The Great "I AM"

Bill Connors

I AM: Jesus in the Gospel of John • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

Exodus 3:1–22

God

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Bookmarks & Needs:

Bookmark:

Needs: Week of Prayer flyer, Easter services card, Laser pointer

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Welcome guests to the family gathering, introduce yourself. Thank the band. Invite guests to parlor after service. I apologize, but I have several announcements to make this morning.

The Baptist Convention of New Mexico is hosting the 2020 New Mexico Evangelism Conference on February 24-25, at Sandia Baptist Church here in Albuquerque. I’m looking forward to being encouraged by the preaching we will get to experience at the conference, from guys like Adam Greenway, the current president of SWBTS and Chuck Kelley, former president of NOBTS. There will also be great breakout sessions and fellowship opportunities. You can get more information at register at bcnm.com. The conference is a free event.

The church office will be closed tomorrow, Monday, February 17, for President’s Day.

Pray for students and adults on Winter Retreat. Their theme is Zeal this year, and they are talking and learning about having zeal and wisdom in their walks with the Lord.

Tonight, we will be ordaining Tony Torres as a deacon. If you are an ordained man, please feel free to come and be a part of his ordaining council at 4:30 in room 205 upstairs. The ordination service will be at 5:30 here in the sanctuary, and it will be followed by a reception in honor of Tony and Noreen in Miller Hall. Please bring finger foods to share at the reception.

The annual week of prayer for North American missions is coming up. It begins next Sunday, March 1. There are some half-sheet flyers on the Get Connected table in the foyer with information about our activities and events that week. Monday, March 2, at 7PM, we will have Dessert & Prayer Fellowships at 3 homes in the city: The Flurys, the Kittredges, and the Bowmans. Their addresses and phone numbers are on the flyer. Our Day of Prayer here at the church building will be Wednesday, March 4, from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm. You can sign up for a 30 minute time slot on the sheet also on the Get Connected table. Finally, there will be a potluck Prayer Lunch on Friday, March 6, beginning at 11:30 am here at the building in Miller Hall. Please find ways to get involved in our emphasis on praying for our North American missionaries during this week of prayer.

We have invite cards available for our services and activities during the week of Palm Sunday and Easter. They are available in the office, at the Welcome station, and on the Get Connected table.

Last week, we considered some of the history of this church family… OUR history. A dear brother who was a big part of that history was brother Calvin Partain. Calvin went to be with the Lord this past week. His memorial will be this Friday at 10 am at FBC Bloomfield. Wayne is planning on renting a van to drive up for the memorial, and anyone who wants to go should get in touch with Wayne to let him know you’d like to ride along.

Opening

In December in my own quiet time, I was reading through the Gospel of love the Gospel of John. In it, we see the perspective of a man who knew that Jesus loved him, and who had been convinced that Jesus is the Son of God through what he saw and heard. The Gospel of John is not one of the “synoptic” Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which all share similar perspectives. John’s Gospel comes across as much more personal and intimate than the other three, and there’s a closeness there because of John’s close relationship with the Lord. If you have never read through the Gospel of John, I would recommend you do so over just a few days, perhaps this coming week. Start to finish, it would probably take about 2 hours total reading time to get through it.

It was in my quiet times that I

For this new series, which probably will take us almost to summer, we are going to look at the “I AM” statements of Jesus. This doesn’t mean that we are going to consider every single time He says the phrase, “I am...” It means that there are several places where Jesus uses “I Am” as a defining phrase, one that declares that He is God, and gives some other understanding of what His ministry is about. It was in my quiet times in the Gospel of John that I was struck with the weight of these statements, and believed that God was pointing me in this direction for our next sermon series after Galatians.

