God's Name: YHWH

Call to Worship

Isaiah 42:5-10 “Thus says God, YHWH, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: “I am YHWH; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the YHWH; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.” Sing to YHWH a new song, his praise from the end of the earth.”

Sermon

This week I was thinking a lot about what we should go through since we’ve finished the book of Acts, and one of my thoughts was lets go through one of Paul’s letters, but then I realized, that we really haven’t looked at the Old Testament very much, we went right from the gospels into the book of Acts, and so I decided it would be a good idea to switch for a bit and go through some of the Old Testament. And so as I was thinking about that, I was going through a variety of different resources, and I found a podcast series by a group called the Bible Project where they looked at the Character of God, and as I spent close to 15 hours this week listening to that podcast, I was blown away by some of their insights into one particular verse. They have over 14 hours of podcast content looking at the Character of God specifcally through the lens of one verse, and that verse is the most quoted verse in the whole Hebrew bible, the rest of the bible quotes this verse, either in whole or in part, at least 30 times, and the verse is Exodus 34:6-7, and so what I would like to do over the next several weeks is to look at some of the Characteristics of God. How does God describe Himself in scripture, and I would like to use this verse as the launching point. Here’s the verse, and I’m going just for this verse to be using a translation from the Hebrew bible that the lead theologian from the bible, Tim Mackie, created, so here it is:

Exodus 34:6-7 “And the Lord passed before Moses and said: Yahweh, Yahweh, a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, overflowing with loyal-love and faithfulness. He maintains loyal-love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He won’t declare innocent the guilty, He will bring the iniquities of the fathers upon the children and grandchildren, to the third and the fourth.”

This is the first time in the entire bible that God defines Himself, and gives words describing who He is. He had been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had called Himself I AM when He was speaking to Moses at the burning bush, but here is the first time that He really describes Himself. And I think that it’s very important for us to understand these words, to better understand God’s character and to be able to truly know the God that we say that we follow and believe in. The context that this verse is in will show us why it’s so important to really understand what God’s saying here, and we’re going to look at that in a second, but for the next several weeks keep this verse in your mind, it’ll continue to be important, and as we go through this series I’m going to be reading the verse to start every sermon, and then focusing on one of the specific characteristics. So this week, we’re going to look at the context behind the verse, and then we’ll dive into the first part of this verse, God’s name. And in the following weeks at each of His characteristics.

So this verse is placed, like I said, is in Exodus. And Exodus is more or less is broken into 2 halves, chapters 1-18 are about the Israelites escaping slavery and exiting Egypt, which is how the book gets its name. And the second half is them at Mt. Sinai, making the covenant with God, this is the part where they get the 10 Commandments, and the rules for building the tabernacle. And it’s in this second half that the verse occurs.

If you recall Exodus starts and all of the descendants of Joseph and his brothers have been living in Egypt for 400 years, they’ve become a large nation, but the Pharaoh doesn’t like that and so he makes them his slaves, and decides that in order to do population control for the Hebrews, he’s going to kill all of the baby boys. And during this time there’s a lady named Jochebed and she has a son named Moses, and she tries to save him by putting him in a basket in the nile river, and his sister Miriam watches as the basket floats along, until one of Pharaoh’s daughters finds the basket, and decides she wants to keep the baby. And so Miriam comes and offers to get her mother to nurse the baby, and then when he’s a little older he’s sent to live in Pharaoh’s daughter’s household.

And Moses grows up, we’re not entirely sure how old he was, but some people think that he was about 40, and one day he sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite man, and so he kills the Egyptian and then flees for his life and goes into the wilderness of Midian, and goes and stays there likely another 40 years. And so believe it or not, Moses is likely 80 when he meets God in the burning bush, and God sends him back to Egypt, and him and his brother Aaron confront Pharaoh, and they say he has to let the people go otherwise God’s going to bring consequences in the form of plagues, and Pharaoh doesn’t listen and so there are 9 plagues, and then one final plague where the angel of death came struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, but the angel passed over the Israelites because they had the blood of a spotless lamb on their doorposts and so God passed them over, and finally Pharaoh said they could go, and so Moses leads all the Israelites out into the wilderness, until they get to the Red Sea.

But then Pharaoh changes his mind and they’re caught between the Egyptian army and the sea, and so Moses calls on God to part the waters, and the Israelites walk across on dry ground. But once they’re across, God closes the waters on the Egyptians and Pharaoh and his army die. And so then God leads the people of Israel into the wilderness, and there he continues to provide for them. He gives them bread from heaven called Manna, which is funny because Manna in Hebrew means “what is it?” so they don’t really know what it is, but God’s providing for them.

