I first heard John Piper preach on Exodus 3:13-15 on September 8, 2012. Last night in the first plenary session of the national Gospel Coalition conference, here in Indianapolis, John Piper again spoke on Exodus 3:13-15.

“Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “The LORD, the God 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, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

So, what does I AM mean? This, of course, is the name YHWH. But what does it mean? What is God telling Moses and us about who he is?

I've been somewhat haunted by the question, “Why is God?” There is a lot wrapped up in that question, such as: Why is there God rather than no God? Why is the God who is, good? Where did this God come from? These are mind-blowing questions, and the answers aren’t easily available. But Piper’s observations on what it means that God is who he is has helped me a good bit. The first time he preached this passage he had 10 observations. Last night he added two more.

1. God’s absolute being means he never had a beginning. This staggers the mind. Every child asks, “Who made God?” And every wise parent says, “Nobody made God. God simply is and always was. No beginning.”

2. God’s absolute being means God will never end. If he did not come into being he cannot go out of being, because he is being. He is what is. There is no place to go outside of being. There is only he. Before he creates, that’s all that is: God.

3. God’s absolute being means God is absolute reality. There is no reality before him. There is no reality outside of him unless he wills it and makes it. He is not one of many realities before he creates. He is simply there as absolute reality. He is all that was eternally. No space, no universe, no emptiness. Only God, absolutely there, absolutely all.

4. God’s absolute being means that God is utterly independent. He depends on nothing to bring him into being or support him or counsel him or make him what he is. That is what the word “absolute” being means.

5. God’s absolute being means rather that everything that is not God depends totally on God. All that is not God is secondary and dependent. The entire universe is utterly secondary — not primary. It came into being by God and stays in being moment by moment on God’s decision to keep it in being.

6. God’s absolute being means all the universe is by comparison to God as nothing. Contingent, dependent reality is to absolute, independent reality as a shadow to substance, as an echo to a thunderclap, as a bubble to the ocean. All that we see, all that we are amazed by in the world and in the galaxies, is, compared to God, as nothing. “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isaiah 40:17).

7. God’s absolute being means that God is constant. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He cannot be improved. He is not becoming anything. He is who he is. There is no development in God. No progress. Absolute perfection cannot be improved.

8. God’s absolute being means that he is the absolute standard of truth, goodness, and beauty. There is no law-book to which he looks to know what is right. No almanac to establish facts. No guild to determine what is excellent or beautiful. He himself is the standard of what is right, what is true, what is beautiful.

9. God’s absolute being means God does whatever he pleases and it is always right, always beautiful, and always in accord with truth. There are no constraints on him from outside him that could hinder him in doing anything he pleases. All reality that is outside of him he created and designed and governs as the absolute reality. So he is utterly free from any constraints that don’t originate from the counsel of his own will.

10. God’s absolute being means that he is the most important and most valuable reality and the most important and most valuable person in the universe. He is more worthy of interest and attention and admiration and enjoyment than all other realities, including the entire universe.

11. Jesus Christ is absolute being and is the I AM WHO I AM (see John 8:58).

12. In Jesus Christ the I AM became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Absolute being has united with human being in the person of Jesus Christ.

This is what we believe. God is. It is a wildly untamable, explosively uncontainable, electrically future-creating reality — God is.

Therefore, it is a cosmic outrage billions of times over that God is ignored, treated as negligible, questioned, criticized, treated as virtually nothing, and given less thought than the carpet in people’s houses.

Being the most significant reality there is, nothing is rightly known apart from its relationship to him. He is the source and goal and definer of all beings and all things.

We will, therefore, be a God-besotted people. To know him, to admire him, to make him known as glorious is our driving passion. He is simply, overwhelmingly dominant in our consciousness. All will be related to him.

Behold! The Great I AM.