Episode 65 (Exodus 3:7-17)

[Music] Welcome to 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I'm Daniel McPrice. I'm joined by Chad Bird. Chad, how's it going man? It's good. Starting off this week with a little bit Exodus 3. I'd apologize for the roughness of my voice. I've been fighting Leridjad as the last few days, but I think I can hold up for 39 minutes and 30 seconds. All right that's good. That's good. Well I think we left it's been this way since we've been in an Exodus, but we left Moses in not necessarily a precarious situation, but definitely not an average situation. No we left him kind of you know with the shoes off, so he can't go very far. He's stuck there in front of a of a bush that's burning, but not burning up, and lo and behold God is talking to him. So yeah, kind of a precarious situation I guess you could say. At least one that is fraught with all kinds of expectation and apprehension as to what's going to happen. What's going to happen next? I guess we should uh, well if not come to his rescue at least see what happens. Yeah yeah let's do it. Let's find out what's going to go down with Moses here. So just to recap here, Moses is 80 years old now. I always like to mention that because I think sometimes we have the impression and maybe it's from the you know the old movie, the tin commandments that he's in our middle age 60 something like that, but he's 80. So 40 years have passed since he had to run out of Egypt after killing the the Egyptian. And all this time he's been in the desert. He uh has been taking care of his father-in-law's sheep. He's basically nobody uh just a average average guy out there in the desert doing what the the better when people do move around, live intense, take care of their livestock. So that's uh that's where he's at and he sees this bush that uh is on fire. Captures his attention of course and so he goes over to to see what's up. And that's when God speaks to him and says first of all his name twice Moses Moses and Moses is uh in Hebrew it's one word Hennany which is literally here I am one what commentator says at your service. So God tells him first of all don't come to close her. Secondly take his shoes off because you're standing on the holy ground and then he identifies himself as the God of your father. You got a Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And Moses hides his face so he's uh he has his shoes off and his face hidden because he's on the holy ground and he's afraid to look at God. So that's where we left him last time. Now what's going to happen? Well there's a lot actually this covers the rest of chapter three and most of chapter four as well so we're gonna we're gonna have quite an interesting conversation that takes place here between between Moses and the Lord. And we're gonna learn a lot of things about Moses but we're also gonna learn a lot of things about about about God. One of the uh I'll go and say this now this is kind of a something to keep in mind as we proceed forward. One of the fascinating things about this whole back and forth between Moses and God is that if Moses had immediately agreed to do what God wanted him to do. I mean if Moses would as soon as God said go down to Egypt if Moses had said yes sir heading that way right now then we would not have a lot of the revelation and insight that we have in the rest of these chapters. And I think that's worth mentioning because this relationship I guess you could call it the develops here between Moses and and the Lord and which Moses is not afraid to dialogue and to question and to struggle because of this we actually learn more about God than we would have otherwise known. In fact if if Moses had never asked a question of God in particular if he had never said hey what's your name but then we wouldn't have this whole discussion about the name of God being Yahweh and I am who I am and and all of that rich material we're gonna get to in just a minute. So I think that's worth mentioning to kind of keep in mind as we're as we're proceeding forward here but that the dialogue between Moses and Yahweh, Moses' non-hazitation to engage in this really opens up possibilities of learning more about God as as a story unfolds. So what happens first? Well the Lord, Lord's gonna talk first, he after Moses is hiding his face and he's afraid to look at God then we have about a five verse speech that comes out of God's mouth. God says, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are an Egypt and Hebrew that's what we call an infinitive absolute which is a fancy way of saying that this is a way that the way that Hebrew really acts since something we have I have surely seen but in Hebrew I have seen seen the affliction of my people that's the way that they emphasize the the seriousness of an action they repeat the verb. So I have seen seen the affliction of my people I have really seen I've surely seen the affliction of my people are an Egypt and I've given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters because I know their sufferings. So I've come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land to a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amarite