Present Tense: Revolution: The Calming Words of Gracious, Compassionate (Ex. 34:6)

Walter Wangerin Jr. has written a book called The Story of God.  In it, Wangerin writes out the stories of the Bible so that they read like a novel.[1]  In the early chapters, Wangerin leads us to the base of Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.  Moses has been called by God up to the mountain for forty days.  That’s a long time—forty days.  It’s more than five weeks.  And while Moses is gone up above, down below resources are disappearing and resolve is evaporating.   

Wangerin records the crisis in these words: While Moses confronted the Lord on their behalf, the people were boiling quail and baking a hard cake on clay, gossiping, napping in the midday shade.  Husbands and wives were quarreling over trivial matters.  Old people crouched beneath tent-flaps, missing the very air of Egypt.  The children wandered the alleys between tents, grumbling about how bored they were.  Aaron heard the smallest children ask for water, and then for the first time he heard his brother’s name mentioned.  Mothers said, “We have to save our water.  Wait till Moses comes back.”  “But I’m thirsty now.” “Be patient.” “When is he coming back, Mama?” “Soon, Raffi. Soon.”  So it went for a week.  Aaron shook his head over a people who could stand so casually upon such convulsions of the universe.  In the following week Moses’ name was used more often.  “Where is he?” the people said.  Now they were growing anxious.  They cast glances at the mountain and its unquenchable fire.  “What happened to him?”  “We have almost no water left.”  “Where do we go from here?”  During the third week the people became angry.  They started to shout at the mountain.  “Moses! What are you doing up there?  Here is where your responsibility is!  You brought us here!  Come and help us now!”  The persistent muttering of the thunder only infuriated them the more.  “Don’t you care about us?” Aaron couldn’t tell whether they were speaking to Moses or the Lord.  “Have you forgotten us?” The fourth week of their abandonment produced a genuine panic.  “He’s dead,” the people said.  “We’re alone out here.” Now there were tears in the camps of Israel.  Little children watched with wide eyes as their parents groaned and wept out loud.  “Where is our God?  Where is his pillar to lead us?  Where is his right arm now?”  Some of the old people rolled over and covered their faces, hoping that they might swiftly die.  No one was cooking.  No one was eating now.  No one was sleeping or washing or grooming himself.  The universe had gone through convulsions.  Heaven and earth had collided, leaving Israel lonely under the thunder of this solitary mountain, and now they knew not what to do.

Not all of this is described exactly this way in the text of Exodus.  But Wangerin helps us see some things which are hinted at in the text.  And his re-telling helps surface the real crisis which confronts the people.  There are many ways we might describe this crisis.  I’ll suggest two ways.  One way is to view this as a crisis of insufficient resources.  Ex. 12:37 tells us that “about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children” walked out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and to the base of Mount Sinai.  That’s a lot of people.  And we know, from the very beginning of their escape from Egypt, that resources were a significant worry.  It took a lot to feed and hydrate this many people.  In Ex. 15 they sing songs of praise for the way they walked through the Red Sea.  Then, in Ex. 16, they groan “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt!  There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Ex. 16:3 TNIV).  Then, in Ex. 17, they groan, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and our livestock die of thirst?” (Ex. 17:3 TNIV).  In both cases, God meets the need and provides food and water.  But it’s clear that resources for 600,000 men plus women and children are a major challenge.  There’s no reason to believe the same isn’t true in Ex. 19 and following, when they reach Mount Sinai.  Moses is gone for forty days on that mountain and it’s quite likely, as Wangerin has helped us imagine, that resources may have been a real worry.  We do know the issue comes up in the days after Sinai.  Num. 11 records that quickly after packing up and leaving, the people are complaining again to Moses about food.  It’s possible that the people at least feared insufficient resources while Moses, their leader and provider was gone on that mountain.  And it’s possible that this fear extended beyond the short-term.  God had called these people on a mission.  Sinai was a pit stop on a larger journey of moving into the Promised Land and taking the Promised Land.  They had to fight enemies, the Amalekites, on the way to Sinai (Ex. 17).  They know they’ll face enemies on the way to and at the Promised Land.  And perhaps now, with their leader gone for over five weeks, they begin to fear their resources for this larger mission.  We can barely get food on our plates!  How are we going to complete this mission?!  We don’t even have Moses anymore!  It was a crisis of insufficient resources.

