YHWH // Exodus 34:6-7

Join us as we begin our Yahweh series on God's Character!

Chapters

• 0:00 A Hard Question About God
• 3:26 Why Your View of God Shapes You
• 5:11 Going To The Source: Exodus 34
• 7:51 God’s Name: Yahweh Explained
• 11:36 Names Reveal Nature In Scripture
• 14:16 God Is Personal And Relational
• 18:51 Does God Really Delight In You?
• 23:11 From Head To Heart: Christian Meditation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:31

Well, I remember a few summers back, we were at church camp in Glorieta, New Mexico, and after worship one night, one of the guys that I've really been walking through life with and trying to disciple was like, Hey man, do you think you can come back to our room after everything's over tonight? Uh, one of our friends who doesn't usually go to church and we invited to camp has some questions about God. And so I'm all fired up. I'm like, all right, we're about to get homie saved, like this is gonna be legit, like let's go. And so I go to the room and he opens the conversation by saying something to the effect of, How in the world do you believe in a God who seems just so obsessed with controlling people's lives and then sends them to hell if they can't keep them? It's like, oh, all right, that's a great conversation starter. And probably for the next like two, three hours till like 2 a.m., uh, we went round and round and round, and I tried to explain, hey, I think there's a lot of things you're misunderstanding here. And he would ask questions, and I'd try to answer them, and it just like didn't go anywhere. And what I realized is that he and I had very different ideas of who God was. Why am I telling you this story? Well, because the reality is that many people have different views of who God is. There's a lot of people who would say they believe in God, but what they mean by that uh can be very different. You know, the word God means one thing here, uh, it means another thing in India where it could be one of thousands of gods. It means another thing in Iran where it means Allah. And even here, right? In India, they could think about all the gods in Dubai. They think Allah. Um, but even here in the Bernie Bubble, some people have different I views, uh, different ideas of who God is. Some people think of God as a cop who's just waiting to uh watching you, just here to enforce the laws, waiting to get you if you mess up or screw up or do anything wrong. Or some people think of God as this fun uncle who just gives you good stuff and never tells you no and just disappears when things get serious. Or some people think of God as a boss, this distant and demanding like force who just cares about how you perform. And then even more of us think about God as this therapist. He's just there to affirm our feelings and listen to us, share about what we're struggling with, but he never challenges us to change. And none of us would ever say, Yeah, I think of God as a therapist, but as you look at how we relate to him, it tells us a lot about how we actually view him. But why does it matter so much, right? Like just let everybody do their own thing, you do you, I'm gonna do me. Well, because what you think about God will completely shape your life. To put it another way, you become like what you worship. I was reading a book on this, and one of my favorite authors wrote uh something to the lines of this. He said, if you think God is angry, hateful, or always disappointed, you're probably gonna live pretty angry, hateful, and disappointed. Or if you think God's just a trendy life coach who's there to make you happy, you're gonna treat him like a self-help tool and end up just chasing shallow things for your entire life. Or if you uh think God is just everything that you believe. He agrees with you on everything, he he thinks the same, he he acts the same, he dislikes the people you dislike, he likes the people you like, you probably made him up. And you're never gonna become anything different than who you are in the moment. Because everybody ultimately lives out what they believe about God. And so the question is, are you hit are you seeing him for who he really is, or just your created version? Better yet, how do you know who he really is? How do I know who God is, what he's like? Well, we have to go to the source. And that source is actually gonna be uh for us God's word, and specifically we're gonna be in Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 through 7. And this is what our whole series is gonna be built around, because the interesting thing about Exodus 34, 6 through 7 is it's the most quoted scripture in the Bible by the Bible. I've heard some people say that it's basically like the John 3.16 of the Old Testament. John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Everybody knows it, quotes it. Uh, the New Testament is drenched in that language in the same way the Old Testament writers quote this all the time. But why these verses? What's so important? Well, these verses are where God reveals his name to Moses. Moses uh has actually just had a conversation with God, a whole thing with a golden calf that we'll get to later. He's on the mountain with God, and God reveals to him his name. And not only does he reveal to him his name, but he reveals to him who he is. And so we're gonna spend this whole series unpacking what God has to say about himself. Because if you want to know what God's like, let's go to the source, Him. And so we're gonna read Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 through 7, as we see more about who God is. And what we're gonna see tonight is that God is relational, that he responds, and that because of that we can have confidence when we enter into his presence. So, verse 6. