Speaker 1: What if the most important sentence God ever spoke has
Speaker 1: been sitting in your Bible your whole life, and you
Speaker 1: have been reading it completely wrong. Not wrong in a
Speaker 1: small way, wrong in a way that changes everything. Exodus,
Speaker 1: chapter three, verse fourteen, Three words in Hebrew, Three words
Speaker 1: that cracked open the entire cosmos. Pastors quote this verse
Speaker 1: every Sunday. Scholars write about it, theologians debate it, but
Speaker 1: almost no one has told you what those three words
Speaker 1: actually mean in the original language, not the translation, the
Speaker 1: real thing. Because when you see it, really see it,
Speaker 1: you will realize that God did not just tell Moses
Speaker 1: his name that day, He revealed the architecture of all existence.
Speaker 1: And here is what nobody is talking about. The name
Speaker 1: God used was not a noun. If the name of
Speaker 1: God is not a noun, then what exactly is it?
Speaker 1: And why does that one grammatical detail make the entire
Speaker 1: universe look completely different? Stay with this because the answer
Speaker 1: is coming. Let us set the scene. Moses is not
Speaker 1: a young idealist standing on holy ground for the first time.
Speaker 1: He is a man who already failed. He tried to
Speaker 1: be a deliverer once and he killed someone. He ran,
Speaker 1: He hid in the desert for forty years, he married,
Speaker 1: raised a family, tended sheep. He was done with Egypt,
Speaker 1: he was done with Israel. He was done with himself.
Speaker 1: And then a bush caught fire and did not burn up.
Speaker 1: God speaks from that fire, tells Moses to go back
Speaker 1: to Egypt to face the most powerful ruler on earth,
Speaker 1: to demand the release of millions of slaves. And Moses
Speaker 1: asks a very reasonable question, he says, paraphrasing, who exactly
Speaker 1: are you? Because when the Israelites ask me your name,
Speaker 1: what do I tell them? Now Here is where most
Speaker 1: Sunday School lessons completely gloss over the weight of that question.
Speaker 1: Moses was not asking for a label. He was asking
Speaker 1: for a credential. In the ancient Near East, a name
Speaker 1: was not just an identifier. It was a declaration of power, origin,
Speaker 1: and nature. When a deity gave you their name, you
Speaker 1: understood their domain, You understood their limits. Egypt had gods
Speaker 1: of the Nile, gods of the Sun, gods of death,
Speaker 1: each one defined by what they controlled, each one defined
Speaker 1: by what they were not. Moses needed to know which
Speaker 1: category does this god fit into? And God Godd's answer
Speaker 1: so broke every category that existed. He said in the
Speaker 1: Hebrew three words aeya asher eha pronounced a yeah, asher ahya.
Speaker 1: Your English Bible says I am who I am, or
Speaker 1: sometimes I am that I am, and most people read that,
Speaker 1: nod and move on. But here is what they do
Speaker 1: not teach you in most churches. That word ehea is
Speaker 1: a verb. Specifically, it is the Hebrew verb haya pronounced
Speaker 1: ha yah, which means to be, to exist, to become,
Speaker 1: to happen, and it is conjugated in what Hebrew scholars
Speaker 1: call the imperfect tense. The imperfect tense in Hebrew does
Speaker 1: not describe something completed. It describes something ongoing, something that
Speaker 1: continues without interruption, something that is still happening. So when
Speaker 1: God says aya, he is not saying I was. He
Speaker 1: is not even just saying I am. He is saying
Speaker 1: I am continuously actively perpetually being no beginning, no interruption,
Speaker 1: no end. And then he says it twice eh ya
Speaker 1: asher ehya. The word asher pronounced a shaer means who
Speaker 1: which or that. It is a relative pronoun connecting the
Speaker 1: two verbs. So the full construction is I am continuously
Speaker 1: being that which I am continuously being. This is not
Speaker 1: a simple answer. This is God refusing to be defined
Speaker 1: by anything outside of himself. Every god in Egypt had
Speaker 1: a limit, a domain, a boundary, a story about how
Speaker 1: they came to exist. This God has none. He just is.
