Only God Alone

This was at least the fifth time Moses prayed since the golden calf incident. His role as a mediator had been swiftly turning into a full-time defense attorney.

Ex. 32:11-13 - Please do not destroy Your people, but preserve them for the sake of Your covenant glory.

Ex. 32:31, 32 - Please forgive their sin--or else blot me out of Your book of life.

Ex. 33:12, 13 - Please go with me to guide me.

Ex. 33:15, 16 - Please be with your people Israel to be their God.

NOW, Exodus 34:9 -

Exodus 34:9 NASB95

He said, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own possession.”

Here is a petition that incorporates all the previous ones. We see Moses...

addressing God as his Lord

seeking God’s favor on the basis of his mediatorial ministry

praying for God’s presence,

confessing Israel’s sin

begging God’s forgiveness

requesting the LORD to remember that the Israelites were His people.

Moses has learned to pray like this not in spite of the promises of God, but because of them.

cf. to the Lord’s prayer - things God has promised His people, but we pray in this way because of God’s promises.

Look again at Moses’ example:

God promised to be present (Ex. 33:14)

Exodus 33:14 NASB95

And He said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Moses prays that He will go with them.

God had promised to forgive wickedness and rebellion (Ex. 34:7)

Exodus 34:7 NASB95

who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”

Moses asked Him to pardon Israel’s sin.

God had promised to take Israel as His treasured possession (Ex. 19:5 cf. Ps. 33:12);

Exodus 19:5 NASB95

‘Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;

Psalm 33:12

Psalm 33:12 NASB95

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.

Moses asked God to make the people His inheritance.

God’s given promises + God’s self-disclosure of His character were what Moses took and made the basis for his own prayers.

We would note also that Moses included Himself in the prayer. He demonstrated real spiritual leadership in how he prayed, identifying himself with the people in their sin.

Umberto Cassuto: “Moses, out of love for his people, associates himself with the collective deeds of the children of Israel, and includes himself among the transgressors.”

Moses was the mediator between God and Israel. What Moses pictures here is the great saving work of Jesus Christ as our perfect mediator, who though sinless, took upon himself our sin so that we could receive forgiveness from God. Do you want to escape God’s holy wrath and have your sins forgiven? Trust in Jesus Christ because “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through His name” (Acts 10:43).

2. The Covenant Renewal, vs. 10.

Exodus 34:10 NASB95

Then God said, “Behold, I am going to make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform miracles which have not been produced in all the earth nor among any of the nations; and all the people among whom you live will see the working of the Lord, for it is a fearful thing that I am going to perform with you.

God’s answer? God granted Moses everything he asked for, wrapped up in God’s simple response: “Behold, I am going to make a covenant.” God will once again make a covenant with Israel because He had promised to do them and because they were in keeping with His character as Israel’s gracious, faithful God.

This covenant was a reiteration of the original. This was to keep the original covenant in effect. This actually demonstrated God remaining committed to His people and still desirous of a relationship with them, even after they had sinned. His reassurance is to remind them of the covenant. His promises are the foundation; when doubts assail us, all we need to do is to go back to the promises of God.

God’s purpose in reiterating the covenant was for His glory. God displayed His power and His grace in bringing out the people from Egypt. God never did anything like this for any nation, before or since, but God did it so that all the nations would see His majesty.

Now God is going to do more wonders for His people and He will do these things to reveal His glory by showing special favor to the people He had chosen to save, displaying His saving power.

Today, God has the same purpose. God has “declared His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples” (Psalm 96:3) through sending the world a Savior: His own Son Jesus Christ. Jesus died on the cross for sinners and was buried, but on the third day he rose from the dead and now everyone who believes in Jesus receives eternal life. God continues to spread His glory throughout the world. As people see the wonder of what He has done to save sinners through Jesus Christ, they join together in giving Him the praise. World missions keeps the desire to see God glorified among the nations aflame for His grace in the covenant.

3. The Needful Response, vs. 11-14.

This covenant demanded a response. God was taking Israel to be His people, but Israel needed to take God to be their only God, a mutual and exclusive relationship. Israel, in order to fulfill her obligation, needed to reject every other deity.

Verses 11-14 reveal that God knew just how hard this would be for them to do.

