A Calling from Yahweh

Introduction

What catches your attention?

Have you ever thought for a moment what catches your attention? For some of us it has to be something extreme to catch our attention. After all these types of people are quite focused on the daily routine of our lives. They are not surprised by the things around them as it detracts us away from their stated purpose. If you find yourself in this type of camp, you are described as driven, Type A, etc. You have no problem with this because you are pleased with this description.

If this doesn’t describe you, then you might fall into the other camp, one that is easily distracted. A butterfly can float by you and you are intrigued by the colours it shows. The modern term used today is ADD, lack of focus, or just plain creative.

In either case of personalities what catches our attention?

· Car accident

You are driving by a car accident scene and you are compelled to look. Maybe you are looking to see if you can help or has 911 been called. Maybe you are just curious but it grabs your attention

· Special discounted item in the store

Some of you love to shop. To see what is out in the stores. If you are like me you are on the lookout for that special deal or discounted item that you might need some day. In our store it is the bright yellow sticker that signifies that it is reduced and you move in to investigate how big of a discount it is. You don’t need the % off sign because you can do the math and you realize that that vanity that is now $30.00 from $900.00 is a fantastic bargain that will be helpful when you get around to remodelling your bathroom……someday!

· Someone in need as you drive by

Maybe God has given you a gift of compassion and what attracts your attention is someone by the side of the road that needs a ride or a helping hand. You are compelled to stop and offer assistance or even a long ride across the prairies.

· God caught someone’s attention in today’s story

No matter what the circumstance or situation from time to time there are things that grab our attention. Some helpful, others a time waster, no matter the result we are grabbed with curiosity and stop to take a look.

In today’s passage we will be looking at another story of how God uses a man’s curiosity to call him. God caught his attention when the time was right to speak to him. To wake him up and give his a life changing direction. As we go through the story this morning I want you to think about times God has grabbed your attention to speak to you.

PRAY

Today’s Name of God is Yahweh

We began last Sunday looking at the names of God, and this morning we will continue in that theme and focus on the name Yahweh. This name was so sacred for the Jewish people that they did everything not to specifically use the name because of its greatness and power. It was referred as the powerful name, the mighty one, and later described in our English translations as LORD.

Significance of the Name

The first time God used this name was when he spoke to a man named Moses. It literally means I AM. I am God.

I have talked with a few of you and as you were learning English you must have learned that in the English language the first verb you learn is the I am. We need to add a clarification to this, like I am a man, I am a teacher, etc.

God does not. He is complete as I AM there is nothing missing and nothing needs to be added.

As we will be looking at the story behind this name, I would like to share with you ten things that we need to know about the name I AM

This is taken from the website Desiring God.

“ Taken from Desiring God”

1. He never had a beginning. Every child asks, “Who made God?” And every wise parent says, “Nobody made God. God simply is. And always was. No beginning.”

2. God will never end. If he did not come into being he cannot go out of being, because he is being.

3. God is absolute reality. There is no reality before him. There is no reality outside of him unless he wills it and makes it. He is all that was eternally. No space, no universe, no emptiness. Only God.

4. God is utterly independent. He depends on nothing to bring him into being or support him or counsel him or make him what he is.

5. Everything that is not God depends totally on God. The entire universe is utterly secondary. It came into being by God and stays in being moment by moment on God’s decision to keep it in being.

6. All the universe is by comparison to God as nothing. Contingent, dependent reality is to absolute, independent reality as a shadow to substance. As an echo to a thunderclap. All that we are amazed by in the world and in the galaxies, is, compared to God, as nothing.

7. God is constant. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He cannot be improved. He is not becoming anything. He is who he is.

8. God is the absolute standard of truth and goodness and beauty. There is no law-book to which he looks to know what is right. No almanac to establish facts. No guild to determine what is excellent or beautiful. He himself is the standard of what is right, what is true, what is beautiful.

9. God does whatever he pleases and it is always right and always beautiful and always in accord with truth. All reality that is outside of him he created and designed and governs as the absolute reality. So he is utterly free from any constraints that don’t originate from the counsel of his own will.

10. God is the most important and most valuable reality and person in the universe. He is more worthy of interest and attention and admiration and enjoyment than all other realities, including the entire universe.