Speaker 1: The name is a verb, not a noun. It is
Speaker 1: an action of pure, unending existence. But here is what
Speaker 1: we still have not answered. Why does that matter for
Speaker 1: you today? What changes when you realize the God you
Speaker 1: pray to is not a static being but an ongoing, active,
Speaker 1: self sustaining reality. And there is something deeper hiding in
Speaker 1: this text, something that translators cannot fully capture, something that
Speaker 1: connects this desert moment to a scene over twelve hundred
Speaker 1: years later when a man in Jerusalem said two words
Speaker 1: and the crowd tried to kill him. What happened in
Speaker 1: Jerusalem over twelve hundred years later? What two words were
Speaker 1: so dangerous that they triggered an attempted execution? And what
Speaker 1: does that have to do with Exodus three fourteen? That
Speaker 1: answer is coming, and it will change how you read
Speaker 1: your entire New Testament if you are hungry for biblical truths.
Speaker 1: Most people overlook subscribe to this channel. We go deep
Speaker 1: into the Hebrew text every week. And what we find
Speaker 1: changes everything. Let us now go all the way into
Speaker 1: the Hebrew, because this is where the ground starts shaking.
Speaker 1: The word ehere from the root hya pronounced ha yah
Speaker 1: Strong's reference H one teen sixty one. The Brown Driver brigs.
Speaker 1: Hebrew lexicon defines haya as to be, to exist, to become,
Speaker 1: to come, to pass, to happen, to occur. Notice that
Speaker 1: last cluster, to become, to come to pass, to happen.
Speaker 1: This is not merely static existence. This is existence that
Speaker 1: is always occurring, always unfolding, always alive. Now Here is
Speaker 1: something most people never see. In Exodus three to three,
Speaker 1: toutre twit toyer set praetri don twellum. Just two verses
Speaker 1: before God names himself, he says to Moses in Hebrew
Speaker 1: key eha imach pronounced key eya emach. It means for
Speaker 1: I will be with you, the same word ehya, the
Speaker 1: same verb. God is not giving Moses two separate statements.
Speaker 1: He is giving Moses one unified declaration. I Am is
Speaker 1: the one who will be with you. The name and
Speaker 1: the promise are the same word. Think about what that means.
Speaker 1: When God says his name is i Am. He is
Speaker 1: not giving Moses a theological category. He is giving Moses
Speaker 1: a companion. He is saying, the infinite, uncontained, self existing
Speaker 1: being is also the one who walks next to you.
Speaker 1: That is the first shock of this text. But there
Speaker 1: is a second one. In Exodus three to fifteen, immediately
Speaker 1: after naming himself, Ahead says tell them yi each Jabu
Speaker 1: has sent you yi ech jewe. The four Hebrew letters
Speaker 1: yad he vav he what scholars call the tetragrammaton, the
Speaker 1: sacred name that ancient Israelites considered too holy to speak aloud.
Speaker 1: Most English Bibles render it as Lord in capital letters,
Speaker 1: which is a translation choice, not a translation of the
Speaker 1: word itself. Here is what those four letters actually encode.
Speaker 1: Behch is the third person form of the same verb haya,
Speaker 1: where eha means I am continuously being waiwa means he
Speaker 1: is continuously being. God speaks of himself as Ehea. His
Speaker 1: people speak of him as yyh. Same verb, same root,
Speaker 1: first person and third person, same eternal, ongoing, uninterrupted existence.
Speaker 1: The name God uses for himself and the name his
Speaker 1: people use for him are two grammatical faces of the
Speaker 1: same infinite verb. Have you ever noticed that before? Now
Speaker 1: here is where this becomes almost impossible to fully absorb.
Speaker 1: In the ancient world, to name something was to have
Speaker 1: authority over it. When Adam named the animals in Genesis,
Speaker 1: he was exercising dominion. When God renamed Abram to Abraham,
Speaker 1: Jacob to Israel snake, he was reshaping their identity and destiny.
Speaker 1: A name was power. But when Moses asks for God's name,
Speaker 1: God does not give him a noun. He gives him
Speaker 1: a verb that cannot be completed. He gives him an
Speaker 1: action that never stops. He gives him a name that
Speaker 1: cannot be contained in any human category. The theologian R. C.
Speaker 1: Sproul called this the aciti of God from the Latin
Speaker 1: a sea, meaning from himself. God does not derive his
Speaker 1: existence from anything outside himself. He is not caused, He
Speaker 1: is not contingent. He does not depend on time, space, energy,
Speaker 1: or thought to exist. He simply is, and he is
Speaker 1: that way without interruption. Now Here is the moment that
Speaker 1: changes how you read your entire Bible. The verb hyah
Speaker 1: is in the imperfect tense. The imperfect is open ended.
