I've entitled this message, Recapitulation. Wow, that's a big word. How about
Repeat? I've entitled this message, Repeat. And the reason I've entitled
it that is because I plan to repeat what I spoke about last
week. And not because I felt like I need to do my homework
again, but because I feel like the material is so vast that
it was too big to really adequately cover in one week. And I feel
that way this week. In fact, I think we could stay
here for a long time, but I'm sure that you would grow weary.
Every time I, as I've mentioned before, when I prepare a sermon,
I usually go back and read back through the material that we
had gone through previously. And sometimes when I do that,
I can't help but want to preach it again. So here we are. Repeat. Look at Exodus chapter 2, verse
23. The context is the children of
Israel in Egypt, and it had come to a breaking point in the hearts
and in the minds and in the lives and on the backs of the Israelites. The Israelites are under bondage.
The Egyptians had put on them burdens too heavy for them to
bear. And it says in verse 23 of chapter
2, And it came to pass in the process of time, or in process
of time, that the king of Egypt died. He had tried to kill Moses,
and now God, in his time, had taken his life. And the children
of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage. I want to look at
that phrase with you. a little bit in a minute, but
just keep it in your mind. Think about it. The Israelites
sighed by reason of the bondage. And they cried. And their cry
came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their
groaning. And God remembered His covenant
with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon
the children of Israel and God had respect to them. I'm going
to read the rest of the chapter in chapter 3 in a minute, but
I thought maybe before I do, I'll spend some time on these
verses, because if I don't get beyond them, then I won't have
to repeat next week as well. So, look at these verses. I meant
to bring this out last week, but in Matthew chapter 5 and
verse 3, Jesus said this. He says, Blessed are they that
mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted. And here it says the Israelites
sighed, they cried and they groaned. Now, we never seek God for mercy
until we're actually guilty. I know this is true by experience.
We don't appreciate mercy until we're standing guilty before
God and have nothing to say in our defense. We know our sin
is all our fault. And furthermore, another way
we don't cry for mercy is that when we think our salvation can
be accomplished by something we have to do, small or great. I've been in so many services
in my life and I've heard salvation preached based or contingent
or conditioned upon what I must do. I must come up with something.
I must come up with some sincerity or a feeling or a resolve or
a change of mind, a change of lifestyle, all these things.
And I've never found in myself the ability to do what's required. And you know what that's called?
Bondage. Bondage. Salvation dependent
upon me in some way and not being able to produce what I need to
do. That's bondage. And these two
things, sin and the law or sin and a requirement some condition
on me to enable God to save me, those two things are nothing
but bondage. And in God's process of time,
in His mercy, He works in the hearts of His people in order
to bring them to sighing and crying and groaning because of
that bondage. That's the way God works. That's
the way He saves. Jesus said, I didn't come to
call the righteous but sinners to repentance." He says, not
the healthy, but the sick need a physician. Not the seeing,
but the blind need their eyes opened. It's not those who can
walk, but the lame who need to be raised up. And it's not the
living, but the dead who need to be raised to life. All these
things teach us something. fundamental about the way God
saves. He saves those who have need
of saving. It says in the Gospels that Christ
healed those who had need of healing. All those. And here
it says, they sighed, they cried, and they groaned. Now, immediately
what we do in our minds when we hear that message, and it's
true, We immediately try to come up with sighing, crying and groaning,
don't you? Don't you sense? I remember as
a kid, sometimes people would get up and they would tell about
what they had been before the Lord saved them. And it was awful. They had been in and out of prison,
perhaps, and done all these things. And I was always thinking, man,
I don't have anything nearly bad enough to make myself sinful
enough that God would look upon me and save me. But our sin doesn't
deserve God's salvation. God doesn't save us because we're
sinners. And that sin being the reason
that God saves us, He saves us because He is good and He has
mercy on sinners. Salvation is because of God.
