02/13/2019 I AM
Exodus: 3: 13-14: Moses said to GOD, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The GOD of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, ‘What is his name? Then what shall I tell them?” GOD said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I AM has sent me to you.” [New International translation]
Summary
The Israelite people lived under Egyptian bondage for at least 400 years. GOD told Abraham that this would happen. (Genesis 14:4). Generation after generation of Israelites was born in Egypt and lived a subservient lifestyle to a people who worshipped idol gods and who thought themselves superior. The Egyptian gods were numerous. Each one had a name. There was Ra (the Egyptian sun god); Yah (the Egyptian moon god), Baal (the Egyptian god of thunder) and others. After 400 years of living in an idol worshipping society, not only had the Israelites forgotten who they were but they had also forgotten who GOD was.
Moses, the child of an Israelite mother, raised by a pharaoh’s daughter, also had “identity” issues. Was he Hebrew, a prince, a criminal, a second class citizen like the other Israelites, privileged because he was raised in the house of Pharaoh, a foreigner living in Jethro’s (his father-in-law) house, or just a shepherd tending Jethro’s flocks? Moses didn’t know who he was either.
When Moses encounters GOD, on the edge of a desert near Mt. Horeb, called the mountain of GOD, (Ex. 3:1) and received a “mission assignment” from GOD to go back to Egypt, and give the Israelites a message, it was not unusual that Moses, who had been raised Egyptian his adult life, would ask GOD for “HIS name. That was Moses “frame of reference.” Just like Ra (the Egyptian sun god) and Yah (the Egyptian moon god) had names, Moses wanted to know GOD’s name. You can almost imagine the next question Moses might have asked. The next question probably would have been, “what you look like,” because then Moses and the Israelites could make an idol, just like the Egyptians, and worship the idol. In asking GOD’s name, Moses hoped to “fit GOD” into his and the Israelite’s “frame of reference.”
However, GOD is a SPIRIT. HE does not “fit” within humanity’s “frame of reference.” GOD answer to Moses was this: You just tell them “I AM” or “I AM WHAT I AM” or “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.”
GOD was trying to create a “GOD frame of reference” for Moses and the Israelites. GOD could have said:
- “I AM the bread (the manna) you will eat in the wilderness for survival;”
- I AM the light of the world because before the beginning of time and there was any light, I WAS there. And I just said “Let there be light,” and it was so;”
- “I AM the way out of danger and harm and just as I rescued Noah, Joseph, and many of your forefathers, I WILL rescue you and MY people;”
- “I AM will be your gate and your strong tower. Just like a city is fortified against by a strong gate and a watchtower, so I will be for you; “or
- “I AM….and so much more than you could ever think or imagine.”
Instead of saying everything GOD is, could be and would be for the Israelites (and to each of us), GOD just said: “I AM.”