and the Parasite and the Highlight and only pause there for them before I go on to the way you wraps up his speech. This is I think an important way to begin because what God is saying in all of these verbs that he strings together is that he's not he's not sort of this, oh I don't know I guess we might call him an American God who is blind to really what's going on and kind of a a deistic sort of God who is like the watchmaker that makes the universe and then steps back and and just lets it tick on its on its own accord. He's a God who's inemidly involved in his creation. He is deeply involved in the sufferings of his of his people. He is a suffering God. It doesn't simply pull out his binoculars and view from a distance what's going on with his with his people instead. He gets down in the pit with them. He suffers with them. He bleeds with them. He is in pain alongside them that is abundantly present in the Old Testament as it is of course in the New Testament as well. One of the words that's used here at the end of verse seven is that I know their sufferings. He reverbs there as Yadda. It's the same same verb that used way back to being a genesis where it says that Adam knew his wife and they conceive in a boy child. So there of course Yadda is a mean social intercourse. So it's an intimate knowledge. It's not simply an intellectual apprehension of some truth. So it's not like God knows their sufferings the way that I know people are suffering in Africa or I know people are suffering in New York City or wherever it is. Now I might know that in an intellectual level but I don't really I don't really enter into their sufferings but God does. So for him to know someone's suffering is for him to dive headfirst into their sufferings and to be there with them and to to suffer alongside them in order that he might bring them out of that win when the time is right. So he has seen the the affliction he knows their suffering he's going to come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and he's going to bring them up to a good and spacious land one that flows with with milk and honey. Now I've said this before and I'll say it again. I have studied Exodus chapter three. I don't know how many times. countless stones. I've taught it, I've written about it, I've studied it on my own, and yet every time that I come back to it, I learn something new. And as I was looking at this the other day, I learned I learned something new here. And that is that we see in his speech here that God is not simply a God who saves us from something. He delivers us to something as well. Now in this case, he comes down to deliver them from Egypt, but he's not simply going to save them. He's not going to simply deliver them from their slavery and leave them there. He delivers them from something in order to bring them into something. So he delivers them from slavery in Egypt in order to bring them into the promised land. So he's a God who doesn't simply reach down and pull us from whatever we're in, sin or addiction or slavery or depression or whatever it is that he's saving us from, but he also brings us where he wants us, where he wants us to be. And I think that's one of the missing aspects of a lot of Christian teaching these days. We hear a lot about how God saves us, Jesus saves us. Well, that is very true, but that's only half the story. He only saves us, but he fills us with his own righteousness. He not only rescues us, but he puts his holiness around us. So he doesn't simply just wash us, bathe us, cleanse all of our dirty sin away. He follows that up by bringing us into his closet, if you will, and clothing us with his own righteousness. So that's the full gospel, not simply the removal of sin, but the imputation of righteousness as well. Yeah, I mean, I've been saying for a long while now that imputation is the great missing thing within broader Christianity. There is a difference between sort of innocent and righteous where if God comes in and just kind of takes away all my bad and just kind of makes me neutral, right? Just kind of like starting over, like a clean slate. Almost as if it's now up to you, right? I think I give him another shot. Let's hit reset on this whole, it's not like that at all. He's not just, he's not hitting reset. I mean, no, he's equate this to baptism and there's so many parallels between baptism and what's going to happen in Exodus. You know, when you talk about what's going to happen at the Red Sea, and I mean, I don't think I'm doing any spoilers here. I think most of the audience has heard about the Red Sea. Maybe not, I don't know. But still there's this, there's this out of the out of slavery and this baptism into the Red Sea. And like you said, be taken to something as well though, promised something. Hey, I could good lose right when I think of salvation. My mind wanders to baptism on the regular. So, but in baptism even, you know, it's not just a matter of, you know, you know, okay, be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. That's true. So, so I'm definitely going in dirty and I'm definitely coming out clean, but more