Renewing the Covenant (Exodus 34:10-17)

And He said: “Behold, I make a covenant.… Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst” (Ex. 34:10a, 12).

Having reconciled His people to Himself, God graciously renewed His covenant with them. Israel had broken the previous covenant, but it was God who renewed it, promising to bless them by driving away their enemies and giving them the land He had prepared for them. God’s part in the covenant was that He would do great marvels that had never been seen before in the world. He would dry up the Jordan, make the sun stand still, knock down the walls of Jericho, drive out the Amorites. God promised to pluck up His enemies in order to plant the choice vine He brought out of Egypt. Nothing would stand in the way of establishing His kingdom.

Israel’s part in the covenant required the keeping of two precepts. First, they were to worship no other gods. They were not to give divine honor to any creature because—and this is the reason given by God—they would put themselves in peril of judgment by the hand of a jealous God. Just as a husband is jealous for his wife, so the Lord is jealous for His people. Jealousy is called the “rage of a man” (Prov. 6:34), but it is also God’s holy and just displeasure. If Israel were going to be God’s people, they would have to worship Him alone.

Second, they were to make no graven image or molten god. They were not to presume to worship the Lord by images. They had already fallen into this sin and were prone to it. So God warned them not to tempt themselves by following after the ways of the surrounding cultures. To protect them from this sin, God erected “fences” around these two precepts. The Israelites were to take heed of themselves, they were to be aware of their weaknesses and guard their hearts against this sin that entangled them. The best way to do this was to remove temptation from their midst. When they entered the land God provided them, they were to make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land, nor were they to marry or to work with them. They were to remove all their idols, or high places, and they were not to eat their sacrifices. So prone were they to the sin of idolatry that even the slightest temptation had to be removed. Any time we have a tendency toward a particular sin, we should take steps to remove temptation from us. Otherwise, we open ourselves up to falling into that sin again and violating the stipulations of the covenant of God.

How do you take heed concerning those sins to which you are most prone? Make a list of those sins with which you have repeatedly failed. Beside each one, write down things in your life that tempt you toward this sin. Take steps to rid yourself of those temptations. Repent of the rebellion at the root of your repetitive sins.

A Response to Grace (Exodus 34:8-9)

“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; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance” (Ex. 34:9b).

Moses responded humbly to God’s revelation of His glory in the proclamation of His divine perfections of power, mercy, patience, goodness, and justice. He spent no time waiting to show God the reverence and honor that He deserved, but “made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.” Worship is the only proper response to God, and it should never be delayed because of earthly concerns or personal fears. If we are to give God His due, we must not suppress the truth, rather, we must humble ourselves and exalt Him with words of praise and acts of worship.

Moses recognized that he had found grace in God’s sight, and on the basis of that grace, he prayed a most earnest and affectionate prayer. He prayed for the presence of God to go with His people into the wilderness, for he knew, even though the rest of Israel didn’t, that their safety and their success depended totally on the strength of the Lord. This should be one of the main subjects of our prayers: a confession of our total dependence on the Lord and of our desire for Him to be with us. We should not fill our prayers only with concerns about what we need in this life, but we must express our desire to be with the Lord, and confess our hope that He will be with us in all we do.

Second, we should ask God to pardon us of sin. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, part of that prayer was a request for pardon: “Forgive us our sins, even as we forgive those who sin against us.” This idea is repeated in 1 John where it is written that we all sin and need to come before the Lord, confessing our sins to Him. If we do this, He is faithful and just to forgive all our iniquity. Confession of sin should be a part of our daily prayers because we fall short of the glory of God by sinning in one way or another every day. Like Israel, we are a stiff-necked people who are totally reliant on God’s mercy and grace.

Third, we should include in our prayers, as Moses did, a request for the privileges of a peculiar people: “Take us as Your inheritance.” God has already promised to make us His inheritance, to bring us into His kingdom, and to give us eternal life. Such a promise should encourage us to pray that the benefits of salvation be applied to us. We have the promise of these things, of pardon and of glory, but we should also continue to pray for these things as an act of faith.

Spend some time in prayer today. Using Moses’ prayer as a model, worship the Lord. Thank Him for the grace He has shown you. Ask Him to be with you in all you do, and to give you the grace to abide in Christ. Confess that you are sinner, and ask God to forgive your specific, known sins. Pray that you enjoy the promises of salvation.

Not Clearing the Guilty (Exodus 34:7)

“By no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex. 34:7b).

In Exodus 34:7, we find a repetition of the warning and promise given in the deliverance of the Ten Commandments, “For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Ex. 20:5–6). As God passed before Moses, proclaiming His name and declaring His goodness and mercy, He reminded Moses that He would not overlook sin. Those who chose to reject Him and continued to worship idols would suffer by His hand to the third and fourth generation. Without repentance, guilt cannot be removed, and God’s judgment will go forth. In light of this, God wanted Israel to consider their actions, to repent of their sin, and not to use His grace as an excuse to continue sinning. It never was, and never has been, the case that we can go on sinning so that grace may abound (Rom. 6:1–2).

