The Actual Name Of God

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Exodus 3:13-14

13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

 
 

“God” is just the generic name for “Spiritual Being.” Moses quite reasonably wants to know the specific identity of this spiritual being with whom he is speaking. Presumably he is familiar with the names of the Egyptian gods—who is this god in the wilderness?

God’s reply is one of the most profound sentences in the Bible, or out of it:

“I AM.”

God’s name—often transliterated in English as Yahweh—means “I am” or “I am who I am” or just being itself.

God is. And that’s his name.

P.S. In most English Bibles today, when you see Lord printed in all capital letters, that’s the editors' way of indicating that it’s the actual Hebrew name of God in the text, i.e., “Yahweh.” Be on the lookout for that—it will change how you read the Bible.

 

The Only Way You'll Know Is When You Know

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Exodus 3:10-12

10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

 
 

Note the amazing privilege God is giving Moses:

“I will send YOU to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

Moses gets to be the liberator of Israel!

But Moses wants some proof that this will actually happen. God’s answer: “I will be with you, and when you find yourself back here one day, you’ll know that it happened.”

In other words, the only way he’ll know is when he knows!

This is why faith is essential—without trust, we cannot live the lives God has for us.

Where do you need to trust the Lord today?

 

God Sees Everything

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Exodus 3:7-9

7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.

 
 

Moses is in Midian because there was something about the oppression of the Israelites that provoked him to murderous action, and his murder caused him to have to flee Egypt. Here, Moses hears that God is concerned about the Israelites’ oppression, too. The deep passions of Moses match those of God.

What is it that really troubles you about the world? Could it be that God put that passion in you so that you would do something about it? How can your passions reflect those of God?

 

Awe-Fear-Reverence

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Exodus 3:6b

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

 
 

What Leon Kass has to say about this verse is helpful:

We pause a moment over this experience. Awe-fear-reverence (the hard-to-translate Hebrew word is yir’ah) is the central religious passion, and no story I know better exemplifies the phenomenon of its sudden appearance. Yir’ah is called forth by an encounter with overwhelming power, with great authority, with deep mystery, with grandeur and sublimity—in short, with the “awesome,” in its original, nondebased meaning. Awe- fear-reverence is not a congenial passion: it implies, and insists on maintaining, clear distance from the object that elicits it. It acknowledges our weakness and inadequacy before something much greater than ourselves (“do not come closer”; “put off your shoes”). And yet it does not—like simple fear or terror—lead us to flee. On the contrary, despite the evident inequality, the very fact of our recognizing the superiority of the object builds a connection between us. We are both attracted and repelled; we want both to approach and to stand back; we oscillate in place, bound in relation to the thing that defies our comprehension and makes us feel small. We hide our face, but we hold our ground. Paradoxically, thanks to awe-fear-reverence and the bond it builds across the unbridgeable divide, we also feel less small. We are, in fact, lifted up, enlarged, magnified. This surely happened here to Moses. —from Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus, by Leon Kass

The second half of Exodus will be about what it will take for Israel to live with the awe-fear-reverence of Lord in their midst, and the New Testament will be about what happens when God himself puts on flesh and dwells among us.

(That’s worth thinking about over the weekend.)

 

Who Is Moses's Father?

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Exodus 3:6a

6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

 
 

Moses’s father is never mentioned in the Bible, apart from this reference to his tribal identity:

“Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman” [2:1].

Here we have Moses, the rootless man without a country, and look how the Lord addresses him:

“I am the God of your father” [v. 6]. The Lord specifically identifies Moses and makes it clear that the strange circumstances of his life are not an accident. This rootless man is given an identity by God.

We become who we need to be when we are defined by God’s word to us and not the words of the world. What matters is not what other people say about us, but what we know to be true about us from God’s word.

 

"Here I Am"

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Exodus 3:4-5

4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to
him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

 
 

When the Lord calls Moses, Moses responds in exactly the right way:

“Here I am.” In other words, Moses immediately makes himself available to the Lord.

How are you and I half-heartedly responding to God’s call today? What would it look like for you and I to be fully obedient and take the next faithful step?

