Good morning. Today is Tuesday, August 18th!

🥳 Congratulations on starting today with God, and thank you for letting us be a part of it.

📖 Verse Of The Day

— Exodus 3:14

🧠 Devotional

When Moses asks God for His name in Exodus 3, God gives an answer that’s only four words:

“I AM WHO I AM.” — Exodus 3:14

It’s a short answer, but there’s a lot packed into it.

Moses is standing at the burning bush when God tells him to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of slavery. Moses has questions, including a pretty reasonable one: when the Israelites ask who sent him, what name should he give them?

God tells Moses, “I AM has sent me to you.”

So what does that mean?

At its core, “I AM” tells us something that separates God from everything else that exists. Everything we know came from somewhere. We were born. Trees grow from seeds. Nations have beginnings. Even the universe is something God created.

But God never had a beginning.

The Bible opens with, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God is already there before anything is created. Psalm 90:2 says the same thing another way: “from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

There’s a theological word for this: aseity, or God’s self-existence. It simply means God doesn’t need anything else in order to exist. Nobody created Him, nobody gave Him life, and nobody keeps Him alive. Paul says God “is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything” (Acts 17:25).

And that makes God’s answer especially meaningful for Moses.

A few verses earlier, Moses asks, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” He knows he isn’t powerful enough to take on Egypt by himself. Interestingly, God never tries to convince him otherwise. He simply tells Moses, “I will be with you.”

That’s really what Moses needed to know.

Pharaoh was powerful, but his power had limits. Egypt looked permanent, but it wasn’t. Moses had weaknesses, fears, and needs just like everyone else.

God didn’t.

So when God says “I AM WHO I AM,” Moses is learning something much bigger than a name. He’s learning who he can depend on.

We spend a lot of time trying to become strong enough, prepared enough, or capable enough to handle everything ourselves. Moses did too.

But Exodus 3 doesn’t end with God convincing Moses to depend more on himself. It gives him a much better reason to move forward.

The God who needs nothing is the God Moses could depend on for everything.