Exodus 34

Moses Makes New Tablets

1The LORD said to Moses, "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Cut for yourself. We have an active part in this and those commandments are for us, for our benefit. He will write the exact same things on them even though we broke them. His word never changes no matter how big of a temper tantrum we pitch or what our opinion of his word is. Is it not sad that he had to do this again? We broke the first set, not him and it wasn’t part of his plan, but he is amazingly faithful with a flawed and stubborn people, but we have to get back to obeying him. He didn’t make us this way, we did. I sure am glad he sticks with us even after we do awful things like taking his laws and smashing them on the ground! Don’t we all do that too often the second we get upset about something?

2Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. Be ready! We are asked repeatedly in the New Testament to be ready for lots of stuff. Ready to give a defense, ready for him to return, ready for struggle, being ready to do whatever he says is the point. Present yourself is another active part we must do. It is a popular topic as well because all revivals call for cleansing or purifying yourselves because we have become unclean. We must stay as presentable as possible so we are ready. They go together.

3No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain." He asked Moses to come and come alone. No one else at this time was presentable, this goes for them and their possessions. Is your heart presentable now? I am talking about being able to stand before Him. There were many believers that were not allowed fellowship because of being unpresentable. Things are no different today. Are you worthy of fellowship?

4So 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. 5The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. He did exactly and only what God said. Very important and things are never debatable with God. We are asked to obey what he says and only what he says but all of it as well. Zero tolerance policy. Anything other than that is sin and breaks fellowship. Only then did His presence descend to fellowship with Moses. If Moses did it wrong or his own way it wouldn’t have. That simple! It is all about obedience. Then you will hear from the Lord!

6The 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.” Just like the end of Exodus 33:22 God passed Jesus before Moses and he spoke to him. This happened to Elijah on a mountain when he needed it most as well 1 kings 19:11-18.

Listen, we have ran God off from the start and it is amazing to me that He loves us enough to have set up Jesus as our way to have this fellowship we always ruin. What is crazy to me is how Moses didn’t know the name Jesus yet, but he sure had a better knowledge of his Christ than us and all this before he actually came and died for us. That is some real Faith! This is mentioned many times in the New Testament and even by Jesus himself.

Luke 24:44 Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled."

John 1:45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

John 5:46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.

I was very drawn by the attributes proclaimed to Moses. These are repeated over and over in the Bible so I spent more time than usual researching these. I am not a big fan of going crazy with Greek/Hebrew word studies, but it pulled together things God had been showing me just through regular reading and all the verses on a topic explaining each other. If we can get these attributes coming out of our lives thru more obedience, and therefore more fellowship with God, I don’t believe we grasp how we can be used to change what seems to be unchangeable. The key is letting his word teach us what is expected.

Merciful – root word mercy is (to fondle) – to love on. Merciful = full of being loved on. This is the only thing that we all really want from anyone so this is true life in the Bible which can be eternal and earthly life. Being loved on by God is our life and comes from Jesus and has always been that way. Merciful = full of life because that is what Christ’s love gives us! Without his love we are dead! Must keep obeying to stay in His love so if we don’t we will still be saved but dead men walking on Earth! John 15:9-11 explains this and that it is how our joy is made full. There are 262 KJV verses with the word mercy in them and if you think of our only way to any real life is through this mercy it sure makes sense and something we should do anything to get and to keep. All about the LOVE!

Gracious – root word grace is (to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior). Grace is for God to grant any fellowship with us. I mean any. We are never deserving of it but He set up a way for us to find favor and have this fellowship. The way is Jesus. 1st gracious act was God even creating us to have fellowship with Him. We could have chosen the tree of life (Jesus) and had this fellowship forever. We chose selfishly instead. Exodus is about him trying to restore fellowship by saving us from slavery in Egypt. This was to point us toward our need of being rescued by Christ. We then chose to worship a man made baby cow. Seriously! He gave us the tabernacle so at least His presence could go with us. This was pointing to the fellowship we have through the spirit now. 2nd gift of His fellowship/grace was by sending His son Jesus to actually walk around with us wicked people. He mercifully allowed us to kill him and He raised him 3 days later. If we believe and confess this (Romans 10:9-11) we have fellowship through Jesus Christ. Then God went even further and put His spirit in us to give us the best hope of obeying and staying in fellowship on Earth. 3rd is if we truly accept this gift we will have fellowship with God the father restored in Heaven when Jesus returns and nothing can stop this one! The tree of life (Jesus) will be in the center of the new heaven just like in the garden. Full circle and the way to have fellowship with God has and always will be about choosing Jesus and we have never deserved any of them. People get caught up with stuff like did God put us here knowing we would sin? What they really want is someone to blame. All I know is God gave us a way to keep fellowship in the garden and we blew it! 1 Cor. 10:13 says there are no new temptations and He never gives us anything we can’t handle. We have always had the opportunity to choose Jesus! The gracious part is we always blow it and Jesus can always fix it!

