I Am

Good morning summer church at all four campus locations across the triangle. We are one church that meets in a different locations around Raleigh-Durham. We have chosen to pursue what we call a multisite strategy because we believe that is more effective than building one big gargantuan Six Flags over Jesus type of building somewhere in the middle, the triangle asking people to drive 45 minutes to it, plus we learned over the years that it is easier for you to pursue things like community and mission, which is essential to be a part of the church, when the church facility is itself close by so. Our motto has been and is stay where you are serve where you live with be the church. They are in your community. I mean, go outside of Raleigh-Durham.

We always plant on an independent church, not a campus but if released to reach part of our city. We have multiplied campuses here and so we are constantly asking the Holy Spirit where he would have us put our next campus and so to that end I have got a big official exciting announcement for you so drumroll please are Megavideo my mega sound in your mind. Whatever we are officially launching on September 27, the Alamance County campus in Nevin as our ninth summit campus so there are a handful of you from out of that area all across our church are excited about that.

I know this area has only become a place where people who work and do life and in Raleigh-Durham where they live. In fact, there are many of you that are listening to me today at one of our campuses who call that area home, over the last few months.

A core group from Alamance County has been gathering to pray in the plan for this they met once a month and each time they have met the group has grown by 40%. At the last meeting they had over 175 and baptized for new believers and they have not even launched yet. One of my dreams as a pastor is that I would do more, following our members as they expand the kingdom of God. And that's deftly been what it's been like this time it is been absolutely incredible to watch has one more time at all over our campuses. We put our hands together and thank God for what we are seeing if you have a Bible now is the time to take it out if you begin to open it.

Exodus 34 Exodus 34 we are in the last week that we been out for several weeks in a series on the name of God, because to know God of explain to you. You have to know his name, your name is important to you, God's name is important to him. We base our study in its entirety on Exodus 34 verses six and seven were God declares his name to Moses. I've explained to you that this verse. Exodus 34, six and seven was kind of like the Jewish people. John 316 died Exodus 34, six and seven is the most quoted verse in the Bible by other Bible writers, Moses says to God. God I want to see your glory. God says to him. Exodus 3319. I will make all my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim before you my name, the Lord, when God is going to reveal his glory is not to this image of brightness or anything like that. It's by declaring his name. Verse chapter 34 verse five the Lord then descended in the cloud and he proclaimed there to Moses the Lord Yahweh, the Lord, and God was merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and and faithfulness. Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but it will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the forefathers of the children and the children's children to the third into the fourth generation come every week in the series we taken one of those descriptions that is attached to the name of God, and we tried to unpack it today were actually going to look at the name itself, Yahweh, nor sometimes in English we say Jehovah how whenever your English Bible has the word Lord in THAT'S what it means is that is the proper name of God. It is a very unusual name in Hebrew, and as I'm going to explain to you on the fact that it so when usual reveals so much about how you were supposed to understand how we relate to God.

God first revealed this name to Moses not in Exodus 34 I first revealed the same to Moses back in Exodus 3 to be got your Bible lit back and say bye-bye Exodus 34 we will be there again today. I'm going back to Exodus 3 because you can see that how God reveals this name to Moses is going to give you the ground rules for knowing him to show you what happens to you when you actually do know him rights. Exodus 3230.

Merrill explained in Exodus 3 opens up with Moses is a pretty discouraged defeated man Moses. It started out his life in a pretty good deal of confidence. Evidently he was a good looking guy I look something like Christian Bale.

I think in a in a pretty high-paying job. He was literally the Prince of Egypt and so here there was no greater than he felt like God had wanted him to have a career change and to deliver Israel and he was just trying to obey the things went really bad habit Jewish people and he was supposed to deliver. They criticized him and they rejected him and Pharaoh got angry at him and he ended up killing a man that's a pretty bad day at work right. Everybody hates you. Your boss fires you and you kill someone on the way to the parking lot will.

Needless to say that all left Moses.

