A Most Important Chapter
Exodus 3 lets us in on a little bit more of Moses’
development. This passage gives us
several iconic moments in Hebrew history.
We have the burning bush story.
Within the burning bush story we have the point where God gives His name
to Moses. He we are also told of the
great plundering that God will do to Egypt through the Hebrew people. So, let’s take each of these moments and talk
a little about what each one means from a spiritual perspective.
Burning Bush
The burning bush gives us a neat perspective of God. God is in the bush, it is burning, yet the
bush is not consumed. So it is in God’s
judgment! Just yesterday I preached a
sermon on 1 Corinthians 3:10-23 in which Paul encourages the Christians in
Corinth to build using materials that will withstand judgment. God judges, we cannot escape that. We will all be judged. But those who follow God and practice God’s
ways will not be consumed.
Even in this story of the Exodus we will see that while the
Hebrew people and the Egyptians are both subject to judgment, the Hebrew people
come through the judgment while the Egyptian people are set back quite
far. I won’t say that Egypt is destroyed
because clearly they are not utterly wiped from the face of the earth. But they do not come through the judgment
without having suffered considerable loss.
God is an all-consuming God, burning away and destroying all
that is not found within His presence – that is, righteousness. It is a hard teaching because most people
just want to hear about the God who loves us not the all-consuming fire. But it is nonetheless who God is.
We should be very careful to understand the point of Exodus
3:7-10. The words are there, but the
message is assumed and often lost. God
has indeed heard their cry, seen their oppression, known their suffering, and
come down to deliver them. If we take
those words only at face value, it sounds like God has simply come down to
rescue the Hebrew people.
While that is not a wrong statement, it is not a righteous
statement. That statement makes the work
of the exodus centered on the Hebrew people.
We know that is wrong, because God’s work centers on God. God is the ultimate center of life. So yes, God did see, hear, know, and come
down to deliver the Hebrews.
But for what purpose did God do this? Was it just so that they could be free? Let it not be so! God saw, heard, knew, and came so that He
could bring His people out of Egypt to serve and worship Him! To focus only on the freedom of the Hebrew
people is to take a divine story and put a purely human emphasis upon it.
The story is not complete until we remember that they were
delivered in order to serve and worship God!
Of course, when the Hebrew people forget this lesson in a few hundred
years and start worshipping themselves and not God, they will go back into
bondage under the Assyrians and the Babylonians. So we can understand that this is really the
point of the exodus. The exodus is not
about freedom – it is about choosing what master we want to serve. It’s about choosing God.
The same is true about Jesus Christ, by the way. Jesus Christ came to “set the captives of sin
free,” of course. But as Paul indicates
in Romans 6:15-23 (especially Romans 6:18 and Romans 6:22) we do not become
free to do whatever we want. We are
freed out of sin in order to become slaves of God. Yes, we are indeed no longer slaves of
sin. But just as the Hebrews are freed
out of Egypt to serve God, so we too are freed out of sin to serve God.
God’s Name
Let’s turn to the naming of God. There is something you should know. I personally find the human use of the word “Yahweh” abhorrent, and this is the only
time you will find that in print here on this blog. Hebrew tradition allows for the name to be
written as YHWH (Since the Hebrew alphabet doesn’t use vowels, but rather uses
points above and below the letters to represent vowels). Although it can be written, these letters are
never to be spoken. For this very reason
in Hebrew tradition they would say “Adonai” (or “Lord” in English) whenever
they would be reading and the letters YHWH would appear only ever in the
text.
I do the same out of respect for God. This is also why in some Bibles you have the
word “LORD” printed in all caps in the Old Testament. Everywhere the word “LORD” appears in all
caps it is a place where we can know that the Hebrew literally prints the name
of God.
There is a simple reason for never pronouncing the name of
God, and it comes out of Moses’ reaction to God here at the burning bush. Moses averts his eyes in an act of
submission. In culture, you show respect
for a being more powerful than you by avoiding eye contact and by referring to
them using titles of respect. To use
someone’s given name says to them that you consider them an equal. A case in point is that when I was a teacher
my students did not call me “John” but rather “Mr. Fraser.” Moses finds it important to not speak God’s
name and to instead take a position of subservience, so I will do the
same. I do not use the YHWH name for God
because I do not ever wish to give the appearance to another that I consider
God my equal.
The word YHWH is an interesting word in Hebrew,
however. The word literally means “I
am,” “I cause to be,” or even “I am always present.” All of those names are significant
expressions of God. I prefer the simplest
translation of “I am” because it is the most useful. When Moses delivers the Hebrew people out of
Egypt through God’s displays of power, Moses can say that the source of power
is the “God who is.” A hundred years
later when David is writing psalms to the Lord he can still praise the “God who
is.” The reality is that God always
“is.” There is no time where God “isn’t;”
God always “is.” That is why “I am” is
my favorite translation of God’s name.
Predictions of Plunder
Now let’s turn to this issue of plundering. The Hebrew people will go with great
riches. This should not be looked at as
stealing. It is wrong to steal, and God
would never tell His people to steal.
However, if the demonstrations of God are so powerful and so terrible
that those who do not believe in Him will pay you to get away from them, that
isn’t stealing. And as Exodus 12:35-36
indicates, the Hebrew people asked the Egyptians for their wealth and the
Egyptians gave it away just to get God and His people out of their midst.
That raises one last question. Did you ever wonder why the Egyptian people
didn’t convert to the most powerful God?
Clearly God is the most powerful being ever. When people see manifestations of His power,
why do they not convert?
The answer is actually easy.
They do not because the price is too high. To serve a God who is that powerful means to
really change who we are. Anyone can
worship dead gods who cannot take retribution when we don’t obey. Anyone can serve bank accounts and
possessions that after they serve their usefulness they can be discarded. But to serve God means real change. So it is often easier to cast such a God away
from us than follow Him. This is why the
Hebrew people plunder the Egyptians rather than convert them and take them with
them. It is a horrible, sad reflection
on humanity. But it is the truth.
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