Let Me Introduce Myself… | Sunday, June 14, 2026

We are currently in a new series here at Cross Connection Church. Every summer, we pause our normal programming to do a summer series. This year, we're doing a series called "Fly on the Wall." That's why you see this fly on our wall back here. If you're wondering what in the world that is all about, the idea behind this series is that we will be looking at a number of places throughout the summer in the Old Testament and the New Testament, where we get to kind of be the fly on the wall during conversations between two different people or between God and one other person.

We saw one of these last week in the opening words of the book of Exodus, specifically Exodus chapter 3, where Moses meets Yahweh, the I Am. We will continue along that same passage and theme this morning, also in Exodus. If you have your Bible, you can open it to the second book of the Bible, Exodus. I'll tell you exactly where we're going to be in a little bit, but you can start in Exodus chapter 3 because we'll kind of move from there.

Again, we are looking at a passage where God is introducing Himself, and I think that this passage we are going to consider today is an important one. It really does bring to the forefront a question for us today: How do you introduce yourself when you meet someone for the first time? There’s a pretty good likelihood that this next week, you'll be introduced to someone or meet someone for the first time.

When we introduce ourselves for the first time, especially in the culture we have grown up in, we have a certain way of doing it, which, to be honest, might be a little strange. Of all the different strange things about humans, this is one of them. We have a tendency to introduce ourselves by what we do. For more than 25 years, because of my vocation as a pastor, it has been my normal practice to say, "I am a pastor" when I introduce myself to someone for the very first time. We use that word of being, "I am," and then identify ourselves by the thing that we do.

Now, you may be surprised to hear this, but when I introduce myself as a pastor to people, it really does change the entire conversation, and not always for the best. In fact, sometimes I'm almost hesitant to tell people. As I'm having a conversation with someone, they generally ask the question, "So, what do you do?" When I say, "Well, I am a pastor," the immediate response is often a kind of, "Oh."

They straighten up. Sometimes they apologize for some word they used in the last sentence. Then they'll look at me like I don't really look like what they thought a pastor should look like, or all those sorts of things. In that moment, they seem to have some sort of pressure to be holy and wholesome, and it's just awkward. There are times when I am hesitant to tell people what I do.

It has been interesting because in the last couple of years, I have a new way that I've been testing out. Sometimes when people ask me, "So, what do you do?" I will say, "I'm a researcher in artificial intelligence ethics." This is true, because that's what my PhD research is. It's fascinating to see the difference in the response to that compared to when I say I'm a pastor. When I say I'm a pastor, it's awkward. However, when I say I'm a researcher in artificial intelligence ethics, they instantly become interested. They respond with, "Oh wow, that's so interesting," and they want to know more. They lean in. It's such a different experience. When I say I'm a pastor, they're looking for the exits. But when I say that I'm a researcher in artificial intelligence ethics, they start asking questions.

Last week, we had an opportunity to be the fly on the wall when Moses had his first interaction with God. In Exodus chapter 3, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a very strange way: in the burning bush. He was there in the backside of the desert, as the King James Version says, shepherding the sheep of his father-in-law Jethro. He saw something strange—a bush that was burning but not consumed. It just continued to burn, and it drew his attention. As he got close to it, the angel of the Lord appeared in this burning bush and spoke to him, calling out, "Moses, Moses."

As he turned and approached it, God told him to take the sandals from his feet because the place on which he stood was holy ground. Eventually, God said to him, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When God introduces Himself to Moses and says, "I am the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," the word "God" there is just a general word for God in Hebrew, the word "El." So He simply says, "I am God." Moses had a reference point for the idea of God or gods because he was raised in Egypt, where there were all kinds of different gods that people bowed down to, such as Ra, Isis, Osiris, and others.

These different gods that people bowed down to shaped their understanding of divinity. However, Moses was introduced to El, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God who revealed Himself to the forefathers many centuries before, specifically four centuries prior. In this passage, Moses is going to get to know this God, who commands him to go to Pharaoh and tell him, "Let my people go." You may be familiar with this story if you've read Exodus or seen "The Ten Commandments" or "The Prince of Egypt."

Eventually, Moses asks God, "If I go there and speak to my people, the children of Israel, and they ask me, 'Who is this God?' what am I supposed to tell them?" God responds in verse 14 of Exodus chapter 3, saying, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you.'"

