The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. – Exodus 34:6
There are many verses that describe the majesty of our eternal and everlasting God in the Bible. They tell of His glory, His power, His presence and His perfect wisdom and knowledge. They speak of His goodness, compassion and patience. God speaks of His own immutability through the prophet Isaiah, “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary,his understanding is unsearchable.” (Isaiah 40:28).
I believe few statements, however, capture His personal attributes toward His people as the key Scripture from Exodus above. It is appears seven times by the writers of the Old Testament, namely Moses (Exodus 34:6); Nehemiah (9:17); David (Psalm 86:15, 103:8, 145:8); Joel (2:13); and Jonah (4:2). Scripture represents “seven” as the number of completeness and achievement. It’s worth memorizing wouldn’t you think? Here is what those almost identical verses tell us about God:
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The Lord is merciful.
The Hebrew word for mercy is rachamim, which describes the emotion of “mercy” or “compassion.” Interestingly, it is derived from the name of the most motherly organ in the human body: the womb, “rechem.” This is where the strongest connection of compassion and love are bonded between the mother and her baby, respectively.* Notice the English translation is “merciful” or put another way, God is “full of mercy,” like a mother toward her soon to be born child and beyond.
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The Lord is gracious.
There is a beautiful song that we often sing at our church called, “Grace After Grace,” taken from the apostle John’s gospel when he writes about Jesus, “And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16-17). In other words, the Lord’s unmerited favor toward us never runs out!
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The Lord is slow to anger.
We are admonished in the New Testament, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). Since the Holy Spirit is the author of that verse, certainly it represents God’s view of anger which is dedicated and designed to bring us to a place of repentance. It is a righteous anger that is slow to be observed or materialized because it is only used as a result of our continued disobedience. It is designed to bring us back to His perfect will for our lives. It is not His wrath. That is reserved for the unrepentant and rebellious who remain in unbelief and in opposition to His lovingkindness.
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The Lord is abounding in steadfast love.
“There may be no more significant Old Testament description of how God relates to His people than the Hebrew word hesed, here translated as steadfast love,” writes the late R.C. Sproul, who maintained that the “best translation of this term would be loyal love. God loves His people genuinely, immutably, and loyally. Both the love and the loyalty are, of course, tightly bound together . . . God is for His people, and will never cease to be for them.” ** Here we see that it is also described as a love that is “abounding” which means plentiful and abundant. It, too, will never run out!
I love that God is described in this way because I have found that’s who He is and has been in my life. It gives me the assurance and confidence that when He says, “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:6) and, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), that is precisely what He means and who He is and who He will be forever. I pray you know Him like that as well. Maranatha!
* Jerusalem Prayer Team
** R.C. Sproul, What is Hesed? May 4, 2013.
