WEEKLY STUDY
” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
I have always been struck by the simplistic beauty and power of this seemingly simple verse. It is so overlooked, so seldom preached upon or taught, yet encompasses a great lesson.
This takes place during the saga of what we call “Moses and the Burning Bush”. Moses was shepherding his father-in-law’s herds in the desert near Mount Horeb, and Jehovah appeared to him in the form of a burning bush. A conversation ensued which changed Moses’s life and also the course of world history.
Although Moses was around eighty years old by then, the Lord told him He had seen the afflictions of His people the Hebrews in slavery in Egypt and how they were being treated cruelly by their taskmasters. He went on to tell Moses “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…”
The Lord further instructed Moses that he was the one selected to go to Pharaoh to tell him to let the Hebrew people go free. As you can expect, this did not sit well with Moses. He didn’t feel up to the task at all. “But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” The Lord replied: “ He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” (An interesting side note, the mountain was called Horeb on the eastern side, and Sinai on the western side. As we all know, Sinai is where Moses received the Ten Commandments.)
Moses then asked the Lord for a name, something akin to a holy seal by which the people would accept his mission; “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
The Lord’s reply? “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” What grandeur! What glory that possesses. I AM! Both present and future. God designated unto himself all divine glory and is the self-existent Creator of all things. All power belongs to God, and He sustains all things according to His most Holy Sovereign Will.
I AM. Simple yet mysteriously complex in nature. Eternal, past present and future. Divine, Sovereign, Omnipotent. The Creator of all and the Gracious sustainer of all. This is the same I AM that went to the cross for the sins of His elect. The same I AM who rose again from the grave and now sits on the right of the Father. This is the very same I AM who one day with the shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God; will descend to bring us home. I AM who I AM.
Patrick is a member of Pleasant Grove Reformed Church, a native Texan
and a father of three. As an author, when he is not writing, he works in the oil & gas industry.