The Story of God: Life’s Biggest Questions
June 28, 2018
Has God ever asked you to do something that you felt totally inadequate to do?
I remember the first time I was ever asked to speak at my church about a year after becoming a Christian. I was going to Western Baptist College at the time, and my Pastor asked me to speak on a Sunday evening. We were going to meet in the “Fellowship Hall,” I was going to share a message from God’s Word, then we were all going to share in a “pot-luck dinner.” For some reason, I agreed to do this. And I remember two things about that night: one, I was scared to death and two, I was terrible. At least I thought I was terrible. But it wasn’t too long before they asked me to speak again. And I learned something that night that God continues to teach me over and over again, and that is this: God will always ask us to do things outside our comfort zone. God will ask us to do things we feel we’re not qualified to do, not able to do, or are intimidated at the thought of doing.
Why? Because when we do what we know WE CANNOT DO, that’s when God get’s the glory. For if we can DO what God asks of us in our own strength, then we get the credit, and we rob Him of His glory. Unfortunately we see far too much of that in our culture – where all the ministry is done by super-saints, and where the ordinary believer, thinking she don’t have what it takes, sits on the sidelines, God is robbed of His glory, and many people never get the chance to be used by God in His Story. So how can we change that?How we can help ordinary people step out in faith… what needs to happen to move us out of our comfort zones so we might step into His story and God get the glory?
Well, that’s what we are going to look at this morning in God’s story. For as we return to Moses’ burning bush moment, that’s where we find Moses. God has invited Moses into His Redemption Story. He is sending Moses to Pharaoh to deliver His people. Not only is God calling Moses out of his comfort zone, but God is commanding Moses to do the impossible. He is giving an 80 year-old shepherd the task of delivering thousands of slaves from the most powerful nation on earth. And like us, he knew this was beyond his abilities; he knew this was pretty much impossible. So he asks God a couple of questions. And as God answers him, we will see what God gives us what we need to do our part in His story. So, if you’d like to know how God can help you move out of your comfort zone and get in the game with God, then let me encourage you to open your Bible to Exodus 3:10-15, where Moses asks God Life’s Biggest Questions.
Now, Moses’ first question comes in response to God’s calling him to leave his simple life behind and go to the most powerful man on earth and deliver Israel. And immediately, Moses asks the question we ask when we’re confronted with something bigger than us: Who Am I? Look at the text: So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Exodus 3:10-11
Who Am I? Moses knew very well who he was: He was an exile: His identity had been shaped by his culture.He was born a Hebrew, but he grew-up in Pharaoh’s court. He was highly educated, but now he was living the desert life. He’s now been gone from Egypt and his people for 40 years, why would anyone listen to him? He was a failure:His identity had been shaped by his crime: He was a murderer rejected by his own people and a most-wanted man in Egypt. How could a failure like him go and back to Egypt and face Pharaoh? And he was intimidated: At one time in his past he thought he was a somebody, he had power and privilege, but now after 40 years in the desert he knew he was a nobody. The Egyptians were the most powerful people in the world. How could this old shepherd possibly liberate their entire workforce from slavery?
Who Am I? This is one of life’s biggest questions. Like Moses, we too have been shaped by our culture, our circumstances and our careers. Like Moses, we too have been shaped by our families, our fears and our failures. “Who am I?”Our modern culture invites us to ask this all the time. Identity has become fluid. Not that long ago, who you are was determined by where you grew up and who your parents were. You were likely to do the job your mother or father did and live in the same area. But now we switch careers. We move around. We join sub-cultures. We have online identities.
In many ways we’re not sure who we really are. For the breakdown of families, national identities and belief in God all mean that we ourselves have become the measure of our lives. Forming my identity is now up to me. It’s become something I achieve rather than something I receive… Most of us are comfortable with our identity until we are face with something bigger than we can handle. And for Moses, his identity crisis was prompted by a task he felt unable to complete. It’s the same today. We enjoy creating our own identity, until we come up against something that’s beyond us.
