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The NAME Above All Names

January 16, 2005                                                                              Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

There was nothing special about this particular mountain, at least not yet. He had done what he had always done, taken his herd of sheep, his goats, to find good pasture. He came to a hill in the desert, one of many. This looked like a good spot and he allowed them to feed. His name is Moses and he has been doing this for 40 years. And he’s had a lot of time to think over these years, and today he’s thinking even more. He’s 80 years old and he wonders if this is all there is going to be. And he thinks about his life because it’s been an unusual life.

He was born in Egypt under the Pharaoh, a Hebrew, a slave. And yet at the time he was born, the Pharaoh was afraid of more Hebrews being born, so he decided to kill all the first-born males. But his mother wouldn’t have anything to do with that so she hid him as long as she could. And when she could hide him no longer, she made a little basket, put pitch on the bottom of it, put him in it, and set him afloat in the river Nile, hoping that God would do something. And behold, God did. Pharaoh’s own daughter sees this little baby, takes him as her own, thinking probably that the river God had provided. How ironic it was that a Hebrew slave boy should now be brought up in the very royal household of Egypt, the lap of luxury, educated in the finest ways, reading and writing many languages, knowing all there is to know about government and whatever else.

He knew who he was; his stepmother couldn’t hide it from him. He had contact with his family, found out about this God Almighty that they worshiped. And yet, allowed the people to be enslaved. He wondered if he had some kind of role in helping that out. As he went through his teens and his twenties and his thirties, time passed and he kept wondering what was his purpose. And others wondered too and would say “How unusual, we know who he is but he lives not as a slave but as an Egyptian.”

One day Moses saw an Egyptian beating one of his fellow Israelites. He looked this way and that and killed the Egyptian, buried him in the sand and thought no one had seen him. A few days later he begins to exercise a different kind of leadership. He steps in a quarrel with two fellow Israelites – “Why are you fighting?” [They said] “Who are you to tell us what to do? Who do you think you are anyway? Are you going to kill us like the Egyptian?” Uh oh – time to get out. Pharaoh is going to hear about this. And so he did; he fled into the desert of Sinai the land of Midian. You know the story.  He meets up with several daughters of Jethro, marries one of them and becomes a shepherd. For forty long years…all the while wondering, “What in the world is going on with my life?”

And so he arrives at a mountain, any mountain. It wasn’t a particularly holy mountain. The stories you’ve heard are probably wrong; it didn’t become holy until God met Moses on the mountain. And so he did. Moses looks up on the mountain and sees a bush burning. Nothing real unusual about that in a dry, arid country, lighting strikes all the time. A fire is going, but an unusual fire…the bush is not burning up. And here, I think, we see Moses’ character. I would probably have run away; he goes to see what is going on. And he gets up to this unusual bush and hears a voice. I certainly would have run away. And what a voice it is. “Moses, Moses, draw near. Take off your shoes, this is Holy ground.” “Hmmm…what could this be?” And so he meets with He as he presumes God. And God tells him “I am the God of your fathers; the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And I have seen the misery of your people and I am going to send you to rescue them.” “Moi?”

Now Moses is torn, he’s had this notion about leadership and who he might be for a long time. But now when it has come down to it, he really does want to run away. “Who am I that you would send me?” A natural question. Two things people fear most: speaking in public and going to a party where you don’t know anyone. And God asked him to do both. “Who am I?” “Don’t worry” God says, “I’ll be with you.” We’ll let’s see, you are already with me now and you are scaring me half to death…how does that work? “I’ll be with you.”

Another tactic, now it was kind of a tactic I think, a delaying action. He asks a couple of questions. One is “Well if you are sending me, who shall I say is Your name?” Well it’s a tactic to delay, but it’s also curiosity because every god has a name. And in Moses’ time, as in our time, for many people there is a god under every rock, a god for this and a god of that. And all of them have names. But though the Israelites worshipped the God of their fathers, they only know him as God Almighty – El-Shaddai. Or Eloi, the God who sees. These are names but they are more descriptive names, not the name. “So what’s your name God?” And the answer is most remarkable. “I am that I am. Tell them ‘I am’ has sent you.” Now “I am” is part of the verb to be. God is saying “I exist, I am, I am Yahweh.” Or as we know it in some contexts, Jehovah. But actually that is a mispronunciation, it is Yahweh.

