Glimpses of Glory: A 7-Day DevotionalНамуна

Grace > Grievance

Hesed. A Hebrew word that in English translates to steadfast love, lovingkindness, mercy, and grace. When one has the right to expect nothing and yet receives everything. Hesed.

As God passed before Moses, He declared who He is: “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in hesed and faithfulness.” He identified Himself as a God who delights in gifting people that which they have no right to expect from Him. We deserve wrath and punishment and eternal torment, yet He reveals Himself as a God of grace, mercy, long-suffering, and faithfulness. Hesed.

At the same time, God has a standard. He makes it clear that He loves both graciousness and justice, existing as a God who visits “the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children.” He is gracious and righteous; He delights to give to His people, yet He delights in goodness.

In Moses’ response, we see the key to drawing as near to God as His graciousness and holiness allow. God reveals Himself as a God of hesed and justice, and Moses appeals to both: “Please let the Lord go in the midst of us … and pardon our iniquity and our sin.” He acknowledges God’s justice in admitting that the people have sinned and do not deserve His company; yet he acknowledges God’s grace—God’s hesed—by asking God to look over their grievance, to pardon them, and to join them.

This leads us to another principle: We must understand God’s character and respond appropriately.

As much as we would love to liken ourselves to Moses atop the mountain, in reality, we have a lot more in common with the Israelites down at the bottom. Each of us has “golden calves” of our own, and day by day we chase after promised lands of our own when God called us to serve Him in the wilderness. This tells us two things: (1) We stand condemned by God’s justice and as a result (2) we utterly depend on His hesed in seeking deliverance. If we desire to draw near to God, then, we need to keep these two key characteristics of His in our minds at all times. We must strive to live rightly for Him, but we must not allow ourselves to mistakenly think that our righteous living actually makes us good. Au contraire, we exist as bad people deeply indebted to a good, just, gracious God. Because of His hesed we know we can approach Him, but because of His justice, we know we must approach Him carefully. If we desire to draw near to God, we must make these two realities central to our thinking.