Moses — “Who Am I?”

Frames in this band: T Timeline · B Biography · G Geography · s sources

● Set the scene before you say anything about God.

“Moses had a job. He took care of sheep. Not exciting. He did it every single day, out in the desert, far away from everybody.”

● Now the bush. Slow down.

“One day Moses saw a bush on fire. But here is the strange part — the fire did not burn it up. The bush just kept on burning. So Moses turned to go and look.”

● Everybody stand up and turn around. “Moses turned. Show me a turn.” Then sit.

“And God said his name out of the fire. Moses. Moses. And Moses said: here I am.”

● Give them the job God gave him, and let it be big.

“God said: my people are slaves in Egypt. I have seen it. I have heard them crying. I am going to bring them out — and I am sending you.”

If God said that to you, what would you say back?

○ Tell them Moses' real answer: “Moses said, who am I? He meant, are you sure? I am not the right person.” Ask if they have ever felt that way about something.

“I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12)

When have you felt too small for something?

● Give examples they actually live in: being the youngest, being new, not being able to read the hard words yet, being scared to go first.

● Sorting move. One side of the room is EASY. The other side is HARD.

● Call things out and let them run to a side: tying your shoes, singing in front of people, saying sorry, sharing your snack, being brave in the dark. Then ask one child standing on the HARD side: “Who could be with you when you do that?”

God did not tell Moses he was strong enough. God said, I will be with you. Which of those two would help you more?

○ Ask: “Is a hard thing still scary if somebody is with you?” Let them say yes. Yes is the true answer.

T — Timeline. Three cards: BABY IN A BASKET · SHEPHERD IN THE DESERT · GOING BACK TO EGYPT. Mix them up and let three children put them in order. “A very long time went by in the middle one. For years, Moses was not doing anything important.”

G — Geography. Point one direction for Egypt and the other for the desert. Have them walk from Egypt to the desert, then turn around and walk back. “Moses ran away from Egypt. Then God told him to walk back.”

B — Biography. Moses had three lives. Hold up a finger for each and count them off with the children: a baby pulled out of a river, a man living in a palace, a shepherd out in the desert. “God called him in the third one.”

s — sources. Open the Bible to Exodus. “This is the second book. The first one is where God made the world. This one is where God gets his people out.” Let a child find the word Exodus on the page with their finger.

● Draw the bush. Make the flames big and orange. Then write inside the flames — you write it for them if they cannot:

“God, help me be brave when ______________.”

○ Pray around the circle. Each child says their one hard thing out loud. You answer every time with the same line:

“God says: I will be with you.”

Frames in this band: T Timeline · G Geography · P Politics · s sources

● Read Exodus 3:1–15 in parts — one narrator, one God, one Moses. Then put Moses' two objections on the board in his own words.

• Who am I? (3:11) — meaning: I am the wrong person for this.
• What is your name? (3:13) — meaning: they will ask me who sent me, and I will have nothing to tell them.

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

Read 3:12 again. Say exactly what God does say, and exactly what God does not say.

Moses asked a question about himself and God answered about God. Is that a real answer? How do you know?

○ Keep reading into chapter 4. Moses objects three more times (4:1, 4:10, 4:13). Ask what happens to God's patience (4:14) — and ask whether Moses goes anyway.

● Start with the fact, not the feeling. Moses had run away from Egypt after killing a man (2:11–15). He was not out in the desert on vacation.

Does knowing that change how you hear him say “who am I?”

What would have to be true for a person with that history to be the right person for the job?

Who at your school gets treated like they have nothing to offer? What do you think they would say if somebody asked them?

○ Push once on cost: “If God told you to go back somewhere you had run away from, what would be the hardest part?”

T — Timeline. Exodus 7:7 says Moses was eighty when he stood in front of Pharaoh. Acts 7:23 and 7:30 divide his life into forty years in Egypt and forty in Midian. Whatever the exact numbers, most of his life is over before this chapter starts. Ask what a person does with a long stretch when nothing is happening.

