God Breaks His Silence

God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”   Exodus 3:14

It had been four hundred years since Jacob and the family moved to Egypt, and in all of that time, God had been silent. No doubt Moses’ mother would have taught him about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But by Moses’ time, these stories must have seemed like ancient history.

Moses received a secular education in Pharaoh’s palace, learning about the gods of Egypt—Osiris, Heqet, Apis, and Ra. Like students in secular universities today, he would have heard his teachers talk about the God of the Bible as only one god among many, a reflection of the culture in which a person is raised.

But Moses would no longer have to wonder who God is after he saw a fire resting on a bush—without actually burning the bush! All other fires go out when they exhaust their fuel; a candle burns only until the wax is gone, and then the flame goes out. This fire was unlike any other. It sustained its own life.

Moses had never seen anything like it, and as he came closer, God spoke to him from the fire: “I am the same God who called Abraham, appeared to Isaac, and wrestled with Jacob, and now I am speaking to you.” Then he presented to Moses the name by which he wanted to be known: “I AM WHO I AM.” Like fire on the burning bush, God is dependent on no one, and he cannot be confined to any time or place in history.

When people say they don’t believe in a God who will judge or in a God who would save people only through Jesus, what they are really saying is that they don’t like the God of the Bible, so they have decided to shape God into a more pleasing image. But this is idolatry, the casting of a false god. The God of the Bible is not whoever you want him to be. He is who he is!

For further reading, see Isaiah 44