Feeling pretty defeated desert for 40 years now as we come into Exodus 3 for 40 years, Moses has wandered around the wilderness nursing that failure in nursing that failure and making it let them feel insecure. I I would guess that most of you know what it's like to feel insecure. Your feel like you're not up to some particular challenge. Maybe you just got hired for a job and you're not sure that you can do it. What's even worse is everybody around you feels like you probably can't do it either and you can just kind of feel them looking at you.

That way maybe you're dating someone new and you're not sure if you measure up to their families expectations every time you go to dinner. You thought you be a judge or maybe you eat, you just embarked on some new phase of life. I just become a mother. Or maybe you're living on your own now for the first time or you're going into retirement.

You just not sure that you have what it takes for this next stage of life video single again.

Many of our brothers and sisters at our campus that meets in wake County present have told me that they feel best when it comes time for their release. Sometimes you know they like for 20 years I've lived in the free world and now I just don't know if I got what it takes to to thrive anymore and that kind of world. Maybe you feel like God is called you to a ministry useful, insufficient board I hear from our church planters around the around the world.

You say you know I just preach a sermon and I got all inspired up on him to go over and I'm enough to take Jesus over here to the middle of the Middle East and I can hear. I just feel like I'll know what I'm doing and I feel completely overwhelmed and it's your fault, and so I am I'm talking to you right now. Maybe you still overwhelmed by life that that the condition that I like to refer to as parenthood.

Every year I tell you guys.

I feel like I'm less and less about parenting before I had kids I have disliked several awesome theories on parenting and I taught them. Everybody battled near the church.

Many of you took notes on them. When I told them I now I have four kids and I got no great ideas on parenting, not one so I just feel less confident you feel overwhelmed by insecurity is a voice inside of you that whispers I am not blank enough. But here's a question for you.

What is most often go to not blank for you. What was often gone. Another I'm not blank I'm not good looking enough. I'm not athletic enough. I'm not smart enough.

I'm not young enough.

Funny enough, spiritual enough in the age of periscope and Instagram. These feelings of insecurity or heighten because no matter what you do. It's always easier to find somebody doing it better. I am never going Instagram is a rule around Valentine's Day because no matter what I do, there's always some guy out there putting me to shame. I got my wife a bracelet not to to her favorite restaurant, some dude got his girl a pony and took a backpacking through Europe and so you know the feelings of insecurity. Here's a statement by AW toes are that we look at every single week. Sorta kinda been a core here for our our series. What comes in our minds we think about God is the most important and the most defining thing about us the most determining fact about any man or woman is not what he or she at a given time, I say or do but what he in his deep heart conceives of God to be like the most shaping determining factor on the trajectory of your life on your emotional stability on where you go and what you do is what you conceive of God to be like. It's not how much you work out on how much education you have. Not even the family that is around you. It is what you think of God to be like you're going to see that that phrase is especially true when it comes to how Moses is going to deal with these insecurities that he has Exodus 3 of us begin in verse three. Now Moses was tending the flock of just what Jethro his father saw for me see what I mean.

I mean listen when you are 60 years old and you were still living in your father-in-law's basement that is failure in any culture at all and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and he came to her read the mountain of God.

Near the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.

Moses saw, however, that though the bush was on fire. It didn't burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and I will see the strange sight, why the bush does not really burn up first for when the Lord saw that he going over to look. He phrase will come back to it. God called to him from within the bush. Moses knows this and Moses said here I am, verse five. Do not come any closer. God said take off your sandals for the place where your standing is holy ground.

Many said I am the God of your father and the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and Jacob.

At this Moses hit his face because he was afraid to look at God and then the Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I'm concerned about her suffering. That's up all sermon series). It got heard the cries of your suffering birthdate, so I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and I will bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious lamp, a land that is flowing with milk and honey. So now you go. I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people and the Israelites out of Egypt. Most of the couple, wait a minute what would my wind in the subjects, which to me talk about you coming down to deliver the is like a mess on a really cool and I was an aberrant receiver that awesome but for the Nelsons which the me doing and that is not cool.that was not guilty, got they were to like me and they criticize me and I never doing that again verse 12 and God said, I will be with you. Notice how God before he deals with Moses insecurities did not reinforce Moses with positive thoughts into nothing. Moses you underestimated your account Moses here's a mirror look into the mirror and he got for me my name is Moses, I am a bad man, now close your eyes Moses and visualize yourself walking in the Pharaoh experience of feelings of taking Pharaoh that none of that pop psychology garbage simply I will be with you because real confidence in life comes not from competence. Real confidence in life come from the assurance of God's presence. You want to know how you can go confidently in the next phase of your life is not that your awesome if that God is omnipresent.