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. So there's a lot here that we're gonna spend, you know, the next six weeks unpacking. So we're just gonna start somewhere tonight. But you probably read this and think, I don't see any name. Like I just see him say the Lord. But remember, we're reading a translation. This was originally written in the language of Hebrew. And that word, anytime you see it, go ahead. If you have your Bible and you like to underlight and highline or underline and highlight, sorry, words are hard. Uh go ahead and do something to that word, the Lord, in all caps. And out in the margin or something, uh write out Lord in all caps, and then put a little dash, and then write the letters Y-H-W-H. Because the Hebrew word that gets translated in Lord in all caps is Yahweh, and that is the name of God. But why Yahweh? Like, like what's the significance? Why does God call himself Yahweh, just thinks it sounds cool? Uh well, you have to look back at Exodus 3, where God actually calls Moses for the very first time. Moses has killed a dude, and he's off basically in his own self-imposed exile. He's hiding from God, he's hiding from his responsibilities, and God comes to him in the form of the burning bush. And he says, Moses, you're the guy that I want to bring my people out of slavery. And Moses is like, No, I'm not. And so God has to talk him into it, and God does, because God is very good at talking people into things because he's God, and Moses finally agrees. But Moses says, Hey, if I go to these Israelite people and they ask me your name, what should I say? And God tells him, I am who I am. And the Hebrew word for I am is a yeah, and it's the same root word as Yahweh, if you say them together, aye, Yahweh. And so the only difference is a yeah is in the first person, and Yahweh is in the third person. So aye means I am, and Yahweh means he is. And so when we say God's name, we say Yahweh. He's the great I am. So that's God's name. We all learn that. And at this point, you're probably thinking, you might have made a mistake coming here tonight. I did not know I was signing up for Hebrew class. It feels like I'm at school. Hang with me, because this is actually super, super important. Like, why does any of this matter? Because in the Hebrew culture, names are a lot more important than we necessarily consider them today, right? If you think about names and why we name cats and dogs or why we got our name, a lot of times it's because it sounded cute or it was someone in our family. Uh sometimes they have a meaning, but names, names aren't like this really, really crucial thing. But in this culture that the Bible was being written in, names were everything. It was who you were. Like your name said everything about you and your family. They had a lot of meaning. And so when God tells Moses his name, uh that's why he's not just saying, hey, this is my name, but he's saying this is who I am. Because you see the Lord, the Lord, and then he lists off his characteristics that God is compassionate and gracious, that God is slow to anger, that God is abounding in love and faithfulness, that God shows mercy to thousands, but God does not leave the guilty unpunished. And we're gonna walk through every single one of those over the rest of the series. But tonight, what I want to focus on almost as an intro is why is it so important that God has a name at all? Like why does any of this matter? Why does it matter that he tells us? Well, there's two things that it really shows us, and then we're gonna talk about what it means to us. One, the fact God tells us his name means that he's relational. And I don't mean that uh he, or another way to say it is God is a person. He's he's has a personality. I'm not saying he's a person who needs to eat, sleep, and breathe. He's not a human being like we are, but he does relate. He has a personality. We see all throughout the Bible that God feels joy, he feels anger, he feels grief, he talks, like he uses language to communicate things. God is all about beauty and creativity. Think about the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, right? A sunrise on a vacation, um, nature, uh, maybe, maybe it's a memory you have, whatever that is, God created that. Like God loves beauty. God has a sense of humor. You see all throughout the Bible. You read it and you're like, God's actually hilarious. Like some of this stuff is funny. And this is important because a lot of us, when we think about God, whether we realize it or not, we think of him as like this far-off energy, like some force in the Star Wars movies. Like he's there, can't really feel him. Like I know he's in control, but he's kind of just this abstract thing that's out there. But that's not the truth. He he is a person, he he feels things, he has thoughts, obviously, nowhere near like we do, and we can't wrap our head around God. He's everywhere, all at once, he's all powerful, he's all-knowing. But at the same time, he does have a personality. And not only that, but he wants a relationship with us. In the garden, he walked with Adam and Eve. In this whole passage in Exodus, he talks to God or he talks to Moses. He's not hiding somewhere whether he reveals himself to us. But why in the world would the God of the universe, the God who made all the stars in the sky, the God who made the mountains in Colorado where we go to camp, the God who made the Great Canyon, why would that God care to reveal himself to us? Well, simply put, he wants to. Like I know that sounds simple, but do you realize how like game-changing that is? That God wants to relate to you. He enjoys you as his creation. Zephaniah 3.17 says, The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save, he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you