Slow (to make long, defer, draw out, lengthen, tarry) to anger (breathing hard and flaring of his nostrils due to being enraged). Longsuffering is used in the KJV and it hit me extremely hard. He (suffers long) to (patiently) give unbelievers the greatest opportunity to choose to experience these wonderful qualities He is proclaiming through Jesus. He suffers mostly because his people refuse to obey and to share these things with a lost and dying world. What literally broke me into tears was that God is always suffering. Listen up, what makes Him different is how He perfectly handles His displeasure with us all and gives more grace and mercy. We want to debate that He doesn’t even get angry at us anymore. So wrong! We just can’t fathom how much suffering God allows himself to go through because of our stubborn selfishness. Remember God actually had to break all personal fellowship or He would be forced to kill us. Do we really understand what Jesus suffered also for us to get this fellowship back? We don’t seem to or we would obey better!

Abundant (increase by multiplying) in steadfast love (KJV uses goodness) (loving kindness) and truth (sureness of stability) (faithfulness) keeping (preserving) mercy (love/life) for thousands (Deut. 7:9 says a thousand generations) forgiving (to lift, bear up, carry, take) (these all make me thing of him carrying my cross) iniquity (perversion of the truth) and transgressions (stubborn disobedience even with understanding of it being wrong) and sin (missing the mark which is Jesus’ perfect obedience) and will BY NO MEANS clear the guilty (He is just!) (if you have not accepted Jesus as your only salvation you will not be forgiven and will pay for your sins by being sent to Hell instead of Heaven for eternity) (if you have accepted Jesus you will still be punished for all sin Exodus 32:34-35) (Deut. 7:10 says he repays them to their face) we should all fear that, but as believers we can never have Heaven taken away from us Romans 8:31-39. That is more than amazing to me because I can still be pretty awful! If I ever have any children I am sure they will thank the Lord my sins are no longer carried over to them though. Ezekiel 18 explains this. Life on Earth can be made harder for my children due to my poor choices, but eternal salvation is an individual issue. At any given time any of us can repent and we are forgiven. It’s all up to us!

8And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. 9And he said, "If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance." It never fails that once presented with a perfect, holy and just Lord (Jesus) everyone quickly bows and worships. Please, Please, Please start to understand this because once we see ourselves compared to the smallest glimpse of true holiness we fear for our very life and can’t look at it. I promise we will all get this sooner or later! Why is it normal to expect to do this in heaven, after we get rid of our sinful flesh, in the sight of all and for eternity, but is never really acceptable or felt needed now? We will have a new sinless body then and will never stop getting on our face and worshiping. We need to realize how big of a sinner we still are and how unholy that makes us. It should compel us to get on our face and stop sinning!

Moses’ greatest quality that truly found favor with God is how even after he does everything as God asks he is always humble, like falling on his face, and never assuming. He is even begging “If now I have found favor” “please”. He knew he did exactly what he was asked, but still not demanding. It is one thing to obey and God grant us fellowship as he promises. It is another to believe we deserve anything no matter how well we do. Cause we don’t! I am afraid I usually expect and even demand an awful lot of favor for obeying much worse than Moses. Also, I have to remember to put myself in Moses’ shoes. He was humble because it is hard to do exactly what God asks and he wanted to do it correctly. I believe I forget I am reading the finished result. Hind sight is 20/20. It is to teach me how to follow the good examples and avoid repeating the bad ones and I still suck at it! Moses was obeying by faith and faith alone. He did not have this book to go by. Pretty impressive! If you are thinking, “well I would sure do better if God was telling me exactly what to do”, guess what? He is! It’s why God had Moses right it all down exactly how He said it!

