better. Does that sound familiar to you? They were exhausted. Their faith was being drained. And Hebrews 11 is all about how to live confidently in a world of uncertainty. I'm super stoked about the series. This starts in just two weeks.

But this morning, we wrap up our series called God's Guide to God. And today's verse reminds me of an old joke about a college student who was taking a final exam in a biology class. And he gets the final test handed to him. And on the sheet of paper, all it has is pictures of birds' feet. And the class is supposed to identify all the birds just by their feet. And the college student exclaims out loud, "This is impossible!" And the professor says, "No, it is not. Just do it." And the student says, "No, I protest. You didn't tell us this was going to be on the quiz." And he gets up and he starts to leave. And the professor says, "Young man, if you leave, you get an F. What is your name?" And the student takes off his shoes and says, "You tell me."

Now in today's passage of the Bible, we get to a line that is a bit of a puzzle, like that test. This one is a brain teaser. Are you ready for this? Quick recap. We call this series God's Guide to God because this is God's self-revelation. You might remember the setup for this is that one day in the desert, a frustrated and exhausted Moses says to God, "Now, show me your glory." And God says, "Okay, here it is. If you were able to open up my heart and look inside and see kind of the DNA of God, what makes God tick, here it is. This is my glory. This is the innermost part of me," says God. And what follows in the next two verses is God's self-description in Exodus 34:6–7. As we've been saying, these are the most quoted verses in the Bible by the Bible. These verses are quoted over 30 times in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures alone.

Why? Why are they so important? Well, as we've been quoting all summer, A.W. Tozer said, "What comes to mind when you think about God is in many ways the most important thing about you." Why? Because the way you perceive of God really determines the kind of person that you become. If you think of God as kind of a distant, uncaring being, intriguingly, that's the kind of Christian you become. If you think of God as a mean and judgmental and prickly deity, that's kind of the kind of Christian you become, and we all know Christians like that. But if you think of God as an empathetic, loving, forgiving God, then that is the kind of person you become as well.

So how is God described in these verses? Well, here's our text. We're going to read it through for the eighth week in a row. I love the repetition in this series. And here it is for the final time, Exodus 34, starting in verse 6. "And he," God, "passed in front of Moses, proclaiming," here it is, God's guide to God, "the Lord, the Lord." And we saw in the first week of the series how when you see, ever you see L-O-R-D in all caps in the Bible, that's the word Yahweh, the name of God. The compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, he's patient, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love. He's just this lifeline, this pipeline, this fire hose of love to thousands, forgiving. What does he forgive? Wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

And I love how every week during this series we've taken another one of the lines, another one of the descriptions in these verses, and we've kind of just really drilled into it to see what it means from scripture. This verse in many ways is kind of like one of those giant sandwiches that you can get at Togo's or a sandwich shop like that, where it's just like layer upon layer of vegetables and meat and all kinds of stuff, and you bite into it, and you're like, "Whoa, what am I eating here?" Right? And this verse has been sort of layer upon layer of theological flavor. It's been rich. But now we get to the last line. And for a lot of people, this kind of causes some theological indigestion, because look at what comes up next, "Yet," yet, uh-oh, "he does not leave the guilty unpunished." What? He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents. What? To the third and fourth generation. And you're kind of like, "God, why did you have to ruin it? This was going so good, and then we got to, 'He does not punish sin. Oh, no.'

You know, I was thinking the other day, if you thought of this list of characteristics as a math problem, kind of an addition problem, and you have all the first characteristics, he's compassionate, plus gracious, plus patient, plus loving, plus forgiving, plus faithful, that kind of all adds up. But then you add this line, plus punishes all sin, and you kind of go, "How does that add up? How does that make any sense?" Doesn't this last line kind of kneecap, you know, nullify everything that came before? It's like, "I love you, I love you, I love you. God is great, God is forgiving, God is wonderful, and he's going to punish your whole family." Really a tension in this verse. In fact, this is really the primary tension of the whole Bible. Really, every story that is to come after this verse in the Bible is about the tension between these characteristics of God.

In fact, you could argue that specifically the apostle Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament in our Bibles, spent about half his time explaining how God could be eternally compassionate, gracious, patient, loving, forgiving, faithful, even in spite of our wickedness and rebellion and sin, and yet also punish all sin. Kind of the answer, the sum, really is what the New Testament is about. So what I'm going to do this morning is I'm going to dive into this verse, and I'm going to look specifically at the writings of the apostle Paul in the New Testament to see how the Bible itself solves this riddle, answers this test.

