Old Testament Reading
The Old Testament reading and our sermon text is Deuteronomy, I’m sorry, it’s Exodus. Don’t change your place in the Bible. It’s Exodus chapter 34, verses one through nine. And this is the infallible, the inerrant word of God.
Exodus 34, one through nine. The Lord said to Moses, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. Be ready by the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain.
Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain. So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and 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 and 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 on the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, if now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance. You can keep your place there, because we’ll be going back to there.
New Testament Reading
But for our New Testament reading, turn to John 1.
John 1, verses 1-5, and then verses 14-18. So John 1, verses 1-5, and then 14-18. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.
Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. For from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses.
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the father’s side, he has made him known. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
Knowing the True God
You may turn back to Exodus chapter 34. One of the marvels of living in the age that we do in the time that we do of having the internet is that we have instant access to virtually all of the knowledge in the world. Whatever it is you want to know, all you have to do is pull your phone out of your pocket and talk to Siri or whoever, and presto, you have instant knowledge. What you didn’t know before is right there on your screen.
And so thanks to technology, we can gain all sorts of knowledge about all sorts of things. But there is only one kind of knowledge that will do you any good for eternity, and that is the knowledge of the true God. No matter how much information you have mastered in this life, no matter how learned you may be, at the end of the day, the only question that will matter is this, do you know God? Have you come to know your creator, the one who made you, the One who is Lord, do you truly know Him?
And the question is not, do you know about Him? Do you know information about God? But do you truly know Him as He has made Himself known to us in His Son, Jesus?
In our congregation, the Ladies Bible Study has been working their way through the classic book by J.I. Packer called Knowing God. And Packer begins that book with a quote from the 19th century English preacher Charles Spurgeon. And this is what Spurgeon wrote. It has been said by someone that the proper study of mankind is man.
I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God. The proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls Father.
By the way, Spurgeon wrote that when he was 20 years old. I wonder if you and I would write something like that when we were 20 years old. But he was a man who truly knew God. He knew Him well.
Another man who truly knew God, again, not just knowing about God, but knew Him, was Moses. God had revealed himself to Moses on many occasions, and we’ve seen how Moses would go to the Lord in prayer and speak to God, and God would speak to him. In fact, in our passage last week in verse 11, chapter 33, it says, consider someone you are close with, a good friend of yours, you would not hesitate at all to say, yes, I know that person.
I know him very well. I know her very well. We’ve had many conversations. We’ve talked a lot.
That’s the way Moses knew God. He knew him as a person knows his friend. And Moses wanted to know God more. He wanted to know him more deeply, more profoundly.
He wanted to have his heart enlarged in the knowledge of this great God that he had come to know. And the way that Moses expressed his desire to grow in the knowledge of God was by praying to the Lord that the Lord would show him his glory. He says in verse 18 of chapter 33 from our passage last week, he says to the Lord, please show me your glory. We could say that, at least in part, at least in part, to know God is to behold Him.
To see God in His glory and majesty and greatness is to come to know Him. And Moses had, in fact, seen God in that way, and so his heart cried out for an even greater vision of God. He says, please show me your glory. He wants to know Him better.
And in the passage that we read today, that we heard today, this is basically God’s answer to Moses, to his prayer to show him his glory. Because here the Lord shows him his glory, and Moses comes to know him even better. And Lord willing, we will come to know him better as well, as we hear from the word of God. And there are three truths here about what it means to truly know God.
You Know God Only by Faith
And the first truth is this, that you can only know God by faith. You know God only by faith. After Moses prayed in verse 18, please show me your glory, the Lord told him that he would show him his glory, but only partially, not fully.
And that’s because no person on this side of heaven is able to behold the full revelation of the glory of God and live. And so for his own good, so that Moses would not be destroyed, the Lord told Moses that he could not see his face. In other words, he could not see the fullness of his majesty and glory. He said in verse 20, you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live.
And so in order that Moses may catch something of his glory, a glimpse of his glory, but not perish, the Lord said, you will see my back. And so the Lord said that when he passes by him, he will remove his hand and he will see the back of the Lord, which is to say he will catch a glimpse with his eyes of the incredible splendor and glory of God. Then at the beginning of chapter 34, the Lord tells Moses what he must do before he shows him his glory. He says in verse one, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.
You remember that the first time that Moses was up on Mount Sinai, God gave to him, along with all of the laws that we have considered, God gave to him the two tablets of stone on which God wrote with his own finger, as it were, the Ten Commandments. But when Moses came down the mountain and he saw the Israelites reveling in their idolatry, Moses became angry and he threw the tablets on the ground and they shattered in pieces. And so now, when the Lord tells Moses, bring two tablets up to me, what the Lord is saying is, I will restore that covenant that the people have broken. I will renew the covenant that the people shattered by their idolatry and sin.