P.S. “Holy” is something set-apart for God’s purposes. So, the ground is holy ground because God is using it to commission Moses. And, it will turn out that this same mountain is where Israel will later receive the Law and be commissioned as God’s people.

 

How Would You Know If God Were Trying To Get Your Attention?

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Exodus 3:3

3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

 
 

The rabbis asked, “How many times was the fire in the bush on the mountain of God and Moses failed to see it?” It’s a fun question.

Is the Lord trying to get my attention these days, and am I too distracted to notice?

 

Non-Competitive Transcendence!

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Exodus 3:2

2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

 
 

Allow me to use a ten-dollar term today: “non-competitive transcendence.” I first heard the Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Barron use this term years ago, and I’ve loved it ever since.

If I want to sit in the seat you’re sitting in, you will have to move before I can sit there. If I want to park my car in your parking space, your car will have to move. This is because we live in a finite world and for me to be where you are, you’ll have to give way. We are “competing” so to speak for the finite resources of the world.

In the Greek myths, when Zeus shows up the same thing happens: people have to get out of the way. There is lightning and violence when the gods arrive. Why? Because the gods are part of this world, and so they are also competing for its finite resources.

Note, however, that when the Lord shows up, he is not competing with us. This is because God is not the biggest part of Creation; rather, God is not part of Creation at all—God made Creation. In fact, the first sentence of the Bible tells us that there is God, and then there is everything else.

So, when the Lord appears to Moses in the bush, the bush is burning but not consumed. In other words, God’s presence doesn’t take anything away from the bush—God’s presence is a non-competitive transcendence.

Why does this matter?

I’m convinced that the primary reason people today refuse to believe in God is because they are afraid that if they do so, they will lose their freedom. But this is to misunderstand God! When God comes close to us, we become more of who we are—we become more free, not less.

In traditional Eastern Orthodox iconography, the Virgin Mary is sometimes portrayed in the midst of the burning bush? Why? Because she was the vessel that contained the Son of God, but she wasn’t consumed by the fiery glory of God! Isn’t that a lovely image?

Don’t be afraid to trust God today—his will for you is freedom and joy, and the only way you’ll find it is in him.

P.S. Try to work “non-competitive transcendence” into a conversation today. I’ll be so proud!

 

Moses The Shepherd

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Exodus 3:1

3 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

 
 

How long has Moses been in Midian? Later on in Exodus it will turn out that it’s been decades that Moses has been a shepherd in a foreign land (see 7:7).

Just like his great ancestor Abraham, who was rootless and fatherless when the Lord called him (see Genesis 11:31-32), Moses is in-between when the Lord finally calls him. All that time wandering in the desert has been preparation.

What if you trusted that everything about your life has been preparation for the Lord to use you now? How might you see your life differently?

 

"And God Knew"

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Exodus 2:23-25

23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

 
 

Most of us understand that life requires us to persevere through hard things. What makes hard things unbearable is the thought that God isn’t with us, that we have been abandoned.

Here, the Israelites cry out because of the evil of their situation and the Bible tells us that “God saw...and God knew” [v. 25].

God sees your struggles today, too, and he is at work to bring good out of what is evil. (see Psalm 10:14)

Don’t give up—keep going. Rescue is coming.

 

Moses, The Man Without A Country

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Exodus 2:16-22

16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock. 18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” 19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. 22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”

 
 

So, Moses ends up in Midian, an region outside of Egyptian territory, on the other side of the Red Sea in the area of the upper Arabian peninsula. He is nowhere and has no identity. Note that the women think he’s Egyptian! Are they wrong? Who is Moses? What he names his son—“stranger”—is revealing: Moses is a man without a country.

This lack of clear identity will be important when the Lord calls and commissions Moses. He will receive his identity from God—he’ll be God’s man.

I think that each of us feels at times that we don’t fit, that we’re not totally at home. But what if this isn’t a bad thing? What if a sense of rootlessness can set us up to hear from God?

 

Moses Flees Egypt

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Exodus 2:13-15

13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.

 
 

Some more questions:
• How did the Hebrews know what happened the previous day? Did the
Hebrew man Moses saved spread the word about the murder, or did
someone else see it?
• Why do they specifically call him “prince and judge”? Are they resenting
his Egyptian upbringing?
• Why does Pharaoh want to kill Moses? Does he see Moses as a threat to
his rule?