Speaker 1: It is an action in process. It is reality still unfolding,
Speaker 1: which means when God says Ehea ashure Ehya. He is
Speaker 1: not describing a state. He is describing emotion, an eternal motion.
Speaker 1: God is not a mountain. God is not a throne.
Speaker 1: God is not a fixed point in the universe. God
Speaker 1: is the act of existing made personal. Aw Tozer wrote
Speaker 1: in the Knowledge of the Holy that this name is
Speaker 1: the most absolute declaration of divinity that could be imagined,
Speaker 1: because anything that truly exists exists because of him. He
Speaker 1: is not one being among many. He is the reason
Speaker 1: being is possible at all. And here is what falls
Speaker 1: out of this. Linguistically, every other being in existence can
Speaker 1: only say I exist because something gave me existence. God
Speaker 1: alone can say I exist because I am existence. Isaiah
Speaker 1: forty three ten says before me, no God was formed,
Speaker 1: nor shall there be any after me. Isaiah forty three thirteen. Yes,
Speaker 1: and from ancient days I am He. Revelation one eight,
Speaker 1: I am the Alpha, and the Omega says the Lord God,
Speaker 1: who is and who was and who is to come.
Speaker 1: Each one of those texts is an echo of Ehea.
Speaker 1: Each one of them says, I am the verb that
Speaker 1: never ends. Now we are getting close the verb the
Speaker 1: tetragrammaton the imperfect tense They all point to a God
Speaker 1: who cannot be defined from outside. But we still have
Speaker 1: not answered the most dangerous question, what happened when someone
Speaker 1: in Jerusalem used this same phrase? Why did it trigger
Speaker 1: a riot that nearly ended in execution. There is a
Speaker 1: moment in the Gospel of John, chapter eight, verse fifty
Speaker 1: eight want Pontkuir, where the entire confrontation between Jesus and
Speaker 1: the Pharisees arrives at its most explosive point. He uses
Speaker 1: two words, two words that every single person in that
Speaker 1: crowd recognized immediately, and the reason they recognize them is
Speaker 1: Exodus three fourteen. But there is something in that moment,
Speaker 1: nobody talks about, something that reveals not just who Jesus
Speaker 1: claimed to be, but what he is doing right now.
Speaker 1: What is he actively doing in this moment with that name.
Speaker 1: The answer is in the next part of this study.
Speaker 1: Let us go to Jerusalem. It is the feast of Tabernacles.
Speaker 1: The temple courts are crowded. Jesus is teaching, and the
Speaker 1: Pharisees are pressing him, trying to trap him, trying to
Speaker 1: discredit him. They bring up Abraham. They say, you are
Speaker 1: not even fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham.
Speaker 1: They are mocking him. They are using history to shrink him.
Speaker 1: And Jesus answers with five words, five words in Greek,
Speaker 1: which in English read before Abraham was I Am? In
Speaker 1: the Greek text, that phrase is ego amy pronounced eh
Speaker 1: go a y me, a deliberate echo of the septuagen
Speaker 1: language of Ahia, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Speaker 1: Every person in that crowd knew instantly, not just the Pharisees.
Speaker 1: Every Jewish person present would have recognized those two words.
Speaker 1: Jesus was not just making a temporal claim. He was
Speaker 1: not just saying I existed before Abraham. He was using
Speaker 1: the covenant name, the burning bush name, the name no
Speaker 1: one was supposed to casually utter, and the crowd picked
Speaker 1: up stones to kill him. John eight fifty eight to
Speaker 1: fifty nine. That is not an overreaction in their minds.
Speaker 1: It was the appropriate response to blasphemy, because only God
Speaker 1: is I am, and this man from Galilee just claimed
Speaker 1: to be exactly that. Now stay with me, because this
Speaker 1: is where it becomes about you. John does not use
Speaker 1: ego amy carelessly. Across the Gospel of John, there are
Speaker 1: seven places where Jesus uses this phrase with a predicate.
Speaker 1: I am the Bread of life. I am the Light
Speaker 1: of the world. I am the Door. I am the
Speaker 1: good Shepherd. I am the Resurrection and the Life. I
Speaker 1: am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I am
Speaker 1: the True Vine. Seven declarations. In Jewish symbolism, seven is
Speaker 1: the number of completion of wholeness, each one answering a
Speaker 1: specific human need. And here is what that means for you.
