Exodus 34

Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and 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 and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” Exodus 34:5-7 NKJV

In these verses the Lord proclaims His name to Moses, using a very long explanation.  There are over 80 names for God in the Bible, and here are a few examples: The Lord Will Provide (Genesis 22:14), The Lord Who Heals (Exodus 15:26), The Lord Our Peace (Judges 6:24), God of Seeing (Genesis 16:13), Everlasting God (Psalms 90:2) and many, many more.  The supreme nature of God is so amazing that it takes many different terms to attempt to describe Him fully.  With so many different names, we can be led to thinking that it is difficult to really know and understand God.  He is absolutely indescribable.  But, the apostle John tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  When we think about God, we need to remember that His most important attribute is simply His perfect love for us and for all of His creation.

So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. Exodus 34:28 NKJV

There are a lot of similarities between Moses and Christ, making Moses essentially a shadow of Christ: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you…You must listen to Him” (Deuteronomy 18:15).  We see that just as Moses fasts food and water for 40 days and 40 nights when he receives the law (the old covenant), Jesus fasts food and water for 40 days and 40 nights when He receives the Holy Spirit, ushering in the new covenant (Luke 4:1-4).