So the Lord is saying to Israel through Moses, I will continue to be your God. You will continue to be my people. And so this is a gracious word that God gives to Moses. And then God tells Moses to come up in the morning to Mount Sinai.
He is to come by himself, and he is to make sure that not only are there no other people with him, because they would perish at the sight of God, but he’s also not even to bring any animals with him, and no animals are even to come close to the mountain, because the holiness of God is so great, so overwhelming, that even the sinless creature the animals would be destroyed if they were in the presence of God’s full glory. And yet, despite that, God does allow Moses to come up. God protects him from perishing in his own holiness.
And he does that so Moses can serve as the mediator, the go-between between the people of Israel and the Lord. And so Moses does what the Lord commands. He makes the two new tablets. He gets up early in the morning.
He climbs up to Mount Sinai. And verse 5 says this, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And so God proclaimed his name, the name of the Lord. And this is the name that God had already revealed to Moses at the burning bush.
It’s the name that is translated in our Bibles as Lord, but particularly Lord with all capital letters. And so in your English Bible, sometimes there is Lord, capital L, small o-r-d. That is not the name of God, but when you see capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that is God’s name translated into English. Nobody knows exactly how it is pronounced.
It’s something like Yahweh. In the name of God, Yahweh means I am, I am. That is God’s name. And His name indicates the truth that God derives His existence only from Himself.
He is I Am. He is not dependent upon any other thing or being in order to be God. He is absolutely independent of His creation. He needs nothing outside of Himself or His existence to be made whole.
That is exactly the opposite the case with you and me. We are creatures made by God, and so, therefore, our very existence depends upon God, our very lives depend upon God. In Him, we live and move and have our being, but that is not true of God. He lives, He moves, He has His being in Himself.
And His name reflects that truth. He is the great I am. And after God declared to Moses his divine name, verse six says this, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. You’ll notice that God declared his name two times, the Lord, the Lord.
And this was to emphasize, to magnify the greatness, the splendor, the majesty of his own person. Because his name is a reflection of who God is himself. And that’s really true for all of us. A name is never just a name, but a name stands for the person that you are.
You fill up your name with meaning on the basis of your character, what kind of person you are. I remember many years ago, our family was traveling somewhere in the Midwest. I think it was Wisconsin, if I remember, and we were, it was a road trip. And we were listening to the radio.
We haven’t done that in a while. But at that time, we were listening to the radio and the news was on. And they kept talking about this person who had committed some very bad, terrible crime. I forget if it was murder or bank robbery or something like that.
And they kept talking about this person, how they were looking for him. And his name was Scott Johnson. And so I thought about, for a lot of people at the time in the state of Wisconsin, when they heard the name Scott Johnson, they associated that with all kinds of awful misdeeds, crimes.
What do you suppose people think when they hear your name? Do they think what you would like them to think when they hear your name? There is nothing more precious than a good name. There’s nothing more valuable that we could possibly possess than a good name.
Proverbs 22:1 says a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches and favor is better than silver or gold. We can give thanks to God that no matter how much we might have ruined our own good name by our sins, our misdeeds, that God is good, he is gracious, he can restore the goodness of our names. And as a Christian, your name doesn’t stand for somebody who is without sin, but as a Christian, your name stands for someone who is forgiven, who has been loved by God, who is justified, and even in the sight of God, righteous because of Christ. And so as a believer in Christ, you do have a good name.
And for God, His own name is invested with His inherent holiness, His glory, His greatness. God alone in Himself is righteous and holy, and His name is the expression of all that. His name possesses the true character of God. And so he proclaims his name twice to Moses, and then he goes on to identify several different truths about the person or the character of God that are all bound up in his name, the name the Lord.
And those truths include that he is merciful and gracious, he is slow to anger, and he is abounding in steadfast love. Now, in a minute, we’ll consider each of those descriptions of the character of God in more detail. But for now, what I want you to see is that, for the most part, the way in which the Lord answered Moses’ prayer to behold his glory was that the Lord proclaimed to Moses these truths about his character that really make up the full meaning of his name. Now, the Lord did give to Moses a revelation of his glory that Moses would see with his eyes.
It was a partial revelation. In the passage that we looked at last week, God said that he would hide him in the cleft of the rock and as he passed by that he would remove his hand and Moses would see the back of God. He would catch a glimpse of God’s glory. However, that wasn’t the primary revelation here.
