Names of God: Yahweh

Introduction

One reason I’ve come to love the OT, is because it seeks to bring us to the very reality of who we are as humans and how we live in the midst of this broken world.

Who Is this?

Is a question that is seeking not only to know about someone but often of whether they can be trusted

We subtly ask this about each other

Dating is about this

Many ask of Jesus as we are going through Luke

Perhaps a question that you are asking about God right now.

Names of God - tell us about who he is

Sometimes revealed by God himself, other times through peoples experience of Him

Elohim, Jehovah, Yahweh

so let’s go to the story of the Exodus 3:13-20

I. Land of Many “gods”

In Egypt 430 years -

Exodus 12:40 ESV

The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.

Now Joseph has died

New King over Egypt, who did not know Joseph - significance of

Fully immersed in Egyptian culture - if you’ve ever been apart of a group for a long period of time you begin to pick up their culture. - ie. negative work enviroment

We have a culture in our church

Egypt had a “religious” culture

Exodus 2. Revelation of the Name Yahweh (3:13–15)

Theirs was a polytheistic, pantheistic, and syncretistic world in which all people groups and nations—there are no known exceptions—believed that there were many gods, that all nature partook to some degree of divinity, and that all religions had at least some validity no matter how many or what sort of gods or goddesses those religions worshiped and regardless of the contradictions a modern person can immediately see between any two such religions.

lets look at vs 13-18

Moses comes across a non-burning burning bush

Out of which God calls him to return to Egypt to lead the Israelites out

Here Moses is in his second objection

If I come to....and they ask what is His name? vs 13

Name - is who a person is

Which god is He?

Many gods in Egypt

Many gods today

god of political ideology

god of money, success, fame, acceptance

god of comfort and peace

god of power

god of family

Which God is He?

Had they compromised? Forgotten? Mixed?

I don’t really know my families story past 100 yrs - can get lost over time

The god of their fathers? who had been silent for 400+ yrs as Egypt grew in power and reach under the power of their gods while Israel now found themselves as slaves, mistreated and controlled

Would they really want to worship Him?

Joshua 24:14 ESV

“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

App: Who is our God?

Maybe this was the reality for Moses as well

II. Place of Holy Ground

So God looks to reestablish himself for Moses and through Him for Israel

So let’s jump back to the the beginning of this encounter

The place of Holy ground where Moses first meets this “god”

So what does He learn? vs 1-6

A. The God who was before

i. Creation

a. Humans

b. Nation of Israel

ii. Promise

a. Great Nation

b. Land

Genesis 12:1–3 ESV

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

God brings Moses back into the story of His people and purpose

But Where has he been?

B. The God of presence

What made this place Holy?

The presence of God

Moses was literally meeting with God

end of vs 6

God was present vs Egyptian gods

Even when God seems silent he is still there

God was about to be physically present in and through Moses

10 plagues

Elijah and the prophets of Baal

C. The God of controlled power

The burning yet not burnt bush vs 2

The writer of Hebrews says, “Our God is a consuming fire”

And yet here God is not consuming

And so this god is not looking to destroy Moses/Israel

But rather God is about to use this power for His purpose and His people

But will eventually consume Egypt

Remember this statement of God to Moses as God passes in front of Moses in chapter 34

Exodus 34:6–7 ESV

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

App: in the midst of silence we need to hold to who He has said He is. Until...

App: What places of Holy ground has God taken you to? How has he shown himself to you?

III. Name of Israel’s God

Yahweh - I am what/who I am

What does this mean?

A. He sets the Standard

God’s of Egypt

i. We don’t define who God is

ii. We don’t define what it means to be truly human

iii. He is perfect

ie. love, mercy, justice

B. He will always be that

i. We cannot look at ourselves

ii. God is not like us, we are to be like Him

iii. He does not change who He is.

This does not mean that he doesn’t relent or change his mind - He is not immovable

2 Chapters before what leads to the revelation of God to Moses in chapter 34, the Israelites create and worship the golden calf

Let’s look at the interaction of Moses with God, as God

Exodus 32:9–14 ESV

And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

Moses appealed to God’s mercy and promise not changed who God was

And in this God was perfect

Application:

A. Yahweh can be trusted to always do what is right because he is perfect.

Can he really?

As we look at our world we can make conclusions about God, that are untrue

God is uncaring, unloving, ok with suffering, removed, absent

God is not, we are experiencing what we have chosen in a general corporate way, and God has worked to provide the way to life in the midst of all of this and

God is not revealed by suffering but in it.

So Paul can say:

Romans 8:31–39 ESV

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

B. He has called us to be His presence in this world

not because we are perfect but because he is

And to testify to His greatness

Conclusion