by his love, he will exult over you with loud singing. And God's talking about Israel right there, but it carries on to us now as his children. Psalm 147.11 says, His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor is his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in his in those who hope in his steadfast love. Like God actually likes you. Like, have you thought about how big of a deal that is? That the hardest thing to wrap your mind around is that the God of the universe loves you, wants to have a relationship with you. He doesn't just tolerate you, he cares about you. And understanding that changes how you relate to him in so many ways. I think back to my last church, and there was a student who really struggled with fear and anxiety, and she would always come and share this with us. And, you know, eventually I asked her, I was like, hey, have you ever talked about this with your parents? Because she had talked really positively about her parents, like she loved her parents, and she's like, No, no, I haven't. And I asked, why? Like, I know you love them so much, like, like, why don't you ever share this? And she's like, Well, I love them, but I don't know how much they love me. Like, I feel like I'm just a burden to them. Like everything I say or I do just annoys them or stresses them out. And that moment broke my heart because she wasn't just carrying anxiety, but she was carrying uncertainty about whether she was truly loved, and it was preventing her from coming to her parents. And ultimately, her parents did love her and they wanted to care about her, they wanted to help her. And this is how a lot of us approach God. We know he's powerful, we know he's big. We might even believe he cares about us in some general way, but deep down we're not sure that he delights in us. We think that we're a burden, that I've screwed up one too many times, that he's disappointed in me, that our prayers annoy him. And so what we do is we never approach him, we just bottle everything up and try to deal with it on our own. And it never works out for us. And we we can't just go through life trying to think that we can do it on our own and just, you know, let me just try not to make God mad. That's not what he wants. He wants a relationship with us. And I know that's hard for us to grasp because some of us, unfortunately, and hear my heart, like that is your relationship with your parents. And hear me, I am sorry, but that is not how God treats you. God is not asking you to perform for him. God does not view you as a burden, God does not view you as a mistake or a mess up or a screw up, a disappointment. He loves you. He made you in his image. And yes, he loves you enough not to leave you where you are. He doesn't just let you off the hook to do whatever you want, he wants you to do what's right. But at the core, he loves you and he cares about you and he wants a relationship with you. And when you understand that, not just in your head but in your heart, it changes everything. And so the question is, how do I get that into my heart? Like all of us can sit here and say that. I can sit here and say that, but at the end of the day, what happens when I screw up and I need to confess to God, and still deep down I feel like I disappointed him? Like it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to actually live it. And as crazy as it sounds, like so much of it starts with meditating. And I'm not talking about like some weird yogi like voodoo, like, oh, like that meditating. But Christian meditating is not just emptying your mind, but it's filling it with something else. And so meditating as a Christian is going somewhere that's quiet, removing all of the hurry, right? So clear your schedule, right? Either say I'm committing to not working on homework until after this, or I'm gonna do it ahead of time, right? Remove yourself from noise, right? Get rid of your phone, uh, go somewhere where where not only like audible noise, but just distraction is gone, and just sit there and think about how God loves you. And I know what you're thinking. It's like, just think about it. Yeah, just think about it. Let's be honest. When was the last time we sat down and just thought about anything? Like we live in a world where we're so distracted, we're so hurried, we're so on our screens all the time, we're always overstimulated. It's like consume, consume, content, content, tick tock after TikTok, after real, after real. When was the last time we just sat down and thought? Much less, when was the last time we sat down and thought about God and that He loves us? And maybe you don't have a great relationship with your earthly parents. Think about what that would be like. Like, think of the best version of a relationship with your parents that you could ever hope for, and then multiply that by a million, and that's how God feels towards you. And as you do that, you will be training yourself to think about and to know and to believe that God loves you. So practically, next time you have five to ten minutes, just sit down. Right? Sit in the fact that God loves you. Like let those words turn over in your mind over and over again. And then ask yourself if this is true, if God really loves me, then how does it change my life? If nothing can separate from me, if nothing can separate me from his love, then why do I keep live living like I need to prove myself or like I need to earn his favor? Or if he loves me and he rejoices over me, like maybe I can stop viewing myself as a burden. And as you do, you will open your heart up to God and you're gonna allow him to teach you how he feels towards you. And as you do that, you're gonna realize it's important because God