Truth #18 – God Is Gracious

What Moses learned on top of Mount Sinai about our prayers and God’s gracious heart

Suppose you were not a tech-oriented person, and you needed help with your computer. Let’s say it has recently become extremely slow, and you have no idea why.

And suppose you have two tech-savvy friends. Peter has a computer science degree. He is a generous person who gives time to hanging out with others, thoughtful gifts at birthdays and holidays, and even money when people in his circles go through hard times.

Naomi, on the other hand, tends to be stingy with her time, wealth, and expertise. She too has a computer science degree and a good job with a tech company, but even with family and friends she gets annoyed when others ask her for free advice concerning technology.

Since you have a sluggish computer and lots of bills at the moment, the thought of calling the manufacturer and paying for support is your last option. Which friend will you call first? Peter or Naomi?

Hmmm. That is not a hard question, is it. You call the person who is happy to hear from you and wants to help, not the person who resents your question.

This situation illustrates why our faith gets stronger when we understand and deep-down believe that God is gracious.

Moses’s bold request

Scripture indeed teaches that God is gracious. In fact it is one of the first things God would tell you about himself if you met him for the first time and asked him to describe himself. I say that because of one important conversation Moses had with the Lord.

It happened on Mount Sinai shortly after God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. God had already revealed more about himself to Moses than any person who had ever lived, but because God is the most interesting, loving, and wonderful person in the universe Moses wanted more.

So he came right out and asked for it. “Show me your glory,” Moses said.

God replied, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’” (Exodus 33:18–19, ESV)

What happened next is extremely important for those who want to be established in faith by being a person who accurately knows God. That is because God himself tells Moses precisely who he is and what he is like. In other words, this is not a public opinion survey about God’s nature. This is not you asking a good friend what she thinks God is like. This is not a pontificating pundit on a talk show. Rather this is God himself saying, This is who I am. Therefore this is what God wants us to know and rely on.

God’s self-description

Then, “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….’” (Exodus 34:5–6)

God’s self-description goes on for several more lines, but I want to stop and call your attention to the second quality he names. He says he is “gracious.”

To be gracious is to be like Peter, the tech-savvy friend in the opening illustration. To be gracious is to be generous with time, money, and affection. It is to be favorably disposed toward others. To be gracious is to welcome and invite others into your presence. A gracious person enjoys helping others and therefore is not annoyed when others entreat his assistance. He is warm and hospitable.

When God does not seem gracious

To think this way about God may be difficult because most of the Bible narrates his dealings with humans who are acting badly. When people sin, God, being perfectly good and just and righteous, responds in opposition and judgment. He abhors evil with a fury that no human except Jesus can fully comprehend. As a result, much of the Old Testament especially narrates God’s acting and speaking in ways that can make a reader think he is not gracious. But by no means is that always the case in the Old Testament, for it is filled with glorious displays of his gracious heart.

Likewise in the New Testament, where his gracious ways are easily seen in Jesus. Jesus said that he is just like the Father. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus told his disciples. Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” So if you think Jesus is gracious, then you can be sure that the Father is equally gracious.

When God finally recreates the heavens and the earth and removes all evil from humanity, then we will truly see how gracious God is, for there will be nothing to provoke him to wrath.

The gracious redeemer

But even now, even in this age of so much evil, God makes known his gracious heart, for “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

It was the gracious heart of God that caused him to send his beloved Son to earth and become a man that he could die for our sins. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7).

To Moses God said he was gracious; to the world God showed he was gracious through the redemption that is in his beloved Son.

Our prayers and God’s gracious heart

What all this means to us who want to be established in faith is twofold.

1. Because God is gracious, he welcomes us into his presence to pray about every care and concern

He does not resent our entreaties; rather, he invites them.

1 Peter 5:6–7 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

Psalm 55:22 says, “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.”

2. Because God is gracious, his default disposition is to answer our prayers of faith

Jesus said, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).

Hebrews 13:6 says, “We can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper….’”

Takeaway: Our faith, our prayers and God’s gracious heart

When you understand the generous favor of God’s gracious heart, you will pray with much greater faith.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)