The Proclamation of Jehovah

And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Exodus 34:5‭-‬6 KJV

There’s an ancient practice that is being accepted in modern times. Its the proclamation of sovereign statutes. Recently, King Charles took over from Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory. A proclamation was issued that was read before the gathering crowd. You would have thought that with the arrival of modern technology, they would simply have announced that over the media. The entire world would have heated that in seconds. They chose to make it the old way of proclamation. In this passage, God issues a proclamation of His person, His forgiveness, His mercy, His boundaries and what He intends to do with the perpetually unrepentant. This was the answer to Moses’ continued intercession. God needed to settle this before the next thing. John Piper has made a beautiful exegesis on these verses in desiringgod. Its worth a whole reading. God has just spelt out the meaning of His name in this proclamation. Piper outs it this way: ”There is a connection between his absolute existence and his sovereign freedom and his omnipotence and overflowing mercy”. Then we are confronted with those God forgives and those He does not. God does not forgive unrepentant hearts. Two other writers in the old testament quote this passage to emphasis this: Joel( Joel 2:12-13 ) and Jonah ( Jonah 4:12 ). In the new testament, 1 John 1:8 says the same thing on Gods mercies. Don’t miss this mercy in Gods proclamations today. A proclamation is the Kings order.