5. Before Abraham Was, I AM: John 8:58

Day 1 I AM Who I AM

God said to Moses, “I I .” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I has sent me to you.’”

—Exodus 3:14

Iiden fy myself with a lot of statements that describe me. I am a Chris an. I am a wife. I am a mother and a grandmother. I am a student. I am a writer. I am all of these things. No ce that all these statements are posi ve. I could just as easily list the things about myself that I’m s ll working on or the things that I am not. In actuality, I am statements are the sum total of who we are––our strengths and our weaknesses, our gi s and our challenges, our character and our personality.

Read Exodus 3:1–14. At the burning bush, Moses asked God what he was to tell the Israelites when they asked him what God’s name was. There’s been a lot of scholarly debate about what the proposed ques on really meant. Some suggest that the Israelites would want to know if this God was di erent from the pagan gods of the land. Other scholars suggest that the Israelites in Egypt knew the name YHWH (wri en Yahweh in English). Surely the people would have remembered the stories from the patriarchs about their God Yahweh. Therefore, asking for iden fi ca on of the God who had been talked about for genera ons doesn’t seem to fi t the ques on.

Author and philosopher Mar n Buber suggests that the ques on was about “the signifi cance, character, quality, and interpreta on of the name.” He points out that what the Israelites’ ques on really meant was, “What does the name mean and signify in circumstances such as we are in?”1 Their circumstances had been terrible for years. They were held in slavery, put into forced labor, and their future was bleak. It makes sense, doesn’t it, that they would want to know what di erence this God was going to make in their lives then. They wanted to see God at work in their lives to bring about a change in those circumstances.

1 Mar n Buber, Moses: The Revela on and the Covenant (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 48–55; quoted in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, v. 2, Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishers, 1990), 320.

Respond Can you relate to how the Israelites might have felt when Moses came to deliver God’s message to them? Why?

Have you wondered where God is when your own circumstances seem hopeless?

Did you lose hope wai ng for God’s response? Why?

Read verse 14 again. Explain how God’s name can bring hope to you when you feel hopeless.