What does God mean when He says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy" (Exodus 33:19)?

For the time being Moses had to be content to know the goodness and the name of the Lord, and in connection with that His grace and His mercy were displayed. Here we have the statement which Paul quotes in Romans 9:15, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy;" and by this is declared the sovereignty of God. The point is that Israel had lost everything on the basis of strict law, and yet God elected to show mercy and continue with them. Israel had therefore no ground for objecting to God choosing to show mercy to Gentiles in these Gospel days. From the days of the golden calf they owed their own existence to the mercy of God.

396 Israel did pretend to take the ground of righteousness, as in Exodus 19, and what followed? The golden calf was made Was God to share with the calf in having them as a people? No: by this, the very first link that bound them, that nearest to God, was broken; by this act Israel had forfeited everything; they had cast off the promises, which they had accepted on the condition of their own obedience (Moses might have had them) and the God that had made the promises, and who alone could fulfil them. Could God overlook this sin? Israel had undertaken to have the promises by their obedience; if God had dealt with Israel in righteousness, every one must have been cut off. What could God do but retreat, as I said, into His own sovereignty? There He had a resource; for if any of them are to be spared, it must be in this way of mercy. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." Man is entirely lost, so now God says, I will act for Myself. Taking a truth in connection with all other truth gives it its right and proper place, and its own divine force. Turn now to Exodus 19, 20 and 21. Israel undertaken to have the promises on condition of obeying all that God would command. God had said, "If ye obey my voice"; they answer, "all that the Lord hath spoken we will do." But before Moses came down, God tells him, "They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them, they have made them a molten calf, and had worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto"; then, "the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and behold it is a stiff-necked people; now, therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them," Exod. 32:8-10. Then Moses says, "Forgive them their sin." Here the mediator is brought in, a figure, of course, of the true Mediator. Moses goes up to make an atonement for them; "Peradventure I shall make an atonement for them." But let us see the effect of his mediation. First, God says, in chapter 33:3, "I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiff-necked people; lest I consume thee in the way": but "I will send an angel before thee" (v. 2). Then in verse 7, "Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp": then in verse 13, Moses says to God, "Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight; and consider that this nation is thy people." And God replies, "My presence shall go with thee" - not with the people, but with the mediator. And then God proclaims the name of the Lord to the mediator, at the same time bringing out this principle, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy."

Compassion. — But this must be elucidated a little. God can be compassionate we here learn, and in 9:15 have seen that He is sovereign in that: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." These were His words, as the apostle has given them to us, addressed to Moses in Ex. 33:19 after the people had made the golden calf. He would have mercy (or, be gracious) to whom He would be gracious, and have compassion on whom He would. This, then, did not depend on the people's deserts. It was part of the Divine prerogative. God, because He is God, can act as He will. Now the time chosen by Him for the revelation of this should be marked by the reader. It was when all was lost, as far as Israel were concerned, and lost by their sin, that God first spoke of these feelings of His heart, compassions, which could be displayed towards objects who had shown themselves deserving only of judgment. And in perfect accord with this, in the revelation of His name to Moses in Ex. 34:6, when God proclaimed Himself as the Lord, the Lord God, merciful (or compassionate), the first statement of His character, and that in the closest connection with the assertion of His Godhead as the self-existing and the powerful One, was that of the compassionate One. What an association of thought! God the compassionate One! The self-existing One compassionate to those who have sinned against Him! Yes, it is true, and it can be used as an appeal to such creatures.

In answer to this the Lord promises His presence. (Ex. 33:14-17). But, however, desirable and mindful that was, Moses desires more, and he further says, "I beseech thee, Show me thy glory." (Ex. 33:18.)

Now all this was the way of a soul that had learnt its great necessity as a sinner; for neither the law, nor conditional covenants, nor shadows and ordinances, nor mere promises of high order, will meet a sinner's case; it demands "sovereign grace." And the Lord delights in such faith. He at once answers the demand it made, promising to deal with Israel, whom Moses represented and pleaded for, in sovereign and boundless grace. "I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." (Ex. 33:19.) In Romans 9:15, where these words are quoted as the expression of sovereign electing grace, what satisfied Moses, Paul preaches as God's gospel for sinners.

God replies to Moses here: "Whosoever has sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book. Therefore now go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee" (Ex. 32:33-34). When you come to the next chapter, God "spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend" (Ex. 33:11). And you now find a most beautiful point in the history of this blessed servant. He is in the company of God, and at length Moses gets very bold as, filled with the sense of what Israel's sin is on the one hand, and equally with the sense of the goodness of God on the other, he says, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory (Ex. 33:18). The answer of the Lord is beautiful: I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee." If the glory of the Lord had then shone, Moses must have been withered up. Only in Him, who is God's Son, can that glory and majesty be revealed without man being overwhelmed. But He who Himself was God, left that glory, the glory which he had with the Father, came down here, became a man, and passed through this scene as the revealer of God. That perfect Man closed His life in death for the man who had no link with God. Then God "raised him up from the dead and gave him glory: that your faith and hope might be in God" (1 Peter 1:21). Get into His presence and see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

"I will make all my goodness pass before thee," is God's response to Moses' wish to see His glory, and then He lets out what I may call the secret thought of His heart, as He retires into the absoluteness of His being in goodness, in order to spare a guilty people. He, so to speak, says to Moses, The case is very bad, and if I let law have its way, I must cut the people off to a man. And then adds, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (ver. 19). Had righteousness had its sway at the moment Israel must all have been cut off. But He says, Although they have abused my grace, and broken the law, there is one resource I have left — mercy. "I will show mercy," is divine prerogative, and divinely charming.