First Appearance of the name

The first appearance of this name God gives to man can be found in the life of Moses

The Calling of a leader

This morning I would like to spend some time in the beginning of Chapter 3 of the book of Exodus. It is my desire this morning as we look into the name of God Yahweh we will look at it in a real story. Last week we looked at God’s interaction with a man, this morning we will look at another man who was approached by God and how God introduced himself to this man. We will look at why God approached him. When God approached him and what he asked of this man. And finally what today’s name of God means for us today. What can we take away from the name today?

Exodus 3:1–15 ESV

1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. 7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” 13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘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, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

The preparation of a leader

God entered the life of Moses not at the beginning but rather in his later years. Moses had heard of the God Almighty. In fact, he had taken matters into his own hands of showing his leadership abilities and attempted to stop the abuse of his own people. This brought him to his current situation and lifestyle. We now find him, a great trained leader, with the fine education worthy of a prince of Egypt tending sheep in the dessert. A waste land far from the luxuries of the palace.

The forty years spent by Moses in the wilderness of Midian were, in one way, the most important of his life. They were the means by which God trained him for his great work. Amid the solitude of the barren mountains he learned to be calm and self-contained and patient. All the rashness and vehemence of his youth were burned out of him. Never again would he slay a human being in sudden wrath. Ambition also sank down dead within his heart. During all those forty years he must have believed that earthly success was at an end for him, must have accepted this thought and dwelt with it. Repudiated in Egypt both by the rulers of the land and by his own enslaved and suffering people, he was an outcast indeed.

‎Two sons were born to Moses there in Midian; and by the names he gave them we may judge of his pensive state of mind. The first he named Gershom, which means a “stranger here”; but the second he called Eliezer, which is translated, “my God hath helped me.” Protest and sorrow had passed into acceptance and peace and thankfulness. Here was a man to be relied on, an instrument worthily fitted to God’s hand.

You see, Moses had come to a realization of who God was and that he was the Almighty God. It wasn’t about Moses any more, rather God’s plan for his life.

Grabbing the attention

It was at this moment when Moses was willing to listen, God grabbed his attention. You see Moses was a shepherd and I could imagine that he routine was quite regular. Feed the sheep, watch the sheep, protect the sheep and look for more pasture to feed the sheep.

God used a burning bush that wasn’t consumed to grab Moses’ attention. It was more than just a burning bush. Walter Kaiser writes, “When Moses went over to inspect this unusual sight, God issued his call by repeating Moses’ name to express the urgency of the message (cf. 1 Sam 3:10 for this same type of urgent summons).”[2]

“The burning bush was not consumed; that was the miracle. Notice how miracle is used here, as it so typically is in Scripture, to accredit God’s message (or messenger). Miracles are not circus side shows intended to entertain; rather they accredit the Word of God given to his special messengers.”[3]

Has God ever grabbed your attention for a task He was commissioning you to do? Do we watch and wait for those small attention grabbers in our life knowing that God is willing to allow us to enter into His plan for the world.

The Leader’s assignment

After God had successfully grabbed Moses’ attention he then instructed what this called man of God was to do on behalf of God. Take a moment to ponder that statement. God is almighty, he doesn’t need our help, yet He is willing to allow all of our weakness and imperfections to make an impact in this world.

God explained that he was now was moving on bringing out His people out of the misery that they were experiencing. To deliver them out of the hands of a Pharaoh, a ruler of the country and leading the people back to a ruler who knows them and cares for them deeply, namely God. The I AM

On a side note, as you reflect on the process of signs and wonders that were displayed in Egypt to allow Pharaoh to ‘let his people go’ were they really for Pharaoh or for the people to see the power and majesty of God. God showed throughout all the signs that he was in control of all aspects of their lives and as they were about to enter into a new land that they should rely on the Almighty the great I AM

The Leader’s response

As we look at the response of Moses when God tells him of the plan, it is now wonder why Moses asked these next questions.

Exodus 3:11 ESV

11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

This is the first sign that Moses had changed. Earlier in his life he had taken matters in his own hand and it didn’t work. Moses realized that in the scheme of life, he was not as important as he first believed he was. In other words, his personal ambition was transformed into a reliance on God.

This is the attitude that we should continually seek out in our lives. So often our personal ambitions overtake our lives and directions and we forget to come to God with a humble spirit and listen to Him for direction. I am constantly reminded of this in my own life. God had given me gifts and abilities and I must daily remind myself that they were a gift from God to be used to glorify him not myself.

