Episode 208: Slow to Anger, Abounding in Love | Tim Henderson+

Introduction

Thank you, Brian, Laura Beth. I appreciate you guys reading those to us. Alright, so I don't know about you, but when we do our weekly scripture reading, usually from the Psalms or from the Gospels, I listen but a lot of the time it doesn't stick. Do you have this phenomenon? Does this happen to you? If you ask me ten minutes later what we read, I’d be like, oh man, I don’t know. I can't remember. Okay, it just passes through me like water through a pipe and leaves no trace. Is that a common thing? Okay. Sometimes though, something that we read will grab my attention. It’ll seize my mind and stick in a valuable way.

The Power of Scripture and God’s Attribute

This morning, for instance, does anybody remember the Psalm that Laura Beth read? It was about thirty seconds ago. Do you remember what it was? It was Psalm 67, is that right? Psalm 67, very good. Did anything, I’m just curious, and it may be something different than what captured me, did anything catch you in Psalm 67? The ironic blessing. What's that? Say it again? The ironic blessing. Very good. No one knows what that is, but I’m sure it’s exactly right. It’s this, okay? It’s this line —

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. — Psalm 67

That’s what you mean, right? Do you guys recognize that line? Has that ever been lifted off the page for you? I honestly, I don’t know anything about Psalm 67. There’s another line in there —

Let the nations be glad. — Psalm 67

That’s the title of a John Piper book, but I don’t have Psalm 67 in my mind. I do have number six in my mind, and that’s what it’s quoting, right? Many of you are probably familiar with this and it sticks with me because it’s meaningful to me. This is what I pray for my kids all the time. The language goes like this:

The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine upon you
and give you peace.
The Lord turn his face toward you. — Numbers 6

Do you know that language? Is that meaningful to you? Number six — I love that passage. When Laura Beth read Psalm 67, I recognized that part. It grabs my attention and it reminds me not only to pray for my kids, “God, bless my children, keep them, make your face shine upon them, be gracious to them,” but it also gives me hope because that wasn’t my idea. That was his idea. He says, ask me for this. He says, ask me to bless you, keep you. And so when I pray, “Lord, turn your face toward them,” I can do so with reasonable hope that he just might do that.

The Context of the Passage

That’s one example of how a reading that could flow through me and leave no trace sometimes interrupts me and grabs me. It doesn’t always happen. But it also happened last week. For me, that’s two in a row. That’s pretty good. Last week’s reading is the thing I actually want to talk to you about today. I know that was a long time ago, like it’s been January, but does anybody remember what the Psalm was that we read last week? Is there any hope? One forty-five. Oh, let’s dance. You got it. One forty-five. Are you looking? Are you cheating? Okay. You’re cheating, but it’s still something. At least you wrote it down.

If you have the Psalms in your mind at all, you’d know that’s near the end. How many Psalms are there? One hundred fifty. And the very end of the Psalter just erupts in praise. If you start at one fifty, one forty-nine, one forty-eight, and work your way back, it’s praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. So, if your guess is that Psalm 145 is about praising God, that’s a pretty good educated guess and you’d be right. But there’s something else special about Psalm 145. When we read it last week, it kind of grabbed my attention.

Here’s the line — tell me if maybe this or something else was arresting to you. It’s verse eight. Nancy, you got verse eight? Do you want to go double or nothing on this? Psalm 145:8 says:

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. — Psalm 145:8

Does that ring a bell for anybody? Have you heard that phrase before? The Lord is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. Do you know why? Do you know what’s the boast of that verse? Do you have any idea? Because that is the most repeated line in the Old Testament. It shows up there, but it shows up in lots of other places. The original of it is Exodus 34.