And first, as a guiding principle, and this is very important, listen carefully to this, you have to remember that as Sarah said in week two, in the Hebrew language, word order matters. Say that with me. Word order matters. What comes first in Hebrew is the most important. And so when God gives us this list in this order and puts "punishes all sin" last, he's saying this line has to be seen through the lens of all the six characteristics that have come before. Okay, that's great, but still how does the Bible, and specifically the apostle Paul, make sense of this tension? Well, the idea is that God, in his compassion and grace and patience and faithfulness and so on, is revealing to us three very important truths about sin. In compassion, in love, in grace, in faithfulness to us, he's telling us you have to know these three things.

So jot these down in your notes. Number one, consequences will be felt. Consequences will be felt. Somebody actually told me once in my office, "Oh, Bernay, God is so gracious and forgiving, that means I can do anything I want to because God's just going to rescue me." No, God is not some heavenly helicopter parent who swoops in at the playground lest their baby skin their knee. The Bible says this, "Do not be misled." You cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. You know, God loves you, but he's not going to suspend the law of gravity for you. He says those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature.

So I lived up in Portland for a while, and while I was there, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department did a controversial but extremely effective PR campaign trying to get people to not make wrong choices in life, and it was called the Faces of Meth. And what they did was they showed before and after pictures of actual people there in Multnomah County before, like their high school yearbook picture, and then months or maybe two years later their arrest picture when they were arrested for some crime, and all of these people had become addicted to meth, and the before and after pictures were striking. You can find it online if you Google Faces of Meth, but I actually decided not to show these pictures to you because they actually are just horrific. The before pictures, these people have bright eyes and like healthy smiles and a glow to their skin, the wonderful, healthy glow of youth, and months or a couple of years later at most they almost look like the walking dead. You see in those pictures decay and death.

God loves you, but there are still consequences to our choices, and this verse is a warning against that. Now, a lot of us might be saying, "Oh, well, you know, I'm not a meth addict, so this doesn't really apply." Okay, well, let's bring it home to some more common issues. How about anger? We all experience anger, but we have to learn to control it because uncontrolled outbursts of anger, I just looked up a bunch of research papers about this the other day, they double your risk of a heart attack, double it. They double your risk of coronary disease. They triple your risk of stroke. They weaken your immune system when you cannot control your anger and have these outbursts. You've got to learn to control it or there will be consequences to that.

What about porn? It's all over our culture these days. There's a whole bunch of new academic studies, and this is not some pastor telling you, you know, not to do this. This is a whole new field of research. It leads to increased isolation, increased aggression, lower self-esteem, and ironically, less sexual arousal. What about something like gossip, a very common, you know, flaw? Well, interestingly, gossip is correlated in the lives of the gossipers to a lowered self-concept, to loneliness, to depression, and to anxiety. The point is God is not a killjoy who tells us not to sin because he just doesn't want us to have some fun. He tells us these things because he is first compassionate and gracious and abounding in love. And he wants you to thrive. He wants you to live your best life possible. And sin stunts that.

As John Mark Comer says in his book, "God has a Name," that's been such a great resource for this series, a great quote, "Yahweh is forgiving. Sin is not." Sin is merciless. Sin is relentless. Sin will exact its pound of flesh. I heard somebody say something about Mount Hermon this summer that really stuck with me. Following God is costly, right? It could lead to persecution. It can lead to some tough choices. But sometimes I feel like we Christians almost focus a little bit too much on this. "Yeah, it's so costly to follow God." As this person pointed out, not following God is costly too, right? You don't follow God, your choices have consequences too. The question is, what are you getting for the price you are paying? Do you understand what I'm saying? We all make trade-offs in life. We all pay a price for our choices. So what are your choices leading to? What are you getting for the price you are paying? Is it worth it in the long run?

Okay, now, most people would be like, "Okay, I totally get this, René. Absolutely. We tell our kids this, right? We tell ourselves this. Consequences will be felt. Everybody can agree with this." You're probably thinking, "I agree with that. What I don't like is the next line in that verse." He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents of the third and fourth generation. "So because your dad did something bad, you've got to suffer?" What is this verse about? What does that mean? Well, one thing it cannot mean is, frankly, what it sounds like in English. And how do I know that? Well, because the very same person who wrote this revelation from God, Moses, goes on to say this in the book of Deuteronomy, "Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents. Each will die for their own sin."

