Exodus: Who is God?

Welcome to the sermon. Last week, we explored Moses's question, "Who am I?" Today, we tackle the other great question from the burning bush: "Who are you, God?" We're diving into Exodus 3 to explore the profound meaning behind the name God reveals for Himself—a name full of mystery and power, which is ultimately and most clearly revealed in the person of Jesus.

Scripture References

• Exodus 3:13-15: Moses asks for God's name, and God reveals Himself as "I AM WHO I AM."
• John 8:56-59: Jesus declares, "Before Abraham was, I AM," identifying Himself as Yahweh.
• Hebrews 12:29: "For our God is a consuming fire."
• Colossians 1:15-20: A description of Jesus as the supreme and exact image of the invisible God.

Key Points

1. Why Moses Asks for a Name

Moses wasn't just asking for a label. In a world of many gods, he needed more than a title; he was asking for God's character and power. He needed to understand who this God was so he could confidently lead the Israelites. It was a request for a deeper revelation of God's very nature.

2. The Mysterious Name: "I AM" (YHWH)

God's answer is a profound riddle: "I AM WHO I AM." This reveals His personal name, YHWH (often translated as "the LORD"), which points to His self-existence, His eternal and unchangeable nature, and His power as Creator. Like the burning bush itself, God's name is both inviting and holy—the fire draws us in with fascination but also warns us with its power. It's an invitation to spend a lifetime getting to know this mysterious, all-powerful God.

3. Jesus is the Answer to the Riddle

The mystery of God's name finds its ultimate answer in Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus repeatedly uses "I AM" statements ("I am the good shepherd," "I am the vine," etc.) and makes the staggering declaration, "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58). He wasn't just pointing to Yahweh; He was identifying Himself as Yahweh in the flesh. If the name YHWH was the introduction, Jesus is the full story.

Conclusion

The name of God, Yahweh, is not just an ancient fact; it's an invitation into a relationship with the self-existent, all-powerful Creator. Jesus is the final and clearest revelation of this name. He is Yahweh in the flesh, the perfect image of the invisible God, making the mysterious known. To truly know the great "I AM," we must know Jesus.

Calls to Action

1. Bow to Jesus: If you have never surrendered to Him, recognize Him today as the one true God, Yahweh in the flesh.
2. Ask for the Fire: If your faith has grown stagnant, pray for the fire of the Holy Spirit to burn away your boredom and fascinate you with God's presence anew.
3. Go Deeper: Move beyond knowing facts about God to pursuing an experiential relationship with God through Jesus.

Transcript

I'm going to pray for Glenn. Thank you, Jesus, for this gift. Lord of Glenn, of his life, Lord. And we pray, Lord, we want to have our ears wide open. Lord, to receive from, all that you've put in his heart, all that you've, spoken to him, Lord. And so we just, we stand in a place of, like, openness to hear and to receive all that you would want to say to us today and bless Glenn's life and, we thank you for the gifts of of Glenn Power.

In Jesus name, Amen. Evan? Evan volunteered. Actually, he was volun-told to read this this morning, so. This is Exodus three, starting at verse 13. Then Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, then the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they ask me, what is his name?

What shall I say to them? 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 also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, 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. In this I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Seven all right. We asked for, just your help this morning, Lord. We ask for a spirit of wisdom and revelation that you would just speak to us. Amen. Or that passage is a little bit shorter than last week. I spoken to Larry last. I think Travis did the same passage this last week here in Visalia, but it was most of chapters three and four.

So to Larry, we were standing up for like five minutes as the chapters were being read. So we are on the same chapters that we were in last week. We're just going to focus on one little short part of it. So if you remember last week, Moses asked, a couple of different questions. He asked, who am I and who are you?

Those are kind of like his two main questions. He actually asked them more than that, and he kind of went back and forth with God for a while. Five excuses, actually. But in those five excuses, there are these two main questions. And we're going to focus on that second question that that who are you? And we're going to focus on the name of God.

God gives his name in this chapter. Did you know that God has a name? I mean, we know that he has lots of names, you know, like Shepherd, Father Creator, but like he has one name that he gave in the Old Testament. When somebody asked the first time somebody ever asked, like, what is your name? He actually gave them a name.

So that's pretty significant. So we're going to we're going to go into that a little bit because I was thinking about names in general this week. I was I looked up the most popular names over the last couple of years, and they were not really what I expected. Most popular male name of 2024. Anybody have any guesses on that?

