God’s Name and Character: A Central Confessional

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’” –Exodus 34:6-7 (ESV).

Contained in these verses in Exodus and repeated in several places in the Old Testament is a central confessional passage.  It proclaims the name of God and his character.  His anger is slow to rise against His people; He has steadfast love for them; He is steadfast, immoveable; He forgives sin.  But at the same time he holds the guilty responsible for their wrongdoings.  And, as hard as it may seem to one generation, their shortcomings and iniquities bear consequences to succeeding generations.  The occasion of this proclamation from God was when God commanded Moses to go back up on Mt. Sinai to receive the commandments to be written on stone for the second time.  He had broken the tablets after the first giving of the law when he returned from his mountaintop experience and found the people together with his brother Aaron participating in worshiping the golden calf they had fashioned themselves.  They wanted a god like the pagans around them, something they could see and bow down to, even though the idol could not speak to them out of the fire or cloud, and even though they knew better than to worship idols.  Upon going to the mountain again, taking the prepared tablets of stone upon which the commandments would be written again, Moses saw the Lord descend in a cloud and stand with him on the mountain.  Then a voice spoke to Moses, declaring what has been termed this central confessional of the Old Testament.  Furthermore, the Lord told Moses about the new covenant and the new commitment with Israel (Exodus 34:10): “it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.”

What relevance does this message have for America today from this declaration given so long ago to Moses?  The same God still wants us to see His steadfastness and unchangeable nature.  He also wants us to see that what we do today affects subsequent generations.  Any nation is dependent upon survival on the basis of each generation following practical measures in governmental relations.  An example of irresponsibility in our own country is the “big government” operations that cannot balance the budget because the outgo is far in excess of the income.  Greed, graft and waste are seen on every hand, and lack of accountability is rampant.  We know this course cannot be pursued indefinitely.  We must come to the point of reckoning.  God is calling us to beware and set another course.  Today I read a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894).  I am taking poetic license and changing in his fourth line his “nine and twenty mingled years” (which referred to him at the time he wrote the poem) and changing that phrase to “two hundred thirty-six years” which tells America’s age as a nation this year since our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.  I thought his poem quite thought-provoking and applicable to our situation now in the United States:

What Man May Learn, What Man May Do

            By Robert Louis Stevenson

What man may learn, what man may do,

Of right or wrong of false or true,

While, skipper-like, his course he steers

Through two hundred thirty-six years,

Half misconceived and half forgot,

So much I know and practice not.

Old are the words of wisdom, old

The counsels of the wise and bold:

To close the ears, to check the tongue,

To keep the pining spirit young;

To act the right, to say the true,

And to be kind whate’er you do.

Thus we across the modern stage

Follow the wise of every age;

And, as oaks grow and rivers run

Unchanged in the unchanging sun,

So the eternal march of man

Goes forth on an eternal plan.

Prayer.  God, ever-steadfast, never-changing, we come again asking forgiveness for departing from Your principles of righteousness, justice and truth.  As poet Stevenson so aptly stated, even though we do not acknowledge this truth as we should, “So the eternal march of man/Goes forth on an eternal plan.”  And You, Lord, hold that plan and coordinate events according to Your purposes.  Help us seek and know what is right and may we have the stamina and fortitude to follow righteous paths.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.