Who is God? I AM

Transcript:

Speaker 1:
Today we'll be reading from Psalm the 40th Psalm verses one through eight. I waited patiently for the Lord. He turns to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud to those who turn aside to false. Gods many, Lord my God are the wonders you have done, the things you have planned for us. None can compare with you where I to speak and tell of your deeds they would be too many to declare sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears. You have opened burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, here I am. I have come. It is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will. My God. Your law is within my heart. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. 

Speaker 2:
We are glad for each and every one of you who have gathered with us today, and today is an exciting day for a lot of different reasons. We've got some kids that are going back to school this week and some of the parents are beginning to see the back to normal pace that comes with being at school. And we are starting a new series today that we're going to be in now for about eight weeks. And so life is good, God is good, and we are excited. Today we're going to be in a series where we ask the question, who is God? Who is God? Now I'm going to assume that all of us in this room have some sort of response or answer to that question. We have some sort of understanding about God and about who God is. Some of us have been living for God for years and even decades constructing our lives after the way of God and what we know about God. 

Speaker 2:
Some of us are newer and are discovering who God is. Some of us have things that we know about God that are great and true, and some of us even probably have some unhealthy understandings about God and about who God is. But the purpose of this series is for all of us to be assured that no matter what our understanding of God is, that God is trustworthy and that because God is trustworthy, it is good to shape our lives around what God desires for us. And we know that God is trustworthy not because of someone's opinion about God or because of what another person claims about God, but through God's own words and through interactions that we read can read about with people experiencing life with God. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. So there's a line in that psalm that we read just a bit ago that captures my attention. 

Speaker 2:
One of the things that I try to do when I'm reading through scripture is before I begin reading, I'll say a quick prayer that just says, God, capture my attention with something in this passage. And one of those lines that captured my attention is Psalm 40, verse six. And it says this. It says, sacrifice and offering what you did not desire, but my ears. You have opened burnt offerings and sin offerings what you did not desire. Now, that's not a typo. That's actually what Psalm 46 says. So sacrifice and offering you did not desire. You opened my ears burnt offerings and sent offerings you did not require. So it seems here that the psalmist has a bit of a new awakening or a new understanding about God and who God is. Now, we don't know exactly how long the Psalmist before this followed, what they knew about God. 

Speaker 2:
We don't know if it was a decade, a couple of decades. It's just a matter of a few years. We don't really know how long this person had been living in the rescue of God, but we know that they did, right? Because in verse two we read, he lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. Now this reference we see throughout the Psalms and throughout the Old Testament where God is considered and understood to have taken the nation of Israel and people as individuals out of the mare and the muck and the slimy pit, and set them upon the foundation of God's way. The myy pit and the clay refers to both Israel being in captivity with Egypt and also people who have been set free individually and communally from the ways of the world or the patterns of the world. 

Speaker 2:
So God has set not only the nation of Israel free, but set the Psalmist free as well. And now God has revealed to these people who these newly rescued people are to be how they are supposed to live, how they are supposed to navigate life in the world. There's a renowned Old Testament theologian, his name is Walter Brueggeman, with a name like Brueggeman and a first name like Walter that something good has to come from your life. And many good things have come from Walter Brueggeman. One of the writings he has is on the Psalms. He goes through and basically dissects many of the Psalms, if not all of them. And he said something very interesting about this very passage that we are reading. He says this now, it says Yahweh. There just a quick understanding for all of us of what Yahweh is. Yahweh is the name of God. 

Speaker 2:
Okay? Now, in the Hebrew language, they don't have vowels. There's only consonants. And so Yahweh in Hebrew looks like Y H W H. Now that doesn't necessarily, you don't really need to understand that except for when we read the word Lord, which is often published in the English translation, all in capital letters that is reference to this name Yahweh. Yahweh is the name that the Israelites understand God. And it's so revered that Yahweh is not a name that oftentimes is mentioned because the name represents so much goodness and holiness and fullness of God. And so here we read the English translation of Yahweh with the consonants and the vows. But here's what he says. He says, Yahweh does not want more conventional religion that belongs to the old world of fatigue. That is a great, I love that phrase, the old world of fatigue, the habitual practices talking about the sacrifices, the burn offerings, the sin offerings. 