Sure sure sure sure, sure. Mohammed. Not in America. Not America was not this. Good guess it was actually Liam. And he. Liam's here. I guess they're all at neighborhood church. Where's. Where's all the Liam's? Oh, my gosh, it was the most. We should have some baby. Liam's most popular name. So we don't often think of the meanings of our names.

A lot of times we name our child because we like the way it sounds, which is totally cool. But names in the Bible names in ancient times had really significant meanings. I was looking up some of these meanings. Liam actually means helmet of will. Okay, interesting. Couple of years ago, the most popular male name was Oliver, which can mean olive tree, or it can mean elf army, which I personally prefer.

But back in ancient times, whenever you called somebody their name, it was like there was no language barrier. You were just calling the definition of their name, you know? So you're calling Liam and you're like, helmet, helmet of will come here, you know, or Oliver Olive tree or, you know, Oliver hits his sister elf army. Stop it.

You know, like you're you're you're saying the name. It's saying the meaning of the name when you say it, which is very different than today. When one Bible teacher explained it like this, he said names were, this John Mark. Common names were way more than labels to pick up your coffee at the end of the bar.

Names were your autobiography in one word, and I just thought that was a really helpful way to explain it. Your autobiography, in one word. So I want to ask a few questions of our text, and part of it's going to get a little bit heady, a little bit nerdy, all right. So you guys prepared to go a little bit a little bit dense for a few minutes here.

We'll we'll pull out of it at the end and make it applicable. But the first question is why does Moses ask for a name in the first place? Doesn't it seem like kind of a weird question, like, Shouldn't Moses know who God is? Shouldn't he know his name? So I'm going to read this again. Exodus 313 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? Okay, so why does he need a name? Why does he think the people of Israel will ask this? This kind of reminds me of landline telephones. Those of you who remember that, like we would have a phone that several people shared, and a lot of times you'd say, can I, can I tell them who's calling?

It kind of feels like one of those kind of moments like, hey, can I can I tell them who's calling? Like, what's your name? Or is Moses doing kind of like an asking for a friend thing, like where he's really asking for himself? Like, what if what if they ask me, God, your name? But Moses really wants to know his name.

Is it like that? Here's there's a couple answers to this. The first answer is this divine names were especially important in a polytheistic, so that just means many gods culture. Okay, so we might just be okay with the name God, but back then there were many gods with many different names and meanings, and so Pharaoh himself claimed to be a god.

There were multiple deities with detailed backstories, so this would have been a really normal question in that day. Like, well, can I give them a name of the God that's that's sending me? Now, the the second part of this is, the name Yahweh. The name that God gives in this passage is used all throughout the book of Genesis.

So this is another confusing part is why wouldn't Moses know the name? Why couldn't he just go in and tell them the name of the Lord Yahweh? So again, thinking this through, perhaps Moses never grew up with the actual name of God. Maybe his forefathers knew it, but he never knew it. That's one option. Another option is that he knew the name of God.

But the other Israelites, they would have wanted to make sure they would have wanted to confirm that Moses knew the name of God. So it would have been almost like a secret password, like, okay, God spoke to you. Well, what was his name? You know, prove that you're talking about the same God that we're talking about. So I think there might be validity to all of these answers, but there's probably more to it than that.

And it goes back to the way I started that names were more than just a name. They were a meaning. There was a meaning behind it. So this is why, scholar Christopher Wright has to say about Moses asking this question. He says, Moses, this question does not necessarily imply that he had no knowledge of the name Yahweh itself.

Rather, what he is asking for is a fuller understanding of the God whose name that is, what is his character and power. What can Moses tell the Israelites in Egypt about this God? This explains why God's answer is not simply to announce the name itself, but rather to describe himself in dynamic verbal terms. First, and then to connect that description to the name of Yahweh.

And I know that's still a little bit wordy, the dynamic verbal terms. We're going to get into that in a second. But the main point for now is our answer number two is that Moses was asking for more, more insight into God's character so he'd be better equipped to talk to the Israelites so it wasn't just about the name.

It wasn't just a secret password. Moses is saying, I need to know more about you before I can be equipped as a deliverer and a leader, you need to tell me your name and more about your character. So then I can go to the rest of the Israelites prepared. Okay, so that's question number one. Why did he ask the name?

Second question is what is the name? This might have been confusing as we were reading the actual passage, so I wanted to just again, we're I know we're getting kind of dense and nerdy here, but I think it's helpful. So what is the name of God? Let's let's go over what he says again, because the more I looked at it this week, the more confusing it became as I reflected God's answer.

So first God says, I am who I am. Okay, that's helpful right? Secondly, he says, I am. Say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. Then he says, say this to the people of Israel, 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.