It's because of who He is that He saves. And it's entirely because
of His work. So don't try to come up with
the sighing and crying and groaning. That's trying to do what you
cannot do. God has to produce it. But it's
true. And it's meant to be a comfort,
a comfort. He says in Isaiah chapter 40,
Comfort ye. Comfort ye my people, saith your
God. Speak comfortably to Israel that
her warfare is accomplished. For she has received of the Lord's
hand double for all her sins. And let me read to this verse
in John chapter 9. The blind man who had been blind
from birth was healed of his blindness. And at the end of
the account, the Pharisees come to Jesus and they said, Jesus said before they spoke,
he said, for judgment, listen to the words of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He said, for judgment, I am coming to this world. This
is John nine thirty nine. If you need to note it for judgment,
I'm coming to this world for judgment. What kind of a judgment? Think of it now. The Lord Jesus
Christ coming to judge between the sheep and the sheep or the
sheep and the goats. He's separating here. He says,
for judgment, I'm coming to the world that they which see not
might see. Now, to me, that's very comforting.
How often do you read the scriptures and you have to claim, Lord,
I don't understand what I read. I don't understand it. And then
when we think we understand it, how many times do you read it
and you find in your heart, I don't really believe it because I'm
not even moved by it. Or maybe you just have a total
indifference. Maybe you maybe what is really being spoken of
here is what I think is being spoken of here is you. God has
put it in your heart to know the guilt of your sin. The condemnation
because of that guilt, your sin nature where you can do nothing
in yourself apart from sin. Everything you do is infected
by sin, and you can't keep yourself from it. Go ahead and try. Try
for one minute not to sin. And you'll have to say, I am
nothing but sin. And Jesus said, For judgment
I've come into this world that they which see not might see,
and that they which see might be made blind. How many times
have I been in a class where they ask a question and I want
to answer and maybe I even stick up my hand and answer the wrong
question. Well, here's a case where we don't want to say, but
I see. Let the Lord open your eyes through
the gospel. Let him bring his salvation to
you and don't claim to have what you don't really own. So he says,
That's the judgment I've come so that they which see not might
see and they which see might be made blind. And some of the
Pharisees said, which were with him, heard these words and said,
are we blind also? And I'm sure they didn't really
think they were blind because Jesus says in the next verse,
if you were blind, you should have no sin. But because you
say we see, therefore, your sin remaineth. Now, the Lord Jesus
Christ came into the world to save sinners. He came to save,
to justify the ungodly. He came to save those who were
without strength. Those who were the enemies of
God. And that's the way the Scripture
comes to us. But in Exodus chapter 2, these
people felt the bondage of their own sin. And you know, sin creates
bondage in many ways. It confuses us. It causes us
to not know our standing before God. We're confused about it.
And we know we're guilty, but we can't admit it. We can't come
to the light. There's lots of things that sin does. It separates
us in our relationship with God and with others. It makes us
know our guilt. And the true conviction of sin
teaches us that we can do nothing about it. Nothing about it. So
those two things give us this sense of bondage. Our sin. Our
sin, the condemnation of it, our sin nature, we can do nothing
about it. We have no strength over it.
We can't believe unless God miraculously gives us life and faith in Christ.
And then the second thing is this bondage to the law, always
requiring what we cannot produce. That's what the law does. And
it doesn't seem fair. Why would God require me to obey
perfectly if I can't do that? And yet that's what God requires.
And God condemns all who don't meet the mark. And that includes
everyone. There's none righteous. No, not
one. None that understand it. There's none that doeth good.
