4 So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. 5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 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, 7 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)
It was a monumental moment. Moses had done up on the Mountain to receive God's covenant with His people Israel. It was a dramatic introduction: God came in the cloud and formally introduced Himself, and what is the first adjective He uses to describe Himself? Merciful. He looks down on us in our weak and sinful condition and reaches His hand out to help us. He looks down on his people and has mercy on them. Linked with His mercy is His grace, both of which are characterized by a slowness to anger. That is how He responds to those who are willing to receive His covenant of forgiveness and justice. We will see those things again in the New Covenant, but they all come back to this: God is a God of mercy, and without that we are doomed.
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