Over four thousand years ago, a
booming voice proclaimed an important message to a humble shepherd in the
wilderness. Moses was hiding in the land
of Midian after he had murdered an Egyptian man. While tending his father in law’s sheep,
Moses saw a bush on the mountain that was on fire, but the branches of the bush
were not consumed by the flames. The flaming bush told Moses to take off his
sandals, and then commanded him to go to Egypt and deliver the Israelites from
bondage and lead them into the land he promised to Abraham. This event became one of the most important
things that happened in the history of the Jewish people, because during this
talk that he had with Moses, the one true God described and named himself with
these two words, “I AM.”
In our day and time, the words “I am” have a completely different
meaning. On any given day, I hear people
proclaim, “I am hungry,” or “I am happy.”
When meeting a new person, I might say, “I am in 9th
grade.” But we use these simple words
differently than our creator did when he used them. We usually use the words “I AM” to describe
our feelings or our position. I have
read many, many articles about the meaning of these two tiny words in Exodus
3:14.
There are lots of theories about
what God meant when he spoke them to Moses, but I believe that we must look at
the words and their meaning in the Hebrew language, which was the language of
the Jewish people, and the first language that Moses learned as a small
boy. The simplest explanation is that
God was telling Moses, “I will be what I will be.” This was an important message for the
Israelite people because they had been treated terribly as slaves of the
Egyptian people for four hundred years.
They knew the promises of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but they
were starting to doubt that this same God heard their prayers anymore. God told Moses to tell the Jews that “I AM”
sent him to rescue them from their desperate life. God wanted his people to know that he was all
they needed, that he would give them what they needed to escape their slavery,
and that he would deliver them safely to Canaan if they believed and
obeyed. Basically, God was telling Moses
that he would provide them (“I will be) with everything they needed to escape
bondage, and go to the land of milk and honey.
“And God said to Moses, ‘I AM who I AM.’
And he said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM’ has
sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). These
were ancient words to an ancient people, but today, they are meaningful to us
all the same. I AM has provided a way
for us to be delivered from the bondage of our sins in his son, Jesus
Christ. All we need to do is to believe
and obey the gospel, and we will be delivered, too.
