Day 18 -- Exodus 5-7

A word about divine names. . . .
In our reading for today God says to Moses—“I am the LORD; I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, ‘The LORD’ I did not make myself known to them” (Exodus 6:30).
The name of God “El Shaddai” in Hebrew is rendered in English “God Most High” or “God Almighty.” This is the name by which the patriarchs had known the God who had singled them out as his own possession. For them there might well be other gods and powers out there, but El Shaddai was theirs and they were his. He had chosen them out of all the earth to be his own particular people.
Now at this beginning of this new chapter in the story of the Family of Promise, God reveal to Moses another name for himself, a strange name in which there is all meaning and no meaning. That name was considered too holy to utter. So that name, YHWH—meaning equally “I am who I am” and “I was who I was” and “I will be who I will be”—is usually rendered in scripture as “LORD”—pronounced “Adonai”--and spelled in capital letters to signify the unspeakable divine Name.
In a time when divine names are casually used “in vain,” it is difficult for us to understand the profound reverence Israel had for the Name that is above every other name. Every attempt was made to secure it from being used to manipulate God in any way by magic or to cheapen and profane his majesty by its careless use.
While we are on the subject of magic, note how important magic is to the story of Moses. Doing magic is one of the charismatic powers he received from God to perform his calling. It is part of his “kit”--a weapon he could use to do God’s will in bringing the people out of Egypt.
The Bible does not question the reality of magic. But not all magic is the same. The LORD is not the only power at work in the universe. Moses can do magic, but so can the magicians of Pharaoh. In our reading it says that “Pharaoh summoned the wise men and sorcerers; and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same [signs] by their secret arts” (7:11).
So we are left with the conclusion there is holy magic and there is unholy magic. Holy magic—what C.S. Lewis called “deep magic”—draws on God’s power to reveal and accomplish his will. We call this magic “miracles.” Unholy magic--done by “secret arts” to attract attention to itself--draws on the power of other gods and powers. It obscures the LORD’s will and attempts to foil his purposes.
This is a good time to say a one further word about miracles.
Miracles are always ambiguous. Unless they are accompanied by faith, it is impossible to say where they come from or what they mean. The Spirit of God gives the faith necessary to see in any event--uniquely wonderful or perfectly ordinary--the hand of God to work.
Without the living Spirit, we are in the position of Pharaoh in our text. Pharaoh was not convinced by Moses’ magic because his heart was “hardened.” His magicians could do the same things.
And miracles alone cannot create faith. We need to remember that. They draw upon existing faith and strengthen it. But they only have meaning within a relationship that has already been established by faith as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise the greatest miracles are only flukes of nature and slight of hand.