Speaker 1: In whatever you are facing right now. If you are
Speaker 1: spiritually empty, the i Am says I am the Bread.
Speaker 1: If you are in darkness, confusion, depression, or lostness, the
Speaker 1: i Am says, I am the light. If you cannot
Speaker 1: find the way forward, the i Am says, I am
Speaker 1: the way. If you are terrified of death, loss, or endings,
Speaker 1: the i Am says, I am the Resurrection. Do you
Speaker 1: see what is happening? The God who revealed himself to
Speaker 1: Moses in a desert, in a burning bush, The God
Speaker 1: whose name is a verb that never stops. The God
Speaker 1: who cannot be defined by anything outside himself. He is
Speaker 1: not a distant philosophical concept. He is actively, presently, continuously
Speaker 1: filling the exact shape of your need. And here is
Speaker 1: where I need to ask you a hard question. Because
Speaker 1: Exodus three fourteen does not only reveal who God is,
Speaker 1: it exposes something about who we are a w Tozer
Speaker 1: made an observation that is difficult to shake. He pointed
Speaker 1: out that Lucifer's original sin in Isaiah fourteen thirteen was
Speaker 1: to say, I will make myself like the most high.
Speaker 1: I will ascend, I will be. In other words, the
Speaker 1: first rebellion in the universe was a creature trying to
Speaker 1: claim the I Am for itself, and Tozer argued that
Speaker 1: this is the root of every human sin. Every time
Speaker 1: we live as if we are the center of our
Speaker 1: own existence, every time we act as if our will
Speaker 1: is sovereign, every time we say, in effect, I am
Speaker 1: the one who decides, we are unconsciously re enacting the
Speaker 1: fall of Lucifer. The I Am belongs to God alone.
Speaker 1: Human beings are not we become. We exist because He
Speaker 1: holds us in existence. Acts seventeen twenty eight says in
Speaker 1: him we live and move and have our being, not
Speaker 1: next to him, not alongside him. In him, you are
Speaker 1: not the I Am. You are the I Am because
Speaker 1: he is, and that distinction changes everything about how you
Speaker 1: approach prayer, about how you approach suffering, about how you
Speaker 1: approach the moments when life falls apart. Because if God
Speaker 1: is the continuous, uninterrupted act of existing, and you are
Speaker 1: sustained within that existence, then nothing can happen to you
Speaker 1: that is outside of Him. Not one moment, not one crisis,
Speaker 1: not one diagnosis, not one broken relationship, not one prodigal child,
Speaker 1: not one financial collapse. All of it sits inside the
Speaker 1: I Am. We now understand the verb, the tetragrammaton, the
Speaker 1: seven Declarations of Jesus, We understand the radical claim of
Speaker 1: Exodus three fourteen. But there is still one final piece
Speaker 1: that locks everything together, something hidden in the structure of
Speaker 1: the Hebrew text itself, something that most scholars notice, but
Speaker 1: few teachers ever explain, something that reveals not just who
Speaker 1: God is, but what He has been doing since the
Speaker 1: moment Moses stood at that bush, and what He is
Speaker 1: doing right now for you. The structure of Ehea asher
Speaker 1: Ehea is not random. The doubling of the verb, the
Speaker 1: refusal to define, the grammatical choice of the imperfect, these
Speaker 1: are not accidents of language. They are a deliberate theological architecture,
Speaker 1: and buried inside that architecture, is an answer to the
Speaker 1: one question that haunts every believer, every person who has
Speaker 1: ever prayed and felt nothing, every person who has ever
Speaker 1: cried out and heard silence. The question is not whether
Speaker 1: God exists. The question is where is He when I
Speaker 1: cannot feel him? And the answer has been sitting in
Speaker 1: three Hebrew words since the day Moses stood barefoot on
Speaker 1: holy ground. Ah yea asher ahea. Let us look at
Speaker 1: the structure one final time, because there is something in
Speaker 1: the grammar that answers everything. The verb ahea is in
Speaker 1: the imperfect tense. We established that continuous action, ongoing existence
Speaker 1: never completed. But here is what most teachers miss. The
Speaker 1: imperfect tense in Hebrew is also used for something called
Speaker 1: the cohortative mood. The cohortative from the Latin cohortari expresses intention, determination,
Speaker 1: or a commitment to act. It is not passive, it
Speaker 1: is volitional. It is a verb form that says I
Speaker 1: will actively, purposefully, persistently be this. Scholars like Walter Kaiser
Speaker 1: read this context as carrying that covenantal intention, not merely
Speaker 1: describing what God is, but committing to what He will
Speaker 1: be for you. So when God says eheah, he is
Speaker 1: not just describing his nature. He is making a commitment.
