Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 29, 2022

What does it take for God to get your attention?To get you to understand just who God really is?Moses burning bush experience became the mere prelude for an obscure shepherd becoming a well-known servant of God!An experience designed to help Moses get to know who God really is!

One of the greatest problems facing people and the church today is their simply is not fully knowing and understanding who God is!Not understanding the meaning of I am that I am!

How do you convince someone to believe in a God that you dont really know?To trust a God that you dont really follow?What do you tell folk who might ask you who God is?What is your understanding about God?

What makes God different from all those other gods that people observe and worship?What does/can God do that other gods cant do?In Exodus 3:14, God speaks for himself!

In most languages, names of people, places and things are called nouns. Nouns refer to static entities.Nouns do not of themselves indicate action or life.But the name of God is not a noun. It is actually a verb a word that indicates action or a state of being.

In the Hebrew language, the word that is translated I am comes from the Hebrew verb hayah - to be, to breathe, to live, to exist. Its verb form in this verse indicates incompleted action - without beginning or ending. It literally means I am the being one!I am the living, existing one! I am not something static! Nor a figment of someones imagination!I am a self-active, self-sustaining being!I move, exist, live on my own!I be!I be whatever I choose to be, wherever I choose to be, whenever I choose to be, for whatever reason I choose to be, as long as I choose to be!

Another form of that same verb also has a causative quality.In that form, the verb, hayah also means to cause to be, to cause to live, to cause to exist!" That reality helps us understand that God is the living, being, existing one who also causes all other things to be and to exist!Even non-living things, static things: dirt, water, dust, air, stones kind of things.You name it - God created it!God is therefore the creator God!

In the Genesis record, man is the only creature that God breathed of himself into.Only man received the eternal breath of the Living, being God!

When God told Moses that his name was I am that I am, God was declaring that he was not a thing, but rather the source of all things!Living and non-living!Mobile and static!God is the God who bes and the God who causes all things to be!Nothing can exist except it begins and continues in the mind and will of God!Thats how God could say, Let there be!And it was!t started to be, and shall continue to be, until God should cause it not to be!

My being is a continuous reality! I am always in a continuous state of existence! No wonder Genesis 1:1 begins with the words In the beginning GOD ! When you think of God, you should think of something happening!God is a Happening being!Thus Gods name also indicates and reflects his nature!

People, places and things exist be - only for a given period of time.But Gods being, Gods existing has no beginning nor ending to it!Thats what the Lord God says about himself in Isaiah 41:4: I the Lord, the first, and the last, I am he.Revelation 1:8 echoes the same about Jesus, the son of God, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

When God told Moses that his name was I am that I am, God was declaring that he was not a thing, but rather the source of all things! Living and non-living!Moving and static!He is the God who bes and the God who causes all things to be!Nothing can exist except it begins and continues in the mind of God, who is the source of all that exists!

Knowing God is to begin knowing yourself!

Rev. Samuel W. Hale Jr. is the retired pastor of Zion Missionary Baptist Church.

Read the original post:

Who really is God? - The State Journal-Register

Category: Hebrew
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