What he asked for is the second amazing thing. He only asked for fellowship with God and that God would continue to forgive all their sins. Look, if you have received Christ then you are forgiven and are going to heaven and nothing can change that, but that does not mean you don’t sin as much or more than before if you are not careful 2 Peter 2:20-21 and doesn’t mean you have daily fellowship with God guaranteed. Moses got to be in His presence only because he was humble and in favor with God by obeying. If you aren’t his spirit is only asking you to repent. He is always there, but isn’t God’s fellowship better than His conviction? This is also an example of how Moses acted as intercessor like Christ. Great thing for us is we have a perfect intercessor now! Not to down play Moses, but he was just a man. He doesn’t compare to Jesus.

The Covenant Renewed

10And he said, "Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. This gets me exited! He did the greatest thing ever with these people by sending His son through them. Nothing greater before and nothing after and that is to be terrifying and awesome! No marvel or blessing he will ever bestow upon his people while on Earth will hold a candle to what He did through His Son for His people!

11"Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Listen, so we know what to obey and He will go before us. This is always a promise. This was a pretty awesome thing he did also, but still ain’t better that Jesus!

12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. 13You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim 14(for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, 16and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.

Be careful so we are not dragged back into the things of this world. We can’t sow His seed among thorns and not expect worldly desire to kill us Matthew 13:22, Mark 4:18-19, Luke 8:14. Making a covenant or making a deal with people other than God’s people. Anything that is not about God is about this world. AND WRONG!!! James 4:4 says any friendship with this world is hostility towards God! I am not sure a lot of Christians even believe this with as many of the misleading teachings that I hear about. Many believe if you have Jesus you can’t turn back to sin like that. They understand nothing of our sinful nature. Jesus says the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak in Matthew 26:41. It isn’t any different after Christ suffered the cross and we received the spirit permanently. Romans 7:15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Galatians 5:16-18 say the same thing. The rest of Romans 7 is pretty good too! Folks listen up, Paul said all this about himself and we are nowhere near Paul’s faith. James 4:1 and 8 speak of being double spirited. You can be saved and if you start choosing the world it will only increase unless you stop it. You need to destroy sin, worldly things, our fleshly desires, 1 John 2:15-17 says this best and this is not to be taken lightly. This is what revival is all about! If you leave something small it will turn into something big. Once you start repenting don’t stop. Clean house Baby! Matthew 12:43-45 and Luke 11:24-26 show you better keep yourself clean! There are always things we need to remove or get better at. Always! It is a life or death problem. I never really took it that seriously. Why do we need to be so serious? Am I being too tough? NO! Jonah warned Nineveh and they chose to repent and were saved. They lived. Nahum warned Nineveh again about 100 years later and they ignored him and chose death. Guess what? God gave them death! If we put anything before Him, He gets jealous! Yes, God gets jealous. “I am a jealous God” he says. This is how many times he calls himself jealous, Exodus 20:5 and 34:14, Duet. 5:9, 6:14, 29:20 and 32:16, Joshua 24:19, 1 Kings 14:22, Psalm 78:58 and 79:5, Ezekiel 8:3 and 5, Ezekiel 16:38 and 42, 23:25, 36:5 and 6 and 38:19, Nahum 1:2, Zephaniah 1:18 and 3:8, Zech. 1:14 and 8:2, 1 Cor. 10:22 and 2 Cor. 11:2. God repeats things that are important! You can try to talk yourself and everyone else into thinking “God is above being jealous” that is not something God would be, because I am not even jealous. Guess what? One of you is a liar! He wrote this book and He says He is a jealous God! Because he made us and sent His son to save us from a problem we created and greatest of all He puts his spirit in us to help us be more like his son and when we don’t obey He feels we have cheated on Him as a unfaithful spouse. It makes us a whore! It angers Him! This didn’t change when Jesus came either. Paul asks the church of Corinth if it is wise to provoke the lord to jealousy? 1 Corinthians 10:22 You better concentrate on how forgiving He is and how long suffering He is because we deserve real death when we even think about worldly stuff. He has done everything for us and we don’t care! He should be jealous! What is awesome is God acts exactly how He promises so keep thinking He doesn’t and call Him a liar and see how that works for you! If you are blameless of any worldly desires, ignore all of this and keep lying to yourself. If you are guilty like I am far too often, He is angry and we need to say we are sorry and stop it. The most amazing part is God also promises He will forgive us if we really mean it.

17 "You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal. If we can make it of our own power it is not worthy of worship. We worship the creator, not what we can create. Romans 1:25 is still explaining this. God created everything and is the only thing worthy of worship. Do we really understand how far reaching this one is? It isn’t limiting it to a golden calf like many would love to think.

18-35 to follow soon.

I love you cause Jesus loves us both and there
is absolutely nothing you can do about that!

BEZ