The Author Writes Himself In
When Russian cosmonauts first entered space, they came back and said they didn’t find God there. C. S. Lewis pointed out how silly this way of thinking was. He said if there’s a God and he wanted to be known he would have to write himself into the story of the world, just as the only way Hamlet can know Shakespeare is if Shakespeare writes himself into the story.
In most stories, you don’t meet the author in the story. You meet the characters, not the author. The Bible is different. In the Bible, the Author writes himself into the story.
God has written himself into the story of the world because he wants to be known. This is the main point of Exodus. The reason why God delivers Israel from Egypt is because he wants to be known.
The point of salvation is revelation. God wants his people and all the peoples to know him for who he is. This is what he says to Pharaoh in Exodus 9:16, “For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”
God wants the world to know his name. He wants you to know him, so he wrote himself into the story of the world. Have you met him? Do you know God as an abstraction or as a reality?
A Hypothetical Question
God wants his people to know him for who he is, to know his name. This is the point of our text this morning, Exodus 3:13-15.
God calls Moses to go to Egypt to deliver his people but Moses is reluctant and has questions. His first question is in 3:11. He feels inadequate to do this work. So the Lord promises his presence with him in verse 12, “I will be with you.” Moses is still fearful concerning his calling, so he brings a hypothetical question to the Lord in verse 13.
There are lots of theories about why Moses thinks the Israelites may ask this question. It’s at least clear that he isn’t looking for a philosophical discussion. He’s trying to think through what God is asking him to do.
God graciously condescends to answer his hypothetical question. His answer is full of theological implications and applications, which we’ll get to at the end. But first let’s look at how God answers Moses’ question.
Stage One: “I AM WHO I AM”
There are three stages, or steps, to God’s answer in verses 14-15. First, in verse 14, “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’”
This isn’t the name yet, and it almost looks like a refusal to answer Moses’ question. But the Lord is laying theological groundwork for Moses so that he can understand his name when he gives it. He’s saying, “You must understand my being before you can understand my name.” God is telling Moses the kind of God he’s dealing with.
It wasn’t unusual for nations to have names for their gods (eg. Ra, Osiris, Baal), and if you wanted to secure their favor you had to call on their name. There was even the idea that if you knew a god’s name, you had some power to make them respond.
So God begins by saying, “I won’t be tied down by a name. I’m not a genie in a lamp. Israel mustn’t think that they can make me do whatever they want because they know my name.”
He’s saying, “I’m absolute reality, no one can make me do anything. I will not be constrained.”
But interestingly, we’ve already seen something of what God will be back in verse 12, “I will be with you.” This is the same verb as in verse 14, and could say, “I am with you.” God already told Moses that, though he’s free, he does commit himself, and what he commits is himself.
Whatever else “I AM WHO I AM” means, it at least connects back to verse 12 and is related to the promise of success. The I AM can and will deliver Israel from Egypt.
Stage Two: “I AM Has Sent Me to You”
The second stage in God’s answer to Moses is the second half of verse 14, “And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’”
This is still not the name, but a bridge between “I AM WHO I AM” and “Yahweh” in verse 15. The first part of verse 14 is for Moses; the second part is for Israel, “Say this to the people of Israel.” Israel will need the same kind of assurance that the mission would be successful as Moses did.
This step in the revelation of God’s name is good news for Israel. This is gospel! When he says, “I AM has sent me to you,” he means that the One who can’t be constrained has constrained himself to a specific course of action for Israel’s sake. God is free to do whatever he wants, and what he wants to do is send Moses to deliver Israel.
The self-determining God is determined to be Israel’s Savior. In his grace and love, he’s choosing to move toward them and dedicate himself to their good.
God cannot be controlled or constrained, but he can be committed. In his love, he’s committed to sending Moses to deliver his people out of slavery. God isn’t merely giving his people a theological lesson. The force of what he’s saying isn’t just that he’s God or that he’s present, but that he’s choosing to be their God. This is really good news for Israel.
Stage Three: “YAHWEH…Has Sent Me to You”
The third stage of God’s answer is in verse 15, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of (the patriarchs), has sent me to you.’”
