Knowing God’s Name

Exodus Knowing God’s Name

Text: Exodus 33:17-34:9

Intro: Every one of us walks into this room with assumptions about God. Some of them are intentional but most of them are not. These assumptions are shaped by how we were raised, what we’ve walked through, the prayers that felt unanswered, the sins we wish we could erase, and the people who told us what God was like—sometimes rightly, sometimes not. The danger isn’t that we don’t think about God enough. The danger is that we think about Him wrong.

In Exodus 33, Moses finds himself in a moment of failure. God’s people have sinned. The covenant has been broken. Moses feels the weight of leadership, human failure, and the terrifying holiness of God. In the middle of all that, Moses asks one of the boldest requests in all of Scripture: “Show me Your glory.”

God’s response is surprising. He doesn’t give Moses a vision he can fully handle or offer an explanation he can master. Instead, God reveals His name—His character—because what Moses needs most isn’t more information about God, but a deeper understanding of who God truly is.

Today we carefully look at what God really is like. Because when God reveals Himself, it changes everything: how we see Him, how we trust Him, and how we respond to Him.

1. God Reveals His Glory
   1. God responded to Moses’ request of show me your glory in two ways:
      1. He placed Moses in the cleft of a rock and let him see his exhaust because that was all he could handle 34:20-22. God places him in the cleft of the rock because Moses couldn’t find a safe place otherwise. This moment is beyond our ability to picture.
      2. As He passed by, the Lord proclaimed His name or His character to Moses. 34:19 Who am I is an important question that many people can’t answer but God who knows all things reveals who His essence is to Moses and to us.
      3. This is the passage that I go to when someone says can you explain to me who God is.
   2. LORD used twice.
      1. Yhwh or yahweh was so sacred that the Israelite people wouldn’t even say the name
      2. The same name that God revealed to Moses at the burning bush.
      3. It means “I am or, I am who I am” His name reflects his uniqueness, his self-sufficiency, and his self-existence.
      4. Peter Enns calls this God’s salvation name. He always has been and always will be. The LORD is the God of salvation and creation. He saves and made people.
   3. God is too much for our brains. The finite will never fully understand the infinite. The LORD, who is infinite, chooses the following names to describe Himself. Do you feel the weight of this description?

• How do you picture God? One who is never pleased with you, one who has taken a picture of you in your worst moment and will never forget what you have done. We think God loves us but doesn’t like us in spite of what God has done for us. Others picture God as Santa Claus who gives gifts when we have been good and give coal when we have been bad - this lacks grace. Grace is when God blesses you when you don’t deserve it. You don’t eat dinner but you still get dessert. Some see God as an absentee Father who has child support and he has us for about 90 minutes on the weekend. When you think lowly of God you will live lowly for God.
• What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

A.W. Tozer Knowledge of The Holy

1. When we think better about God we will live better for God. We must get His name right.
2. This is why the Scriptures are so important. We don’t have to guess what God is like, how He relates to us or how He wants us relating to him because God has revealed Himself to us in His Word. This verse is repeated in scripture. Ps. 86:15, 103:8, 145:8
3. The common denominator in all of the names of God describing Himself is that they assume our own failure.The passage begins with God telling Moses to cut out two tablets of stone for God to rewrite the law on.
   1. God is reminding Moses of his failure as he broke the tablets of stone when he saw the people worshipping a golden calf.
   2. Moses would carry these stones up Mt. Sinai alone. Have you ever carried stone tablets? Up a mountain? I haven’t but I assume it’s not easy especially for an 80 year old.
   3. The ten commandments are a covenantal relational agreement between God and His people.
   4. Moses broke the tablets with the commandments, symbolizing man breaking his relationship with God. God calls Moses back up the mountain because God did not give up on the people even though they failed. 33:21,22, 34:5

• Sometimes we compare God to our parents but everyone’s parents are failures and God doesn’t compare to our parents' mess.

1. God Reveals His Glory In His Name
   1. Notice the language God uses to describe Himself. To fully understand the significance of God’s name - LORD, we need to understand the importance of what God proclaims and reveals about himself. God reveals how He relates to us. This is important because all of us come with presuppositions about what God is like, and how God relates to us.
      1. Mercy
         1. The Hebrew word for merciful here, rahum, is probably better translated as compassionate. The word includes the component of “to feel with.”
         2. This word can also be translated as pity or tender mercy as a father would show his child. Ps. 103:13 This compassion is more than a feeling as it brings you to action.
         3. This tender mercy keeps God’s face turned towards us even though we keep failing.
         4. The children of Israel started worshipping a golden calf when they were in a place they had never been and their leader had been gone for almost 6 weeks. They didn’t feel the Lord’s presence but God promised His presence during suffering, this is who He is. His face is towards us with tender mercies.
      2. Grace

• Maxie Dunnam tells the story of a woman who took a friend with her when she went to a photographer to have her picture taken. The beauty parlor had done its best for her. She took her seat and fixed her pose. While the photographer was adjusting the lights in preparation of the camera shot she said, “now be sure to do me justice.” The friend who came with her said, “dear, what you need is not justice but mercy.” We all need a friend like that who points us to our need for mercy and for grace.
• God gives us what we do not deserve. Most of us have become numb to the grace of God. Grace of God - yawn. The grace of God should drive us to be in awe of God. God is thinking of us all of the time. Ps. 139:17-18
• Paul Tripp describes grace in the following six ways:

1. Forgiveness
   1. We are all sinners and sinners need to be punished unless declared forgiven and set free.
   2. Jesus declares the guilty free from the cross for all who believe in Him - this is grace.
2. Acceptance
   1. God forgives us and welcomes us into His family.
   2. Even with my past, I am able to come to God and sit with Him and give my pains, struggles and burdens of life.
3. Presence
   1. We are never alone. God is with us in every situation no matter who we are with or what we are experiencing.
   2. We are where God dwells. He didn’t just forgive us but He indwells us.
4. Enablement
   1. God enables us to live for Him and be His witnesses. Acts 1:8
5. Freedom
   1. God’s grace not only forgives our sin but gives us freedom from it. Sin is not to rule over us.
6. Completion - God’s grace will one day take us home where every wrong will be made right and we will no longer be in the presence of sin.

• Mercy/compassion and grace is not needed by those who always get it right. God is not surprised by your failure, firing, adultery, addiction - He knows and He loves you. God has more mercy than you have mess. He doesn’t lead with, I told you so.

1. Slow to anger
   1. One of the fruits of the spirit is long suffering or patience. God’s character reveals His long-suffering and patience towards us.
   2. God restocks His grace and mercy every morning. He never runs out.
   3. We tend to make God in our own image and often we struggle with anger. God doesn’t. 2 Peter 3:9
   4. To state that God is slow to anger means that He does get angry. God is self controlled and is merciful. When he acts against evil he does so righteously, deliberately and does not lose His temper.
2. Abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness
   1. Steadfast love is sometimes translated as loving kindness and also points to God’s covenant commitment.
   2. He also abounds in faithfulness or truth. God always follows through on His love. He never goes back on His promises.
   3. 34:7 repeats chesed or God’s covenant love and speaks of God maintaining this love to thousands. God’s love is far abd wide going from generation to generation.
3. Forgiving
   1. Forgiveness is only needed by those who make others angry and need forgiveness.
   2. Iniquity - to turn aside from what is right and good.
   3. Transgression - willful violation of the terms of the covenant, involving more than disobedience but the rejection of a relationship.
   4. Sin - moral failure, more general term.
   5. God is willing to forgive any of these sins. Sometimes we are so weighted down by guilt that we feel that we can’t get out but we can if turn to God who forgives.

• God has an account that wil never run out that is designed for our failures. God’s account had mercy, grace, slow to anger and forgiveness that is available for each of us.

1. Justice
   1. I would love to talk about 6 attributes of God that He reveals and ignore the seventh but that would be an injustice.
   2. In Biblical times, it was common for families to have three to four generations living together. God held families accountable as families and we see this throughout scripture. Numbers 16:25-34 the family of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.
   3. God is holy love not grandfatherly love that gives you sugar and sends you home letting others worry about your belly or your behavior.
   4. God does not let sin go unpunished and this reveals that He is above us and is holy. He is a God who punishes sin
   5. On the cross Jesus died to make atonement for our sin and so that God could be the just and justifier for those who have faith in Jesus. Rom. 3:26
2. Our Response To God’s Glorious Name
   1. Worship
      1. Worship means to ascribe worth to God. In this case Moses recognized the nature of God. Moses sees himself and praises God for who He is. He bows in humility, submission and gratitude.
      2. Moses quickly does this. When we see the Lord, nothing else matters other than our obedience and worship of Him. We will not delay.
   2. Longing
      1. Moses longed for the Lord to not forget His people. Who should you be praying for? Use 6 circles
      2. Pray that the Lord would work in us collectively and in your life individually.

Conclusion: When God finished proclaiming His name, Moses didn’t ask another question, or debate theology, or say, “I need time to think about this.”

Exodus 34:8 says, “Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.” That word quickly matters. When Moses finally saw God as He truly is—merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving sin, yet perfectly just—his only reasonable response was surrender. Today, you’re in the same place Moses was. God has revealed His name to you. Not a God of your imagination or a God shaped by your past wounds, your failures, or your disappointments, but the God who moves toward broken people, who covers sin with grace, and who paid the full price of justice at the cross.

So the question is not, “What do you think about God?” The question is, “What will you do with the God who has revealed Himself to you?”

Some of you need to make a decision today to stop running from God because of your past. You’ve been carrying guilt that God already paid for. You’ve been hiding from a God whose face is turned toward you with compassion. Today is the day to receive His forgiveness and trust Jesus—not as an idea, but as Savior and Lord.

Some of you need to make a decision to stop reshaping God into something safer and smaller. You’ve settled for a convenient God instead of the holy, gracious, faithful God who calls for your whole life. Today is a call to repentance—to bow low, to worship, and to obey.

And some of you need to make a decision to long for God again. Your prayers have grown quiet, worship has grown casual, dependence has faded. Like Moses, your prayer today is, “Lord, if Your presence does not go with us, do not send us from here.”

God has made His name known to you and for you mercy is offeredm grace is extended and justice has been satisfied at the cross. The only thing left is your response.

So today—don’t delay, or analyze your way out of obedience, or leave unchanged.

Bow your heart, trust His name, receive His grace.