None that seek after God. They're all unprofitable. That's
the condemnation. If there was a snake in your
yard, his nature is to bite and kill. Would you spare the snake
because that's his nature? You would take him out. You would
kill the snake. And it would be right in putting
the snake to death, because he is a snake. David said, I was
chastened in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
And he didn't say that as an excuse. He was saying that in
order to justify God, or to say that God is righteous in condemning
him for his sin justly. Those two things, our sin, our
sin nature, and the requirements of God on us, bring us into bondage. But Christ has done everything
to free us from both of those things. How does He free us from
these things? He frees us from our sin, the
condemnation of it, because He Himself took our sin. He took
our sin. And He bore all the consequences
of it. And He Himself was made sin,
and under that that sentence of sin, God transferring the
sins of His people to His Son, and Him suffering for that, He
remitted sin. He fully paid the price our crime
debt owed to God, and the justice of God was satisfied in the payment
received from the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, but all
that God required for obedience, He provided. That is the way
He put away our sin. That's the way He makes us righteous
before God. And not only that, but in order
to free us from the bondage of our sin nature, He does something
unexpected. He creates in us a new nature. And in that new nature, we believe
God. He actually convinces us to believe
him in our new nature. We couldn't. And we were dead
in sins. And he creates us in Christ Jesus, a new creation. And he gives us his life. And
in that life, we look to Christ only and we cling to Christ only. He holds us to himself. And then
the bondage of the law, how did he free us from the bondage of
the law? Well, he himself, as I said, he met every requirement
and he suffered his curse. And he frees us from that bondage.
And so we see these things now, as I mentioned before, the children
of Israel were in this situation historically, but it's to teach
us. It's to teach us the the word of God says in in Romans,
chapter 15, for those things that were written beforehand
were written for our learning that we, through patience and
hope of the scripture, might have hope. They were written
for our learning. In 1 Corinthians 10, 11, those
things were written beforehand were for our admonition on whom
the ends of the world were come. So everything in the Old Testament
was to teach us to give us faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. to
teach us about Christ. That's why the Old Testament
was written about him. And when it describes the people
of God in the context of the suffering of affliction and their
sorrows, the sorrows because of their sin, know this. The
reason is here they side by reason of the bondage. And God is the
one who brought them into that bondage. God brought them into
that bondage in the historical case. Right. They were brought
into Egypt. And in Egypt, the Egyptians put
them under slavery and bondage. We're brought justly under the
bondage of our sin. The law brings us into bondage.
And it's just that God do that. But something much more glorious
occurs in God bringing us into bondage. He delivers us. And
so he says here in Exodus chapter two, when they cried, God brought
the cry. God brought them to bondage.
God brought the cry when they cried. And God heard their groaning. It didn't mean that God was sitting
by and doing something else. And then suddenly he hears this
distant cry and oh, and pays attention. Nothing could be like
that with God. God brought the reason for the
crying and sighing and groaning on them, and God extracted from
them this cry to him for mercy. for His saving grace. Until we're
guilty, until we're needy and have nothing we can do, we won't
look, we won't cry. And that's the truth brought
out here. Lord, make us to know our need. Make us to know Your holiness. Make us to know Your goodness
in Christ so that we would sigh and cry and groan to be delivered
from the condemnation of our sin, the nature of our sin, and
the bondage of the law. And so it says here that the
Lord remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and
with Jacob. And I'm going to cover that in
a minute here when we get into chapter 3. So let's look now
back into chapter 3 in our repeat of last week. Now Moses kept
the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law. And he led the flock to the backside
of the desert. I wrote another sermon from that
verse, but I decided not to spend the whole sermon on that verse.
But think about this with me. In Egypt, the people sighed and
cried and groaned because of the bondage, like bleeding sheep. Have you ever heard sheep? We
had some sheep out where we lived. They were using them to clear
the grass and things that might burn. And but here they were
bleeding all the time. You know how sheep do. But these sheep were the people
and the people were bleeding because of their confusion and
their waywardness and that they've gone astray in their hearts and
in their lives. Here, Moses is leading his father-in-law's
sheep to the backside of the desert, to the mountain of God.
And I thought about this and I realized Moses led sheep which
belonged to his father-in-law. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
good shepherd who leads his sheep, which are his father's people,
to the fold, to the salvation, to the Lord, to himself, to God
himself. He leads us. He brings us to
God, doesn't he? I need to be brought to the mountain
of God. I need that. I need a shepherd
who will take me through the desert of the wilderness of this
world and through my own confusion, my waywardness, my propensity
to go astray and not be able to find my way back, I need a
shepherd who will take me to the mountain of God." To Zion.
