“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Cut two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be prepared by morning. Come up Mount Sinai in the morning and stand before me on the mountaintop. No one may go up with you; in fact, no one should be seen anywhere on the mountain. Even the flocks and herds are not to graze in front of that mountain. Moses cut two stone tablets like the first ones. He got up early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hand, he climbed Mount Sinai, just as the Lord had commanded him.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had to start over? Sometimes, in order to make forward progress, you have to start over. You have to go back to where you began and treat everything you’ve done before like it never happened. This isn’t easy to do. It takes a lot of both humility and courage. But when things aren’t going the way they should, a good reset can get them back on the right track; the track they should have been on all along. As we get into chapter 34 here, Moses and Israel get to start over. Let’s reflect a bit on how incredible this was, and why what we have in Jesus is better.

Forgiveness isn’t a given. It is a benefit of God’s character of mercy. It is an effect of His love. Without that, forgiveness really wouldn’t even be a thought. If God were only just, when sin occurred – and with Israel, major sin had just occurred – the sin would be punished accordingly, and things would move on from there. Adam and Eve would have been immediately put to death physically rather than merely spiritually (which was bad enough in and of itself), and that would have ended God’s curious experiment with creating a particular kind of creature made in His image. It would have proven the point that freedom isn’t a natural good, and that genuine love isn’t possible. But God is not only just. He is also loving. As a result, forgiveness happens over and over and over again.

I should perhaps add to this the fact that forgiveness is only a possibility if God exists in the first place. Without God’s existence, forgiveness is wildly illogical and irrational in every instance it is offered. Without God’s existence, there would be no release from the moral guilt we feel and which can linger long after our victim has assured us that “it’s okay” when we have done something we should not have done.

That moral guilt exists because there is a God whose character we have violated. Without God that moral guilt itself would be irrational to feel because morality itself would be inherently and entirely subjective. No one could assess our behavior as anything other than merely inconvenient to them or the society around us, and inconvenient isn’t the same thing as morally wrong. There would be no kind of moral ought to anything we do or don’t do. Yet while God’s existence causes that moral guilt in us, this same God also willingly releases us from that guilt when we are ready to genuinely repent of it. Don’t miss just how incredible this really is.

In any event, after Israel’s sin and Moses’s decision to smash the original set of tablets with the law inscribed on them that God had given him in response, things were a mess. The people were stuck in place physically and spiritually. The covenant held because God’s character hadn’t changed, but its status as far as the people were concerned was in limbo. There was nothing permanent with the words of the covenant written down on it. If the people were going to be able to go anywhere and accomplish anything at this point, they were going to have to go back to the beginning and start over. So, that’s exactly what God invited Moses to do.

He told Moses to make a new set of tablets, to come back up the mountain, and He would write the words of the covenant on them once again. This was all in conjunction with God’s responding positively to Moses’s request to see His glory that we talked about yesterday. God was going to reveal Himself in a truly powerful way to the people. He wasn’t just the God who rescued them from their enemies. He wasn’t just the God who provided for them when they couldn’t provide for themselves. He wasn’t just the God who invited them into a covenantal relationship with Himself. He was the God who forgave them after they sinned in response to their repentance, and gave them a fresh start. This was simply who God was – who God is – and He was glorious because of it.

As a part of this invitation to start over, God reasserts His holiness. It should not be lost on us that in offering the people this chance to reset things and start over God is not somehow slacking off on His character. It is happening fully in line with it. His holiness was not going to be compromised. Moses was the one who had remained faithful before Him, and so He alone was invited back up the mountain. God would make the covenant with him and he would be the mediator of it for the people. The rest of the nation was still marked by their sin and could not approach Him. The intimacy of the relationship God had initially planned to have with them was still broken and would take time to restore. But He was starting the process. He was the initiator here. The graciousness and forgiveness was flowing from Him.

Friends, the God we serve is the same God the people were benefiting from here. He hasn’t changed. He is still willing to forgive our sin. He still comes to us to restore our relationship with Him when we are far from Him. He pursues us with His love when we are singularly unlovable because it is in His nature to love us. He is love. When we have entered into a covenant relationship with Him in Christ and then violated that covenant, He still invites us back into it. But now, instead of a human mediator like Moses who ultimately died and who failed to abide by the terms of that covenant himself, we have a better mediator in Christ.

Jesus, the man who was also God, and who sits permanently at the Father’s right hand, intercedes for us. Like Moses, He reminds God of His great love for us because He is Himself God and has lived out that great love for us. He laid down His own life on our behalf so that we can simply live in Him rather than worrying over how we are going to properly atone for our sin. He made Himself our atonement. Now, when we receive Him, there is only life to live. And, one day, when all things are restored and given the ultimate reset God has planned for all of creation, those who have received this new covenant Jesus established through His death will be able to enjoy that life for all eternity.

Whatever you have going on in your life that is leaving you feeling distant from God, no matter how bad you are certain it is, there is forgiveness and restoration available for you. You can have your relationship with God reset in Christ. He started things over, you only have to receive Him as Lord, and He will take care of the rest. So, lay down your pride and your stubbornness, and receive what He desires to give you in Christ. You will only ever be glad that you did.