Once again, we see that the events of Moses’s life will prove formative. His way of trying to rescue the people isn’t working. There is a problem that must be solved and a people to be rescued, and though Moses has the heart for the task, he isn’t yet prepared for it. His flight to Midian turns out to be exactly what God needs.

Our lives may often seem to be following a winding road, but what the story of Moses shows us is that God is at work in the detours, using them to shape us into whom he needs us to be.

What if all that has happened to you has shaped you into the kind of person the Lord needs you to be?

 

Moses Murders A Man

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Exodus 2:11-12

11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

 
 

There are so many questions this episode raises:
• Did Moses know that the Hebrews were “his people,” or is that just the
narrator telling us?
• When did Moses come to know his true identity?
• Did the other Hebrews know he was one of them?
• Why did Moses kill the Egyptian?
• From whom was he trying to hide the body?

What’s clear is that there is something about the subjugation of the Hebrews by the Egyptians that provokes something primal in Moses.

That’s good, and will be something God uses. What’s bad is that Moses then murders the Egyptian.

One of the lessons Moses will have to learn is how to channel his righteous anger into productive and not destructive acts.

It’s not wrong to be angry at the evil of the world; what’s wrong is to allow anger to drive you to act in sinful ways.

What are you righteously angry about today? What troubles you deeply? How might you turn that anger over the Lord and ask him to turn it into something productive?

 

Moses In The Ark

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Exodus 2:1-10

2 Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. 4 And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. 5 Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews' children.” 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child's mother. 9 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

 
 

Pharaoh has ordered the drowning of every baby boy born to the Hebrews, and this action will prove his undoing. The strange circumstances of the birth and life of Moses will be exactly what God will use to prepare him to be the leader of the Israelites.

The heroes of this episode are the women: Moses’s mother, Moses’s sister Miriam (who is about six years old here), and Pharaoh’s daughter. Each of them acts courageously in defiance of Pharaoh, and their actions make Moses’s life possible. But each of the women (as well as the previously-mentioned midwives) are also just bravely doing what women do—they are mothers and sisters and midwives and daughters. Here again we see ordinary people doing ordinary things in a courageous way, and the Lord takes their small actions and makes them matter.

Our English translations fail us when they translate the Hebrew word in v. 3 as “basket.” In Hebrew, this word is used only one other time in the entire Bible, and it is the word “ark” from the Noah story. Here, Moses is placed in a little ark! Just as with Noah, here the man the Lord will use to save his people is himself saved from drowning in an ark.

Note that Pharaoh has ordered the destruction of the Hebrew boys through the water; later, Pharaoh will lead his armies to destruction in the waters of the Red Sea.

Isn’t it interesting how God always allows evil to bring about its own destruction? If Pharaoh hadn’t ordered the murder of the Hebrew babies, then Moses would not have been raised to be a leader in Pharaoh’s own household. Presumably the formation and education Moses receives in Pharaoh’s palace were essential for his future leadership.

At the Cross, what seemed like a victory for evil turned out to be its ultimate defeat. What looked like a loss for Jesus was actually proven three days later to be a win.

Be hopeful today: evil will not win in the end.

 

The Midwives

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Exodus 1:15-22

15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. 18 So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

 
 

Pharaoh’s plan is devilishly shrewd—rather than killing the baby girls, he plans to have the boys killed, thereby ensuring that the girls will have to marry Egyptian men when they grow up. In that way, there will be no Hebrew people left—the boys will be dead and the girls’ children will be raised as Egyptians.

Once again, however, the malevolent plans of this all-powerful king are thwarted, in this case by the midwives to the Hebrew women. Note that the midwives are more concerned with pleasing God than they are with pleasing Pharaoh.

Remember that the central theme of Exodus is the forming of God’s people into a nation. Here, we have an important lesson that God will teach the Israelites over and over: namely that God’s law trumps human law. The midwives are a model of faithfulness.

How can you fear God more than man today?