I am continuing a series of sermons today, I began last week talking about it, on the names of God, if you will. A lot of them will be more descriptive names, but today is the name of God – the name above all names. Yahweh.

I’ve told you the story. I’m not going to read all of the scripture to you. I’ll read just part of it, first from chapter 3 and then from chapter 6. Beginning at verse 13, the word of God says:

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?”

And 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.’”

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 by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.”

And in chapter 6:

God also said to Moses “I am the Lord.”

“I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord [Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them.”

“I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens.”

“Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.”

“Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with a mighty axe of judgment.’”

This is the word of the Lord.

A child asks “Where do I come from daddy?” “Well, honey, God made everything, including you.” “Well, daddy, where does God come from? When did He start?” How interesting it is that even 6-year olds can befuddle us with questions. But here in this passage today, you have the answer. The answer is, “I am. I am that I am.”

What do I mean by that? Well, I want to ask you a question. It’s kind of a silly question but I want to ask it anyway. Are you here? You might say “Of course, I’m here.” Some of you might say, “Well I don’t know, I haven’t had my coffee yet.” The question is – do you exist? Of course we exist. We think that we’re different from the animals because you and I can know that we exist. We can imagine a time when we did not exist and we can imagine a time when we will not exist, at least in this world. We can say we exist. We can say, like God, I am.

But, we are different from God in that we cannot say “I am that I am.” There’s a big difference. Because we can only say “I am” in a dependent sort of way. We are dependent on almost everything for our existence – the sun, the earth, food, clothing. We can imagine being on a desert island and maybe being self-sufficient for awhile to some degree and maybe not needing others, but generally we need others to exist. We’re the product of two parents. We wouldn’t have existed without them. We are dependent. Though we can say we exist, we are dependent creatures. God is not. Philosophers and theologians like to say that God is self-existent. God is dependent on no thing. God is dependent on no one. God is “I am that I am.” And what we have to say to our children is that “God has always been, honey, and always will be.” “Well, I don’t understand that daddy.” Well, maybe we don’t either. But that’s the answer.

I know I am kind of waxing philosophic this morning to some degree. But it’s very necessary. But on the other hand there is a very practical application to this, very practical, that God is self-existent. And I simply want to begin my practical application of that by asking a question. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about the fact that God is self-existent? Here’s what I mean. You know I really believe that though we believe in God, confess Him every day, maybe, or at least every week, very often we live our lives as practical atheists. Now we’ve heard a lot about atheism in the last few decades. We’ve heard of Madeline Murray-O’Hare, the famous atheistic woman who got prayer out of the schools. And lately it’s this fellow named Newdow who’s been getting a lot of press by wanting to take the “under God” phrase out of the Pledge. Actually I heard this morning coming in, he was denied the motion he’s making to have a couple of the ministers removed from the inaugural address to say a couple of prayers because it would be offensive to him and people like him. We’ve heard about that, we’ve heard about atheists.

But we who are believers in God sometimes live as though we were practical atheists. After all, how many of us got up this morning and said “Thank you God, that I’m alive.” I think we forget that and we’re often prone to do just the opposite. We’re often prone sometimes to just complain. “My life is not like this, but it is like that.” “I’ve got a terrible job.” “My kids are bums.” “My parents treat me terrible, it’s all their fault.” And on and on it goes. We complain a lot. Should we not say thank you, even as terrible as it may be at times? Just for the days that we have? You see, without God existing, we would not exist. If it was not for the self-existent God, we in ourselves would not exist. We could not be. And we are – I’m trying not to get too confused here –we are because He is. And it leads to thanksgiving and worship. Such is God’s name of Yahweh. But it means more than self-existent, it also means that God is unique. He is only one God.

