Against Cheap Grace | Exodus 34:10-28
Cheap Grace
“Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church.”
So begins The Cost of Discipleship by 20th century German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer famously contrasts “cheap grace” with “costly grace.” According to cheap grace,
“Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways. … Thus, the Christian should live the same way the world does. … Cheap grace is that grace which we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
Cheap grace is the threat Moses warned about in Deuteronomy 29, when he said, “Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart’” (Deut 29:18–19, emphasis added).
That’s the essence of cheap grace: “that grace which we bestow on ourselves.” It rips the revelation of God’s glory in Exodus 34:6–7 out of context and says, “Since God is merciful and gracious and forgiving, therefore, I can do as I please. There is no need to trust and obey God. In fact, to obey God would detract from grace!”
I believe Bonhoeffer was right. Cheap grace is a mortal enemy of the church. But Exodus 34:10–28 guards us against the trap of cheap grace by calling those who have been forgiven by God to live faithfully in covenant with God.
Exodus 34:10–28
And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. 11 “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. 13 You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. 17 “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal. 18 “You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib, for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt. 19 All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. 20 The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before me empty-handed. 21 “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. 22 You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. 23 Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year. 25 “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until the morning. 26 The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” 27 And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.
What happens after God forgives idolaters and sinners? How does God relate to those whom he forgives? How does God expect forgiven people to live? Does God require anything of them? Or does receiving God’s grace exempt you from obedience to God?
According to Exodus 34, God mercifully maintains his covenant relationship with his forgiven people. When God forgives your sin, he restores you into fellowship with himself. That means God keeps his promises to you, while calling you to put off sin and to put on godliness.
That’s my outline. When God forgives your sin, 1) he keeps covenant with you, 2) calls you to put off sin, and 3) calls you to put on godliness.
God keeps covenant with you (vv. 10–11, 27–28).
The astonishing assurance of Exodus 34:10–28 is that God is willing to keep his promises to those who have been unfaithful. That guarantee bookends this passage. Verse 10 begins with it: “And he said, ‘Behold, I am making a covenant.’” And the passage ends in vv. 27–28: “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.’ So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.”
Not only did God say he was making a covenant again, but he replaced the broken stone tablets with two new tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments (v. 28).
This is finally the resolution to the Golden Calf debacle that started all the way back in Exodus 32. While Moses was on top of Mount Sinai receiving instructions from God to build God’s dwelling place in the midst of the people, the people were at the foot of the mountain, breaking God’s covenant and worshiping a golden calf. Immediately, God revealed to Moses that such sin justly deserved destruction. And the rest of Exodus 32, 33, into 34 contains Moses’ intercession, where Moses pleaded with God for mercy and implored God for his presence.
And here we have God’s answer: “Behold, I am making a covenant” (v. 10). Wrapped up in those few words is the gracious answer to all of Moses’ prayers. A covenant is a solemn bond between God and his people, in which both parties give themselves to each other, not with empty promises, but with a solemn oath of loyalty that comes with blessings for faithfulness and curses for unfaithfulness. To be in covenant with God is to have the assurance of God’s forgiveness, the promise of God’s presence, and the guarantee of God’s favor and provision. God first made a covenant with Israel after freeing them from slavery in Egypt. Now, after they immediately broke that covenant by worshiping a golden calf—like a bride committing adultery on her honeymoon—God forgave his people and renewed his covenant with them.
In v. 10, God renewed his promise to work on behalf of his people: “Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you” (Exodus 34:10).
Notice who is doing all the work:
“I am making a covenant” (v. 10)
“I will do marvels” (v. 10)
“All the people … shall see the work of the LORD” (v. 10)
“It is an awesome thing that I will do with you” (v. 10)
The foundation of God’s covenant is God’s commitment to work for his people. God is the one who will work wonders, perform marvels, and do awesome things. That’s God’s side of the covenant.
But to be in covenant with God comes with covenant obligations, which God restores and reiterates to his forgiven people. Look at v. 11: “Observe what I command you this day.” Then vv. 11–26 repeat various commands found early in Exodus 20–23.
