When we meet someone we don’t know we usually begin a new relationship by getting that person’s name. If you don’t know someone’s name there is a kind of distance, alienation, or strangeness. Just knowing a person’s name doesn’t mean you instantly know that person intimately, but at least knowing their name is the first step in a relationship by removing the mystery of complete anonymity. A nameless person is a stranger and a mystery, in the same way that being in a nameless place means you are probably lost. In grade school we learn that nouns are persons, places, and things. But nouns need names, or these persons, places, and things remain strange to us and what is unknown is potentially dangerous and not to be trusted. Being able to name things makes those things knowable, familiar, and even comforting.
So what is God’s name?
Many people have never thought about this question because God’s name is obviously just “God.” Right? But actually “God” is not a real name at all, it is a generic noun like “car” or “house” and tells us very little about the characteristics of the thing itself. Most people today have never asked for God’s name because our cultural context is not crowded with deities like the ancient world. If you enter a room full of strangers then knowing everyone’s name suddenly becomes very practical just so you can make distinctions between one face and another. The God of the Bible revealed Himself to the people of Israel in a polytheistic context which is why Moses anticipated that the people would ask the logical question “which god sent you?”
God’s answer to this question is the surprising and profoundly wonderful revelation “I am what I am.”
But that’s not actually a name. It is a description of God’s nature and it is a vague description that needs some explanation. God’s answer to Moses’ question is like meeting someone for the first time and asking for their name, to which they reply “I am just me.” You would think that they were intentionally being evasive and that they probably want to remain unknown. But God’s intention was exactly the opposite! This revelation of the Divine Name is so important in Scripture because it is really a revelation of the Divine Nature and it was also a revelation, if you understand the context, of the Divine Purpose.
God has revealed Himself as the absolute and unchanging bedrock on which everything else is built. This includes God’s solid, unchanging purpose to save and bless His covenant people. The revelation of God’s Name is given so that His people will trust Him absolutely, who is Himself the Absolute underneath all things. God is giving us a reason to have faith. We need a reason to believe or God would not have given this revelation of His Name.
This revelation of God’s Name is the basis for a covenantal relationship, not just a casual acquaintance or a one-time meeting. God is not into dating, He wants a partner, even a wife, if you will. So this knowledge of God’s name is not given so that we can be intellectual about the idea of God. It was given as the prelude to a marriage, to a covenant. Unfortunately, most people today was a casual, dating relationship with God because this has no obligation. And they want to be free to date other Lovers too! Folks think they want a God of love, but are not at all prepared for the implications of God really loving them. There is no question about the love of God. The real question is about our love for God.
We are not born in love with God. In fact, we are not born knowing God at all. Adam’s Race is in a state of alienation from the one, true, living God who created us and everything else. This alienation, or distance, which is caused by sin, implies ignorance. Just as we are ignorant of people we have never met, we are also ignorant of our Creator.
The trouble is that God is not a person we can walk across the room or across the street and meet. The most obvious problem is that God is spirit, which also means that God is invisible. God made the physical, visible world, but He is not a part of the world and that means He cannot be experienced with the five senses which is how we come to know about everything else around us.
Man can come to know certain things about the world around him by philosophical deduction and scientific investigation, but the world by its wisdom cannot know God. In other words, we cannot know about God unless God tells us something about Himself.
The Creation speaks of the existence of the Creator, and we are held responsible for this natural revelation, along with the logical implication that we ought to be seeking to know about the Creator. But the creation, which theologians also call Natural Revelation, only tells us that there is a God and gives us very little about what kind of God there is. Perhaps we could deduce from studying nature that the Creator must be wise and powerful. But if we are to understand that God is good, kind, or that He cares about us humans, these things must be revealed through some kind of special revelation because creation may not lead you to come to those conclusions about God. Creation’s voice is not silenced, but it has been frustrated. And we might conclude only by studying nature that God is cruel and uncaring. What kind of God makes a great, white shark, for example? What kind of Creator makes a python snake?
But the problem is more complex than just our ignorance of God or we would just require more information about God. The human race has already rejected the information God left behind in the Creation and we have chosen to worship the Creation itself rather than the Creator. Mankind has always been spiritually promiscuous, which is what the Bible calls idolatry. The ancient pantheon crowded with deities has been transformed into the modern, intellectual idolatry of pluralism and tolerance, but the result is exactly the same: mankind continues to reject the absolute truth of the one, true God.
People today don’t have a problem with the idea of a God, or a Higher Power, who may or may not exist, and who does not intrude into our lives and tell us how to live, making moral demands and holding us accountable. But people get very uncomfortable with a God who defines Himself, telling us that He is THIS and not THAT, and then expects us to do something in response to who and what He is.
God names Himself and we do not get to name God. God brought all the animals to Adam for him to name because God’s creation was originally given to man for him to rule over or manage in God’s behalf. But man does not rule over God and we are not allowed to name our own version of deity or create a god we would like to worship. God is who He is, and we must accept who He is, not make the god we would prefer to serve.
“I am what I am” is a statement about the absolute reality of God, standing there immovable like the Rock of Gibraltar or the very foundations of the earth. No wonder the Bible says that “there is no rock like our God!” You can build your life on this Rock or you can be shattered against it. But you cannot move it or change it!
