Reflections

¹³Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?”  14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”  Exodus 3:13-14

Before God appeared to Moses, the Israelites knew God to be the God of their forefathers.  God was referred to as the God of Abraham, God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.  When God appeared to Moses and told Moses that he was being sent to Egypt to free Israel, Moses asked God His name.  God responded “I AM WHO I AM”.  In other words, there is no one like God.  He is who He is.  He exists within Himself.  There is no one that created God; He is the creator of all things.  God does not change.  He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever.  We cannot fully comprehend who He is.  He is the beginning and the end.  He is eternal.  In God we have our being.

God had not revealed Himself as “I AM” before Moses.  So when Israel spoke about God, they referenced Him by the God that the forefathers worshipped.  In other words, there were those that worshipped other gods but Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped God, so that is what Israel referred to until God revealed Himself as LORD to Moses.  He is Master.  He is above all names.  He is above all other gods.  He is Jehovah – Lord, the omnipotent One.

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 25″O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me;

 26and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”  John 17:25-26

In the Old Testament the Law and the Prophets made sin known.  People’s understanding of God was limited to the law.  Many saw God as a judge or law giver.  When Jesus came to the earth He revealed to us God the Father.  Jesus said He only did and said what He saw the Father doing.  Whenever someone had an encounter with Jesus they had an encounter with the Father. 

Through the life of Jesus we can get to know the Father.  In the above scripture Jesus is praying to the Father how He has made the Father known to us who believe.  By making the Father known to us we can also know the love of the Father and the love that Jesus experienced is also in us.

Too often we rely on our own viewpoint of God in our quest to know Him.  We rely on what we see or have experienced in our own lives.  Jesus points us to the Father.  His life is a reflection of God the Father.  So if Jesus did what the Father was doing then we can know this: That God loved us so that He clothed Himself in flesh, came and lived with us, taught us, healed us, died for our sins, arose from the dead, and clothed us in His righteousness.  God is in us and we are in Him.  Now that the Father is made known in us, let us be a reflection of Him so that we may make Him known to the world.

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