Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations.” (Exodus 3:13-15)
Who is God? What is His name? In His own words, it is “I AM” (Ex 3:14). But then He says in verse 15 that His name is “The LORD.” So begins our study and meditation on knowing God through the study of His names. Clearly there is more to a name than just knowing how to verbalize it. A name is a person’s identity; it tells us about the person, who he is—especially in the ancient world, where a name often inherently conveyed a description of a person. Today we may give nicknames to people, like “Lefty” or “Happy,” which tells us something of the person. Parents choose names for their children that embody their aspirations for their young ones, either by the meaning of the name or by taking the name of an admired person.
God has chosen His own name, or rather, has given us His description embodied in the many names and epithets found in Scripture. The most important of them all is what we might call His personal name, the one that supersedes them all. Of course, the name of Jesus is the greatest name “under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), and it is the name before which every knee will someday bow and tongue confess (Phil 2:10-11). But the Scripture also says, “When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subject to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). So even the name of Jesus will be subject to and superseded by “I AM.” In fact, Jesus even used the name “I am” of Himself which infuriated the Jews of His day (Rom 8:28) because they took this as clear-cut blasphemy.
Jesus came to help us understand God. “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, [the Son] has explained Him” (John 1:18). “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power” (Heb 1:3). “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). So we begin our series of devotional meditations with the name of God, “I AM.”
My LORD and my God, help me be disciplined to continue this series of meditations to the end.
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