Exodus 3.13-15
We’re still in the passage of the burning bush, still considering this
fascinating conversation between God and Moses. Last week we looked at Moses
’ first objection to God’s call. Today, we look at his second. We have much
to learn from the Word. May God bless us with a little progress this
morning.
Moses frames this objection of his in terms of a question. ‘If I come to the
people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to
you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?’ Moses
raises a question about God’s name. You need to remember here the
significance of a name in that culture. A name was a reflection of something
significant about that person. And there are times in Scripture when that
significance is explained. Moses’ name points to his rescue from the waters
of the Nile. It wasn’t always Adam and Eve. Originally, it was Adam and
Woman. Her name was changed for a good reason. Jesus was given His name
because ‘He shall save His people from their sins’. We don’t have the same
custom about names, but we see something similar when it comes to nicknames
like ‘Shorty’ or ‘Slim’ or ‘Tiny’.
What you need to see is that Moses’ question was a way of asking, ‘Who are
You? What are You like?’ And how does God answer? ‘I am who I am?’ What a
curious reply! Imagine you’re at a neighbor’s for a picnic. You’re getting a
coke out of the ice chest, and there you meet someone you don’t know doing
the same thing. As you extend your hand in greeting you say, ‘Hi, I’m
[whatever your name is]. I live across the street. Who are you?’ What would
you think if this other person replied with, ‘I am who I am’? It sure sounds
like he doesn’t want you to know him. Is that what God is doing here? Why
this curious reply? Does God want to hide something from Moses – and us? No,
quite the opposite. Actually, He is revealing something about Himself by
this answer. God is saying, ‘So, Moses, you want to know something about Me.
I am someone you could never really understand – even if I told you.’
Three dogs live in the house next to mine. I’m all in favor of having good
relationships with neighborhood dogs and their owners. So, with their owner’
s okay, I give treats to these three dogs. Whenever I leave or return home,
if they are out they eye me. I’ll tell them ‘Wait’ and then retrieve some
biscuits from the box I keep by my back door or I’ll tell them ‘No’ if I’ve
fed already that day. And there is a particular order in feeding them. The
biggest and most aggressive gets his first. Then the noisy beagle gets hers.
And last, but not least, the timid one, my favorite, gets hers. Now, how
would these dogs describe me if they could? I am, to them, ‘the bearded guy
who gives us treats – sometimes.’ And yet, there is much missing from that
description. It doesn’t include my dreams or disappointments. It doesn’t
include what makes me laugh or what makes me cry. Actually, they know very
little about me. And that is understandable. They couldn’t understand me
even if I tried hard to explain. There’s a large gap between us. After all,
they are just dogs. How much greater gap exists between us finite creatures
and the eternal God! Our God has a name which He has revealed to us. And it
is a name that reminds us that He is someone whom we cannot understand. ‘I
am who I am’. There is mystery surrounding our God. And try as we might to
understand Him, He is – and always will be – mysterious to us.
To get at something of what this means, I’m going to quote a world-famous
theologian. Listen carefully. ‘Safe? Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells
you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.’
And again, ‘He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.’ For the uninitiated,
those quotes are from Mr. Beaver in The Chronicles of Narnia. The God of too
many Christians is a safe god, a tame god. He is a god who is well known and
well understood. As a result, he is a predictable god and one who is under a
measure of control. And that is why this god so often disappoints them. The
God of the Bible is nothing like that. He is mysterious to us, beyond our
comprehension. Though we should live a thousand eternities, we will never
really figure Him out. And so, we do not have Him under our control and we
certainly cannot predict what He will do. Who could have predicted the
Incarnation and the Cross?
Let me bring this together with a question. How well do you know this
mysterious God? The right answer to that is, ‘I know Him well enough to know
that I don’t know Him all that well.’ The Church in the West has lost a
sense of God’s mysteriousness these days, and it shows in our feebleness.
There is an idol in the Church, the god whom we have figured out. This is
not the God of the Scriptures. ‘Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his
ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?