This wasn’t the chief way that God made His glory known to Moses. It was not a visual revelation, for the most part, but a verbal revelation. The Lord proclaimed these truths about Himself to Moses. These truths that He is a God of mercy and grace, patience and love, and righteousness and justice.
All of these truths about God make up His glory. And these are the truths that the Lord declared to Moses. And it was in this way, mostly in this way, that Moses beheld the glory of God. You’ll notice that whatever Moses saw with his eyes, whatever that sight was when he saw the back of God, he does not describe that for us.
He doesn’t tell us what he saw, but he does write down for us what he heard. He heard these wonderful truths about the character of God. And the lesson that we need to take from this today is that God, for us, God does not reveal his glory to us in a visual way. He does not give us a sight of his majesty, his splendor that we behold with our eyes.
He did in part for Moses. But for the most part, even for Moses, he revealed his glory to him by declaring the truth about who he is. And that’s how the Lord makes himself known to us. That’s how we behold his glory today.
And so the way for you to come to know God, the way for you to truly know God in a way that brings salvation is not by having a vision of God. God does not reveal Himself to us in that way. But it is by believing the truth about God, the truth that is revealed about Him in the Scriptures. We have the Bible, the scriptures, which are now the way in which God makes himself known to us.
And in the scriptures, God has given us, in fact, a far greater revelation of his glory than even what Moses saw on Mount Sinai. We can only imagine that what Moses saw when God removed his hand and gave him a glimpse of his back, even a partial revelation of the glory of God would be almost overwhelming because God is infinite. We can imagine that it was indescribable. Perhaps that’s why Moses didn’t even attempt to write down what he saw.
It was glorious. Nevertheless, God has revealed himself in a way that is even more glorious, more wonderful to us in the scriptures. And he has done that by revealing his glory to us in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. And so when we, by faith, believe all that the scriptures tell us about the person of Jesus, the work of Jesus, we are, in fact, beholding the glory of God.
In all that Jesus did to us, He made known to us the truth of God, because in all that He did, He did as God, because He was and is the Word who became flesh. He doesn’t just reflect the glory of God. He doesn’t just point us towards the glory of God, but He Himself was and is the revelation of God’s glory because He is God. And so when we see Jesus dying for sinners, such as you and me, we see there the mercy of God, the love of God.
When we see the patience that Jesus exercised towards others, we see there the patience, the long-suffering of God towards us. When we see how Jesus forgave his enemies, we see the forgiveness that God has for his enemies. And so as you look to Jesus Christ by faith, as you look to him as he is revealed to us in the scriptures, in the face of Jesus, you behold the glory of God. And so if you would know God, if it is your heart’s desire, like it was for Moses, to behold God, to grow in the knowledge of Him, to truly know Him as He is, then believe in Jesus.
Believe that He died for your sins. Believe that He is the incarnation of the everlasting God who came into the world in order to bring salvation to you, a sinner, by his death, by his resurrection. And then you come to know God by faith in Christ. And so, you know God by beholding his glory as that is revealed in his son.
And to know God in this way is to have eternal life. Jesus said, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So our first lesson or truth is that you know God only by faith.
Knowing the Whole Truth About God
The second truth here is this, you can only know God if you know the whole truth about God. So when God declares his name to Moses, he proclaims several truths about him, about his character, his nature. He is merciful and gracious, he is patient, and so on. Theologians call these various truths about God his attributes, his attributes, and the attributes of God are the qualities or characteristics that are true about God.
And you’ll notice that when God revealed His glory to Moses by proclaiming who He is and by declaring truths about Him, the very first truth that He begins with is the truth that God is fundamentally, basically, a God who is gracious. He is a God who is gracious. He says in verse 6, He is merciful and gracious. The mercy and grace of God refer to the truth that God does not deal with us as our sins deserve.
Rather, in his mercy, God forgives us our sins. And in his grace, God does good to us. Although because we are by nature morally corrupt, depraved, and sinful, nevertheless, God is merciful and gracious. He blesses us.
He shows us favor. And He does this not because we are good, but He does it because He is good. He says in verse 6 that He is slow to anger. God is patient.
He is long-suffering. Unlike you and me, when He is provoked, He does not fly off the handle. He does not lose His temper. He doesn’t lose His control.
But He is patient. He is like a patient father with his foolish and childish toddler who doesn’t get angry and yell, but who is kind and gentle and patient with this child. God is that way towards us. God is also abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
The phrase steadfast love, that is a translation of a Hebrew word that refers to the gracious and loving dealings that God has with His people, particularly because they are His people to whom He has bound Himself in covenants. He has promised to be their God. They are His people, and on the basis of that, He shows love and mercy and kindness. That is God’s steadfast love.