than clean, I'm coming out righteous. That's different. You know, yes, I'm clean, but I'm also good, which is better than neutral. I'm perfect. As if I had done everything. Yeah. Yeah. And you say that way. Yeah. It's not just kind of a kickstart. Okay. You're washed, you're clothed. Now make sure that you don't mess everything up by getting those clothes dirty. It's the, the, the righteousness that we receive is not a potential righteousness or righteousness that we can somehow mess up. No, it's, it's, it's not ours. That's the whole point. Right. We're wearing somebody else's clothes. Yeah. You come out. They're not our own. Yeah. You come out in that indestructible Jesus suit. I mean, that's, that's it. That's the way it is. Yeah. So can we say it? Well, of course, but our sin does not detract or solely the righteousness of Christ. Yeah. It's us. It dirties us, but it does not dirty the gospel. The gospel remains perfect and pure and spotless and righteous because it's not ours. That's, that's sometimes we talk about a, an external righteousness or alien righteousness. I don't like the term alien is because I think, you know, outer space stuff, but alien meaning it's not, it's from somewhere else. It's not ours. So because it's not ours because it's always a gift, then there's nothing we can do to mess it up. You can't in some way mess up the righteousness with which you're clothed because it's always Christ, righteousness, which is perfect and complete and holy and spotless. And that's, that's what God puts on us as he does this kind of second action of, of salvation. He saves, but he imputes his righteousness to us. He cleanses us and he clothes us just like he's going to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and not simply leave them in the wilderness and say, all right, you're on your own. He's kind of bringing them out of slavery into the freedom of, of the Holy Land. So that's, that's a picture here of the complete action of how God, how God works for Israel as well as for us today. Hey, look, you want me to make you like to term alien righteousness? Yeah. Yeah. convince me. I'm a friend, a, who had a guy come to his church, a guy, a visitor come one day that he was there. And he asked, you know, ask him, I heard the church stuff. He's like, Oh, I just, I was just looking for a church. But as you got to know this guy, it turns out what, what ended up happening was this guy was a huge, huge sci-fi fan. Yeah. And he saw this is going. He saw the term alien righteousness somewhere thought that sounds super interesting. It started reading up on it. And then it was like, I forget the church. That is great. That is great. Hey, well, it just, it just moved away up the ladder as far as my, my liking of it now. There you go. We want to thought that that alien would be a great evangelism tool. But there is one guy, one guy, but that's a good, one guy. It's a true story. So, yeah. So that's the, the equivalent, I guess, the bringing into the promised land would be the equivalent of this alien righteousness clothing, clothing us, the righteousness of Christ. So that's what God is telling Moses. He's going to do. He's going to come down and he's going to bring up and he's going to bring them into this good and spacious land. Now, this is, I wanted to mention something about the milk and honey. I was, I was talking with my life about this the other day about how I sort of have an explanation that almost ruins the romanticized image we have of milk and honey because I mean, it, it is a land flowing with milk and honey, but not, not really the way that we are accustomed to think of it because most of the milk from the Holy Land came from goats. So this is like a land flowing with goat milk. And there is, there's no record in the Old Testament of anyone ever raising bees in order to harvest their honey. What, what seems to be the meant by honey here is actually a product that's very common in the Holy Land. It is a kind of a a syrup-y resin honey-like substance is made from dates. So I guess if we could translate this in a way that's a little bit more realistic to the agriculture and the horticulture of the Holy Land, it would be to a land flowing with goat milk and and date juice. This just doesn't sound quite as romantic, you know. But it's realistic. Hey, where there's goat milk, there's potentially goat cheese. There you go. There you go. So you can't, you can't beat that. But that's really what's, it's what's being described here. It's it is a picture-esque description of the Holy Land, but not really the way that we we commonly think about it. Hey man, contrasted with leaks and onions, it still, it still sounds really good. Yeah, it's still a whole lot better than leaks and onions. I've never, I've never quite understood the Israelites attraction to life back in Egypt where they had leaks and onions. That's the deceitfulness of sin, right there, man. Remember when you look back at that sin and you're like, "Mmm, leaks and onions. Day and night, man, I wish I could have a diet of leaks and onions." And like, The other person looks at you like what? Like what are you talking