Most of us have a fuse. You know how short yours is. The traffic gets bad on the way home, the kid spills the milk for the second time at supper, the coworker says the thing that always sets you off, and you can feel it. The heat moves up your neck. You bite the inside of your cheek. Maybe you hold it in. Maybe you don't.

Now imagine being God. Imagine knowing every sin ever committed. Every cruel word, every act of violence, every silent grudge, every lying tongue. Every blasphemy spoken against His name from the foundation of the world. He sees it all at once. He misses nothing.

How long would your fuse be? If you knew everything I have ever done, everything I have ever thought, you would have walked out of my life a long time ago. But Yahweh God did not do that with Israel. He did not do it with Moses. And brothers and sisters, He has not done it with you. The God who knows everything, who sees everything, who has every right to consume us in a moment, that same God describes Himself with this phrase: slow to anger.

The longsuffering of God is not weakness. It is sovereign restraint, and it serves a holy purpose.

1. The God Who Names Himself

Then Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood there with him, and He called upon the name of Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and called out, "Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." And Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship. And he said, "If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though they are a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own inheritance." Exodus 34:5–9 (LSB)

You need to feel the weight of what is happening here before we even get to the phrase "slow to anger." In the Bible, when God describes Himself, you stop and listen. There are not many places where He does it. He acts. He speaks. He commands. But moments where He turns to a man and says, "this is who I am," with His own voice, naming His own attributes, those moments are rare.

This is one of them. It may be the most important one in the Old Testament. The Jewish rabbis called this passage the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. Moses comes back to it. The Psalms come back to it. Jonah quotes it. Joel quotes it. Nehemiah quotes it. Every time the people of God need to remember who their God is, they go back to Exodus 34:6–7.

And remember the setting. Just two chapters earlier, in Exodus 32, Israel had built a golden calf. While Moses was on the mountain receiving the law from God Himself, the people were down at the base dancing in front of a piece of metal they had made with their own hands. They had violated the first two commandments before the ink was dry.

And Yahweh said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are a stiff-necked people. Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may consume them; and I will make you a great nation." Exodus 32:9–10 (LSB)

That is where this story is. God has every right to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He says so. Moses pleads on the basis of God's covenant, on the basis of God's name. God relents. Then in chapter 33, Moses asks something audacious: show me Your glory. God says yes. So in chapter 34, the most sinful nation on earth at that moment, the very people who had just bowed down to a calf, are about to hear God describe Himself. What will He say? Will He thunder about His justice?

No. He says compassionate. He says gracious. He says slow to anger. He says abounding in lovingkindness and truth. Right after the calf. Right after the rebellion. That is the context.

The way God describes Himself is the way you need to think about Him. Not the way your fear paints Him. Not the way your guilt paints Him. When you sin, your conscience will make God out to be cold, distant, ready to drop the hammer. That voice is lying. The Lord describes Himself, in the same breath as His holiness, as compassionate and gracious. If your view of God is harsher than the view God has of Himself, your view is wrong. Bring it under this verse.

2. Slow to Anger

The Hebrew phrase here is more vivid than the English lets on. It literally reads: long of nostrils. That sounds odd in our ears, but the picture is striking. In Hebrew thought, anger flared up in the nose. The nostrils flared. The breath grew hot. A short-tempered man was a man with short nostrils, quick to flare. A patient man was long of nostril. The breath had a long way to travel before it became a fire.

That is how God describes Himself. His nostrils are long. The fuse is real, but it is long. The anger is real, but it is restrained. He is not impassive. He is not unmoved by sin. But He is patient.

There is a word for this in our English Bibles, especially in the older translations. The word is longsuffering. You find it in the King James Version throughout the New Testament. We have lost it in some of the newer translations, and we are poorer for it. Long, suffering. God suffers long. He bears long with sin and sinners. He puts up with what would consume any other being in the universe. Some translations use the word "patience." But there is something in that old word that the newer ones don't quite carry. Longsuffering. It has weight. It says this is not just waiting, it is enduring, bearing up under, staying in when every right demands leaving.

Think of what He puts up with. Open the Bible, Genesis to Revelation. Israel rebels, and He bears with them. The judges' generation does what is right in their own eyes, and He bears with them. The kings worship idols, and He sends prophet after prophet. He sends His own Son, and we crucify Him. And still, the gospel goes out.

'Yahweh is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.' Numbers 14:18 (LSB)

Moses is in chapter 14 of Numbers. The people have refused to enter the Promised Land. They want to stone Moses and Aaron. And what does Moses pray? He prays Exodus 34 right back to God. Lord, You said You are slow to anger. You said You are abundant in lovingkindness. So please, forgive them.

Moses understood something we forget. The longsuffering of God is not just a doctrine to admire. It is something we plead. It is the ground we stand on when we cry out for mercy.

You know what low tide looks like here on the Georgia coast. Seven feet of water just gone. The marsh banks bare. The water has pulled out so far you can walk where the boats float. You see what was hidden: the mud, the shells, the broken bottles, the crab pot someone lost three years ago. That is what God sees in us. Every hour of every day, the water is pulled all the way out. He sees the bottom of the heart. The mud. The hidden things. And still He does not consume. The tide of judgment has not yet come in.

If you are a believer, stop being shocked that God is patient with you. Stop wondering if this is the time He finally walks away. He told you who He is. The same God who bore with stiff-necked Israel for forty years in the wilderness bears with you. Believe Him. And ask yourself: is your fuse longer than it was a year ago? Is your spouse easier to live with because you are slower to anger? Are your children less afraid of your tone? The longsuffering of God should produce longsuffering in those who belong to Him. A quick temper is not a personality. It is a sin to repent of.

