A Journey Through the Bible: Exodus 3 and 4

Exodus 3:14—“And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”'” I discussed this passage in my Old Testament Chapter Summary of Exodus 3, but it is important enough to mention here as well. God is the great “I AM.” About the best we can understand that term is the God exists—and He always has and He always will. If we were to speak to Jehovah today and ask His name (as Moses had done), we would get the same response: “I AM”. God just…is. There is a sense, of course, in which I could say “I am,” that is, I now exist. But I’m not “I AM” like God is “I AM.” I haven’t always existed. But God is eternal and self-existent. The question “Who created God?,” as many have asked, is nonsensical. If another being had “created” God, then that other being would be God, which means the created “God” wouldn’t be “God”, the creator “God” would be “God”—if that makes any sense, which it doesn’t. Again, God is eternal—“I AM.” We, as humans, cannot fathom eternality, but that’s because we are finite beings.

In John 8:58, in one of His never ending arguments with the Jews, Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” There can be no clearer statement of Jesus’ divine eternal existence than this. Those sects who argue that Jesus was a “created” being and thus not eternal simply are arguing in the face of Exodus 3:14 and John 8:58. The Jews certainly understood what Christ was saying—that He is God—and they wanted to kill Him. And eventually, of course, they did—or at least, His human manifestation. The concept of the “godhead,” or, more popularly, the “Trinity, though that word isn’t found in Scripture, is indeed Biblical. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Again, incomprehensible to man, but only the arrogant and rebellious refuse to admit that understanding eternal deity is utterly impossible for human beings to comprehend.  Humility is not something man is good at, but is essential in the face of an infinite God.

Exodus 4:8—“Then it will be, if they do not believe you, nor heed the message of the first sign, that they may believe the message of the latter sign.” When God worked miracles through man, it was always to reveal or confirm the message given. Obviously, to know the mind of God, He had to reveal that miraculously to man. But in order to convince men that the message was truly from Jehovah, He enabled men to work miracles—miraculous testimony confirmed by miraculous events. Why should anyone have believed Moses when he told them that God had spoken to him? Well, the miracles he did should have proven his word. Only God can suspend and interfere with natural law. There are many who, through trickery, deceit, and magic, have attempted to duplicate true miracles, and they have deceived many. But nobody has been able to do the wide variation of miracles that God and His envoys did. Let one of the modern “miracle workers” still a storm as Jesus did. How about raising the dead? I have asked several of them, over the years, to heal my blind eye; I’ve told them I would put my glass eye on display for all the world to see if they would only heal my sight. Needless to say, my glass eye remains. Has the reader seen any other glass eyes on display from those whose vision has been restored? No. There is a limit to human chicanery. Only God can truly work miracles and they were performed, as in Moses’ case, to confirm the message God had (miraculously) given him.