And this is a principle echoed many times throughout Scripture. We're responsible for our own decisions. God is not going to, you know, hold our children to account for decisions that we made. God deals with you and me on the basis of our choices, not somebody else's. That's clear, right? Okay, but then what does this verse mean? Quoting John Mark Comber again, "If Yahweh is not saying, 'If grandma cheats on her taxes, he'll take it out on little Johnny,' what is he saying?" Right? Well, there are layers of meaning we could go into, but big idea is this. He is warning us, "The consequences of sin may be felt across generations." And again, this is something that is just sociologically true. Everyone knows children of incarcerated parents are much more likely to end up food insecure and in poverty and in gangs and incarcerated themselves.

But let's bring it closer to home. Again, if you have uncontrolled anger issues, which is becoming more and more of a problem, or if you are simply hypercritical and judgmental, which are also sin issues according to the Bible, Jesus told us not to be judgmental. Literally that is in the Sermon on the Mount. The Apostle Paul says, "Let only what words that will lift other people up come out of your mouths." Not hypercritical words, right? So the Bible warns us against hypercriticism and judgmentalism and outbursts of anger. Those are sin issues too. And if you let these things become part of your life, is that going to affect your children? Some of you had parents who were hypercritical and judgmental and angry, and you know how it affected you. And it can even affect your own children because you're being taught self-destructive coping mechanisms.

Family, what God is saying is, family dysfunction has ripple effects. I don't know if you followed what's been happening up with the Millennium Tower up in San Francisco. Massive skyscraper. The tallest residential building in the city, Joe Montana, lives there. It has its own gym, its pool, its theater. One small problem, it was literally built on sand. Engineers thought they had the problem solved. Didn't work. It seems to me that somebody told a parable one time about this. But now the flaw with the building's foundation, it's unnoticeable at ground level. If it was a one or two story building, it wouldn't be a big deal. The problem is, by the time you get to the 58th floor, it's causing the building to lean off its axis a foot and a half, and it's getting worse.

What a great illustration of this verse about the effects. One bad choice may not look like a big deal in the moment, but it becomes magnified as time goes on. And this is important. God in his compassion and forgiveness and patience and love is correcting our irrational thinking. We often will think, "Well, I know this is probably a bad choice, but I'm only hurting myself." What God is saying is, "You are never only hurting yourself, ever." There are always ripple effects. I mean, if worse goes to worse, unforgiveness between people can lead to family feuds. Family feuds can turn into tribal conflict, and tribal conflict can turn into outright national war. I'm going to tell you a story about that in just a minute.

Now, I want to make something clear. You are not doomed to repeat your parents' mistakes. Especially -- I want to say this if you're joining us on the live stream, you're watching from a jail or a prison, as I know some of you are. I'm so glad you are joining us. You are not fated to repeat your family flaws. You can absolutely stop the cycle. You can absolutely be set free from that. You can straighten the skyscraper. You can rebuild on a firm foundation. In fact, that's what they're doing right now up at the Millennium Tower. They're reworking that foundation down into bedrock, as they should have done to begin with. And part of rebuilding on bedrock for you and me is hearing and receiving the Word of God when it says, "There are consequences to our behavior." This is a warning spoken in love.

The second truth this verse is about is this. Justice will be served. Justice will be served. And by the way, this is a good thing. Here's that story I told you I was going to tell you. Our family once traveled to Uganda to visit some of my wife's relatives who lived there in Africa. And one night in Entebbe, we went to this fantastic pizza restaurant, wood-fired pizza, beautiful location right on the shores of Lake Victoria, which is this huge kind of like inland sea there in Africa. Just a fantastic location. It's owned by a Rwandan woman who's married to a Dutch diplomat. And when I was there, I thought, "This is just classic 21st century world, right?" A Rwandan woman married to a Dutchman who's got an Italian restaurant in Uganda. It was awesome.

But let me show you a picture of her. This is her. Her name is Goretti. And Goretti was living with her husband in Holland when the horrible genocide broke out in her home country of Rwanda. You might remember there were two main tribes represented in Rwandan culture. And leaders of those two tribes fomented more and more hostility and division between them over the decades until finally, like one week, it broke into outright civil war. And you literally had members of one tribe slaughtering members of another tribe. And in that genocide, Goretti lost, get this, 63 members of her family. She was almost the only member of her family to survive.

So I only knew that story because my wife's relatives, her cousin and her cousin's husband, were telling me this story as we're sitting there in the pizza restaurant. And so when Goretti came around, I asked her, "How could you go on after that tragedy? How are you doing?" And she told me this, "You must forgive or your life is over." Can you say that out loud with me? "You must forgive or your life is over." I just want to let that line settle in for a minute here. Because for some of you, you can forget the whole rest of the sermon. This line right here is why God wanted you here today. You're struggling with something right now. God wants you to hear this line. "You must forgive or your life is over."

