Heading Home: Walking with Jesus to the Cross — Day Eight

Exodus 34:1-9, 27-28

The Lord said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you broke. Be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me, on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and do not let anyone be seen throughout all the mountain; and do not let flocks or herds graze in front of that mountain.” So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the former ones; and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.” The 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,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children,
to the third and the fourth generation.”

And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

There is something lovely about this small story, this encounter. Moses and God are both tired out. The people have done it again — gone off the rails, in a big way. Moses is so disgusted by their behavior, that he trashes the tablets upon which God had written the law, the guidebook for their future. Yet God isn’t done with them, no, God is not. 

He invites Moses to come away . . . again. Just Moses, no one else, including animals. And Moses goes, taking two blank stone tablets with him.

Here is what I love: GOD SHOWS UP. And this description is gorgeous. God descends in a cloud and he utters words of such poignant beauty. God tells it like it is: God’s love is ever-lasting — “to the thousandth generation” — but the sins of the people have consequences, consequences for themselves and their children and their children’s children. The consequences last some time, yes. But that time is nothing compared to the ‘thousand generations’ of God’s limitless love and grace. Forgiveness is promised, consequences remain.

I have seen the truth of this in every single pastoral counseling and spiritual direction session I have ever been in. We often need help navigating those dual realities: everlasting forgiveness, and consequences — even, maybe especially, generational consequences — for sin and brokenness. 

Those closing two verses tell us that God and Moses get down to work after this lovely opening salvo. The tablets will be filled again, the law will go out to the people — a gift and a burden.

Truth is like that sometimes.

God of truth, God of love, God of mercy — thank you for keeping steadfast love for us, thank you for walking with us through the consequences of our own sinful behavior, thank you for giving us the guidebook of the law. But thank you  most of all for sending Jesus to help us reinterpret that law and live it more fully and joyfully than ever.