What's In A Name?

Exodus 1:1-6:1, Shemot, “Names”

Again, this week, I am going to key off the name of the reading as the theme for what I am going to share.  Things start off for us when, during his conversation with God at the burning bush, Moses asks God the simple question, what shall I say to the sons of Israel when they ask me your name?  To that, God replies, “I AM WHO I AM; and He said, “This you shall say to the sons of Israel I AM has sent me to you”.  In this, I AM is derived from the root word HAYAH which means “to be”.  One of my favorite questions when talking to people about God’s sovereignty is, “what part of “I AM” isn’t?  In other words, “I AM” is all inclusive.  There just isn’t anything that is separate from what God is.  When overlaying this with the root word of HAYAH, we can understand that not only is He everything, He also tells us that He will be what He chooses to be.

The concept of this is all over the entire story of everything we have read up to this point through Genesis and into Exodus.  We see this in God’s relationship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  We see it in how He uses Joseph’s brothers’ hatred to put Joseph into Egypt where He can preserve life, and we see it in how they all stay in Egypt well beyond what they needed to preserve life so that God could create a nation in them.  Looking back, this is the story of Jacob and his relationship with Laban that led to Jacob wrestling with an Angel of the Lord and “becoming” Israel.

As we approach the last few verses of this week’s readings, we see another example of God just being who He says He is and not acting like we, in our flesh, would like Him, or expect Him, to act.  By the time we reach the end of chapter 4, Moses has met up with his brother Aaron.  They met with the elders of the sons of Israel, and the people believed, bowed low, and worshiped.  In chapter 5 we find Moses and Aaron approaching Pharaoh, challenging him to let the people go into the wilderness to worship God, and Pharaoh not only being resistant, but increasing the workload on the people.  This led the people to meeting with Moses and Aaron again.

This time, the people said to them “May the LORD look upon you and judge you, for you have made us odious in Pharaoh’s sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.”  Then, Moses returned to the LORD and said, “O Lord, why have You brought harm to this people? Why did You ever send me?  “Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people, and You have not delivered Your people at all.” (Exodus 5:21-23 NASB)

Our final verse of the reading is God’s response: “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for under compulsion, he will let them go, and under compulsion he will drive them out of his land.” (Exodus 6:1 NASB)

But I’m not going to end there because I think we need to connect something from next week’s reading into this week’s to really get the point.  In verse 6:3 God says to Moses “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, LORD, I did not make Myself known to them.” (Exodus 6:3 NASB)

In other words, God’s response to Moses asking “why have You brought harm to this people?  Why did you ever send me?” is “because I am going to make Myself known to you and this people in an entirely new way, a way that none of your ancestors have ever known me.  They knew me by one name.  You and these people are going to come to know me by another name.” 

And form this, we go full circle back to the title of this reading; “Names”.  You see, the God we serve is not a simple one name God.  He is so much vaster, so much more all-encompassing, so much more…..  well, He just is…. I AM.

Going back to God’s answer, quite honestly, this is not the kind of answer most of us would like to hear.  This is not the kind of answer we would expect.  And, sadly, this is not the kind of answer we are given when we ask similar questions in a multitude of the churches across this country relative to the challenges and complexities of life.

The point is, how well do we want to know Him?  How much of all that He is are we willing to accept?  And, how much of all of who He is are we willing to be in relationship with so that we too can “know” Him in a way that can only be discovered through the trials and tribulations of what it takes to transform us from who we have been into what He is giving us the opportunity to become.  And even more so, how many of our perspectives are we willing to let go of?  Perspectives on those moments when we felt like someone was out to harm us but in reality, it was Him using the circumstances of life to make us, mold us, transform us, or simply to bring glory to Himself.