Who Am I, then is a fair question. Put yourself in Moses’ bare feet for a moment. Would you have wanted to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go? Or to persuade the Israelites that God had called you to lead them to the Promised Land? Moses was a man like us; he had his doubts, he had his fears, he knew his shortcomings.
How encouraging it is, then, to see how graciously God answered Moses. God could have tried to convince Moses that he was the right man for the job. He could have reminded him of the way he had been trained in Pharaoh’s court. He could have pointed to the lessons learned as a shepherd in the wilderness. He could have encouraged him by telling him that no one in the whole world was better prepared to lead Israel out of Egypt than him.
All of that was true, but it was not the answer God gave Moses. If God had shown Moses that he was fully qualified for his calling, what would have happened? It would have led Moses to trust in his gifts, to trust in himself and his abilities, rather than trust in his God.
So the real question was not who Moses was but who God is. For when God answered Moses, God didn’t focus on Moses, but on His presence with Moses. Here’s God’s Answer: And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”Exodus 3:12
God’s work of salvation was not going to depend on the competence of a man but on the presence of God. Moses says, ‘I cannot do this.’ God responds, ‘You’re right, but I will be with you.” And by that one statement, any doubts that Moses may have had about his own abilities became totally irrelevant. God had promised to be with him, and “with God all things are possible.”
“I will be with you”is God’s covenant promise. We don’t do any ministry alone. In fact, the normal operating procedure for doing what God calls us to do is the realization that WE REALLY DO HAVE NOTHING TO BRING TO THE TABLE! Like Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”John 15:5 Let that sink in…
God calls you to be part of His story. You get the opportunity to serve Him. But you never have to go it alone. God promises to be with you. We have all been called to go and make disciples of all peoples. That’s our part in the story. Listen to His promise:Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 As we make disciples, Jesus promises to be with us!
Now when Moses here’s that promise: “I will be with you”this raises a second question for Moses. So Moses asks the greatest question: Who Is God? Moses said to God, “Suppose 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?” Then what shall I tell them?” Exodus 3:13
Now before you get down on Moses for his lack of faith, put yourself in Moses’ bare feet again. Can you imagine going back to Egypt and saying, “Look, I was out in the desert watching these sheep, you see, and there was this bush, and it kept burning without burning up. Well, anyway, then I heard this voice telling me to come and lead you out of Egypt.” Moses knew how skeptical people would be, and it was not hard to guess how they would react. They would tell him that he had been seeing things and hearing things out under the hot desert sun. Then what was he going to say – “Well, I guess you had to be there?” So it’s easy to see why Moses felt like he needed something more. He needed more than his word… So he asked God to reveal His name. He asked God “Who Are You God?” And as far as I’m concerned he asked life’s biggest question. It’s bigger than the question: “What’s the meaning of life?” It’s bigger than the question: “Why am I here?”… Who is God? “What is your name?”
I love his question. It’s a question I wish people were asking today. But no, people are asking these questions: “How can I be happy?” “How can I make life better?” “If I’m not for me, then who is?” These are not bad questions, but they miss the point – they’re all about “me.” No, Moses asked the right question here. He wants to know who is sending him, who’s with him. What’s your name? What are you like?
God’s Answer: 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.’” Exodus 3:14
If you want someone to know who you are, the first step is to give them your name. God discloses His name – Yahweh– so that we may know him in a personal way. But what does His name mean?