The phrase "I am" is intriguing in Hebrew, as it has an unknown pronunciation and its exact meaning is not entirely clear. However, it is connected to the root verb "to be." God reveals His name as Yahweh, represented by the letters Y-H-W-H in the original language. As I mentioned, the pronunciation remains uncertain, and over time, vowels were added to make it easier to say. Thus, you may see it written as Y-A-H-W-E-H. While we say "Yahweh," we still do not know the precise pronunciation.

Centuries later, it was transliterated again, leading some to use the term "Jehovah." You might wonder what these names mean. They are the names by which the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob introduced Himself to Moses, instructing him to tell the children of Israel that God would set them free. In the Old Testament, you will see this name in your English Bibles as "LORD," written in all caps (L-O-R-D). This represents Yahweh.

But who is this God? The challenge with this name is that we are unsure how to pronounce it or what it fully means. Nevertheless, this is the God who has revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is the God who met Abraham long ago.

In the opening chapters of Genesis, specifically in Genesis chapter 12, the Lord speaks to Abram. It says, "Now the Lord had said to Abram, 'Get out of your country, from your father, from your family, and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'"

When Moses was told, "I am the God of Abraham," this is the same God who revealed Himself to Abram in Genesis chapter 12 and said, "I want you to come follow me. Follow me into an unknown territory and land by faith, trusting in me. If you do, I will bless you, and you will become a blessing to all peoples." The blessing that God is promising to Abram and Abram's descendants ultimately points to the greatest descendant of Abraham, Jesus. He is the blessing to all peoples.

This is the God who reveals Himself to Abram in Genesis chapter 12 and then again in Genesis chapter 15, where He promises Abram descendants. In Genesis 15:5, the Lord brought Abram outside and said, "Look now toward heaven. Count all the stars if you are able to number them." He then said to him, "So shall your descendants be." God promises to make Abram's name great and to create a great people from him.

However, hundreds of years later, specifically 400 years later, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob find themselves as slaves in Egypt under harsh taskmasters. This same God, who revealed Himself to Abraham in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15, shows up and reveals Himself to Moses. He says, "I want to bring my people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, up out of Egypt and fulfill the promise I made to Abram 400 years ago. I’m going to use you to go and tell Pharaoh, 'Let my people go, that they may come and serve me.'"

Moses is not immediately excited about this mission. He tries to push back, but God insists, "No, I’m going to send you. You’re going to do this." So, Moses finally goes and says to Pharaoh, "Let my people go." Pharaoh responds, "Sure, no problem." Not exactly. The Scriptures say Pharaoh hardened his heart and stiffened his neck, setting himself against God.

What you have in the first quarter of the book of Exodus is a competition between Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt, all the things that they trusted in.

Yahweh is the one true God. Through a series of ten plagues, all the things that Pharaoh and the people of Egypt trusted in were basically destroyed. Finally, Pharaoh relented and let the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob go. Eventually, as Moses led them, they returned to the mountain known as the mountain of God, or Mount Sinai, or Horeb. These are all the different names used for that place where God revealed Himself in Exodus chapter 3.

The children of Israel arrived at the mountain, and while they were down in the valley, Moses went up onto the mountaintop to meet with God. All the people were preparing themselves to meet with God. When Moses came down, he said that God wanted to establish a covenant with them, so they needed to make themselves ready because, in a few days, they would establish the covenant. They responded, "Everything that God has said we will do, and we will be obedient." This was their profession, similar to when someone gets married and the minister asks, "Do you?" and the person replies, "I do."

Moses acted as the mediator between God and the children of Israel in this covenant they were entering into. He asked them if they promised to be loyal to God, to be His people, and to be united with Him. They affirmed, "Everything that He has said we will do, and be obedient." This is recorded in Exodus chapter 19. Moses then said, "Great, I'm going to go back up the mountain to get the commandments from God."

Moses was gone for 40 days, and during that time, the people began to give up on him. They thought, "Well, we don't know what happened to him. He was here, we were going to meet with God, and then he left." They approached Moses's brother Aaron and said, "Hey, Moses is gone, and we don't know what happened. We want you to make a god for us that we can worship, the one who brought us out of Egypt."

