Marco Ambriz

January 12, 2025

When has God answered your prayers after a time of waiting?

Exodus 3:7–8

7 Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

3:7 MY PEOPLE. God’s relationship with his people is so close, his love for them is so intense, that he specifically identifies the children of Israel as “my people" (Ryken, 84).

I HAVE OBSERVED...I HAVE HEARD...I KNOW...I HAVE COME DOWN. How do these verbs speak about God's care and concern for his people? 

I KNOW THEIR SUFFERINGS. If God knew of Israel's sufferings, why did it take so long (a few decades) for God to act? Perhaps Yhwh has been giving the Egyptians a chance to turn, as will continue to happen through Moses’ confrontation of them. Perhaps Yhwh has been waiting for a deliverer to be ready. Both immediate hearing and long delay have been the experience of God’s people at different times (Goldingay, 301).

3:8 I HAVE COME DOWN. God was reaching down to bring his people up out of Egypt. Here we see that the God who is awesome in glory and fearsome in holiness stoops to save (Ryken, 86).

TO DELIVER. There are occasions when sympathizing with people in their pain and grief is important, but this is not one of them—or rather, God has more important things to do than sympathize with Israel. Sympathy is what we show people when we are in no position to do anything about their pain. The covenant imposes on God not sympathy but action (Goldingay, 304).

TO DELIVER THEM...TO BRING THEM UP OUT. There was something God was saving them from. He was saving them from their slavery in Egypt, delivering them from the house of bondage. There was also something he was saving them to. He was saving them into the Promised Land. His plan was to bring them out of the land of slavery and captivity and into a land gushing with milk and honey. This was the land that God had promised to Abraham—the land of Canaan.

A LAND FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY. This means that Canaan was ideal for raising goats and cows. Feeding on good pastureland the goats, sheep, and cows were full of milk. Flowing with honey means that the bees were busy making honey. Milk and honey suggested agricultural prosperity (Hannah, 112).

As Pastor Marco says, God is BOTH the MOST MOVED and the MOST PRESENT being for all of us. 

God is MOVED by our situation.

Exodus 3:13–14

13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors 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.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”

I Am Who I Am

6 אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה7 אֲשֶׁ֣ר8 אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה

ʾě·heyě(h)ʹ ʾǎšěrʹ ʾě·heyě(h)ʹ

The Hebrew ehyeh may be translated into the English "was, is, will be." Thus, the name God gives Moses could be one or all of the following: 

1. I am who I am

2. I am who I was

3. I am who I will be

4. I was who I am

5. I was who I was

6. I was who I will be

7. I will be who I am,

8. I will be who I was 

9. I will be who I will be

How do you make sense of this name? How is this a comfort, and an answer to Moses' question?

Revelation of a Name (John Goldingay)

Yhwh responds by providing not a label but a theology (Goldingay, 335).

The title or self-description “I am” (Ex 3:14) could sound to us like an abstract expression, and a profound one. God is the eternal, self-sufficient, all-sufficient one, not a god who comes into being or can die, like other Middle Eastern gods, but one who simply “is.” That is no doubt true, and it may be implicit in the First Testament’s understanding of Yhwh, but it is not the immediate implication of the declaration ʾehyeh, still less of ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh. Indeed, the verb more likely means “I will be,” for Yhwh has just used the same verb form in Ex 3:12 in telling Moses, “I will be with you,” ʾehyeh ʿimmāk. That takes up the words spoken to Isaac and to Jacob (Gen 26:3; 31:3). Yhwh will often use this verb form again (beginning in Ex 4:12, 15), and every time it means “I will be,” not “I am.” It is indeed “I will be” who has sent Moses to the people (Ex 3:14) (Goldingay, 336).

“I will be who/what I will be” does not imply that God is a chameleon who can transmogrify into a variety of different entities. Expressions analogous to “I will be whatever I will be” can be a way of avoiding specifying how or where the relevant statements apply, perhaps because the speakers are in no position to be specific or simply prefer a generalization (Ex 16:23; 33:19; 1 Sam 23:13; 2 Sam 15:20; 2 Kings 8:1; Ezek 12:25). They need not constitute an evasion but do mean the statements might refer to anyone or anywhere, whatever is needed or appropriate. So Yhwh’s name suggests that Yhwh may or can or will be anything that is appropriate or needed, or that Yhwh decides to be. The giving of the name and the spelling out of its implication is thus both a revelation and a comment on the impossibility of offering a revelation. It is more like an open-ended promise. God has the capacity to be whatever Israel needs God to be. Whatever happens in the future, God will be there with Israel, and out of an infinitely resourced being, God will be what the situation requires  (Goldingay, 337).

How does this explanation of God's name speak to you?

Works Cited

John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Israel’s Gospel, vol. 1 (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 301.

John D. Hannah, “Exodus,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985.

Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005.