God said to Moses, "Say to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14)

Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." (John 8:58)

Our studies in the self-portraits Jesus painted in those sayings of His that begin "I am ..." bring us to the most profound of them all. This time the subject has no predicate; He does not say "I am" anything ... just "I am." To any but the Jews to whom He spoke such a statement would have made no sense at all; but to them the sense it made was shocking. The two words "I AM" were the name of God - the most solemn and sacred of all the names He bore; so sacred that no Jew in our Lord's day would dare utter it lest, even inadvertently, he "take the Name of the Lord his God in vain." So long had it been since anyone had uttered it, indeed, that no-one was sure of its correct pronunciation any more. For a man to, not take it upon his lips merely but ascribe it to himself, made him in their eyes a blasphemous megalomaniac. None of them had ever been so shocked as they were to hear Jesus say it. "So they took up stones to stone Him," John records. They'd have been guilty themselves if they had not ... unless Jesus really was "God manifest in the flesh" - in which case it was among the most awe some statements he ever uttered.

THE NAME OF GOD GIVEN

Let me take you back to the beginning of their story and the origin of that mysterious name for God.

Moses, when God met him by the burning bush at the foot of Mt Horeb and summoned him to lead his people Israel out of slavery in Egypt, 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, 'What is His Name?' what shall I say to them?" (Exodus 3:13) A god who has no name is an unknown god, and men cannot pay homage to a god they do not know.
And God said to Moses, "I am who I am. Say to the people of Israel, '"I AM" has sent me to you.'"

At first hearing it is an answer that falls strangely on our ears. What does it mean?
It means three things at least:

1. He is beyond definition
2. He is beyond manipulation
3. He is beyond anticipation

i. He is beyond definition

"I AM WHO I AM"

It is not possible for mere man to be shown all that God is. No knowledge of ours can ever exhaust the fulness of His being. Always the truth of Him spills over into mystery.

It must be so. A God my mind could fully comprehend could Himself be no bigger than my comprehending mind; He would not be God at all. Bigger than that He must be ... must for ever be. No knowledge of Him that creatures He has made may have could ever be adequate to the full reality; the creature must be less than its creator.

If you say, "God is ..." you begin a sentence you can never finish. He is the subject who has no predicate. "I am ... that I am." What else can He say to us?

There is no equivalent to God but ... God! Put God on one side of an equation, and what do you put on the other side? God = ... what? There is nothing you can put there but "God." When we speak of Him we have no comparison with which to describe Him. "To whom will you liken God? or what likeness compare with him?" asks Isaiah (40:18).

"I am Yahweh, and there is no other; besides me there is no God," He says (45:5). Yahweh is the word derived from the Hebrew verb 'to be' which is rendered 'I AM' in Exodus.

To the question, "Who are you?" what answer can the eternal God give but, "I am what I am"?

Beware of those who would have you believe they have the whole truth about God all buttoned up. What such people have wrapped up in their little parcel of knowledge is not (you may be sure of it) the true, living and eternal God. Much indeed we may say of Him, and with confidence, as I hope we shall see in a moment. But all of it? ... never!

God reveals Himself: He does. But such knowledge as His self-revelation yields can never carry us further than one stage further on a journey from ignorance to just a little less ignorance.

The living God is beyond definition. He is exalted above all knowledge of Him.

ii. He is beyond manipulation

Here we must understand how Egyptians in the time of Moses thought of the names of their gods. To them a god's name was much more than a mere label to tag him with. The god's whole essence, his character and power, was concentrated into his name. To know his name was to know his secret. Egyptian priests underwent a long initiation, fill of rituals and mysteries, before they were entrusted with knowledge of the true names of their gods, so that when at last they knew that name they knew its secret.

That sort of knowledge is power. To know the god's name, there fore, was to get a handle on the god's power. To invoke him by his true name in the correct manner was to summon him up and oblige him to work for you. You rubbed the Aladdin's lamp and the gene appeared, ready to put his powers at your disposal. So they believed.

Now Moses knew that the Hebrew people, saturated as they had been for four hundred years with this atmosphere of Egyptian religion, would want to know the name of this God who had sent Moses to them.
"After all," they'd be sure to say, "this God you want us to adopt has not apparently troubled himself about us before. What are His intentions for us? What are His powers? How can we make Him work for us? What is His Name?"

