Great Post from Ask The Blind Pastor:

I am talking about the story where God comes close to rescue the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. God reveals his name for the first time…

The context comes when Moses is hanging out in the desert watching sheep. God finds him through the burning bush. A bush on fire but not burning up would catch anyone’s attention. Moses has despaired for his people and their plight. The Israelites are crying out under oppression from Pharaoh.

God comes close and shares his heart through these four chapters of Exodus, 3-6.

First, God is a personal and present God. Jeremiah 33:3 says we can call on him and he will answer. God tells Moses at the burning bush he has heard the cry of his people and has come down to rescue them through Moses. Moses begins a conversation with God on how and looking for credibility. God says he will be with him, but Moses says, what if I tell them, the God of your fathers has sent me to rescue you, and they ask for your name?

For the first time in redemptive history, God gives us his personal name. We know it simply as YHWH or I am who I am. Exodus 3:14-15. God is close to us, knowing where we are in pain and misery. He wants to know us and for us to then know him.

The response to God coming close and rescuing us should always be worship. Exodus, 4:29-31, the Israelites bowed down and worshipped YHWH.

However, knowing God comes with a cost. We need to count the cost of what God is asking before we take it so easily. Sometimes we do people a disservice by telling them how great and wonderful Christianity is without giving the full picture. Jesus told us to count the cost of following him in Luke 14:27-28. Moses felt this pressure when he went to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh rejected God straight away. Exodus 5:2 gives us a great picture of relationship and obedience. Pharaoh says, I don’t know your God, why do I have to obey him. God wants to be known in the world, this is the heart of all he does. This is why he sent Jesus, but he wanted to be known from the beginning. He acts through the mighty exodus and says all nations know me, because of what I have done. In Deuteronomy 4, he says who is like me. Throughout the plagues, God tells Moses that Pharaoh will know I am the Lord, or all Egypt will know I am the Lord, and even at one point that his name would be proclaimed among all the earth, Exodus 7:5, 8:10, 9:13-16. God’s heart is that all nations would know him, and he acts in such a way to make his name known. The obvious outcome of knowing God is following him and obeying him. Pharaoh doesn’t know YHWH and therefore doesn’t obey him. Obedience flows out of knowledge, and we who know God need to obey him fully. T

Here are several things that make following God difficult.

1. We make poor choices and don’t live fully as he would want us to and thus pay the consequences.
2. Satan makes things difficult.
3. Others who do not know God make things difficult in this world.

Pharaoh then made life even more miserable. As if being a slave could get more miserable, Pharaoh increased the hardship and expected the same results. He claimed the people were lazy and coming up with ideas of needing a festival to worship their God. The people could not bear this burden and went to Moses, saying he made life worse not better, Exodus 5:21.

In Exodus 5:22-23, Moses goes to God thinking he must have missed the real reason God sent him. He couldn’t have been to rescue the people. There was a sick ironic reason to send Moses back to Egypt, and he accused God of sending him to make the Israelite people a stench in Pharaoh’s nose. God you haven’t rescued the people at all.

When we have problems and trials of life, we need to be intentional to remember God’s promises. It is too easy to be myopic and only see the calamity. God knew this and came close to Moses again. In a beautiful text of Exodus 6:2-8, he reminds us who he is, YHWH and that before now, we did not know him in such a way. He starts the monologue off with I am YHWH and concludes with I am YHWH. He says, I will rescue with a strong right arm. I will be your God, and you will be my special people.

2 God also said to Moses, “I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites,

whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with upliftedhand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.’ “

To conclude, God knows us and wants to be known by us. Obedience flows out of relationship, and God will make us his special people in the midst of difficult times.

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