 

The New Pharaoh

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Exodus 1:8-14

8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

 
 
 

A new, nameless Pharaoh arises who has no connection to Joseph and his first act is to divide between “us” and “them.” He is afraid of the Hebrews and at the same time he needs them for labor. But his oppression is turned back against himself. Not for the last time in Exodus—or the Bible—will we see that evil actions turn back and hurt those that take them. Here, the more Pharaoh tries to hurt the children of Israel, the more they prosper.

 

They Swarmed

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Exodus 1:6-7

6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. 7 But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.

 
 

The language here in Hebrew is the language of Genesis 1:

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth" [Genesis 1:28].

Compare with Exodus 1:7:

But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly [literally, they “swarmed”]; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.

Here you have Abraham’s family in a foreign land, but the blessing of God is so powerful that despite their circumstances, they are becoming fruitful.

That’s God’s desire for your life, too: that you would be fruitful regardless of your circumstances.

What if you decided that nothing about your circumstances could keep you from trusting God and living fruitfully this year?

 

Names

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Exodus 1:1-5

1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt.

 
 

Exodus begins with a list of names. In fact, in Hebrew that’s the title of the book: “Names.”

The story of Exodus is how those names become a nation.

God forms a people out of Abraham’s family. Here, that family is just 70 people. When the book concludes forty chapters from now, they will have become a nation. What we will see is that God’s outcomes have no relation to how things begin. Jesus makes this same point in one of his most-famous parables:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” [Matthew 13:31-32].

The good thing is that God controls the outcomes; all he asks of us is just to do the next faithful thing.

In fact, I think that’s a good way to think of the Christian life—just taking the next faithful step.

What’s your next faithful step today?

 

Joseph Dies As a Mummy In Egypt

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Genesis 50:22-26

22 So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house. Joseph lived 110 years.23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation. The children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph's own. 24 And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” 25 Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” 26 So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

 
 

Those are the last sentences of Genesis. Like all great stories, Genesis ends with a note of sadness and with a few loose ends. Joseph dies, but unlike Jacob his father, he is not buried back in the Promised Land. Before his death, he tells his descendants that they will need the help of God to get out of Egypt and return to the Promised Land, and he makes them promise that when that day finally comes they will carry his bones with them back to the land of his fathers. And then he dies, and is embalmed after the custom of the Egyptians.

And so Genesis ends and the last sentence will take your breath away: The book closes with Joseph as a mummy in Egypt.

Genesis concludes with Abraham’s family—the children of Israel— living in Egypt, outside of the Promised Land.

Exodus is the story of their rescue, and we begin reading it on Monday!

P.S. The children of Israel never forgot their promise to Joseph. And generation unto generation, they were reminded that the day would come when God would bring them out of slavery, and that when that day came, they were to carry the bones of their brilliant ancestor Joseph with them. And so, this is what happens when the long- awaited Exodus finally occurs, so many centuries later:

19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place” [Exodus 13:19].

I said before that Genesis ends without all the loose ends tied up. That may be true, but you know what?

In God’s time, all loose ends are eventually tied up. There are no details that the author of Creation forgets.

 

How Joseph's Slavery Was Israel's Salvation

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Genesis 41:39-49

39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. 40 You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you.” 41 And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” 42 Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. 43 And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, “Bow the knee!” Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt. 44 Moreover, Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, and without your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.” 45 And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphenath-paneah. And he gave him in marriage Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On. So Joseph went out over the land of Egypt.

46 Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land of Egypt. 47 During the seven plentiful years the earth produced abundantly, 48 and he gathered up all the food of these seven years, which occurred in the land of Egypt, and put the food in the cities. He put in every city the food from the fields around it. 49 And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured.

 
 

Through a series of miraculous coincidences, Joseph, who has been sold into slavery in Egypt, rises to become viceroy over the entire kingdom, and his shrewd leadership and management make sure there is food available when famine comes to the region. The famine causes his family—the children of Israel— to come to Egypt in search of succor, and it ends up being Joseph—the brother they sold into slavery—who is their rescuer.

As Joseph says later, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” [Genesis 50:20].

That’s a verse to meditate on as this new year begins. See, no matter what happens this year, God will turn it to good.

Be hopeful!