The only answer they were given was, "I AM THAT I AM." In other words, "That sort of knowledge of me you may not have. I am not such a god as can be manipulated at all. I am your GOD, not your almighty servant."

The peculiarities of Hebrew tenses, in fact, are such that these words can equally well be rendered, "I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE" ... "I am sovereign in my self-determination. I will turn out to be for you what I will turn out to be for you. Not what you choose, but what I choose shall govern our future together."

Perhaps that sounds harsh to you. So it is. Before we pass on to the third strand of meaning in the phrase - which does much to draw its sting - let us first for a moment grasp that nettle, and feel it as we are meant to feel it.

God is not to be persuaded by any means at our disposal to our point of view; He is not at our beck and call, no matter how desperately we beseech Him. What He does to us, or for us, is at His own sovereign discretion, not ours. The point was underlined so there should be no misunderstanding when He went on later to say, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious." We cannot - we absolutely cannot - require anything of Him.

It is one of the most offensively difficult lessons of faith for us to learn. But Scripture presses it home. Says Paul in Romans 9:18, "So then, God has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens the heart of whomever He wills. You will say to me, "Why then does He still find fault, for who can resist His will?" Paul answers - and it is an answer that sticks in proud man's craw - "Who are you, a man, to answer back to God?"

No arguments about predestination and freewill avail us one little bit in meeting that question. It is a question addressed, not to our minds, but to our whole being. God is such that you cannot - you absolutely can not - call Him into question. He may call you into question; you may not so call Him. That is how it is. He is God! He is not there to be our servant; we are here to be His servants ... period.

And until we know that this is how things stand between us and God, and have yielded consent deep within our spirit for it to be so, we have not yet become a true man of faith, a true woman of faith.

Said Jesus, "No-one knows the Son save the Father, or who the Father is save the Son, and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him." (Matthew 11:27) Your becoming a Christian does not rest primarily on your decision for Him, but on His decision for you.

I know the protest this arouses in us; I too have protested. Nevertheless this is the Word of God to our souls. My business is not to make it agreeable, but to declare it.

"Am I a God at hand," asks Yahweh of the prophet Jeremiah, "like a tool to be picked up or laid down by a man at his pleasure? Am I not a God afar off?" (Jeremiah 23:3)

"I will be for you what it pleases me to be for you." So God has spoken.

To be yourself the judge of what God must be and do is the sin into which Eve fell . The temptation was, "Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Good shall be as you conceive it, so God Himself must conform!

My friend, when you hear God say, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," and reject what He says, that moment you recapitulate the fall of Adam. You make his primal sin your very own sin. The protest is the expression of that sin in you.

"To that man will I look," says the Lord, "who is of a humble and contrite spirit, and who trembles at my Word." (Isaiah 66:2)

We have not learned to stand before God rightly until we have learned to say with the Psalmist (123:2), "Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to Yahweh our God, till he have mercy upon us." You and I may claim nothing of God but what He, in His sovereign freedom - and graciously - has been pleased to promise.

I tell you, when I hear the name of God and of Jesus invoked as in some quarters it is invoked today, with strident demand and arrogant clamour, I shudder. I do not hesitate to say it: that spirit is born in hell.

iii. He is beyond anticipation

But this is not all that God's answer to Moses meant. He could, after all, have made the point quite effectively by simply remaining silent - by declining to answer Moses' question at all.

But God does answer; and whilst there is this note of severity in His answer which we must not shirk, nonetheless the answer God gives is, fundamentally, gracious. For not only does He tell us that He is beyond the reach of our knowledge, and beyond the reach of our control, He also tells us that He is near to us in our need. "I will be for you what I will be for you."

The Hebrew verb that is used is not all that easy to translate, as we have noted. As well as meaning "I will be" it conveys also the idea of being present: "I will be present among you as all that I will turn out to be."

"How I will be present among you, you may discover as you obey me.
"What I will do for you you may learn as you walk trustingly with me.
"All that I do will work for your deliverance.

"I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them ... I will bring you up out of affliction and bondage, and you shall be my free people in a good land, and you shall find me to be your glory and your joy."

So God at once begins to spell out the truth of what He is, and what He will turn out to be. The first thing to be known about Him, after we know that He is our Creator, is that He is our Saviour.