The word “LORD” in all caps in our English Bibles is the Hebrew word, “Yahweh.” It’s four consonants, YHWH, and we don’t know how it was pronounced because vowels weren’t added till much later. “LORD” isn’t the name of God. Yahweh is.
The Jews seldom said the sacred name of God, mostly to avoid breaking the third commandment, and instead usually used substitutes like “Adonai,” which means “Lord” or “Master.” Yahweh is a noun built on the verb “I AM” of verse 14. It’s not perfectly clear what the noun means, but it looks like a play on words with the verb I AM. The parallel in verses 14 and 15 also point in this direction. Both verses essentially say the same thing, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM’ (or ‘the LORD’)…has sent me to you.”
The first two stages of God’s answer to Moses make it clear that God giving his name does not negate his freedom and self-determination. Giving his name does not reduce him to a tribal demi-god like Ra or Baal.
It does mean that he wants Israel to know his name so that they can know him, so they can call on him, not control him. Giving someone your name means you want to be known. It’s an invitation to a relationship.
God’s willingness to reveal his name to Moses is an invitation, a “supreme act of God’s grace.”[1] As finite creatures, we can’t know everything there is to know about God because he’s infinite. But God has made himself known in the world. Giving his name means he wants people to know him and relate to him. It means that God is accessible.
God doesn’t reveal his name to satisfy our curiosity but to be the medium of continuous relationship with his people. As the end of verse 15 says, “This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”
What Does God Want the World to Know About Himself?
God’s personal name, Yahweh, is used over 6,800 times in the Old Testament. He clearly wants people to know his name!
This is also the purpose of the exodus. “That they may know that I am Yahweh” is repeated throughout the narrative (Ex. 7:5, 17, 8:22, 10:2, 14:4). This purpose is stated most clearly in Exodus 9:16, when the Lord says to Pharaoh, “For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”
What is it that God wants the world to know about himself? If I said, “I’m John” 6,000 times in this sermon, that’d be weird and it wouldn’t tell you anything about me. But if I said, “I’m absolute power,” that’d also be weird, but it’d tell you something about who I am.
That the noun “Yahweh” is linked to the verb “I AM” shows us something of what God wants the world to know about him. When God says, “I AM Yahweh,” what’s he saying about himself? What does he want us to know about who he is?
In the context of these early chapters of Exodus, especially during the plagues, “I am Yahweh,” means, “I am supreme over creation, human, and gods.” But when we extrapolate this meaning more broadly, we can find that there are many things that God’s name means theologically.
Twelve Meanings of “I AM WHO I AM”
In a sermon on this text at The Gospel Coalition’s national conference last year, John Piper listed twelve meanings, or theological implications, of God’s name, and I can’t improve upon them.[2]
First, God never had a beginning. When we tell our kids that God made everything and they ask, “Who made God?” We say, “No one made God. He’s always existed.”
Second, God will never end. He’s the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the One “who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev. 1:8). He was there before we came and will be there after we’re gone.
Third, God is absolute reality. All reality outside of him is reality he created and sustains. Before the universe existed, there was only God. No time, space, matter, or emptiness. Only God.
Fourth, God is utterly independent. He’s not depending on anything outside of himself (Acts 17:23-25). This is what the burning bush communicates. It’s a theological object lesson. God, like this fire, is a flame that doesn’t need nourishing. He’s a truly living flame, needing nothing to sustain him. God draws no vitality from outside himself. The God of the flame doesn’t need Moses, me, you, or anyone or anything. He’s not lonely but full of life and love within himself (Jn. 17:24).
Fifth, everything that is not God depends on God, and is therefore secondary.
Sixth, the universe compared to God is as nothing, as a shadow is to substance, as a bubble is to the ocean. Isaiah 40:17, “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.”
Seventh, God is constant. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). He cannot be improved, is not developing, progressing, or becoming. Absolute perfection cannot be improved.
Eighth, God is the absolute standard of truth, goodness, and beauty. He’s where we go to know what is true, right, and lovely.
Ninth, God does whatever he pleases (Ps. 115:3). There are no constraints on him. He is utterly free.
