I guess I was about 4 years old when I realized that my mother had another name besides “Mom” … and one day I decided to call her by that name instead of “Mom.” Big mistake. She asked me to do something and I replied: “Okay … Marie.” There was that thunderous moment of silence … the laser beam stare … and then, through clenched teeth, my mother slowly asking, “What … did … you … call … me?”
I’ll never forget the speech that I got that day … very short, clear, and to the point. “When I ask you to do something or call you, you will answer me with a ‘yes, ma’am’ or a ‘no, ma’am,’ and the same goes for your father. When he asks you to do something or calls you, you will answer him with a ‘yes, sir’ or a ‘no, sir.’ Do you understand?”
What could I say but … “yes, ma’am.”
That was 60 years ago and I still answer my mother with “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” Same for my father. I still call her “Mom” and I still call my father “Dad” but I have never called either of them by their first name … not because I’m afraid of them but because I respect them.
People under 50 might think that my parent’s reaction to being called by their first name was a bit over the top … but most of you, I think, come from a generation where you just didn’t do that … period! I was taught that you called all adults “ma’am” or “sir” as a sign of respect. First names were for other children only. I grew up in the 60s and 70s when all of that started to change. I remember going to a friend’s house after school one day and hearing my friend call his mother by her first name and I was shocked … my heart froze as I waited for the hammer to fall … and was even more shocked and confused when his mother acted like nothing had happened. As the robot in “Lost in Space” would say, it did not “compute.” Eventually she asked me to stop calling her “ma’am” and to call her by her first name. Couldn’t do it. It didn’t feel right for me to be that personal, that familiar with an adult who was supposed to be an authority figure. It just felt disrespectful. I know that some of you know what I’m talking about and miss it like I do. Calling someone “ma’am” or “sir” never felt mean or oppressive … just respectful.
As we have been learning in this series, the ancient Hebrews often considered a person’s name equivalent to their personality. The meaning behind the name “Moses,” for example, was “pulled out” … which was prophetic, given that he was literally “pulled out” of the Nile River by Pharaoh’s daughter and later he would pull his people out of Egypt.
If you remember, in Genesis 2:19, God brought all the animals before Adam and whatever Adam called them, that was their name. In other words, unlike all the other animals that God made, we had been given the ability … the insight … to see into the nature and characteristics of other animals and other human beings … but when it comes to God … as we are about to find out … God had to give us His names for a reason. His names reveal aspects of His character or “personality” … if that’s the right word … that we could never see for ourselves. For example, He is one … “El” … and He is plural … “Elohim” … the Designer and Sustainer of His Creation … and He is “Adon” and “Adonai” … the Sovereign King of kings and Lord of lords, remember?
“Elohim” and “Adonai,” along with the other names that we are going to learn about and explore, were often revealed to specific individuals for specific reasons or for specific purposes. But today’s name … O, my sisters and brothers … we must hear today’s name with fear and trembling … with reverence and awe … for it is the personal name of God … not a title or an adjective … but the very name of God as given to us by God Himself!
I am begging you to do your best to stay awake and not let your mind wander because the name that He gave us is so … so … [pause] … amazing … so revealing … so unique that I am going to do my utmost best to show you how this name reveals the height, the depth, the length, and the breadth of who He is. I say “as best I can” because such a thing isn’t really possible … but I beg you, bear with me.
The name that God gave Moses is what’s known as a “tetragrammaton.” Oh … that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? “Tetragrammaton.” Well, when you break it down … ‘tetra’ means ‘four’ and a ‘grammaton’ is a letter. “Tetragrammation” is just a fancy way of saying “four letters” in Greek … but the four letters that we’re going to be talking about today are the four most important letters ever put together. The four letters are the Hebrew symbols for “YHWH.”