G — Geography. Moses is at Horeb, which the text calls the mountain of God, out past the far side of the grazing land (3:1). Egypt is the empire. Midian is the middle of nowhere. Ask why the call comes in the nowhere instead of in the palace.

P — Politics. God's message is not “be nicer to the Israelites.” It is a demand to release a labor force, delivered to a head of state by a wanted man. Ask what makes a request like that dangerous, and for whom.

s — sources. Moses' father-in-law is called Reuel in 2:18, Jethro in 3:1, and Hobab in Numbers 10:29. Have them look up all three. Ask what they would conclude from that, and then tell them that scholars have not agreed on it either.

Put the Geography frame next to the Politics frame. Why would a plan to confront an empire start in an empty desert instead of in the capital?

● One sentence, written down, with a plan attached:

“Something I feel too small for is ______________, and the first small step I will take is ______________, on ______________.”

● Say what counts as a first step. Asking one question. Sitting with one person. Practicing it once alone. Small is the whole point.

○ Collect the cards in an envelope and hand them back next Sunday without comment. Every lesson stands alone, but a card in a box costs you nothing.

Frames in this band: B Biography · G Geography · P Politics · R Reason · s sources

● Read Exodus 3:1–15, then 4:1–17. Chart the objections against the answers. Build it with them, not before them.

What Moses says	What God does with it
Who am I? (3:11)	I will be with you (3:12). Notice what God never does: dispute the objection.
What is your name? (3:13)	The answer in 3:14 is built out of the Hebrew verb “to be.” A name that behaves like a verb.
They will not believe me (4:1)	Three signs. Evidence, not argument.
I am not a speaker (4:10)	God asks who made human mouths (4:11), then supplies Aaron (4:14–16). The objection is never called false.
Send somebody else (4:13)	Anger — and Moses goes anyway.

God answers the first objection by changing the subject. Is that evasion, or is that the point?

Every objection Moses raises is factually accurate. Does that make him faithless?

3:7 says God has already seen, heard, and knows. Then 3:10 says: I am sending you. Why would a God who has already seen it need a person?

● Put it where they live: “You get picked to lead the group project, or run the drill, or say something at the assembly. Your first thought is a list of reasons you are the wrong choice.”

Which reasons on that list are actually true? Which ones are cover?

Is there a difference between humility and hiding? How would somebody standing outside you tell them apart?

Who around you is being counted out — in a class, on a team, in a group chat — for a reason that is true but not disqualifying?

○ Say the distinction plainly. God does not tell Moses he is capable. God tells him he will not be alone. Those are two different promises, and only one of them is on the table.

B — Biography. Moses is Hebrew by birth, Egyptian by upbringing, Midianite by marriage, and wanted for homicide in the country he is being sent back into. Ask which of those makes him qualified, which makes him a liability, and whether any single one of them can be separated from the others.

P — Politics. The demand is addressed to a head of state and it concerns his workforce. Read 3:7 and ask straight out whether God is taking a side. Then ask how this story would have sounded read aloud in Egypt.

G — Geography. Horeb is on the far side of the wilderness, past where the flock normally goes (3:1), outside Egyptian control. Ask what it means that the plan to confront an empire is formed beyond that empire's reach — and what that costs in the years before it starts.

R — Reason. The question for this week: what can God do through somebody who does not feel ready? Do not accept a slogan. Make each student name a specific person and a specific unreadiness before they answer.

s — sources. 3:14 is famously hard to translate. The Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh has been rendered “I am who I am,” “I will be what I will be,” and “I am the one who is.” The Hebrew verb form does not carry the present-versus-future distinction that English forces, so the translator has to choose one. Have them find the alternative printed in the NIV footnote and read it out. A footnote is a translator admitting the difficulty in public.

Choose one.

• Write down the objection you actually make when you are asked to do something hard. One honest sentence. Then write what would have to be true for you to do it anyway.
• Find somebody this week who is counted out for a reason that is true. Sit with them once, on purpose, and tell nobody you did it.
• Take a role you already have — older sibling, team captain, the one who runs the group chat — and name one thing you have been avoiding in it. Do that thing before next Sunday.

