There is one place in Holy Scripture where this phrase is supremely used. In the third chapter of the book of Exodus it is recorded that God manifested himself to Moses at the burning bush, and there declared himself to be the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He commanded Moses to return to Egypt, appear before Pharaoh and demand the release of the Children of Israel from their cruel bondage; and when Moses inquired by what name he should speak to the people, he answered:
“Say unto them, I AM hath sent me unto you.”
“I AM.”
To the Jew these two words set forth the supreme name and title of the eternal God.
In saying, therefore, “Before Abraham was—I AM,” Jesus announced himself to be the eternal, self-centred, supreme being, Almighty God. When he said this, and because they understood him, because they knew exactly what he meant by these words, the Jews took up stones to stone him.
If I were seeking to demonstrate by object lesson, and in a fashion that would admit of no reply, that Jesus claimed to be Almighty God, I would summon the mightiest and most masterful artist the world knows to come and paint for me the scene which takes place a little later as a consequence of that moment when he emphasizes his claim by saying:
“I and my Father are ONE.”
The picture would represent a great crowd of scowling, fierce, angry Jews, their hands filled with stones—some of them drawn back, the whole figure intense with readiness to cast the fatal stone—and Jesus, standing a little distance apart, looking calmly on.
Underneath the picture I would have written in great golden letters (letters so artistic, so startling, so wonderful in form, that at the risk of art itself—almost at the risk of minimizing the picture at the first glance, subordinating it to interest in the letters and dividing the mind of the onlooker between the actual scene and the letters themselves)—I would have written in letters that should smite the eye and the innermost thinking of the beholder, the words recorded in the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel, given by the Jews in reply to the demand of Jesus when, speaking with amazement, he asks, “For what good work do ye stone me?” I would have every gazer at the picture read these words till they rose up in vastness against him, smiting his attention as the very stones in the hands of the Jews—these words:
“For a good work we stone thee not but for blasphemy; and because that thou BEING A MAN MAKEST THYSELF GOD.”