"I AM"
Pentecost, the Greek word for Shavout, the fourth Hebrew feast of the year, celebrates God giving the Torah. Fifty days from Passover, the day Moses led the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the first books of the Bible. It begins with two Hebrew words, Bereshit Elohim, which our English Bibles translate, “In the beginning God” (Gen 1:1). Those two words concisely sum up the revelation and testimony of the entire Bible and all the interactions between God and His people.
We reviewed in Bible Study how Bereshit announces the gospel in its Hebrew letters. My favorite explanation is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2CFLX4kouc. It means, “The Son of God, crowned with thorns upon His head, is destroyed willingly on a cross, a gift of the covenant.” Elohim is the plural form of El. El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning god or deity. Its plural form in the worldly sense means gods, as in the various gods of the nations. Scholars prefer force of all forces in its Biblical sense. The modern Christian understanding is Godhead.
Genesis’ first chapter only uses Elohim, revealing that the Godhead, the unified Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, “created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1). In fact, no one, not any of the patriarchs before Moses, knew God by any other name. They all called Him El or Elohim, but when God appeared to Abraham, He introduced Himself as El Shaddai, God Almighty (Gen. 17:1). Later, Isaac, Abraham’s son, blessed his son, Jacob, in the name of El Shaddai (Gen 28:3).
When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and commissioned him to free the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, He identified Himself by a different name, YHWY. Moses asked what name he should say sent him. Elohim answered, “I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you” (Ex 3:14). I AM THAT I AM is a translation of YHWH, four Hebrew letters, the basis for God telling Moses to identify Him as “I AM.” Bart Ehrman, a highly respected but atheist scholar, states the Hebrew phrase can be translated as either “I am who I am,” or “I will be what I will be.” It is the past, present, and future forms of the verb to be. YHWH is the sublime name of God that only the High Priest can pronounce and then only on Yom Kippur.
Our great High Priest, who offered the single blood sacrifice that forever atoned for our transgressions and the sins of all mankind (Heb 10:10), told His Father, “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). YHWH, who spoke face to face with Moses and delivered His word for Israel, further revealed who He is when He took our flesh, suffered crucifixion for our sins, paid their penalty for us, laid in the tomb, and rose from the dead. In His prayer, Jesus stated that He had already revealed God’s name, but will do so again.
During this summer, we will consider ways Jesus proclaimed God’s name during His personal ministry in Judea—how He announced the name that Elohim gave Moses. John recorded seven of Jesus’ statements beginning with “I am.” They are not the only time that Jesus declared that name during his earthly ministry. If fact, the seven may be tools Jesus used to clarify His characteristics, not a list of His declarations of God’s name.
I am amazed, entirely stunned, by the patient effort God makes throughout the vast expanse of time to reveal Himself. Our Bibles report that every person, throughout all the generations from creation to Abraham, for a total of 2078 years, only knew Him as Elohim. During that long interval, Earth’s inhabitants became so evil that God destroyed all but 8 people, Noah, his wife, their three sons, and their wives, in a worldwide flood. About 115 years later, Nimrod instigated a rebellion against God’s commandment to populate the entire Earth by gathering everyone into one place, likely near Uruk in Mesopotamia. He directed them to build a great tower to reach heaven, a monument to idolatry and promoting false worship as an alternative way to heaven. They called it the Tower of Babel, meaning Gate to God. God destroyed the tower, confounded the language, and scattered the people. Shem executed Nimrod in 2166 BC. The apostasy that followed was so severe that 218 years later, by 1948 BC, only one, Abraham, remained loyal to God. When He appeared to Abraham, He identified Himself as El Shaddai, God Almighty, conveying His all-sufficient might, the power by which He created all things and could enforce His commands. Abraham and his descendants likely saw God as an earthly Monarch, but with substantially more power and dominion. When God identified Himself to Moses about 500 years later, He expanded our understanding of who He is. He identified Himself as I Am, disclosing that He is who He was, is, and will become.
Why would the Creator of heaven and earth reveal Himself at all? He told Moses that Adam and Eve, “heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8). He also commanded Moses to build the tabernacle, telling him why: “That I may dwell among them” (Ex 25:8). Jesus came to tabernacle among His people: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14); and the Bible ends with the promise, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev 21:3). God, our Creator, wants to live with His people and wove that message into His revelation, the Bible. He is the Supreme Being, who increasingly discloses Himself through time as He draws His creation closer to Him.
I remember when my dad’s sister and her family visited us one Christmas. One cousin, Cindy, who is several years younger than I am, is blind. I was about 13 then. I watched her stare into one of our tree’s Christmas lights that glowed at her height. She took significant time carefully examining it as she tilted her head from side to side. That memory serves as a good analogy for our spiritual sight, or lack of it, especially as we try to perceive our Creator. Paul explained, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor 13:12).
How does a person communicate with a blind person, especially one who is intellectually handicapped? Or, in this instance, how can God communicate with people, His created creatures, who are spiritually blind? We cannot see Him as He is nor behold His abode. Apostle Paul reminded us, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).
As we investigate Jesus’ seven statements in the Gospel of John that begin with “I am,” we hope to understand better who God was, is, and will become as He draws us closer to Him. He is the Bread of Life (John 6:35, 48, 51), the Light of the World, the Door ( John 8:12,9), the Good Shepherd (John 10:11,14), the Resurrection and Life (John 11:25), the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6), and the True Vine (John 15:1, 5); but then, He is so much more. He has already revealed some things, but further revelation will undoubtedly disclose considerably more as time marches creation closer to Him. We are blessed to live in the days of that enlarging revelation. Whether we remain alive in this life or are resurrected when the new heaven and earth come, we will witness God’s final disclosure of who He was, is, and will become as we stand before Him face to face.