"From the Midst of a Bush" - Part V

Well, this morning we continue on in chapter 3. We've been in chapter 3 for quite a stretch by now, and we're treading as carefully as perhaps

Moses has been treading as he still is bowed down before the burning bush. The angel of the

Lord speaking out of the midst of that miraculous sight. And as we've said from the beginning, chapter 3 is primarily interested in God's revelation.

Not just the revelation of what God is going to do, but the revelation of God Himself. In other words,

God's self -revelation. Who is this God that is going to rescue the people of Israel out of the house of bondage?

Who is this God who's going to break them into the wilderness and cause them to worship

Him and lead them into a land flowing with milk and honey, into a land of blessedness, blessed by His presence?

Well, we've come now to verse 14. And with verse 14, we've come to one of the great mountaintops in the unfolding story of the

Old Testament. We've come to the revelation of God's name. We spent last Lord's Day talking about the divine name.

We've seen already the God who calls, the God who knows, the God who delivers, the

God who sends, and the God who is with us. And last week, with verse 14, we discussed the

God who is. We described God's aseity. In other words,

God is of Himself. God is pure being, not becoming.

There's no development or progress with God. God is utterly other than everything else that is, because everything else has its being in God, in Him.

Paul says in Acts 17, we live and we move and we have our being.

He is being. He is. And so he tells Moses, I am.

I am who I am. That is my name. I am.

As I mentioned last week, a little bit during interaction time, the actual phrase there in verse 14,

I am who I am, it's a little bit different than the divine name ever after, where we have

I am who I am in Hebrew. It's an imperfect tense. It could be translated as future.

And some translations prefer that. I will be who I will be. It's related to the verb haya, which is to be, the verb of being in Hebrew.

And what we have as the divine name is the third person form of that verb, Yahweh, if that's how it's pronounced,

Yahweh, which then becomes a noun ever after, becomes the proper name for God ever after.

And if you have your study Bible, when you come across Lord with all capital letters, you're looking at that divine name revealed here at the beginning of Exodus 3,

Yahweh, I am. Well, we spent some time last week talking about why this is the divine name.

It brings us to contemplate something about the incomprehensible nature of God.

Who is like the Lord, our God? We asked with the psalmist who is like this being from whom all things derive to whom all things are oriented, for whom all things exist.

Who is like this God who is not only the creator, but is being absolute being and everything else is becoming.

Everything else that has been made by him is utterly unlike him. Well, that's the divine name.

And we focused on that divinity, on that deity, on the very nature of God's being.

But I mentioned this debate that's ongoing about verse 14 and how other scholars prefer to call it the covenant name.

Now, it's not necessarily a division between the two. And in fact, I like to overlap them. I prefer to say the divine name.

But I also agree with everything that scholars want to say about why it is also the covenant name of God, because where it is used and how it is given to God's people, it is always in relation to his covenant promise.

And so this morning to to further develop the divine name, we want to look at the covenantal implications of that name.

And I don't think it'll be quite as technical as last week, but you should still probably have a pen at hand.

And I also want to show us how the fullness of that development of God's name, the fullness of that covenantal use of God's name takes us all the way to the gospel, all the way, particularly to the gospel of John and how

John articulates the divine name in the person and work of our Lord Jesus.

So that's all we're hoping to do this morning. We want to look at the covenant name and how Jesus is the great

I am. God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, this you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

Moreover, God said to Moses, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, the Lord God, that's

Yahweh, the Lord God, Yahweh Adonai of your fathers, the

God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

This is my name forever. This is my memorial to all generations. Go gather all of the elders of Israel together and say this to them.

The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob appeared to me saying, surely

I have visited you, seen what is done to you in Egypt, I have and I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the

Canaanites and the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hittites and the Jebusites to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Does that sound very repetitive to you? We read it all in full from verses one through 17 before we started.

Notice how often God is repeating his desire. He repeats his identity not only as the

Lord, but we moved our way from the Lord God, the God of your fathers, the

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the great I am. And then the great I am is sending him with the message that he is the

Lord of the fathers of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then he repeats that he has seen and known the afflictions of his people.