In spite of their unfaithfulness, God chooses to mercifully maintain his covenant. In a marriage, sexual immorality violates the marriage covenant. But when the offended spouse chooses to forgive, that covenant is preserved. Forgiveness does not change the terms of the marriage covenant so that now adultery is permissible. Forgiveness is one party choosing not to enforce the consequences of covenant unfaithfulness so that fellowship can be restored and the covenant maintained.
Here’s the crucial point: when the gracious and merciful God of Exodus 34:6–7 forgives, the result is the restoration of the covenant relationship (with all of its blessings and responsibilities), not the removal of the covenant.
This is critical to understand. So many people think of God’s forgiveness as God excusing sin rather than restoring the sinner into right relationship with God. They think of grace as the removal of any and all obligation to trust and obey God. But God does not deal with disobedience by permitting disobedience. God deals with disobedience by “forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin” (Ex 34:7), so that the forgiven sinner can remain in covenant with God.
So what does God require of forgiven sinners? The specific commands in this covenant renewal can be framed in the familiar two-part paradigm found throughout Scripture: put off and put on. God keeps his promises, and God calls his people to put off sin and to put on righteousness.
God calls you to put off sin (vv. 11–17).
God calls his forgiven people to put off idolatry, the very sin they just committed. In v. 12 he says, “Take care”—that word means be on guard, to watch out, to beware—“Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go.”
If Israel was alone in a desert when their hearts craved an idol and their hands carved it, how will they fare when they arrive in Canaan, a land full of idol worshipers and their idols and altars and images and sacred pillars? Bringing Israel into Canaan was like taking a toddler into a toy store or an alcoholic to a liquor store. What could possibly go wrong?
And so God’s first prescription was to demolish everything. “You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim” (Exodus 34:13). Altars and pillars and Asherim all refer to fixtures of idol-worship. An asherah pole was a sacred post or tree that represented Asherah, the Canaanite goddess of fertility. These idolatrous artifacts would be “a snare” (v. 12), a temptation and a trap. Either Israel would be tempted to worship foreign gods, or else tempted to use those altars and pillars to worship Yahweh.
So not only does God repeat the first and second commandments—“You shall worship no other god” (v. 14), and, “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal” (v. 17)—but he applies them practically. “You shall tear down their altars … for you shall worship no other god” (v. 13). Tearing down idols is a practical application of the first commandment.
And God repeats this motivation (from the second commandment): “For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (v. 14). This is a strong protection against cheap grace. In vv. 6–7, the LORD passed before Moses and proclaimed his name: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious.” In verse 14, God reminds Moses that Jealous is another name for God. Like a husband who is appropriately jealous for his wife’s exclusive affection, God is passionately devoted to protecting the exclusive devotion of his people. God graciously forgives repentant sinners who forsake their sin and turn to him, but he does not tolerate unrepentant idolatry.
Besides tearing down altars and chopping down Asherim, God warns his people not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of Canaan (v. 12). And the logic comes in vv. 15 and 16:
“Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.”
—Exodus 34:15–16
Notice how God warns against an incremental descent into full blown idolatry. First, there is tolerance for idolatry in the form of peace treaties. Then there is an invitation to participate and to share a meal. Then comes intermarriage. Verse 16 warns that tolerance of idolatry in one generation will lead to full blown idolatry in the next.
Likewise, falling into temptation never “just happens” out of the blue. It’s like the game of chess. There are many moves that happen before checkmate is delivered.
Did you know that the new covenant in Christ contains similar commands to put off sin?
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Col 3:5).
“And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24).
“Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22).
“Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry” (1 Corinthians 10:14).
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14).
And here’s Paul—in the New Testament—citing and applying Old Testament passages from Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah to new covenant believers:
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.’ Since we [new covenant Christians] have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” (2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1).
When God forgives, he graciously instructs his people to put off every defilement and temptation to sin. Are there temptations to worldliness and idolatry that you are tolerating in your life? Are there social accounts you follow, podcasts you listen to, company you keep, shows in your Netflix cue that lure your heart away from the Lord Jesus? Are there patterns of sin you are excusing while assuring yourself “God forgives”?
Let God’s gracious forgiveness motivate you to put off such things.
God calls you to put on godliness (vv. 18–26).
Whenever you put something off, you have to put something else on. Anyone with an ax can chop down an Asherah pole. But whom will you worship instead?
