The Daily Word

One of the most powerful statements in the Bible consists of 2 words and only 3 letters. It is first used when Moses was alive, and he entered into a conversation with God. Moses has spent 40 years in luxury, as a somebody, masquerading as the son of Pharoah’s daughter but when he really recognised he belonged to the children of Israel, who were in slavery to the Egyptians and committed the murder of an Egyptian slave-master, he ran for his life and spent the next 40 years as a shepherd, being as it were learning to be a nobody. It was when he met God at the burning bush and God told him what he would spend his next 40 years doing that the words were first used.

Moses grew so much in spiritual stature in those las 40 years that he came to epitomise the Jewish Law. But his first conversation with God showed his humanity and reluctance to change and follow God’s leading, something we have all perhaps done during our lives. As he raised excuse after excuse for not doing what God wanted him to do and you could almost hear God losing his patience with Moses, God uttered one conclusive statement which has echoed down spiritual history and will continue into eternity. “I am who I am!”

‘I am’ are the words I want us to think about during this week and particularly as used by Jesus. But to see the power of Jesus’ statements, we need to understand a little about ‘I am’ as one of the most sacred names for God. I AM in this context is translated as Yahweh, Jehovah or LORD. It was a name that was rarely used in speech because of its sacred and holy connotation but throughout the Old Testament, it was used with another word added to it to illustrate an aspect of God’s character. For instance, ‘Jehovah-Jirah’, the LORD my provider and ‘Jehovah Rapha’, the LORD heals, The crucial point is that when the words “I am” are spoken on their own, by an individual it was normally seen as one of the worst types of blasphemy. BUT, when used by Jesus, it signalled His absolute deity, a thought we need to bear in mind as we look at Jesus statements in the New Testament.

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church