Aaron listened to their request and said, "Okay, give me a whole bunch of gold." He then fashioned a golden calf for them, and they worshipped it, bowing down to it. In Exodus 32, verse 7, the Lord said to Moses, "Go, get down from the mountain, for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molded calf, worshipped it, and sacrificed to it, saying, 'This is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.'"

The Lord continued, "I have seen this people; indeed, they are a stiff-necked people. Now, therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them."

You are a great nation. Now, this here, I think, is the God that most people think of when they think of God. When you have a conversation with someone who may not necessarily be a religious person, they might say, like many people in our time, "Well, I'm spiritual, but not religious." However, they have a conception of God. If you ask them what they think of when they think of God, they often envision something like this: a God who is angry, a God who is full of wrath, a God who might consume them. This perception has especially been true in the last twenty-five to thirty years.

I remember when Richard Dawkins published a book in the early 2000s called The God Delusion. In Chapter Two, the opening words state, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it, petty, unjust, unforgiving, a control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, philosophical pestilential, megalomaniacal." I can't even say that. He used the dictionary here: sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Some of you may have read that when it was a bestseller on The New York Times bestseller list for weeks. Over the years, I have met many people who look back to this and think of it when they think about God.

If the story of Yahweh ended in Exodus chapter thirty-two with God saying, "Let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them, that I may consume them, and I will make of you a great nation," you might be justified in concluding that the God of the Old Testament was arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. But the story doesn't end there. There is the rest of the story, and it is really important that we consider and look at it.

As the story continues after that word in Exodus thirty-two, God and Moses have an interaction wherein Moses intercedes with God, and God grants grace and forgiveness for Israel's hideous idolatry. When Moses sees God in this way, it is different from all the other perceptions.

Gods that he would have known, like Ra and Osiris, reveal a different image of divinity. However, Moses sees God revealed in a gracious and compassionate way. What's his response? Moses says, "I want to see your glory. I want to see what you're really like." The Lord responds to his request in Exodus 33, verse 19: "Then He said, 'I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.' But He said, 'You cannot see my face, for no man shall see me and live.' And the Lord said, 'Here is a place by me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and will cover you with my hand while I pass by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face you shall not see.'"

I think there's something really important here that's easy to miss, but it's essential. Point number one, if you're taking notes: for God, His glory is His goodness. Did you catch that? Moses says, "Show me your glory," and God says, "I will allow my goodness to be seen by you." For God, His glory, the glory of God, is His goodness. This becomes the setup for what I think is one of the most important introductions in all of history, an introduction that sets the tone for everything we ought to think of when we think about God.

Again, what do most people think of when they think about God? If you have a conversation with someone who's not seriously seeking God and you bring up the topic of God, in their mind, they may conceive of God as some mean, gray-haired person up in the sky who says, "Get off my lawn." That is the conception for a lot of people regarding God. But here, we have an introduction of God as He introduces Himself. What does He say about Himself when He says, "I am"? This becomes one of the most quoted scriptures in all the Old Testament.

For many people, there is a divided understanding of God. They tend to fall into a heresy that was one of the earliest Christian heresies.

The early second history was promulgated by a teacher named Marcion, and it became known as the Marcionite fallacy or heresy. What is that? It is the view that the God of the Old Testament, as seen in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, is angry, wrathful, and vengeful, and not really happy. However, right around the time of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, a new God showed up, and He is really nice.

There is a perspective among some people that there are two competing gods: the Old Testament God and the Gospel God. Many prefer the Gospel God because He is kind, while they feel uncertain about the Old Testament God. A lot of people fall into this mindset. But when you actually examine the Old Testament, you realize that God's glory is His goodness, even in Exodus.

In fact, there may be no better place that illustrates this than Exodus chapter 34. I would like you to open your Bibles and stand with me. It took me a while to get here, but we will begin reading at verse five. Remember the context: Moses, in the previous chapter, has said, "God, I want to see Your glory." God responds that Moses cannot see everything, but He will show him something really important.

Now, let’s read Exodus 34, verse five. "Now the Lord, capital L.O.R.D., Yahweh, descended in the cloud and stood with Moses there. He proclaimed the name of Yahweh. Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, 'Yahweh, Yahweh, El, God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and children's children to the third and fourth generation.'"

So Moses immediately bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped. Then he said, "If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance."

God, I pray that what is revealed here might reframe for us today our misconceptions about who You are.