inviting us into relationship is not just this mushy gushy-feely thing. We kind of talked about this on Sunday in big church, but he also invites us in to play a role. We talked about this in the last series that we are his image bearers and that we get to co-rule and all those sorts of things. And so that brings us to our second point. One, God giving us his name means that he's personal, he wants a relationship with us. And two, it means that God responds. And I don't mean that God's nature or his character changes. So Malachi 3:1, God says, I am the Lord, I do not change. Even this name, I am, is just this permanent, like God is who he is, he doesn't change. So God's not gonna have a bad day one day and decide to smite some people and then move on. Or God's not gonna go back on his promises. God's not fickle, he is perfect, he is unchanging. Uh, but because he is personal, he also responds to us. He interacts with humanity. All throughout the Bible, God interacts with his people. For example, uh, when Israel is in the desert, we talked about this earlier, this actually happens right before Exodus 34. Uh, Moses goes up on a mountain to receive the law from God. What happens when he's gone? The Israelites who literally just walked through an ocean that split open and escaped from the most powerful country in the world and saw a pillar of fire and smoke. Like all those things, they're like, you know what's a good idea right now? We're gonna make a golden cow. And we're gonna worship that sucker. And that's what they do. And God's like, all right, I'm done with these people. I'm gonna take them out. We're gonna start over with you, Moses. Let's go. And Moses begs, God, don't do that. Like, like, I don't want the the Egyptians to say, oh, like God brought them out in the desert to like like God, it's not gonna, like, God, just please don't destroy them. And what happens? He listens to Moses. God doesn't. And now there's other times where this happens. God talks with Abraham over Sodom. God is ready to destroy Sodom, and Abraham's like, what if I can find 40 righteous people? He's like, sure, if you can find 40. Abraham thinks about, what if I can find 30? And that keeps whittling down. Or God relents from judgment. In Nineveh, the story of Jonah, God is uh going to judge Nineveh, and so he sends Jonah and he says, Hey, preach to them the message of repentance, and if they repent, I'm not going to destroy them. And ultimately they repent, they don't destroy them. God changes when he told King Hezekiah about the timing of his death. Right? He lets Hezekiah live 15 years longer. So God himself is not changing, but there is some sort of flexibility in his plans that's kind of hard to wrap our heads around. And this doesn't mean that God is wishy-washy, but remember, we're his image bearers and we're invited in to co-rule with him. He gives us a part to play. He's still completely sovereign and completely in control. His plans, his big plan, his ultimate plan always comes to class. Nobody's going to uh nobody's gonna mess up his plans, but God has flexibility with how he'll allow them to play out. This is not a great illustration. I hope it works. This is a really hard topic to illustrate, but imagine it this way. Uh, and if it doesn't make sense, then just forget I said any of this. But my love towards my daughter, Leighton, is unchanging, right? It I love her. Like, regardless of what happens or what goes on, I love my daughter Leighton. But that love can be expressed differently depending on the situation. When she's doing great and like she's she just knocked it out of the park, right? She said her ABCs, like, come on, like you're a genius, you're gonna run run the world in a few years. Uh that shows up as praise and encouragement. Or when she's sad or scared or afraid, my love shows up to her as encouragement, right? Like, hey, it's okay, baby, it'll be all right. Or when she's disobedient, when she's rebellious, that love might show up in discipline. Now, it might not feel like love in that moment, but the only reason I'm disciplining her is because I want what's best for her. I want her to grow up and to know how to respect people and to treat people well and to honor God. It's the same love, but depending on how Leighton acts or interacts, like it changes how that's expressed. And that's not a perfect illustration because God's love is perfect and I'm a broken human being, and I do change, God doesn't change, but hopefully you can see like kind of a picture there. But moving past that, what does that mean for you? How does this play out in real life? Well, one thing is that it should change how you pray. A lot of us struggle to pray because our view of God is just this, you know, He's got everything set up, nothing's gonna change, no matter what we do, and we just pray because God tells us to the end. And yes, God tells us to pray. And no, our prayers are not always answered with yes, but God actually responds. Like God interacts with our prayer. He doesn't just ask us to pray so that we do, but he asks us to pray, and sometimes how we pray changes things. Dallas Willard, who's a theologian, has this quote and I kind of reworked it, but he says this God doesn't play pretend when it comes to prayer. He doesn't act like he's listening while he really just does whatever he wants, anyways. What you pray about actually matters. Your prayers really can change what happens. If we believed everything would happen the exact same way, whether we prayed or not, prayer would feel completely pointless. It's just this dead ritual. And God doesn't respond to that kind of empty prayer, just like we wouldn't want to respond to someone who's just going through the motions. And so when we pray, we