Here it was, Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. And it says,
"...and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of
fire out of the midst of the bush." And he looked, and behold,
the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And
Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight. Why
the bush is not burnt? And when the Lord saw that he
turned aside, God called to him out of the midst of the bush
and said, Moses. And he said, Here am I. The bush
that burned with fire. Again, this is a repetition,
perhaps, of last week, and you will remember this. Think about
all the times that God rained fire down from heaven in the
Old Testament. The first one that comes to my
mind is Sodom and Gomorrah. What happened to the cities of
Sodom and Gomorrah when God rained down fire? They were completely
destroyed. Nothing left. Burnt up. He rained down fire and brimstone
from heaven. And then, think about Elijah.
Remember, he was a prophet of God, and Ahab sent... I don't
know if it was Ahab. One of the kings sent 50 messengers,
telling him to come down. And Elijah said, if I am a prophet
of God, then let fire come down from heaven and destroy you.
Fifty men, burnt to nothing. And then, the king sends another
50. Same thing happened again. Another
50, burnt up. It was the third fifty that got wise and said
something else. Then Elijah stands at that great
challenge that Jezebel had and King Ahab had with all their
prophets of Baal, and Elijah challenges them, he says, If
the Lord be God, then serve him and he builds an altar. Remember
stone and wood and the and the sacrifice and poured water all
around it. And God and Elijah calls on God
and the Lord sends fire and he burns up the stone and the wood
and the sacrifice and licks up the dust and all the water. Everything
is consumed by the fire of God, right? The sacrifice is completely
consumed by that fire. And you can think about all these
things. The fire of God is a consuming fire because God is a consuming
fire. But here the bush is in, it's
a small bush, a little bush. Think of a tumbleweed. Sometimes
they roll by our house and I have to, these big things are that
if they were caught on fire, they'd be gone in a minute. The bush was on fire and the
bush did not burn. God tells Moses in verse 5, don't
come near here, don't draw nigh hither, put off your shoes from
off your feet, for the place whereon you stand is holy ground.
You see, the holiness of God is here. The holiness of God. We mentioned this last week,
but think about what happened. And I want to take you to this
verse in Isaiah chapter six. Look at these in Isaiah chapter
six with me. The holiness of God. Where was
the holiness of God seen in the Old Testament? Predominantly,
it was seen above the mercy seat, wasn't it? And here we see in
chapter six of Isaiah. that in the year that King Uzziah
died, remember, he was the king that tried to go in and offer
himself in the holy place, and he was made a leper and died
from that. But he says, in the year that
King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne
high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Now, in John
12, 41, John reveals that the Spirit of God reveals to us that
the person spoken of here, the Lord, is none other than the
Lord Jesus Christ. John 12, 41. If you want to reference
that later, I'll let you look at it in your own time. But he
says here in verse 2, above it, above the throne, stood the seraphims. Each one had six wings. With
twain he covered his face. He couldn't look upon God and
His holiness. With twain he covered his feet.
Their walk was unclean in the sight of God's holiness, and
with twain he did fly. And one cried to another and
said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole
earth is full of his glory. The Lord God of hosts, Jehovah
God, he's the one that's being spoken of here, and yet it's
the Lord Jesus Christ. He sits on the throne of eternity,
of glory. And he says, And the post of
the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house
was filled with smoke. The house was filled with smoke.
It's like the incense in the Holy of Holies. The whole entire
second sanctuary was filled with the incense from off the altar,
from off the censer. And God's presence filled it.
The glory of God filled it when the offering was made on the
mercy seat. And then Isaiah says, Woe is me, for I am undone. Undone. Doesn't that sound like
taking your shoes off? Moses, take off your shoes from
off your feet. The place whereon you stand is
holy ground. I'm undone because I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm a prophet and my lips are
unclean. And I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims
unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken
with the tongs from off the altar, and laid it upon my mouth, and
said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken
away, and thy sin is purged." Isaiah sees Christ on his throne
in the place of the offering, the altar. And in the place of
the temple, he sees the Lord Jesus Christ in His glory, because
that is the place of God's glory. Here we have the same thing occurring
in Exodus. Moses sees the bush. It's on
fire. The holiness of God requires
that sin be punished. The holiness of God cannot tolerate
or look upon sin. And yet the bush is on fire,
and the bush is not burned. The holiness of God required
that our sin, in order for God to bring us to Himself, our sin
must, must be punished. He must have received a fair
and just compensation for the punishment of our sin in order
for us to be accepted. And God's holiness required that.
