The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
How does a mere human being come to know God? First, Paul maintains — and he’s right — it’s called a cosmological argument: by the fact of the existence of the universe and all things, and the order created therein, we know that God, a creator, an orderer of all things, exists — the divine Creator, all-powerful, all-knowing. Second, our conscience testifies to the fact that we are accountable to something greater than ourselves, namely to God Himself.
But knowing that there is a God is different than knowing God. How then can we come to know this God — who He is, and what He’s like? How can we know what this God thinks in regard to us, and what His will is for humanity? How can we know whether this God is for us or against us? For us to know that — for us to know Him — we need God Himself to tell us and to show us who He is. We need Him to come to us and make Himself known to us. In short, we need God to do for us what He did for Moses.
One day, Moses was out tending his father-in-law’s flock. Moses, you may recall, was actually raised to be a prince. He was raised to privilege in Egypt, not to be a tender of sheep. He was an Israelite, and like his fellow Israelites at the time, born a slave in Egypt. But he was one blessed boy who was rescued from the Egyptian king’s edict that all newborn Israelites should be drowned in the river Nile. There he was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised as a noble in the palace. And there he lived happily and well-educated and well-fed, until the day he rose up and killed a taskmaster, an Egyptian. That forced him to flee the land, and he went to Midian to work for his father-in-law.
So there he is in our Old Testament reading: a shepherd in the land of Midian for 40 years, tending sheep. But this day would be different than all other days that had come before it. As Moses shepherded the flock by Mount Horeb, he saw something beyond his understanding: a bush that was burning but wasn’t being consumed by the flames. As he approached to see what it could be, God called to him from the bush: “Moses, Moses.” And Moses responded, “Here I am.” And the Lord told him not to come near, but to take his sandals off, because the ground upon which he stood was holy ground. And what made that place holy? The presence of an all-holy, almighty Lord God, who had come to Moses to reveal Himself to Moses and to be known by Moses. And He had come in a most remarkable and meaningful way.
The fire of the burning bush indicated the Lord’s holiness and His awesome power. He would often appear in columns of flames on Mount Sinai. The fire of the burning bush indicated that He was in fact indeed an all-powerful God. But the fire also was in a burning desert bush, a humble bush. The Lord was revealing Himself as a God who graciously comes to people in humble forms, not in grand illusions.
Then God gave an additional revelation of Himself in His name. From the burning bush, God told Moses that He was sending him to Pharaoh to bring His people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And Moses responded by asking who he should say sent him for this duty. And the Lord God said, “I AM WHO I AM. Say to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
So who is this I AM? This great I AM. He is the one who alone is eternally, independently, and unchangingly present. He’s all that, and He’s much more. He’s not merely present. He’s actively present, fulfilling His promises that He gave centuries before. He is with them to be their God, to care for His people. To make that clear, the Lord proceeds to identify Himself even more fully, saying 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.’”
So who is I AM? He is the one who promised the patriarchs of Israel that He would one day make them a great nation, give them a homeland, and through them would bless all nations on the earth. He is the one who is now setting in motion the way to fulfill these great promises.
At Mount Horeb, the Lord showed Himself to be a God who gloriously and graciously comes to His people and makes Himself known to them. In the burning bush, He revealed Himself to be a God who comes in lowliness, without diminishing His divinity. In His words to Moses, He identified Himself as the God who can be trusted to remember and keep His promises. And in His fulfillment of the greatest of those promises — the promise of an offspring of Abraham, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed — God gave an even more astonishing and more revealing disclosure of who He is and what He’s like.
As the Lord came to Moses in the wilderness by Horeb, He came to us in the wilderness of this fallen world. He came to us personally. He came to us in the most remarkable of all ways. He came to us in perfect divinity, yet at the same time in perfect humanity. Much of the flames Moses saw were cradled in the lowliness of a desert bush. The true divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ was present in, with, and under the humanity of Jesus Christ. Or as Paul put it in the Epistle reading: in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
Because of His divine nature, wherever Jesus walked or knelt or fell or hung was automatically holy ground. And as at Horeb, the holy God further revealed Himself by His name. His name: Jesus — the Lord saves — which is an expression of both who He is and what He came to do. He is the Lord who came to save us from our sins.
And in His teaching, Jesus reveals more about His identity and mission through additional names and titles. One especially significant, given the day and the language: He did this through what we have come to know as the great I AM statements. For Christ said of Himself: I am the bread of life (John 6:35 and 48). I am the light of the world (John 8:12). I am the good shepherd (John 10:11–14). I am the door of the sheep (John 10:7). I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). And I am the true vine (John 15:1). And most remarkably and simply of all, John 8:58: I AM.
Jesus said, “Those who are truly children of Abraham do as Abraham did.” And what specifically did Abraham do? Abraham, Jesus said, rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. By faith, Abraham saw the good news of the Savior to come, Jesus Christ, and he rejoiced in that good news. So too the children of Abraham — those who share the faith of Abraham — they too rejoice. Galatians 3:7: “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.”
Now Jesus’s enemies responded by scoffing at Him: “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” And Jesus replied with the most remarkable words ever spoken: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” He was identifying Himself as the eternal Lord and God in the flesh. And Jesus’s enemies understood what He was saying. They understood so clearly they picked up stones to throw at Him. It was not His time, though. He hid Himself. He left that place and proceeded on the path that would culminate in the greatest of all of His self-revelations.
That journey led Him through the passage of rejection, betrayal, and abandonment — unfortunate, and ultimately it brought Him to the cross of Good Friday, where God was most fully revealed in the person and the work of Jesus Christ as He hung on the cross, dying. There we see Him as the mighty Creator who died for the creature’s sins. The good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep. The God who came to us and became man so that He could die for mankind and bring us unto God.
On Mount Calvary, we see an even greater revelation of God than was given to Moses on Mount Horeb. Indeed, there we see, more clearly than anywhere else, how wondrous His love is for us. Yes, in Christ crucified, our God most holy reveals Himself to us there on the cross. There on the cross, we see God as He wishes to be known: a God who came to serve, to bear our sins, and be our Savior. A God who loved us more than His own life. A God who came in lowliness to lift us up in His grace.
And that is precisely the God who comes to us that we know Him and His grace today. He comes as the God of our fathers, the Lord God Almighty. Yet once again, He comes in quiet and gentle ways. The one who once spoke to Moses from a lowly bush, and who in His incarnation came to us in the form of a humble servant, now comes to us in the gentle splashing of the water of Holy Baptism, in the still, soft voice of Holy Scripture, in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Because of His presence, whenever and wherever He comes to us in these holy means of grace, we stand on holy ground. There He makes Himself known to us as the Lord who has filled us and redeemed us. He comes to us that we may know Him as the one who is, and always will be, for us and with us.
Thus all glory and honor and praise be to the great I AM. For He has saved you from your sins. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.