You are. And Lord, not only would it maybe reframe for us who You are as You give Your self-revelation, as You disclose who You are to us here in this passage, but that You would give us the words to maybe reframe it for others. There are a lot of misconceptions about who You are in our own culture, right here in San Diego, with neighbors, co-workers, friends, and family members. They have all kinds of misunderstandings about what You’re like and who You are. Those things have actually kept them from ever coming to You because they’re fearful. They’re down the mountain, down Mount Sinai, waiting for the verdict.

I pray, God, that You'd reveal Yourself to us in maybe a different way than we've seen before today, and that that might even transform us in our relationship with You. We ask this in Jesus' name. And all those agreed said, Amen. You can be seated.

This is one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament. I remember the very first time I ever heard it taught. I was about 17 or 18 years old, and I was in this room. There was this short, portly, old, bald guy named Gale Irwin, who came and taught here at this church. Gale passed away about a year ago. Bless you. He passed away about a year ago, but Gale was wonderful. He had this big, gleaming smile, and he always wore suspenders. He had a very unique way of teaching.

He was teaching this passage, and I will never forget the way that he taught it. It stuck with me for 30 years. Here in this passage, when God reveals Himself and says He is abounding in goodness and truth, Gale would say, "abounding in goodness and truth." Then he said it also states that God is long-suffering, and that means slow to anger. He would go through the whole thing: He’s abounding in goodness and truth, and He’s slow to anger. I can’t do it because I’m not short, fat, bald, and happy, but he was.

It stuck with me. I love this passage. Among the many things you could say about this passage, I think the key to focus on goes back to that first question I asked you: How do you introduce yourself?

Because we all have a standard way that we introduce ourselves when meeting someone for the first time, we live in an American postmodern Western culture that really identifies us by what we do. Our being, the essence of our nature, follows our activity, which is strange if you think about it. But that's our default.

So, you'll say something like, "I'm an architect," "I'm a pastor," "I'm a nurse," or "I'm a teacher." Whatever it may be, we identify ourselves by the things that we do. It's just the way that we do things. A contractor, a researcher, a dentist—go down the list of all the different things we might say.

But what does God say when He introduces Himself? When He explains who He is and His nature? You see, in Hebrew literature, a name, Yahweh, is synonymous with or equal to a nature. Captured in this name, the best translation we can come up with is something like, "I am." But what are you? That doesn't describe much when you just say, "I am." I am what? We're all waiting for the fill-in-the-blank because I say, "I am a pastor," and you say, "I am whatever you say." We're waiting for God to say, "Okay, but what does that mean?"

And here He answers it. The moment that He answers is critical. The context of what's going on in this passage is so important for us to understand. What is He telling us? "I am who I am." He speaks about His eternal existence just in that very word that's used there, but it doesn't tell us what He's like until you get to Exodus 34, verses six through seven.

Here, God tells us what He is like. He shows us His glory by defining His name: Yahweh, Yahweh El, merciful. That's the first word He chose. I don't even know if I can capture just how important this is. I don't think there's any way to overstate how important this is that God chooses "merciful" as the first thing He says when He defines His character for us, especially in the context in which this is happening.

Think of all the things that God could have said that would have been true among all the innumerable attributes of God.

In that moment, he could have said Yahweh, Yahweh, God, or holy. Would that have been wrong? No. According to the Scriptures, that would be perfectly true. He could have said Yahweh, Yahweh, El, and that would have been completely right and true. He could have said Almighty. He could have said Eternal. He could have said Sovereign. He could have said All-Knowing. All of that would have been true. And yet, he chose to say, "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful." For God, His glory is His goodness.

Point number two: when God introduces Himself, He leads with mercy. Again, there is no way to overstate the importance of this. This is crucial. When you meet someone, you say, "I am" followed by whatever it is that you do. I say, "I am a pastor." As I told you, it sets the tone for the entire conversation. When I tell someone I am a pastor, they kind of straighten up and get a little weird because now the representative of the Almighty is here.

Oh goodness, I didn't think he'd have a ponytail! I'll never forget when I was just starting as a chaplain with the Escondido Fire Department. I was at Station One on Quince, and I was with two firefighters who knew who I was. The fire department has a lot of people; we have seven stations, and at every station, we have five different guys on the crew, with three different shifts: A shift, B shift, and C shift. So, there are a lot of different guys.

