Welcome to this Wednesday edition of Discovering The Jewish Jesus. I’m your host, Dustin Roberts, and today Rabbi Schneider shares a profound lesson in the Bible from Mount Sinai.
If you’ve ever felt like God is distant, or perhaps even unapproachable, today’s message, it’s for you. And you know, many of us have grown up picturing God as stern, maybe even harsh, but I want you to see him through a different lens, one that is breathtakingly compassionate and full of grace. Now this isn’t an Old Testament versus New Testament thing, because today we’re gonna go all the way back to Moses for our lesson.
So let’s get started. Here’s Rabbi.
Yahweh is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many times we don’t even think about the Father. Many times people, they just worship Jesus.
Remember, Jesus said, he was the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes, he said, to the Father, but through him. The Father is the one that sent Jesus to die for you. Jesus did everything to fulfill the Father’s purpose for his life.
At the end of Yeshua’s life in John 17, he said, Father, I’ve completed the work that you gave me to do. So for Yeshua, it was all about the Father. And many Christians don’t understand that our focus needs to be on the Father rather than just putting all our emphasis on Jesus.
And this is in no way bringing down the Lordship of Yeshua, but it’s simply exalting the Father to his rightful place because from the Father, from him and through him and to him are all things. And the Father of the Bible, your Father in Yeshua has a name and his name is Yud Hei Vav Hei Yahweh. Now in an earlier broadcast in this series, I talked about some of the things that grieve Yahweh, that hurt Him, and made a point to help us understand that the way we walk and the way we conduct ourselves and the way we relate to Him can hurt Him or bring Him joy.
And we need to understand that God is sensitive and He’s gentle. And so we focused on things that we need to be aware of in our own lives that can hurt or grieve Him. Today, what we’re going to be focusing on, who He has revealed Himself to be in terms of His primary attributes.
And we’re going to go to the Book of Shemot, or Exodus chapter 34, which is what I believe to be the most profound revelation in the Hebrew Bible, or in the Old Testament that we call in Hebrew the Tanakh, of who God the Father is. So before we begin, let’s just pray. Father, we pray that You give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know You.
In Yeshua’s name. Amen and amen. Now, as we approach Exodus 34, what had been going on is that Moses had been talking to Yahweh.
He had been talking to Father God. And he said to him, Show me Your glory. And the Lord said to Moshe, Listen, no man can see my face and live, but go into the cleft of the rock, call upon my name.
And he said, Moses, I’ll pass before you, and you won’t see my face, you’ll see my back. But as you call upon my name, I will proclaim my name to you. And the Lord was saying to Moses, when I proclaim my name to you, I’m going to fill you with an understanding so that you will know who I am.
And so let’s go right now into God’s Word. Hear the Word of God. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of the Lord abides forever.
Then the Lord, Yahweh. Again, every time you see capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, in the Old Testament, that’s actually Yud-Heh-Vah-Veh. That’s Yahweh.
Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh God, Yahweh L. And now he declares and reveals to Moses who he is. Moses is calling upon him, and God comes and meets him.
Moses sees God’s back. And as Moses sees the Lord passing in front of him, the Lord speaks into Moses both his name and the revelation of who he is. In other words, Moses didn’t just hear the syllables.
He didn’t just hear with his ears, Yahweh. When Moses heard the Father breathe into him his name, Moses’ heart was filled with light and revelation so that he knew who Yahweh is, not only in name, but in the fullness of substance of who this person is and was. And so let’s continue on.
The Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh God. And then we begin to see the revelation of who the Father of the Lord, Jesus Christ is and who our Father is. The first thing that we see here is that Yahweh says, I am, get it, compassionate.
So when the Lord reveals himself to Moses, when our Father reveals himself to Moses, the first thing the Father reveals about himself, get this church, is that he is compassionate. Wow, heal us, Father. A lot of times when we think of God, we don’t first of all think of him as compassionate.
We think of him as judge. But that’s not who he is, because he desires to show compassion. In fact, the Hebrew word here, the original Hebrew in the actual text, when the Lord says, I am Yahweh God, and then he says, compassionate.
The Hebrew word there in the actual scripture is rahum. It’s translated compassionate in our English Bible, but the actual Hebrew translates directly into womb. So when the Lord says, I’m compassionate, the root of that is a mother’s womb.
So when the Lord looks upon us, He feels about us the way a mom does towards the infant child that’s in her womb with unconditional, devoted, tender, motherly love. So think about this. God is a safe place for you and me.
Our father is safe. Jesus, who said, If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father, demonstrated this. The Apostle John felt so safe with Yeshua that we read at the Passover before Yeshua went to the cross, John leaned his head on Jesus’ bosom, just resting there.
