Peter Barnes: Exodus 34:1-28 : NO AUDIO
(16 June 2019)
SERMON NOTES: THE COVENANT RENEWED (Exodus 34:1-28)
– recall Ex.32:15-20.
1. God renews the broken covenant.
– 34:1-5. There are new tablets because Moses broke the original ones, but the words are the same. The content is summarised in verses 10-26. There is one God alone, whose name is Jealous; and Israel is to remember the Passover the Sabbath, and the other feasts. The centre of the moral law is the Ten Commandments, and it is recorded in a book and on the tablets which would be put into the ark of the covenant (34:27-28; recall Ex.24:4, 7).
– this covenant with Moses cannot be a covenant of works; Gal.3:17-19.
2. God is just and merciful.
– 34:6-7, also in Num.14:18; Neh.9:17; Ps.86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2. God is abundantly merciful. Yet He is also just. How can God be slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love to Israel, yet also be unwilling to clear the guilty?
– Ezek.18:4, 31-32.
3. In the cross, God is just and merciful to sinners.
(a) Jonah 4:2. What God is to the Israelites, He will be to Gentiles.
(b) The only way God’s mercy and God’s justice are reconciled is in the cross of Christ – Rom.3:25-26.
Let us respond like Moses, with reverent worship and with prayer – 34:8-9.