I AM THAT I AM

Having received the revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of their fathers, Moses is concerned with how he will present this God to the nation of Israel. God instructs him to declare Himself to be ‘I AM THAT I AM’. The scholars tell us that this complex title contains each tense of the verb ‘to be’. It can be rendered; I was, I am and I shall always continue to be.

This most definitive of titles contains a vital lesson both for Moses and for ourselves. It is not our business to prove the existence of God, but to declare Him. Just like those to whom Moses was sent, men today have little or no knowledge of this God. Modern science, so called, secularism and religion seek to rationalise or modify God to suit man’s own image and desires. But we must declare Him as the unchanging God, as seen in His beloved Son, who is the same ‘yesterday, and to day, and forever’.

Indeed this title seems to be the one, more than any other, which the Lord Jesus uses to reveal who He is. In John’s gospel in particular, He proclaims ‘Before Abraham was, I am’, John 8. 58. Throughout the gospel, He says repeatedly ‘I am’, adding the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, the door, the way, the truth, the life, the resurrection and the life, and the true vine. This is the God all must come to know. Creation declares the existence of a designer, the ‘Elohim’ of Genesis 1, but, like Israel in Egypt, all need to acknowledge the eternally self-existent’ I AM’. This was the great stumbling block in Christ’s day and still is today. But for Israel, and for us, this title offers tremendous stability in an uncertain world.

The ‘God of their Fathers’ takes them to His past faithfulness, but now they need a God for the present. Here is a God who made past covenant with the patriarchs, that He would fulfil, and sees the present predicament of His people, which He will resolve. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph have all come and gone, so have several Pharaohs and so would the present one. But Moses will tell them of the One ‘which is, and which was, and which is to come’, Rev. 1. 4.