If you remember, I explained last week that whenever you see the word “God” in all capital letters it is referring to the “tetragrammaton” or the name of God that is made up of the four Hebrew letters “Yod – He-Waw-He” … which we translate into the English letters of “Y-H-W-H.” The “tetragrammaton” or four-letter name for God is used over 6,800 times in the Old Testament … three times more than the name of “Elohim.” This name was considered to be so sacred that when the scribes would write it down or copy it, they would take a bath beforehand and then destroy the pen afterwards because the pen could not be used to write profane or common words after writing a name that was so sacred … so powerful … so divine … so holy.
Observant Jews hold this name in such high honor and immense awe that they have come up with different ways of writing it down so that they would not speak it or say it to themselves while they are reading. For example, they may write it as “G-d” or they may refer to God as “Ha Shem” … which means “the Name” … with a capital “N” or they may write or say “Hakadosh Baruch Hu” … which means “The Holy One, Blessed Be He.” I love “Hakadosh Baruch Hu” because they found a way to bless God without speaking His name … “The Holy One, Blessed Be He.”
The “tetragrammaton” of YHWH was so sacred and holy and revered that it was only spoken out loud once a year on the Day of Atonement … and then only by the high priest in the Holy of Holies after going through a rigorous and prescribed process of ritually purifying himself.
Part of our problem today is that we’ve become too casual with God. Instead of hesitating to even pronounce His name, we use His name flippantly. God’s name has even become part of our slang and is used more often in swearing than supplication. The Third Commandment, found in Exodus 20:7, commands us not to take the name of the Lord in vain. “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name.” In Hebrew, the Third Commandment literally translates as: “You shall not attach the LORD’s name to emptiness.” God’s name is not just some name or some word. You don’t treat it as casually as you would my name, for example. It is to be spoken with deep reverence and profound respect … even fear.
In His classic book called “Your God is Too Small,” author J.B. Phillips wrote: “The trouble with many people today is that they have not found a god big enough for modern needs” (Phillips, J.B. 2004. New York: Touchstone; p. 28). He goes on to explain that our view of God hasn’t changed much since we were little children. Some of us still carry around the image of God as some kind of celestial policeman who is constantly on the look out so that He can bust us for our bad behavior … or we go to the other extreme and believe that God is some kindly old gentleman who merely winks at our wrong doing. He is either the managing director who micro-manages and controls everything … or He’s the meek and mild God who looks the other way because He loves us. In other words, says Phillips, we have stuffed God into a box … and our box, quite frankly, is way, way too small. We have shrunk Him down so much that our thoughts about Him are nowhere close to what the Bible teaches about Him. Some of us have made God into our own image instead of fully living out what it means to be made in His image, amen?
So … are you ready to take God out of your box of preconceived ideas and experience God as He has revealed Himself to us in His Word? Trust me … when you get a glimpse … and we are only going to get a glimpse … into God’s personal name it will become all too obvious that there is no box that could ever contain YHWH … nor can any one name describe Him.
At the beginning of chapter 3 of Exodus, we find Moses wandering around in the wilderness in an area the scripture described as “beyond the wilderness” (v. 1). Think about that for a moment. The desert was where civilization ended and nothingness and emptiness began … and Moses is beyond even the wilderness … suggesting that Moses is as physically and spiritually and emotionally as far out and as alone as he can be. Economically he is “beyond the wilderness” … tending sheep that belong to his father-in-law Jethro. Again, think about that. Moses has nothing. And if that isn’t galling enough, everything that he does have, including the sheep that he is tending beyond the wilderness, don’t belong to him. Moses was a fugitive … a wanted man … and he chose a great place to hide from the law and to hide from himself. But the one person he could never hide from was YHWH.
As King David once noted, where can we go that God isn’t already there, amen? And God has Moses right where he wants him … on the backside of nowhere where there was nothing but rocks, sand, sheep … [pause] … and YHWH. He has Moses’ complete and undivided attention. God is getting ready to make a “somebody” out of a “nobody” that “everybody” had forgotten about a long, long time ago.