’ [Romans 11:33-34]
I really enjoy studying history. So, I have been listening to some lectures
on church history by Dr. David Calhoun from Covenant Seminary. Very
interesting stuff. One of the reasons that I enjoy history is that it has
much to teach us. Let me mention one lesson that I have learned from
studying the history of the church. Heresies are not usually these strange
things that show up completely out of the blue. Usually, a heresy results
when someone grasps a piece of the truth and then takes it to some extreme.
Very often, heresy is a truth that is not properly balanced by other truths.
This applies to the truth of the mystery of God. Some have taken this truth
and run with it for all they are worth. And the result is that they come up
with a God who is unknowable. He is so mysterious that we cannot know
anything about Him. And so, we are left to grope in the dark, hoping,
somehow, to stumble upon Him. But is that the conclusion we should draw? Is
that the teaching of the Scriptures? Clearly not. The mystery of God is tied
to the fact of His revelation. After all, we came upon this idea of God’s
mysteriousness because of our study of the Bible, God’s revelation of
Himself to us. The mystery of God needs to be balanced by its companion
truth, that God reveals Himself in Scripture. We’re back to the idea of a
delicate balance that I’ve mentioned before. You need to work on developing
this delicate balance in your own life. That means that there is much about
God that you need to learn. You need to learn it so that you can know Him
well. But at the same time, whatever you get to know about God needs to be
tied to the essential mysteriousness of who He is. There is no simple
three-step recipe to follow as you work on this. It will take wisdom which
means you will make mistakes along the way. But growth, here, is possible.
That’s not because any of us here are especially bright. It’s possible
because your God wants you to get to know Him in all the ways that He
reveals Himself to you, and that includes knowing Him as the mysterious God.
Once again, we are dependant on His grace which is ours because of Jesus.
There is another balance that you need to watch for. Some have emphasized
the mystery of God to the point that the god they end up with is distant and
even cold. After all, they reason, He is a god who is so very different from
us. The gap is huge, too huge for us to bridge. But what do the Scriptures
teach? Are we to think of the God of the Bible as distant and remote?
Clearly not. To us, He is ‘Father’, with all that that means. Yes, there is
a difference between Him and us. The gap is, in fact, huge. But it is a gap
that He has bridged. He has reached out to us, and so there is hope to enjoy
Him as Father, through Jesus. Again, there is a delicate balance here. And
it is a balance that we can see in the Lord’s Prayer. How does it start?
‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’ Our God is a Father to us. Do you feel the
warmth of that truth? But there is a kind of distance. He is the God of
heaven. So, here also, we need to work on that delicate balance.
Understanding these things will show in different ways. Let me mention two
that came to mind. As you make progress in grasping something of the
mysteriousness of your God there will be a sense of awe, a sense of wonder.
Evidence of that will be a bit of fear. ‘Who is this God?’ That will lead to
times of stunned silence because you will find yourself overwhelmed by the
beginnings of an answer to that question. ‘Who is this God?’ And all of that
will result in worship, profound worship. Those rituals and ceremonies that
sometimes fall into the category of empty habit will suddenly take on a
different quality. They somehow will become more real. Our gracious God has,
once again, revealed something more of Himself to your heart. And whatever
it is, there is always associated with it that sense of mystery. The more we
get to know Him the more we realize that we don’t really know Him. And so,
we bow before Him in a profound silence.
My other thought relates to eternity, to heaven. One way to understand
heaven is that it is the place where you can love and be loved – without any
sin. Imagine that! Heaven is a place of perfect love for and from all who
are there. And that includes God. But to love a person you need to know that
person. You cannot love someone you do not know. Heaven is the place where
we get to know God more and more and more, forever, so that we will love Him
more and more and more, forever. And as we get to know Him more, I suspect
that the mystery will not be lessened. I suspect that the more that we get
to know our God the greater the mystery will be.
Jesus has come so that we might get to know our mysterious God. Repent of
your small ideas of God and believe the Gospel so that you might know your
God well.