Moses approached his new ‘job’ with an attitude of humility and unworthiness. It was this attitude that is the key to reliance on the I AM

When Moses realized that he alone would not be able to accomplish this task without God, he asked in what name he should use when caring out this plan. What credentials will he be using in bringing out the people of Egypt?

Yahweh. Is all he needed.

Wrap up

Jesus’ and the I AM

So what do we do with the I AM today.

The first point I want to leave with you is the description of the I AM in the New Testament. It is quite simple. All we need to look into the New Testament and look at the life of Jesus.

When Yahweh spoke to his people in the Old Testament, He often began explaining who he was. God now came as a man and spoke to his disciples in a different manner. He asked, “who do the people say I am” (Matt 16) He also asked them who do you say I AM

“We Know His Name (John 17:6–12)

Christ has given His own eternal life (John 17:2), but He has also given them the revelation of the Father’s name (John 17:6). The Old Testament Jew knew his God as “Jehovah,” the great I AM (Ex. 3:11–14). Jesus took this sacred name “I AM” and made it meaningful to His disciples: “I am the Bread of Life” (John 6:35); “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12); “I am the Good Shepherd” (John 10:11); etc. In other words, Jesus revealed the Father’s gracious name by showing His disciples that He was everything they needed.

But the Father’s name includes much more than this, for Jesus also taught His disciples that God—the great I AM—was their Heavenly Father. The word Father is used 53 times in John 13–17, and 122 times in John’s Gospel! In His messages to the Jews, Jesus made it clear that the Father sent Him, that He was equal to the Father, and that His words and works came from the Father. It was a clear claim to Deity, but they refused to believe.”[4]

Jesus came and added to the I am.

Jesus is the Resurrection and the life

Jesus is the Bread of life

We are the light of the world

The second point I want to leave with you today is focused on the burning bush. You see God used an extraordinary event to grab the attention of Moses so that he could deliver his message. “As “from within a/the bush” (vv.2, 4) itself that the Lord called to Moses. Instead, its meaning is to be found in the fact that God chose the small and the despised burning bush as his medium of revelation, and he waited to see how sensitive Moses was toward the insignificant and small things of life before he invested him with larger tasks.”[5]

God is calling each one of us today to help in his mission to reach the world. We are called to be the light of the world. Are we? Do we need to have our attention steered to God by a miraculous event or do we follow in faith?

What grabs our attention? Every day I ask God to use me for his purpose.

Calling believers

What has God done to get your attention? If you haven’t listened to God, what does God need to do to get your attention?

If you come Sunday after Sunday and walk away not changed, what do you think he will do to get your attention. In my past, when I have gone off on my own and let my self lead myself, God has grabbed my attention. Sometimes it takes a submissive and humble heart to turn back to God and ask for forgiveness for not having reliance upon Him.

What will you do when the I AM calls you

In conclusion, one author states it this way, “’I AM who I am’, may convey the sense not only that “God is self-existent but that he is always present with his people. Yahweh is not a God who is remote or aloof but One who is always near, intervening in history on behalf of his people.”[6]

‎“By focusing our thoughts on God’s name, our Lord is teaching us that God’s name signifies much more than His titles; it represents all that He is—His character, plan, and will. Certainly the Jews should have understood that, because in Old Testament times, names stood for more than just titles.”[7]

Finally, we are the light of the world. We represent Christ to a lost and fallen world. To our family who have strayed away from God. We shine Christ’s love to our neighbor that we wave to as we see them out in our yard. We are the example of Christ to the people in this community as we made our way to church this morning.

So I leave you with this parting thought,

Are you the “flaming bush” in people’s lives that would grab their attention and draw them to the great I AM? If not, why not? We need to the come to the Father and ask for the grace and strength to be light to this world and he will use us to spread his message of good news to those who come into our lives.

Let’s pray

Endnotes

[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), Ex 3:1–22.

[2] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., "Exodus" In , in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 2: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 315.

[3] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., "Exodus" In , in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 2: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 315.

[4] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), Jn 17:6–12.

[5] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., "Exodus" In , in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 2: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 315.

[6] Spangler, Ann. Praying the Names of God, P.78

[7] John F. MacArthur, Jr., Alone With God, MacArthur Study Series (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1995), 55.