RC Sproul tells a story about Madeline Murray-O’Hare as she appeared on a talk show many years ago. And the talk show host was, his name was David Frost. I know some of you are old enough to remember David Frost; if you’re not, he was a talk show host that was a British guy and he was interviewing Madeline Murray-O’Hare and they got into a really heated argument about God’s existence and the angels and all that kind of thing. And even though David Frost was from England he did a very American thing. He took a poll of the audience and he said “How many people believe in God?” Of course, almost everybody raised their hand. He looked at her in triumph, he had won the debate. RC Sproul goes on to say that if Madeline Murray-O’Hare had been smart, she would have asked a different kind of question. She would have asked “How many of you believe in Yahweh?”

Remember last week I told you that it’s perfectly okay to refer to God as God and yet, to some degree, that’s too generic. You see, when we start getting down to brass tacks, as in what is God’s name, think about how much difference there would be among people because ninety-nine percent of people in the world believe in some kind of god. But do we believe in Yahweh, who is self-existent, who is One, who demands that we worship Him and Him alone, who will judge us in the end? That would have been an even more interesting discussion.

God is One. What is the first commandment? We know what it is, we just heard it. It is “You shall have no other god before me.” I think this leads to this idea of tolerance. And again, the question of what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about the fact that God is One and has some rather intolerant things to say about himself – “You shall not have any other gods before me.” Jesus later says “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That doesn’t sound terribly tolerant, does it?

You see, in the modern world, in this world, we have come into the place where we view truth like a cafeteria, we view religion like a cafeteria. We walk in, we say “Oh, I’ll take a little bit of this. I’ll take a little bit of that. I’ll take some of this and some of that.” So we pretend we have all kinds of religions down here and we’ll say “Hmm, that looks pretty good out of that one and I’ll take that one and this one and put it on the plate.” And what have I done? I have created my own religion by maybe taking a little bit out of everybody else’s. Because we’ve looked at truth as not really truth, we’re just simply saying, “Well, I make up my own truth, so I might as well just take a little bit from everybody else.” And it’s just the opposite.

I said to you last week, it does not matter what you and I believe about God. On one level, it does not matter what I believe about God at all. It only matters what God says about Himself. There’s a big difference, a huge difference here, of how you approach it. And of course, even if we look at it as a revealed religion, which we do, we have to decide which “revelation” is true. We do have a role here, but it’s still a different angle on it. It’s not me saying “Well, I’ll just take a little of this and a little of that.” It’s saying “Which one is true, because one is and one is not, or one’s a little bit true and one’s a lot true.” What are we going to do about the fact that God is One and in the world you are looked at as intolerant if you say that this is the real God. Yahweh is God.

Well I want to say that I believe in tolerance, I really do. I’ve used this example many times and I will again. I’m an Army Chaplain. And do you know as an Army Chaplain, I’m required, by law, to facilitate the free exercise of religion among soldiers? It’s part of the Constitution – that’s why chaplains have been allowed to exist. Somebody asked me one time, “Well, golly, separation of church and state. Why are you chaplains in the Army anyway?” I walk around with a cross on my collar, I’m a representative of Christ. How can that be true? It’s because of what the Constitution says, it says that everyone has the right to free exercise of religion. Therefore, it is my job to facilitate that. That does not mean that I have to perform anyone else’s services, it does not mean I have to think somebody’s right, but I do have to facilitate in other faiths. In other words, see that they get the day off to do their religious practice, or whatever. And you know what? I believe that’s the Christian thing to do. I think it’s the Christian thing to do. Now I may not think what they’re doing is correct – I kind of joke and say there’s some people out there who say that their cat is a god, you’d be surprised what’s out there, it’s just strange sometimes – it’s not my job to not help them. It is my job to wear the cross. It is my job to witness to Christ, and to be tolerant of them to a degree.