In vv. 18–26, God calls his people to put on practices that nurture their faith in God, what we call means of grace. Some of the details here sound strange to our modern ears. You’ve got prohibitions against leaven in verses 18 and 25. Verse 20 details with how to redeem a firstborn donkey—or break its neck. And my favorite, “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (26).
Think of these commands as training God’s people to trust God. It’s like how the military teaches obedience. They require soldiers to fold their shirts and make their beds in precise ways. Why does the military care so much about t-shirts and bedsheets? They don't. They care about soldiers who can follow orders without attitude. When the chaos of war breaks out, there’s no time to deal with soldiers who are going to question everything and do things their own way. Likewise, God was teaching his people to trust him completely in the everyday stuff of life.
Feast
Exodus 34 God gives instructions for three annual feasts Israel was to observe. These were regular corporate worship gatherings that tangibly reminded God’s people of God’s faithfulness and celebrated God’s “provision and protection.” The Feast of Unleavened Bread celebrated their exodus from Egypt (v. 18). The Feast of Weeks (also called Pentecost) would celebrate the beginning of the grain harvest every year, commemorating Israel’s initial entrance into the Promised Land and God’s abundant provision there (Lev 23:10). And the Feast of Ingathering came at the end of the year, after the harvest was done.
In the new covenant, we no longer observe these unique Hebrew holidays, not because they are irrelevant, but because they have been fulfilled and transformed in Jesus. Paul told the Corinthians, “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Corinthians 5:7–8).
Unleavened bread was never really about the leaven; it was about putting off malice and evil and putting on sincerity and truth. Obedience looks different for us, but we’re still called to trust and obey. On the day of Pentecost, Jesus poured out the Holy Spirit on his church, marking the beginning of the ultimate harvest, as God saves people from every tribe and tongue. And when Jesus, who is the firstfruits from the dead, finally returns, he will fulfill the Feast of Ingathering, and gather all his own to himself.
And like Old Testament Israel, the new covenant church gathers regularly for corporate worship in order to nourish and express our love for God.
Rest
God also prescribes rest for his people: “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest” (v. 21). This repeats the fourth commandment. To be clear, Sabbath rest is not a meritorious service rendered to God. It has always been about trusting God—trusting that every good we have or hope to have comes from God alone and not from our own striving. The command to rest poses a question that invites faith: Do you trust God to provide all you need enough to rest from your labors?
And Exodus 34 adds this clarifying detail: “In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.” According to human calculations, there are times when we think we can afford to rest and times when we think we can’t. God says that even when you think you can’t rest from your work—e.g., plowing time and harvest—you must trust him enough to rest. Putting on the habit of a weekly day of rest and worship is God’s prescription for nourishing dependence on the LORD and guarding against self-reliance.
Give
Finally, God prescribes generous giving. In v. 19, he says, “All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. … And none shall appear before me empty-handed” (vv. 19–20b). And in v. 26, “The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God.”
God called Israel to give him their first and their best as protection from pride and idolatry. Note the connection between wealth and idolatry in Deuteronomy 8:
“Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, … lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God …. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the LORD your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.”
—Deuteronomy 8:11–14, 17–19
Did you catch the progression? Faithfulness leads to prosperity, prosperity to self-reliance, self-reliance to amnesia and idolatry, and idolatry to death.
So what is the remedy? Generosity! Give to the Lord your first and your best. This keeps your heart free from the love of money. And it reminds you constantly that all you have belongs to the Lord.
Do you see God’s prescribed means of grace—corporate worship, rest, giving, Bible reading, and prayer—as duties you begrudgingly perform for God, or as kind and wise prescriptions from God that will protect your heart from idolatry and strengthen your faith?
Conclusion
This is how God relates to his forgiven people. He mercifully maintains his covenant relationship with you.
And you have access to something better than a renewed covenant at Mount Sinai. You have the new covenant, enacted on better promises by a better mediator and guaranteed by the blood of Jesus.
Titus 2:11–14 says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
Have you received this costly grace from God—grace that cost the Son of God his life, grace that saves you and also trains you in godliness? Or have you only ever received the cheap grace you bestow on yourself? If you are living in worldliness and sin and unbelief and idolatry, do not lie to yourself that God doesn’t care.
Magnify the riches of God’s mercy by trusting in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.