about? Like these minions are not a good diet. No man, they were so good. I think you've forgotten. That's in the seetha fullness of sin. There you go, there you go. I didn't know what they were so confused. I didn't even know what was good for them, right? That makes sense. So to kind of pick up what we're left off here. So God describes all these things he's going to do. And how he's going to bring Israel into this promised land. And then he kind of wraps everything up by saying this. He says, now look, the cry of the Israelites has come to me. And I've seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. And if I can kind of pause there, see, see your Moses, right? And you're listening to all this. And in the back of your mind, you're thinking, uh-oh. I can feel something coming here. There's a reason God is telling me all of this, right? He's leading up to something and then, damn, he gets to it. Therefore, come on. I will send you to Pharaoh so that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt. Now we're going to get to Moses' response in just a second. But I'd like to point out now that this is one of the first of many, what we call, what we refer to as call narratives in the Old Testament. These are stories where God appears to someone and usually a prophet. And he calls that prophet to serve, calls that person to be a prophet, to be his spokesman, to uh, foretell his will for the people and to foretell his will for the people and to foretell what's going to happen in the future. That's what prophets do. They foretell and they foretell. Well, Moses is going to be a prophet and this is God coming to him to call him to do that. And it's very, I think revealing the verb choice that's used here. Because it says that God says that I will, I will send you to Pharaoh. The Hebrew verb that's used there is a shelloc. To shelloc is a technical term. So if I, if I commissioned someone to go on an official mission for me in order to speak for me, to act in my stead with my full authority, that person is my shelloc. To shelloc is to sin. So a shelloc is one who is sin. So the uh, the rabbi's had a saying. They uh, they said that the shelloc of a man is as the man himself. So the, the shelloc of Yahweh here is Moses. Moses is the one who bears the, the authority of Yahweh to speak and to act for him. And shelloc is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek verb, Apostela, which means to apostle or to sin. So we could really compare Exodus 3 with Matthew 28 when Christ stends out his, his, his apostles. There he commissions in with the full authority that he possesses and they speak and they act for him. He hears you, hears me. And so he's going to do the same here with, with Moses. Moses will be the mouthpiece of Yahweh speaking with his authority. So this is sort of the Matthew 28 of the Old Testament. So all of that leads up now to Moses' response. What is, what is Moses going to say? Well most of the time in the Old Testament when a person is called to the prophetic office, the object, they come up with a list of reasons they should not do this. The only exception that I know of is Isaiah who is, is unusually gung-ho about this. You know, he, he says, "send me, send me." Well, Moses says, "send somebody else, send somebody else." And this is the way that he, this is the way that he starts. So after God says all this, Moses responds, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?" So Moses begins this whole list of reasons why he shouldn't go, why God should think again, go to plan B, send somebody, send somebody else. And it begins then with basically this question of his, his own inherent personal deficiency. I mean who am I? There's got to be a whole lot of other people who are more qualified for this, better at this, younger than I am, whatever it might be. There's got to be other options because who am I that I should go and and do this? And every time that Moses has an objection, God has a response. So this one is pretty mild to begin with, you know, who am I? And so God answers his response this way. He says, "Sirate late, I will be with you." And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain. So Moses says, "Who am I?" And God's response is basically, it doesn't matter who you are, what matters is who I am and not just who I am, but what I'm going to do with you and for you. So don't get an idea, Moses, that this is somehow up to you, that somehow you have to, you know, submit the proper resume that you have to have a lengthy enough CV that you have to have a whole list of, you know, credible sources that I can turn it to to make sure that you're a legitimate and qualified candidate for this position. Now let's call the opposite. The only reason the Moses is going to succeed is because God is with him. Certainly I will be with you and that's really all that you need to know. God has already said, "Look, I'm going down. I've heard, I've seen, I'm going down to deliver my people. I am just simply going to use you as my tool, as my servant in order to bring this about." So don't think so highly of yourself or so lowly of yourself either way because