Exodus 3.14, 15

And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Moreover God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘The LORDGod of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever…”

We’re looking into the Law of God, the five books of Moses, in order to discern the foundations of the Biblical worldview that begins to emerge there. We’re focusing on the most prominent theme and presence of the Law, and that is God Himself. God is One. God is Three. And God is eternal.

The formal name of God was known throughout the period of the patriarchs, throughout the book of Genesis. It was known, but it was not understood. The Hebrew word, Yahweh, appears to derive from a form of the verb, “to be.” God says that His name is “I AM.” The sense of this seems to be that God always is. He never was and never will be. He is eternally existing as He is in Himself, as He was before the beginning of all things, and as He was known to the fathers of Israel.

God is thus eternal and unchanging. Nothing comes before Him. Nothing that is affects Who He is or what He does. He will never come to an end. His purposes will never be altered, abandoned, or overcome by any other purposes or powers because He always exists to ensure that what He has purposed shall be fulfilled.

The One-in-Three God will always be.

The people of Israel, long captive in Egypt, must have looked back through the stories of their fathers and longed for the God of their fathers to be with them, so that they might again hear His promises, know His presence, and realize His purpose for their lives. Now Moses was being sent to tell them that, in fact, this was exactly what had always been but was now about to become more manifestly clear.

Whatever may be the worldview which the eternal God has promulgated, beginning in His Law, we can be certain that, because He is eternal and unchanging, He will not change His mind about His will, and nothing will be able to prevent Him from realizing what He has purposed forever in this covenant and worldview.

God does not change. Nothing precedes Him in being or power, and nothing can arise without Him or above Him. He is eternal, unchanging, and ever-present with His people, to accomplish for them all that He has promised, without fail.

The eternally-present God of the covenant is with His people to give them rest (Ex. 33.14). This aspect of the divine worldview, first promised in the Law, but only partially fulfilled, would await the coming of Him Who is Immanuel – God With Us, the incarnate Word – and the outpoured Spirit of the Three-in-One God Who spoke to Moses from the burning bush.

Act: How should the eternality and unchangeableness of God encourage and sustain us in changing and troubling times? Talk with a Christian friend about this question.

T. M. Moore

The book of Ecclesiastes is a crucial resource for understanding the Biblical worldview against the backdrop of our secular age. Follow T. M.’s studies in Ecclesiastes by downloading the free, weekly studies available in our Scriptorium Resources page at The Fellowship of Ailbe. Click hereto see the weekly studies available thus far.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.