Exodus 34:7, and its correlating passage in chapter 20, has caused a great deal of controversy because it is often misunderstood. It can be mistakenly assumed that God is being unjust by making the children suffer for the crimes of the father, which would seem to contradict the teaching of Ezekiel 18, “He will not die for his father’s sin; he will surely live.… ‘Why does the son not share the guilt of his father?’ Since the son has done what is just and right and has been careful to keep all my decrees, he will surely live. The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him” (Eze. 18:17–20 NIV).

If a father is unrepentant, then the consequences of his sin will be visited on the children (but not the guilt of it). The children will not be punished for the father’s crimes, but they will suffer because of them. However, if the children repent of their own sins, then God will show them mercy, just as He will show the father mercy if he turns from his sin. The key is repentance. To those who turn from their sin, God will show mercy. But those who persist in sin will bring suffering to themselves and to their children.

This passage is a reminder that our actions have broader effects than our own lives. What we do affects our children. Though they do not pay for our crimes, they suffer the consequences and learn from our examples, even emulating our behavior. Repent of your sins today so that your children will not suffer from them.

The Name of the Lord (Exodus 34:5-6)

“The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth” (Ex. 34:6b).

The Lord made His glory known to Moses by passing by him and proclaiming His Name. He had made Himself known to Moses in the glory of His self-existence and self-sufficiency when He proclaimed the name, I am that I am. Now He makes Himself known in the glory of His grace, goodness (or faithfulness, as the Hebrew term denotes), and all-sufficiency to us. In giving the second edition of the law, God prefaced it with the proclamation that it was God’s grace and goodness that gave the law. The pardon of Israel’s sin in worshiping the calf was demonstrated as they passed the seals. By this declaration, God let them know that He pardoned them merely out of His own good pleasure, not out of anything they had merited. He pardoned them from His own inclination to forgive.

He began this proclamation by addressing Himself with His covenant name, Yahweh, the LORD, who has His being in Himself and is the fountain of all being—the strong God, the God of almighty power and the source of all power. We are quick to lose sight of God’s awesome holiness and power when we consider His mercy. But it is His power and greatness that make His mercy so wonderful. His are not the mercies of a frail and feeble man; they come from a God who is sure to deliver what He has promised. He will not turn from His sovereign mercies as man is prone to do. His mercies are established by His very nature.

Next the Lord proclaims His goodness. Though the Lord is great and all-powerful, this does not mean He is not a good God. He is merciful and compassionate, just as a father is compassionate toward his children. Though we deserve punishment for our sins, God is long-suffering with all mankind. In this, we see how gracious He is. He not only has compassion on His creatures, but He actively shows them favor because of His own goodwill, not because of anything in them. There is enough mercy in the Lord for all, enough to cover each and every kind of sin. No sinner is beyond the pale of God’s ability to forgive. Though Satan often tries to convince people that God will not forgive their great and terrible sins, God says otherwise. His mercy is greater than all the sins of the world; therefore, we need not fear that the stream will run dry.

When God describes Himself, He doesn’t emphasize one characteristic to the exclusion of others. He isn’t only supreme power and justice or only love and grace. He is all of these fully, and in perfect balance. Is there an aspect of God that you emphasize too much? Avoid worshiping a "god" of your own creation.

Writing of the Law (Exodus 34:1-4)

"And the LORD said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke” (Ex. 34:1).

God directed Moses to prepare a new set of tablets after the first had been broken because of Israel’s idolatry. Previously, God Himself had provided the tables and written on them. But for the replacements, Moses had to hew out the tables, and God only wrote upon them. God used man’s efforts as His means to deliver His holy, inerrant Word. Following the Fall, God used the ministry of prophets to bring His revelation to sinners. Through the Scriptures, which have been delivered by men, sinners can now know God’s will. But the writing is still God’s, though He uses human agents, for all Scripture is given by the inspiration of God. Further, only God can write His law on the heart (Jer. 31:33).

One thing that we need to observe from this passage is that God, being reconciled to Israel through the intercession of Moses (a pre-figure of Christ), ordered the tables to be renewed. This reminds us that, even under the Gospel of peace and reconciliation by Christ, the moral law remains the standard for our lives. Though we are saved in Christ, we are obligated to obey the law of God. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, but not from the command of it. The moral law still speaks with authority today. When our Savior, in His Sermon on the Mount, expounded the moral law and vindicated it from the corruption with which the scribes and Pharisees had twisted it (Matt. 5:19), in effect He renewed the tables, reducing the law to its primitive sense and intention.

The best evidence of the pardon of sin and peace with God is the writing of the law in the heart. The first token God gave of His reconciliation to Israel was the renewing of the tables of the Law, thus the first article of the new covenant is “I will write My law in their heart” (Heb. 8:10), and it follows, “for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness.” The heart that has the law of God written on it loves God’s law. It wants to obey the will of Christ and delights in doing it, though the sin nature opposes it. Jesus Christ said that, if you love Him, you will obey His commandments. He also said that you will know a tree by its fruit—the fruit of a holy and righteous life, of the marks of the Spirit, and of love for one another. With a renewed heart and by the Spirit’s power, we now have the freedom to obey God’s good and holy law.

What is your attitude toward the law of God? Do you love it, or do you resent it and oppose it? Do you want to obey it, or do you think that it doesn’t matter whether you obey it or not? Do you think the Christian is obligated to obey the moral law of God?