First, Yahweh means that God is mysterious. That means there are some things about God that we will never understand. Part of what makes His name mysterious is that it is derived from the Hebrew verb, “to be” (hayah). Therefore, His special name means something like “He who is” or “I am the One who is.” But even this is a mystery. The great Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) wrote, “God is that which he calls himself, and he calls himself that which he is.” Who is God? God is who he is, and that’s all there is to it. And that’s ok. For if we could comprehend all that God is, then we would be God. I love this. God needs to be bigger than we can comprehend. He needs to be mysterious, unfathomable. He is God. But even though His name conveys His mysterious nature, His name does reveal some great things for us:
Second, Yahweh means that God is eternal and unchangeable in his divine being. Because His name occurs in the present tense of the Hebrew verb “to be” God does not say, “I was who I was” or “I will be who I will be.” He says, “I AM WHO I AM.” This is because He has no past or future but only an eternal present. God is the One who always is. He is who He is. He has always been who He is, and He will always be who He is. So He could say to Moses that He was the God of the Patriarchs – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He could also promise, “This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations”
This is where His name helps us. For being unchangeable means that God is unconstrained by external factors. In other words: nothing and no one can force God to be or do anything against His will. At the same time, God is constrained by His own character and promises. And that’s good news for us. For if God is unchanging in His nature we can count on Him. We can trust Him. He will always act in a way that is consistent with His holiness and His Word. Think of it this way:
- Because God is not constrained by outside forces, we can be sure He CAN deliver.
- Because God is constrained by Himself, we can be CERTAIN He WILL deliver. THIS IS WHAT MAKES GOD TRUSTWORTHY, Dependable. The God who sent Moses and promised to be with Him, is the same God who sends us and promises to be with us. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. God is eternal and unchangeable. You can count on Him. You can trust him. He is dependable.
God’s name has a third meaning: It means that God is self-existent. The Hebrew verb “to be” is flexible enough to allow the divine name to be translated as “He who causes to be.” Everything else owes its life and being to God, but God is independent. He does not owe His being or His attributes to anyone else. HE simply exists all by himself. As the Puritan Matthew Henry observed, “the greatest and best man in the world must say, “By the grace of God I am what I am; but God says absolutely – and it is more than any creature, man or angel, can say – “I am that I am.” God is who He is in Himself. He is not dependent on anyone or anything else because He has his existence from himself.
As we have seen, this part of the meaning of the burning bush, which kept burning – all by itself – without ever being extinguished. Like the burning bush, God is perpetually self-existent. I love how the old Scottish preacher Alexander Maclaren put it: God lives forevermore, a flame that does not burn out; therefore his resources are inexhaustible, his power unwearied. He needs no rest for recuperation of wasted energy. He gives and is none the poorer. He works and is never weary. He operates unspent; he loves and he loves forever. And through the ages, the fire burns on, unconsumed and undecayed.
This is God’s name. He is the mysterious, eternal, unchanging, trustworthy God, whose living fire burns forever. This is God. This is the great I AM.
And now knowing the name of God will be of great help to Moses as he goes back to Egypt. For when he returns to Egypt, he will now be able to say to the Israelites, “I AM has sent me to you.” He will set you free. He will give you life. You can count on Him.
And it is this same mysterious, eternal, unchanging God who wants to help us. For we serve the same God Moses served. The only difference is that the God of Moses has given us a new name to call him. It is the name – the only name- by which we must be saved, Jesus Christ. For Jesus declared himself to be this same God when he said, “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am.” John 8:58
This mysterious, eternal, unchanging God existed before Abraham, He was right there in the burning bush, and then one day, He took on flesh and blood and made his dwelling among us. His name is Jesus. He is the Great I AM. He came so that we might KNOW the same God Moses met in the burning bush; so that we might KNOW the same God who never changes. So that we might KNOW the same God of eternal power and life, so we can trust that He will be with us and help us in whatever He asks of us.
You see, Moses asked life’s biggest questions: Who Am I? and Who Is God? because he didn’t think he had what it takes to do what God called him to do. He felt totally inadequate and intimidated by God’s call. But when he asked these questions, God promised that He would not only be with Moses, but revealed Himself to be the eternal and unchanging God He could trust to help him succeed.
This is our God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. And He has come to be with us and help us in whatever He asks us to do. So let me ask: do you know Him?
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