Who Am I That I Should Go?

Exodus 1-6: The Reluctant Prophet

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Moses had five objections.

When God spoke from the burning bush and commissioned him to deliver Israel from Egypt, Moses did not say yes. He said: Who am I? What do I say when they ask your name? What if they don't believe me? I'm not a good speaker. Please send someone else.

Five objections. God answered every single one.

This is the part of the Exodus story that gets overshadowed by the plagues and the Red Sea. But Exodus 3-4 may be the most honest record in all of scripture of what it feels like to be called by God when you are certain you are the wrong person.

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The Setup: Why Moses Was in Midian

Exodus opens in darkness. The Israelites, Joseph's people, have become slaves. A new Pharaoh rules who "knew not Joseph" - a phrase that is both political and theological. He has erased the memory of what the Israelites contributed to Egypt. Fear of their numbers drives him to brutal suppression, and when that fails, to murder. The midwives Shiphrah and Puah defy his order to kill Israelite newborns - a quiet act of moral courage that the text honors with their names while Pharaoh's goes unremembered.

Into this Moses is born, placed in a basket on the Nile by a mother who refuses to let fear be the last word. Pharaoh's daughter finds him. She knows he's a Hebrew child. She keeps him anyway.

Moses grows up inside the system of oppression - educated in Pharaoh's courts, trained in Egyptian power - while remaining, in some deep way, identified with his people. When he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating an Israelite, he kills the man. He flees to Midian. He marries. He settles.

By the time God speaks from the bush, Moses has been in Midian for forty years. He is eighty years old. He is tending sheep that aren't his. The man who once killed for his people's freedom has become, by all appearances, someone who has left that chapter behind.

This is the man God calls.

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"I Am That I Am"

The burning bush is perhaps the most theologically dense passage in the Hebrew Bible. The bush burns without being consumed - a visual that has generated centuries of commentary. Fire in scripture is frequently the presence of God. The miracle here isn't the fire. It's that the ordinary thing it should destroy remains whole.

Moses removes his sandals because he is standing on holy ground. The location hasn't changed. The ground itself hasn't changed. What's changed is that God is present, and that changes everything about how Moses must stand.

When Moses asks God's name - a question with enormous cultural weight, since to know a name was to understand an identity - God answers: "I AM THAT I AM" (Exodus 3:14). In Hebrew, this is related to the verb "to be." God is the self-existent One, the one who simply is. He is not defined by anything outside himself.

The Book of Moses (Pearl of Great Price) supplements this moment significantly. In Moses 1, God's first words to Moses are about Moses's divine identity: "Thou art my son." God's first move is not to assign a task. It's to establish a relationship. That sequence matters. The call to go to Pharaoh comes after Moses knows who he is to God.

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The Five Objections

"Who am I that I should go?" (Exodus 3:11)

Moses's first question is really a statement: I am not significant enough for this task. God's answer is not a list of Moses's qualifications. It's a promise of presence: "Certainly I will be with thee." The question of Moses's adequacy is rendered irrelevant by the fact of God's company.

"What shall I say to them?" (Exodus 3:13)

Moses worries he won't know what to say. God responds with his own name and with a detailed script. The messenger doesn't have to generate the message.

"What if they don't believe me?" (Exodus 4:1)

God gives Moses signs: a staff that becomes a serpent, a hand that becomes leprous and is healed, water that becomes blood. Credentials for a skeptical audience.

"I am not eloquent." (Exodus 4:10)

This is perhaps the most relatable objection. Moses describes himself as "slow of speech and of a slow tongue." Whether this reflects a genuine speech impediment or simply a lack of confidence, God's answer cuts to the heart of every such worry: "Who hath made man's mouth? Have not I the LORD?" God is not looking for a polished communicator. He is looking for a faithful vessel.

"Send someone else." (Exodus 4:13)

This one makes God angry. But even then, His anger is not abandonment. He appoints Aaron as Moses's spokesman, and keeps Moses as the one who holds the rod, hears the instructions, and carries the authority.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, addressing the tendency to feel inadequate in callings, taught: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten - and sometimes what you need is not more confidence but more consecration." Moses didn't feel adequate. He never did claim to be. What he ultimately chose was obedience, and God worked with that.

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The Covenant Remembered

Exodus 6 contains a passage that anchors the entire Exodus narrative in covenant theology. God speaks to Moses after the first disastrous encounter with Pharaoh (which made things worse, not better), and says:

"I am the LORD: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan." (Exodus 6:2-4)

God is not beginning something new. He is fulfilling something old. The deliverance of Israel is the covenant with Abraham keeping its word across centuries. This reframes everything. The plagues are not raw power. They are covenant faithfulness made visible.

President Russell M. Nelson has repeatedly emphasized that understanding the Abrahamic covenant changes how we read all of scripture. Exodus is not just a national liberation story. It is God demonstrating, through Moses, that no promise He makes to His people expires.

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Open Your Come Follow Me Manual

This week's reading raises the question God asks each of us in different forms: will you go? The answer doesn't have to be confident. Moses's answer was barely yes. And that was enough.

Come Follow Me Manual - Week 11