EXODUS 34:6-9 THE LORD PROCLAIMS HIS CHARACTER2015 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: Exodus 34:6-9 The Lord Proclaims His Character

You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2015. As we look at this passage here, Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 through 9, I would like to start by asking you the question, how do you feel when law enforcement is around?

You guys ever had that situation where you've got the lights going on behind you? And how do you feel when that happens? I was thinking about this recently because, well, the other day I was driving to Home Depot and

And a police car pulled up behind me just as I was barely starting to head that way. And he proceeded to follow me all the way as I went to Home Depot. And I was thinking about it because I was remembering back to the good old days. Or maybe they weren't so good. So...

You guys have heard me share many times before. There was that season, young and foolish, rebellion, right? And so I had outstanding tickets and failures to appear and warrants for my arrest as a result for those speeding tickets and such. I had registration on my vehicle that had been expired for more than a year. I didn't have insurance and my license was suspended.

And so the combination of those things caused great pain anytime I saw a police officer anywhere in the general vicinity where I was on the road. And so I would feel this pain like,

seriously, from my knee to my chest, it would just like, it's hard to describe that pain, but it was a physical pain that I would feel anytime. And so I would be like trying to figure out, okay, is there a gas station I could pull into or something I can do to kind of like not look suspicious, but just, you know, wait until they're gone. And then, you know, I'll be able to get back on the road. But every time I would see them and then if they would pull behind me,

Then it's like panic time, right? Then my heart is pounding and I'm sweating because I know, man, if I get pulled over, I am busted. And I was so scared. And so I was thinking about that as this guy was following me and I was just kind of enjoying like, hey, there's no pain. He's behind me, but it doesn't hurt. I maybe paid a little bit more attention to the speedometer than I might usually do, but there was no pain. There was no agony.

How do you feel when law enforcement is around? We know, of course, that there's different sides to law enforcement. There's the one side of protection, but then there's the other side of enforcement.

And so there are times where you can be around law enforcement and be comforted by that. Like you're protected, that they're there for your protection to help you, to help care for you, to help keep you safe. But then there's also the sense where sometimes when you're not doing what's right and law enforcement is around you,

Well, then there's maybe the pain or the fear because they also are enforcers. And that dual aspect to law enforcement is something I think is appropriate for us to consider as we look at this revelation of God here in Exodus chapter 34.

In a similar way, God has, well, he has his love and protection side, but he also has his holiness and punishing of sin side. And similar to law enforcement, we get to choose which side of God we relate to, which side of God we get to partake of.

So I get to choose whether I'm, you know, panicked and freaked out by law enforcement or whether I'm comforted and protected by law enforcement, by my behavior and by what I do. And in a similar way, as we look at this revelation of God and see the different aspects of God, we'll see God doesn't change. This is who God is.

But what we experience of God is very much up to us. And we can experience his judgment or we can experience his abounding grace and mercy towards us. And so we're going to be looking at the character of God today here in Exodus chapter 34. The Lord proclaims his character to Moses. And these verses are abundantly wealthy as far as revelation from God and insights about who he is.

I'm going to pull out seven characteristics from God that we get to see here. But there's many more that you could spend time considering as well. Spurgeon said that knowing God should be the active interest of every human being and especially of every Christian. We have here in our passage the best knowledge.

of who God is because it's God himself revealing himself to us. This is better than anything we could learn from nature or someone else could tell us we have God himself revealing

revealing to us saying, this is what I'm like. This is who I am. And so we get the great privilege to consider his revelation of himself towards Moses and to us this morning. And so the first characteristic I'd like to highlight from verse six is that the Lord is compassionate. Here in verse six, the Lord goes before Moses and he says, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious.

He introduces himself as the Lord.

This is the proper name for God. It's often, you know, pronounced Yahweh or Jehovah. Those are two different ways to pronounce the same word in the Hebrew. It means the existing one. God is the one who exists, who has always existed. And it's the proper name of God. And so he says, the Lord, this is who I am, the Lord God. And then he describes himself as merciful.

This word merciful can also be translated compassionate. And so that's why I made the point the Lord is compassionate. When we talk about mercy, we describe mercy as not getting punishment that we deserve. When God is merciful to us, he withholds punishment that we deserve.

And I like that these two words are related, mercy and compassion, because the reason why God withholds punishment that we deserve is because he has compassion upon us. This word compassion, it means to feel sympathy for others, to look on someone and feel sympathy for where they're at and what they are experiencing.