You see, Goretti knew that the violence that was fomented by these different tribal leaders, what was feeding it was anger and resentment. And so if she kept anger and resentment going, do you understand? She would be feeding the monster that killed her family. And so she had to step away from that and forgive. But I asked her, "How is it even possible for you to do that?" And here's what she told me, "Because I believe in the promise of God's justice." Do you see the power of that? That promise of God's justice meant that Goretti did not need to be the avenging angel for her family. It meant that only God is powerful enough and wise enough to actually do that. Goretti said, "My job, my role is to be a peacemaker." And honestly, this is a true story. At first I thought she said, "Pizza maker." And I thought, "That's beautiful, a pizza maker." She goes, "No, peacemaker." Jesus did not say, "Blessed are the pizza makers." Peacemaker.

But this is so powerful. It's like in these verses where the apostle Paul writes, "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord." You know, those of us, I think, who live in more privileged societies sometimes forget the healing power of this promise. But even people in our society need to hear this. When I was a pastor in Tahoe, a young girl was kidnapped, J.C. Lee Dugard. Some of you may remember that story. She was found and freed many years later as an adult, thank God. But at the time of the kidnapping, I got to know J.C.'s mom. And she told me the only thing that was keeping her sane was this promise, "God will avenge. God will repay." This promise of punishment is not a traumatizing statement, "Two victims of trauma." It's a healing statement.

I mean, in my own situation, I don't want to go into detail because I have before, but as a child, many of you know I was molested by a music teacher. And as an adult, I really had no legal recourse because I was so young that I could no longer remember the man's name. So for years, I just daydreamed of violent vengeance. Horrible way to live. The one thing that finally set me free was choosing to trust in this promise, "God's the avenger. God will repay." Now of course, I am not saying don't take legal recourse if that's possible for you. And I'm clearly not saying don't involve therapy as part of your healing process. I recommend it. What I am saying is this, knowing justice will be served is healing for victims of injustice. And the great news is God says one day there will be no more injustice at all, no more oppression, no more racism, no more persecution, no more evil.

God will not leave the guilty unpunished means consequences will be felt, justice will be served, but frankly, if these two things were all it meant, we'd probably be okay with it. But you and I know these verses mean more. God does not leave the guilty unpunished. It's a little disturbing because if we're honest, guilty means me, right? Because no one is perfect. You know, if you knew every thought that had come into my mind this week, you probably wouldn't want me to be your pastor. And if I knew every thought that came into your mind this week, I probably would not want you in my church. All of us know we are all flawed, we all sin, and sin needs to be dealt with. Some of the Eastern religions have the same idea. They depersonalize it, but it's a similar concept. Karma, your bad karma cannot just be wished away. There must be payment for those misdeeds. No one escapes this truth. Scales will be, must be balanced. And that is what makes this verse very uncomfortable, right?

As I said, we're all fine if punishment for sin means like Hitler, but we all know it means me. As the Bible puts it, "No one is righteous, not even one, for everyone has sinned." We all fall short of God's glorious standards. So if God promises in Exodus 34:7 that he punishes all the guilty, then where does that leave you and me? Well, in the next few verses, finally, that tension is resolved. Paul says, "Yet," and this yet supersedes that previous yet, "Yet God in his grace freely makes us right in his sight." He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins, for God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for our sin.

Now, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That means that while there are temporal consequences to sin, that we will all feel those consequences that we talked about, what comes up, what must come down, but the eternal consequences of sin we can be freed from because of the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf. Paul goes on, "This sacrifice shows," watch this, "that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past." He's talking about how when you read the Old Testament stories, you realize, okay, even though God promised I will not leave the guilty unpunished, actually, he did leave the guilty unpunished several times, like most of the time. Think of David. Think of Abraham. Think of the brothers of Joseph. I mean, think of almost any story of the Bible. They really did not get what they deserved, right? God was merciful to them all.

So how's that possible? Paul says he was being fair because God was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. Jesus sacrificed for us, taking our punishment on the cross. Watch this. God did this to display his righteousness, his glory, so that he might be both. Now look at this. This is like one of my favorite lines in the Bible. This is Paul's summary of Exodus 34:6–7. How do all those things add up? God did this so that he could be both just, the final line, and justifier, all six lines that came before it. God is both just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Wow. Both just and justifier. Paul is saying Jesus sacrifice is the solution, the answer to the puzzle, how he is both just and justifier. The cross was the way that God could be all of these things. Compassionate plus gracious plus patient plus loving plus forgiving plus faithful plus punishes all sin because God did punish all sin by taking the punishment for all our sin on himself.