When I read about how Yeshua connected our forgiveness to our ability to forgive others, I can’t help thinking about the complexity of God’s interaction in the journey of the Hebrew people.  If I allow myself to truly embrace His sovereignty and the concept that He is “I AM”, I have no choice but seeing life in a similar way as Joseph did when he told is brothers to not be angry with themselves because what they had intended for evil, God had intended for good.  This has led me to a very simply, yet maybe hard to embrace, understanding of things.  I have come to see that actions themselves are neither inherently “good” or “evil”, but that the heart behind those actions is.  In the case of Joseph’s brothers, they intended murder, but God saw well into the future and set the stage for the preservation of life and the character transformation of each of those involved.  For the brothers the action was evil.  For God, the same action was good.  In the case of Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s intention was murder, but God’s was to set the stage for the redemption of the Hebrew people.  Again, when looking at the same event, Pharaoh’s actions were evil, God’s were good.    Later when we see God killing the first born of all the Egyptian children we are faced with the same comparison.  When Pharaoh was killing all the innocent children of Israel it was evil because of his heart.  When God killed all the innocent children of the Egyptians, it was Good because God had good intentions.  Taking this one step further, only God knows what those children experienced, where they ended up, and if that experience was horrific or blissful for them.  We simply do not know.  When we look at the relationship between Jacob and Laban the same kind of understandings can be drawn.  Laban was cheating Jacob.  This was an evil way of dealing with a fellow human being.  God was using Laban to reveal something to Jacob about his own character that would later set the stage for the wrestling match and Jacob being given a new name (no longer to be known as supplanter (to cheat), but Israel (the father of a nation)).

Ultimately, one of our biggest challenges in life is to not make the same mistake as Adam and Eve.  “Eating” from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will not make us just like God.  God has a view of life, death, struggle, affliction, blessings, and curses that we simply do not have.  When we attempt to judge God based on our view of good and evil, we take the bait of Satan just like Adam and Eve and are led away from seeing God in a way that we have never known Him before.  When we refuse to allow Him to reveal himself to us in these ways, we miss the opportunity to know Him by some of His other names.  And, in so doing, we miss the opportunity to be in a deeper relationship with Him.  Ultimately, if we hold onto unforgiveness, is there an underlying unforgiveness toward God?  If He truly is sovereign, and He is using people in our lives just like He used Joseph’s brothers, Pharaoh, and Laban, then isn’t forgiving others a pathway to seeing God’s use of what they intended for evil to still be good?

I think this comes back to the people challenging Moses when they said, “May the Lord look upon you and judge you, for you have made us odious in Pharaoh’s sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.”  The reality is, Moses did exactly what God asked him to do, and Pharaoh responded exactly how God knew he would.  This really is the dynamic of life.  God knows the people He has surrounded us with, the people He has put into our sphere of influence, and the people who are influencing us as they go about their own lives.  He truly is in control and when we judge others, we are ultimately judging Him.

Ultimately, unforgiveness is rooted in pride because at the end of it all, we are basically saying “that person does not deserve to be forgiven because their sin is worse than mine”.  The truth is, if Yeshua took on my sin, He is there to take on there’s too.  Taking this one step further, He didn’t take on my sin because I deserve it.  He took on my sin because I don’t deserve it.  The same holds true for every human being on this planet.  That is what grace is about.  And, if we allow ourselves to realize that God uses our sin to mold and transform others, then ultimately, we need to give Him the latitude to use the sin of others to mold and transform us.  Maybe this is why Yeshua is so strong on forgiveness being such an important part of being His.

As I consider these things I wonder where Jacob would have been if all he could have done was to hold onto unforgiveness toward Laban?  Where would Joseph and the entire nation of Israel ended up if Joseph would have held onto unforgiveness toward his brothers?  And where would the nation of Israel ended up if they would have held onto unforgiveness toward Moses and Aaron?

I pray that as you reflect back on some of the challenges you are going through, or the challenges that maybe you have experienced, that this blog has helped open your heart to see things in a new way.  I pray that it has led you to thinking about some areas in life that could change for the better if you could see things in a different light.  I pray that as you ponder what I have shared, that you come to know God by a new name, and that in and through this, He gives you peace surrounding all that has been, and all that is.  Amen.