Verse 13 Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and they say I say to them, God of your father sent me to you and they say well what is his name.

What will I tell verse 14 God said to Moses, I am who I am, that's what you're to say that your delight.

I am has sent you the word in Hebrew, for I am is the word hi Ya Ya, where he received as I am Lord IS the work. Yeah, from the verb to be just means that you want to learn Hebrew word you say it someone were to say hi Ya say it getting a little bit on your neighbor you didn't say right okay I got hi Ya okay I am. It just means God says I am. He is I do not have a beginning or ending cutting come from anywhere. I'm not going anywhere.

I'm the same all the time forever. I am God. Now you see why he chose the image of the fire in the bush because he's like that firefighters need fuel to burn the fire that Moses Saul was self-sustaining the bush that it was and did not burn up right, it was self-sustaining. Will God the eternal. I am needs no external fuel.

Nothing preceded God, nothing, created him, he needs nothing he doesn't require anything to be complete or to be happy. He is self-sustaining.

He is eternal. He is unchanging. He is always and forever the same everything that is ever existed, had its beginning in him.

He was there before it started to go back to the beginning of the universe. However, it began, you would see that he would be there. He is eternal.

He is unchanging.

He is always and forever is the source that gives life to everything else is there in the middle of it holding it all together and he will be there when it all ends told you every once in a while we just need to try to wrap our minds around. Even though we can do it try to wrap our minds around the size of God and I believe that God not accidentally gave us an open theater. We can think about it every single night.

You don't want my watches and not this one but one of them has a little clearer back on its you look into it to Siva. You know that all the awesome you know are engineering goes into making a watch you hitting your Swiss be amazed by me God to doubt the universe every night you got a minute is open theater readers walkout. He just get overwhelmed at the size not of the universal to the God who just spoken into existence you. They say the light from the closest stars for light years away which I wheezy or light your night did you have any target your mind around that light travels at 186,282, 2 mi./s seventh grade science class got 100 on the quest concept of present troubles every single every zero Zagat and four years to get since the earth again is like doing overhead right if you fire a 30 alt six at a dear the bullet travels at just a little over half a mile. Second, it feels instantaneous right to have a mile a second right so that the new horizon.

Bielby just went out to Pluto and shot back the images to us traveling 20 miles a second 40 times faster faster than a 36 point it took nine years to get the Pluto nine years traveling 120 miles second and that were not even out of our solar system. Yet you keep going you up to speed to hundred 86,282.2 mi./s, which is the speed the millennium falcon goes Windows in the works.

If you traveled that speed for four years you'll come to the first star and you want to get to the edge of the universe. You had a travel that speed for 91 billion years and if you got there. When you finally got there, there would be saying I'm in your local time and you got all way to the other side of the universe. At the same time so I also went over there may be there to use outside it all. He's been there before. All these break this kennel point. He's bigger than big. He's bigger and all and all the words we used to say, being God is not just huge, gigantic, humongous or gargantuan.

He is beyond words. That's God. This God says the most. Think about that Moses is having a conversation with that God save the Israelites, the I am the God of your fathers, the got of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob that God has sent me to you.

This is my name forever. This is the name you shall call me from generation to generation never ever just call God I am hello is you are you will be you always are. Moses said to the I am, but I am. I've never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue with this image of Moses be like Charlton Heston or Kristin Bailey speak to the deep Val Kilmer-esque voice and that is not true that either means to be a speech impediment, he stuttered.

Oriental really small mousy voice like on Pee-wee Herman for you children of the 80s.

It was not impressive and the Lord said to him, who gave human beings are mouse Moses, who makes them deaf or mute who gives insider makes them blind is it not I the I am the revelation of God's name is I am sure you three vitally important things about your relationship to God first, explain if it shows you how you encounter God in them is warn you the section when I taught this at first here's a little bit philosophical.