And He guides them to Mt.Sinai and there Moses goes up the mountain and talks with God, and God invites Israel into a covenant with himself.

And this is how God starts the covenant. Ex. 19:3-7

Exodus 19:3–7 ESV

while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.” So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him.

And so the premise is this: if Israel will follow God and be in a close personal, intimate, covenant relationship with Him. Then He will be there God and He will protect them and provide for them, and help them to prosper. But if they don’t follow Him and keep their side of the covenant then He will remove His providence and protection from them. And so then He proceeds to layout the terms of the covenant, both what is asked of them, and what He will do for them. And it’s very similar in a way to the way that a wedding works.

Cass and I just got married last year and in our ceremony we made both commitments and vows. And we signed the marriage license. But we also previously had sorted through a variety of things that would be expected of both of us in marriage. How would we take care of household chores, how would we bring in income, how would we set aside time for each other during busy weeks, those sorts of things.

And similarly God makes vows and covenant with Israel, which are important, and they sort out some of the other details like how will they keep themselves ritually clean, or how will masters treat their servants. And they also have a covenant document of sorts as God writes down the commandments for them.

And so I think in some ways the best thing we can picture to really get a sense of what’s occurring over the course of these chapters in Exodus is to picture a marriage covenant.

In a way we could picutre it almost as if Moses is the officient at a wedding between Israel and God, and God has just finished writing out His vows on the marriage certificate and then as He’s doing that something awful happens.

Exodus 32:1–6 ESV

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

Growing up I don’t think I really understood what was going on in this story, and I think that a lot of people miss what’s happening here, the people aren’t making idols to replace God, they think what they’re doing is literally making God themselves, they’re creating a physical form for Him, and saying that this calf is God.

It would be like when Cass and I got married if while Cass was writing out the last part of the marriage certificate, if suddenly I just made this random statue of a baby cow, and said this is my wife, this is the person I have dated the past several years, I will be married to her, and then it’s literally just a golden baby cow statue.

Now take that idea and amplify it by like 100 because we’re talking about something even bigger than marriage, we’re talking about the creator of the universe. And so this act is a slap in the face to God, because His chosen people who He has just decided to be in a covenant with, they’ve rejected the real Him even as He’s signing the covenant, and they decide that it would be easier to just have a fake version of Him, one that they can make in whatever way they like.

The real sin with the golden calf isn’t idolatry; that they replaced God with something else. It’s that they made a fake version of God, called it the real one, and tried to manipulate Him how they liked.

They say that the golden calf is “the Lord” and the words used here are the same Hebrew words that God used when He told Moses at the burning bush: “I AM WHO I AM”. The Hebrew word is YHWH, and it’s important to note that, because they are using God’s name and saying this fake version they created was Him. It’s the same idea as if I were to say that the golden calf was Cass, except even more extreme because of the reverence of God’s name.

And then after they’ve created their own version of God, they then are absolutely profane in their worship of Him. The phrase “rose up to play” doesn’t mean like kids, it’s referring to sexual actions done like the other ancient civilizations did as part of their cult sacrifices. The NLT, says that they “indulged in pagan revelry”.

And this is just utterly disrespectful to God, He even tells Moses that He’s done, He’s going to let His wrath burn against them, and remove the protection from them, because they can’t even start this relationship with Him without breaking it. But Moses asks God to forgive them, and to give them another chance, and God agrees. And then Moses goes back down the mountain, but what’s interesting is that even though he just asked God to not be angry, Moses gets angry himself and he throws the tablets with the commandments on the ground and they break, and He goes and deals with the people and his brother Aaron, and lets his anger loose on them for their sin.

And it’s in this moment, after things have settled down a little bit that Moses goes back to talk to God to get the tablets again, that we finally get to the verse we’ll be focusing on the next several weeks.

Exodus 33:18–34:9 (ESV)

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before Moses and said: “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, overflowing with loyal-love and faithfulness. He maintains loyal-love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He won’t declare innocent the guilty, He will bring the iniquities of the fathers upon the children and grandchildren, to the third and the fourth.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

And here what’s the most interesting, is that even as the people have turned from God and tried to control Him and make them who they want Him to be. He in this moment does something that He’s never done, and reveals to Moses and to Israel His true name and character. He tells them who He is, what His name is. And it’s significant, because names in the bible functioned much different than they do today. They were most important, they had deeper meaning.