This morning, however, we are going to start in the book of Exodus, where God first declares His identity to Moses, and this whole idea of “I Am” begins. Let’s stand, if you’re able, in honor of God’s holy Word as we read , verses 1-15:

Exodus 3:1–15 CSB

1 Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush. As Moses looked, he saw that the bush was on fire but was not consumed. 3 So Moses thought, “I must go over and look at this remarkable sight. Why isn’t the bush burning up?” 4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses, Moses!” “Here I am,” he answered. 5 “Do not come closer,” he said. “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he continued, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. 7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 9 So because the Israelites’ cry for help has come to me, and I have also seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them, 10 therefore, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh so that you may lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses asked God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 He answered, “I will certainly be with you, and this will be the sign to you that I am the one who sent you: when you bring the people out of Egypt, you will all worship God at this mountain.” 13 Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?” 14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.

PRAY

When we think about the phrase “I am,” we usually use it in terms of some aspect of ourselves. “I am hungry.” “I am thirsty.” “I am a husband.” “I am a father.” “I am a pastor [fill in your particular job here].” “I am going.” “I am here.” Even if we just use the phrase by itself, “I am,” we are declaring an answer to a perhaps unspoken question: “Am I real?” Why is this important?

It’s an important place to start in this series because its is vital for us to see that the God of the universe said, “I AM WHO I AM,” and when He said it to Moses in our focal passage in , He was making a statement radically different from our own. He was saying something about Himself, yes, but He was also saying something important about us, and for that matter, everything else that has ever existed or will ever exist. And then later, when Jesus uses the phrase “I Am” in the ways that He does in John, He’s connecting His identity to the identity of the Great I Am… the One and only Almighty God.

Our focal passage this morning is probably very familiar to many of us. Even if we haven’t actually read before this morning, we’ve likely heard somewhere about Moses and the burning bush. We read as much as we did this morning because we need to see a little bit wider picture than just when God tells Moses who He is.

We’re going to consider four aspects of God in this passage today, aspects that we will also see in Christ as we move through this series together in the coming weeks.

1) The ACTIVITY of God

When we find Moses, he’s tending sheep for his father-in-law, Jethro. Moses had been a prince in Egypt, adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter. The Egyptians at the time found shepherding to be “detestable” according to , so even though he had been raised more or less as an Egyptian, he finds himself doing something completely different than he certainly ever planned. He’s a lowly shepherd.

Not only that, but he’s really far away from Midian, where Jethro is from. He’s at Horeb, also called Mount Sinai later in Exodus. Here’s a MAP:

If you can’t tell, this water here is the Dead Sea, and this is the eastern “fork” of the Dead Sea. Mount Horeb is way down here near the tip of the Sinai peninsula, and Midian is on the other side of the Dead Sea. Moses at the least had to have traveled for over 100 miles to get to Horeb. So he’s not just out of place culturally. He’s out of place geographically as well.

And this is where God chooses to get his attention. Moses isn’t looking for God. It’s the activity of God here that’s important.

exo 3:2-

Exodus 3:2–4 CSB

2 Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush. As Moses looked, he saw that the bush was on fire but was not consumed. 3 So Moses thought, “I must go over and look at this remarkable sight. Why isn’t the bush burning up?” 4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses, Moses!” “Here I am,” he answered.

Moses had traveled for probably weeks through the desert. He knew how quickly desert bushes burn. And in the distance, he sees a bush burning that doesn’t stop burning. He’s got to check it out. He’s still not seeing the activity of God here. But it’s God who gets his attention. it’s God who reaches out. It’s God who calls Moses to Himself.

And God is still at work doing this very thing. He wants that relationship with us. He’s at work reaching out, drawing us to Himself. Here’s what Paul said about the work of God in calling us into a relationship with Jesus:

1 Corinthians 1:9 CSB

9 God is faithful; you were called by him into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

It’s God’s activity to call us into that relationship, according to Jesus:

John 6:44 CSB

44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

We get to choose to engage in what God is doing when He calls, or we can choose not to. Moses had a choice on Horeb. He could respond to God’s call with, “Here I am,” or he could ignore it. He chooses to engage in God’s activity.