And so He laid that sin Just like the fire came down from
heaven on Elijah's sacrifice and consumed everything, God's
fire would come on the sacrifice and consume it. And yet, the
bush is not burnt. Why? Because the Lord Jesus Christ
is the one who bore that sin. And because it was the holy Son
of God in His nature, both as God and man, there was no spot
in Him When He took the sin of His people, He had no debt of
His own to pay. He was a Redeemer who was able
to pay, willing to pay, and His payment was accepted by God.
He was the Lamb of God from eternity. always designated, always prepared,
always giving himself up in order to pay for the sins of his people. And when God reveals himself
in the Lord Jesus Christ, crucified for his people, for sinners,
to answer the justice of God and all the demands that God
has, we see there the holiness of God. God is holy. He must punish sin. Christ is
holy. He fully endured the wrath of
God, the infinite wrath of God against sin, and yet was not
consumed. And God accepts sinners on that
basis. And that's the only way we can
know God is seeing Him in Christ and Him crucified. And that's
why God tells Moses, you take your shoes off. because the very
ground here is holy. And then in verse 6 of chapter
3, he says, moreover, I am the God of thy 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 upon God. God is the God
of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Look down in verse 14. We'll
read there. He says, And God said to Moses,
When Moses said, what is your name? What is the name I'm going
to tell the people when I come to them? He says, God said to
him, I am that I am. And he said, thus shalt thou
say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me unto you. And
God said, moreover, not only am I, I am that I am, but moreover,
Moses, he said to Moses, thou shalt thus Thus doth thou say
unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers,
listen, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob
has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And
this is my memorial to all generations. This is this is astounding that
God would so identify himself. What does he say is his name
forever? He says his name is the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac and the God of Jacob. That's his name forever. Now,
you see several things in this. Remember in the New Testament,
Jesus actually used this verse to prove the resurrection. Remember
that? He told the Sadducees came to him and said a woman had a
husband and he died. And then she married another
man and her brother, the brother of the man who died and so on
until she had six brothers. Remember that? And the Sadducees
said, so you see, whose wife will she be in the
resurrection, if there's a resurrection? We've got him all twisted up,
and this is so confusing, there's no way he can answer this. And
Jesus said to them, you do greatly err. You do greatly err, not
knowing the Scriptures or the power of God. And he refers to
this verse here, in verse 6, Exodus 3, 6. He said, didn't you ever read
what Moses said about God? I am the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. He's not the God of the dead,
but of the living. And so you see in this verse
that God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. It means a couple of things that
stand out right on the surface. God In the Lord Jesus Christ, God
Himself so identifies Himself as being inseparable from His
people. You want to know my name? You're
going to know it in my relationship, the intimacy with which God has
joined Himself to His people. That is phenomenal. Because the
children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself, likewise,
took part of the same. The Lord Jesus Christ was not
ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name
unto my brethren. In the midst of the church will
I sing praise unto thee. The eternal God, the Lord Jesus
Christ, stood before God and was condemned, took our sin and
was condemned for those sins and bore all those sins. He did
all of that in order to have his people, in order to save
them. And he says, they're my people, so much so that my very
name is linked to them. And not only, but in this one
verse you see this other astounding truth. that all that God says
to Moses about who he is and what he would do in the Lord
Jesus Christ, represented by the burning bush and in his name
here, I am that I am, and I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. All that he says that he is, think about this, he says
that he is in order to save his people from their sins. Can you
imagine? The eternal God, the almighty
God, the God who is infinite and cannot be bounded, the God
who is immutable and cannot change, the God who is almighty, His
power is infinite, His understanding is infinite, stooping to take
an infant's body in that form and constraining himself throughout
eternity to be a man. And not only through eternity,
