The Message of the Cross (2) I Am Who I Am
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November 11, 2019 |
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 “God 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 3:14).
In our Christian life, it is very important to understand who God is.
Some believers say with their lips that they believe God, but they do not feel His love and have no assurance of salvation. Only when we know the origin of God can we have close relationship with God and live a Spirit-filled life with the assurance of salvation.
1. God Who is without beginning and without end is “I AM WHO I AM”
In everything man has learned and experienced, there are always “a beginning” and “an end.” For instance, men and animals have a beginning and an end. Their beginning is marked by the birth by their parents and their end is marked by when and how they die. No matter how old an antique object may be, it was produced at some point by someone and all historical events have had a beginning and an end.
Because of this some people ask, “Who created God?” or “From what point has God been present and what was there before Him?” And some others think and wonder about how God first came into being as if there had to have been a beginning point of His existence. However, if God the Creator and the Absolute did have such a beginning, that in itself would have been the most bizarre thing of all.
If God had begun an existence at some point in history, people would obviously think about things that may have preceded God and the time before His presence. God could neither be the Creator nor the Absolute if someone else had created or given birth to Him. Therefore, if God is indeed absolute and perfect, He must be without a beginning or an end and must have existed on His own.
Concerning who God is, He said to Moses in Exodus 3:14, “I AM WHO I AM”. No one gave birth to God or created Him. God has been present from everlasting, the time before eternity to everlasting (beyond eternity).
2. God existed as light and sound but became the Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit
In what shape or image did our God, who had been present from the time before eternity, exist? John 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Here, the phrase “In the beginning” refers to the time well before things in the universe were created, when God existed by Himself. It symbolizes an age a mere creature man could never understand with his limited experience or knowledge. Concerning this God who has been present by Himself from before eternity, John 1:1 tells us that “the Word was God.” He had not yet taken on any particular form but existed as the Word itself, and this is the “sound.”
1 John 1:5 also tells us, “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” There is spiritual significance embedded in terms “light” and “darkness.” The term “darkness” encompasses everything that is not truthful but unrighteous, lawless, and sinful, while the term “light” refers to everything that is truthful such as love, goodness, righteousness, and the like. Yet, God is not only “Light” in spiritual terms but He also existed as light during this time “before”.
God who is the Word existed in the midst of such a beautiful and wondrous light with a clear and transparent sound. He existed in the midst of an inconceivably beautiful light and as a transparent, mellow, soft, majestic, and thunderous voice that resounded throughout the universe.
Then at the time of His choosing, God, who had existed as light and sound, entertained a heart to create man; God wanted someone with whom He could share love. In order to accomplish all the plans regarding human cultivation, God the Origin first formed Himself into “God the Trinity”: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
From this time on God the Origin took on a more concrete image as God the Trinity. And, as recorded in Genesis 1:26, we know what He looked like: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” In other words, when God the Trinity made man, He made man in His image. Man’s outward appearance was created in God’s image and man’s heart was created to resemble God’s heart. However, from the time that Adam sinned, man’s heart that had taken after the heart of God, has been altered for the worse and it gradually became far distanced from God.
3. Only “I AM WHO I AM” is the object of our worship
Unlike man who is a mere creature, God exists on His own from everlasting to everlasting. Only “I AM WHO I AM” is the true and perfect God and only He must be the object of our worship and love. Yet, some people do not know this God and thus worship idols that have been made by man. Such individuals carve and form objects made of gold, silver, wood, and rock; and then they bow before them!
Suppose a child to whom you gave birth could not recognize you and went up to strangers and began calling out to them, “Mom!” or “Dad!” How disappointed and hurt you would be in your heart. By the same token, can you imagine how disappointed and hurt God the Creator would be if you served some idol that had been invented by man? For this reason, God detests idol worshipping.
In Exodus 20:3-5 God tells us, “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me.” For only God who is “I AM WHO I AM” is the one true Deity, we must worship and serve only Him.
There is one more thing you should keep in mind here. The Savior Jesus who came into this world is the same as God the Creator. No man or woman could be His parent. Of course, when Jesus entered this world to become the Savior, He donned flesh and was born of a virgin.
Even then, however, we read in Matthew 1:18, “When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.” The reason Mary is referred here as Jesus’ “mother” is only because this account was recorded by one of Jesus’ disciples. Jesus was not born with any hereditary influences that were passed down to Him from Joseph’s sperm or Mary’s egg. He was born by the power of the Holy Spirit. God merely used the Virgin Mary in pregnancy as an instrument to carry the Savior.
In many places of the Bible we see Jesus calling the Virgin Mary “Woman” but not “Mother”. Nowhere does He call her “mother”. No woman, who is a mere creature, can ever be the mother of God the Creator. Some people worship and praise the Virgin Mary as if they were worshipping God Himself. However, here you must remember that no creature can ever be the object of our worship. You must remember always that except for God the Trinity nothing can become the object of our worship.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God who is “I AM WHO I AM” existed as light and sound in the beginning. In order to gain true children with whom He can share love forever, He created man and started human cultivation. For the human cultivation, He began to exist as God the Trinity. I pray in the name of the Lord that by always keeping in mind that God the Creator alone is the true God and only in worshipping Him, you will lead a blessed life in Christ.
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