Exodus 34 and God’s Revelation

Let’s do the backing up to Exodus 34.
Where do we get the Ten Commandments? When does that show up? It’s in Exodus. Do you remember the chapter? Exodus 20. So in Exodus 20, God gives the Ten Commandments. Moses is up on the mountain having a conversation with God, and the people have received the law. They immediately decide that the best thing they can do right now is take off all their gold jewelry, melt it in a pot, make a cow, and worship it — which just sounds like such a stupid idea to me. I’m sure they had their reasons; something about that made sense to them, I don’t know what it was. But Moses comes down from the mountain with these stone tablets and he’s literally in the moments of receiving the law, they are immediately violating the first — they’re worshiping false idols, instantly. And he’s so ticked he throws down the stone tablets and they shatter. God engages with these cow worshippers — it goes very badly for them. Then he calls Moses back on the mountain and tells him to go make some new tablets.

He says, I will make with my finger a duplicate copy. When we read that second law in Exodus 34, that’s where God responds to the people. He’s going to give them the law for the second time, and he has something extra to say. Here’s what he says in Exodus 34:5-7:

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with Moses there; and he proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed:
The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation. — Exodus 34:5-7

That statement, given the second time they received the law, stuck. It lodged in their minds, and over centuries it kept appearing in the Old Testament — it’s the Old Testament's favorite verse. It’s repeated ad infinium. Here’s some examples:

In Numbers 14:

The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love, and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet, he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.

Nehemiah 9:

You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love. Therefore, you do not desert them.

Psalm 86:

But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Psalm 103:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

Joel 2:

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love. And he relents from sending calamity.

Jonah 4:

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

Sometimes the Israelites add a clause to this, sometimes it’s retained or reorganized. What all of this shows is that this concept lodged deep in their minds. They were constantly working out the implications of this — that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love — and applying it to their circumstances.

Application

And I think that’s what we’re supposed to do too. We should be rolling around in our head what it means today, how it changes our behavior because God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love.

I’ve been thinking about this all week — it’s been stuck in my head — and I decided to turn it into a talk. So, here are some questions I’ve been pondering:

First, how closely does that statement correspond to what you think God is actually like? And I don’t mean just Sunday school quiz-knowledge. I mean, as you go through your day, is it your default assumption that God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love?

Think about a friend who shipwrecked his life last week, lost his job, might lose his marriage, and made some really poor decisions. The consequences will be real, but he needs to know now more than ever that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love.

Do you think that God does all of those things for you? That he’s like that to you? Or even just isolate one, like compassion? What does the word compassion literally mean? If you break it down, calm passion. What does that mean? Do you know? It means he cares. But if you get into Latin, Greek, whatever’s going on, compassion — you know? What’s passion? It’s pain. Calm with. So it means that he has the same pain.

Has it ever occurred to you that God is sad when you are sad? That he has the same pain? A couple weeks ago, we were at Feast with the 20, and we looked at this incredible passage in The Magician’s Nephew. It’s so beautiful we’re gonna look at it again. So, just to remind, there’s a kid named Diggory. He’s just entered Narnia on the day of its creation. He brings with him an evil witch. It’s his fault. And his mom is back in England gravely ill. He is crushed. Because he’s culpable for bringing evil into the world, Aslan gives him an assignment.

Here’s part of their conversation:

Diggory kept his mouth very tight, very shut. He’d been growing more and more uncomfortable. He hoped that whatever happened, he wouldn’t blub or do anything ridiculous.
Son of Adam, said Aslan, are you ready to undo the wrong you have done to my land on the very day of its birth?
Well, I don’t see what I can do, said Diggory.
You see, the queen ran away and I asked, are you ready? Yes, said Diggory.

He had for a second a wild idea — 'I’ll try to help you if you promise to help my mother.' But he realized immediately that the lion was not the sort of person to make bargains with. When he finally said yes, he thought of his mother and his hopes, how they were all dying away. A lump came into his throat, tears in his eyes. He blurted out, “Please, please, won’t you, can’t you give me something that will cure my mother?”