What I want to try to show you is that burning bushes still exist all around us we see the burning bush like oh we are never seen that you probably haven't ever seen that but I'm to show you that if you see the burning bush is a metaphor which it supposed to. Also, not just the actual burning bush with a metaphor you'll see that actually God does the same thing today and he still speaks to people in the same way say that the second thing is the I am the name I am is going to give you a ground rule, an important ground rule is very countercultural for American and how you know God, and the third thing is I am shows you what knowing God will actually do to your sense of self identity. Okay number one. I am shows us how we encounter God. Typically, we do not encounter God to a lifetime of philosophical reasoning. Instead, we encounter God through an experience that we have simply confronted by the fact that he is and that he is speaking EEE just he does this many times that encounter begins as it did with Moses light with an unanswered question. Moses had it with the burning bush, he turns aside, it says to investigate it. God did not resolve the mystery of the burning bush. Instead, God spoke out of the bush and says I am I a burning bush today is an unanswered question that leads you to ask questions out of which God begins to speak and say I am some people it's the mystery of the cosmos. Anthony flew with. If you're not in the philosophy that name probably that mean a lot to you but Anthony flew with one of the primary agnostic atheist men of the last 50 or 60 years right before he died right before he died atheist Anthony flew comes out and says hey I have decided there has to be a God to give you kind of lost me.

You don't realize what a huge bill that is a bit like Coach K come out that I'm actually Carolina fan have been told that it was a big deal. It was a big deal and he said the reason is because I just can no longer put my head in the sand.

I have to acknowledge that with the intensity and the complexity of design that is evident in the universe. You can't just say that it's all one big cosmic accident. Thomas Edison said there's no way that you can look soberly at the complexities of our world and deny that there's gotta be a captain on the bridge somewhere for Albert Einstein that unanswered question was the enigma of the depth of evil in the human heart. He said that points to realities that better beyond biological and and beyond just evolution. He said it is easier to denature plutonium that is to denature the evil spirit of mankind read it. One atheist to very candidly and this is not common who said that the most troubling thing for him with the problem of universal human rights is is why is it that we believe in human universal human rights of Muses words. I'm an atheist, but I believe in universal human rights, which is problematic because I believe we got here by trampling on the week. Those of us with stronger genes dominated those with weaker genes. That's why we survived the why would we give people rights now some of my atheist friends say that the will of the majority grants people rights.

What if the majority says that we can oppress a certain kind of person for the majority decides that a certain characteristic needs to be eliminated from the gene pool is there not a standard above the will of the majority to whom the oppress can appeal his conclusion.

I don't know why human universal rights exist, but I know that they have to. Thus, I temporarily abandon my worldview in order to hold such a view, that's a burning bush that asked the question that you didn't go to is not enough in itself, but it leads people to ask a question, the God and said, I will necessarily resolve the issue that I must tell you I am brother people. The question is less philosophical. It's more longing they feel something like the birth of a child and you look at that and you said it's not just a group of colliding chemicals the year it happens in the yearning that you experience when someone you love dies and is something inside you, tells you there's more than just biology and atoms in science going into this one was fascinating testimonies that it happened I'm from Steve Jobs at the last interview he gave before he died was on 60 minutes on 60 minutes.

It was the interviewer asked him right for the end of the interview. The watch that he said he said is that you believe in God you believe God and Steve Jobs is like me quote. Not everyone didn't write down throughout my life. Sometimes I have believe in God.

Sometimes I have it but ever since I found out I have cancer.

I find myself believing a bit more because I want to believe in an afterlife.

When you die, it can't just all disappear the wisdom we've accumulated as a race somehow. It lives on. It can't be like an on-off switch. Were you just click it and then you're done. Incidentally, he said that's why I don't like putting an on-off switch on Apple devices which you write an Apple device you know artist for how to turn it off.

He said that's intentional because I don't like to just be able to turn something off.

I like the concept of it just cc that is a burning bush brother people. It's it occurs to reading the Bible and experiencing the fact that there somebody living and moving in the Bible, and rice. One of my favorites that I sometimes refer to.