but in time to suffer the filth and the weakness and the ignominy
of being a man. Look at Psalm 22. This is God. This is the eternal God. This
is the God who cannot be measured, who had no beginning and has
no end, who doesn't change. This is God whose outlook on
life never changes. He has no emotions that make
him go up and down like we do. No plans that are disappointed. No wavering, never learning because
He knows all things, never gaining power. There was never a time
when God could say, I am now what I wasn't then, as if He
began to be or changed from that. If He did begin to be, if there
was a time when God started and He wasn't before that, then He
says, I am now. But I wasn't that then. Or there's
a time coming when He's going to change. I am now, but I'm
not going to be that then. Or maybe I'm going to be something
else then that I'm not now. But He says I am that I am. And
here we see that God. Look at Psalm 22. He says in
verse 6, Man of Sorrows. What a name. Verse 6, I am a
worm and no man. I'm a worm and no man. This is
our Lord Jesus Christ. He made Himself of no reputation
and took upon Him the form of a servant and in the likeness
of sinful flesh and took our sin. And in that form, He stands
before men and before God in the guilt, in the condemnation,
in the shame and in the filth of our sin. Knowing that in His
own soul before God and and exposed before the accusations of filthy
men. And he says, I'm a worm and no
man, a reproach of men and despised of the people. This is the God
who seraphims cry, Holy, Holy, Holy. And he stands here hanging
on the cross and he says, I'm a reproach of men and despised
of the people. This is that God, our Lord Jesus
Christ. All they that see me, they don't
worship. They laugh me to scorn. They
shoot out the lip. They shake their head saying,
he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him. Let him deliver
him, seeing he delighted in him. But thou art he that took me
out of the womb. Do you see that? The eternal
God, the Lord of eternity, becomes a servant of time in the form
of an infant. Thou art He that took me out
of my mother's womb. He never began to be. Before
creation was made, all there was was God. All that creation
is came out of Him. No events in time or space, nothing
happens that didn't come from Him. He is the eternal God. And yet He says, I began to be
as a man when you took me from my mother's womb. And then He
grew up as a man and He learned. He grew in wisdom and in favor
with God and man, in stature. And He suffered. He was hungry.
He was weary. He wept. He was amazed. All the things
that belong to us as men. And not only those things that
belong to us as men and women, but also those things that belong
to us as sinners. The shame of sin in our conscience. He felt it. And he knew it. And
he cries out, I'm a worm. I'm no man. Guilty. Guilty. So, he says in his weakness,
he says, Be not far from me for trouble is near. Look at Isaiah
chapter 53. See the same thing there. We sang it in our song on purpose,
he says here in Isaiah 53 and verse. Verse three, he is despised and
rejected of men, a man of sorrows. But the people were the ones
who were sighing and crying and groaning because of the affliction.
Ah, yes. But how does He save them? How
does He save those who are sighing and crying and groaning? Well,
read on. He says, He's a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces
from Him. He was despised, and we esteemed
Him not. Surely, He hath borne our griefs. Our diseases, in other words.
And He carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten
of God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. And the beating that our sins
deserved in order to make peace with God was upon Him. with his
stripes we are healed. That's what our Savior did. That's
the one who identifies himself in Exodus 3 as the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob because he is known in his relation to his
people. He is known in his covenant with
his people. And he is known in the salvation,
the fulfillment of that covenant. How could Jesus say that I am
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob proves the resurrection.
Well, it does because he's the God of the living, not the God
of the dead. But in saying that, he's saying
here that when he reveals himself to Moses as that God, he guarantees
all of the fulfillment of all that God promised in his son.
Because the only way God can be the God of the living is that
the Lord Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. And
He is that. He is that. Now look at verse
14. And God said to Moses, I am that
I am. I am that I am. This is amazing. I wrote down some verses here,
if I can find them in this heap. There's a lot of verses in this
clearly. Who spoke these words? First
of all, look at verse 14. And God said to Moses, I am that
I am. God spoke the words, didn't they?
