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I Am's which sound forth at times from the mount of cloud and vision. We might even have gone so far as to see how much more wonderful it is to have a faith in which, with wonderful simplicity, God says
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I Am, than merely to have a religion which affirms
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He is, and we should have been glad that at any time there were men to whom God spoke for Himself. But we should not have supposed that the statement had any bearing on our life and existence, or that it solved, or put us in the way of solving, some of the questions that perplex us. Perhaps the principal reason for this lies in the words of Jesus Himself:
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Ye do not understand the scriptures nor the power of God. And yet ought we not to be aware of this, that every revelation of God involves a revelation about the creature, just as the earth is affected by every potency and virtue in the sun? Revelation is not merely information about God, without relation to our own life and being. For instance: both the Spirit and the Scripture combine to assure us that God is Love. Is that merely a piece of theological information about God of which the universe is independent, or does He not in the revelation spread His wide pinions over all creatures that He has made and gather them together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings? Out of such a revelation the willing soul discerns the New Jerusalem descend as a bride adorned for her husband; the eager soul receives, the wayward soul returns, the sorrowful soul is comforted. No revelation of God is possible that is simply information without a bearing on my history, my existence, my future. And so with our text we may say the
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I Am of God involves the
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I shall be of the creature. If one comes to me and says,
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I was your father's friend, it may be either (i.) that my father is dead, or (ii.) that there has been a change in the affection of the person speaking; but if he comes to me and says,
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I am your father's friend, he implies two things: the existence of my father and the permanence of his own love for him; and the one just as much as the other. So when God says, not
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I was the God of Abraham, but
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I am, etc., He is not merely asserting His own existence and providence, but the continued life of the faithful of ancient days. And so the
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I Am of God proclaims the
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I am of the creature; the soul looks down the sloping years and says of its prospect,
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God is, and I am. And Christ's answer to the Sadducee comes to this:
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You are inconsistent in denying the future life; you ought first to have denied the being of God; but as long as He is, beat His saints small as the dust, scatter them to the four corners of the earth, yet He will send forth His angels and gather His elect again from the four winds, and lo! they are sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God: for He is not the God of dead men, but of living men; and all live unto Him!