She was a atheist writer who would always vampire novel. She said she said not my biggest work.

I read it was gonna be on what happened around the birth of Jesus, because I knew that the real Jesus. The Christian believed and another one that I got. And so I was going to figure it out. She said I knew that when all my study. I was can come up with a gay Jesus, or are you a communist Jesus or something like that. She's after 10 years of study. She said there is no possible way anybody with an open mind looking at the evidence could conclude that anything else happened except for the man rose from the dead, and she says I didn't want to believe it. She says but there's no way she says I encounter the most biased scholarship I've ever encountered in my life by people who find some way to twist the evidence to pretend that he did not arrangement it was even weirder to me is the more I got into in the deep rest that it felt like I wasn't just studying someone like somebody was studying me.

She said I'm she's pictured.

It was haunting. I felt like I was being pursued rather than the one who pursued reminded me what Peter craves the professor of philosophy at Boston College always is when he can read the Bible. He said it was like looking through a keyhole in your room can instantly find somebody look back at that's a burning bush that suddenly he speaks and says I a.m. here's my question for you. Have you had this kind of experience. Maybe it wasn't this dramatic missing. The book of Ecclesiastes says that God is put eternity in your heart which means she's put a restlessness. He puts unanswered questions those rest feelings of restlessness, those questions there burning bush.

It look upward and you have questions you look inward you since long that him and you know there's more to life than just send love and conscious visitors biology and colliding chemicals.

When you turn aside like Moses did you listen you'll find him, the great I am speaking out of that so it shows you how you encounter in years, and he speaks, there's a second thing, I am the name I am gives us the ground rule for knowing God gives the ground rule for knowing God. I am who I am, means, by contrast, I'm not who you to find me to be.

I am who I mean this is who I am. I'm not who you think you want me to be. Theologians talk about the difference in women under this is a tad bit nerdy but theologians talk about the difference in the theology from below and the theology from above, the theology from below is philosophical speculation, where we put the brightest minds together and we come up with what you know God must be like.

It can be debated, it can be challenge your ideas my ideas, we argue about them and we see what would explain things the best write the theology from above is the understanding that our beliefs about God, did not come up from smart minds below but was actually delivered to us from above the characteristic of theology from above that shows if you believe it is you don't argue with it.

It has to be received or rejected, but it cannot be debated or reshaped because of it come from God been used except for what it is right.

Okay, one more philosopher. This is the last one I promise, and only do this like once a year for the Hampel nerds in our country. It just so my game to write on Plato and Plato talk about the theology from below you call that on but in his book the Republic. He said he said he said essentially philosophy is a group of men sitting in the cave staring at the back wall and there is the light from the sun behind and coming into the cave creating shadows on the wall. They're not.

They can't turn around because her chained up in the can't see what that's outside the cave to base in the shadows, they start to speculate.

He said that's what philosophy is, we just get dim shadows that we can actually see what's there right and then later on, not in the Republic than in a later book, Plato reflecting on that, he says, if only, if only somebody from outside can actually come in and then explained to us what's out there. Then we could see with clarity what he is talking about is the difference in theology from below and theology from above.

Christians of course believe that that one who came into the cave was Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who didn't come with good ideas about God.

He came with the actual revelation of God and the sign that you believe in it is that you don't edit it and you don't reshape it, you just either accept it or you rejected. Here is my question for you which theology do you believe it. You believe in the one from below the one from above most you say while leaving the one from above.

The fact that you want to edit it and reshape it and change it shows that you don't really believe that it's from above that you still hold to the oneness from below, because it either is from God or it's not from Diablo might not unlike a part of the Bible and scratching text my God. Never be like that. Don't get your own personal God because he is who he is not who you want him to be and all you got for many of you is the figment of your imagination. A deified version of yourself not to know God at all. Tim Keller describes it on because of the Stepford wives God undersea movie Stepford wives. I think it's an old movie. So if you're over 50 men using it but I'm basically the gist of it goes like this again. I never seen it, but it's a group of men decide that their wives are annoying because they contradict them and they make you mad and will do what they want them to do okay and also I don't see this movie some way to it all and so they create this like him robot race of wives who essentially do exactly what these guys wanted to do it. At first it feels awesome this is awesome but then is very unfeeling because they don't ask you know real person that is no projection of themselves and Keller said that's a picture of how a lot of people are with God. They like the real gods of the receipt God and what they wanted to be and they think will this makes me feel good but it's just a figment of your imagination. You might as well give up the charade. That's what kids do.

