‘I Am’ Revealed December 22, 2007

Exodus 6:6-9 ‘ “I am God. I will bring you out from under the cruel hard labour of Egypt. I will rescue you from slavery. I will redeem you, intervening with great acts of judgement. I’ll take you as my own people and I’ll be God to you. You’ll know that I am God, your God who brings you out from under the cruel hard labour of Egypt. I’ll bring you into the land that I promised to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and give it to you as your own country. I AM God.”But when Moses delivered this message to the Israelites, they didn’t even hear him—they were that beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions.’“We are too hurt to believe in Him.”

“I have been failed too many times.”

“I don’t know how to trust anyone, let alone an invisible God.”

“If He cares so much, why has this happened to me?”

Reading the above passage today, I was struck by the hope and promise relayed to Moses. God spoke into the crushing reality of the present. He perceived the pervading hopelessness among his people and galvanised a plan for deliverance. And yet the Hebrew people were so broken that they couldn’t hope for it.

Verse 2 of the same chapter says: ‘God continued speaking to Moses, reassuring him, “I am God. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as The Strong God, but by my name God (I-Am-Present) I was not known to them.’

The I-Am-Present God reveals himself in wonder and miracle. Into the despair of slavery he breathes the promise of rescue. And, He doesn’t make do with a few supernatural signs, but he reveals his name to His people. This is extra, a personal touch. This is God interacting with His people in a tangible way. Before He has been known, but now comes the revelation of His character.

When we know someone by name we build relationship with them. We can empathise with them, consider them, truly begin to know them.

In the same way God works out his plan. He sees a people who are oppressed and treated unjustly. He gives something of Himself to them – His name. For the first time since the Fall, God’s people can draw nearer to God, they can know Him more intimately. This relationship is part of His plan for their salvation.

There is another example of this. In the birth of Jesus we see the same revelation of God’s character. The display is stronger, we are drawn deeper and deeper into relationship with Him, as he literally comes and is part of our existence, as God, no longer just a concept, no longer just a name, is incarnated in flesh.

How many times since that Bethlehem night, has He spoken, and, like the Israelites, have we been too ‘beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions’ to hear His promises?

How many times have we relied on a conceptual knowledge of who God is, forgetting the revelation of His name and overlooking the truth of his incarnation?

Lord, my heart swells with your promise of deliverance, even when all I see are the rusting manacles of surrounding slavery. Thank-you, ‘I Am Present God’, that you don’t remain afar, but that you incarnate yourself into the complexities of my present. My confidence is in you, faithful one. Amen.