The Name Above All Names

Message Title:

Message Series: The Great I Am (#2)

Text: Exodus 3:1-17

Date: Sunday, February 23, 2020

Scripture Reading: Exodus 3:1-17

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father,the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever,

the name you shall call me

from generation to generation.

16 “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’

Message Introduction/God Story:

Last week we began a new message series for the season of Lent called “The Great I Am”, in order to focus our attention specifically on the Identity and Character of God. So today’s message, entitled “The Name Above All Names”, is taken again from Exodus 3. What I aim to do this morning is to pick up right where we left off a week ago, reflecting on the nature of God’s personal name, which he revealed to Moses at the burning bush encounter.

To do that, let’s remember that I began to share with you last week three key insights into the name of God, but we only had time to cover two of them. So let's briefly review the first two, then press on to a third and final insight drawn from Exodus 3:14.

Here again is the key verse we’re studying:

Ref. Exodus 3:13-14. Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

So let’s revisit together this incredible story of Moses encounter with the LORD so that we can fully appreciate who He is and what His name means for us.

Review Point 1:

The Creator of the Universe revealed his name (‘YHWH') and character to bring people into personal relationship with him.

This story, more than any other, is God’s personal introduction of Himself. Here, in this sacred interaction with Moses, the LORD revealed something about himself that is of supreme importance: He revealed his name, which allowed Moses (and us!) to know Him in a new a deeper way.

Why is this significant? The One True Living God of the Universe is revealing his identity for the sake of having a personal interactive relationship with Moses. What this tells us about God is that He is essentially relational by nature. It tells us that He initiates making himself known to those He wants to be in relationship with. This encounter reveals to us how deeply God wants to be known by people. He wants more than for us to know about him… He wants us to know Him relationally. This is what the sharing and using of names is all about.

Friends, this is the heart of our God… and it is reflected in the hearts of each one of us, who are created in the image of God, and thereby long to be known and loved for who we are.

So that’s observation number one. Now, here’s the second insight for you:

Review Point 2:

The LORD also revealed his name (‘YHWH') and character to remind us of his presence with us.

Here’s where I introduced to you last Sunday the concept of the Tetragrammaton… the four consonants in Hebrew that make up the name of God. They are YHWH, or Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh, which when written in Hebrew (from right to left) looks like this:

[Show illustration of the Name]

Now, as I pointed out last week, this name is written in the OT over 6000 times. Yet, ironically, in our English Bibles, instead of using the literal translation with vowels added, which would be “YaHWeH”, or perhaps “YaHuWaH”, our English translations substitute “the LORD”. So if you’re reading in the OT, every time you come across a reference to “the LORD” you're actually reading what in the original Hebrew was the Tetragrammaton, YHWH.

But even more importantly, let's remember that in Exodus 3:14 we don’t just get the name of God, we're also given the meaning of it, which reveals to us something vital about the character of God. The LORD says to Moses, “Here’s my name… tell the Israelites that “I Am” has sent you to them…”. So instead of simply using the name “YaHWeH" itself, Scripture gives us the meaning of it: “I Am who I Am”. YaHWeH then is what we would call a transliteration of the Name, but “I Am who I Am” is an actual translation of what the name it means.

This name, as I pointed out previously, is all about the present tense, which signifies that YaHWeH is always present with us. This, at least in part, is what makes Him and Him alone the “Great I Am”, not the "Great I Was”. His name conveys the meaning existence and presence. In fact, it comes from the Hebrew verb ‘Hayah’, which simply means “To Be”.

But on top of all this, there's one other dimension to God’s self-revelation of His name that's important for us to understand, which brings us back to where we left off last Sunday...

Message Point 1:

The LORD revealed his name (‘YHWH') and character to draw us into reverent worship of Him.

Ref. Exodus 3:14. God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

Let me put it this way: You see, friends, there’s another dimension to this name that’s draws us into a tension between the presence, or imminence of YaHWeH, and the distance, or transcendence of YaHWeH.

In terms of His identity and character, His very name conveys this tension between imminence and transcendence, or presence and distance.

Here’s another way to put it:

The LORD wants to be known by His people, and has made himself known through the giving of His name, yet in all of His Holiness He can never be fully known by people. For the LORD, YaHWeH, is set apart in His Holiness. He alone is transcendent. And this reality, which is meant to draw us into worship, is conveyed to us in the very meaning of God’s name. So as familiar as the sharing of his name makes us with the Lord, that familiarity is always meant to be balanced with a certain reverence and respect. We are friends of God, as the Bible puts it, but that doesn’t mean we can forget about his holiness. There is always a tension in how we relate to Him between familiarity and formality.

Here’s an illustration to help you catch the gist of what I’m describing. How would you like to be known and remembered for a breach of royal protocol that would mark your life?

