Exodus 34:5-9 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost Sunday, August 27, 2023 “The Lord Proclaims His Name”
What did Moses expect? To understand why I ask that question in relation to our passage from Exodus, consider what brought him to the point of what we hear in that reading today. Moses was the Lord’s chosen leader for his people. He had led the people out of Egypt where they had been slaves. He was the Lord’s instrument through whom the Lord had displayed his power by miraculous signs and devastating plagues. Moses had led the people through the heart of the Red Sea on dry ground and out into the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. And the people had all stopped at the Mountain of the Lord, Mount Sinai. Moses went up and spoke with the Lord and received from him all the instructions about leading and organizing the people. Among those instructions were God’s Ten Commandments, a summary of everything that God wanted all of his people to follow for all of their lives on this earth. The Lord had even inscribed those commandments on tablets of stone that Moses could take with him. On his way down to the camp, Moses heard an unusual sound. The people were acting wildly. They were worshiping, but not worshiping the Lord who had brought them out of Egypt. They were throwing a worship party for a calf idol that they had made out of gold. And Moses, realizing that the people had completely shattered everything that God had wanted them to do and had gone against everything that God had wanted them to be, Moses took the stone tablets and smashed them to pieces on the ground. I am summarizing a bit for the sake of our time together this morning, but Moses spoke to the Lord again. The Lord instructed Moses to go ahead and lead the people toward the Promised Land. But he also suggested that he would not go with them as he had to that point. He was too angry and too concerned about what they would do to provoke him next. And Moses begged and pleaded. He prayed and implored. He demanded that the Lord go with Moses and the people. He expected the Lord to keep his promises. And the Lord assured Moses that he would do just that. And with the Lord’s assurance that he would be with and bless Moses and the people, Moses asked, “Please show me your glory.” So what did Moses expect? Was he thinking that the Lord would shake the mountain and fill the air with bright light and smoke? Was he expecting miraculous things to go on all around him? Could he even imagine what it would mean to see the glory of the Lord? The words of our sermon text from Exodus 34 tell us what Moses got. The Lord explained that no sinful human being could see his face and live, so he was going to answer Moses’ request by hiding him in a cleft of rock and by passing by with his hand covering the opening so that Moses could get a glimpse of the Lord’s back. And God promised that as he passed by, he would proclaim his name. And that is exactly what happened. With stone tablets prepared to replace the broken ones, Moses went back up the mountain. And then our reading begins. The Lord came down in the cloud. He took his stand there with Moses and proclaimed the name of the Lord. This is the glory of the Lord, that he proclaims his name. And he does so for the sake of stiff-necked people. That’s how Moses describes the people he was leading. Remember how they worshiped the golden calf? They had done so much more as well. They had grumbled and complained as God miraculously provided food for them. They longed to go back to the land of slavery in Egypt when small troubles and trials appeared. Again and again they rejected the Lord and went their own ways. It was as if their necks were stuck in the direction of their own thoughts and desires and could not be persuaded by the Lord to turn in the way he wanted them to go. And Moses wasn’t innocent, either. The Bible tells us a great deal about the incredible things that the Lord accomplished through him, but Moses had his moments. He had his early impetuous years when he struck down an Egyptian for treating an Israelite harshly. He had his moments when he was more upset with the people than God was and he struck out in anger. The one responsible for leading the people right to the threshold of the Promised Land was not allowed to go into it himself because he had been so stiff-necked at times. You know who else fits the description of a stiff-necked person? You do. I do. We were born set on our own ways and not on God’s. in fact our ways by nature are set against God’s. And even the group that gathers here on a