Exodus 3:13-15
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?” 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.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
What is in a name? A name, at the heart of it, speaks of the character of a person. Thus, as we study the names of God this week, we will essentially be studying His character, the essence of who He is. To begin, we look at the personal name of God – the one He told Moses to tell the Israelites is His name. For context, the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt and were exposed to the Egyptian multiple gods. Each god had a name and a specific area of dominion. Following this, Moses asks God what he will tell the people when they ask for His name. God answers Moses in three parts:
– I AM WHO I AM
– I AM has sent me…
– YHWH has sent me…
These three all communicate the same thing and help us appreciate God’s personal name, YHWH, which came to be pronounced as Yahweh. So sacred was this name that the Jewish scribes dared not pronounce or write it down lest they take it in vain. They thus did a variation of the name Adonai, which is translated in our English Bibles as LORD (different from Lord). As opposed to the Egyptian gods and their names, God’s name here thus spoke of:
– His existence – that He is the God that is.
– His self-existence – that He is not dependent on anyone or anything for His existence. This also speaks of His self-sufficiency.
– His eternal nature – that He has existed in eternity past and will exist in eternity future.
– His all-encompassing nature – that He is sufficient for all things compared to the Egyptian gods who only were assigned a small part each.
There is more to the implication of God’s personal name but these suffice for now. The question we must ask ourselves, however, is whether we treat God as His name deserves. Are we persuaded that in I AM we have everything that we need both for this world and the world to come? Well, Jesus took this name to Himself when He responded to the Jews in John 8:58, _”“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”_ We can, therefore, come to Him with the full assurance that He is all in all. As demonstrated throughout the book of John, Jesus is truly the great I AM:
I AM the bread of life – John 6:35
I AM the Light of the World – John 8:12
I AM the Door – John 10:9
I AM the Good Shepherd – John 10:11-14
I AM the Resurrection and the Life – John 11:25
I AM the Way and the Truth and the Life – John 14:6
I AM the Vine – John 15:1-5
Reflections
1. What is your need this morning? Call on the great I AM.
