Digging in Deeper: Exodus 34:5-7

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“The Lord came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed his name, ‘the Lord.’ The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: The Lord – the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the gifts that is often given to expectant parents is a book of names. It’s basically a dictionary for names. There are hundreds of pages of names with their approximate meaning. They range from mundane to bizarre. The weight of naming a new human can be a heavy one. Today, many parents try to be creative with their name selections. While I can appreciate the desire to not pick the same name everybody else is choosing, leaving a child with a name that will be forever misspelled or mispronounced isn’t exactly a gift. Used to be, names were chosen because they were traditional in a family or because of the character they were understood to convey. When God came down to reveal Himself to Moses as the latter requested, this revelation primarily involved proclaiming His name…which was all about His character. Let’s talk about it.

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Giving God Something Worthwhile

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God is in the business of growing His kingdom. The primary way He does that is through the faithful labors of the people who have committed their lives to Him in Christ in small (and large) communities all over the world that we call churches. God is growing His kingdom through the ministries of First Baptist Oakboro, and we are on the cusp of taking a big step of faith as we follow Him in pursuit of even more. For the next month, I want to share with you a vision for how to experience more of God’s kingdom-growing work in your own life, as well as to invite you into a journey of experiencing that work alongside of us. The first thing experiencing this incredible work takes is a willingness to say no to the things that might prevent it. That is, it takes a commitment to sacrificial living. Let’s talk about it.

Giving God Something Worthwhile

Do you know what it takes to become a world class athlete? Or a world class woodworker? Or a world class singer? Or a world class anything? It takes just two things. I know that sounds a little crazy to say, but it’s true. It takes only two things. If you have these two things, you can be a world class ____________. The first thing it takes is some level of natural talent for whatever it is. Some people are just naturally good at playing the piano, for instance. Some are naturally good artists. I had a friend in high school who could draw anything. He didn’t really do anything to become that good, he just had a natural ability to take what was in his mind and translate it to a page. Some people have a natural talent for doing math. Different people are good at different things. If you don’t have any talent for something at all, you can probably develop an affinity for it, but there’s always going to be a difference between what you can accomplish with regard to that thing, and what someone who does can.

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Digging in Deeper: Proverbs 17:28

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“Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps silent – discerning, when he seals his lips.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in a day when social media dominates the cultural landscape. It has become our public square in all sorts of ways. None of this has served to make us necessarily more social – in fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that it is isolating us more and more from one another and feeding into what multiple public health experts have described as a loneliness epidemic across the developed world. What it has done, though, is given everyone the ability to contribute their voice to public discussions. The trouble is that while all of us have opinions about the goings on in the world around us, being able to share those opinions with the world don’t make them well-informed or necessarily worth sharing. Still, many people seem to feel the pressure (whether actual or only imagined) to share their thoughts on everything. Sometimes this is helpful and beneficial to the people around them. Sometimes it falls somewhat short of that. So then, how do we know whether to share or not? Let’s spend a few minutes thinking that today.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 34:1-4

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“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.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 33:18-23

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“Then Moses said, ‘Please, let me see your glory.’ He said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name “the Lord” before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ But he added, ‘You cannot see my face, for humans cannot see me and live.’ The Lord said, ‘Here is a place near me. You are to stand on the rock, and when my glory passes by, I will put you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away, and you will see my back, but my face will not be seen.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Depending on my audience, I’ll occasionally ask a congregation if they’ve ever read the passage in the Bible where God moons someone. When I do that, adults mostly look bemused and a little awkward. Kids snicker or outright giggle. Then they wait for me to tell them where since I’ve whet their curiosity. It’s right here in this very passage. I’m kidding, of course, but it provides a good opener for talking about what exactly Moses is asking God for here and why God responds the way He does. Let’s explore one of the most important requests of God in the Scriptures, and why it is a good one from us to make as well.

Continue reading “Digging in Deeper: Exodus 33:18-23” →