11/10/2023 – God is Willing to Give You Another Chance
Deuteronomy 10: At that time the Lord said to me, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones and come up to me on the mountain. Also make a wooden ark. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Then you are to put them in the ark.”
3 So I made the ark out of acacia wood and chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. 4 The Lord wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the Ten Commandments he had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the Lord gave them to me. 5 Then I came back down the mountain and put the tablets in the ark I had made, as the Lord commanded me, and they are there now.
Grace is the attribute of God by which He blesses to the uttermost those who do not deserve it. Grace is the reason that every sinner is saved and sustained.
Even after we sin, trampling underfoot the very grace of God, instead of judging us and condemning us, as He would have every right to do, He extends His mercy to us time after time. He does not only forgive our sin…He forgives our iniquity and transgression! He gives us countless opportunities after we have failed.
Peter once asked: how many times should I forgive? Jesus replied: not seven…but seventy times seven!
God wrote His law for the people of Israel on stone tablets. The stone tablets represent our hearts, hardened by sin. These first tablets were destroyed by Moses before he had a chance to present them to the people.
Exodus 32:17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18 And Moses said, “It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome; but the noise of them that sing do I hear.” 19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them beneath the mount.
But Moses interceded for the people, and God answered his prayer. God decided to provide a second set of tablets. He decided to write it again. It is never easy for us to do something again, to try again, to give someone a second chance. But God, knowing that His people would continue to sin, decided to give them a second chance.
The second set, hidden in the ark. The placement of the tablets in the Ark represents the fulfillment of the law by our Lord Jesus Christ.