I'm not quite sure that I can pronounce it correctly in Hebrew, but I'll do my best bet. I'll do my best shot. I can't even speak English. Why am I trying to speak Hebrew? Okay, so here's my best shot at pronouncing this in Hebrew. Aw. I'm just kidding. That's not really Hebrew. You know like when you look at somebody and you kind of go, aw. Like you see the situation and you're like, it does something in the gut. It does something in here where it's like, you wish you could fix something.

the situation for them. You see pain, perhaps, and you feel that pain that they're feeling. You wish you could change that. You could remove that pain from them. Or you see the difficulty, and you wish that things were different. You wish you could change the circumstances. That's kind of the sense that we get from this word compassion. The Lord is compassionate.

The psalmist in Psalm 103 refers to this, I think, in a way that would help us understand it a little bit better. He says in Psalm 103, 13, as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. That word pity, it's the same word here for compassion. And so the Lord has compassion or he pities those

Those who fear him just as a father pities his children. And then it goes on to say in verse 14 of Psalm 103, for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are children.

dust. The reason why God has compassion on us and he pities us as he sees what we're going through is because he remembers our frame. He remembers that we're just dust. We were formed out of the ground. There's not much to us at all. He knows what we're about. He knows what makes us up. He knows our struggles, our frailties, our weaknesses. He knows the history of what's happened to us.

And so he's able to look upon us and have compassion. The Lord is compassionate. And that's good to know. And I would encourage you to consider, are you hurting? If you're hurting, a lot of times it's easy for us to think that God doesn't care. But listen, if you're hurting, whatever kind of pain, whether it be physical or emotional, whatever kind of pain that you experience, God cares. He has compassion.

He looks on, he sees what's going on, and it triggers that within him like it does within you when you see perhaps your child or a child in pain or hurting, and you feel that sympathy, you feel that God feels that kind of compassion. Are you struggling with sin? Maybe there's something that you've been wrestling with and trying to kick, trying to get out of, but you find yourself trapped in it.

God has compassion on you in those circumstances as well. A lot of times when we're dealing with sin, we can get this idea that God is ready to strike us, that he's looking for that opportunity to bring judgment upon us. But when you are struggling with sin, God is compassionate. He looks at you. He sees what you're going through. He remembers your frame. He knows that you're just dust.

And he has compassion. He feels sympathy. If you are in difficult circumstances, God has compassion. Now, one of the objections that we might bring to this idea of God having compassion is if that's the case, then why doesn't God do anything?

We might look on at a situation of someone who's in pain and we might feel that awe and want to help and feel sympathy for, but there's nothing we can do to resolve their pain. But if God feels that kind of compassion, well, why doesn't he remove the pain? Why doesn't he fix the problem? And if that's an objection that you can relate to, let me share two things with you briefly. Number one, God has done something.

And that is that he sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for our sin. God, in doing that, dealt with the greatest pain, the greatest need that we have. He looked on our condition of sinfulness and

on our condition of deserving eternal judgment. He had compassion and because of his compassion, he sent his only begotten son. He has done something. He provided a savior for free by his grace to give us the opportunity to experience forgiveness and everlasting life.

And so a lot of times we look at our immediate circumstances and we try to make a determination upon that, but we need to look at the whole picture. God has provided a savior. That's the ultimate proof of his compassion. But secondly, I would ask you to consider this. God has compassion and he is doing something, but we might not understand it at the moment. We don't always understand what God is doing. I have this memory that

And I don't know how much of it is an actual memory or how much of it I've made up in my imagination, but it's maybe a little bit of both. There was, well, this I know for sure. I was, as a child, I was working on some pictures with an X-Acto knife. And in the process of cutting out something in a picture, I sliced through my thumb.

And it was about a quarter inch of my thumb and it kind of like sliced through almost all the way. There was just like a little bit of skin on the backside. And so it was just kind of like hanging there. And so my parents took me to the hospital. Now at the hospital, this is the part where it gets a little bit vague. I have a memory of them sewing my thumb back together.

