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.’”- Exodus 3;13-14
Names are more than just sounds we make to call a person we know. They represent who we are and who we can be. God, himself, recognized the importance of a name and what it stands for. The book of Exodus opens with the oppression of the Israelite people in slavery under the nation of Egypt. After the family of Jacob(Israel) moves to the land of Goshen during the famine under the reign of Joseph, a son of Israel, they begin to multiply exponentially and the when the new Pharaoh comes into power, he determines they are becoming too large of a nation and decides to force them into hard slave labor. Now Jump about 400 years. God appears to a Hebrew exile by the name of Moses in a burning bush and tells him that he is going to use him to free the people of Israel. Moses, like any of us would, asks God, "by what name should I tell Pharaoh on who's authority to release the people?" "ehyeh asher ehyeh," God replies: I Am That I Am. This all encompassing name, Jehovah, begins to lay the groundwork for the all other aspects of God to begin taking on new and fresh meanings. All the way throughout scripture, anytime God does something for his people, a new name is added to this everlasting name of Jehovah, or YHWH, as is commonly referred as. Jehovah Shalom- God of Peace, Jehovah Raffa- God of Healing, Jehovah Nissi- The Lord is my Banner, just to list a few.
God knew from the beginning that as the world gets darker and further away from him, we, his children, would be able to call on these names in times when we need him to come in a do again what he has already established he can and will do for his people. For Moses and the Israelites, this name symbolized that God has all the power and authority to break the chains of bondage from the hands of Pharaoh. As we go through this journey called life, God will reveal himself to us personally with a name that is necessary for our current situation and when the time comes to call on this name, it will remind us what He did for us back then, and what he wants to do for us in the future.
God doesn't want to just put us on this earth to try and manage life on our own. Instead, by revealing the different character traits of himself, he has provided everything we will ever need to make it through this life and see him after this life is over seated on the throne waiting with open arms to receive us back to him.
Adam Semple- A Young Man on a Journey through the Names of God