It has been 40 years since Moses murdered the Egyptian task master and buried his body in the sand. Tending sheep beyond the wilderness, Moses, the adopted prince of Egypt, thought that nobody could find him and nobody would remember him … but he was never lost to God. What Moses didn’t know is that God had been watching over him since birth … preparing him to be a part of His fantastic plan to free His captive children from the most powerful nation on the earth. It had taken 40 years for God to prepare Moses, and Israel, and the Pharaoh for the exodus. It had taken God 40 years to get the Egypt out of Moses. Let me assure you … it doesn’t matter to God if it’s been 40 minutes, 40 hours, 40 days, 40 weeks, 40 months, or 40 years … He knows where you are … He knows what you’ve gone through … and he has been waiting for you to come to the end of yourself so that He can begin a new work in you, amen? I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty exciting stuff to me.
After 40 years … Moses is ready … after 400 years Israel is desperate … and God is able. God often orchestrates circumstances in our lives … whether we are aware of it or not … that will bring us to a place where He can speak to us and use us for His glory. When He knows that we are ready … He calls … He draws out attention to the fire of His Presence and once we’ve taken notice … once He knows that He has our attention … He speaks!
It was just another day of tending sheep for Moses when he noticed something that actually wasn’t that unusual a sight in the desert … a burning bush. When you’re surrounded by nothing but sand and rocks, you don’t really have to be all that careful about putting out your campfire. It’s not like it’s going to start a forest fire, amen, because there’s no forest to catch on fire. In fact, there is very little wood in the desert, amen? The fire could have been started by some nomads or shepherds who had camped out there the night before and weren’t very careful about putting out their campfire. It could have even been started by lighting. You’ll notice that Moses is pretty calm about seeing a bush on fire. In fact, Moses stands there watching the bush burn for a while expecting it to burn itself out …
What made this particular burning bush so odd … so out-of-the-ordinary … wasn’t the fact that it was on fire but that it kept burning and burning and burning. That was weird enough to make Moses go over to it for a closer look. As he draws closer to this burning bush that isn’t burning up, God calls out to him. “Moses! Moses!” Now, I can only speak for myself but if a voice called out to me from a burning bush that isn’t burning up, I’d either drop dead or split … but Moses can’t split. He has to take care of the sheep. Do you see the foreshadowing here and why God chose Moses for this particular task? Moses has been taking care of sheep in the wilderness for 40 years … sheep that don’t belong to him … and he’s about to shepherd the children of Israel … sheep that belong to God … in the wilderness for the next 40 years. Pretty cool, eh?
It is also important to point out that God calls him by his name … Moses. Moses doesn’t know God’s name … not yet … but God knows Moses’ name … and, as we have discussed, a person’s name in Moses’ day revealed something about that person’s character or relationship to God. Moses’ name meant what? Yeah, “pulled out” … just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Hum … who had Moses put in the river and then “pulled out” by Pharaoh’s daughter and then had him raised by his own mother in the very palace of Pharaoh so that one day he could pull God’s children out of Egypt and lead them through the wilderness to the Promised Land?
As I said, if a voice spoke out to me from a burning bush that isn’t burning and it knows my name, I’d probably drop dead … and even though the text makes it sound like Moses casually responded to the voice, I’m sure that he was anything but calm and casual. I would even bet that he could hardly speak and was barely able to squeak out “Here I am.”
The Voice tells Moses to come no closer … “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). Moses does the Voice one better … he not only removes his sandals but covers his face “because he was afraid to look at God” (v. 6).
Now, the commentaries are filled with mountains of discussion about this moment, but the one that “speaks” to me has to do with the powerful symbol of leaving the world behind. When Moses steps out of his sandals, he is stepping out of his comfort zone. God is calling Moses out of the profane life that he had been living for the past 80 years and calling for him to stand on holy ground as he begins to start his new life serving a powerful and holy god.
The Voice continues to speak. “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt; I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers. Indeed, I know their suffering and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:7-8). Now here’s something that God and Moses could agree on. The very reason that Moses is out here beyond the desert tending sheep that don’t belong to him is that he had heard the screams of a Hebrew slave being so badly beaten that Moses became uncontrollably enraged and killed the slave driver and buried his body in the sand. What God is about to do is offer him is a way to save … not one Hebrew slave … or a few Hebrew slaves … but all of the Hebrew slaves … but he can’t do if he’s hiding in the backside of nowhere. He has to go to Egypt.