Speaker 2:
They're not condemned, but they are recognized as irrelevant. So what has become irrelevant to the psalmist here from the beginning, God has set people free both from physical chains and from the patterns of the world and the world's economy that you and I live most of our lives in. Nothing is free, right? Anytime somebody says you get something for free, we know that is not true. If it's too good to be true, it is right. That's how we live our lives. So when we receive a gift from God, it is our sort of inclination, it is our natural response to want to prove ourselves worthy. But this gift of new life isn't something that anyone can prove themselves worthy of. Now, you all are amazing people and I have the utmost respect for you, but none of us can prove ourselves worthy of the freedom that God offers us. 

Speaker 2:
And when we find ourselves feeling unworthy and not being able to prove ourselves worthy, we turn to the conventional ways of the world to offer whatever it is that we are able in religious terms. This has been understood for much of human history, of offering sacrifices and burnt offerings. Now, I don't know exactly what you do in your home behind closed doors. I'm just going to assume that most of us don't offer sacrifices to God, but there are things that we do that we sort of hope accomplish the same purpose. Maybe that's church attendance or paying our tithe or doing whatever it is that we think that God is doing. We think that if we do these things, then we will earn God's favor. The good news is that we have already received God's favor. We don't have to earn it, but we have to trust that that is true. 

Speaker 2:
These rituals that the psalmist is referring to are how human beings seek to get the attention of God and to earn God's favor. But Yahweh as he is being revealed to the Israelites is no ordinary God. So whatever conventional wisdom we might employ will not suffice when it comes to God. Yahweh's desire for people is to live free and to live according to the ways and the means that lead to freedom for all others and for creation. Yahweh is freedom. And the way we honor this freedom is to live according to God's ways. Individually and collectively, we learn true joy and delight as we respond to the Spirit who patterns our lives fully and holy in the ways of the kingdom of heaven. While we reside here on this earth, Yahweh God provides for us, this is a good line for us right now. It's not the sweat from our brow owl. It's not the scratching and clawing to get ahead. 

Speaker 2:
It isn't sacrifice that we utilize to earn God's favor. It is trusting God and it's trusting God's ways over our human ways. No matter if we've been at this God thing for a long time or if we're brand new to the journey, we can all meet God in new ways and move forward in our trust in God. Now, there is a constant temptation for all of us to understand God in ways that makes sense to us. And sometimes this isn't a bad thing, but other times it gets us into a little bit of trouble. What tends to happen is that we see God through our lens rather than who God truly is. Maybe you can identify with this, just in thinking about this for myself, I thought, how many times in my life have I justified my struggles as shortcomings while looking at others what probably are shortcomings and considered them sin or worse than mine? 

Speaker 2:
How many times have I tried to make God an advocate for the things that I'm passionate about, all the while writing off God's passion for things that aren't interesting to me? Now, more than likely, if we're doing this, we aren't aware of it. But like the Psalmist, we have assumed or been taught that God was one thing which made sense to us, but really God was another. Now, there's a quote from Henry Rousseau who's a famous artist. It's attributed to him. Sometimes it's attributed to other people, but by all understanding, he authored this quote, and here's what he said. He said, God created man in his own image. And man being a gentleman returned to favor. So God created us and then we turned around and did a favor to God and created him as we wanted God to be. But if we will realize that and then listen and examine our lives, we will discover who God truly is and it will lead us to living more fully in the ways of God. So that's what we're going to try to do over the next few weeks. We're going to look at the seven statements that Jesus made where he said I am, and then whatever it is that Jesus said that he is. But before we get to that, we're going to go way back almost the very beginning of the scriptures because it is God first who announces himself as I am, where we get the name Yahweh. So a little bit of backstory here. 