And in the process of that, it was incredibly painful, which was interesting because I sliced through with my X-Acto knife. It didn't hurt at all. I didn't even notice at first.

until it started getting red everywhere. And then I noticed, but then they're sewing it up and it was incredibly painful. And so one of the nurses with my other hand offered her thumb and she said, okay, squeeze my thumb as hard as you can. Every time it hurts, just squeeze as hard as you can. And she said, don't worry, you won't hurt me, but it'll help with your pain. So here I am, I'm squeezing the nurse's thumb with all my strength because I'm in great pain and

I don't maybe my dad was there. I'm pretty sure he was there. Maybe I'm making it up But I remember Mike my dad's there I'm in this excruciating pain and there's a sense like don't you see how much this hurts dad? Like you're supposed to take care of me like don't you know they're hurting me like isn't there something you can do? Because this is incredibly painful and my dad Just sat there now

That was compassion. I know my dad wasn't like, oh yeah, give him what he deserves. You know, doctors like, can you make it hurt some more? No, no, that wasn't my dad, right? He, out of compassion, let the doctor do what needed to be done. It was a painful but necessary procedure. And the same is true for us. We don't always understand what God is doing. We don't always understand the circumstances that we're in, but God is compassionate and he is doing something about it.

But the doing something about it might be letting the painful procedures be done. Because what God has in mind is our eternal good and what's best for us for the rest of eternity. And so God has compassion. He cares. He is doing something. He has done something. And you can rest and trust in that.

Well, that's the first characteristic, and we can't spend that much time on all of them. So let's move on to the next one. The next thing that we see is that the Lord is gracious. Again, we're looking at verse 6 here in Exodus chapter 34. The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious.

The idea of gracious or grace is one that's important to us, and we've been spending a lot of time talking about it on Wednesdays as we're working through the book of Romans, because as we're talking about the gospel, of course, it's based on the grace of God. And so we describe the grace of God as unearned favor and kindness. That is that God is good to us and he is kind towards us,

On the basis of who he is, not on the basis of who we are or what we do. It's his goodness given to us undeserved so that you cannot earn God's grace. There's nothing that you can do to deserve God's grace. Sometimes we get the idea in our heads that, well, God should be good to me because I did something good. And sometimes

That's something that we think, but it's not based on what the Bible has declared. It's not based on the grace of God. The grace of God, what we really need is God's grace. We don't need what we deserve because what we deserve is never as good as what we think we deserve. What we really deserve is judgment. We really deserve much less than we have or what we can get. But

When God deals with us according to his grace, how much we've earned and how much we deserve, those don't even matter. They're not even in the picture. It's simply based on God's goodness. God is good and kind to us. And he deals with us far better than we deserve. Well, thirdly, as we continue on in verse six, we see that the Lord is slow to anger.

Again, in verse 6, it says, God is long-suffering. This word long-suffering, we refer to it as patience or the idea of being slow to anger. But literally, the Hebrew, it means he's long of nose.

And so God wants you to know that he has a very big nose. That's what he wants to reveal here to Moses, right? It was a, it was a, I just forgot. What do you call that when it's a something of speech? It's a figure of speech. Thank you. Yes. A figure of speech that, that they would use. I was going to say idiom, but then I figured, you know, that would be anyways. Okay. So figure of speech.

That God is long of nose. And it was a figure of speech in this way because, well, when you are angry, you know how the nose dilates, your nostrils flare? And so that's the idea of, that's why it's attached to this idea of long suffering or slow to anger because God's saying, it takes me a really long time for my nostrils to flare. Right?

It takes me a really long time. It takes a long time for you to get me so upset that I become that angry. So we might describe it as, you know, someone has a short fuse. It's a similar type of thing. He's long-nosed. He's long-suffering. He's slow to anger. People sin against God, and he bears with them. And they offend God. They fight against God.

And he bears with them. And even people who know better, who know the truth, rebel against God and sin against God. And he bears with them. And the nation of Israel in the Old Testament is a really classic example of that. The nation of Israel...

Under King David and King Solomon, they were mostly centered around the worship of God and they were focused on walking with God. But after Solomon, they departed from God. The nation split in two and then things just continued to get worse and they continued to rebel against God and incorporate more and more of the things that God had forbidden into their lives.

They sinned against God, even though they had great revelation, even though they knew better. But God did not wipe them out. Instead, he sent prophets to them. And not just like one time. He sent prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet. And this is spanning over several hundred years.

He's dealing with this rebellious nation that are his people that he's done so much for, and yet they've turned against him, and he gives them chance after chance, opportunity after opportunity to turn and get right with God. It's an incredible display of God being slow to anger.

