Moses asked, "So when they ask me who sent me, what should I tell them? I know you are God... but what if they ask me your name? Who should I say you are?"
God answered, "Tell them I AM WHO I AM. This is what you should tell them. I AM has sent you... This is my name forever."
The name God chose for himself is a wild name. No one is quite sure just how to translate it. In Hebrew the name comes from the word "to be". We use the letters YHWH to show the word, but no one is quite sure how it should be pronounced. Along the way somebody threw in some vowel sounds and some German pronunciation and we came up with "Jehovah"... but this probably isn't accurate. Most hebraic scholars through history have come to believe that YHWH should be pronounced "Yahweh". It has been such a sacred name, that in ancient Israel and in many Jewish and Christian circles today, the word would never be spoken out-loud. In fact, in most of our Bibles today, instead of spelling out YHWH, translators have agreed to print "LORD" instead.
So when Jesus starts using this phrase to describe himself, he really stirred up some strong opinions in people. Sometimes people would marvel at him... Many times people wanted to kill him for being so brazen. Crowds began wondering who he could be to say such things about himself. They started asking him, "Who are you? Where do you come from? Who has sent you?" Often, Jesus would answer, "I AM."
Bold. In many posts to come I'm going to reflect on these I AM statements from Jesus. I've started a new category for these posts, because I expect there will be many of them over the months ahead. Feel free to leave questions, insights, observations, objections, etc in the comments below.
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