Let Me Introduce Myself… | Sunday, June 14, 2026

And the Lord said to Moses... Now Yahweh descended in the cloud and he stood with Moses there and he proclaimed the name of Yahweh. And Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, "Yahweh, Yahweh, El, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children..." (Exodus 34:5-7)

When the God of the Old Testament finally tells us who he is, the very first word he chooses is "merciful."

How Do You Introduce Yourself?

We are in a new summer series at Cross Connection Church called Fly on the Wall. That's why you see this fly on our wall. The idea is that throughout the summer we'll look at places in the Old and New Testaments where we get to be the fly on the wall, listening in on conversations between two people, or between God and one other person. Last week we saw one in Exodus 3, where Moses meets Yahweh, the I Am. We continue that same theme this morning.

This passage brings a question to the forefront: how do you introduce yourself when you meet someone for the first time? There's a good chance you'll meet someone new this week, and in our culture we have a strange habit—we introduce ourselves by what we do. For more than 25 years my normal line has been, "I'm a pastor." We use the language of being—"I am"—and then identify ourselves by our activity.

When I introduce myself as a pastor, it really does change the entire conversation, and not always for the best. People straighten up, sometimes apologize for a word they just used, and look at me like I don't fit their picture of a pastor. So I'm sometimes hesitant to say it. Lately I've been testing a different line: "I'm a researcher in artificial intelligence ethics," which is true—that's my PhD research. The response is completely different. When I say I'm a pastor, people look for the exits. When I say I'm an AI ethics researcher, they lean in, fascinated, full of questions. Same person, very different dynamic.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

Last week we were the fly on the wall when Moses first interacted with God in Exodus 3. The angel of the Lord appeared in a strange way—in a bush that burned but was not consumed—out in the backside of the desert while Moses shepherded his father-in-law Jethro's flock. God called, "Moses, Moses," told him to remove his sandals because he stood on holy ground, and said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

The word for "God" there is the general Hebrew word El. Moses had a reference point for that idea, because he was raised in Egypt surrounded by gods—Ra, Isis, Osiris, and many others. But now he's introduced to El, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God who revealed himself to his forefathers four centuries earlier. This God tells him to go to Pharaoh and say, "Let my people go."

When Moses asks what name to give the children of Israel, God answers in verse 14: "I am has sent me to you." The word here is connected to the verb "to be." The original puts forward Y-H-W-H, a word whose pronunciation is uncertain. Over time vowels were added so we say "Yahweh," and later it was transliterated again as "Jehovah." In your English Bibles this appears as LORD in all capitals. This is the God who met Abram in Genesis 12:

Now the Lord had said to Abram, "Get out of your country... to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great... and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

The ultimate blessing promised to Abram is his greatest descendant, Jesus. This same God promised Abram descendants as numerous as the stars in Genesis 15. Now, 400 years later, those descendants are slaves in Egypt under harsh taskmasters, and God shows up to make good on his promise—using Moses to tell Pharaoh, "Let my people go, that they may serve me."

The God Most People Imagine

Moses isn't immediately excited, but God sends him. He goes and says, "Let my people go." Pharaoh hardens his heart, stiffens his neck, and sets himself against God. The first quarter of Exodus is essentially a competition between Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt and Yahweh, the one true God. Through ten plagues, everything Egypt trusted in is destroyed, and finally Pharaoh relents.

Moses leads the people back to the mountain of God—called Sinai or Horeb—where God had revealed himself. The people prepare to enter a covenant, and they profess, "Everything that God has said we will do, and we will be obedient." It's like a wedding day "I do." Moses then goes back up the mountain to receive the commandments and is gone forty days. The people give up on him and ask Aaron to make them a god. He fashions a golden calf, and they worship it.

And the Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and indeed they are a stiff-necked people. Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation." (Exodus 32:9-10)

This is the God most people imagine. Ask someone who says, "I'm spiritual but not religious," what they picture when they think of God, and you'll often hear something like this—angry, full of wrath, ready to consume them. In the early 2000s Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, and the opening of chapter two reads: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction—jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser..." and on through a string of insults. That book was a bestseller for weeks, and many people still think of God exactly this way.

If the story ended in Exodus 32 with "let Me alone that My wrath may burn hot against them," you might be justified in that conclusion. But the story doesn't end there.

God's Glory Is His Goodness

As the story continues, Moses intercedes, and God grants grace and forgiveness for Israel's hideous idolatry. Seeing God revealed in this gracious, compassionate way—so different from Ra or Osiris—Moses responds, "I want to see your glory. I want to see what you're really like."

Then He said, "I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you... but you cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live." (Exodus 33:19-20)

There's something essential here that's easy to miss. Point one: for God, his glory is his goodness. Moses asks to see God's glory, and God answers by allowing his goodness to pass before him. This sets up one of the most important introductions in all of history.

Many people hold a divided understanding of God. They fall into what became one of the earliest Christian heresies, promulgated by a teacher named Marcion—the view that the God of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy is angry and vengeful, but right around Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John a new, nicer God showed up. People like the gospel God but aren't sure about that older one. Yet when you actually examine the Old Testament, you find that God's glory is his goodness even in Exodus. There may be no better place to see this than Exodus 34.

Now Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Yahweh... "Yahweh, Yahweh, El, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty..." So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. (Exodus 34:5-8)

A Short, Fat, Bald, and Happy Witness

This is one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament. I first heard it taught when I was about 17 or 18, by a short, portly, bald man named Gale Irwin, who passed away about a year ago. Gale had a big gleaming smile and always wore suspenders. When he taught this passage he'd say, "abounding in goodness and truth," and then, "long-suffering—that means slow to anger." I can't do it justice, because I'm not short, fat, bald, and happy like he was. But it stuck with me for thirty years.