That’s how God loves us in His Son, Jesus Christ. Made Himself our God by way of covenant in Christ, and so He loves us on that basis. His faithfulness here can be translated His truth. God is true to His word.
You can depend upon Him. He keeps all of His promises to us. And notice that the Lord doesn’t just say that He is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, but it says that He is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He is a God from whom there are rivers of steadfast love and faithfulness flowing out to his people.
Matthew Henry says it very well. The Puritan commentator, he says, the springs of mercy are always full, the streams of mercy always flowing. There is mercy enough in God, enough for all, enough for each, enough forever. That is how God’s love abounds to us.
In verse seven, the Lord describes how He is faithful to His people from generation to generation. Verse seven, He says, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. The word thousands here refers not to thousands of people, but it refers to thousands of generations. In other words, it describes how God keeps His covenant promises to His children, and to their children, and to their children, and so on.
God is also a God who forgives iniquity and transgression and sin. You’ll notice, that’s what we read in verse 7, you’ll notice that there are three words used here to describe sin: iniquity, transgression, and sin. And the reason why there are three words here to describe sin is to underscore the fact, the truth, that God’s forgiveness covers all kinds of sin and all degrees of sin. And so there is no sin that you have committed, no matter how heinous it is, no matter how terrible it may have been.
There is no sin of which you may be guilty, that God cannot forgive and will not forgive as you come to Him by faith in Christ. He forgives all manner of sin. You cannot out-sin the grace of God. But the Lord goes on in verse seven to describe another aspect of His character that is just as true of Him as His grace and mercy, and that is His righteousness and justice.
He says in verse seven, “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”. Now, we can’t read this to mean that God somehow condemns the children for the sins of their parents. God is just. Each person will be judged according to his own sin.
But what it does mean is that just as parents can hand down God’s promises to future generations by their faith and their faithfulness, so parents can hand down sin and unbelief to future generations by their own sin and unbelief. Again, to be sure, children are guilty of their own sin and unbelief. However, so often it is sin and unbelief that they learn at home from their parents. Now this is not to say that the children of faithful and godly parents will never stray from Christ or reject the faith or walk in a way that is not pleasing to the Lord.
That certainly does happen. We acknowledge that, that that happens. And when it does happen, when the children of faithful parents stray from God, reject the faith, it is a very heartbreaking thing to do. And when it does happen, we don’t blame the parents, we weep with the parents.
We pray with the parents for their children, that God would bring them back. It also needs to be said that none of us are perfect Christian parents. If any of us has a child or children who grow up to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior and to walk by faith in Christ, we cannot even in the smallest way give credit to ourselves or chalk that up to our good parenting. But all the glory goes to God.
This is just another way of saying that salvation is always of the Lord. Salvation is always a gift of God’s pure mercy and grace to the one who receives it. And if God is pleased to give that gift to our children, we bless Him for it, we praise Him for it, we cannot say, it’s because I was such a good parent. However, having said that, we can say that on the basis of this passage and on the basis of other scriptural teaching, in God’s general dealings with people, ordinarily, generally, He brings it about that the faith of the parents or the lack of faith of the parents is often passed down to their children.
And so, at the end of the day, we pray. We pray for God’s grace for our children, that He will fulfill His covenant promises that we may see that fulfillment in our day. But notice how the grace of God here far exceeds His justice. He keeps steadfast love, not to three or four generations, but to thousands, to the thousands generation.
On the other hand, He visits the iniquity of the fathers only to the third and fourth generation. And so if we can put it this way, there is a kind of comparison here in verse 7. And God’s grace, His mercy, far outshines His strict justice. And again, that gets to the truth that God is fundamentally a gracious God.
He delights in showing grace and mercy to sinners. And what’s significant about this list of God’s attributes – of course, everything that is named here is significant – but it’s significant that God declared all of them to Moses. God didn’t just tell Moses that he is gracious and merciful and leave it at that, nor did he just tell Moses that he is righteous and just and leave it at that, but all of these truths together, taken as a whole, constitute the full glory of God, who he is as God. As one author put it, God’s glory was revealed in the totality of his perfections.
And it is absolutely crucial that if we are to know God rightly, if we are to have a right knowledge of God, the God who’s made known to us in the scriptures, we don’t just believe a part of who God is, we believe everything about who God is. We live in a time when many people think of God only in terms of love and mercy and grace. And at the very same time, people do not like, some even hate, the idea of the righteousness of God, the holiness of God. But the problem is, without a true understanding of God’s righteousness, we cannot truly understand God’s grace.
