“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished..” Exodus 34:6-7 (NIV)
I love God’s self description in Exodus, as He described Himself as slow to anger, abounding in love, patience and forgiveness, yet, not leaving the guilty unpunished. What a holy and awesome God, who is so slow to anger and wants to give each of us every chance for redemption.
The Lord told Moses to “cut two new stone tablets like the former, so that I may write on them the words which were on the former tablets that you broke”. Exodus 34:1 (NAB)
The original ten commandment tablets were thrown down and broken by Moses, the exasperated leader, who simply lost it when he saw his people fall back into their old ways, after God parted the sea for them and gave them bread out of heaven.
God told Moses to re-carve two new stone tablets. Moses may have been angry enough to throw the tablets down and break them, but God is slow to anger. He patiently started over again, and wrote His words on the new tablets that Moses cut out.
Making a new set of stone tablets was an act of mercy, forgiveness and hope for renewal. The new tablets were a sign of God’s grace upon all humanity. God longs for all people to be reconciled to Him.
God has a way of reworking His original plan, and rerouting lost souls back to Him. Broken tablets are symbolic of our broken dreams, our crushed hopes, our disappointments, failures and mistakes. God doesn’t walk away from us in the midst of our loss or failures. He is never finished with us, just because the tablets are broken.
If we ever missed a turn following GPS to a new route, it will reroute us, leading us down various side streets and turns until we are back on the path to our final destination.
That’s what mercy does for anyone who comes to God in repentance. Even when others unjustly hurt or disappoint us in some way, God will rework His plan in our life and if we trust Him to reroute us, it always turns out for the good.
Ezekiel, the priest, centuries before Christ, wrote, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.”
(Ezekiel 36:26-27)
These words were spoken 600 years before Christ, and yet it’s the essence of the gospel. It’s about receiving His Spirit, who renews our heart, and He guides and empowers us to walk in His ways. God does not give us tablets of stone, but He can change any heart of stone. He gives us a new heart with His Spirit engraved in us.
God tells us He is slow to anger and merciful. The more we read the prophets, and many other stories in scripture, the more we see God as the enduring, patient Father of mercy, just as Jesus described Him to us.
God holds back His judgement in hope that many will turn back to Him, which is why He sent us a Savior. We need saving and we cannot save ourselves.
Broken tablets represent much more than our losses, our helplessness and our broken dreams. It means there are new beginnings ahead. God has been reaching out to each of us, because He knows which of our tablets were broken. He sees how our hearts were broken, He knows what dreams have been lost and He is saying “it isn’t over yet.”
He wants to patiently reroute our path for the good.
He is a God of multiple chances, and He is able to reroute us even after we have gone off the original route. As long as we are still breathing, His grace is still reaching for us.
Today, instead of engraving tablets in stone, He has sent His own Spirit to engrave Himself in our hearts. God didn’t make the most costly sacrifice of giving His perfectly innocent son to die a cruel death for us, if He didn’t individually love each of us so much, that He considers us worth it.
God’s love is more powerful than the broken tablets. The name of Jesus is above every name. It’s the only name, given among men, by which we must be saved. If we set the GPS of our souls’ journey to that name, He will get us right where God wants us.
Lord, we leave our broken tablets at the altar of your abundant grace and mercy. Heal and renew us, revealing how great your love is for us, and engrave your Spirit in our hearts and lead us in all your ways. Amen