Speaker 2:
God heard the cry of the Hebrew people that were held in slavery in Egypt. These are the people who God promised, who we know as Father Abraham, that they would be fruitful, that they would be plentiful, that he would be the father of many nations of people. And this line of people find themselves in captivity in Egypt, when God heard their cry, God began working to set them free out of the mud and the mire of slavery. And as God always does, God raised up a person to speak and proclaim God's decrees to the world. God works through people. That's the way it has always been. That is the way it will always be. God tells Moses to go and proclaim to Pharaoh who is the leader of Egypt, to set the Hebrew people free. And here's what Moses asks of God, and I want to read this in chapter three of Exodus verse 13. Here's what he says, Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and I say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they ask me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? 

Speaker 2:
God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites I am has sent me to you. And you can see when Moses kind of suggested to God, suppose I do this, that now after God says, tell them I am sent me. Everything's cleared up for him, right? No, not quite. But as we stated earlier, God works through people to accomplish God's tasks of freedom. And so for me and you today, as we look about and we see some of the captivity in our neighborhoods in our world, whether that be here in East Dallas or wherever it is that you live, we notice that there are people who for whatever reason, are stuck in the mire, in the muck. We see that there are systems in place that keep people down, and we notice those as people who are followers of the way of Jesus. We notice those things for a reason. And if the people of God are constantly turning their eyes away from the mire and the muck and the strife and the difficulties, then there's no one available for God to work in their life to set people free. So we have to understand that today as we think about this story of Moses. 

Speaker 2:
Now back to the story of Moses in Exodus, we're introduced to this person named Moses, who by the way, his name Moses, means to draw out kind of a prophetic vision that Pharaoh's daughter gives to him. This is who God sends to Pharaoh, this person named Moses, with the purpose of setting God's people free. So we need to understand who Moses is as we understand who the Hebrew people are. So the Hebrew people are the secret behind Egypt's power. Egypt is a world power at this time. They're a vast empire. And the Hebrew people were the shoulders upon which this vast empire was built, but in captivity, the Hebrew people flourished, right? This is what God promised to Abraham that they would flourish. They became so numerous that Pharaoh feared that the Israelites would have an uprising and overthrow the Egyptian rule. And so Pharaoh used his powers to counter God's coming emancipation by a series of decrees. 

Speaker 2:
This is what happens when the powers of the world are threatened by the kingdom of God. They flex their muscle and try to show who's really in control. So Pharaoh says, let's make the Israelites work harder. Let's give them fewer resources, make them work harder. Well, that didn't work. They continued to multiply. Then Pharaoh said, okay, let's have the midwives of the Hebrew people kill all of the boys when they are born. The Hebrew wives feared God more than they did Pharaoh, and they would not do it. Then they commissioned Egyptian people to kill the newborn babies. And again, none of this works. The Hebrew people continue to multiply, and this is where we are introduced to Moses, a Hebrew baby boy whose mother floated him in the Nile in the direction of Pharaoh's daughter. Moses is taken from the river and raised by Pharaoh's daughter in Pharaoh's family. 

Speaker 2:
But eventually he discovers his Hebrew roots. And in discovering his Hebrew roots, he recognizes the evil of the Egyptian empire and how it treats his ancestors, his family. And Moses, we find is out and about, and he sees a Hebrew person being mistreated by an Egyptian, and they were powerless to do anything about it. So Moses acts and ends up killing the Egyptian person, and he realizes that he's made a great mistake because even though he's a part of Pharaoh's family, he will not be treated as such because Pharaoh cannot allow a Hebrew person to do something like this to an Egyptian. So he has to flee, and he settles out in the desert in a place called Midian where he becomes a shepherd. Okay? Now, this obviously takes place over many years. That was a very fast understanding of who Moses is. But just imagine for a moment, Moses' journey from royalty to realizing his lineage as a Hebrew slave to now a shepherd in the middle of nowhere. 

Speaker 2:
And we began to see that most likely Moses had no idea who he was. We would call this today. We would probably diagnose him with having an identity crisis because he has no idea who he is. Maybe we can identify with this to a certain extent. But in the midst of the wilderness, both literally and figuratively, the wilderness of the desert and the wilderness of not knowing who he is, Moses meets God. And God reveals to Moses the plans that he has for him. It doesn't matter this morning where you find yourself in life's journey, regardless of the labels you carry, whether they have been given to you or chosen by you, God knows you and loves you right where you are and desires for you to see yourself and to know yourself, and to understand yourself as God sees you just as he did with Moses. 