Ultimately, he does bring other nations to destroy Israel and Judah and take them away captive because of the rebellion against him. But it took him a long time to get there. And then even then, he preserves the people, you know, the remnant that was left and then brought them back into the land after the 70 years of captivity. God is slow-witted.

to anger. People who look at the Old Testament and see God as an angry God, well, they do so because they don't understand the context. Yeah, God announces judgment, but he announces judgment over a couple hundred years to give his people opportunity to repent. It's like a parent telling a child,

If you keep doing that, you're going to get a spanking. And they keep saying that. They keep telling them. They keep warning them. They keep warning them. They keep warning them. If you keep doing that, that's going to hurt you. That's going to destroy your life. That's going to bring judgment. If you keep doing that, and God was doing that, giving them opportunity to turn, to repent, to get right with him. God is slow to anger. And you might know that because whenever you do something wrong, you're not immediately struck by lightning. God bears with you. Now, why does he do that?

Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3, verse 9, he says, The reason why God suffers a long time with us, bears with us for a long time, and restrains himself from anger is because he's not willing that any of us should perish.

He desires for us to come to repentance. And so his slowness to wrath is our opportunity to turn and receive the goodness of God, the forgiveness of God that he extends towards us. Well, number four, as we continue to consider verse six,

The Lord is good. And so he says, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness. Not only is the Lord good, but he abounds in goodness.

This word goodness, it describes an act of kindness or mercy that's shown to someone. But more than that, it's the kind of mercy and kindness that is shown to close friends and family. So there's some kindness that you might show to close acquaintances or people that you know, coworkers, or maybe even strangers that, you know, you would be kind to them in certain ways and

Just, you know, for the sake of being kind, just because it's kind to do that. But then there's kindness that you show to your close friends and your family. So maybe you'll give someone who's asking for money, you know, some stranger that you've never met, you might give them a couple bucks.

Maybe there's someone you know a little bit better. You might give them a little bit more. But when it's close friends or family, you might be willing to sacrifice greatly to give them what they need because of your relationship, of that closeness that you have with them. Or you might be willing to bear a little bit of pain or discomfort for someone you don't know very well. But for your family...

You're willing to bear all kinds of pain and all kinds of discomfort and you put up with all kinds of things for their sake. It's kindness that's shown in that regard. Those things that you would do only for your family, only for your close friends. An example of this in the scriptures is 2 Samuel chapter 9 when David showed kindness to Mephibosheth.

Now Mephibosheth was a son of his friend Jonathan who had been killed. As a son of Jonathan, Mephibosheth could have been an heir to the throne because Jonathan was King Saul's son. And so normally in the cultures around Israel, the normal practice would be put to death the whole family of the king who was before you so that none of them could come back and try to claim the right to the throne.

But David doesn't do anything like that. Not only does he not show this kind of harm against Mephibosheth, but he says, you know, Mephibosheth, I loved your father. And so I want to bring you in. And so David brought him into his own home. He took care of him as part of the king's table. He gave him the land of his father. He blessed him abundantly. He showed him great kindness.

And this is the idea. This is the word that's used here. God is abounding in goodness, in kindness, in doing good things, and doing good things for us as if we are family or close friends. Not just, you know, like, okay, here's a piece of candy and that's something that's kind. But here's what's really meaningful. Here's what's really needed. Here's what you really need. I'm going to do good things for you and deal with you kindly.

This is the way that God treats you. Not just a little bit here and there, but God says, I am abounding in goodness. I am overflowing with goodness. Psalm 103 verse 11 says, For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his mercy, same word as goodness here, toward those who fear him. His mercy, his goodness is,

stacks up as high as the heavens are above the earth. Or one commentator put it this way. He has barns and silos full of love and goodness. He's stacking it in the streets looking for a distribution system. Sometimes we might feel like we've

you know, exhausted God's resources of kindness. Like we've already asked too much of God. He's already been so good to us. We can't ask anything more. But I like this picture. He's got barns and silos full. It's just overflowing. They're stacked up in the streets. He's just trying to find a delivery system. Someone who would ask for God to be good. Someone who would invite God to show his kindness in their life. God is good.

Well, we also see that the Lord is faithful. Here in verse 6, again, it says, Now, this word truth, of course, it could speak about saying something and it's the truth, but it also is translated as reliability or faithfulness or stability.

And that's why I made the point the Lord is faithful because, well, he is faithful. Whatever God says, you can count on it. You can count on whatever God says. It is the truth because God is faithful. Now, if I tell you something, you might think, well, you're just lying to me.

And hopefully I'm not just lying to you, but that's a possibility, right? People lie to you. And so you have to kind of evaluate when someone tells you something, okay, do I trust this person? You know, am I going to believe them? How do I know that they're telling me the truth? But if you decide, okay, I don't think they're going to lie to me. So I tell you something and you decide, okay, yeah, he's not lying to me, but I could tell you something and I believe it's the truth, but it's wrong.