Illustration: An American Mayor’s Gaffe Remembered For Life

When Bill Cleator was mayor of San Diego, California, in 1983 he hosted a royal visit by Queen Elizabeth II. While on a harbor tour, Cleator tried to guide Queen Elizabeth II out of a reception and infamously touched the monarch’s back, saying, “This way, your Majesty.” Seems innocent enough, right? Yet at the time, it was scandalous.

This simple act did not go over well considering the royal no-touch policy. One tabloid headline even screamed, “Get Your Hands Off Our Queen!” Television stations replayed the incident over and over again in slow motion, so that it became international Headline news.

In fact, this incident so scarred the life and tenure of Mayor Cleator, that it’s infamy was even revived when he passed away in 1993. The AP reported upon Cleator’s death that “The British media had described the gesture as an insult — a commoner daring to touch royalty — and said the gentle brush caused a look of annoyance to cross the queen’s face.” The incident was even included in Cleator’s obituary, and read at his funeral. And for this singular reason, Cleator is now remembered in a Hall of Dishonor, as San Diego’s fifth worst mayor ever.

Aren’t you glad not be known for something like that? A simple act of familiarity was a breach of formality. That’s the same tension, my friends, that Moses had to grapple with, but on an even higher level. For he suddenly found himself in the manifest presence of the Sovereign of all Heaven and Earth.

So as we think about the significance of this encounter, consider that at the same time the LORD is making himself personally and relationally known to Moses, He is also drawing out of Moses a particular response to His presence. The LORD wanted to draw Moses into a deeper relationship and granted him a very personal revelation of His name, yet at the same time He also wanted to set the terms of that relationship. The LORD wanted Moses to realize that he was encountering One whose character is absolute holiness…. One who was present with Moses, but also beyond Moses at the same time.

In fact, if you think about the story of Moses encounter with the burning bush, this insight is not only present in the Name and it’s meaning, but it also comes out to us in two other distinct ways. Notice what happened right before the giving of the Name… notice what drew Moses into this encounter and how he was directed to respond.

First, he saw the manifestation of the burning bush.

Ref. Exodus 3:2-3: There [at the mountain of God] the angel of the Lord appeared to him [Moses] in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

Then Moses was commanded to remove his sandals.

Ref. Exodus 3:5-6: “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father,the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Do you see what was happening here?

Moses was being drawn into the manifest presence of God in a very specific and reverent way.

This is an important counter weight to our personal knowledge of God, in that it keeps our knowledge of God from literally going to our heads. If you’ve ever met or known someone famous and powerful you know what I mean by that. You see, as much as God wants us to know Him personally, he also wants us to recognize that to truly know Him is to respect Him and reverence Him for who He really is. He doesn’t want us to go around acting like big shots just because we’re on a first name basis with Him!

So we need to realize that there is this dynamic tension between the personal/relational nature of God, and His transcendence. What God was doing with Moses, and what he wants to do with us as well, is simply to keep the awareness of his Holiness so high that our hearts are guarded from the pride of knowing Him personally.

Now, let me explain to you how all this is even reflected in the name YaHWeH.

Maybe you’ve been wondering, since I first mentioned it, why the name of God gets written as ‘the LORD’ in our English Bibles. Let me explain this further: You see, for the Hebrew people this sense of God’s Incredible Holiness was cultivated in how they referred to his name, and without our knowing it that tradition has been passed down to us through the Biblical translators.

Did you know that the name YaHWeH was -and still is- considered so holy and sacred, that it's actually forbidden to pronounce it?!

Illustration: Words You Shouldn’t Speak. [all the typical cuss words, plus a few like b-u-t-t and h-a-t-e.

The common denominator with all these words is that they are all considered too unholy to speak! So if you speak one of these words in our house, you’re likely to get a stern rebuke from Momma Shoe.

Now consider this… to my knowledge there is no such unspeakable word that has been banished from our use for the opposite reason… because it is too holy to speak out loud. Yet, that is the Hebrew tradition that developed over time regarding pronunciation of the name of God. Any good Hebrew knows full well that the real name of God, YaHWeH, should never be spoken out loud, because to do so with human lips is to indignify that Holy Name.

So then, instead of using God’s personal name as it was given to Moses, down through history the Jewish people would just insert ‘Ha shem’, which means ‘the name’, or they might say ‘Adonai’ instead, which means Lord. This explains why the vowels were dropped in the Hebrew text and the name of God was represented by its four consonants YHWH. When they would read it in the OT text this was to remind them not to speak it. It also explains then, why most English translations insert “The LORD” instead of God’s actual name YaHWeH.

Now here’s another interesting related insight that suggests something vital to us about The Great I Am. Think of what it means to know that the LORD is so great, and so high above all created things, that He alone is self-existent.

He was, and is, always will be. He alone is uncreated, and His nature is unchanging. And furthermore, He alone causes to be that which is.

