PASTOR DEAN P THOMPSON'S WORD OF HOPE PODCAST MINISTRY
This Podcast is for daily devotions, spiritual enlightenment and inspiration, to encourage the child of God unto faithfulness and transformation.In these times of distress, desperation and fearfulness, it is my utmost desire to share words of hope and consolation to the hurting, the depressed, and to those who are feeling hopeless and lost.
PASTOR DEAN P THOMPSON'S WORD OF HOPE PODCAST MINISTRY
THE GOD WHO STAYS
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Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with a word of hope. Encounters with grace, the God who stays. The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth. Exodus chapter thirty four verse six. At the very foot of Sinai, while Moses is on the mountain receiving the covenant, the people melt their gold their gold into a calf, and now throw a festival to it. The bull was a common symbol of divine power throughout the ancient Near East. The Canaanite storm god and the Egyptian apis bull both took bovine form. So Israel is not so much inventing a new god as smuggling in the idolatry of the surrounding nations. It is spiritual adultery on the honeymoon, betrayal at the moment of the wedding vows, and it is fully it fully justifies God's righteous anger. The scandal is not that God is angry, but that he stays. When God passes before Moses and proclaims his name, the fullest self revelation of his character in the Old Testament, the first words out of the divine mouth are not holy, holy, holy, but merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness. This proclamation echoed again and again through the rest of the Old Testament. It becomes Israel's creed of grace. The word long suffering is literally long of nostrils, slow to flare in anger. God defines himself in the aftermath of betrayal, primarily by mercy. When we fail badly, not through weakness, but through outright betrayal, we prace for God to leave. The golden calf tells us otherwise. The God of Sinai reveals himself precisely at the moment his people least deserve it, and he leads with mercy, grace, and patience. This is the God you are dealing with, not one who is looking for a reason to abandon you, but one who is abundant in goodness and truth, slow to anger, quick to forgive. He is the God who stays. O merciful and gracious God, you who are slow to anger and abundant in love. We have betrayed you even at the foot of your mountain. But thank you for staying. Please continue to reveal your goodness to us again and again. Amen. God bless you, brothers and sisters.