“THIS IS MY NAME FOREVER!”

Exodus 3:13-15                                     (ESV)

“13 Then Moses said to GOD, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The GOD of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is HIS name?' what shall I say to them?"

14 GOD said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And HE said, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

15 GOD also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel: '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”, AND THIS I AM TO BE REMEMBERED THROUGHOUT ALL GENERATIONS!”

The Spiritual maturation process of Moses might be considered one of the most painful in all of Scripture.  He began as a Jew who had to flee  because he killed an Egyptian for beating a fellow Hebrew.  After arriving in Midian, Moses had to be shown that GOD IS IN CONTROL, not just of people who Believe in HIM, but also the non-believer......even the Pharaoh of Egypt!  Moses was taught, in a sometimes painful experience, that “I AM WHO I AM” was not to be challenged!  Moses had to learn, through experience, that GOD IS GOD and he was not!  

Just hearing that “THIS IS MY NAME FOREVER” was easy to hear, but Believing that ALMIGHTY GOD is “I AM WHO I AM” took 40 years tending sheep!  Then, after all he had gone through, Moses still had lessons that had to be experienced.  GOD told WHO HE was, but Moses didn’t accept the FACT about the Sovereignty, the Omnipotence, and the Omniscience of GOD until GOD proved HIS power to Moses through the trials that he experienced.  GOD didn’t have to pass a test, but Moses had to fully know WHO was going to deliver him at the Red Sea long before the Red Sea was in front of the Israelites.   

Learning from experience isn’t always the most pleasant of things.  The tendency is to question why GOD is allowing us to suffer (in our eyes) through what we see as “difficulties”, when HE ultimately might be preparing us for our own Red Sea where HIS NAME IS GLORIFIED (Exodus14:31)!  

Had Moses remembered “THIS IS MY NAME FOREVER”, there might not have been as much FEAR on the banks of the Red Sea?  “I AM WHO I AM” was guiding Israel and HE has never NOT kept HIS PROMISES!  In Exodus 3:8b GOD promises Moses that HE WILL DELIVER the nation of Israel to “... a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites”.  Moses had been given THE PROMISE, but the pressures of getting TO the Promised Land might have affected his memory?  

We must keep our EYES on the PROMISES OF GOD and NOT on the difficulties surrounding us.  When “I AM WHO I AM” says “THIS IS MY NAME FOREVER”, we must never forget that, despite our trials, GOD IS GOD and we are not!