“So come,” says the Voice in the burning bush that isn’t burning, “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” I can hear Moses thinking, “Hey voice, whoever you are, I was with you up this point but there ain’t no way … You absolutely have the wrong guy, let me tell you!” I think I would probably have to agree with Moses on this one … “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Moses whines and protest. And I have to also agree with Moses that a burning bush that isn’t burning saying that it will go with me when I face the most powerful king in all the land would give me little comfort or reassurance. I mean, who or what does this “voice” belong to? “Suppose I go to the Israelites,” Moses hedges, “and say to them ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?” (Exodus 13).
What is His name? Poor Moses’ question makes sense. He has no idea who or what is speaking to him. He may be Hebrew by blood but he knows little or nothing about his Jewish heritage. As a baby, he had been separated from his people at birth and raised in the house of Pharaoh … who believed that he was the descendent of one of Egypt’s many gods. About the time that Moses learned that he was, in fact, the descendant of Hebrew slaves, he killed an Egyptian and had to flee into the wilderness to hid. He ended up marrying the daughter of a pagan priest and tending his sheep. He knew absolutely nothing about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob … how could he, right?
All of the Egyptian gods and goddesses had names … Ra … Isis … Horus … Hapi … Anubis. It only made sense to Moses that the Israelites would want to know which of the many gods spoke to him from the burning bush that wasn’t burning. Moses needed a name … a title … something that would carry weight with the Israelites and with Pharaoh. He couldn’t just go up to the Israelites or Pharaoh and say “a god” or “some god” spoke to him out on the backside of nowhere. They had no reason to take what he said at face value. They would naturally want to know the authority of the one speaking before they’d act. The Sun god “Ra,” for example, was considered to be more powerful than “Babi” … the baboon god who ruled over spirits of the dead.
“Thus you shall say to the Israelites,” says the Voice in the burning bush that is not burning, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 5:14). Notice anything? “I AM WHO I AM” is all caps … capital Yod … capital He … capital Waw … capital He … YHWH.
Here’s the problem … YHWH has no vowels … which is why the tetragrammaton of God’s name is technically considered unpronounceable. In an attempt to make YHWH pronounceable, vowels were inserted in the tetragrammaton … no longer making it a tetragrammaton or a “four” letter word but a pronounceable “hexagrammaton” or six-letter word. The problem is … which vowels to insert between the Yod-He-Waw-He? And the reason that that is important is that the vowels can change the meaning of the whole word. In the 10th or 11th century a guild of Hebrew scribes call the “Masoretes” standardized the use of the vowels “a” and “e” … turning YHWH into the pronounceable name of God …“Yahweh.” Any number of vowels could have been inserted:
It could have been Y-e-h-w-a-h … pronounced “Yeh-vah”
It could have been Y-o-h-w-a-h … pronounced “Yo-vah”
It could have been Y-o-h-w-e-h … pronounced “Yo-veh”
When you use different vowels, however, you make it a new name with a new meaning … which makes the tetragrammaton of YHWH hard to translate because all of these variations could actually apply to God. The name “Yahweh,” for example, could mean “I am” … “to be” … “to exist” … “to cause to become” … “to come to pass.” The common consensus today is to translate “Yahweh” to “I AM WHO I AM.” When you shift the vowels around or use vowels other than “a” or “e” you can get names that mean: “I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE” … you can see how that would apply, amen? It can become “I SHALL BE WHAT I AM” … “I WILL BECOME WHAT I CHOOSE” … or “I WILL BECOME WHATSOEVER I DESIRE OR PLEASE.” Again, you can see how all of these names still apply, amen?