How safe did John feel to do that? He knew Yeshua’s goodness and kindness and the purpose and intention of compassion towards Him. And it’s also interesting to note that when you think about this Hebrew word, rachum, being directly translated in English as womb, you think about the fact that that is actually a feminine word.
Rachum, compassion, is a feminine word. So we think of God as male, and the scriptures refer to Him as He and Him and we should. But God is not just male, He’s also female.
Some might think, well, what do you mean God’s also female? He is. God is both male and female.
The scripture says God created mankind in His own image, male and female. He created He them. God has both male and female attributes within Himself.
And so the first thing that the Lord does in describing Himself is use a female adjective when He says, Rahum. Think about this. When a child, they’re running outside, and all of a sudden they fall, and they scrape their knee, and their knee’s all bloody, and their mom and dad are standing 150 yards away on the front lawn in front of the home.
Who does that little boy or little girl run to on the front lawn? Their mother or their father? Well, 90 plus percent of the time, they’re gonna run to their mother because they feel so safe in their mother’s arms.
And God wants us to know that this is the way that we can feel about him. Loved and safe, nurtured, protected. God reaches out to Moses and says, Moses, this is who I am.
And the same one that reached out to Moses as Rahum, compassionate, my friend, my beloved friend. He is that to you as well. You can feel safe with your father.
He is so warm and tender. And then we think about Yeshua saying even to Jerusalem, how often I wanted to gather you together as a hen, as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings. You can relate to God, beloved ones, not just as a male authority figure, but you can relate to the Lord Yahweh as your friend who nurtures you even as a mother.
He wants us to feel that tenderness and to trust him and to open our hearts to trust him.
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And then the Lord continues on here and he says he’s gracious. So the Lord says here, I am Yahweh. I am Yahweh God.
Compassionate, which we just looked at, and gracious. Now, the Hebrew word for gracious is chanun, and it means favor, that God’s compassionate and his favor is upon us. And the concept in the original Hebrew here is that even though we don’t deserve anything, even though we haven’t earned anything, even though we don’t have rights to demand, to be blessed or to say to him, you owe me this, he still stoops down and says to us, I love you and my favor, my goodness, my goodwill, my good intention is upon your life.
We have no claim to that. It’s just who he is and who he chooses to be to us. It’s as if he’s stooping down to meet us where we’re at.
Even though we feel ashamed in the natural, God’s saying, no, I love you. I created you. I’m compassionate towards you and I favor you.
I love you. This is why the Lord sent Jesus to die for us. Get this, why we were yet sinners?
because his favor was towards you and I, when we were even dead in our trespasses and sins. Our Creator will never leave us or forsake us. He’s opened his heart towards us to save us in our misery and in our darkness.
That’s how good he is. And then the Lord continues on, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger. And some of you grew up in churches like, the main thing you learned about God was if you sin, man, he’s going to get you at the baseball bat.
And that’s kind of your concept. If who God’s been and your heart hasn’t opened up and you haven’t emotionally blossomed before him, you haven’t learned that you can talk to him about everything and that you can let him into your life and that he’s going to help you. Even when you’re sinning, if you call out to him in truth and in true repentance, he’s there for you.
Jesus didn’t come into the world to judge the worlds. But to save the world, right? He’s not the accuser.
The devil’s the accuser. The only way we can become accused is if we reject Jesus. If we reject Jesus, there’s an accusation on our life.
But once we come into relationship with God through Jesus, the Bible says there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. So the Lord here reveals himself as one. Listen now, that’s slow to anger.
And the Hebrew word here for anger is apayim. And apayim is plural, so it’s actually slow to angers. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, and His disposition is slow to angers, plural towards us.
What does that mean? He could get mad so many times with our lifestyle, with what we do, with what we say, but He is patient and long-suffering towards us continually. That’s why Jesus said, if your brother sins, forgive him 70 times seven, because that’s who God is.
Slow to anger, slow to angers. He’s not out to get us. I just feel like the Lord wants to open even my heart more to this.
So Father, we ask you to break in right now. Lord, we love your word. We love your truth.
We say yes, yes, and yes. But Father, would you help us to truly understand and comprehend this revelation that you’re giving us right now, that it would truly reach our center and transform us, that we would open up fully in your love. Amen and amen and amen and amen.
He’s slow to anger, patient and long suffering towards us. And then we continue on and the Lord describes Himself as being abounding and that Hebrew word for abounding carries with the idea of unlimited, unlimited. Abounding is more than enough.
