God Says, I Am the LORD

God says, "I Am the LORD!" Exodus 6:2-8 091414M In seeking customer service, there is an old saying, "Go to the head of the stream to muddy the water." How would you explain that? "Go to the head boss if you want to get something done." Of course, when it comes to the world--the entire universe, actually--that would be God. Is that all God is saying in our lesson today? He's the boss? No, there's much more than that when: God Says, "I Am the LORD!" 1. The God who reveals himself. 2. The God who seeks to save. 3. The God who is always faithful. 1. Everyone is born with a certain natural knowledge of God that tells them in some form a god exists. You have to learn how to tune out that "voice" inside you in order to be an atheist or an agnostic. You just know that a supreme being of some kind is responsible for all that exists, to whom all people are responsible. But when God says, "I am the LORD!" he means so much more than that. First, he is The God who reveals himself.

We already said God reveals himself in the human conscience and in the works of creation. All this had to come from somewhere; YOU had to come from some divine intelligence. Therefore, there is a commonness to all religions in that there is a god to whom all people know they're accountable. The common denominator of the world religions is that you're accountable to a god to whom you must prove yourself, either by being good, doing good, keeping certain "pillars" of faith as in Islam, or meditating to purify your mind, heart and life of anything that might offend him, as in Hinduism. You just KNOW you're accountable to him, and if you measure up, he might be nice to you in life and after life; if not, well...who knows?

Of course, the problem is that nobody CAN measure up. So there's always doubt as to where you stand with God, at least with the natural knowledge of God. It's not complete; sin clouded that understanding. That's why God chose to reveal himself to human beings. One of the overarching themes of the Bible is that God reveals himself by concealing himself. He reveals his name to human beings. He does that in his Word. And, as we hear in our lesson, that "name" is far more than just "God": 2 God also said to Moses, “I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty,[a] but by my name the LORD[b] I did not make myself fully known to them.

There's a problem here however. God DID reveal himself as the Lord to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. FULLY known, perhaps not, as he did with Moses when he actually appeared in his glory. But a different legitimate translation could go this way: And by the name of the Lord did I not make myself known to them? God explained his name "The Lord" more fully to Moses at the burning bush when he revealed himself as "I Am Who I Am," and to tell the Israelites "I AM" has sent me to you. God is sheer existence, totally independent of everyone and everything, who is just when it comes to sin, yet chooses to be forgiving and merciful. He preached to Moses that he is: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished...." In other words, he is the Savior-God, something you could never know by nature.

God revealed himself in this way not only to his Old Testament people, but also to you and me. He loves fallen humanity. He cares. He wants to be intimately involved in your life. For all the other religions where you somehow have to appease God, and it's what you have to do for him, God is cold and impersonal, like a computer. Press the right key, the right thing happens. Press the wrong one, you're out. Be nice to God and others, maybe God will be nice to you. If bad things happen to you, you have to wonder whether or not you've been good enough to God or to others. And as for the after life, well, who knows? Hopefully you did enough cumulative good to trip the trigger to some utopia of some kind. Of course, there's a problem with all of that. People's consciences reveal they HAVEN'T done enough good to appease God. They know they DON'T deserve God's favor. So they thrust ourselves to his mercy. Maybe, just maybe he'll have a compassionate heart. In his name, the LORD, God reveals he HAS had a compassionate heart. That's the unique thing the true God reveals about himself.

2. When God says "I Am the Lord," it means he is The God who seeks to save. The theme of "deliverance" is one that runs through the whole Bible. God raised up for himself a special race of people, the Israelites, from whom the Deliverer from sin and death would come. And so he continually delivered his people.

Even when they were in slavery in Egypt at Moses time, God heard the misery of his oppressed people, and he promised to deliver them: 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

God spoke these words to Moses and the Israelites before the ten plagues came on Egypt, before the Passover with its plague of death, before the crossing of the Red Sea on dry land, and before the covenant given at Mount Sinai. But God would deliver his people. Why? Because of the great deliverance he would bring to the world through them in the Savior. They were his people of promise. If they didn't return to the Promised Land in Canaan, the Savior couldn't come from there as he foretold. So God delivered his people, a picture of the ultimate deliverance he would bring through the Savior who would one day come.

We have the privilege of seeing how God delivered his people again and again, and ultimately kept the promise of the Savior. We know how he came from Bethlehem in Judea, how he did miracles in Galilee of the Gentiles to prove he was God in the flesh. We know how he faced the temptations of Satan without batting an eye, and how he was forsaken by God on the cross and died for the sin of the whole world. We know how he arose from the grave, led the festal procession through the halls of hell, and ascended into heaven from where he will return to take those who put their confidence in him home. Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this Savior God who still seeks to save people. He saved you and me! He burst into our lives without our invitation when we were baptized into his name. He delivered us from sin and death by his death on the cross and his resurrection. He answers our continual prayer, "Deliver us from evil" by either keeping evil from us, turning it into something good for our ultimate benefit, or giving us strength to endure to make us stronger in faith. And he will deliver us from all evil when he takes us home to heaven, and raises us from our graves on the last day. He still seeks to save people, intimately involved in our lives.

3. That's how we know that when God says "I am the Lord," it means He is the God who is always faithful. He keeps all his promises. Another word for a solemn promise is a covenant, the word God uses in our lesson: 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. 8 ...And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’” Here God is restating the promise he made to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Bringing his people to the Promised Land was part of the promise of the Messiah or Savior. Notice how serious God was: he swore "with uplifted hand" to give the land to his people. We still do that when we take oaths. In court, or at an inauguration, the official says to the person making the promise, "Raise your right hand." It's a symbol the person means what they're promising. So with God. He promised and he delivered. So God's people could count on him to keep all his promises.

Including his people today. You and I don't always keep our promises. We promise our time, we promise to do things for people, we promise to pray for others, parents promise things to their kids, and often we fall short. With God, we promise to uphold our marriage vows, we promise we're going to be faithful to him and his Word, we promise to amend our sinful lives after we fall and he picks us up, and again...we fall short. Not God. That he kept the promise of the land and the Savior shows us that he keeps his promises to us: to forgive our sins in Jesus, to make things work out for our good, to be with us all the time, to take us to heaven when we die, to raise us from our graves in the end, and so on. God is faithful and will remain faithful. And that's what he reveals about himself.

So go to the head of the stream to muddy the waters of customer service. Go to the boss. And so it is with God, who is more than boss of the world. He's the Savior of the world. He reveals himself as such when he says, "I am the Lord." Praise God that in Christ, his Son, our Savior, you truly know God! Amen. Exodus 6:2-8 God Says, "I Am the LORD!" 1. The God who reveals himself. 2. The God who seeks to save. 3. The God who is always faithful.

2 God also said to Moses, “I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty,[a] but by my name the LORD[b] I did not make myself fully known to them.

And by the name of the Lord did I not make myself known to them?

“The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished...."

: 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. 8 ...And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’”