So is God's name. I am who I am. Is it I am or is it the Lord? Because he says all three in a row. Tell them this is my name. No, no, no, tell them this is my name. Then tell them this is my name. Okay, so let's get into it. All right? You guys are looking like you're really paying attention.

So I feel like we're. This is better than I expected. Actually, I thought you guys would be super bored with this part. So the first part, I am who I am. We could call this in it like an expansion or an explanation of the name. The name comes later. Okay. Spoiler the name is the third one, the Lord or Yahweh.

But this first part, I am who I am. It's like an explanation. It would be like. So we named our first daughter Junea. Jerusalem Power. And most people, you know, we tell him her name is Junea and they're like, oh, that's so sweet, that's so pretty. But if we tell him the full name, we go Junea Jerusalem. And right about the time we say Jerusalem, they're like, oh, an interesting that's a fun choice.

You know, like something like that. It's like it always catches people off guard, like, oh, that's interesting. You went with that name. And so it would be like if I was telling somebody her name and I gave some qualifiers or some explanation around it. I'm like junior Jerusalem, you know, like the city of Jerusalem, you know, like Jerusalem in the Bible, like the most important city in the Bible, the city of peace.

You know, like if I gave some of these excellent explanatory terms, then that's kind of what's going on here. Now, there's just one problem with this. In the example I just gave, it was more clarifying when God gives his clarifying terms, it is more confusing, isn't it? What's your name? I am, I am who I am. Oh, okay.

All right. We're gonna come back to that.

Secondly, he tells them the shorter version, which is tell them that I am sent you. It's like, okay, that's a little bit easier. I am still a little weird, but. And then the third one, he says, tell them that the Lord sent you. Okay, this is last three minutes of Bible facts. Nerdy time. So that name of the Lord is super important in the Old Testament, and you may not catch this if you're just reading through your English translation, because most of the time it'll just say Lord in all capitals.

Capital letters. Have you ever wondered that? Like why? Why capital letters? What's going on there? Well, they're actually using that for the divine name that God gives Moses from this very passage. This is the only time that he explains it and says, this is my name. And he actually says, this is my name forever, you know, not just for a short period of time.

This is my name forever. Okay, so what is the name itself? It actually is. I'm not sure what slide I'm on, but it's for Hebrew consonants. See what I this is getting confusing, but it's YHWH the help.

Okay, this leads us to our last question here. What does the name of God mean? Okay. This name, you know YHWH, this is called the Tetragrammaton. Okay. If you want to impress your friends, just tell them that you learned about the Tetragrammaton in church today. This is the this is the name that God gives. But why is it just four consonants?

You know, earlier I've been saying things like Yahweh, why is it just these and not the word Yahweh? Well, Philip, right, and explains here he says, the Jews consider these letters to be so sacred that later some of them even refuse to pronounce the Lord's name for fear of taking it in vain. Perhaps that is why the proper way to pronounce the divine name has been forgotten.

Part of the problem, too, is that the most ancient Hebrew manuscripts do not contain any vowels, only consonants, so to say it another way, after centuries of the Jews refusing to say the full name out loud, the full pronunciation was lost to history. So all we have is the four Hebrew consonants that were preserved in these early manuscripts.

So now we are left to guess what the proper pronunciation of the Divine Name was. And most scholars think that Yahweh is the way it was probably pronounced, but we don't know that for sure. This. This is our best guess from scholarship. What we do know, and I know this may be the most disturbing part of the message, but what we do know is that Jehovah was not the right way to say the name.

This is an inaccurate rendering of the Hebrew. So Philip, right? King again says that the King James Version of the Bible sometimes writes it out as Jehovah, although this is based on a misunderstanding of Hebrew vowels that dates back to the medieval church. So this is bad news for the Jehovah's Witnesses, who base a lot of their confidence on being the ones that know the actual correct name of God.

But we now know from scholarship that it for sure was not Jehovah. And I won't get really off into the details of why we know that, but we do know that for sure. So the King James is incorrect when it renders it Jehovah. Now on a yeah. Travis, as mentioned before, we have a teaching team and I'm thankful because I'm more of a teacher and everyone else in the teaching team is more of a pastor.

And when we are talking about this, all of their, like, pastoral gifts kicked in and they're like, man, that's going to be really hard for people. Like, we've been singing Jehovah Jireh songs like ever since we were kids. I was like, that's a good point. I ain't think about that. Like I was just going to tell them I was wrong and move on.