If you think of when God calls Abram and He changes his name to Abraham, which means “father of many” and does that because he’s going to provide children for Abraham even in his old age. Or if you think of when God changed Jacob’s name to Israel he does it because Jacob meant deceiver, but Israel means “he who contends with God” and God makes him the founder of the very nation that God chose to contend with for thousands of years. Or when Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, because He would be the rock upon which Christ would build His church.

Names were important, and Yahweh is no different, God’s name means “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will always be”. That is to say that God’s name means that He will be constantly the same, and what will He constantly be? Compassionate, Gracious, Slow to Anger, Overflowing with loyal love, and faithful.

Even in the moment when God takes a massive gut punch from Israel. When by every right He should leave Israel, and even wipe them off the face of the earth. God instead turns to them, does someting that He never did to anyone else, and reveals His true name and nature, because He wants a deep intimate relationship with them. And what He reveals is beautiful that He is all of these characteristics that we’ll spend the next several weeks pouring over.

It’s an incredible verse, stuck in the middle of an incredible story. And I think that there are a couple of key take aways that we can have.

First, that God is overwhelmingly forgiving. If Israel couldn’t outrun His forgiveness, we can’t either. There’s nothing that we could ever do that could remove God’s forgiveness from us if we repent.

Second, God has a name. His name is YHWH, and it means that He’s consistent. God doesn’t change, He is always who He is, He doesn’t have some secret dark side or anything like that. He is always all of these characteristics and that’s a beautiful thing for us who follow Him. We also need to understand that by revealing His name to us in the scriptures, God, YHWH, is showing that He wants a deep personal intimate relationship with us, one beyond what we could imagine.

Third, we need to know God as He is not as we want Him to be. That was the problem Israel had with the golden calf, they were trying to make God into their own image, when scripture tells us that from the beginning we’ve been made in His. All too often we try to make God into our own image too, sometimes without realizing it. I want to read a section from a book that I’ve found helpful on this topic, it’s called God Has a Name and it’s by a pastor named John Mark Comer. He says:

“Here’s the problem: we usually end up with a God that looks an awful lot like us. As the saying goes: God created man in His own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor. There is a human bent in all of us to make God in our own image… Here’s how you know if you’ve created God in your own image: he agrees with you on everything. He hates all the people you hate. He voted for the person you voted for. If you’re a republican, so is He. If you’re a Democrat, He is too. If you’re passionate about ___, then God is passionate about __. And above all, He’s tame. You never get mad at Him or blown away by Him or scared of Him. Because He’s controllable. And of course, He’s a figment of your imagination… Maybe the truth is that we want a God who is controllable because we want to be God. We want to be the authority on who God is or isn’t and what’s right or wrong, but we want the mask of religion or spirituality to cover up the I-want-to-be-God reality. The most ancient, primal temptation, going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden, is to decide for ourselves what God is like, and whether we should live into His vision of human flourishing or come up with our ow. All so “we will be like God, knowing good and evil”. This is why theology is so incredibly important.” End quote.

I find this quote very gripping, John Mark Comer really hits the nail on the head. We far too often don’t look at God for who He is, we look at what we want Him to be, and I think that a lot of the times when we look at God for who He really is, and what the bible really says about Him. We’re going to be left a little bit confused, and a little bit uncomfortable, but that’s ok, because God is a very real, relational, and personal God, one that desires for us not just to know about Him but to truly know Him.

If I didn’t know Cass I could tell you about her, I could say that she was a 5’6” white female, with blonde hair, and brown eyes. That she was 22, or that she grew up in Sackville. But I couldn’t tell you what her character was like, what I knew about her because we’re in relationship together. I could try to make assumptions but more than likely I would get it wrong some of the time.

The same is true about God, based off of our culture or our traditions or going to church we could tell you a little bit about Him. But God desires to be known deeply and intimately by us, and we also should desire to know His character, deeply and intimately, and that’s why God has revealed to us both His name and His character, so that we could start to learn deeply and intimately who He truly is, not who He want Him to be. And so as we begin this series, I can’t promise this will be comfortable or thatcin every case we’ll come away with easy answers about the God we learned about in Sunday school, but I can promise that I will do my best to help us to enter into relationship with Yahweh, the God who desires for us to deeply and intimately know Him and who is inviting us into the same sort of covenant relationship that He invited Israel into.

Let’s pray.

Benediction

Jude 24–25 ESV

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.