Who Is God Really, and Does It Matter What I Believe About Him?

• How to spot the gap between the God you picture and the God the Bible actually describes, and why closing that gap changes how you live
• What God’s own name, given to Moses at the burning bush, tells you about who is really in charge
• Why you can bring your doubts, waiting, and disappointment to a God who says he sees and hears you

Almost everyone carries around some picture of God, even people who say they don’t believe in one. It usually came from family, culture, or a mix of things picked up along the way, and most of us have never actually checked it against the source. This page looks at Exodus 3, the moment God introduced himself by name to a tired 80-year-old shepherd named Moses, and what that introduction says about who God really is.

It does, more than it might seem. What we think about God is, in a sense, the second most important thing about us (the most important thing is what God thinks about us). In London, train stations remind riders to “mind the gap” between the platform and the train. The gap that matters most is the one between how we imagine God and how God has actually shown himself to be. In Exodus 3, God introduces himself to Moses directly, in his own words, rather than leaving Moses to guess. If the picture we carry in our heads doesn’t match that, everything built on it, how we pray, what we expect from life, how we make decisions, will be a little off.

Moses had spent forty years working as a shepherd in the middle of nowhere when he noticed something strange: “Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up” (Exodus 3:2-3). When he went to look closer, God spoke to him from within the bush: “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). This is the first time the word “holy” appears in the Bible, meaning completely set apart, pure, and good. Taking off his sandals was a sign of respect. The scene tells us God isn’t a vague force or a casual buddy. He is powerful and perfectly good at the same time, and Moses’ response, hiding his face because he was afraid to look at God, fits that.

That’s a fair and honest question, and it’s worth sitting with rather than rushing past. The Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt for centuries. When God finally spoke to Moses, he said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them” (Exodus 3:7-8). Scripture doesn’t explain why God acted at that particular moment rather than sooner, and it’s tempting to offer a tidy line like “God’s delays are not God’s denials” and move on, but if you’ve ever waited through years of pain with no answer, you know how hollow that can sound. What the text does say is that God saw, God heard, and God eventually acted. Whatever we don’t understand about God’s timing, we’re never told he was absent or indifferent during the waiting.

Moses wasn’t an obvious choice. He was 80 years old, and forty years earlier he had lost his temper, killed a man, and fled for his life. Since then he’d been tending sheep in the wilderness. When God said, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10), Moses didn’t jump at the opportunity, he pushed back, offering excuse after excuse. Scripture doesn’t spell out exactly why God chose him. What it does show is that Moses thought of himself as a failure, and God used him anyway. The pattern here is clear: God’s plan doesn’t depend on people who already have it all together.

When Moses asked God’s name so he’d know what to tell the Israelites, God answered, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you'” (Exodus 3:14). Up to that point in the Bible, God had mostly been described through titles. Here he gives his personal name. The phrase points to a God who is self-defined, he doesn’t get his identity from us, and he isn’t shaped by what we wish he were like. He is the one who establishes what is real and what is right. In plain terms, God is saying, “I define me. You don’t.” That can sound unwelcome at first, but it’s also reassuring, because it means God is steady and can’t be talked out of being good.

Plenty of people build their own belief system from a bit of this and a bit of that, borrowing pieces from different philosophies, spiritualities, and cultural influences until it feels right to them personally. This pattern even has a name, sometimes called “Sheilaism,” after a woman who described her faith as her own custom mix of beliefs. The problem is that a god who thinks like you, agrees with you, and never surprises or challenges you ends up looking a lot like a reflection of yourself rather than an actual God. In Exodus 3, God introduces himself as “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14), meaning he defines himself, we don’t get to invent him. That can feel uncomfortable, but it’s also freeing: you don’t have to construct God from scratch, you get to discover who he already is.

Centuries later, Jesus was in a tense exchange with religious leaders who challenged him about who he claimed to be. His answer echoed straight back to the burning bush: “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). By using the exact name God gave Moses, Jesus was claiming to be God himself, and the people listening understood precisely what he meant, they picked up stones to stone him for it. The book of Hebrews describes Jesus as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). If you want to know what God is like, the Bible’s answer is to look at Jesus. That’s the clearest way to close the gap between the pictures of God we’ve inherited and the real thing.

God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I am has sent me to you.”

This is God introducing himself by name to Moses at the burning bush, and it tells us that God defines himself, we don’t get to shape him into whatever we’d prefer. It also means the one who is in charge of everything is the very same one who said he had already seen his people’s suffering and was coming to rescue them.

Mike Woodruff is the Lead Pastor at Christ Church, where he’s been teaching through Scripture for decades. He has a knack for taking big, ancient ideas and making them make sense for regular life, with a good sense of humor along the way. If you’re new to church or new to the Bible altogether, he’s a good person to learn from.

If you’ve ever wondered whether the picture of God you grew up with (or walked away from) actually matches who he says he is, you’re in good company. You don’t need to have it figured out to come. Join us this week and see what it’s like to explore these questions alongside people who are still working through them too.