Didn't he? Isn't it God that said this? God said this. And
by saying I am that I am, there's a number of things that we need
to look at here. And I'm sure that I cannot even
come close to really explaining this as it ought to be explained.
But the first thing you see here is that God is eternal. There's
no time when God was what he is not now, and there's no time
he's going to be what he is not here. I am that I am. And not
only that, we see that God is immutable. He never changes.
And I pointed this out last week, I believe. that when we think
about the way God thinks of His people, we think that there's
these dips and valleys. There's a time when God was totally
upset with us, and then God was happy with us, and then we do
these things and God becomes upset with us, and then God's
happy with us again. He just goes through these roller
coasters of change. That's not so with God. God does
everything the very best that God Himself can do in all that
He does, there's never a time when God is disappointed, when
His plans don't succeed, when He deviates from it because of
any reason. You see, we think of the way
we think. I'm going to do something. We
design it all out and we try to bring it to pass with a sequence
of steps. And so we think about different
possibilities and going down those steps. God is not like
that. God doesn't think, OK, if I take this course of action
and that outcome occurs, no, no, I don't want to do that.
How about if I do this over here? No, no, I can't do that either.
He's searching for the right way. Not at all. God makes reality. There's one course and one outcome
and that's the only one he thinks of and that's the only one he
does all the time. That's the way God works. We
can't imagine that. We can't imagine someone who
is like a razor focus on the goal and always achieving that
goal. That's beyond us. But that's the way God is. He
never changes. His love for His people is not
an up and down thing. It's the highest that it can
be before the foundation of the world, in eternity and glory,
at the cross, in time and in the experience of our life, before
we were born. All these things, it's always
constant, ever the same, always at the maximum that it could
be. God is God. And when we think about God,
I want you to see this too. There's several things about
this. God says, I am that I am. Now, when we think about God,
sometimes we and I do this all the time and maybe I shouldn't,
but maybe it's because we have to speak this way. We say his
justice or his grace or his mercy or his truth or his faithfulness
or his righteousness or his perfections in some way. But God is pure. God is pure. He is holy. His perfections are all one. God is just all the way through
and through. God is gracious all the way through
and through. You can't untangle these things
because God is not like a compound made up of different pieces patched
together. God is God. These things are
just characteristics of who God is. All that He is, He is these
things. Now, I want you to see this,
because this is glorious. When God makes Himself known
to us by this name, it is His name, but He makes known Himself
again, in the context of what? The sighing and the crying and
the groaning of His people. He came down to save them. And
He says this in verse Look at this. He says in verse 7 the
Lord said to Moses I've surely seen the affliction of my people
which are in Egypt I've heard their cry by reason of their
taskmasters For I know their sorrows and I am come down to
deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians I am that I
am came down and that's why we see him speaking to us from the
bush and these these are the these are the things it says
about our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Word of God. He says this
about Himself. He says, I'm the Son of God. And you can
see these things in different versions, and I won't quote them
to you because I don't want you to spend time writing them down.
We can always share these later. But He says, I'm the Son of God.
I am the Son of God. He says, I come in my Father's
name. I and my Father are one. He said,
I am the bread of life. Now, think about these things.
Why would He say I'm the bread of life? Well, because He is
the bread of life. But why is He the bread of life? Because
we need His life given up in order to live to God. I can't
live without Him. My life is Him. And bread is
something we take and we eat it. in order to live. I take
and eat of Christ and Him crucified in order to live to God. I can't
live in my soul and I can't live in eternity. I can't live and
have eternal life now in my experience unless Christ crucified is my
bread and my living. He says, I'm the bread of life.
You want to live to God? Jesus said, I'm the bread of
life. I am. And so you see, even by that,
you see that He is what we need. All that God is, He is to His
people. All that He is, He is to God
for His people. And this is the amazing truth
of the salvation we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. None but God
can save us from sin because sin is that bad. But God could
save us from sin because God is that good. And God's glory
is magnified to the maximum extent in the salvation of His people
by Jesus Christ. I am the bread of life. He says,
I am the light of the world. The only way you can know God,
the only way you can know God and come to Him in that light
that's unapproachable is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember the woman, when Jesus
said this, I am the bright, the light of the world. You know
when he said that? When the woman taken in adultery was guilty
and her accusers had, they knew they had her before, before Jesus
said, now Moses told us to stone her. What are you going to do?
