Exodus 1:8-14 [15-2:10]; 3:1-10, Moses and God’s Name

Sunday, October 1, 2023
12:00 AM 11:59 PM 00:00 23:59

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Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today

“He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”

— Genesis 3:6

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NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, October 1, 2023

by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff

Main Idea: The name of our God is synonymous with deliverance—and will be forever.

Just as Moses’s name denotes where he came from, the divine name, or the name of God, tells us something about God’s origin. “I am who I am” signifies a timelessness unique to God. It suggests that God always was and always has been and always will be. It lets Moses know that his connection to God extends from a long, established ancestral line all the way to him, and hints that that same connection will be passed on for many generations past Moses.

“I am who I am” also has a transcendent quality to it. It confirms for us that God cannot be explained by just one identifying characteristic. God’s essence is unlike literally anything else—comparisons, metaphors and descriptors can’t do it justice.

Finally, the divine name comes in the context of a call for Moses to deliver God’s people. So really, the divine name is, inherently, a promise: that God will be God, now and forever. And because God is God, now and forever, God will deliver God’s people, now and forever.

God is timeless and God is transcendent, which means that God will work this deliverance in a myriad of ways. In this combination of stories, we see God delivering Israel through chosen people and outsiders; through family and strangers, through working people and nobility; through babies, children and adults; through deceit and through honesty. In fact, we even see multiple layers of deliverance in these texts over generations. (Shiphrah, Puah and the daughter of Pharaoh are arguably as important as Moses in the book of Exodus, because they deliver the deliverer. God works through them in order to work through Moses.)

When Jesus says to the Sadducees in Mark Chapter 12 that God is a God of the living, this is what the Spirit wants us to hear today: that our God, who has delivered so many of our ancestors in faith, continues to deliver us, too. And God has added another divine name into the mix in this deliverance: the name of Jesus.

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