I think the ambiguity is deliberate and beautiful and appropriate. Every variation of YHWH produces a significant and meaningful name for God. Some, like “YAHWEH” are present tense. Some, like “I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE” or “I WILL BECOME WHAT I CHOOSE” are future tense. YHWH is not a static name but an extremely dynamic name for an extremely dynamic God who is now … who is here … who is present … but who is always changing and growing and moving. With just four letters … Yod-He-Waw-He … YHWH … God expresses a wide range of possibilities.
But we’re not done yet. We’ve only scratched the surface. You see, Yod-He-Waw-He, or YHWH, is more of a description of who God is rather than a name. Now … briefly … “Elohim” and “Adonai” are both plural nouns … but the name YHWH … is actually a verb and not a noun. In fact, it is what’s known as a “causative” verb in Hebrew. A “causative” verb points to the source of the action. Stay with me here … I don’t want you to miss the beauty of this. It’s amazing.
Let me use a simple sentence to illustrate what I mean: “I bumped into the table and the glass fell over.” You can picture that, right? The glass fell over because I “bumped” into the table and caused it to fall over. The word “bump” is causative because it is the action that I, the noun, did that caused the other noun, the glass, to fall over. My “bumping” into the table is what “caused” the glass to tip over.
Now, here’s where it gets really, really cool. God … I AM WHO I AM … is both the source of the action and the action that results from His action. He is the sustaining Presence and He is the action or source of that action. I know … this is hard to wrap your mind around but it truly shows you how awesome God’s name is, amen? Think about it. God is a verb … He is the action … and He is the source of that action. You can hear it in all the variations on the name YHWH … “I AM WHO I AM” … “I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE” or “I WILL BECOME WHAT I CHOOSE.” Another way to translate YHWH would be “HE WHO CAUSES TO EXIST” or “HE WHO IS EXISTS.” In other words, “I EXIST BECAUSE I EXIST” … “I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE BECAUSE I EXIST” … “I WILL BECOME WHAT I CHOOSE BECAUSE I EXIST.”
I know … I know … this is hard to understand … and for a reason. We are talking about GOD and I just wanted you to get a glimpse in to the beautiful and personal way that GOD has revealed Himself to us … so stay with me. Moses asks God what His “name” was, and God doesn’t give him a “name” as in a proper noun … like “Moses” or “Abraham” or “Gordon” or “Ra” or “Zeus.” He gives Moses a verb to describe Himself … and that, to me, is beautiful and extremely significant. Do you know anybody whose name is a verb? “Hi, my name is ‘Running’” … “Pleased to meet you ‘Singing’” … more accurately, have you ever met someone with a name that is a “causative” verb … “My name? Oh … it’s ‘Causing the Sun to Shine’.”
One of my favorite books on this topic is “God is a Verb” by Rabbi David Cooper. Listen to how he explains this beautiful, unfolding name of YHWH. He starts out by saying that we relate to God as an “interactive” verb. Interactive verb is another name for a causative verb that is interacting and impacting the environment around it. God is, without a doubt, actively and constantly interacting with us and with the world around us. “God,” says Rabbi Cooper, “is God ‘God-ing.’” “From this perspective,” explains Rabbi Cooper, “creation should not be treated as a noun either [because creation] is an ‘interactive’ verb; it is constantly ‘creation-ing.’” What he is saying is that creation is a thing … made up of stars, planets, trees, people, water, clouds … but creation is never static … it is always in a state of ‘creation-ing’ or “re-creating” itself. Creation is a tangible thing but it is also a living a thing, a constantly evolving and changing thing. Rabbi Cooper goes on to say that “when we put these two ideas together” … the idea that both God and Creation are constantly changing and evolving … “the paradigm of relationship between Creator and creation dramatically shifts. God is God-ing. Creation is Creation-ing. Every aspect of creation is a process,” he concludes, “like an infinite flower opening its pedals” (1998. New York: Penguin Books, p. 65).