Frames in this band: T Timeline · B Biography · G Geography · P Politics · R Reason · s sources

● Close reading of Exodus 3:1–15. Four observations on the table:

• The call interrupts ordinary work. Moses is not praying or seeking anything; he is minding somebody else's sheep (3:1).
• 3:6 identifies God by relationship to the dead — the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — before a single word about power.
• 3:7–9 is a chain of verbs: seen, heard, know, come down. The rescue is grounded in God's attention. Nothing in the passage says the Israelites had earned it.
• 3:11 asks a question about Moses. 3:12 answers a question about God. The subject shifts and the original question is never addressed again.

“I AM WHO I AM.” (Exodus 3:14)

If the answer to “who am I?” is “I will be with you,” what theory of vocation is being assumed?

What is the difference between being qualified and being sent? Which one does this text care about, and what does it cost to say so?

● Moses' objections are not neurotic. He is a fugitive with a homicide behind him, no standing among the Hebrews (2:14), and a foreign accent in two directions. Every stated reason is accurate.

When is “I am not the right person” an act of honesty, and when is it a way of staying safe? Can the person saying it always tell?

3:7 says God has already seen and heard. What does it mean to be sent into a situation God is already in?

○ Ask the version that costs something: “Name something you believe you are supposed to do and have not started. What is the real reason, not the presentable one?” Do not require anyone to say it out loud.

T — Timeline. Exodus 2:23 marks a regime change — the king of Egypt dies — and the call follows. Exodus 7:7 puts Moses at eighty before Pharaoh; Acts 7:23 and 7:30 give the traditional forty-and-forty division of his life, which Exodus itself never states. Ask what it does to a reader to be told that most of a life happened offstage and did not need narrating.

B — Biography. Exodus 2:10 explains Moses' name from a Hebrew verb meaning to draw out. Many scholars note that the form also matches a common Egyptian element meaning “is born,” the one visible in names like Thutmose and Ahmose. Both readings have serious defenders, and the text offers only the Hebrew one. Ask what a narrator is doing when he supplies a Hebrew explanation for a name that works perfectly well in another language.

G — Geography. The mountain is called Horeb here and Sinai elsewhere in the Pentateuch, and its location is not established. The traditional identification with Jebel Musa in the southern Sinai comes from later Christian monastic tradition, not from the text; alternatives in the northern Sinai and in northwest Arabia have both been argued. Ask how much of the theology depends on knowing where it was, and be specific about what would change.

P — Politics. 3:7–10 claims that God hears a subject population and intends to remove it from its owner. That claim has been political ever since — in African American spirituals and abolitionist preaching, in Latin American liberation theology, and in settler colonies that cast themselves as Israel and the existing inhabitants as Canaanites. The same passage funded liberation in one mouth and conquest in another. Ask what actually determines which use a text gets put to.

R — Reason. Divine call and human freedom. Moses objects five times and goes anyway. The text does not say he was overridden and does not say he was persuaded. Have students construct the strongest case for each reading and then name what each one cannot account for.

s — sources. 3:14, ehyeh asher ehyeh, is one of the most argued sentences in the Hebrew Bible. The verb form is imperfect, which Hebrew uses for incomplete action, so “I will be what I will be” is grammatically as available as “I am who I am” — the NIV prints the alternative in a footnote. The Septuagint went further, rendering it ego eimi ho on, “I am the one who is,” which pulled the phrase toward Greek metaphysics and shaped centuries of Christian doctrine of God. The connection between ehyeh and the divine name in 3:15 is proposed by the text itself and contested by nearly everyone since. Have them say what changes theologically if the future rendering is the right one.

Choose one.

• A 300-word paper: “Is ‘I will be with you’ an answer to ‘Who am I?’” Argue it, and state the best version of the opposite reading before you dismiss it.
• Interview an adult who does work they once believed they were unqualified for. Ask what changed — the work, or them, or neither. Bring back one direct quotation.
• Write out the objection you would make if you were called to something costly. Then write the objection the person you most admire would make. Compare what each of you is protecting.