There was a time on the mountain when Moses asked God to show him His glory, to which God replied that He would make His goodness pass before him and proclaim His name to Moses. Revelation of God. God revealing Himself to man.

Now, what might you think that would look/sound/feel like? A mighty rushing wind? Booming thunder and lightning? The "blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet" that Hebrews talks about when it refers to Mount Sinai encounters with God?

Here is God's revelation to Moses: "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 . . . ". (Exodus 34:6-7) This, this is what God wanted Moses to know about Him. Of all things! And certainly in his years with God, Moses had seen this side of God's nature, the compassionate God who brought His people out of Egypt, providing for their every need as well as punishing the unrepentent among them. This is how God chooses to identify Himself to Moses, when Moses desires to know more of Him.

Nancy Guthrie in her devotional, Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament, says this about God's revelation: "So how does the goodness of God forgive as well as punish? In Christ. God does not--in fact he cannot--overlook sin. God will punish every sin in one of two ways--either personally in our own experience in hell, or substitutionally in Christ's experience on the Cross. The goodness of God is not that he ignores sin. The goodness of God is that he doesn't demand our blood to pay for our sin. Instead, he gives his own."

God can be merciful and gracious, forgiving our sins, why? Because, and only because, of Christ.