3. But Not Soft on Sin

"who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." Exodus 34:7 (LSB)

Read the whole verse. Not just the first half. The same God who keeps lovingkindness for thousands and forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin is the God who will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. That is one breath. That is the same self-description. The same name.

People hear that God is slow to anger and conclude He is never angry. They say He is patient, so He must be safe to keep sinning. He bears long, so He must bear forever. That is a lie. And our text refuses to let us draw that conclusion.

Notice the language. "By no means." That is not weak language. That is the strongest possible negation in Hebrew. He will absolutely not, under any circumstance, simply pat sin on the head and let it walk.

And what if God, wanting to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath having been prepared for destruction, and in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory— Romans 9:22–23 (LSB)

Even toward those who will finally perish, God endures with much patience. The longsuffering is real. But the patience is not unlimited. The vessels of wrath were prepared for destruction. Patience is not pardon. It is the long approach to a real moment of accounting.

Sin is not a small thing in this universe. The God who runs the universe does not yawn at it. He sees it. He weighs it. He has a docket. The reason He has not yet acted on yours, if you are still outside of Christ, is not because the docket is empty. It is because the patience is not yet finished.

Think of a courtroom where the docket is full but the judge has not yet called the next case. That is not justice asleep. That is justice waiting. Every minute that name is not called is a mercy. But the judge will rise.

If you are sinning right now against light, against conviction, against the warnings of the Spirit, and you have looked at the patience of God and called it the approval of God, you have made a deadly mistake. The fact that nothing has happened yet is not a green light. It is a long red one, getting longer, but not staying that way forever. The hand that has not yet fallen is still raised.

4. The Purpose of His Patience

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some consider slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9 (LSB)

Why is God slow to anger? Why has He not yet brought the curtain down on this present evil age? Peter answers it directly. The patience of God has a purpose. It is not idle. It is not absent-minded. It is aimed. He bears long so that His people, the ones He has chosen from the foundation of the world, will be brought in. Every day the world keeps spinning is a day God is gathering His sheep. The longsuffering of God is the field on which the gospel runs.

If you are in Christ tonight, you are alive in Him today because of this very attribute. Think back. There was a time when you were not following Christ. You were running the other direction. You were storing up wrath for yourself. What stopped Him from striking you down in the middle of that year? Nothing but His patience. He bore with you. He waited. The kindness of God led you to repentance.

Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? Romans 2:4 (LSB)

Read that as your own testimony if you are saved. Riches of kindness. Riches of forbearance. Riches of patience. He did not have to bear with you. He chose to. And the bearing was for a purpose: to bring you to repentance.

The longsuffering of God is the very air the elect breathe before they are converted. It is the runway of grace. The clock of patience is running for someone you love right now. A son. A father. A coworker. A neighbor. Maybe an enemy. They are still drawing breath. The judgment has not yet visited. That means the door is still open.

Think of a man with a candle in a long hallway, waiting at the door of a house. The candle is still lit. As long as that candle burns, the door is open. As long as God is being slow to anger, the gospel can still be preached, sinners can still be saved, prodigals can still come home. But the candle will not burn forever. There is a day when the patience runs out.

Who in your life is still on the runway of God's patience? Pray for them this week. Speak to them this week. Do not assume there will be another year. And are you treating God's patience as a license or as an invitation? If your sin has continued and nothing has happened, you have not gotten away with it. You have been given more time. Use the time.

The Gospel in This

Here is the question Exodus 34 leaves hanging. How can a holy God be both slow to anger and absolutely committed to punishing the guilty? How does He keep lovingkindness for thousands and forgive iniquity and at the same time refuse to let the guilty go free? Forgiveness without justice is not righteousness. Justice without mercy is not the God of this passage. So what does He do?

He goes to Calvary.

At the cross, the longsuffering of God and the justice of God meet in one Person. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, takes upon Himself the weight of every transgression God has been bearing with for thousands of years. Every golden calf. Every blasphemy. Every lie. The accumulated debt of every elect sinner from Adam to the last one called. He absorbs it. He drinks the cup. The patience of God toward His people, all those centuries of bearing long, was bearing it down a road that ended at a hill outside Jerusalem.

If you are not in Christ, hear this carefully. The fact that you are still alive is not because God does not see your sin. It is because His patience has not yet run out. Through the preaching of the gospel you are being called to come. Called to flee from the wrath to come and run to the Savior who has already drunk it. Do not mistake His silence for His approval. The candle is still burning. Come now. Cast yourself on the One who was slow to anger long enough that you could be brought in.

If you are in Christ, look at what you have been spared. Every day God could have justly visited your sin, He instead visited it on His Son. The wrath that was building against you was poured out on Jesus. The patience that bore with you did not run out. It did not run out because one afternoon, some two thousand years ago, it was satisfied at the cross. The God of Exodus 34 is the God of Calvary. The slow-to-anger God is the God who, in His Son, took the anger Himself, so His people would never face it.

So this week: name one person who is still on the runway of God's patience. Write the name down. Pray for them every day. Look for one opportunity to speak to them about the Lord.

Find the place in your life where your fuse is short and ask God to lengthen it. The God who is slow to anger lives in you by the Spirit. He can lengthen your nostrils too. Repent of the quick temper. Imitate the Father who has borne long with you.

And when you sin this week, and you will, do not run from God. Run to Him. He has named Himself. Compassionate. Gracious. Slow to anger. Abounding in lovingkindness. Forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Take Him at His word. Confess. Receive cleansing. Walk on.