The God Who Is
I AM Series - Week 1
Main Text: Exodus 3:14
Supporting Texts: Exodus 3:1-15, Revelation 1:8
Introduction
A young seminary student once asked the renowned theologian Karl Barth, after decades of studying God, what the most profound thing he had learned was. Barth smiled and replied, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Sometimes the most profound truths are the simplest ones, yet they contain depths we spend lifetimes exploring.
Today, we begin a twelve-week journey that will take us from a burning bush in the wilderness to a borrowed tomb in Jerusalem. We're going to trace the scarlet thread of God's self-revelation through history. The God who revealed Himself to Moses as "I AM" continues to reveal Himself through Jesus Christ. It all begins with three simple yet infinitely profound words: "I AM WHO I AM."
Have you ever introduced yourself to someone and struggled to explain who you really are? We define ourselves by our relationships or our occupations or our achievements. But when God presents Himself to humanity in the most definitive way, He doesn't define Himself by anything outside Himself. He simply says, "I AM."
This morning, we stand on holy ground as we encounter the God who needs no introduction yet chooses to reveal Himself to us.
1. Holy Ground Encounter (Exodus 3:1-6)
Moses at the Burning Bush
Picture Moses for a moment. Forty years earlier, he was a prince of Egypt with dreams of delivering his people. Now, at eighty years old, he's a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian, tending his father-in-law's sheep. The palace has been exchanged for pastures. The royal scepter for a shepherd's staff. It seems like the final chapter of a life that didn't quite work out as planned.
But God specializes in meeting us in our wilderness moments. As Isaiah 55:8-9 reminds us, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Moses is leading the flock to the far side of the desert when he comes to Horeb, the mountain of God. There, in the ordinariness of another workday, Moses encounters something extraordinary. A bush burns but is not consumed.
Notice that the bush itself wasn't special. It was likely an ordinary desert shrub, the kind Moses had passed thousands of times before. What made it extraordinary was the presence of God within it. This teaches us something profound: God transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary by His presence. Your workplace, your home, your daily commute become holy ground when God shows up.
God Breaks the Silence
Four hundred years. That's how long it had been since God had spoken directly to His people. Four centuries of silence. Generations had come and gone, hearing only the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Stories that must have seemed like distant myths to slaves born in Egyptian bondage.
But here, God breaks the silence. When He does, notice how He identifies Himself first: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exodus 3:6). Before revealing His eternal name, God connects Himself to human history. He's not a distant, philosophical concept. He's the God who has been actively involved in the story of His people, even when they couldn't see Him or hear Him.
This principle appears throughout Scripture. Psalm 46:10 declares, "Be still, and know that I am God." Sometimes God's apparent silence is His invitation for us to be still and recognize His presence. As we read in Habakkuk 2:20, "But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him."
When God seems silent in your life, it doesn't mean He's absent. He's still the God of your story, working in ways you may not perceive until you look back and see the burning bushes you almost walked past.
Taking Off Our Shoes
"Take off your sandals," God tells Moses, "for the place where you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5). In the ancient Near East, removing one's sandals was a sign of respect and humility. Slaves went barefoot. To remove your sandals was to acknowledge you were on someone else's property, in the presence of someone greater.
This echoes Joshua's experience when he encountered the commander of the Lord's army near Jericho. The divine messenger gave Joshua the same command: "Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy" (Joshua 5:15). Both encounters required the same response: reverent submission before God's holy presence.
There's something deeper here. Shoes are what protect us from the earth, what separate us from the ground. God is inviting Moses to remove what separates him from truly experiencing His presence. To be vulnerable. To feel the holy ground beneath his feet.
What shoes do you need to remove today? What barriers have you erected between yourself and God's presence? Perhaps it's your self-sufficiency, your cynicism after years of disappointment, or your carefully constructed image. God invites you to remove whatever separates you from experiencing the holy ground of His presence.
2. I AM WHO I AM (Exodus 3:13-14)
The Name Above All Names
When Moses asks for God's name, he's not making polite conversation. In the ancient world, names carried power and meaning. To know someone's name was to have a relationship with them, even authority in invoking that name. The Egyptians had many gods, each with names that described their function or domain.
But when Moses asks, "What is His name?" God responds with something unprecedented in human history: "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14). In Hebrew, it's "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh." This isn't really a name in the conventional sense. It's a declaration of being itself.
God is saying, "I don't derive My existence from anything else. I simply AM. I am the ground of all being, the source of all existence. Before anything was, I AM."
This aligns with what Jesus declares in John 8:58: "Before Abraham was, I am." Notice Jesus doesn't say "I was" but "I am," claiming the same eternal present tense that God revealed to Moses.
What YHWH Means
The name God gives becomes the basis for the sacred name YHWH (Yahweh), sometimes rendered as Jehovah. It's built on the Hebrew verb "to be." But it's more than existence. It carries the sense of active presence, of becoming, of causing to be.
When God says "I AM," He's declaring:
• I am actively present
• I am unchanging yet dynamic
• I am the source of all that is
• I am sufficient for all your needs
• I am who I prove myself to be
Psalm 135:13 confirms this: "Your name, O Lord, endures forever, your renown, O Lord, throughout all generations." The name YHWH carries God's eternal character and His covenant faithfulness across all time.
The Jewish people held this name in such reverence that they wouldn't even pronounce it, substituting "Adonai" (Lord) instead. They understood something we often miss in our casual age: the weight of glory in God's self-revelation.
God's Self-Existence Explained
Theologians call this concept "aseity." God's self-existence. Everything else in the universe is contingent. You exist because your parents existed. The earth exists because of cosmic forces set in motion. Even the universe itself had a beginning.
