One of the most wonderfully succinct and encouraging passages in the Bible regarding the glory of God’s grace is found in Exodus 34:5-7, wherein we read: Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty, … the guilty being those who spurn, despise and deny their need for His grace.
In this passage, God is responding to Moses’ request in Exodus 33:18-19 for God to show him His glory, the full revelation of the infinite perfections of His being, that which made God, God. Now Moses had just seen up close, indisputable displays of God’s glory, of His infinite wisdom and majestic power as well as the severity of His just judgement against idolatry, as He miraculously frees Israel from 400 years of slavery to what at that time was the most powerful nation in the world, Egypt. God (Yahweh) responds to Moses’ request to see His glory in this way, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
God, in responding here to Moses’ request to see His glory, emphasizes the aspect of His being that makes all of the other aspects stand out, and that is the glory of His grace. As I noted in my previous post, the term grace as used in the Bible, describes how God freely and gladly displays His glory, all of the infinite perfections of His being, for our eternal joy, pleasure, satisfaction and delight in Him.
God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, His subsequent “covenant” with them as His “chosen people” and His establishment of them in the land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, was all of grace. I say that it was all of grace because the Hebrew people had done absolutely nothing to earn, deserve or merit any of this. In fact, the Bible seems to indicate that while slaves in Egypt they were worshiping the gods of the Egyptians, and even took replicas of some of the Egyptian idols with them after God’s gracious deliverance and establishment of them in the Promised Land, the land and nation that would be known as Israel (Exodus 6:8) (Joshua 24:14-15) (Ezekiel 20:7).
This, however, was all central to God’s eternal plan to magnify His grace by graciously saving out of this sin corrupted, sin condemned world, a people for His glory; a people for whom knowing, loving and being loved by God would be the all-consuming passion of their lives, which was what God intended in the beginning (Isaiah 43:7). God had graciously created mankind in His image and likeness, that we would know our greatest joy, our greatest, pleasure, our greatest significance and satisfaction in relationship with Him.
Yet from the beginning, mankind, starting with Adam and Eve, have disdained, have spurned God’s grace, denying Him as the ultimate source of our happiness and fulfillment, and thus rejecting His purpose for and rule over our lives. The consequential result is that we live under God’s righteous judgement – death, being cut off from the glorious life with God for which we were created, subject to His wrath, His active, passionate, personal expression of His hatred of our sin, destined for Hell and helpless to do anything about it (Ezekiel 18:20) (Ephesians 2:1-4) (Romans 1:18).
But God, who is rich in mercy, who abounds in steadfast love, planned from the foundation of the world to reconcile and restore condemned, sin-corrupted men and women back to the grace filled life of love and friendship with Him through the one referred to in Genesis 3:15 as the seed of the woman.
This seed would be further identified as Abraham’s seed (Genesis 26:3-5). Abraham (Abram), was an idol worshiping pagan in Chaldea when God graciously called him to leave his people and country, and sojourn to a land of promise in which God would not only bless Abraham, but through his offspring Isaac, and then his offspring Jacob, establish a great nation (Israel), a nation that God would graciously establish to be a light and witness to all of the other nations of the earth of the greatness, the goodness and the glory of God’s grace, and through whom all the peoples on the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3).
And that blessing would come through the seed that would subsequently come through Jacob’s son, Judah, and then through the royal linage of King David, Israel’s greatest king. The seed’s miraculous birth and majestic destiny would be announced 700 years before it actually occurred (Isaiah 7:14) (Isaiah 9:6-7). He would be conceived in the womb of a virgin named Mary, to whom her supernatural pregnancy and the seed’s identity would be confirmed to her by an angel who would also do the same with her betrothed husband, Joseph, graciously setting his heart at ease (Luke 1:26-38) (Matthew 1:18-23).
The seed’s actual birth would be announced by another angel (they seem to have been pretty busy during this time) to the lowliest of all professions at that time, shepherds. The angel would direct them to a stable in the city of Bethlehem where they are told they “will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger (Luke 2:9-12).”
We are told in Luke 2:13 -14, that this announcement was punctuated by a host of angels joining the one angel in praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill (Grace) toward men!”
In Luke 2:17-18, we are told that upon seeing the Babe, the shepherds returned and made widely known the saying which was told them concerning the Him, and that “all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds.”
Months or even up to two years later we have the account of ‘Wise Men” from the East following a star God provided to lead them to the one born “King of the Jews”, whom they sought to worship (Matthew 2:1-11). This One is no longer a Babe but a young child; no longer in a stable, but now in a house. We read beginning with verse 9 “When they heard the king (Herod), they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, “they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy”. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh”.
These gifts were of great value and expressed these men’s hearts of sincere worship. However, little did they know that this one born King of the Jews came in love to give to them and us a far greater gift, a gift of inestimable worth and infinite value, the gift of eternal life, the glorious, grace filled life with God for which we were created, a gift that is received only by faith, which in itself is also a gift (John 3:16) (Romans 6:23) Ephesians 2:8-9).
And 2000 years after this event, wise men and women continue to seek Him, and are promised that those who do, will find Him, when they seek Him with all of their heart (Jeremiah 29:13)
Grace and Peace ×