who you are ultimately doesn't matter whose you are, is what matters. You are my servant, you will be the one who speaks and acts for me. And as a way of assuring you, what all of a sudden done, that I'm the one who's behind this all, you're going to bring the people back to this exact location, not Sinai, not Horib, St. Place. And here you're going to worship me. You're going to acknowledge that I am the God who has accomplished all of this through you. So that's where the answer begins, but we have more. So God has said this. He said, "I'll be with you." And Moses continues. So he's got another objection now. He's first of all said, "Who am I?" And now he's going to pose another question. He says, "Well, look, I'm going to the sons of Israel. Say, I do this. And I get there, and I tell them, 'Hey, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.' And they're going to ask me, what's his name? So what am I supposed to tell them? This is a fascinating question for more of the one reason, because it implies, to some extent, anyway, that the Israelites may have actually forgotten kind of the whole history of who they were, of what Yahweh had done for the patriarchs in years past. And that Moses himself may have forgotten this as well. You know, they maintain some knowledge of God and some of the things that he had done. But the very fact that Moses has to ask God what his name is, suggests that there is a there's a deficiency of knowledge about who this God is to whom he's to whom he's speaking. So he wants to know his name. And this is verse 14, probably one of the most, not probably, one of the most famous verses in the Old Testament. Moses says, what is your name? God responds, "I am who I am." And he said, "That's what you're supposed to say to the sons of Israel. I am has sent me to you." So what's going on here? Well, there's a lot that we could say about this, and I'll try and keep myself at least somewhat restricted as to how much I say. But I won't explain this a little bit. First of all, when God says, "I am who I am." That could be translated in a few different ways. It could be, "I am who I am," or, "I will be who I will be," or, "I will cause to happen," or, "What I will cause to happen." There's a whole lot of proposed translations for that. I personally think that we should just stick with, "I am who I am," or, "I will be who I will be." So in Hebrew, it's three words. It's, "Ayeh, I'll share, ayeh." "Ayeh" means, "I am," or, "I will be." So, "I am who I am," or, "I will be who I will be." "Ayeh, I'll share, ayeh." Usually, at least in my experience, when I've heard this explained, it's almost as if the people who are explaining it are saying, "See, there's this unwillingness on the part of God to disclose too much of who he is." It's almost like, "Hey, I am who I am, and don't ask many more questions." Period, that's it. But context is extremely important here. Because, just a few verses before, actually two, two verses before, the same word, "Ayeh" was used when God was speaking with Moses. He said, "Certainly, "Ayeh, with you." Certainly, "I will be with you." And then two verses later, we have God saying, "Ayeh, I'll share, ayeh." "I will be who I will be." I think that the explanation, which makes the most sense in this context, is not simply God being unwilling to disclose more of his identity, rather that God is saying, "Look, who I am is the God who's with you. I am ayeh, I will be with you." So what God is telling Moses is, "Look, I've just promised you that I'm going to be with you, ayeh, when you go down to Egypt in order to deliver the Israelites." And that's how I want to be identified. So I am the God who is constantly with you, to deliver you, to be with you, when you deliver the children of Israel. What about this? It's interesting that he says, "I am who I am, who I am, or I'll be who I'll be." I think it's a little bit strange that Moses asked this question, considering that, just before this, that he said that, "I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." So the idea that he's completely unwilling to disclose his identity doesn't really work because he did give him more information. It's as though Moses wants more than that because he clearly already knows that. He's already stated himself as the God of his fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So it's a little bit strange, I think. I've always thought of it strange. Moses is like, "Well, who should I tell them?" He sent me. And he's like, "Well, I mean, this is the same God. It's a God they believe." He said, "It's not like he comes up." He's like, "Hey, I'm a God." And you're going to do this thing. And he's asking which God. He knows it's the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I do think there's this sense in which he's saying that I am, that's sufficient, that I am that. I'll always be that. And then of course, I'm sure we're going there, but I think the simplicity of it is sort of beautiful too. That God doesn't give you too much. He gives you this sort of simple thing. Something that when Jesus mic drops the same language, it has the effect. If this