The immutability of God means that God stands unaffected by change. Time, decay, and corruption cannot touch the Divine Nature. God is unmoved and unchanged by man’s changing views of theology, the latest progressive philosophy, or the shifting sands of cultural trends. Men value being progressive, which involves change and a movement from imperfection toward perfection or from ignorance toward enlightenment. Change implies imperfection, incompleteness, and weakness or vulnerability to some greater, more powerful force and influence. Given enough time, wind and rain can erode a mountain, which is a symbol of strength and stability. So even mountains are not immutable and can be changed over time. But God does not change!
All things in this created order are subject to change and decay, the creation itself being subjected to the bondage of corruption. And so the hymn-writer could say that “change and decay in all around I see. O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
One of the outstanding lessons of the Old Covenant is the absolute separateness of God from everything we see in the world around us. This separateness of God is called holiness. God’s stands separate from the world that He made. He is outside of time and inhabits eternity, being unaffected by time, decay, and corruption. God’s separateness, or holiness, makes human beings uncomfortable because we fear what is not like us or what is unfamiliar. We greatly fear staring into the face of some alien life-form, utterly strange, yet vastly superior, with unknown intentions. It is no wonder that the ancient, superstitious fear of the gods has been replaced by the modern fear of science-fiction aliens invading from another planet! We fear holiness, which is the attribute of God most often mentioned in Scripture.
Holiness, not love, is the attribute of God mentioned the most in Scripture. The idea that a holy God could also love us is only understood within the context of covenant and God choosing to take a People for Himself. God is holy, but God also wants to be with His chosen people and He is willing to go to great lengths to make that relationship happen.
This revelation of God’s Name is made in the context of covenant where God actually speaks and makes certain promises to certain people, namely to Abraham and his descendants. The real revelation in “I am who I am” is the faithfulness of God to keep the promises He has made. God is absolutely holy and our response is to fear Him. But God is absolutely faithful and our response to that revelation is to trust Him. God will always be who He is, and that means God can be trusted. God makes promises and His people can trust Him to keep His word. How could we trust a God who is not absolute, but who might suddenly change and forsake His original purpose? We have trouble trust people because they just might change their minds and therefore their words are not reliable in every case. But “God is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent!” The only way to have a relationship is to have trust. To have a relationship with God we must be able to trust Him or we will only fear Him and run the other direction. But “the righteous shall live by faith.” We can live by faith because God says “I am who I am.” So our faith and hope are in the living God!
God not only reveals Himself as “I am who I am” but as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God wants to be remembered for what He said to the Patriarchs, the promises He made to them, and the faith that they had in His word. If the Divine nature is wrapped up in the revelation “I am who I am” then the Divine purpose is wrapped up in the covenant promises God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God had not forgotten His promises and that is why He was speaking to Moses. The great “I am” does not forget and that means that His people are never forsaken! God made a promise to bless the world through Abraham’s family and that was still God’s purpose when He spoke to Moses in the burning bush. The nature and purpose of God burns like an eternal fire that cannot be extinguished. God’s original promise to Abraham, which is God’s unchanging purpose, was to bless the world through Abraham’s seed, which Paul reminds us is in the singular and not the plural. God said “seed” not “seeds.” That “seed” of Abraham is Jesus Christ! All the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ.
But in his letter to the Galatian Churches, Paul also said that the covenant of Law was necessary before the promise to Abraham could be fulfilled. The Law was added because of transgression. Jesus would come to save us from our sins and reconcile us to a holy, unchanging God. But we would know nothing about holiness, sin, or reconciliation without the teaching of the Law of Moses. Before God could bring His Son into the world to save us from our sins, God had to send Moses to save the Israelites from Egypt. God was going to demonstrate what salvation was all about by bringing Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Everything about the Exodus, which only the great “I am” could have orchestrated, were teaching us about salvation. God sent the Deliverer, judged the King of Egypt, provided the covering of the Passover Lamb, made a covenant with the people, and would then bring them into the Promised Land. These were shadows of an even greater Exodus that is to come.
Our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed and the blood of the New Covenant has been applied. Our great High Priest has gone into Holy of Holies. Now we wait for our Deliverer to appear again, judge this present, evil world, and take His people out into the Promised Land of the New Creation.
But while we are still in this world we are the People of God. God’s purpose was to have a People for Himself, who are in covenant with Him, like a husband and a wife are in covenant with one another. Do we really understand what it means to be the People of God? To be in covenant with God means that He is the center of our lives. Our first desire is to please God in everything we do. This is not a burden for us because we love God and we know He loves us. If we are living to please God then we are not going to be concerned with pleasing people. How can having the praise of mortal man be compared to the praise of the eternal God? Being the People of God means we worship God in reverent fear. This is not a cringing fear that hides from God because we fear His wrath and punishment. We serve God as holy priests with access and confidence through the blood of Christ. We are getting ready to leave Egypt behind for good and so we have already cut our affections for it in our hearts. So we choose to obey the Word of God instead of the culture of Egypt. To belong to a Holy God means we must be like Him. We must be separate from the World. While we are still in this world we have nothing to fear because the great “I am” is for us! And if God be for us, who can be against us?
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