Exodus 34:11–14 NASB95

“Be sure to observe what I am commanding you this day: behold, I am going to drive out the Amorite before you, and the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite. “Watch yourself that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, or it will become a snare in your midst. “But rather, you are to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim —for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—

When God tells the Israelites not to make a covenant, He is saying that if they were in a covenant relationship with Him, they couldn’t make a covenant with anyone else. Back in the day, “alliances with other peoples were not alliances with humans but with their gods as well.” That is, making a treaty, or covenant, with another tribe/nation means acknowledging the legitimacy of the deities the other tribes/nations.

God has called His people to be radical monotheists; they were not to do anything that would even hint of a reality of any other god.

Then God went a step further: The places of worship of other deities were forbidden to be used by the Israelites. The Canaanites were going to be driven out of the land, and all that they would leave of the implements of their god/goddess worship would be a snare to Israel, tempting them to worship false gods.

Why is God so adamantly opposed to any form of idolatry? He wants His relationship with His people to be exclusive. He calls Himself “the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (verse 14). Jealousy just doesn’t sound right as an appropriate name for God; however it does not depend on what we think, but on what God has revealed in the Bible about Himself. Many times throughout the Bible He has said of Himself that He is a jealous God. What does this mean? The primary definition of the English word is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “fiercely protective.”

J.I. Packer said, “God’s jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy, and spite, as human jealousy so often in, but appears as a praiseworthy zeal to preserve something extremely precious” In explaining verse 14, Packer continued: “[God] meant that He demands from those whom He has loved and redeemed utter and absolute loyalty, and will vindicate His claim by stern action against them if they betray His love by unfaithfulness” (Knowing God, pp. 153, 155).

4. The Possibility of Spiritual Adultery, vs. 15-17.

Verses 15-17 describe the downward descent into spiritual adultery.

Exodus 34:15–17 NASB95

otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice, and you might take some of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters might play the harlot with their gods and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods. “You shall make for yourself no molten gods.

Any alliance with pagan nations,would receive an invitation to participate in Idol worship.

There would be a pull to keep the alliance, by intermarrying with people who worship other gods. The sons who would do this would bring their wives and their pagan idols with them.

The next step is to introduce elements of the pagan rituals associated with the worship of these idols.

From treaties of mutual advantage, it is a slippery slope to the point that Israel would lose its distinctiveness among the nations. Israel’s own history demonstrates that the LORD’s warnings here were prophetic. It started when the Israelites first entered the land and decided not to destroy the idols that would tempt them to sin. Everything eventually got so bad that the LORD had to remove His people from the land of promise. And all of this could have been avoided--if only the Israelites had obeyed God’s command.

Wrapping Up

When it comes to worshipping other gods, there can be no compromise. God wants all our worship and all our praise, giving the glory to Him alone.

For us today, that means that we must refuse to make any truce with idolatry in our churches, our families, and our own Christian lives. There are not many ways to God--we can only be saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone. That’s what God says, and He means what He says! It is only through trusting in Jesus that we can have a relationship with God.

With people of other faiths, we are called to love them, serve them, and befriend them; however, we cannot worship with them--they do not worship the God that we worship, they do not serve the same God, and our God is a jealous God.

We are to love serve and worship only God alone exclusively. We need to fall so in love with God that we are unwilling to have any other lovers. God wants us to love Him alone.

Philip Ryken shares this insight a missionary had , not long after arriving in Asia.

I am sitting this morning in the kitchen and I am caught up in two extremes. As I look out onto the makeshift type of kitchen on the porch-like area, I think with such fondness of our comfortable home in the States. I think of how big it was, how there was so much room for the kids to play, of how well our kitchen worked, of how large our refrigerator was, how many products there were to eat, etc., etc. I also think of the incredible convenience of the minivan and the protection of seatbelts. I wonder, “What have I been falling in love with over the last eleven years? Have I been falling in love with comfort or have I been falling in love with Jesus?” I fear that all my comforts have started to act like dark sunglasses and I have not seen the glory of my Lord.

Question: What have you been falling in love with? What are you teaching your children, even grandchildren, to love? Comfort? Success? Money? A game or hobby? Your work? Love only God alone above all else.

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