Picture that. God is like an infinite flower opening its pedals. We wait to see the finished product but its beauty just keeps unfolding and unfolding for all eternity. That’s why I think God appeared as a fire to Moses. When you look at fire, it never changes … it is always “fire” … but the fire is always moving, jumping, flickering, leaping … always changing … never the same from one second to the next. Like Rabbi Cooper’s infinitely unfolding flower or Moses’ burning bush, YHWH is constantly changing … the second you “see” God … the second that you think that you know God … the second that you think you’ve capture God and pinned Him down … guess what? Something new, something amazing, something glorious emerges. Since something new is always emerging, our understanding of God is constantly changing and growing as God brings us to new levels of understanding about who He is. And this is only the beginning, my brothers and sister. This process of learning and growing awareness continues on even when we get to be in His presence and live with Him for all eternity in His heavenly city because He is an infinitely opening flower and an eternally burning flame. God God-ing … unfolding … revealing Himself to us for all eternity.
How’s that for a name, amen? A causative verb that describes God as the ever-changing Source … with a capital “S” … of all that was, all that is, and all that will ever be. YHWH … a name that captures the constantly elusive and evolving nature of God. You know why I think that Yod-He-Waw-He … YHWH … is the “personal” name of God? Because no human being could have come up with a name like that … an unpronounceable name made up of four letters that captures the essence and heart of God who is constantly creating and expressing Himself through His creation, amen? It seems to me that only God could have come up with such a profound and strangely accurate name like that for Himself using only four letters, ya think?
And now for the cherry on top of this linguistic sundae. One of the many faces and manifestations of Yahweh was and is … Jesus. “Before Abraham was born,” said Jesus, “I am” (John 8:58). On eight different occasions, the gospels record Jesus using this same phrase … “I AM” … to define who He was and what He came to do. Those who were paying attention would not have missed the obvious connection when Jesus proclaimed … “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) … “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12) … “I am the gate” (John 10:7,9) … “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11, 14) … “I am the way” (John 14:6) … “I am the vine” (John 15:1,5) … “I am the alpha and omega” (Revelation 22:13) … “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).
YHWH … Yod-He-Waw-He … “I AM WHO I AM” … “I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE” … “I WILL BECOME WHAT I CHOOSE” … “HE WHO CAUSES TO EXIST” … “HE WHO IS EXISTS” … “I EXIST BECAUSE I EXIST” … I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE BECAUSE I EXIST … “I WILL BECOME WHAT I CHOOSE BECAUSE I EXIST.” If you think that you can stuff all of that in to a box, good luck. Listen … if the grave couldn’t hold Him what makes you think that your lack of faith or your lack of imagination can, amen?
In her book, “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life,” Hannah Smith wrote: “The name ‘I AM’ implies that we may ask for what is not complete. This apparently unfinished name” … she’s talking about Yod-He-Waw-He … “is the most comforting name the heart of man could [hear] because it allows us to add to it without any limitations” (1952; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker; pg. 36). In other words, is there anything in this world or in Heaven that YHWH … Yod-He-Waw-He … can’t handle? Ultimately, following GOD and putting your trust in Him alone boils down to whether or not you believe that He is who He says He is … I AM WHO I AM. As the prophet Isaiah points out, “He will keep you in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him because he trusts in Him” (Isaiah 26:3) … the great I AM.
Our closing prayer is based on Psalm 34:1-7:
Elohim, Adonai:
We will praise You, Yahweh, at all times.
We will constantly speak Your praises.
We will boast only in You, Yahweh.
Let all who are helpless take heart.
Come, let us tell the world of Yahweh’s greatness.
We have exalted Your name together in our hearts and in our worship today.
We pray to You, Yahweh, and You answer us.
You free us from all our fears.
Those who look to You for help will be radiant with joy,
no shadow of shame will darken our faces.
In our desperation we pray and we know that You, Yahweh, are listening.
We know that You, who has saved us from all our trouble yesterday, will continue to save us from all our trouble today and tomorrow;
For the angel of Yahweh is our guard;
who surrounds and defends all who fear Yahweh.
In the name of Jesus, who is the very embodiment of the great I AM, we pray. And would all who believe that God is who He says He is join with me in making it so by saying … Amen!