And so thankful to Jared and Ralph who brought this up. God, God knows our hearts. Okay, so every time that you sing Jehovah Jireh or Jehovah Rapha, like he knows what you're saying and those things are still true about God, he is still God. Our healer. He is still God the provider. Okay, so don't that. Like don't don't let it rob your childhood faith from you that Jehovah is not the real name of God.

Okay, I am who I am. It's a bit of a riddle, right? It's it's a bit of a it's an explanation that really doesn't clarify things at all. The I am who I am. There's something mysterious about Yahweh, the name of God. And and the more I thought about, the more beautiful that became. Actually, that Yahweh is this mysterious I am who I am.

Or you could also translate it. I will be who I will be, or Tim Keller translates it. I am being itself, I just I love all this. Here's another quote to just kind of sum up all the different meanings that this mysterious name has to it. The divine name Yahweh has suggested to scholars a range of likely nuances of meaning that God is self-existent and therefore not dependent on anything else for his own existence.

Okay, this is the fact that God is not created, okay? And I know this is like this hurts our brain to think about that. God had no beginning and he has no end. But this is the self existence of God, and there's something really edifying about just meditating on if it doesn't make you crazy, then it then it builds you up.

You know, the self existence of God. Number two, that God is the creator and sustainer of all that exists. So, so everything came from him. And it's like the famous kid question like, well, if God made everything, who made God? It's like it just he he is. It goes back to the divine name. I am who I am.

He's the one who is. No one created him. Okay? Number three, that God is immutable and that means he's unchangeable. God is immutable in his being and character, and thus is not in the process of becoming something different from what he is. Example the same yesterday and today and forever. And lastly, that God is eternal and his exist existence.

Well, each of these points is true of God. The main focus in this passage is on the Lord's promise to be with Moses and his people. So in a sense, when God is giving the divine name, it's almost like he's saying, you can't change who I am. No one created me. I am who I am. There is nothing before me.

There will be nothing after me. And so now I want you to spend the rest of your life understanding what that means for you and getting to know my character and getting to know my ways. So this as soon as I started to kind of understand, like the mysterious nature of the name of God, I realized that God appeared to Moses in fire, and I started to see similarities between the fire of the burning bush and the mystery of God's name, Yahweh.

There's a lot of similarities to it, because what does fire do? Fire draws us in, right? There's there's something about fire. I mean, if you get a bunch of guys together with pizza and a TV on, usually the conversation stays pretty superficial, right? Pretty surface level. But if you get a bunch of guys around a fire at night, like we start going deep, we start opening it up.

There's something about fire that just draws us out of us. And it's it's fascinating. Like, you can just look at flames for minutes on end, if not an hour. You know, just you're just drawn in by the fire of it. But what else is true about fire? It's, It's sobering. You don't want to get too close. It can burn you.

So there's all these things that are true of of God and the mystery of who he is that are also true of fire. Which is why God shows up in the Old Testament. So often in fire. It's like his favorite way to show up, to show that, hey, I'm not to be messed with on the one hand, but I'm also the most fascinating and exciting being that you've ever known.

This is what's true of God. Where does God show up in fire? He shows up a pillar of fire. In Exodus, Zechariah says that God will be a wall of fire around his people. Elijah sees the fire of God come down more than one time and was eventually taken to heaven and chariots of fire. And Daniel sees a vision of God, and his throne was fiery flames.

And this is just barely scratching the surface of the Old Testament. We I actually heard a sermon in my 20s on the fire of God, where the preacher went through every book of the Bible and talked about the fire of God. Why is this? Hebrews 1229 says, Our God is a consuming fire.

And these are three things that I just as I was trying to, kind of explain this and write this out with this fire, God warms us with his love. It's that inviting, appealing, compassionate nature of God. He warms us with his love through his fire. But then secondly, he warns us with his holy nature. Remember what he told Moses?

He said, take off your shoes for the ground. You're standing on his holy ground. And then lastly, with this fire, God welcomes us deeper into intimacy. And that's that fascinating part of it. God is doing all of these things when he shows up to Moses at the burning bush and at the very end of the Bible, Jesus shows up to the apostle John.

And the description is that his eyes are like a flame of fire, and he's doing the same things. He's he's welcoming him, he's warning him, and he's warming him with his love all at the same time with his eyes of fire. Okay, let's, let's start to move forward in the Bible. So God gives this name. It's a bit of a riddle.

It's a bit of a mystery, but it draws us in and it's like God is inviting us into a lifetime of getting to know him. And as we continue to read through the Bible story, we find out that God is rescuer. Father Emmanuel, judge, warrior, Holy. And again, this is just scratching the surface of the nature and character of God.