I don’t believe that anyone in this room is here by accident. God has brought us together this morning as church family, but also there may be someone here in the room who has never responded to the call of God on their life. You may be a member of the church. You might have been for years, but you’ve been playing a part. You’ve never truly responded in submission to the call to relationship with Jesus Christ by faith. I pray this day will be that day for you.

Moses responds to the call, and moves to draw near to the burning bush from which God is speaking to him. And then God tells him to stop. Why? Because of God’s very presence in that place.

Exodus 3:5–6 CSB

5 “Do not come closer,” he said. “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he continued, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.

exo 3:

2) The PRESENCE of God

When Moses approaches the bush, he is told to stop and take his sandals off because the place is “holy ground.” The ground wasn’t holy on its own. It was only holy because God was there. God’s presence made that little plot of ground a temple, a sanctuary, a place set apart and to be treated with the utmost respect by Moses. It’s the presence of God that made all the difference, and it would be the presence of God that made the difference as Moses carried out the instructions that God had given him:

exo 3:11-

Exodus 3:11–12 CSB

11 But Moses asked God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 He answered, “I will certainly be with you, and this will be the sign to you that I am the one who sent you: when you bring the people out of Egypt, you will all worship God at this mountain.”

Moses understood that he had no authority over Pharaoh. He couldn’t just waltz into Pharaoh’s court and demand that he let the Israelites go. He’d be a dead man for sure. I don’t think that at this point Moses is being a wimp or anything (that does come later). I think that this is an honest question: “Who am I to do this?”

It doesn’t matter who he is, because it’s the presence of God that will make all the difference. God says that He will be with Moses, and He even gives Moses a sign to look forward to that He’s going to get this done.

We might feel somewhat like Moses, and wonder who we are that we could serve in the church, or be a deacon like Tony is going to become tonight, or tell someone we know about Jesus, or even who are we that we could be saved at all? It doesn’t depend on us. It’s God’s presence that makes all the difference.

We might feel that

Church, the truth is that the presence of God is everywhere that we go by His Spirit within us. Paul said in :

Ephesians 2:19–22 CSB

19 So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building, being put together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you are also being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.

eph 2:19-22

I guess you could say that where the believers go, that’s where the holy ground is. Not so that people have to walk around without their shoes on around us, but that if we will only listen to and obey the Spirit of God as He leads us, people will be able to experience the presence of God where they are, maybe even the calling of God on their lives as we live out and share the Gospel with those we meet and know.

This brings us to our third point:

3) The COMPASSION of God

The activity of God and the presence of God in Moses’ life and in the life of the Israelites is flowing out of God’s compassion for His people. They’re in a bad place. They’ve been in basically slavery for hundreds of years, and now they are finally crying out to God for a rescue. And God is going to rescue His people because He loves them and has compassion on them.

exodus 3:

Exodus 3:7–10 CSB

7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 9 So because the Israelites’ cry for help has come to me, and I have also seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them, 10 therefore, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh so that you may lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

exo 3:7-10

Exodus 3:7–8 CSB

The Israelites couldn’t rescue themselves. Pharaoh had killed off most of the males in Moses’ generation with his edict of drowning the male Hebrew children when they were born. They were miserable, and now the time had come and Moses was being called up from the farm team. They are going to get to experience God’s activity and God’s presence as He pours out His compassion on them.

We all need rescued like the Hebrew people. We’re all in bondage to sin apart from the activity and presence of God. But because of the compassion of God shown in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, we can be saved from sin and death.

Jesus shows compassion by rescuing as well.

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (, CSB)

Romans 7:24–25 CSB

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

God wants to be in a relationship with us, but without Him, we’re trapped in our sin. Jesus came to take our sins on Himself, so that we can be forgiven and be in that right relationship with God if we surrender our lives to Him. In taking our sins, Jesus died in our place, but He didn’t stay dead. He rose from the grave and will never die again. He is preparing a place for us in the very presence of God, and we will live there for all eternity if we belong to Him by faith.

Acts 7?

