The God Who Is
Passage
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So, Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
“This is my name forever,
the name you shall call me
from generation to generation.
“Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’
“The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.
“And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.” (Exodus 3:1-22)
Overview
Our name, Canopy, comes, in part from the Exodus story, where we see a people on a journey, a nation in the process of becoming. The story begins with a great liberation, but we quickly learn that liberation and freedom are not the same thing. Liberation is the beginning of freedom, but true freedom requires not only an origin but also a destination, in other words, a new and distinct vision for life beyond captivity. One of the great tragedies of the human condition is that few liberated people ever experience true freedom. They (we) simply move from one slavery to another. Unless we are given a compelling vision of life beyond oppression, our souls bear the memory of that oppression, and we inevitable recreate the conditions of our captivity for ourselves and for those around us. So, we need not only to be taken out of slavery but to have the slavery taken out of us, which is a far more difficult proposition. We need to be freed not just from an oppressive situation but from a mindset, from a muscle memory, of oppression. I think this mindset is what Paul had in mind in Romans 12:
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)
It is one thing to be set free; it is another thing entirely to learn to live free. So, throughout the next 6 months, we will join the Ancient Israelites on their journey of freedom, freedom from captivity and freedom to God’s vision for our future. We want to learn from their experience (viewed through the lens of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit) what it means and what it takes to live free.
Without question, the single most important truth we will discover on our journey is that freedom begins and ends with God. Because the true definition of freedom involves not only a liberation from the past but also a new vision for the future, we, who have never known life beyond slavery, are utterly incapable of achieving freedom on our own. On our own, we have neither the imagination nor the capacity for real freedom. We need help from the outside. We need a savior not only to liberate us but also to teach us how to live in the freedom that we have been given (this being the true biblical definition of “savior”: liberator and teacher). And, so our journey into freedom begins with an encounter with God.
The first thing we notice about this encounter is that it begins with a detour. Twice in this passage, the Bible calls attention to the fact that Moses “went over” (literally, “turned aside”) to see the bush that God had set alight. Now, this might seem like a small thing, but the repetition seems intentional, as if to draw our attention to the fact that God didn’t burn a bush on the path Moses was walking but on “off the beaten path.” And, only when he turned aside did he hear the call of God. We will find this to be true in our own lives as well. God is often lighting bushes around us, but we will never hear the call as long as we continue to walk the well-worn path. We must turn aside from the status quo to meet with God. We most often find Him in the detours.
Having turned aside, Moses heard the call and began to approach, but then came God’s warning:
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
This is the first time in the Bible that the word “holy” appears and so provides us with a framework for understanding this important concept. The notion of holiness was, by no means, unique to—or even original to—the Israelites, but the understood it differently than the rest of the nations around them. In Egypt, Canaan, and beyond, holiness was associated with a place, and the gods chose places to dwell and to meet with people because those places were holy. This is a static holiness, one that is geographically defined. In the book of Exodus, however, we meet a God who is Himself holy and who, by presence, endows holiness on places, people, even objects. In other words, He does not reside in holy places; places are holy because He resides there. This is a dynamic holiness, one that is associated with a person. The ground was holy because God was there.
What’s remarkable about all of this is what happens when we apply this understanding of holiness to the book of Acts (and beyond). In the age of the Spirit, where the Spirit of God is “poured out on all flesh,” each person who is filled with the Spirit of God becomes holy ground. I wonder if we think about our lives in this way. Do we take off our shoes in our own lives? Do we approach each Spirit-filled day, with reverence, intentionality, and expectation? Wherever He is is holy, and He is here, with us, in us. Our lives are holy ground.
Moses, stepping forward barefoot, then heard the details of God’s plan to deliver His people from Egypt. Because the plan involved Moses going back to a place he had fled and putting his life on the line with no real guarantee of success, Moses immediately questioned the wisdom and viability of the plan. Notice, though, that it wasn’t God Moses questioned but rather himself. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh...?” (v. 11). This, I think, is a wise response to the call of God. It shows that Moses had an accurate understanding both of his limitations and of the task that God had set before him. I believe that every call of God should be accompanied by a sense of holy terror.
What’s wonderful is how God answers (or doesn’t answer) Moses’ question. Rather than affirm Moses (tell him that he’s good enough, smart enough, and that, doggone it, people like him), God answers Moses self-doubt with His presence. His response to Moses’ “Who am I?” is simply, “I will be with you.” This point cannot be overstated. God is not looking for capability; He’s looking for availability. He will provide power. Mother Teresa put it beautifully: “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.” As Moses would discover time and time again, his job was to show up and hold out the staff. God would provide the wonders.
Given God’s answer to his fears, Moses’ next question is a reasonable one. “Well then, who are YOU?” (my paraphrase of v. 13). And, with this question, we get to the heart of the matter and the starting point for our journey into freedom. God’s response to Moses’ question:
“I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14)
There are many ways to translate this famous name that God gives Moses—“I am who (what) I am.” “I will be what I will be.” “I am He who is.”—but they all point to the same idea: self-determination. In all of the pantheons of the Ancient Near East (and the rest of the world) gods were associated with people’s experience of the world. In a pre-scientific era, any unexplainable phenomenon was attributed to the activity of a god or goddess. For example, the sun was a powerful mystery, so the Egyptians, observing the sun, called it Ra and worshipped it as a god. In other words, people started with their experience of the world, and from that experience, created gods. But, this God was different. He gave Moses no reference point in creation that defined Him. He would not be constrained by a place or an object, but as we will see in the unfolding story, claims that all places and objects (and everything else) come from within Himself. There is no reference point for Him in creation because He is the reference point for all of creation. He is the origin, the starting point for all things.
What’s fascinating is that humanity hasn’t changed at all in the past several thousand years. We still want to make gods from our own experiences. We still want to start with ourselves and work our way, from there, to an understanding of God. We still want to worship what we can see and define and control. But, this God still refuses any such approach. He is the origin, He is reality, and only in Him do all things find their meaning. As we begin our journey into freedom via the Exodus story, the first thing we have to realize is that He is the only way to freedom. Only the God who is can set you free.
But, how can we know Him? How can we come to know a God who gives us no reference point? The answer is in the very name He gives for Himself: “I am what I am, will be what I will be.” The way you come to know someone who identifies Himself as I am is to stay near to Him and see what He is, see what He does. In other words, this God will only be known in the context of relationship. His name is an invitation to a journey, a call to walk alongside Him and learn who He is through nearness. In calling Himself, “I am,” what He’s essentially saying is, “Do you want to know who I am? Then, come and see.”
Discussion Questions
If God is in the detours, how can we step off the well-worn path to meet with Him? Does He have you on a detour right now?
In what ways can we take off our shoes in our own lives?
In your life, are you more reliant on yourself or on God? Are you living out of your capacity or His?
Each of us is prone to try to define God from our experience. How can we instead allow Him to define reality? How can we pursue knowledge of the God who is?
When you hear that we are “learning to live free,” what comes to mind? In what places are you longing to experience freedom?