Speaker 2:
So Moses is sent by this God to proclaim that the I am has sent him to set the people free. And through a long series of events, eventually freedom is granted and then it's rescinded. But nonetheless, it is achieved. And in the end, we know that it is God who is the source of the Hebrew people's freedom. And from this newly acquired freedom, the Israelites are on a journey to discover exactly who this God named Yahweh is learning to live in God's ways, to live with a trust that God provides. And if it is true, if Yahweh provides, then the Israelites don't have to scratch and claw and to hold on at all costs. They can learn to live in the land of God's faithfulness, knowing exactly who God is. 

Speaker 2:
And so who does God proclaim that he is? In Exodus 34, here's what we read, how God describes Himself, the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generation. And when Moses heard this understanding of God, he bowed down and he worshiped. So who is this God? Who is Yahweh? It's compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, relentless to forgive and destroy sin. And when necessary to hold those accountable for the ways in which they are out of sync with what is good and what is just. This is who God is. And when we speak God's name, whether it be Yahweh or Lord, this is who we are speaking about. And because this is who God is, when people scheme in ways both large and small to manipulate others for their own gain, God will not stand for it. And as God sent Moses to set the people of Israel free, God sends you and me in the same exact way. 

Speaker 2:
When we find Moses and Midian, who is Moses is a question that he would struggle to answer. But when he meets God, this always compassionate and gracious God, this slow to anger God, this abounding in love and in faithfulness, this forgiving God, Moses learns who he is as well. What was true for Moses is true for us today, the best way to see ourselves truly is to know and see who is God. And if we allow the circumstances of our lives and the patterns of this world to give us our identity, then we will be stuck in a constant swirl of identities, which ultimately take instead of give and leave us wondering who we are. This is why following Jesus is so important to live now in the grace of God is life's greatest source of delight and joy to at the pace of God in a world that is rushed by illusions of control, to live by the patterns of God in the midst of a world of fatigue, as Walter Brigham and puts it, is to truly understand who we are. Unfortunately, for us today, we have a in the flesh and bones example of this God, in the person of Jesus, 

Speaker 2:
Many, many years after Moses met God in the wilderness, we meet the Lord today and the person of Jesus. And as Yahweh provided for Moses and for the Israelites, God in the flesh is the provision for us. As we wrap this up today, I want us to listen to what God tells Moses is next for the Israelites after slavery in Egypt, 

Speaker 2:
In Exodus three 16, he says this, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob appeared to me and said, I have watched over you and seen what has been done to you in Egypt, and I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land. This is important for us to realize into the land of the Canaanites, the Hitite, the Amorites, the Hittites, and the Jebusites, a land that is flowing with milk and honey. Freedom for the Israelites wasn't only that they would be free from slavery in Egypt, but that they can learn to live free from the patterns that led to the empire forcing them into slavery. And the first place, as the Israelites learned, what it meant to live according to the way of God, in the land of the Canaanites and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the ProSites, and the Hittites and the Jebusites, we too can learn today to live in the delight and joy of God. This is what it means for us to live in response to the Spirit as we follow the way of Jesus. 

Speaker 2:
And so over the next few weeks, we're going to look at who Jesus claims to be and how that influences us to order our lives to understand the trustworthiness of God, not only for our own individual lives, but our communal lives as the church, and even for our city and our neighborhood, and even the world, because that is who God has always been, and that is who God will always be. Would you pray with me today? God, we recognize today that this story of your redemption, it started well before us, has been understood in many different forms by many different people, has opened up the opportunity for us to respond to who you are in the same way that Moses did, in the same way that the Israelites did, and on and on through the generations. And so today, God, we pray that if there are any places of our lives where we are living captive, whether it be to a thought or an action, or an impulse, would you set us free from that? And would you give us the words and the words to speak and the life to live that we might proclaim to all who we come in contact with, 

Speaker 2:
That you desire freedom for them as well? Thank you, God, for your many blessings and for your trustworthiness proven through the generations and in our lives as well. In your name and for your sake. Amen.