Jesus Revealed It

We continue to discover appearances of Jesus in the Old Testament—Christophanies. But today we won’t start with an Old Testament passage and then explain it from the New. We’ll do the opposite. We’ll go to a New Testament passage, and let it interpret the Old Testament for us.

We’re going to John 8, where Jesus identified himself as the Old Testament character I Am. That is, Jesus presented himself as the one who spoke with Moses at the Burning Bush. Be clear about this: At the risk of being stoned, in order for others to know him better, Jesus revealed that he was the one in the Burning Bush—the I Am.

‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.’ So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I Am’ At this, they picked up stones to stone him (John 8:56-59).

Blasphemer or Honest Man?

The Jews knew exactly what Jesus meant when he said ‘before Abraham was born, I Am.’ They knew what he meant, he meant that he was the one who spoke with Moses at the Burning Bush. They picked up stones to react to what Jesus said because for them, Jesus had blasphemed. They picked up stones because anyone who blasphemes God’s name must be stoned.

… he who blasphemes Yahweh’s name certainly shall be put to death; the whole community certainly shall stone him (Leviticus 23:16; LEB).

But Jesus was by no means blaspheming God. On the contrary, the one at the Burning Bush could not have been the One God for many reasons, primarily that Moses saw the one with whom he was speaking and God cannot be seen by any man.

The Burning Bush passage is the only passage in the Bible where anyone calls himself I Am. Although the name Yahweh appears over 6,000 times in the Bible, there’s only one passage where someone calls himself ‘I Am Who I Am’ or ‘I Am’—and that’s Exodus 3:14.

A Little Lesson in Hebrew

In the Hebrew, ‘I Am Who I Am’ looks like this: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה and ‘I Am” alone looks like this: אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה. The latter sounds like ehyeh and the long version sounds like ehyeh asher ehyeh. The Tetragrammaton YHWH has some similarities to the verb I Am, but it’s a totally different word. It looks like this יְהוָ֞ה, and sounds different from I Am. Out of the 4 letters in each word, two are different, and they’re consonants (the only letters that exist in Hebrew are consonants).

It’s difficult to know how YHWH (the four letters that make up God’s name; a.k.a., the tetra [four] grammaton [letters]) was originally pronounced since Hebrew doesn’t have vowels, but the most likely pronunciation in English was Yahweh. Most Bible versions, when the Tetragrammaton is found, will replace it with the LORD (in all caps). That’s because the Jews were afraid to pronounce YHWH, thinking they might accidentally use God’s name in vain.

Poor Teachings

Now that we know that Jesus was there at the Burning Bush, we need to perform a careful reading of Exodus 3. If we read rightly, we’ll conclude that Jesus was certainly there as he claimed to be, and that the One God, the Father, was not.

If it weren’t for Jesus’ big hint in John 8, very few people would interpret Exodus 3 correctly. In fact, even with Jesus’ guidance in John 8, practically no popular teachers today interpret Exodus 3 well. Most people never touch the passage because teachers have muddled it so much. But, as we’ll see, it’s not too complicated to understand if you follow Jesus’ lead.

If you do hear someone attempt to teach Exodus 3, you’ll likely hear them begin by saying that ‘I Am’ is the name of the One God. That’s how they start their teaching, but is it true? Where in the Bible does the Father say that I Am is his name? [Most of them don’t even know that the One God is the Father to start with].

From that poor start, most pastors will jump to John 8, and they’ll interpret the I Am statement there as Jesus “claiming that he was God.” They’ll say that although Jesus never outrightly stated that he was God, he did say that he is the ‘I Am’ which is tantamount to Jesus claiming to be God. Why? Because according to them I Am supposedly is the name of God, and they are desperately looking for a way to justify their belief that Jesus is the One God, or (at least) one of three members of the One God. Their approach to the Scriptures is greatly misleading and erroneous.

Rightly Dividing the Word

Pastors are not rightly dividing the Word of Truth. They need to start with Jesus in John 8 stating that he is the I Am, and then they need to backtrack to Exodus 3 and behold him there. When they do that, they’ll understand that it was not the Father, the One God, who was speaking to Moses.

Once you know it’s Jesus in Exodus 3, the passage makes sense. If you try to force it to say what popular pastors want it to say—that it was the One God—then you’ll get frustrated. But if you will take Jesus at his word, you’ll see him in the Burning Bush. And you will see things about Jesus that you may not have known before. As you read Exodus 3, you’ll see that Jesus is:  

• the Angel of the LORD

• the one who consecrated Mount Sinai prior to God’s descent on it

• not the One God [even Moses thought that at first]

• a messenger who came down from Heaven

• the one who would lead the Israelites into the Promised Land

In addition, Jesus told Moses and the Israelites they ‘would serve God’ on Mount Sinai—speaking of God as another. That was a big hint that Moses was not speaking to the One God, our Father. Why would God Himself say that the Israelites ‘would serve God’? Wouldn’t he say that they would serve him? If it’s God speaking, he’ll say the Israelites ‘would serve me.’

The ‘I Am’ Was Visible

These are all amazing things to learn about Jesus. These are all great truths from the Burning Bush passage. But one truth stands out above the rest: Moses saw the one with whom he spoke. And not only did he see the one with whom he spoke, but the one with whom he spoke commanded Moses to report to the Israelites about himself as the God who appeared to him! He was most certainly seen by Moses, and God has never been seen by any man.

Let’s examine the Burning Bush passage closely. It was there that the pre-incarnate Christ revealed himself as I Am. In our next installment, we’ll comb through the passage, and we’ll comb through it with one aim: To confirm that what Jesus said in John 8 was true—that it was him in the Burning Bush.