But God simply IS. He has no beginning, no cause, no dependency. As Revelation 1:8 declares, He is "the Alpha and the Omega... who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."
Psalm 90:2 expresses this truth poetically: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." God exists outside of time, the eternal foundation upon which all reality rests.
Think about the security this offers us. Every other foundation in life shifts:
• Economies collapse, but God IS
• Relationships fail, but God IS
• Health deteriorates, but God IS
• Circumstances change, but God IS
When everything else in life is in flux, we anchor our souls to the One who simply IS. As Isaiah 26:4 declares, "Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock."
3. The God of Your Story (Exodus 3:15-17, Hebrews 13:8)
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
After revealing His eternal name, God does something beautiful. He immediately connects His eternal nature to human history: "This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation" (Exodus 3:15).
God is not content to be known merely as the philosophical absolute. He insists on being known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who enters into covenant relationship with broken, imperfect people.
Abraham lied about his wife and laughed at God's promises. Isaac showed favoritism among his children. Jacob's name literally means "deceiver." This is the God who doesn't wait for us to get our acts together before He engages with our stories.
Romans 4:16-17 explains God's approach: "That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring... in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist."
The Same God Today
The book of Hebrews makes this stunning declaration: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). The God who revealed Himself as I AM to Moses is the same God who reveals Himself through Jesus Christ. The same God who spoke from the burning bush speaks to us today through His Word and Spirit.
This consistency of character appears throughout Scripture. Malachi 3:6 states, "For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed." James 1:17 adds, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change."
The stories of Scripture aren't ancient history. They're family history. The God of Abraham is your God. The God who delivered Israel from Egypt wants to deliver you from whatever bondage holds you. The God who provided manna in the wilderness wants to be your daily bread.
Consider how this truth transforms your perspective:
• When you face impossible odds, remember: the I AM who parted the Red Sea is your God (Exodus 14:21)
• When you need provision, remember: the I AM who fed millions in the desert is your God (Exodus 16:4)
• When you feel alone, remember: the I AM who walked with Israel through the wilderness is your God (Deuteronomy 31:6)
Your Burning Bush Moments
Moses wasn't looking for God that day. He was doing his job, following the familiar path, when suddenly the ordinary became extraordinary. The question isn't whether God is still speaking. It's whether we're still listening.
Your burning bush might not be a miraculous sight. It might be:
• A Scripture that suddenly comes alive with meaning
• A conversation that touches something deep within you
• A moment of unexpected peace in the midst of chaos
• A provision that arrives just when you need it most
• A conviction that won't let you go
The God who IS constantly reveals Himself to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. He's not confined to church buildings or religious moments. He meets us in our wilderness, in our ordinary Tuesday afternoons, in our places of failure and frustration.
But Moses teaches us we have to turn aside to see. Exodus 3:3 says, "So Moses thought, 'I will go over and see this strange sight.'" Moses could have rationalized it away, could have kept walking, could have been too busy with the sheep to investigate. But he turned aside. He paid attention. He removed his sandals and encountered the living God.
Jeremiah 29:13 promises, "You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart." God reveals Himself to those who actively look for Him.
Conclusion
As we begin this twelve-week journey through God's I AM revelations, we start here at the burning bush because this is where God definitively answers the most fundamental question of human existence: Is anyone there? Is there meaning beyond what we see? Is there hope beyond our circumstances?
God's answer echoes across the centuries: I AM.
Not "I was" as if He's a relic of the past. Not "I will be" as if He's only a future hope. But I AM. Present tense, active, engaged, here, now, with you.
In the weeks ahead, we'll discover how Jesus takes this divine name and applies it to Himself in seven magnificent declarations found in John's Gospel: I am the bread of life (John 6:35). I am the light of the world (John 8:12). I am the good shepherd (John 10:11). Each declaration will show us that the God who revealed Himself to Moses continues to reveal Himself to us, ultimately becoming flesh and dwelling among us.
But it all starts here, with this foundational truth: God IS. He doesn't need you to validate His existence. He doesn't require your belief to be real. He simply IS. Yet here's the wonder of grace: this self-sufficient, eternal, all-powerful God chooses to reveal Himself to you. He wants to be known by you. He desires to be the God of your story.
As we close this morning, I want to leave you with the take-home question that will guide your reflection this week:
Do you know the God who simply IS?
Not do you know about Him. Do you know Him? Have you encountered the living God who breaks into your ordinary life with His extraordinary presence? Have you removed your shoes on the holy ground of His presence?
Moses left that burning bush encounter transformed. He went from a man running from his past to a deliverer of nations. He went from a stuttering shepherd to a spokesman for God. He went from isolation in the wilderness to intimacy with the Almighty.
The same God who transformed Moses wants to transform you. The same I AM who commissioned Moses wants to commission you. The same presence that made common ground holy wants to make your common life sacred.
This is our invitation as we begin this series: to encounter the God who IS, to discover His presence in our present, and to find that the ancient name revealed to Moses is as fresh and powerful today as it was beside that burning bush.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is alive. The I AM still speaks. The holy ground awaits.
Will you turn aside to see?
Will you remove your shoes?
Will you encounter the God who IS?
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, You are the great I AM, the God who IS when everything else shifts and changes. Thank You for revealing Yourself to us, for breaking into our ordinary lives with Your extraordinary presence. Help us to recognize our burning bush moments. Give us the wisdom to turn aside, the humility to remove our shoes, and the courage to encounter You as You truly are. May we know not about You, but know You. The God who IS, who was, and who is to come. Transform us as You transformed Moses, that we might be vessels of Your presence in this world. In the name of Jesus, the great I AM who became flesh and dwelt among us, Amen.
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Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
Mobile: +91 9933250072