The key goes back to my opening question: how do you introduce yourself? We live in a postmodern Western culture that identifies people by what they do. Our being follows our activity, which is strange when you think about it. We say, "I'm an architect," "I'm a nurse," "I'm a dentist." But what does God say when he introduces himself?

In Hebrew literature, a name is synonymous with a nature. The best translation of Yahweh is something like "I am." But "I am" what? When God said "I am" to Moses, we were left waiting for the fill-in-the-blank. Here, finally, he answers it. And the answer is critical, because of the context in which it comes.

God Leads With Mercy

God could have said many true things. He could have said, "Yahweh, Yahweh, El, holy." That would be perfectly true. He could have said just, almighty, eternal, sovereign, all-knowing—all true. And yet the first word he chose was merciful.

Point two: when God introduces himself, he leads with mercy. There is no way to overstate how important this is. When you meet someone and say "I am" whatever you say, it sets the tone for the whole conversation. When I started as a chaplain with the Escondido Fire Department, I was being introduced around station one. We came to the engineer cleaning the wheels of the ladder truck, and every other word out of his mouth was a profanity. Then he looked at me and said, "Who the bleep are you?" My friends laughed and said, "This is Miles, he's our chaplain." Instantly the man said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Father." The way you're introduced changes everything—same person, different dynamic.

Consider the context here. God introduces himself to Israel right after Exodus 32 and the golden calf. They have every reason to be terrified. They had promised, "Everything you said we will do," and then shredded it. They broke the first three commandments outright and probably half the rest. The last word they had was that God might consume them. They are down in the valley, bracing for holiness, justice, and sovereign judgment from One completely justified—waiting for the verdict.

You remember that feeling. Your mom said, "Go to your room—your father will be in in a minute." He might have been only five foot seven, but you were terrified, waiting for the verdict. That's Israel. And in that moment God proclaims, "Yahweh, Yahweh, merciful." Do you feel the weight lifted? He had every fearsome word available—holy, just, almighty, all true—but in that moment he says, "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful."

My Only Hope Is His Never-Failing Mercies

This matters because it means the difference between life and death—not just for Israel, but for you. This is God's self-disclosure, and it becomes the most quoted Scripture by Scripture in the Old Testament. It's the word Jonah pleads from the belly of the fish: "Lord, remember, you are merciful."

The prophet Jeremiah captures it perfectly. Writing his broken-hearted Lamentations as he watched judgment fall on Judah for its sin, he says in the first verses of Lamentations 3, "God, I have seen what wrath looks like... and when I think about your wrath, my soul sinks within me." But then:

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:21-23)

There's the whole thing. When I really consider God's holiness, justice, and righteousness, and then realize who I am in relation to that, I feel there's no hope for me. Point three: my only hope is God's never-failing mercies. That's it.

If God had introduced himself at Sinai as "the Lord, the Lord God, holy," or "just," or "almighty"—all true—Israel would have been consumed. Burning, hot, consuming wrath was on the table. Israel was bracing for the verdict. Then God said, "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful." Jeremiah's confession becomes Israel's confession: through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed. We are not getting what we deserve. That's what mercy is—I'm not getting what I deserve.

Mercy That Does Not Overlook Sin

I have to be careful here, because there's a wrong way to hear that God leads with mercy. We can turn God into a kindly old grandfather who casually overlooks sin, patting us on the head and saying, "It's okay, don't worry about it." That would make sin not that sinful. That's the way of postmodern moralistic therapeutic deism—the God we invent to make life easier to live with. To guard against that, we can't stop at "merciful." We must read the rest:

...merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children... (Exodus 34:6-7)

God says, "I am merciful and gracious and patient, and I will forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin—but I will by no means overlook sin. I will judge sin." So how do these go together? How was Marcion wrong? It's the same voice, the same breath. The self-introduction begins with mercy yet also says, "I will by no means overlook sin." How is God both merciful and just? How does the God Moses met on the mountaintop forgive the sinners in the valley?

At the Cross, Mercy and Justice Meet

The answer is to meet God on another mountaintop—Calvary—because there justice and mercy meet. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ... that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them... For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:18-21)

Point four: at the cross, mercy and justice meet. The wrong view is Marcion's—that there's a difference between the God of Exodus and the God of the Gospels. At the cross, God's justice and mercy meet. It's not two attributes in a cage match where mercy finally wins. It is God's justice being poured out on Another for my sin. He who knew no sin became sin for me, that he might give me his righteousness, mercy, and grace in Christ Jesus. That is the whole gospel, and Exodus 34 is the introduction: God's justice and wrath are satisfied so that I might have mercy.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth... For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:14, 17)

And what was Moses's response when he saw God this way? He made haste, bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. He prayed, "If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance." And what was God's answer? Yes. "I will take you as my people, even though you are a stiff-necked people." What glorious good news that is.

Closing Prayer

God, thank you for this disclosure, this self-revelation here in Exodus 34, where you allow us to peek in, to be a fly on the wall, to see what you're like, who is the I Am. You are truly just and truly holy and all of those things. But Lord, you lead with mercy. And it is because of your mercy that we have the opportunity to stand at this very moment in your presence. If it were not for your mercy, we'd be toast. Thank you for your grace and mercy toward us. We have not received what we deserve; greater than that, you've given us an abundance of blessing—you've given us your righteousness. I pray that this reality wouldn't only reframe for us who you are, but that we would have the words to reframe it for others, bearing witness of your glory in a world that desperately needs to know who you really are. Among all the misconceptions and misunderstandings, give us boldness to proclaim the truth. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.