It is a wonderful thing when the soul has the sense of the mercy of God. In the words "I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy," He, so to speak, says, I will do what I like. I am absolute. Beloved friends, do not set your face against God. Do not oppose God. You leave God alone to exercise what I may call the prerogative of His love, and what will He do? "I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy," is His way of meeting the guiltiest sinner that ever trod the earth.

I will ask you to turn to Psalm 106 for a moment. How wonderfully there does the truth of the mercy of God come out. Psalm 105 gives the detail of what God had been for Israel in grace. And then the next Psalm opens with "Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks to the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endures for ever" (Ps. 106:1). Then the whole of that Psalm is occupied with showing what obdurate rebels Israel were. But why do they say, "His mercy endures for ever." Because it says further on, "And he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his mercies" (Ps. 106:45). It is mercy that God falls back on. And you will find in the next Psalm, "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endures for ever" (Ps. 107:1). If you trace out Israel's history from first to last, the keynote of their song has ever been mercy, fruit most truly of the absolute, blessed goodness of God. When the nation had utterly ruined themselves because of their sin, then it was God retired into the infinite goodness of His own Being, and mercy rejoiced against judgment.

Thus the bearing of the declaration is as evident as it is appropriate and unanswerable. For a people in such a case to harbour the thought of unrighteousness with God is a monstrous forgetfulness not only of their actual state in relation to Him but of their only hope in His sovereign mercy. Once before they took the ground of righteousness in accepting the law; but before the tables of stone were brought down, they had forfeited every thing by their infraction of the most fundamental precept of the law. Hence hope there could not be, unless in His compassion. They had shown out what they were, and the sooner because of their self-confidence. Now it remained to learn what God is; and this is His word even in presence of the foul dishonour they had done Him: "I will show mercy on whomsoever I show mercy, and I will compassionate whomsoever I compassionate."

Now the circumstances in which God announced His sovereignty add amazing force to all this. For when was it that He said to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion?" It was when, on grounds of bare righteousness, Israel ought to have been cut off. God then withdrew, as it were, within His sovereignty, in order to spare Israel, whom righteousness must have condemned around their golden idol. How blessed then for Israel that it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs; but of God that shows mercy! Rom. 9:16 is an abstract enunciation of this principle, that the question is not of man's desires or efforts, but of God's will. Besides, when we come to the facts of the case, we find that man neither wishes nor seeks for mercy, It is too late, then, for man to talk of rights. The truth is that he himself is all wrong, and that the foundation of righteousness is that God should have His rights. As we have seen, and we may bless Him for it; He uses His rights in maintaining His prerogative of mercy in behalf of the people who had utterly destroyed themselves! (Cp. Ex. 33:19 with the preceding history.)

Thus, too, we find it in the history of every day. When men are self-righteous, they are ready to dispute at every step with God's sovereignty: when really broken down under a sense of sin, they are right glad to hear that God's mercy is sovereign enough to show them mercy: when saved and at peace themselves, they can rejoice at that mercy flowing out towards any.

Paul follows up with a third example to demonstrate how absurd — and counterproductive to the objective of defending Israel’s position of blessing — it would be to accuse God of unrighteousness on the basis that He blessed those who had no merit. Did they not remember what God had said to Moses in the wilderness? ‘I will shew mercy to whom I will shew mercy, and I will feel compassion for whom I will feel compassion’ (v. 15). This statement was made in Exodus 33 after Israel had broken the law and worshipped the golden calf and in doing so had broken the covenant and forfeited all its privileges. God could have consumed them in a moment. But He did not do so. He showed mercy. And on what basis? It could not have been merit because they had none. It was on the basis of His own pure inexplicable will. Surely, the Jews had accepted this fact; it was just that they had not realised, or had lost consciousness of, the principle implied, namely mercy that is not dependent on the actions, or even the will, of those who receive it (v. 16).

179 This sovereignty (v. 24) God would use in favour of Gentiles as of Jews. But the apostle treats some other points and objections before arriving there. Verse 14, we have the common objection suggested, there is unrighteousness with God. The apostle then quotes Moses in reply, affirming that sovereignty, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." This was sovereign, but it was sovereign mercy. And when we examine this and the following case, in both we find the wickedness there. For sovereignty in mercy and compassion supposes the evil, and pardoning was not as to good. But when we examine the case, this will appear more strongly still. When the passage quoted from Moses was spoken, Israel had made the golden calf, and God had threatened all with excision, and on Moses's intercession retreats into His own sovereignty to spare any. Had He not been sovereign, had He acted in righteousness, all (save Moses and Joshua) would have been cut off. But He was sovereign, and could use mercy, and He did. The apostle draws the general conclusion. It is not willing or running on man's side, but God that shews mercy. No righteousness was attained by man's willing or running, but by God shewing mercy when man was unrighteous.

(Vv. 14, 15). To these arguments the flesh may object, that to elect one and not the other is unrighteous. Is there, then, unrighteousness with God? God forbid, says the Apostle. To answer this objection the Apostle refers to a specific case in the history of Israel in which it is plain that God acted in sovereign grace and yet could not be charged with unrighteousness. He recalls the terrible sin of Israel when they made a golden calf and worshipped it. Of the unrighteousness of this act there can be no question. They had broken the first command, and the penalty was death. Righteousness could have destroyed them all. But what did God do? He fell back on His sovereignty and said, "I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion". God falls back upon the very principle to which the Jew objects, and but for which all Israel would have been destroyed. It is impossible, then, for the Jew to say it was unrighteous of God to act in sovereign grace.