God the I AM
- Strength For Life
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
One of the most useful tools when reading the Old Testament is a good imagination. It is much easier to understand the lessons the historical Biblical characters teach us about God and how to properly live when we put the mental work into picturing details of the situations in which they were required to exercise faith. For example, the greatest aspect of Noah’s faith was probably not as much the labor of constructing the ark as the days Noah spent laboring without any external signs that God’s promise of a flood would come to pass. How many days did Noah encourage his family to put another three hours of work into gathering the materials for the ark before they even began to build? How many times did he wake up to find some enemy had taken his tools or removed some support pieces? Of course we do not know, but it makes his place in the hall of faith easier to understand. Noah was rewarded for his faith with first-hand experience of God’s redeeming work in the world.
Moses is also in the hall of faith, and he likewise personally experienced God’s redemption. He was also the person to whom God revealed Himself as the “I AM.” Consider the situation Moses was in. He had been forced to flee Egypt after he made an ambitious but ill-advised choice to try to deliver his people on his own. Moses peaked too early, you might say. His rash actions, which he no doubt replayed hundreds of times in his mind during his 40 years of exile in Midian, landed him in a dead-end position as a shepherd in what Exodus 3:1 calls “the backside of the desert.”
When Moses turned aside to look at the burning bush, he was living in a period of divine silence. Scripture’s last recorded words from God were His direction to Jacob to reunite with Joseph in Egypt (Gen. 46). Two generations previously, God told Abraham how long that period of silence would be: “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13). When Moses stood at the bush, 400 years had passed since God had made His covenant with Abraham. Back in Genesis 15, the Lord had presented the timeline this way: after the 400 years, and the time of affliction, “that nation, whom they shall serve,” God said, “will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance” (Gen. 13:14).
In the intervening years between the last words from God and the burning bush, Israel had lost their connection with their God. They may have understood that their rapid population growth was a sign of His blessing (Ex. 1:7), but by the time Moses fled from Pharaoh into exile, they were no longer praying to the God of their fathers. They only groaned at their affliction (Ex. 2:23). It seemed like He had forgotten them.
God introduced Himself at the burning bush as the God of Moses’ father, “the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex. 3:6). Moses did not know God, but he had heard about Him, especially in the context of Israel’s patriarchs. However, Moses understood that the people would want to know more than a revival of distant memories. They would want to know His name. “When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, ‘The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you’; and they shall say to me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say unto them?”
Even today, knowing another person’s name is important. It is the very first thing we ask someone we are meeting for the first time. A person who withholds his name is keeping his distance. Unless you know someone’s name, you cannot properly greet him, learn his history, know his family, or request anything from him. How does God respond when Moses asked God for His name? “I AM THAT I AM: and he said, ‘Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, “I AM hath sent me unto you”’” (Ex. 3:14).
This idea of perpetual existence, that God exists independently of anyone or anything else, is also communicated in the name written in our King James Bibles as LORD. God uses this name in verse 15. He calls Himself the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I AM and LORD are built on the same Hebrew verb for being. Both indicate that God exists in the perpetual present.
God’s identifying Himself as the I AM sent an important message to Moses and to the people of Israel. He was the same God who had made promises their ancestors, and He had not changed His mind about fulfilling them. The years of silence had not altered God’s word or His nature. “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:7-8). Did you notice God’s action words? “I have seen,” He said. “I know, and I am come down.” God’s coming down in Scripture is an indication that He is about to act. At the burning bush, God announced that the series of events that would fulfill the promise He had made to Abraham 400 years before was about to begin. And how did the people respond? Exodus 4:31 says that when Moses told them God’s name and showed them the validating sign miracles, “the people believed: and when they heard that the LORD [the I AM, remember] had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.”
Consider another 400-year period of silence, prosperity, and oppression. In the time between Malachi and Matthew God was silent—no inspired Scripture. The centuries of silence concluded with Israel under Roman occupation. Just like in the days of Moses, a sudden personal appearance from the LORD broke the silence. This time, the revelation was in the personal form of Jesus Christ. Again like the LORD’s appearance to Moses, He identified Himself by reminding the listeners that He was the God of Abraham. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56). Again, the people were not quick to believe. “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” the Jews retorted. “Jesus said unto them, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM’” (John 8:58).
How did the people respond to their God in the flesh, after seeing His miraculous signs? “Then took they up stones to cast at him” (John 8:59). Their hearts were so much harder than their fathers’. It should be no wonder, then, that Jesus pronounced doom on their city of Jerusalem (which was fulfilled when the city was destroyed in A.D. 70). They rejected the I AM and the deliverance from sin He came down to bring to them.
The lesson from John 8 is not to reject the saving work of God. He does not always strive with men; once the time of mercy is over, there is judgment. For most of us, however, we need the lesson of the first appearance of the I AM, at the burning bush. God is the same, and His promises remain the same. He does not change, and though He withholds His saving hand and His people hear only silence, He has not forgotten and He has not forsaken. He has always been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the first heirs of His promises. If we will take hold of His promises and be patient, resisting the temptation to despair or forget Him, we will find that He always, always comes down to fulfill His word and rescue His people when the time is right. He is the I AM.
The above article was written by Jonathan Kyser. He is a pastoral assistant at NorthStone Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. To offer him your feedback, comment below or email us at strengthforlife461@gmail.com.
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