That ever happen to you? Someone is convinced this is the truth, and so they tell you the truth, but then it comes out later, oh, well, I thought it was the truth. That's the way I understood it. And so we kind of have these filters in our minds, don't we? We have to evaluate. People are telling us things. We're like, okay, number one, are they lying to us? Number two, do they know enough to know that that's the truth? How do they know? What's their sources? How have they made these conclusions? When it comes to God, you don't have to have those filters.

Everything that God says is the truth. And you can count on that because God knows everything. We might say something and think it's the truth, but we don't have all the information. God has all the information. And so he's faithful. Anything that he says, you can count on it. You can bank your eternal condition on everything that God says because he speaks the truth. He is faithful. In addition, whatever God promises, you can count on it.

Because he's faithful. He will fulfill his promises. He will fulfill his word. God doesn't change. That's also the idea here that's built up into this idea of faithfulness or stability. He's not wishy-washy. He's not different one day and then different again the next day. So he doesn't say, well, you can be saved by faith in Jesus Christ today. And then tomorrow you have to earn your salvation.

That's never going to happen. He's always the same. He doesn't change. His character doesn't change. He doesn't go back and forth and flip-flop. He is faithful. He is stable. And so you can count on God. You can count on God in everything He says, in everything He promises. You can trust Him. You can believe His word. You can rest your life in His hands because God is faithful.

Number six, as God reveals himself to Moses, the Lord is forgiving. And now we move on into verse seven. It starts in verse seven saying, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. God keeps mercy for thousands or for generations and he forgives and he lists three types of sinfulness, iniquity, transgression and sin.

Now, I don't think God's point is, okay, try to categorize all of your sins and figure out which ones are iniquity, which ones are transgression, and which ones are sin. I think his point is that we would understand whatever kind of sinfulness we participate in, God is able to forgive all of it. Whether it's perversity, depravity, rebellion, iniquity, transgression, whatever it is, God is able to forgive.

There is no sin that God cannot forgive. He is a forgiving God. He pardons iniquity. But now, as we move into the final characteristic that God revealed of himself, we see a little bit of a contrast. Number seven is that the Lord is just. The Lord is just. As you continue on in verse seven, he says, by no means clearing the guilty. So he forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin,

And he by no means clears the guilty, but he visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. And suddenly, like I've been loving this, you know, revelation of God, like, wow, he's compassionate and he's gracious and he's good. And he, oh man, this is awesome. And then suddenly here I'm in trouble because God by no means clears the guilty generation.

The idea of clearing the guilty, it means to count them as innocent or to leave them unpunished. And maybe you begin to wonder, well, how can God be forgiving, but then also not clear the guilty? How is that possible? And I like the way that David Guzik describes it. He says, if his love and forgiveness are rejected, God will punish. And that punishment will have repercussions through the generations that hate him.

And so both of these exist. God is forgiving and he is just. He will punish sin because, well, like I was talking about law enforcement at the beginning, it depends upon us. We get to decide which aspect of God's character we experience. If we will repent and turn to him, if his love and forgiveness are rejected, he will punish. But if we repent and turn to him, then we get to experience forgiveness.

His forgiveness, His compassion, His grace, His slowness to anger, all of those things that we've been talking about. But if we refuse to accept God as He has revealed Himself to us, if we refuse to turn to God, well then, we will not be cleared of our guilt.

We will be held accountable for our guilt, for our sinfulness. And it will affect not only us, but he says it will affect our children and our children's children, he says, to the fourth generation. Now, he explains that a little bit more in Exodus chapter 20, verse 5, when he says, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

And so that extra phrase of those who hate me helps us understand a little bit better what God is saying here. He's saying that if you are in this position of hating God or refusing to worship God and receive God for who he is, if you refuse to love God, then you put yourself in this position of being against God and it's going to affect you and your kids and your kids' kids to the fourth generation.

Now, at any time, they can break the cycle by stop hating God and start loving God. They can turn and repent. But as we continue in this cycle of hating God and being against God, we will experience the judgment for sin. And so if you hate God, if you refuse to receive the forgiveness that God offers by faith in Jesus Christ, it will affect your kids and it will affect your grandkids and it will affect your great grandkids.