But just as worse, it seems to have become a crisis of insufficient resolve.  Resources seemed short for the short-term project of just living day-to-day and for the long-term project of taking the Promised Land.  But along with potential resource challenges came despair, anxiety, and discouragement.  There may have been a physical problem of resources.  But it was accompanied by the emotional problems of resolve.  We’ve already heard the giving up, the sense of quitting in their words to Moses when the food was scarce and the water was gone—It would have been better for us to die than to come out here!  That’s a crisis of resolve.  There’s not just a problem on their dinner plates.  There’s a problem in their hearts.  They are giving up.  We can hear it when they talk to Aaron about Moses who’s been gone so long on Sinai: “Come, make us gods who will go before us.  As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” (Ex. 32:1  TNIV).  That’s despair.  That’s giving up.  And we’ll hear it again and again on the journey to the Promised Land.  We’ll hear it not only for the short-term project of living but for the long-term project of taking the land.  Once they spy out the land they complain to Moses, “If only we had died in Egypt!  Or in this wilderness!  Why is the LORD bringing us to the land only to let us fall by the sword?  Our wives and children will be taken as plunder.  Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Num. 14:3 TNIV)  These are words of despair; not only regarding short-term needs like food and water, but also regarding long-term issues like the mission, the purpose, the calling they’ve been given by God.  It was a crisis of insufficient resolve.

Can you relate to this crisis of insufficient resources?  There are times when it seems we do not have what we need just for the short term project of getting by day-to-day.  For some, your financial resources are insufficient.  Some of you are dealing with enormous debt.  You are at the bottom of a hole and there seems no way out.  For some, your health resources are insufficient.  You’re dealing with significant health concerns and every day is a battle.  For some, your time resources seem insufficient.  You can barely get done what needs to be done at work, at home, or at school every day.

And what about the resources for the long-term project of living out God’s mission?  We just finished five weeks of exploring the call to be salt and light.  Yet so often it seems we have insufficient resources for that mission.  One of my best friends, Jim Harbin, director of Memphis Urban Ministry has often shared with me how difficult it is to lead MUM given its financial resources.  He says he is leading a ministry to the poor, but the ministry itself is poor.  He doesn’t have the resources to complete the mission.  Talk to David Jordan at Agape and Ron Wade at Hope Works and you’ll hear similar stories.  Sometimes I look at our weekly contribution and our Ask and Imagine funds and I wonder if we have the resources needed to complete our mission to Houston Levee.  Finally, some of us are ready to do something personal based on the last five weeks, something specific to reach lost and lonely people.  But we’re wondering in our hearts if we really have all it takes to reach lost and lonely people.  I think most of us know what it’s like to face a crisis of insufficient resources.

I think even more of us know what it’s like to face a crisis of insufficient resolve.  Haven’t you ever felt like quitting, like giving up?  Your resolve just ebbs away.  The mission seems greater than your emotional reserves—the mission of raising up godly children, that mission of being faithful to a straying husband, that mission of loving an insensitive wife, that mission of staying pure in an impure world.  For example, a few weeks ago in the Wednesday night class called “Point Man” we discussed adultery and affairs.  One of the men in the class confessed that sometimes the pressure to be impure and the temptation to be impure are just so great that he wants to give up.  He finds it so hard to just keep fighting those pressures.  I think we know what it’s like to face insufficient resolve—to wake up in the morning and wonder if we have the emotional reserves to make it through another day.

But into that crisis God speaks.  We’ve been looking at these words in Ex. 34:6-7 on Sunday mornings.  These words are the longest self-description of God by God in the Bible.  There is no other place in the Bible where God talks as much about God as God does here.  These words are spoken into the crisis of insufficient resources and insufficient resolve.  Last Sunday we looked at the words “LORD, LORD.”  Today we look at the two words that follow.  Read these words out loud with me: 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:6-7 TNIV).

Let’s spend some time meditating on these two words: gracious and compassionate.  In the original Hebrew and in the time during which this text was written, the word “gracious” ultimately referred to the way someone who has responded to someone who has not. ^[2]   It could describe how a wealthy and generous benefactor responded to a person in great need.  He responded graciously, filling the person’s needs by his own resources.  The word “gracious” carries the image of one who has generously filling the needs of one who has not.  Thus, the word suggests a particular image of God.  It seems to suggest the image of a dependable donor.  To say that God is gracious is to say that he is a dependable donor—one who has faithfully providing for those who have not. 

Here are Moses and the Israelites facing a crisis of insufficient resources.  And one of the first words out of God’s mouth about himself, one of the words he wants to stamp on their minds and hearts is the word “gracious”—the LORD, the LORD, gracious.  God is saying, “In the midst of the crisis of insufficient resources, I have more than enough.  I will fill the needs of all who feel they have not.  There will be no insufficient water or food.  There will be no insufficient resources to accomplish the mission.”  God is saying, “I have and I will fill the needs of those who have not.  I am, above all, gracious.”