My am not my daughter. My second daughters of the more imaginative variety. Let's say and when she was five or six years old.

We she had will withhold Allie's world is at any given point. She was just, you know, kinda in her world. Everything was perfect. Revivals got over to her house and he was content messing with her and he says I hey I'm in Ali's world.

She's five years old to except she says how did you get in here.

I everything in her world is like she wanted to be, but it's what kids season's rights, not real, it's not real that's you are kind of like that with God as you got this God that makes you feel like oh I'm comfortable not, but is not real. The theology from above means I am who I am and that God who is cannot be reshaped or edited or debated or refashioned you to receive him for who he is or rejected right. Third, knowing God's name. Knowing God's name is IM number three transforms your identity as I mentioned to you. Moses is really insecure their personal disabilities. He had a speech impediment to personal failures killed an Egyptian been rejected because of those things he a lot of personal doubt that scholars say when Moses says in verse 11, whom I they said that in Hebrew. You can see that that is a reflection of the same question that the Jewish people through back in his face. In Exodus 2 the first time you come to deliver them.

We should avail to you Jack, we tell us what to do right answered their doubts about him when he repeats that question shows that the doubts they have put upon him. He has now taken into his own identity has somebody criticized you for so long that you've actually started to believe it about yourself. Maybe it was a mom or dad. Maybe it was a sibling. Maybe it was a boss or a friend but you started to believe it. And so you are someone who feels I am incapable and I am insecure.

Interestingly Moses his insecurities kept him from seeing God actually prepared and quite well for this task that was in front of him anything about Moses had spent the last 40 years in the wilderness leading sheep that was the same wilderness. He was going to leave the children of Israel through enabling act like sheep and he was good to know every waterhole and every danger and he knew that place, like the back of his hands.

Plus he spent all that time an Egyptian palace with many new outbound laws and codes and I was you gotta read and write. That's W the first five books of the Bible, God done a pretty dog on the job get Moses ready, but most could see that because he didn't realize that the I am God had been with him every step of the way there. Some of you that are so consumed with your failures in your disappointment and doubt and because you're not sure the God is good with you that you can't see the got is actually work very carefully in your life and every disappointment, every pain, every tragedy because he's been preparing you for something in my challenge to you is what if you look back to the rest of your life, and said everything that happened, for good or for bad weather. It felt wrong or right that there was a God in that it was shaping me for something he had prepared me for the refinement change you. But here's what's interesting.doesn't use that line of reasoning with Moses. It's true he doesn't bring that up all God says of Moses.

When Moses says but God, who am I got to such a Moses says who are you in a matter who you are not is who I am is there but I'm not eloquent, I'm not smart I'm not successful in God says I got enough alders thing for the both of us. I didn't choose you because you were those things that I don't really want the guy who says all I know I got yours me because I'm awesome because you're good called line God wants an open vessel that he can pour his power through an open vessel that would give him the glory so he chooses people that are broken. He chooses people who feel insufficient because they're the ones who will allow him to work through them and they are the ones you will give them the glory God would rather have a pipe that was clean and empty that he would've won the soul jumped up with your sense of how awesome you are. That's why Paul said in the book of first Corinthians.

It's not many mighty, not many wives not many strong, not many wealthy that God chose to build his kingdom through that. He chose the mighty and the wise and the strong and the wealthy.

It was all done, they say, look how awesome we are. Look at what we did for God I got that I'm having none of that. I want somebody's going to give me the glory so I am the God of very unpromising material feeling inadequate is a prerequisite to being used by God which means you feel adequate you feel awesome you feel like I'm confident that congratulations you just earned yourself a seat off of the bus of the people that God is going to use because God chooses the week he chooses the unpromising material you may not be but he says I always am, and my and this will overcome you're not next to God. I'm not very good. I am God.