I was meeting all the different guys, going around with two firefighters who I knew, both of whom were Christians. We came out to the fire truck, the big truck with the ladder, and there was this guy, the engineer, who drives it. He was down on the ground cleaning the wheels of the fire truck because they take good care of their stuff.

As we walked up to him, he started yapping, and every other word was a bleep. Then he looked at me and said, "Who the bleep are you?" The two guys standing with me were laughing, and one of them said, "Well, this is Miles. He's our chaplain." Immediately, the guy responded, "Oh, I'm sorry, Father." When I say I'm a pastor, it's like everything changes, and not always for the better.

Things get weird. Now, if I say to someone, "I'm a researcher in artificial intelligence ethics," all of a sudden, they lean in and say, "Oh wow, that's interesting! Tell me about that." They immediately have questions. Here's the crazy thing: it's the same person. I'm exactly the same person, but the way I introduce myself changes the dynamic of everything. Everything changes.

Hold that thought for a moment. Here's what I think we need to see in this passage. When God introduces Himself at Sinai to the people who are going to be His covenanted people, He is introducing Himself in this moment after Exodus 32 and the golden calf incident. He is introducing Himself to a group of people who have every reason to be scared to death of Him because they said, "Everything that you said we will do and be obedient," and now they have completely shattered that.

I mean, the first three commandments are: You shall have no other gods before Me; you shall not make for yourself any image to bow down to it; you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. They just shredded those, not to mention the other seven commandments. They probably broke at least half of the commandments with what they did with the golden calf. They are down the mountain, and Moses is up the mountain. The last word they got from Moses was that he told them to leave Him alone for a minute because He might consume them. He said, "I'll be back."

What do you do with that? They are down the mountain, bracing for holiness, justice, and sovereign judgment from One who is completely justified. They are waiting for the verdict. Have you ever experienced that? You remember when your mom said, "Go to your room. Your father will be in in a minute." He might be sitting right there, and he might be five foot seven, but boy, were you fearful.

They are waiting for the verdict. They know what they've done, and they are waiting to find out what is going to happen. In that moment, God proclaims, "I am Yahweh, Yahshua, Yahshua."

Yahweh, Yahweh, merciful. Do you feel the weight of that lifted? God had every fearsome word available. He could have said holy. He could have said just. He could have said almighty. Every one of those would have been fully and completely true and right. But in that moment, He says, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful."

So why does this matter so much? Why is it not just an interesting line in Exodus chapter thirty-four? Because it means the difference between life and death, not just for the children of Israel, but for you. This is God as He reveals Himself. This is His self-disclosure, how He introduces Himself. This becomes the most quoted scripture by scripture in the Old Testament: "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful." This is the very word that Jonah chooses to plead when he's in the belly of the fish: "Lord, remember your Yahweh merciful."

It's where my mind should go when I'm in Sinai, waiting at the base of the mountain. I think the prophet Jeremiah captures it perfectly. Jeremiah was writing during the period of time that the people of Judah, one of the nations of Israel after its divided kingdom, were experiencing judgment because of their sin. He is watching it happen and writing his broken-hearted lamentations in a book called Lamentations.

He looks at all this taking place, and you can read it later in Lamentations chapter three. In the first twenty or so verses of Lamentations chapter three, he says, "God, I have seen what wrath looks like. I have seen what it looks like when you turn your hand against us for judgment. I've seen what it looks like when we're surrounded and besieged by our enemies because of our own sin. When I think about your wrath, my soul sinks within me."

But then he says this in Lamentations chapter three, verse twenty-one: "This I recall to mind, and therefore I have hope." When I think of how just God is and how awesome He is, how almighty He is, and how sinful I am, I am completely toast. What hope do I have? I recall this to mind; therefore, I have hope. Verse twenty-two: "Through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed because His compassions..."

Fail not. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. There's the whole thing right there. When I think about who God is, I think about His holiness, His justice, and His righteousness. Then I really consider how awesome He is, and I realize who I am in relation to that. I feel like there's no hope for me. What hope do I have?

Point number three: my only hope is God's never-failing mercies. That's it. That's my only hope. If God had introduced Himself at Sinai as the Lord, the Lord God, holy; the Lord, the Lord God, just; the Lord, the Lord God, almighty, all of those things would have been true. But if He had introduced Himself in that way at Mount Sinai, Israel would have been consumed.