In the faith of the Old Testament, the name of God and His will to save are held inseparably together. His Name means that He is a God of Grace Who, though He is by no means at our beck and call, yet has no other purpose than to bless us with life and health and peace.

All that He is He is for us, and for our good.

Let men and women be content only for God to determine their good, and be their good, and they shall be blessed indeed - beyond all expectation, far beyond their dreaming or deserving. All that God is in the mystery of His being must for ever lie beyond our comprehension, it is true; but all that He is in the abundance of His goodness, in His out spreading power, in the splendour of His glory ... all that He is He is for us.

"I will be present among you as all that you shall discover Me to be." This also was His word to Moses.

"Trust me, and you will prove Me; seek Me and you shall find me; walk before my face and you will learn, as an ineffable secret, who I am, and what is the splendour of my purpose for you, and the greatness of my love for you."

THE NAME OF GOD PROGRESSIVELY REVEALED

When Moses bowed his face before God that day and heard Him reveal Himself in this pregnant, weighty word, he hardly knew what God would prove to be. But he took the plunge ... and started learning.

As you read on through the narrative, you discover a truly remarkable thing. At repeating intervals you come across a phrase that recurs so often it sounds almost like a meaningless, monotonous refrain - the phrase "I am Yahweh" - "I am the LORD."

If you look closely at each occasion where it occurs you will find that some new discovery about God has been reached, so that "precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little," (Isaiah 28:10)
God's whole Name and Nature is being progressively revealed.

Genesis 15:7 : And God said to him, 'I am Yahweh who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess."
Yahweh is a God who guides and gives

... Exodus 6:7 : "You shall know that I am Yahweh your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians."
Yahweh is a God who delivers and redeems

... Exodus 6:29 : Yahweh said to Moses, "I am Yahweh; tell Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you."
Yahweh is a God who does not withhold His word, even from His enemies

... Exodus 12:12: "On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am Yahweh."
Yahweh is a God who has all judgment in His hands

... "You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Moloch, and so profane the name of your God; I am Yahweh."
Yahweh is a God to whom children are precious.

And so on ...
By the time of Isaiah an even richer fulness had been given to the meaning of His name; it is seen that all that He is, He is and will be not for Israel only, but for all the peoples of the earth: "I am Yahweh, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you, I have given you as a covenant to the peoples, a light to the nations, to open eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am Yahweh, that is my name; my glory belongs to no other ..." (Isaiah 42:6)

So God's Name and Nature is more and more fully spelled out ... until at last there comes forth out of the heart of the Eternal One Who takes the sacred name upon His lips as of right:

"Before Abraham was, I AM," He says.
"I am the Bread of Life ...
"I am the Light of the World ...
"I am the Good Shepherd ...
"I am the true and living Way ...
"I am the True Vine ...
"I am the Resurrection and the Life ...
"I am the First and the Last, the Living One ..."

And all that He is, He is for us! In Him God's whole Name and Nature is at last spelled out fully, leaving no part dark. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

That was the destination of the journey upon which Moses set out in those dim beginnings back in the fastnesses of the Midianite desert. It is a greater good than any human mind could have dreamed.

"I AM THAT I AM" ... a glory far, far beyond all human anticipation.

THE FULNESS OF THE NAME

Listen to the prayer Jesus prayed under the shadow of the Cross (John 17:6):

"I have manifested Thy name to those whom Thou gavest me out of the world; Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to me, and they have kept Thy word. Now they know that everything that Thou hast given me is from Thee.
O righteous Father, the world has not known Thee, but I have known Thee; and these know that Thou hast sent me. I made known to them Thy name ... and I will make it known, that the love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name ..."

Do you want to know the Name of God? Then Jesus is your man!

In Bethlehem of Judæa in the days of Herod the King there was born One who put meaning into the word "God", who displayed the whole truth about Him - not of just a fragment here and a fragment there, but "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

As He stood before Pilate, He looked back over His life, from the manger to the garden of agony, and knew with complete assurance that God had enabled Him to live it to one supreme end: to show the world the truth; not just a few truths, but the whole truth, with no loose ends: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth."

Christ Himself is that truth. He too is beyond definition, beyond manipulation ... and beyond anticipation! But receive Him fully into your life and before long, God in all His fulness will come alive to you.