I'm not very skilled. I know I am God.

I'm not sure. I'm not confident or steady person I know I am God. I'm not able to live a victorious Christian life. Nasty to Doug was only one person in history who ever lived a victorious Christian life and he was so good we named for and now that one is come to take up residence in you. It is not about you live in it for him. It's about him limited through you is not about who you are. It's about who he is. I know that you bring into this place all kinds of inadequate season deficiencies and worries and insecurities and Scripture says yup and you know what you know the half of all you know that you're so weak. You cannot even guarantee that you will be around tomorrow so we can so small and so frail. The book of James as it's a sin for you this week over confidently about tomorrow because you like a wisp of smoke James up for your like a blade of grass Dave's happy James up to five the slightest shift in wind direction.

The slightest change in temperature.

When you're gone, and the scope of the universe. You are so small and insignificant and frail and pitiful that you don't amount to a grain of sand on the ocean floor under you think a man. I'm so glad I came to this talk and say thanks for making me feel like nothing.

Thanks for making me feel small. I'm not trying to make you feel small. I'm trying to tell you that you are small. Okay.

And that's a big no difference in any preacher. The stand up here and try to motivate you by making you feel big is actually being against what the gospel tells you even want you to see that you are he wants you to see that he is, and that's why he said my name is I am not you're going to be enemies also means you'll need to sweat anything because the one who's calling you was named I am who could possibly be smart enough to figure all this out. I am how my supposed to know which way to go. I am who can I trust I am I'm not really sure who's on my team. I am nobody's listening to me. I am my marriage is crashing and I don't know where to turn. I am not always hope for marriage and kids in the family by this point in my life, but it seems like at times passed me by. I am I'm 50 years old. Not like I'm starting all over. I am anybody thinks I can't do it. I am what if I fail again I am I'm not sure I believe anymore I am doing all I can give it is not enough.

I am important everybody nobody's porting to me. I am I can hold on I am.

I'm tired I am, I quit. I am I need a drink. I need to fix any that hit him. I need a lover. I am I need a fresh start.

I am I just need somebody told me and tell me to be okay. I am I in the gospel of John. You see Jesus are the most curious thing with the name I am he takes any sort applied to himself and all the strange ways mix things and certainly don't make sense for you, before Abraham was, I am within draw the gospel. Johnny take that same name and he starts declaring it whenever we have a point of weakness and start attaching something to it.

So, to those who fill in darkness. He says I am your light to those who thirst. I am the living water to those who feel lost. He would say on the way to those who feel confused, I'm the truth to those who feel under the curse of death.

I am a life to those who feel insufficient on the good Shepherd. Those who need a fresh start.

I am the door to those crushed by guilt. I am the resurrection and the life.

And so to the unrighteous.

He says I am your righteous covering the powerless.

He says I am your defense to the empty I am your fullness of the dead.

I'll be your resurrection into the fetid.

He says I'll be your hope. Now listen, knowing that you know now what God's name means knowing what it is I want you to think about a command.

One of the 10 Commandments that you've always known, but you probably never have applied in the full sense of what God wanted you to apply is the third commandment were God commands us not to take his name in vain.

That was always taught to me growing up as don't say oh my God I don't write OGS. We know that means don't say good Lord don't say Jesus Christ is an exclamation. And that's true, but a friend of mine points out that this is not just a command on how to use God's name. The command specifically is about how to take God's name. And here's the example. In times past, there was a girl named Veronica Marie peters, and on the greatest day of her earthly life. She became a career and when she took my name, she became a part of me. She became one with me and everything that I had became hurts all the possessions I have became hers. My future became hers. My earning potential, or lack thereof became hurts my future family became hurts everything that was mine bypass my present my future became hers so there was no more.

Your and Monty was simply hours when you became a Christian. Think about this. You took God's name.

I am which means the properties of the I am became yours because you became one with him and I met the what he has. You now have you became literally Peter says a participant in the divine nature itself.