It never stops. Remember, Yeshua said He came to give life and to give it more abundantly. So the Hebrew here in the text in Exodus 34 for abounding carries with the idea of being unlimited in His loving kindness towards us.
I mean, there’s no limit on God. I mean, God is, wow, I can’t describe, you know, the fact that from Him is continually coming more and more and more and more and more and more and more and it never ends. He’s abounding in loving kindness and truth.
And we think of this word loving kindness. It’s interesting that in Scripture, loving kindness and truth are often linked together. So for example, in Psalm 85 10, we read loving kindness and truth have met.
And one translation reads loving kindness and truth kissed each other. And so God is abounding in loving kindness towards us and truth and met. When we say amen, it comes from that word truth and met.
And it has to do with faith as well. Truth. God is abounding in loving kindness and truth towards us.
And truth is so important as God’s people to walk in fellowship with the Father. We need to be people of truth. And that’s why we should be examining ourselves in the Holy Spirit all the time.
The scripture teaches us to examine our own heart. Jesus became flesh and the scripture says when he became flesh, he was abounding towards us in loving kindness and in truth. But then the text continues on after teaching us even more deeply that Yahweh is forgiving, which we’ve kind of already said these things, that Yahweh is forgiving towards us.
He forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, the text says. The Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness to thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty go unpunished.
So we have all these manifestations of goodness towards us of who Yahweh is. But then we come to the end of the text here. And the Lord says after describing how gracious and compassionate and loving and forgiving He is towards us, then Yahweh says, But He will by no means leave the guilty go unpunished.
When do you become guilty finally? When you reject Yeshua. Jesus said, If you wouldn’t have understood who I am, the guilt upon your life would not be nearly as great now that you’ve heard the truth and yet have rejected it.
You see, when people reject God, there’s nothing left for God to do, but to judge them for their sin. He said, He will by no means leave the guilty go unpunished. You see, Yeshua, my friends, He is the perfect balance between the mercy of God and the justice of God.
In the mercy of God, He reflects the compassion, the loving kindness, and all of God’s goodness and desire to forgive towards us. But God also demands that sin must be punished. He demands justice.
He’s a God of mercy and a God of justice. And so how is God able to show his loving kindness to us and yet still be just when we sinned against him? He’s able to do that, beloved, because Jesus legally paid the price for our sin when he died on the cross for us.
And for people that have revelation and reject Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for their sin, there’s nothing left for Yahweh to do but to judge them, for he will by no means leave the guilty go unpunished. If you’ve never repented, today is the day you must give yourself fully to your Creator. The scriptures teach us that no good thing does he withhold from those that love him.
Jesus said seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will be added unto us. As we come to the close of the broadcast today, I want us to ask ourselves, are we adequately loving God with our wealth? I know that many of us have heard messages on this before and as soon as we hear a discussion about finances, we’re kind of jaded, it turns us off, but the reality is, the scriptures are clear that God’s people are called to honor him with the first fruits of their wealth.
I just want to ask you today, beloved one, if God is blessing you through this ministry, would you honor him with your wealth through this ministry? The scripture tells us when we honor him with our lives, it comes back to us, press down good measure running over into our lives. Let’s trust him, let’s honor him and let’s love him.
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We’ll also send you Rabbi’s audio message of the month, and it’s available as a digital download as well. As we enter into the fall Holy Day season, I want to invite you to explore the deep spiritual significance of the Holy Days. The Feast of Trumpets kicks things off in a couple of weeks at sunset on October 2nd.
And this two-day feast, it lasts until nightfall on October the 4th. And it provides a powerful lesson of God’s goodness to believers today. And it reminds us that not only is it a new year, but Jesus is returning soon.
Our website, it offers a wealth of Messianic resources on the Holy Days, like Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets. And you can learn more about them online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. You can even give a Fall Holy Day offering if you would like.
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Thanks so much for supporting this ministry and for praying for us. That’s all the time we have for today. But before we wrap up, I want to turn things back over to Rabbi, as usual.
He’s here to send us off with God’s sacred and special blessing. Rabbi.
In the Book of Numbers, Chapter 6, the Lord gave instructions to Moses and Aaron to speak this blessing over his people. And the Lord said, When you speak these words over my people, I will place my name on them and bless them. Receive the impartations of the Lord’s blessings.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with his countenance, and the Lord give you, beloved one, his peace.
God bless you, and shalom.
Discovering The Jewish Jesus is a production of Shalom Ministries, and I’m your host, Dustin Roberts. Join us tomorrow when Rabbi Schneider explains how to respond with our talents and our gifts. That’s Thursday on Discovering The Jewish Jesus.