He must have been more just than you if you let her go. Jesus
said, Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. I am the
light of the world. I'm the one who reveals how God
can be just and justify the ungodly. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am that. I'm the door of the sheep. The
only way that you can get into the fold is in Christ. I'm the good shepherd. And the
Good Shepherd gives His life for His sheep. Can you imagine?
Everything that He is in His living, He gives it up in order
to save His sheep. And listen to these other verses. I'm just touching on some of
them. I'm the resurrection and the life. I can't wait until
I'm raised up in my new glorious body. Well, I can't either. But
what are you going to get when you get there? A sparkling lake
with trees and blue sky and birds singing and things like that?
I don't care, because Christ is my life. If I'm raised in
Him, I have all having Him. I don't know what it's going
to be like, but I know one thing, it's going to be more wonderful
than I or ear can see or imagine. He says, I'm the way, the truth
and the life. I'm these things, the way, the
way to the Father, the truth, the truth. This is the only salvation. This is the only truth in heaven
and earth. I'm the life. I'm the true vine.
He says, I am not of this world. There's one thing he's not. I'm
not of this world. But he also told, he said in
a revelation, he says, I am the first and the last. I am the
Alpha and the Omega. In fact, he says it this way
in Revelation 1. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning
and the ending, which is and which was and which is to come,
saith the Lord, the Almighty. I am He that liveth and was dead,
and behold, I am alive forevermore. And then he says this, I am the
root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star.
There's nothing you can find that we need as sinners to come
to God or that we need once we have been brought to God that
we don't find in our Lord Jesus Christ. All that Israel needed
was met. by them in Christ and Him crucified,
reigning, ruling over all things to bring about their eternal
salvation. The Lord is the one who is I
Am. He's the God of His people. That's
His name. That's how He's known. And He's
known. There's so much that we could
say about this, but our faculties are not capable, really, of comprehending
it. until we really... I think the
only one who can really properly unfold this text of Scripture
is the one who is himself, I Am. He has to make his own name known.
He's the one who has to reveal himself to us. And that's why
I say, when Moses led the sheep to the back side of the desert
to the Mount of God, it was there that God made Himself known to
Moses as Christ and Him crucified in the burning bush. I'm His
sheep. I need to be brought to God.
I need God to make himself known to me in the person and the work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I need that. Without that, I
am totally blind. Totally blind, ignorant, and
deserving of all that infinite God would pour out on me in wrath
and never be satisfied apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. If I meet God in His nature as
He is, then His consuming fire will never be consumed because
I will always provide fuel, a need for Him to be consuming towards
me. And I say that because You cannot stand, you cannot come
to God, you cannot fulfill any requirements that God has of
you for salvation. They have to be provided by Christ. They're all provided in Him.
And that's why He tells us, come unto Me, come unto Me, and I'll
give you rest. Let's pray. Father, we pray that
we might know You in the Lord Jesus Christ and in Him alone. Why would we go elsewhere? Christ
is all. And the fullness of the Godhead
dwells in Him bodily. Lord, we pray that our soul's
need before You would be met and You would give us faith to
see this and to enjoy it in our conscience that every sin and
every guilt and shame and condemnation that we have because of our sin
before you would be washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You would give us that faith. He would sprinkle His blood on
our conscience so that we wouldn't work in order to make ourselves
acceptable or to keep ourselves acceptable. But we would work
out of love and serve you out of love because you have made
us acceptable and you've created us in Christ Jesus unto good
works. which you beforehand determined
we should walk in. And Lord, we pray that we would
love You. We would love You today. We would love You tomorrow. And
we would see You and love You in eternity. We ask these things
for Your great namesake. In Jesus' name, amen.