Exodus 34

God promised Moses that His presence would continue to be with the people of Israel. The favor and mercy that the Lord determined to show His people was confirmed by the Lord's own presence passing before Moses. Further assurance came through the instruction to bring two new tablets to God. Moses had destroyed the original tablets of the Law in his anger over Israel's idolatry.

God said, “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.” Once again, Moses was told to come up to God on the top of Mount Sinai. No one was to accompany him, not even an animal grazing in the area.

Moses did what God commanded. The Lord had already revealed Himself to Moses as the great I-AM in what must have seemed like another lifetime. He had also proclaimed Himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At this important new moment in the history of Moses' relationship with God, the Lord who had said that He would have mercy on whom He would have mercy, revealed more of His own mysterious character. Descending in a cloud of glory that stood by Moses, God said that He was both gracious in His love and inflexible in His justice. The great I-AM was not easy to understand. We could have received a God who was perfectly gracious, a God who had determined to pass over our iniquities. Alternatively, we could have understood a God who was perfect in His righteousness who would punish everyone for their sins. But how could we fathom a God who had both the fullness of perfect mercy and the fullness of inflexible justice at the same time? This was the way God spoke about Himself to Moses, but it was too much to comprehend.

“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,...” Yes, this is our God, but there was more, “...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.” How could this be?

We could not understand how such conflicting absolutes of mercy and wrath could ever be reconciled until the Son of God cried out from the cross as the Lamb of God, and then, within the space of three days, rose from the dead with us held tightly in His arms. Until that moment the people of God had to do what Moses did: worship and wonder. We had to simply and humbly petition the Lord to pardon us, not understanding how this could ever happen. How could the Lord take us as His inheritance forever?

But now the Lord of the covenant has come. He has solved this great mystery in His person and in His sacrificial work. The covenant existed before the Lord of the covenant came to secure His promises for us through the gift of His life and death for us. Before that point we already had His promise. He would be the God of His special people, doing great marvels for them, and giving to them the Promised Land. God would give this great gift, but would Israel be able to keep the gift? The insecurity of not understanding how God's mercy could somehow satisfy His anger with us over sin kept the Lord's people wondering. Yes, God would drive out the occupants of the Land before Israel, but would He then have to drive out Israel, and very soon?

Would a people that had so quickly worshiped a calf idol soon worship all of the gods of the nations they were replacing? Would they turn away from the Lord forever? Would they ignore His sacred festivals and take up the customs of these other nations? Would they forget what He commanded concerning lawful and unlawful sacrifices? Would they refuse to rest in Him, and profane His Sabbaths? Would they fall so fast and so completely that they would be unable to call God their God? Would they fall, like Adam?

Yet there was something more in God's relationship with Israel than could be expressed through the Law. There was a certainty of relationship that could only be seen in the face of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. There was a glory that would shine forth from heaven for the Lord's holy people.

This glory was largely hidden from the view of Israel for a long time. Moses saw the glory of the face of God, and He was visibly changed. But even the reflected glory in His countenance was something that the nation could not see and live. Therefore, even the face of Moses was veiled, like the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle.

But now, through the death of Christ, that veil has been forever removed for those who are found in Jesus. We see in Him the fullness of God's mercy and the complete satisfaction of His justice. Christ has brought us what the Law could never give: the certainty of eternal glory and the assurance of a forever promise that was older than the writing of the Law on tablets of stone.

The time has come for our souls to be open to the unveiled presence of God with His people. The glory of God is among us forever. The God of Israel will not abandon us.