Speaker 1: He is saying, I will be actively purposefully for you.
Speaker 1: Remember Exodus three twelve, he ehja imach for I will
Speaker 1: be with you the same verb. God is not separating
Speaker 1: his nature from his presence. His nature is his presence. Now,
Speaker 1: the question that has been haunting this entire video, what
Speaker 1: about the silence? What about the moments when you prayed
Speaker 1: and the heavens felt like iron. What about the seasons
Speaker 1: when you knew the doctrines, believe the theology, and still
Speaker 1: felt abandoned. Here is what Exodus thre like You three
Speaker 1: fourteen says about that. God does not say I am
Speaker 1: sometimes here. God does not say I am here when
Speaker 1: your faith is strong enough. God does not say I
Speaker 1: am present when your circumstances confirm it. He says I
Speaker 1: am imperfect, continuous, uninterrupted, regardless of what you feel. The
Speaker 1: burning bush was not burning because Moses felt spiritual. It
Speaker 1: was burning because God was there. Moses's feelings did not
Speaker 1: create the fire. The fire was already there long before
Speaker 1: Moses looked up. John Piper made a point that belongs
Speaker 1: at the center of Christian teaching. He said that God's
Speaker 1: independence and self sufficiency mean he never acts out of need.
Speaker 1: He never reaches out because he is lonely. He never
Speaker 1: saves because he needs worshippers. He never draws near because
Speaker 1: he needs your love to sustain him. He acts entirely
Speaker 1: out of who he is, out of the infinite fullness
Speaker 1: of I Am, which means when he says I will
Speaker 1: be with you, it is not a conditional promise. It
Speaker 1: is the overflow of his nature. He cannot not be
Speaker 1: present because he is existence itself, and here is the
Speaker 1: final architecture of everything we have built today. Moses asked
Speaker 1: who God was. God answered with a verb. The verb
Speaker 1: encoded continuous, uninterrupted, self originating existence. That same verb became
Speaker 1: the tetragrammaton the Covenant name. That Covenant name echoed through
Speaker 1: every prophet, every psalm, every lament. It reached its fullest
Speaker 1: expression when a man in Jerusalem stood in the temple
Speaker 1: and said ego amy before a crowd that wanted to
Speaker 1: kill him for it. And then that same man was crucified, died,
Speaker 1: and three days later proved that the I Am cannot
Speaker 1: be stopped, cannot be silenced, cannot be ended. The resurrection
Speaker 1: is not just a miracle. It is the i Am
Speaker 1: of Exodus three fourteen, refusing the verb to die. And
Speaker 1: here is where it lands for you. Romans eight thirty
Speaker 1: eight and thirty nine says, neither death nor life, neither
Speaker 1: angels nor principalities, neither things present nor things to come,
Speaker 1: nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation
Speaker 1: will be able to separate us from the love of God.
Speaker 1: That is not a comforting thought. It is a grammatical statement,
Speaker 1: because the God who is I Am cannot be removed
Speaker 1: from your situation. He is more present in your hardest
Speaker 1: moment than the walls of the room you are sitting in.
Speaker 1: The question was never is God here? The question was
Speaker 1: always will I open my eyes to the bush that
Speaker 1: is already burning? The silence you have felt in prayer,
Speaker 1: the seasons when God seemed absent were not evidence that
Speaker 1: he had left. They were invitations to understand that the
Speaker 1: I Am is not dependent on your emotional weather. He
Speaker 1: is continuously actively for you, and that has been true
Speaker 1: since before the universe had a name. What you just
Speaker 1: encountered is not a theology lecture. It is a burning
Speaker 1: bush moment. Take it seriously. If this changed how you
Speaker 1: see scripture share it. Someone in your life needs to
Speaker 1: hear this. And if you want to go this deep
Speaker 1: into the Hebrew text every single week, hit subscribe now.
Speaker 1: This channel exists for people who are done with shallow Christianity,
Speaker 1: people who want to stand barefoot on the ground where
Speaker 1: God speaks.