can have the confidence knowing that prayer does work. Like prayer does change things. Not always. We're not always gonna get the answer yes. Sometimes it's a maybe, sometimes it's a no, sometimes it's a not yet, but it does change things. You you see God in the scriptures say, hey, if you would have prayed or if you would have done this, then things would have gone this way, but because you didn't, things went this way. And so how often have we not prayed, just thinking God's not gonna do something when he's just been wanting us to respond and wanting to see that? And so the idea is that we can pray like it works because it does. We can have a confidence. And maybe you hear that and you you think that feels big and scary. Or maybe you think, who is God that he wants to listen to me at all? Like I've made so many mistakes, I've screwed up, I've done all these things. Like, why would God ever care to listen to me? Like, what do I have to come before him that he would listen to me? How have I earned that right? Well, the thing is you haven't. But God sent his son Jesus. We were created in God's image. We were made to have a relationship with him, but we couldn't because of this thing called sin. Sin is anything we do that, anything we say, think, or do that displeases God. It's trying to make ourselves king. It's saying, I'm gonna do it my way. And that's evil and it has to be punished because God's perfect and He we want God to punish evil. We want the bad guys to face the consequences of their action, but the problem is we're all bad guys. We've all lied, we've all cheated, we've all stolen. So if your question is, what have I done to earn God's listening to me? Nothing. But Jesus, God sent his son Jesus, he lived a perfect life. He did earn heaven, he did earn full access to God. He was God. God the Son, God with flesh on, Yahweh come to earth, and he lived a perfect life. But at the end of his life, he died on a cross on the side of a road. The most painful, terrible death you could imagine. And it wasn't by accident, but it was so that God could make a way. Because even though our sin had separated us, God didn't want us to stay separated. And so on that cross, Jesus became our sin, and all of the anger and the punishment and the wrath we had earned got put onto him so that we could get the reward that Jesus earned. And so now we can stand in confidence knowing that our sin was not just swept under the rug, but it was paid for, that God chose to pay for. It was an intentional thing. He did it, it's finished, it's done. Jesus didn't stay dead either. He came up out of that grave on the third day to show that death could not claim him, and death can no longer claim you if you're his child. And so now we can have confidence when we come before God that I'm not approaching him on anything I've done, on how many times I've gone to church, on how many Bible studies that I'm a part of, but I come to God based upon what Jesus has done on my behalf. That he lived a perfect life, that he died the death, he lived a life I couldn't, and he died the death that I should have, so that I can have full access to God. And so we pray in Jesus' name. And how many times have we said that, like it's just something that we repeat on autopilot? It's not. Praying in Jesus' name. One means praying in line with his character, right? I'm, you know, you can pray for a Ferrari or a Maserati, uh, but are you really praying that in line with Jesus? You know? But also praying in Jesus' name also means that we have full access to God. Like Jesus is our go-between. We don't have to pray to a priest, we don't have to get somebody else to do it on our behalf, that we have been welcomed into his family, right? Scripture says that if you have placed your faith in Jesus, you will be saved and you will be adopted into the family of God. And think about who has total access to me, right? Like you guys, I love y'all. Y'all can text me, call me, but there's even gonna be times in my life when you guys don't have access to me, right? I'm gonna turn off that phone, I'm spending time with my wife, whatever. But you know the people who have do have full access to me? Like if I'm up here on stage, the one person who could run up here and I would give them my attention, it's my kids. Because I love them. And they can always come to me, they can always talk to me, and that's how God views you. And so you can have confidence knowing that you have full access to him, that he loves you, that he wants a relationship with you, and that you know his name if you're his child. And so I do have to say, we're about to close here in a minute and go to small groups. That is only available if you have first placed your faith in Jesus, right? None of that matters unless you've made that decision to say, I'm no longer trying to do this thing on my own. I'm gonna lay it down, Jesus. I confess that I'm a sinner, I need salvation, and I'm gonna make you my king and I'm gonna follow you for the rest of my life. And that the moment you make that decision, you are saved. And then out of that, you become a child. And so if that's something you haven't done yet, get that right with a leader tonight. When we go to small groups, I'll be down here, leaders will be around. Like have that conversation. I don't want you to go one more day without that getting figured out. But on the other side of that, if you do, you can leave here knowing you are not a burden to God. That you're his child who he loves dearly. You can be encouraged by that. You can have hope. Even if you don't feel that here from your earthly parents, you know that you have a heavenly father who is perfect and he is for you. So let's pray, and then we're gonna move to small groups, all right?