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For most of his adult life, Moses felt something like deep disillusionment and hopelessness.
Having failed disastrously in his own strength to free his fellow Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, he fled into the Sinai wilderness. There he spent 40 years apparently doing little more than tending sheep and keeping his head down.
Then, in Exodus chapter three, God comes knocking. He offers Moses a history-changing job assignment – only to discover that Moses is one of history’s most reluctant spiritual recruits.
When he learns that he has been chosen by God to spearhead the Exodus project, he gasps, “Who am I?” God answers, “Don’t worry, Moses. This isn’t about you.”
“Well, then,” splutters Moses, “who exactly are you?” God responds by revealing his mysterious personal name, Yahweh, which is used more than 7,000 times in the Old Testament and is usually translated into English by the four capital letters L-O-R-D.
What does Yahweh mean? It’s comforting to know, in a strange sort of way, that God’s personal name is not a noun. Nor is it an adjective. Yahweh is a verb: “I am who I am,” or, “I am all you need.” Moses is learning that Yahweh is a God of action – a God who rolls up his sleeves and gets down into the muck and mire of everyday human life.
Moses’ mission begins optimistically: “Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses… And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped” (Exodus 4:29).
The elders say, “Let’s do it. Let’s go to Pharaoh and demand our freedom. After all, what’s the worst thing that could happen? We’re already slaves.” Moses is thinking, “All I have to do is get Pharaoh to sign off on this thing, get the people out of town, and I’m done.”
Now normally you don’t just walk into the throne room of the most powerful man on earth and announce, “Here’s what you’re going to do.” Ancient etiquette required you to bow and scrape, compliment the king profusely, and then do the Garth and Wayne thing from Wayne’s World – you know, “We’re not worthy, we’re not worthy.”
Moses and Aaron, however, take a more direct approach. Consider Exodus 5:1: “Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go!’”
Pharaoh, predictably, isn’t exactly on the bandwagon. His in-your-face response comes in verse two: “Who is the LORD [Yahweh, that is], that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know Yahweh and I will not let Israel go.”
The question, “Who is Yahweh?” is another way of asking, “Can this God of yours pack a punch? Let’s see what happens when he goes a few rounds with the gods of Egypt.” Like most ancient peoples, the Egyptians believe in dozens of territorial gods. They worship the god of the Nile River, and the god of thunder and lightning, and the god of the harvest, and above all Ra, the sun god.
The Egyptians even believe that their domesticated cats are gods – which unfortunately is something the cats apparently have taken a little too seriously.
Pharaoh asks, “Who is this Yahweh? He doesn’t reign in Egypt.”
During my senior year in high school, I essentially lived out the concept of territorial gods. A different god reigned over every area of my life.
At church, I bowed before a fuzzy idea of a God who had little to no impact on my daily life. In economics class I bowed before pragmatism; I cheated on an important test. In my relationship with my best friend, I bowed before ego; I told a foolish lie that ultimately ruined our friendship. With respect to the yearbook, I bowed before ambition. I successfully ensured that the longest list of extra-curricular activities in the Class of 1971 would appear next to my picture.
Among my many gods, I bowed down to looking good, feeling good, and making good. It was during the course of that same year that I first heard and understood that the God of the Bible wanted to do more than rule just a few minutes of my Sunday mornings. He wanted to reign over everything.
In Exodus five, Pharaoh is not about to abandon his multiple gods. He’s not going to bow down to some upstart new deity. “Get back to work,” he commands. “From now on, you will make the same number of bricks, but without straw. Go find your own straw.”
This is a tragedy for the Israelites. Instead of one step forward, they’ve taken three steps back. Look at 5:20: “When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, ‘May Yahweh look upon you and judge you!” The Hebrew says literally, “You have made us stink to Pharaoh.” Thanks for nothing, Moses.
Rejected by the very people he is trying to help, Moses groans to God, “I did everything you wanted, and things are getting worse.” “Don’t worry, Moses,” God says, “I am in charge here.”
In Exodus 6:9 he takes that word back to his people: “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.” In Hebrew, the word discouragement is literally, “shortness of breath.”
They are gasping for breath, like little children who have been crying. Try explaining to a disappointed child at 5:30 p.m. that human beings do not live by Happy Meals alone. Go ahead and talk about the joys of delayed gratification, and what a valuable opportunity this is for character-building, and how learning patience will definitely pay off by the time they are 30 years old.
A child with “shortness of breath” usually doesn’t tune in to such a message. Discouragement crushes the human spirit. Once again, for Moses, things seem to be hopeless.
Few things are as discouraging as believing that God is about to do something big – but nothing happens.
Have you ever trusted God for a new move, or a new relationship, or a clean bill of health, or getting into that group to which you’ve always wanted to belong – but it blew up in your face?
I’ve heard people say, “I thought God was leading me into a whole new season of life. I trusted him…and things immediately got worse. My parents got sick. The estrangement with my child grew deeper. What’s going on?”
These are the kinds of moments at which some people give up believing that God can be trusted. Moses is experiencing such a moment. God is asking him, in so many words, “Do you believe, Moses, that I can raise the dead? Do you believe that I can put life back into the deadness of your current situation?”
In Exodus chapters seven through ten, God goes to work. He answers Pharaoh’s question. “Who is Yahweh?” Pharaoh is about to find out.
Plague follows plague. The Nile turns into reeking blood. Pestilence kills the cattle. Horseflies cover everything that moves. Hail, boils, locusts, and a “darkness that can be felt,” as the Bible puts it, hammer home the fact that a cosmic battle is happening here. Specifically, the ten plagues are judgments against ten primary Egyptian gods. They fall like ten-pins in a bowling alley, mowed down by Yahweh’s perfect strike.
What rival gods are currently demanding your time and attention and sacrifice? Perhaps it’s your career. Or your reputation. Or your love life. Or your kids’ achievements. Or your savings account.
But those are just modern versions of the territorial pantheon of ancient Egypt. Such rival gods will never keep their promises. They are powerless to keep you safe and happy.
That’s because they do not, in fact, reign.
Who is Yahweh? He is the one who alone reigns over the cosmos.
And just like Moses, we can discover from experience that he is also the One we can trust.
Even when things seem hopeless.