This relationship with God is what we were made for. It’s what we’re designed for. It’s where we are meant to be. We aren’t meant to believe that we are somehow masters of our own little universes. In fact, that’s what’s wrong with the world. We’ve forgotten Who is most important. It’s not us. So our last point that we see here with Moses:

4) The CENTRALITY of God

Ultimately, this passage is where the idea of God’s title as “The Great I AM” comes from, and what lies behind everything that this series is going to be about—the fact that God is central to all things. God is God. No one else is, and no one else could claim to be. That’s why He refers to Himself the way that He does:

Exodus 3:13–15 CSB

13 Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?” 14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.

When God said, “I AM WHO I AM,” He was saying that He is the center, and everything draws its existence from Him, not the other way around. He is the Only Self-Existent One. God doesn’t exist because we think He does. We exist because He does.

God doesn’t exist because we think He does. We exist because He does.

Acts 17:28 CSB

28 For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’

Our existence, and in fact, all of existence itself is derivative: everything and anything derives its reality from His first reality. So God is central to everything, and is to be central to us. His centrality means:

He answers to no one. He has nothing to fear, nothing to dread, nothing to worry about. He needs nothing. He never grows weary or sick. He never sleeps, never loses His focus, never sins, never approves of our sin. He can literally do anything that He chooses to do, lacking no power to do so. He is the creator and sustainer of everything, and by Him the universe holds together. He is not to be trifled with, not to be ignored, not to be rebelled against. He is to be held in the absolute highest regard, is to be the sole recipient of our worship, and is to be loved so much that our love for anything else looks like hate in comparison. (From your own sermon, Seek First His Kingdom)

God is eternal and unchangeable. He says, “I AM.” He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is not getting better or worse. He is infinitely perfect. (From Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary, Exodus, by Tony Merida)

And what we will see during our series is that Jesus is God. So if God is central, and Jesus is God, then Jesus is central to everything. He’s not to be relegated to some place of convenience in our lives, as if we can pull Him out of our pockets when we need Him, and then keep Him hidden when we want to do things our own way. He is central. He is what and Who is most important in the universe, in the world, in our lives. This is how Paul said it:

Jesus is central, because He is God.

Romans 11:36 CSB

36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.

Colossians 1:15–20 CSB

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. 18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

col 1:15-

Closing

This should prompt us to one of two things: worship or fear.

If Jesus is Lord of your life, then this fact should lead us to a place of worship. He is central to everything. We may not live that out perfectly, but we know Who is in charge and we want to honor Him and give Him glory. It’s the right response to the revelation or reminder of His greatness. Worship the Lord! The Bible “word” for agreement to worship is “Amen.”

If Jesus isn’t Lord of your life, if you have never surrendered your life to Him, then the revelation of how central He is to everything should prompt fear. Many have a problem with the idea of fear as a motivator for salvation. Fear was one of the motivators in my own coming to faith in Christ. When I realized that God was real and central to everything, I discovered that I was living in rebellion against Him. Then I realized that I could never be good enough on my own, and that if I was going to be saved, God was going to have to save me. I wasn’t going to save myself. The realization of my separation from the God who made me and loved me was a terrifying prospect.

Maybe this is you today. There’s no judgment here. This church family wants you to be saved because we love you and we know that God loves you and we want your relationship with God to be restored and right. I’ve shared the message of the Gospel as clearly as I know how today. Give up your life to Jesus this morning, and be rescued by Him.

If this is you, we want to celebrate that fact with you and talk more with you about that decision to surrender to Jesus. Come and share with one of us. I’ll be here, Trevor and Camille will be at the front with me.

If you believe that God is leading you to become a formal member of this church family here at EHBC through church membership, come and share that during this time as well.

If you need to pray this morning, you can come and pray with one of us, or you can come and pray at the steps.

Respond to the activity, the presence, the compassion, and the centrality of God this morning.

Invite the band down.

PRAY

Remind of the parlor. Turn service over to Wayne.

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