What a powerful image that is for those of us this morning who feel the crisis of insufficient resources. As you face another day with a to-do list longer than your arm, as you face another day with that pit in your stomach as you think about returning to that high pressure office, as you face another day worried about going back to that classroom with that teacher who seems to hate you, God is saying, “I am gracious.  I have and I will provide all you have not.  There will be no insufficient resources today.”  As we look at our mission at Houston Levee, launching out to a new neighborhood, becoming a new presence in that part of the county, and continuing our ministry to the city from the suburb, God is saying, “I am gracious.  I have and I will fill all you have not.  There will be no insufficient resources today.”

In the original Hebrew and in the time during which this text was written, this second word “compassionate” was used sometimes to describe how a father loves his children.  It was also used to describe the way a mother loves her children. ^[3]   In fact the Hebrew root of this word “compassionate” is the same root as the Hebrew word “womb.”[4]  At its deepest meaning, this word “compassionate” points to a mother’s womb.  At its deepest meaning, it describes what a mother feels in her womb for her children.  The word “compassionate” calls to mind a mother devoted to her children.  Not only is God describing himself as dependable donor—the one who has providing for those who have not.  He is also describing himself as devoted mother.  To say that God is compassionate is to say that he is a devoted mother. 

God’s saying to Moses and the Israelites, “I know your resolve for the moment is low.  I know your resolve for the mission will ebb and wane—more than you’d like to admit.  I know you are worried and upset and fretting and despairing.  But one thing I also want you to know is this: I am compassionate.  I feel toward you the way a Mom feels toward her kids.  You are the center of my world.  You are the love of my life.  I’ll sacrifice everything for you.  I will always be there for you.” What a powerful message to people whose resolve is hitting rock bottom.

And what a powerful image for those of us who, in this present moment, are losing resolve.  We feel alone.  We feel as if no one cares.  We feel like quitting.  We’d like to crawl into someone’s lap and just have a good cry, just be held, just rest for a moment.  And into that crisis comes this word: compassionate.  God is saying, “I feel toward you the way a Mom feels toward her kids.  You are the center of my world.  You are the love of my life.  I’ll sacrifice everything for you.  I will always be there for you.”

I asked some of my friends to share examples of ways in which their mothers were devoted.  One wrote “When I think of a devoted mother, I think of the way my mother always had time to listen to what I had to say and to help me through the tough times.”  Another wrote, “I think of the way my mother would fix 3 meals a day from scratch from things she grew from a huge garden for a family of 9.”  Another wrote, “I think of the way my mother was always there for me and went everywhere with me. Sometimes my friends didn’t like it so I just told them that they didn’t have to go!!! Of course, they went anyway because everyone loved my Mother.”  There’s nothing like a good mother, is there?  There’s no one more devoted than a good mother.  There’s nothing that raises morale and gives hope and inspires courage like a mother.  And that’s what God’s saying in Ex. 34.  “I am compassionate.  I will always have time to listen to you.  I will always help you through the tough times.   I will always be there for you.”

Last Wednesday night I followed a mother for about twenty minutes as she searched for her missing son.  In the crowds and friendly chaos of the last night of Wonderful Wednesdays her son had wandered off and hadn’t ended up where he was supposed to end up—in the elementary gym.  I followed this mother as she walked down every hallway, looked in every corner, and walked on every inch of the Harding and Harding Graduate School campuses.  I watched her face as she worried about her son and longed for her son.  And I knew this mother was going to keep walking, keep looking, and keep searching until her son was found.  Nothing was going to stop her from finding her son.  Nothing was more important to her than her son.  And I was there when, thankfully, she and her son were happily reunited.  (Then, many of us watched as she walked her son out of the gym to have one of those talks you never want to have with your Mom).  I think that’s the image God wants us to have of himself.  He’s saying to us, “I am compassionate.  I’m the mother who’s never going to quit, who’s never going to stop.  I’m the mother who cannot think of anything else but you.  You mean everything to me.”

In September of 2006, sociologists from Baylor University released the results of a study looking into America’s different views of God.[5]  They identified the most common views of God. About 1/3 of us believe in an “Authoritarian God” who is “angry at humanity’s sins.”   About 1/6 of us believe in a “Critical God” who “has his judgmental eye on the world.”  And about ¼ of us believe in a “Distant God” who is more of a “cosmic force that launched the world, then left it spinning on its own.”  The researchers found that our images of God tend to be quite negative.  And what do you do when you hit a crisis of insufficient resources or a crisis of insufficient resolve and all you have is that negative image of God?  I don’t know how you can make it through life with those images.  That’s why today, God calls us back to this bedrock description of himself by himself.  Regardless of what your culture or your circumstance is telling you, here’s the truth: God is gracious and compassionate.  He is your dependable donor—the one you has providing all you have not.  He is your devoted mother—always with you, there for you, on your side, and at your back.