Exodus 34:1-18 NKJV
34 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. 2 So be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself to Me there on the top of the mountain. 3 And no man shall come up with you, and let no man be seen throughout all the mountain; let neither flocks nor herds feed before that mountain.”
4 So he cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. Then Moses rose early in the morning and went up Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him; and he took in his hand the two tablets of stone.
5 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, 7 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, 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.”
8 So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. 9 Then he said, “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.”
10 And He said: “Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. 11 Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. 12 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. 13 But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.
17 “You shall make no molded gods for yourselves.
18 “The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, in the appointed time of the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.
The LORD mercifully renews the covenant Israel has broken, symbolized by new tablets to replace the broken ones. Here Yahweh repeats His name, which includes not only “He who is,” but also “who He is,” namely, the God who is merciful, gracious, very patient, abounding in goodness and truth. He is the God who shows mercy and forgives sin to the penitent. He is also the God who remains angry with the impenitent and will erupt against them with judgment.
Counting on that truth of who God is, Moses confidently repeats his fervent plea for God to accompany His people into the Promised Land, even as he openly admits that the people of Israel are stubborn and rebellious and don’t deserve God’s favor or help. God has already given a “yes” answer to this request, but Moses doesn’t hesitate to seek confirmation, and God doesn’t hesitate to give it. In fact, whenever the Gospel is preached, God is repeating the same promises to His children, because we feed on those repeated promises as a baby continually feeds on her mother’s milk.
In the verses that follow, Moses gives a sampling of the content of the covenant. The Lord will work wonders for Israel and give them victory over all the Canaanite tribes when they reach the Promised Land. Israel is expected to abide by the terms of the covenant. Above all, they are to strictly observe the First Commandment, avoiding all the idolatry of the Canaanites.
One might think that such warnings were unnecessary. After all, given who the Lord is, given all that He had done and promised to do for Israel, given the visible, miraculous proofs of His power, who would be so foolish as to turn away from Him to another god? You know the answer. Israel would. And so would every sinful human being, because we all carry around a sinful flesh that is always looking for a “better” god to serve, whose name is sometimes simply “me.” Only by God’s grace, by the atonement that Christ has made, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, working through the Means of Grace, can we remain faithful all the way into the Promised Land of heaven! Let us pray: O Lord, we praise You for who You are. Have mercy on us and preserve us in Your covenant of grace, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.