Tenth, God is the most important and valuable person in the universe. He’s more worthy of our attention, affection, worship, obedience, and enjoyment than anything else.
Eleventh, since Jesus is God, Jesus is absolute being. John 8:56-59, “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.’ So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.” He could’ve said, “I was,” but he said, “I am” to link himself to the Divine Name. He was saying, “I am Yahweh.” This is why they wanted to stone him.
Twelfth, Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh. John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” In Jesus, absolute being united with human being. This means that God purchased us with God’s blood. In Jesus, Yahweh comes to us to make a second exodus, to deliver us from our bondage to sin and Satan and death.
This is the God we worship, pray to, sin against, and will live with forever.
Ten Applications of God’s Name
There are many ways these truths can shape our lives. Here are ten applications that I thought of:
First, God is a safe place. Because God is absolute being, when we feel like we’re falling, we can find stability in God. When we’re unsteady, God is our Rock. When we’re afraid, God is our Refuge.
Second, God is sufficient. Because God is absolute being, he is absolutely sufficient for us in every circumstance. Our needs will never exhaust his resources. God has infinite reserves of power, wisdom, and love. There’s an endless abundance of God for us to know and experience.
Third, God is trustworthy. In a world full of deception and A.I. “deep fakes,” God stands forth as a reliable source of information about the world and everything in it. He has nothing to gain by lying because he doesn’t need anything. He’ll always be an authentic and trustworthy guide.
Fourth, God is where we find ourselves. Because God is the absolute standard of truth, goodness, and beauty, expressive individualism (the dominant belief of our culture) is a dead-end street. Only in God can we find ourselves, and only in God can we find something compelling enough to conform our lives to. Our desires aren’t absolute, so they’ll never finally satisfy.
Fifth, the nature of God isn’t discovered, but revealed. God isn’t found inside us, but outside us. This doesn’t negate the mystery of faith. In revealing his name, God conceals as much as he reveals. As the old saying goes, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” God cannot be known exhaustively, but he can be known truly.
Sixth, God’s revelation is an invitation. God doesn’t merely give us information but calls for commitment. God didn’t promise to take away Moses’ nervousness or to give him boldness. He simply told him who he was, as if he was saying, “Here is who I am, can you trust me?”
Seventh, God’s nature inspires courage. If God is absolute reality, absolute strength, and if he’s with us, then nothing can come against us that’s stronger than him. You can see why the promise, “I am with you” is so inspiring. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31)
Eighth, God must be the main point of our ministry as a church. We can and should learn from anyone because the world is full of God’s truth and wisdom, so we learn to “swallow the meat and spit out the bones.” But we must stay committed to the Reformed tradition because of its God-centeredness.
Ninth, we’re baptized into the “name” of God. Jesus tells us to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19). Our baptism and entrance into the church signals that we belong to the “I AM WHO I AM.” Being baptized or joining a church doesn’t save anyone, but it does reveal those who are saved.
Tenth, because Jesus shares the Divine Name with his Father (“the name above every other name,” Phil. 2:9-11), God is knowable and accessible to all people. The incarnation results in the “worldwide availability of God.”[3] God made himself Israel’s God in order to make himself the God of all nations.
Do You Know God’s Name?
Tolkien’s character Treebeard says of his name, “My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to.”[4]
God’s name is like this. It tells us the story of reality, of what or who is really real. God’s name tells us who he is. It tells us we owe everything to him. It tells us he owns us and that we’re accountable to him.
Jesus as Yahweh in the flesh tells us that we must come to him to finally find who we are and how we can be saved. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13).
Jesus as Yahweh in the flesh tells us that the God who isn’t constrained by anything wants to be committed to us. Only in an absolute being can we find absolute forgiveness, righteousness, and redemption. Only in Jesus can we be “saved to the uttermost” (Heb. 7:25).
Proverbs 18:10 says, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.” Do you live in God’s name?
[1]Richard Bauckham, Who Is God?: Key Moments of Biblical Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 45.
[2]TGC23 On Demand (thegospelcoalition.org)
[3]J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 1993), 30.
[4]J. A. Motyer, The Message of Exodus, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2005), 68, n. 6.