Sin is devastating and it will destroy us. And that's why God says, don't do it. Thomas Nelson says, God is more willing to show his mercy than his wrath. Yet his wrath is also very real. As you look at this list of the characteristics that God has revealed about himself, notice the proportion here. He's compassionate. He's gracious. He's slow to anger. He's good. He's faithful. He's forgiving. We're like, yes, yes, yes. Give me all of those. And then he's just. He's...

willing. He's more willing to show his mercy. He's more willing to give you, for you to experience the goodness of God. And so he gives you opportunity. And that's why he's slow to anger, because he gives you opportunity. But if you refuse him, then he will also deal justly. And he will deal with sin and punish sin, because he is a holy God. And so you get the choice. It's based on you.

Again, like law enforcement, you can be comforted and protected by them, or you can be freaked out because you're doing something wrong. In the same way with God, you can receive all of his grace and mercy and compassion, or you can receive his judgment. He's the same. He doesn't change. It's up to us. Will we respond to what God has revealed? Now, Moses gives us a great example of how to respond in verse 8 and 9. Check it out.

It says,

And so Moses models for us here the right response. And what is the right response? Number one, worship God. Verse eight, Moses bowed down his head and he worshiped. As God reveals himself, as you consider the characteristics that we've been looking at, the right response, the only correct response is to worship, to bow down before God, to recognize him as God, to honor him as God. And then secondly, Moses acknowledges

The sinfulness of his people. He says, let the Lord, I pray, go among us even though we are a stiff-necked people, even though we're stubborn, even though we are sinful. Now, this is happening just after they've made the golden calf and worshipped that while Moses was on the mountain with God. And so Moses now comes to God after that. They've turned so quickly to this false God. And he says...

I acknowledge we're stubborn. We are stiff-necked. We are sinful. There's no escaping that. I'm not trying to explain it away. And that's what we need to do. Acknowledge your sinfulness. Don't try to blame others for it. Don't try to escape it or don't try to justify yourself. Number one, you worship God. Number two, acknowledge your sinfulness. Admit it. Yes, that is my heart. That is what I did.

And then thirdly, ask for forgiveness. There at the end of verse nine, Moses says, pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us as your inheritance. Pardon our iniquity, forgive us. Even though we're stubborn, even though we're sinful, even though we've rebelled, Moses asks for forgiveness. One more thought from Dave Guzik. He says, if we know God is good, we should ask him to be good to us.

If we know he is forgiving, we should ask him to forgive us. When we know him, it leads us to receive from him. And so God revealed himself to Moses and said, Moses, I'm compassionate. I'm gracious. I'm slow to anger. I'm good. I'm faithful. And so Moses responds to God with worship. He leaves himself and the people bear and says, we're stubborn. We're sinful.

He acknowledges that sin, but then he says, God, you said you're forgiving. So Lord, would you forgive us? You said you're compassionate. Would you show us compassion? You said you're gracious. Would you be gracious towards us? Would you show us kindness even though we don't deserve it, even though we've messed up, even though we're stubborn? Would you still go with us? He asked God according to the revelation that God has just given to him about who he is. And that's the right response.

And so this morning, I want to invite the worship team. You guys can come back up. And they're going to lead us in a song. As they lead us in this song, I would encourage you to reflect on the characteristics of God. Reflect on the things that we've just been studying. And let this be your right response to God. However you came in, I don't know. If you need to repent, if there's things in your life that God...

you know about that God wants you to get rid of and you need to turn and get right with God. Now's the time. God's revealed himself to you this morning. He's declared to you who he is and what he's like. The right response is to now worship him for who he is. And as we worship the Lord in this song, I would encourage you, acknowledge your sinfulness. If God's doing a work in your heart, you know it. If he's calling you to repent of things, you know it. And I know what that's like too, because God calls me to repent of things.

And when that happens, I like to try to avoid repentance if at all possible. And so I'm debating within myself. I'm wrestling within myself. Am I really supposed to do this? Or maybe it's their fault and so I didn't have to. Trying to get out of it. Trying to finagle and, you know, work it out. No. Stop all the arguing. Stop all the finagling. And acknowledge your sinfulness.

The scriptures say that if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Listen, you can experience all those awesome characteristics of God if you will confess, acknowledge your sinfulness and ask God for forgiveness. So as we worship him for who he is this morning, let's do that. Acknowledge your sin and ask God for forgiveness as we worship him.

We pray you have been blessed by this Bible teaching. The power of God to change a life is found in the daily reading of His Word. Visit ferventword.com to find more teachings and Bible study resources.