We could we could make ten pages, of of names, you know, and just go through them all, all the ways that God reveals himself after he reveals himself as the I am, who I am. But something really unique happens in the New Testament. Yahweh does more than give us a new name for himself. He becomes flesh. He becomes human.

And so when Jesus steps on the scene, he does something more than just point to Yahweh, which he does. He was always pointing to the father. He was always leading people to the father. But he does something more radical than that. He actually identifies himself as Yahweh. And we see this the most clearly in the book of John.

In the book of John there are so many I am statements. Jesus is saying, I am the good Shepherd, I am the vine, I am the Messiah, I am shows up again and again. And what he's doing, subtly but not so subtly, is saying I'm the one who appeared to Moses in the burning bush. That's me. So let's let's read maybe the the clearest passage of this in John eight.

In John 856 or 59, it says, Jesus is talking, and he says, your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. And just think of the audacity of a man, a rabbi, in front of them, saying this like Abraham, your favorite guy from the Bible was looking forward to me coming on the scene.

Okay, but it actually gets way more radical than that. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was, I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

So he doesn't say before Abraham what? Before Abraham was, I was like, that would have been crazy, right? Saying that he's 3000, 4000 years old, he says, before Abraham was, I am connecting himself with the divine name of God. So now we know why they picked up stones to to stone him, because this was blasphemy in their eyes.

It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis would always say about Jesus, that he's either he's a liar, he's a lunatic, or he really is. Lord. But there's no in between. There's no him being just a good teacher or a nice man, which is where most people like to land. Like, yeah, I like Jesus is cool. Like he's got great ethics, he's got great morals, he's a great teacher.

You you can't in intellectual honesty land there because Jesus himself claimed to be Yahweh. So he he's either insane like he was just a walking, walking around as a lunatic, or he was a liar, like he was demonized. I mean, he was sent to earth to deceive people, or he truly was God in the flesh. And we see this with Jesus pulling out all of these statements, connecting himself with Yahweh.

Now, to make this connection, because there's another thing we talked about as a teaching team. What what is the name? What's what's the value of the name of Yahweh? Now that we have the name of Jesus, we we know that the name of Jesus is preeminent. That acts acts 412 says that there's no other name under heaven by which we may be saved.

It's the name of Jesus that saves us. It's Jesus that shows us who God is. So what is? What is the value of the name of Yahweh? Well, the way I put it together, and this is just my way of explaining it, is if the divine name was a riddle, then Jesus is the answer to the riddle. If the divine name was an introduction, then Jesus is the conclusion.

If the divine name Yahweh was the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, then Jesus is the exclamation point at the end. But we need the whole sentence, right? You can't just have an exclamation point by itself. We need the whole story of God and the way he's revealed himself to us. We need the whole story to see what God is really like and to get to know him.

But Jesus is the final revelation. He's the one who shows us who Yahweh is in the clearest way. I want to end with this passage from Colossians talking about Jesus, and I just want to I just want to charge us. I mean, if you if you do not know Jesus at all today, this would be a great day to get to know him, to to bow to him as Lord.

If you've never done that before, to surrender your life to him, the one who is Yahweh in flesh come to save us from our sins. But maybe you, you know God. Maybe you've known him for a long time, but maybe your relationship with him is kind of superficial. It's kind of surface level. This would be a time to ask for the fire of God to come and fascinate you in a new way, to ask the for the fire of God to come and purify you from compromising your life.

Come to us, God, the same way that you came to Moses in the burning bush. Show yourself to us in a new way. We want to hear you call our name just the way he calls in Moses, Moses and Moses was. He was ruined forever. His whole life was changed. We want to encounter God like that. Knowing God is more than just a mental exercise.

It's more than just like, okay, I got the facts right. Like, I know the verses, I know these these true statements about his nature. It's a it's an experience of relationship with him. And that involves his presence, his fire, intimacy with him. So actually, let's end by let's stand up. And I'm just going to read this, Colossians passage over us about Jesus, the one who shows us Yahweh better than any one or anything else in Colossians one says this Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile him to him, to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And we just ask God that you would come and just show yourself to each person here today in a special way, in a new way.

Lord, we do invite the fire of the Holy Spirit to come where we've been bored with God. Would you come and burn away our boredom today, Lord? Yes. Where we've been stagnant in our relationship with you, God, would you encounter us and move us forward today where we've been caught in sin and compromise? Lord, would you give us a fresh fear of the Lord today that you're the I am?

You're the beautiful one. You're the consuming fire. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.