answer was long, it just doesn't work as well for Jesus to roll out, "I am." Yeah, that's right. The simplicity and the immediate clarity of it is striking. And of course, yeah, like you say, that worked well, especially in John's Gospel, which Jesus has these "I am." I am statements. Yeah, I mean, he's the God who exists. He is the God who is. He's the God who always has been, always will be. And part of his identity, part of his isness, is the fact that he is always with us. He's the God who is. He's the bandit's us. He's the Emmanuel. Right. I mean, is it part of this, when he says, "I am." The reverse of that also is the idea that looked like the God, even the God that you're going up against or the other God's aren't. Right? So, like you said, I'm the one who exists. As opposed to this. Yeah, that's the opposite. It's the other God who don't. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, so I'm the God who is. They are the God's, so called God's who are not. They are vanities, as the Old Testament were referred to the Melsuaries, as nothingnesses. They exist only in our imaginations. So, he is the God who exists, the God who exists not simply in it being, but in action. He acts to save his people. He's with his people. He's going to, he's going to deliver his people. Yeah. So, that's, that's the name. Yeah. There's a, at the end of the day, there's only two kinds of God. The God that is and the gods that are not or another way to say it, I suppose, is there's the God who created and the gods we've created. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, and one of them is and the other ones are too, but they, but they aren't. They're not, they're not, they're not who they've always been. They haven't always been. We made them up. Yeah. Yeah. Paul and Corinthians actually refer to them as demons. These gods we've created are used by the demons in order to, in order to deceive people. So, there's this malicious force behind them. Now, I know we've got about three minutes left. I just want to say a couple more things about this, about this divine name. I am who I am. Now, this is, we usually know this by, by the Hebrew name Yahweh. And there's, there's a couple of things that you need to know about Yahweh. First of all, Yahweh does not technically mean I am who I am. Yahweh means he is who he is. Now, think about this. So God says, I am I am and we say Yahweh. That is he is who he is. So the name Yahweh, even though it's of course, adamantly connected with the I am announcement, literally in the Hebrew is third person. So it's he is who he is. So I like to think of it as confession in a confession. We say back to God what he's first said to us. So God says, I am who I am and we say he is who he is. Yahweh. So Yahweh means he is or he is who he is. And God, when God speaks to himself, he says, I am, I am who I am. And it's not Jehovah, by the way, if you're interested in this, you can check out my YouTube channel where I did a whole YouTube video about how Jehovah is not the name of God. But just briefly, it's not. It was a, it was a misunderstanding. Yahweh is the is the pronunciation of the divine name. Now, as we alluded to earlier, what is what is most fascinating about the divine name is then Jesus claim of this divine name for his own as we see in the is we see in the gospel of John. So we talked earlier about the aims of the Lord being the second person of the Trinity being the son of God who appears to Moses in this in his flame of fire and the burning bush. So this is this is Christ. This is the son of God speaking to Moses, identifying himself right now as Yahweh as the God who is I am who I am. And then later when the son of God is taken on our human nature and his incarnation, which we're about to celebrate a Christmas, then he will once again affirm that he is Yahweh. He is the great I am. So already here in the Old Testament, we have Jesus saying I'm Yahweh. We'll see that in the New Testament. Jesus saying I'm Yahweh. In both cases, he says it in order that not only we might know that he is the true God, but he is the true God who saves. He comes down to deliver us from the from the Egypt of sin and death in order to bring us into the holy land of his righteousness and his life. Yeah. And at the end, this is this is Jesus who's going to do this. Yeah. Yeah. That's him. That's him. He's in the burning bush. He's going to be in our own flesh and blood in both cases. He's there in order to do what he does best to save and to bring us into his kingdom. And that's it. We're out of time. But hey, I feel better about that ending getting the end with Jesus than getting the end with some of the things we've had to end with. So we just leave it right there. Guys, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, if you'd like to support us, this podcast, the other podcast that we do, the articles and all the events and that's everything that we put on. We got lots more stuff that we'd like to do. And we could use some help with being able to pay for some of the things that we need to pay for to pull it all off. 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