God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14, NIV 1984)
You don’t just walk onto the first tee of most private clubs. Somebody’s going to ask, “What are you doing here? Who sent you?”
Believe it or not, Moses understood this very circumstance as he stood in the middle of the desert at Horeb talking to a burning bush. I know that sentence, written as it is, presents us with a fantastic picture, the kind that many would dismiss as “myth”—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
That burning bush, which was the physical representation of God himself, had just commissioned the erstwhile palace boy-now-shepherd to return to Pharaoh’s throne and demand the release of the Israelites, who had been harshly enslaved in Egypt.
Sure thing, Moses must have thought. Piece of cake, that one. Just waltz into the court of the king and make a simple request. No worries.
So Moses put it plainly to the Lord: “Who shall I say sent me? What is his name?” Moses, altogether reluctant, was calling the bush’s bluff. Maybe he’d seen enough royal conjurors in his boyhood years that he figured someone was playing a trick on him.
But God flatly returned Moses’ inquiry with the declaration of his name, as we see it in today’s verse: “I am who I am.”
We cannot pass lightly over God’s answer, for its linguistic weight is stunning. In five brief words, God declared his eternal and enduring nature. He has been and he is and he ever will be the “glue” that holds everything together. He is the reason and the cause, the designer and sustainer, the maker and the tender. You think God as a burning bush is a quaint idea? Take him out of the universe, and everything will go, in a silly but most descriptive word, “POOF!”
Science has its say in our present age. But literally nothing it has said disproves God. Empirical truths for natural causes do not eliminate a supernatural God; conversely, they increasingly appear to require him. Many scientists and philosophers are busy looking for a “theory of everything”—they know they need a force that holds all they have discovered together. The trouble is that they have been so quick to dismiss those things they cannot see as “myths,” they’ve eliminated the possibility even Moses had trouble accepting: God made all and rules all. We won’t always understand his every move—would we really want a God we could fully comprehend?—but we can count on his ever-presence. It doesn’t only hold the universe together; it holds us together!
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Jeff Hopper
March 21, 2012
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday through Friday and is archived by passage and topic at www.linksplayers.com.