This is how all these aspects of God's character, think of this, seemingly at odds for so many centuries through hundreds of pages of the Bible, finally come together in perfect harmony on the cross. It all adds up in Jesus. Somebody say amen. Somebody type amen if you're watching virtually online. It all adds up in Jesus. Say that line with me. It all adds up in Jesus. It all, say it, it all adds up in Jesus. Jesus is the fully orbed portrait of the nature of God. The face of all of this is Jesus. This shows the way that God found to be both completely forgiving and gracious and compassionate and eternally loving and for all sin to be punished by taking our punishment on himself.

Now this does not mean somebody came up after church last night and asked me, now does this mean that we all just have a license to sin, a get out of jail free card? No. If I continue in evil, it shows that I don't know God's love. But when I truly receive this, two things happen. My soul is instantly purified in God's sight and a supernatural transformation begins in my character. Because what type of person is produced with this fully orbed understanding of God? A freed person, a gracious person, a merciful person, a relaxed person because you have experienced the eternal compassion and grace and abounding love of God yourself and you just want to bow down and worship God and love other people with the same love that you've been shown. Amen.

How does Moses respond to all this? I hope the way we're going to respond. Look at the very next verses in Exodus 34. Moses immediately threw himself to the ground and worshiped and he said, oh Lord, if it is true that I have found favor or grace with you, then please go with us, travel with us. Yes, this is a stubborn and rebellious people, but please forgive our iniquity and our sin. Claim us as your special possession. And you know what God's answer of course is to Moses and through the whole rest of the Bible to you and me and anybody who places their trust in him is yes, yes, yes. I would love to forgive all your iniquity and claim you as my special possession because that's how much I love you.

We're going to conclude the service today in maybe a slightly unusual way. I'm going to ask the musicians to come back. We're going to close the service today with communion because I can't think of a better response to this message than what Moses did in this verse. Let's bow down and worship and say thank you God that we found favor with you. Thank you that you forgive our iniquity and sin. Thank you that you claim us as your own chosen possession, your special people. And that was all accomplished for us on the cross. The cross shows all of those components of Exodus 34:6–7 in perfect harmony. Do you understand what this means to you?

We're going to sing a hymn. This hymn is over 200 years old and yet I'll be honest, I've never heard it before, though I grew up in the church. It was originally written in the Welsh language by a Welsh poet named Gwilynn Hyrathog. Say that with me. No, just kidding. Gwilynn Hyrathog. I'm probably mispronouncing this because I don't know how to speak Welsh. But he was a shepherd who actually turned into a Christian political activist in the early 1800s. He was one of the earliest abolitionists, campaigned for the abolition of slavery all around the world, including America and in England. And he also was a campaigner for democracy for the oppressed people all around the world.

But as is often the case with kind of activist personalities, he also had a profound sense of his own guilt. And one day on the shore of Wales, he made a bonfire on the beach and he was crying out to God, "God, I should be a better abolitionist. I should be a better campaigner for democracy. I should be a better Christian. My sins overwhelm me at times. Please forgive me." And it was as if God spoke to him and said, "Look at your bonfire. Yeah, your sins are like that. They can be as destructive as fire, yes. But now look up at the ocean. That's my love. My grace for you is like the ocean. My forgiveness for you is like a flood. Your little bonfire of sin doesn't stand a chance against my pardon poured out on you in Christ." And overwhelmed by this vision, he wrote a poem in Welsh, but here's part of it in the English translation. He wrote, "Here is love. You think of your own sin as I read this. Here is love, vast as the ocean, loving kindness as the flood. When the Prince of Peace, our ransom, shed for us his precious blood on the Mount of Crucifixion, fountains opened deep and wide and through the floodgates of God's mercy flowed a vast and gracious tide, grace and love like mighty rivers poured incessant from above." And watch this. Heaven's peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.

Lord, thank you so much that in Jesus we see how your compassion and grace and love and forgiveness and faithfulness are harmonized with punishment for sin. And Lord, I pray that right now if there's anybody here or anybody joining us on live stream who's been thinking about becoming a Christian, that in this moment they would pray, "Lord, thank you for the fact that mercy triumphs over judgment at the cross. I don't understand it all, but I humbly receive your grace and compassion, abounding love and forgiveness because you took my punishment on the cross and we see your glory in the face of Jesus. We remember that during communion now. Thank you, God. Amen.