But in the world we live in, you’re not tolerant unless you think that that’s truth for them, and you have your truth, and everyone can have their truth. And God is up there saying “You shall have no other gods but me.” Different thing…this is Yahweh we’re talking about. There are many things we could say about this name, we’d be here all day (we’re not going to do that).

The last one I think is most important. In saying that God is Yahweh, He’s saying “I am personal. I am that I am. I am a God that has a personal relationship with you.” I think Moses must have been just absolutely astounded that God would actually have a personal conversation with him. It had to amaze him. In that day, if you drew close to the deity, you usually died or something bad happened to you. So later on we see the Israelites not even wanting to go near the mountain, and how different that is.

I was interested in these past few weeks to read how a great philosopher named Anthony Flue who has been kind of the guru of atheism in the last several decades, written several books, interacted with Christians and believers in philosophical things. He has articulated atheism. And yet, in the last few weeks, he has said, “I was wrong. There is a god, or there is some kind of higher intelligence that has made the universe. The evidence is too clear.” I think that’s great but it’s not the same thing as believing in an omnipotent, personal God who has a name. He hasn’t gone that far.

Or Thomas Jefferson – the author of so many of our governmental documents – was a deist. Now a deist, very simply, is a person who believes in a higher power – maybe that is what Flue has come to believe in – and yet, the universe is kind of like a clock you wind up and set it over here and watch it run, you don’t have much to do with it; God may be personal but He doesn’t make Himself known that way.

Or even “the force” – one of my favorite movies – what is the force but an impersonal force, good or evil?

Or in our discussion last week about Allah. I asked a question, is Allah the same thing as the Christian God. On one level, yes. Remember we talked about saying “el” in the Hebrew or “theos” in the Greek, it means god. In Arabic, “el” is “al” and so on one level, yes, they’re the same. On another level, no, absolutely not. Now they’re the same in this way; in the Muslim conception, God is self-existent, God is a Creator, God has certain rules, a lot of similarities. And you can pray to Allah, you can follow Allah, you can believe in Allah, but you can’t know Allah. Allah may be a person, but that God does not lower himself to have a personal conversation or relationship with any human being. Yahweh does. The greatest commandment in the Bible “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul” would never even be conceived in the Muslim world. It is not about God loving us and us loving Him, it’s about following for them. And that’s the difference. And we have a witness to them. And it’s not about us running around saying “Nah nah nah, I have the truth and you don’t.” It isn’t that, please don’t hear me say that. We’re not better than they are. But in God’s scheme of things, we know God better than they do. And with love and patience and kindness we simply keep saying “We believe in Yahweh, we believe in Jesus and this is why.” What are we gonna do about that? God loves you, He talks to you. Get to know Him better. That’s what we all need to do.

Last but not least, we might ask the question “Well what does all of this Old Testament stuff have to do with our worship of Christ and the church?” Well, everything. What’s interesting is this whole exodus thing, you know Moses is chosen to lead the people with God’s power out of Egypt. And that event – see God is not an abstract God, God interacts in history, with history, with you…He’s not simply up there someplace, He’s right here – God leads the people out of Egypt and it’s viewed as a redeeming, salvation event that formed these people into who they were. And they still are together because of that event, that’s the precipitating event that they look back on. Now they haven’t realized that another event has happened like it.

Do you know what Jesus means? Jesus is “Jeshua” or as we like to say “Joshua” and if you read the accounts you’ll see that Joshua’s name was something else and Moses changed it to “Joshua” or “Jeshua.” And “Jeshua” simply means Yahweh saves. Yahweh saves. Connection! And we have another event like the exodus in a way that is the precipitating salvation event for us. It is of course the cross, it is of course the resurrection, leading us into a promised land one day. We believe in Yahweh – that is His name and He of course is Jesus as well. Who became one of us, saved us, gives us covenant promises and it’s all very similar. Worship Him, witness to Him, and love Him…He loves you. And know Him as the personal omnipotent God of the universe. What an amazing thing that you and I can know this God and he allows it and encourages it and has reached down and brought us to Him. Let us pray.