It is only against the backdrop of the truth that God is a holy God, a righteous God, who must deal justly with sin that we can understand the full extent, the full meaning of His mercy, of His grace. He does not deal with us as we deserve, as His righteousness demands. And so He is merciful only because He is also righteous and just. But when we reject some truths about God, we have a distorted understanding of God and we don’t truly know Him.
Mercy without righteousness becomes a kind of easy indulgence. Grace without holiness becomes a kind of blanket tolerance for sin. And so this distorted, false understanding of God sounds like this, you know, God is he’s not all that concerned about righteousness and holiness. You go ahead and live however you want, follow your heart, do what you think is right, what pleases you.
God is always there to accept you. He is always there to to love you and to be good to you and to be gracious to you, no matter how you live your life. Or God is is good. He just wants you to be happy.
He is willing to accept you as you are, without any demand for change or repentance or to live righteously. That’s the kind of distortion we get of God. He becomes kind of a cosmic Mr. Rogers, who’s all acceptance, but no demand for change or for righteousness. The truth is, God is both righteous and merciful.
He is both holy and gracious. Paul says this in Romans 11, verse 22. Note then the kindness and severity of God. God shows incredible kindness, incredible mercy to those who come to him in repentance and faith with true sorrow for their sin.
God is abounding in steadfast love. He loves, He delights in forgiving those who come to Him, seeking that forgiveness. But for those who fail to repent, for those who reject Christ, who will not obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, who will not come to Him in faith, God shows what else is true about Him. He is a God of severity, of righteousness, of justice, and he will by no means clear the guilty.
And so to truly know God, you must know the whole truth about God. And that was revealed to Moses when the Lord passed by and declared his name. But there was another time that the scriptures tell us, an unparalleled time, when the Lord revealed the full extent of his love and mercy and grace and of his righteousness and holiness. And of course, that was at the cross of Jesus Christ.
The cross of Jesus Christ is a revelation of the uncompromising righteousness of God, because we see in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ what sin deserves. This is what your sin deserved. This is what my sin deserved. God cannot tolerate sin.
He cannot abide with sin. He must judge it. He must condemn it. And when you see Jesus, by faith, hanging upon the cross, you see there the revelation of what God must do to sin.
He must destroy the sinner. The curse of death, that Jesus died, is God’s righteous response to sin. But at the very same time, the love, the mercy were revealed so magnificently, gloriously at the cross of Jesus Christ, because Jesus hung there, not because of his own sin, not because he was deserving of the wrath of God, but he hung there in the place of others. He hung there to take the sin and the guilt of others, of you and of me.
And that is the expression of the love of God that he provided a way in his son that we might be forgiven. And if your faith is in Jesus Christ, then you have received that grace. You have come to know the love of God, that the God who has saved you, he is a righteous God, but his justice has been satisfied with Christ. And you are now forgiven, and in his presence, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, accepted, loved, the object of his favor, both now and forevermore.
And you have come to know God in all of his glory, a righteous God, but a God of love.
Knowledge That Leads to Worship
Real briefly, the third truth that this passage teaches us is that you know God only if your knowledge of Him leads to worship. I remember the very first day of seminary, one of the professors was talking to us students. We were all eager to crack open these huge theological tomes and start learning theology and studying Hebrew and Greek and filling our heads with all kinds of knowledge of God. He says, he said to us, there are 14 inches between the heart and the brain.
And whatever we learn about God in the years ahead, in all of our studies, if it only remains in the brain, if that knowledge never travels that 14 inches down to the heart, then what good is it? It does us no good at all. If the knowledge of God is mere information, it is, to us, worthless. It’s not true knowledge of Him.
That certainly wasn’t the case with Moses. All that the Lord revealed to him, it didn’t remain in his brain. He didn’t say to himself, I can’t wait to go down to the mountain and impress all the people of Israel with my amazing knowledge of God. It didn’t remain with him in his head, but it traveled down into his heart, and we know that because he did the only thing that a person can do who is overcome in the presence of God, knowing him, and that is that Moses bowed down and he worshiped.
He worshiped. Verse 8, and Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. This was Moses’s response to the revelation that God had given him of his glory. When he beheld the small glimpse of his glory, when he heard these truths about who God is, all he could do is to bow at the feet of God and praise him.
And God has revealed his name to you as well for that same purpose, so that you will praise him, that you will worship him in the name that God has revealed to you is not just Lord, but the name is Jesus. And he has proclaimed his name to you, not on Mount Sinai, not giving you the two tablets of the law, but he has proclaimed his name to you in the gospel, in his son, Jesus Christ, full of grace, full of truth. And if you have come to know him by faith, you have come to know God for forgiveness, for salvation, for eternal life. But above all, that you might worship him, that you might praise and give glory to him for who he is as your God and your savior.
Let’s pray.