1 February 2024 - God the I am

Exodus 3:14(NIV) 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.”

This is the first time God says I AM (“I AM WHO I AM”), the Hebrew says, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, which translates to I will be what I will be; I will become whatsoever I may become. The use of ehyeh asher ehyeh in Exodus 3:14 was God’s way of assuring and pledging to Moses and Israel that God would become whatever they needed Him to become. The Israelites were crying day and night for deliverance. God was calling Moses to help lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses asked God – what is God’s name or what should he say to the Israelites? In God’s response, He provides a promise to Israel – He would become what they would need Him to become – in this case – their Deliverer.

The divine name of God, I am, who I am, implies: • God exists - Contained in the name I am, who I am, is the first and most important truth about God: He exists.

Atheism is the rejection of belief in God. An atheist is one who maintains that there is no God. Secondly, the agnostic does not know whether God exists or not.

So how do you know that God exists? You’ll know God is real when you ask Him to be real in you. If God does not exist, life is ultimately meaningless. If your life is doomed to end in death, then ultimately it does not matter how you live. In the end it makes no ultimate difference whether you existed or not. If God does not exist, then we must ultimately live without hope. If there is no God, then there is ultimately no hope for deliverance from the shortcomings of our finite existence. If God does exist, then not only is there meaning and hope, but there is also the possibility of coming to know God, and His love, personally. If God exists, it makes not only a tremendous difference for mankind in general, but it could make a life-changing difference for you as well.

People in the Bible knew God, John Hick explains: “God was known to them as a dynamic will interacting with their own wills, a sheer given reality, as inescapably to be reckoned with as destructive storm and life-giving sunshine . . They did not think of God as an inferred entity but as an experienced reality. To them God was not . . . an idea adopted by the mind, but an experiential reality which gave significance to their lives.”

It is from this perspective that God speaks to Moses. I am, who I am. • God does not change - Malachi 3:6(ESV) For I the Lord do not change

James 1:17(ESV) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

• God is everlasting - Isaiah 40:28(ESV) Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.