Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Alright, guys, this week we're looking at Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7, where God describes his own attributes. So yesterday we did a little foundational work by setting the context of Exodus 34, by summarizing what we see in Exodus 32 and 33 and reading the first five verses of Exodus 34. So let's go ahead and read Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7, and we're going to be reading out of the Nazarene 1995 edition. Then the Lord passed by in front of him, in front of Moses, and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, god compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving, kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. So, guys, in these two verses God describes seven distinct attributes of himself. So that's what we're going to be covering this week and today we're going to focus on the first two. God is compassionate and God is gracious and as my pastor, dr Mark Hitchcock of Faith Bible Church in Edmonton, oklahoma, put it, verse 6 of Exodus 34, okay, is one of the most important verses in the Bible. God attributes, or his attributes of compassion and graciousness. These are mentioned 12 times in the Old Testament, so the fact that we get it that often lets us know how important it is. And the word used for compassion here is sometimes translated as merciful, and it also is used to describe the womb of a mother. So if you are a mother listening to this, obviously you understand what that is like. Or for any of you husbands out there, where your wife was, you know, holding your child, your progeny, in her womb. Just think about how she cares for her stomach and cares for her womb and her body in those moments. And the womb itself is a form of protection until the baby develops further right to where it can, you know, live outside the womb and do all those different things. It's still dependent on us as their caretakers, but that is a safe, comfortable place for the baby to develop, and this just really shows us the depth of God's feelings towards us.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Now, the word used for gracious here means to bend or to stoop down. So just think about this. Before God sent his son Jesus around, you know, 1400 years or so later to earth, he literally had to lower himself to reach us in our earthly humanity. Okay, so God is not simply waiting for us to reach up for him, right, he's actually reaching down to us. So he looks down at us you know the dirty and dumb sheep that we are and he feels compassion towards us. He feels he's basically he's gracious enough to scoop us up when he certainly doesn't have to right Now.

Speaker 2: 2:51

These two attributes show the overall benevolence of God. Okay, it shows his character, but you have to ask yourself, well, why? Well, for starters, god did not have to deal compassionately and graciously with the Israelites, right? Because, again, when Moses was on the mountain with God, the Israelites back at camp went full apostate. They started worshiping a golden calf statue, they threw a good size rager. They were going crazy, and that broke the covenant that God made with these people. But here God is renewing the same exact covenant, right? And look, do you think Moses would be able to deal with all these stiff-necked Israelites if he were not compassionate? I mean, that'd be an impossible task if he chose to not operate in that way, right?

Speaker 2: 3:32

And so all of this guys reminded me of the parable that Jesus told of the prodigal son that we see in Luke 15, one of the most famous parables. So, as most of you know, as a setup of the story, a man had two sons. The older son was super type A, very conscientious, he got crap done and did it on time. The younger son was a complete screw-up, right, right. So the younger son demanded his inheritance before his father actually died, which, as you can imagine, is just the ultimate insult. Okay, dad, I love you and all that, but you just won't die quick enough. So can I just go ahead and have what's owed to me now? I mean, it's pretty brutal.

Speaker 2: 4:00

Then the younger son goes off and squanders his entire inheritance with the ancient equivalent of hookers and blow. He finds himself in a literal pigsty and then he decides that he's going to swallow his pride and, in a posture of desperation, go home to his father. So let's actually pick up the parable in Luke 15, verse 20. And these are the words of Jesus here. And he arose and came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And then the son said to him father, I have sinned against heaven and before you I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Speaker 2: 4:45

But the father was compassionate towards his ne'er-do-well son, right, but he didn't just feel compassion and then do nothing, right. He ran towards his son and, just contextually speaking, men didn't do that back in this day, right, you know, with their clothes and robes and everything. It was kind of hard to run, and so the fact that he ran to his son in an undignified manner was incredibly, incredibly telling. And the father then graciously put his own robe on the son and made ready for an immediate celebration because his son had come home. And that's what God has done for us. If you want to know the attributes of God, let's take him at his word. God is compassionate, god is gracious. Chew on that today. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 5:31

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