That nature is now inside the became the apostle Paul said, and inheritor of all the divine promises all the promises of God. Paul said yes in Christ Jesus. Jesus earned them all and he became one with you with me. They all became yours. And that means that when you feel fear and when you feel insecurity or you say no to God or falter in obedience or cower before to sign it because you think, but I am not blank you are taking his name in vain because though he you are not. He always is and you are one and when you say but I got I'm so stupid.I'm a loser.I'm such a failure.I know I'm a terrible mom. God says I'm not any of those things and if I am in you that you are not either. What I am. You know are because you and I became one. And there's no more your mind. This is ours and I'm not there thinks is not taken my name in vain. When you feel fear. When you feel insecurity when you feel insufficient you are violating the third command because you are trampling on his name, and you say I am not. Therefore, you must not be either got is yet you are not.

That's why I chose you. But I am using the God I'm so dysfunctional. He says yet.

I am so complete, you say I am so defense it he says, but I am so selfish and you say I am so doubtful he says but I am so faithful you say I am so simple he says I am so grateful.

I am so weak, but I says and so strong.

Whatever you're not.

Whatever you need whatever you didn't get from your parents or your teachers or your boss whatever you're not getting from somebody else. He says to you, I am, and that means that when the pharaohs in your life say to you who do you think you are say I don't think I'm anything but I know the great I am when the haters in our own hearts whisper to us. You are not, we shout back. You are right you are right, but he is and now I am in him which means that all the promises of God in all the possibilities are mine in Christ Jesus, so my challenge to you is name your secure in your your insecurity and write it out. I am not blank but then you right right on that. But in Christ.

I am blank and you put the opposite of it. I am sufficient I am fully supplied.

I am more than a conqueror. I am undefeatable. I have everything I need for the task that is ahead. Which leads me to one final correction I want to make in the series on the statement of given to you every week. Restarted this message with the statement eight of your toes made it what you think about God is the most important thing about you CS Lewis read that about 50 years ago read that statement and inhibitors are made. And he said this had never seen this in front of him pointed out to me, look at this CS Lewis I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think about God is talking about a debater's cloak is a heavy toes and him were born. Your parts.

They were contemporary by God himself. It is not so. Not every day you CS Lewis ETA because Magnum listen how God thinks about us is not only more important, it is infinitely more important indeed. How we think of him is of no importance, except in so far as it is related to how he thinks about us. I'm not telling you that it's doesn't matter what you think about God is just the whole series Benson most important thing that you understand about God is not just two years, but who is come to you. The fact that he is glorious not just in the heavens, but he is and I am that is giving you all the things that belong to him and united himself with you that when you are a sinner and you had no righteousness, and you deserve to be cast out of the presence of God.

He said I will be your righteousness. And Paul said the same God that gave us his righteousness. When we were his enemies will now give us the power that we need for every assignment he puts in our path which means that if I'm not a great dad. It's okay because he is and he'll be that through me means that if I'm not a great moral Christian it's okay because he's gonna learn to live that victory through me.

It means that if I'm not a great preacher and teacher it's okay because he takes a willing and the weaker vessel and reports his power through it.

The gospel is not that you are awesome. The gospel that you are lost in the gospel is that he is and so his and this overcomes you're not nest because the two of you unite what it means to walk with God is not that you become somebody that is Superman. It means that you learn to yield yourself to the I am begins to work through you.

So Paul would say, even when I'm faithful is he is faithful because he cannot deny himself.

Because the work that he is started in me is his work and he will do it and I'm not dependent on the awesomeness of ball.

I am leaving on the grace of Jesus Christ, the great I am not you by your head with me at all of our campuses. If you would every week, every week in the series. I've given you a chance to begin a relationship with God. If you don't have it.

It begins the repentance and faith against the repentance and faith God on the mass acknowledge that I am what you have call center and I surrender. I'm done with living my life the way I want to live in them ready to follow you and I receive I receive your offer forgiveness and salvation are seated right now and I invite you to do that all over this church campuses all around the trying wellness in this series there is you that are believers. I want you to end it just sitting in, soaking in the presence of the I am and I am who is not a God that we worship from a distance. But, and I am who has brought himself close and united himself of your frailty and your weakness.

We just rehearsed for yourself in these moments the gospel by more than a conqueror. I am righteous I am able because he is and I'm in him