Sermon Tone Analysis

!! Setting the Context

            Today’s passage is somewhat of a mystery for us.

Countess volumes of books have been written about this event at the burning bush.

There are some tough questions we need to ask in order for this encounter between God and Moses to come alive and make sense.

We need to get to the bottom of what this discussion between God and Moses is all about in order for this passage to show a clear meaning for how it applies to us today as well.

Here are the questions that stand before us for this morning.

Why does Moses need to know God’s name?

What is God’s name?

What does that name mean?  That’s the way we’re going to proceed this morning is to work around those three questions.

So here we go.

!! Why does Moses need to know God’s name?

Before we get into the details of what this name of God is all about it will be extremely helpful for us to set up the context by reminding ourselves why Moses needs to know this.

We should not forget that Moses is not the leader of Israel yet here.

Moses was raised in the palace of the Pharaoh.

Moses probably knew the gods and religious forms of the Egyptians, but it was not very likely at all that Moses knew the religion of the Hebrews with any kind of great detail.

It is completely speculative if he would have remembered anything from the first year of his life that he lived with his biological mother among the Jewish people.

It seems more likely that anything Moses knew about the God of the Israelites he learned by association later.

For all practical purposes we cannot forget that Moses grew up as an Egyptian.

We also have to remember in the story that the whole reason Moses is away from Egypt now is because he is a fugitive—wanted for murder.

Moses left because nobody wanted him around.

The Jewish people did not want him; the Egyptians were trying to kill him.

And now this God shows up in a burning bush and Moses needs to ask, “Who are you again?”

You see what is underneath the need for Moses to know the name of God.

His objection to doing what God asks him to do is totally about credibility.

Moses thinks he has none.

Moses thinks to himself, “There’s not a single reason in the world why anybody back in Egypt is going to listen to me or believe me.”

Moses is asking, “Who are you that people are going to listen, because they sure aren’t going to listen to me?”  Moses understands that his name does not carry any weight; his name holds no credibility.

So he asks God what his name is as a way of finding credibility.

Does this God have the authority to take on the powers of Egypt?

Who is this God that he can make a challenge like this?

            Remember what we have said about names in this series of sermons.

Remember that names are more than what people call you.

Names hold meaning.

In fact the Hebrew word for name can also mean reputation or character or remembrance.

When we read in our English Bibles that Moses asks God, “What is your name?”

We could also translate the question to read, “What is your reputation?

What is your character?”

Moses has no experience with the God of the Hebrews up to this point in the story.

He knows very little about the Hebrew God.

He wants to know of God’s authority and character.

!! Why Do We Need to Know God’s Name?

In short, Moses knows that he is completely inadequate for the task.

He knows that this assignment from God is not something that he can deliver on his own.

And how often is that the case for us as well?

How often do we find ourselves in situations where we wonder how we can ever do the right thing and still come out okay?  Or how often don’t we find ourselves facing enormous hurdles between us and the path God has set before us.

And in those moments how many times have we looked at those obstacles and said—like Moses—no thanks, God.

Find somebody else, God.

Don’t send me to do this, God.

This is more than I can handle, God.

And we turn away because we don’t think we have the strength to face the challenge.

We doubt God’s ability to take care of us when we cannot.

We forget God’s name.

We forget God’s reputation.

We forget God’s character.

We need to know and remember God’s name too.

!! What Is the Name?

So what is this name?

What is it about God’s name that is so full of character and hope that it convinces Moses to follow God’s command?

Let’s work together through a little bit of explanation about God’s name itself.

We should start by noting that the Bible has a generic name for God.

That’s the Hebrew word /Elohim/.

/Elohim/ means god in a general sense.

When the Bible talks about the other gods of the Egyptians and the gods of the Canaanites it uses the word /Elohim/ to talk about those gods.

And the God of the Bible is referred to by that generic name as well—but often with additions.

For example God almighty is /El Shaddai/.

And God Most High is /El Elyon/.

You see, /Elohim/ was simply a way to name any supernatural spiritual power.

It was not a personal name.

And this was a name the Israelites used to refer to God—but not in a personal way.

So here in our passage for today God reveals his personal name to Moses.

Now the next thing we should note about this name is that—while it is new to Moses and to us the readers—it is not a new name to the Israelites.

God is not revealing a name for himself that has never been revealed before to anyone before Moses hears it at the burning bush.

Because the whole reason Moses asks God for his name is so that he can convince the elders of Israel that it is in fact the one true God of the Hebrews that sent him to them.

So the elders of Israel must already know the personal name of God.

And besides that, God reveals his personal name in the same sentence as saying that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Hebrew construction of this passage strongly suggests that the patriarchs knew the personal name of God as well.

So now Moses—and us too—know that personal name of God.

The name is Yahweh.

Our English Bibles translate it as “I AM” which is the best possible guess because there simply is no English word that captures all the Yahweh means.

If you remember an old King James Bible, the King James translators expressed Yahweh—the name of God—as Jehovah.

In our NIV Bible translations we can always tell where the original Hebrew refers to God as Yahweh because our Bibles translate it as LORD in all capital letters.

You see that there in verse 15 where God says, “the LORD, the God of your fathers…” and so on.

What does this name mean?

Why would God reveal himself as Yahweh—I AM?  Well, Yahweh expresses being.

More than that Yahweh expresses an actively present being.

Yahweh is not just a God who is there; Yahweh is actively there.

And he continues to be there.

Now work hard with me here.

I’m going to take you back to middle school grammar for a minute.

As a part of speech, Yahweh is a verb.

You remember that verbs are words that express action.

And Yahweh is a form of the verb “to be.”

Keep working with me here.

In English we express verbs in past tense, present tense, and future tense.

We say yesterday the boy ran to the store—past tense.

Today look at the boy run to the store—present tense.

Tomorrow the boy will run to the store—future tense.

Then we have this tense in English that expresses ongoing action, or continuing action that will keep going.

That’s called an imperfect verb.

We usually express that in English by putting an “ing” on the end of a verb.