What was the last word that the Lord had said to Moses? In Exodus 32, verse 9, the Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people. Indeed, they are a stiff-necked, rebellious people. Therefore, let me alone, that My wrath might burn hot against them and I might consume them. I just might destroy them. And Moses, I'll start over with you because you're the only one who seems to be faithful. I'll just destroy them." Burning, hot, consuming wrath was on the table. Israel was bracing for the verdict, just waiting to find out what He was going to say.

Then God says, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful." Jeremiah's confession becomes Israel's confession: through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed. We're not getting what we deserve. That's what mercy is—I'm not getting what I deserve. I know what I deserve.

Now, at this point, I need to be extra careful because there is one way to hear this that God leads with His mercy, and that's dangerous. It leads down a wrong path. You see, there's a way that we can hear this, that God leads with His mercy, which kind of turns God into this kindly old grandfather who casually overlooks sin. He might say, "Oh, pat you on the head. It's okay. Don't worry about it." If that's the case, then I guess sin is not that sinful. That would be the wrong way to see this. That would be the way of what's called post...

Modern moralistic therapeutic deism is kind of the way that people interact with God today. It's the God that we invent to make life easier to live with. To guard against that pitfall, we can't just stop at the Lord, the Lord, God, merciful. We need to read the rest of the passage, and the rest of the passage is powerful.

The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. But here's the key: by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the children's children, to the third and fourth generation. God says, "I am merciful and gracious and patient, and I abound in goodness and truth, and I will forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin." But here's the deal: I will not overlook sin. I will judge sin.

So how do these two go together? That's the challenge. How is Marcion, 2000 years ago, not right? There is a wrathful, just, righteous God, and then there is kind of a nice God, and they seem to be in competition. Maybe there's a courtroom where they plead their case, and then eventually one wins out. Today, the merciful one won out. Oh, yay! How do we not have two separate, distinct, different beings? How do these things come together?

Because it's the same voice. It's the same breath. Here, the self-introduction begins with mercy but also says, "I will by no means overlook sin." So where does this come together? How do we connect these? How is God both merciful and just? Which is it? It can't be both, can it? How does the God that Moses met on the mountaintop forgive the sinners in the valley?

The answer to that question is to meet God on another mountaintop, a mountaintop called Calvary. It is there on Calvary where we see justice and mercy meet. Paul, in Second Corinthians 5, says, "Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation." That is, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses.

To them, He is committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconciled to God.

Here’s the key verse: For He, God, made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Point number four: At the cross, mercy and justice meet. The wrong view of God is to see Him as Marcion did. There isn't a difference between God in Exodus and God in the Gospels. At the cross, God's justice and His mercy meet. It is not two attributes in a cage match against each other where mercy finally wins. Rather, it is God's justice being poured out on another for my sin. He who knew no sin became sin for me, that He might give me His righteousness and grant me mercy and grace in Christ Jesus. That is the whole of the Gospel right there.

Exodus 34 is just the introduction, showing that God's justice and wrath are satisfied so that I might have mercy. The same simple God, fully just and fully merciful, is seen there at Calvary. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, as John says in John chapter one, verse 14.

Now, John the Baptist bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This is He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'" And of His fullness, we have all received grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

When Moses saw this, what was his response? Moses made haste, bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. He said, "If now we have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, go among us. Even though we are a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance."

And what was God's answer? Yes. He said, "I'll take you as my people," even though you are a stiff-necked people. What glorious good news that is! Amen.

Would you stand with me as we close in prayer?

God, thank you for this disclosure, this self-revelation here in Exodus 34, where you allow us to peek in, to be a fly on the wall, to see what you are like, who the I Am is. You are truly just and truly holy, and all of those things. But, Lord, you lead with mercy. It is because of your mercy that we have the opportunity to stand at this very moment in your presence. If it were not for your mercy, we would be toast.

God, thank you for your grace and your mercy towards us. We have not received what we deserve. Greater than that, you have given us an abundance of blessing. You have given us your righteousness. I pray, God, that this reality wouldn't only reframe for us who you are, but that we would be able to have the words now to reframe it for others.

Help us to bear witness of your glory in a world that desperately needs to know who you really are. Among all the misconceptions and misunderstandings, give us boldness to proclaim the truth. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.