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At the start of our series, we briefly saw Moses asking God two questions: 'Who am I?' and 'Who are you?' In today's passage, many centuries later, we see a group of religious leaders asking the similar questions of Jesus, questions of identity that are meant to make us consider our own identity through the answers Jesus gives. Are we slaves to sin, or have we been freed through believing in him? Are we children of God, descendants of Abraham through faith, or children of the devil, standing in lies? And ultimately, are we people who glorify Jesus as the great I AM, or do we want to put him to death for saying that of himself?

In 1 Samuel 8-12, Israel wants a king—a visible leader, like all the nations around them. But in doing so, they reject the God who gave them everything. And what they receive is Saul: impressive on the outside but hollow within. Yet even in their failure, God remained faithful. He sent thunder not to destroy, but to wake them up, to bring them home.

The covenants God makes with his people (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus) help us make sense of the storyline of the Bible as a whole. God makes special promises to be our God, and we, God’s people, his people commit ourselves to the conditions of the covenant: to live as God’s people. But how do we hold on to God’s promises when we don’t see any evidence that God is going to fulfil what he’s promised? And if we know in advance that we’re going to fail to live up to the conditions (we’re sinful), how can we have hope that we’ll receive what’s promised? This morning, we focus our attention on God’s covenant with Abraham as we discover exactly how it is we can trust God’s promises when questions arise in our minds if God will do what he’s said. More than that, in a very strange and unusual ceremony in Genesis 15, we discover we can have every confidence that God will fulfil his promises to us despite our inevitable failures.

More than a millennia has passed since God declared his name, YHWH, to Moses. For Jews living under Roman rule, waiting for the Messiah, it seems like the great I AM is nowhere to be seen. For Jesus' disciples, sailing on the Sea of Galilee on a dark and stormy night, fighting for their lives, they must have felt that even more! And it is into this picture that Jesus steps, walking on water, declaring that there is no need to fear, for he is with them, and us - and he is that one and the same I AM.

While we don't often think too much about it in our culture, in the Biblical era, names often had special significance. In our text this morning, we will see how this is true even of God. When Moses asks for a name to give to the Israelites, to let them know their God would be with them, God replies not only by giving his name, YHWH (often translated as the LORD), but also gives that Name a meaning: I AM WHO I AM. This simple statement gives us a measure of who God truly is, in all his unchanging, eternal, sovereign power and glory, and over this series, we will come to see how these attributes and more are reflected in the Son, Jesus, who claims this name for himself.

The Philistines have been ravaged by God. They captured the ark of Yhwh’s covenant, thinking that they have won the victory over him. However, as we saw in the previous chapter, God showed that he has supremacy over all other gods. The Philistines now realized this and wanted to get rid of the ark by sending it back to the Israelites. Even though they do not worship nor know the God of Israel, they knew what they were going through was the result of his judgement on them. They tried to satisfy his wrath and judgement by including golden tumours and rats (symbols of the judgement that befell them). Through the movement of the cart and cows, God confirmed to them that it was indeed his judgement upon their cities. Upon arriving in one of the towns of Israel, God struck down some seventy people because they “looked into the ark of the Lord”. They have not learned their lesson of the holiness of God. Even the Philistines, who did not receive God’s promises, began to learn to respect God

The ark of the covenant has been captured by the Philistines. In the eyes of the world, this means that Yhwh is weak and was therefore defeated by the Philistine god. The ark was carried and placed in Dagon’s temple, next to Dagon. It was meant to be a sign of Dagon’s trophy, having bested Yhwh. The people of Israel should despair because their God has been humiliated and defeated. Or has he? No! In fact, it was Dagon that ended up prostrating before Yhwh. What’s more, Yhwh brought devastation on the people of Ashdod (one of the cities of the Philistines). The people were afflicted with tumours. They recognised that it was the ark of Yhwh’s covenant that has been causing their pain. The same thing happened in other cities in Philistine and they were terrified of Yhwh. Yhwh was not defeated. He is not weak. In fact, this chapter is showing us that he does not need Israel’s army to defeat his enemies. He defeated the Philistines all by himself. Far from being weak, Yhwh showed that

In our passage this weekend, we are given a picture of the rot at the centre of Israel’s priesthood. “Eli’s sons were scoundrels.” Even though they were supposed to be priests of God, they had no regard for God at all. They took advantage of the sacrifices that people brought for God and used their position to sleep with women who served at the temple. They were supposed to be priests – mediators between God and mankind and teachers of God’s laws to God’s people. However, what they are doing is a complete mockery of who they were supposed to be. On the other hand, in the midst of this rot within the priesthood, we have faithful Samuel. Samuel, dedicated to the Lord since his birth, has been ministering faithfully to the Lord all throughout this period. He continues to “grow in stature and in favour with the Lord and with people.” God’s grace is working in the midst of the rot within the priesthood. While he is in the background at this moment, it is clear that he is being prepared b