All of this my friends, is included in the meaning of his name. And therefore, the meaning of his name conveys to us that He is transcendent in character, which in turn is meant to elicit from us an appropriate response: reverence, respect, and worship. As Solomon put it so well, Moses found himself in a situation where he realized that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.”

In fact, in the same spirit of reverence, I even have a few friends that have taken to spelling the word ‘God’ like this: “G-d”. Why would they do that? Simply to emulate the sense of holiness that accompanies any reference to the LORD by the Hebrew people. For them, it’s simply a matter of reverence. You don’t refer to God with too much familiarity because you never want to lose sight of his awesome holiness.

So what about us? Maybe you’re wondering…. Should we spell God without the ‘O’? Should we too never pronounce the personal name of God, YaHWeH? Like the Jewish people, should we consider it so holy that it should never cross our unholy lips?

Well, I just said it, didn’t I? So there’s your answer. With no disrespect to Jewish tradition here, I would point out to you to that this is simply a tradition, not a Scriptural mandate. In fact, to the contrary, I believe Scripture actually invites us and commands us to call upon the name of the LORD. Of course, we should do it with all appropriate reverence and respect, but I believe we can do it, literally. I believe YaHWeH is not offended when we call Him by the name he has revealed to us… otherwise, ask yourself this: Why would he have revealed it in the first place?

For example, let me direct your attention to two relevant examples, one from Scripture and one from the realm of our experience:

First, consider the invitation I just mentioned a moment ago. It’s an invitation repeated throughout Scripture, but here’s one example, found in Isaiah 12:4. The prophet wrote, and presumably spoke as well…

Ref. Isaiah 12:1-6.

In that day you will say:[What day? Our day… the day of salvation!… the day after Isaiah 11 has been fulfilled!]

“I will praise you, Lord.Although you were angry with me,your anger has turned awayand you have comforted me.

2 Surely God is my salvation;I will trust and not be afraid.

*The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defense;he has become my salvation.”

*3 With joy you will draw waterfrom the wells of salvation.

4 In that day you will say:“Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;

**make known among the nations what he has done,and proclaim that his name is exalted.

*5 Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things;*let this be known to all the world.

*6 Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion,*for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.”

So here’s the question: If we are to honor the spirit of this prophetic proclamation we must proclaim the name of the LORD, which is YaHWeH. We must exalt his name, and make it known among the nations. For it is indeed, the Name above all names… it is the personal name of the One and Only True and Living God of the Universe!

Worship isn't simply an act of singing that we enter into on Sunday mornings. It’s a mindset of reverence before the Lord, which leads to the giving of praise and honor. How do we do that? You can sing to YaHWeH. You can shout to YaHWeH. You can pray to YahWeH. You can testify to the goodness of YaHWeH. In all of it, in every possible expression we can think of, we are meant to exalt his name and make it known among the nations.

Now, in closing, I want you to think about a singular word, or exclamation, of praise that you have probably spoken or sung hundreds - if not thousands - of times over the course of your life. Do you know what word I’m thinking of?

It’s the word ‘Hallelujah’.

Do you know what the two key parts of this word are, what it means?

The first part, Hallelu, is the second person imperative plural form of the verb ‘Hillel’, meaning to praise, or boast. So in it’s imperative form, Hallelu would literally be translated, "Praise Be" or “Be Praised”.

But here’s where it gets really interesting. Have you ever heard this, or thought about the significance of this?

The second part of the word ‘Hallelujah' is ‘ ah', which is short for YaHWeH. In other words, think of Yah as the short form, or nickname for YaHWeH.

This means that every time you say or sing the word Hallelujah, you’re literally saying or singing ‘Praise be to YaH!' Praise be to YaHWeH, for his is the name above all names. So whether you knew it or not, every time that you've spoken or sung the word Hallelu Yah, you have been proclaiming and exalting the name of God.

And furthermore, as we’ll discover and discuss next week, the Hebrew name of Jesus is pronounced, ‘Yahshua’, which literally means ‘Yah saves’. So Hallelu Yah! He’s in on this action too!

Friends, as I wrap this up for today, here’s the bottom line takeaway I want to leave you with this morning: to know God personally is to know him by name. But it’s also to know his character… that is, his supreme holiness… and to relate to him accordingly. It’s to know that He wants to be known. And It’s to know that He is always present with us. Yet, at the same time, it’s also to know that He alone is Holy and worthy of all worship.

Closing Invitation:

How well do you really know Him?

What I want to fix your attention on through this series of messages over the fall season is the fundamental question: “Do you know the one true God of the universe personally and intimately, and is that knowledge continuing to grow deeper?” Do you know how He is present with you? And do you know how He is greater than you?

Illustration: Herbert Spencer’s bird in space analogy. (Little, p.27)

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