He looked at the lion’s great feet, then up at its face. And what he saw surprised him. The face was bent down near his own, and wonder of wonders — big shining tears in the lion’s eyes. Tears so big, they seemed to be more tender than his own; for a moment he felt as if the lion must really be sorrier about his mother than himself.

My son, said Aslan, I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.

Does that surprise you? Is it strange to think that God has ever had tears in his eyes for you? Do you really believe he is compassionate? That he is abounding in love? Do you think he’ll be like that to you? To your enemies? To your children who are far from him?

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, steadfastness, faithfulness, keeping love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. — Numbers 6

Because I want to suggest to you that whether you believe it or not, it will shape the trajectory of your life.

One of the things I’ve been pondering is how we are, I am, you are shaped by your belief or your failure to believe. Your inability to believe that God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love.

AW Tozer, a pastor and author, long dead, wrote some influential books. I read one decades ago, and there's one line that stuck with me more than most:

The gravest question before the church is always God himself. And the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

What he means is that we become like what we think God is like. If we believe God is cruel, we may become cruel ourselves. If we believe he is generous, we will become generous. If we believe he is slow to anger and abounding in love, we will grow more into that image. Because we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

The Tension of God's Justice and Mercy

And that’s why Toshiro says this is the most important thing about us. What we believe about God is shaping us. We are drawn to be and to become what we think he is.

So, consider: what is your mental image of God? What do you really think he’s like? Because you are inexorably moving toward that picture.

Final thing I’ve been mulling on is a well-known passage in the Old Testament that contains a strange tension. I wonder if you noticed it when I read it. Here it is again:

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation. — Exodus 34:6-7

What? He forgives iniquity, sin, and transgression, but he also will not clear the guilty. So which is it? It’s a massive tension that runs through the entire Old Testament and it’s never fully resolved in that book. How do these coexist? What happens when mercy and justice collide?

Imagine with me a scenario: think back a couple hundred years to a Native American tribe led by a good chief. He is gracious, compassionate, and kind. But they’re experiencing a terrible drought — supplies are scarce, plants and buffalo are dying, and they don’t know what to do. The chief issues a rule: if anyone is caught stealing, no matter who they are, they’re to be brought to the center of the village, tied to a pole, and whipped — zero tolerance. The chief is just and merciful.

One day, a cry goes out: a thief has been caught. Everyone gathers, and they bring the thief before the village. It’s the chief’s own mother. What will he do? He’s both merciful and just.

He orders her to be brought forward, wrists tied, and the punishment readied. But before the whip falls, the chief steps in. He stretches his broad shoulders across her frail back, placing his hands over hers so she is safe within himself. Then he demands the penalty be carried out.

The whip does not fall on his mother. It falls upon himself. By taking the punishment himself, he fulfills both justice and mercy.

You see the picture? The reason we can experience that kind of mercy from God is because Jesus stepped in for us — his justice and mercy meet on the cross. The punishment fell on him instead of on us. If you are in him, if you have found safety in Jesus, then the wrath that was due for you has been borne by him.

Conclusion

Eric and the band are going to sing a song for us now, based on Psalm 67 and Numbers 6. That blessing — “The Lord bless you and keep you; make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; turn his face toward you and give you peace” — is a divine call that we would ask God for his grace and favor.

My hope is that you wouldn’t only believe that God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love in some abstract way, but that the God who is all those things would turn his face toward you and give you peace. That he would forgive you, be gracious to you. If you know you need that, I invite you to come forward as we sing. If you'd rather stay in your seat, that’s fine — it’s not magic. Sometimes, engaging physically helps us say, Lord, bless me, keep me, turn your face toward me because I need to live under his gracious, compassionate, slow-to-anger, abounding love.

This time is for you. We hope to meet you in it. Whether for the first time or the fiftieth, all that he is will be offered to you.

Lord Jesus, we love you. We thank you that in you we experience grace and compassion, slowness to anger, and abounding love. Would you turn your face toward us, shine upon us, forgive us, and give us peace? Amen.