And then he repeats the the people that are dwelling in the land that he will bring to them. And he assures them that indeed he will bring them to that blessed land.

So all of this repetition is for emphasis. We read it and we say, well, why couldn't you underline it?

Why couldn't you highlight it and put it in bold or change the color of the font? Well, those things didn't exist. Of course, the way you repeat things in Hebrew is you repeat.

And so all of this is repetition. God is the one who's going to fulfill all that he is telling

Moses. We also see that God is the central character. Moses is not the central character of the book of Exodus.

God is the central character of the book of Exodus. And that's shown even here in chapter three.

This is what I'm going to do. This is what you shall say to the elders of Israel. The Lord God has sent me.

The Lord God has seen. The Lord God will send. Make no mistake about it, in other words, this will be the

Lord's doing marvelous in our sight. But then in terms of the narrative itself, this whole speech is proleptic.

Fancy word. It means it's drawing the reader to anticipate everything that will happen.

We have a preview of what the rest of the storyline of the Pentateuch is going to bring into fulfillment.

With verses 16 to 17, it's interesting. Moses isn't sent to the children of Israel in general.

He sent first and foremost to the elders of Israel. He sent to the leaders of the people.

Literally, the term in Hebrew is the bearded ones, which I find ironic, considering none of your elders have have beards, really maybe maybe a half a beard.

Certainly I'm not a bearded one. But Moses is sent to the bearded ones. He's sent to the elders.

These are the leaders of the people, the heads of the houses among the tribes of the people.

And Moses is first and foremost to go to these leaders. And he's to tell them the details of verses 16 through 17.

Notice that though God has called Moses as the mediator between God and his people, he also sends

Moses to the leaders of the people. Moses' leadership will need to be a mediated leadership.

And in order for these leaders to mediate the leadership of God through Moses, there's certain things they must understand about who

God is and what God is going to do. Only then can they faithfully and effectively lead

God's people. Do you know that's still the same case today? The leadership of God is a mediated leadership.

And only as the leaders have word from God and understand something of who God is and what

God is going to do, can they faithfully and effectively lead the people of God. So the design has not changed, though the mediator gloriously, the mediator has indeed changed.

But God's people are still led through mediated leaders. What do these leaders need to know in order for them to lead

God's people? It's another way of asking, what do the leaders need to know so that they can pass that on for the people to know?

Moses needs to know something. The leaders need to know what Moses knows and the people need to know what the leaders know.

It's the cascade of how God is going to move his people out of the land of Egypt through the land of wandering into the land of promise.

Well, there's four things that I see here in verses 16 and 17 that God wants

Moses to mediate to the leaders who then mediate it to the people. First, the

Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. The first thing that Moses is to give to these leaders is the identity of God in conjunction with the promises he had made to the fathers, to the patriarchs.

This reminds them of the fact that though for hundreds of years, 400 years, they've been dwelling in the land of Egypt, sore, afflicted and in bondage, nevertheless, they're part of the linear progression of God's promise.

There's a covenant that God has made with Abraham and he's affirmed it with Isaac and with Jacob.

And they're in that covenantal relationship with God. So the first thing they must know is this is the

Lord God of your fathers, the God of your history, the God of your lineage, the

God of the promises that I made, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And of course, it's also a reminder of what

God had told Abraham in Genesis 15, that indeed they would be afflicted for 400 years. And maybe this was the generation forgot 400 years is up.

What a reminder it would have been. The promise to Abraham may have been forgotten by them. It was not forgotten by God.

But also it gives these leaders a deep sense of God's abiding presence with his people.

I was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and I am your

God. You might not know who I am, but I've never lost sight of you. My presence has been with you all along.

This is my name forever. Second thing, I've surely visited you, seen what is done to you in Egypt.

This would have reminded the leaders that, though at times they felt that God was not near, that God was absent.

Indeed, he was near. He was a witness to their affliction and their groaning. His eye was upon them, his ear open to their cries.

It's a reminder that God is sympathetic to them as a father pitying his children. It recalls the language of Joseph at the end of Genesis 50, where Joseph on his deathbed says,

God will surely come to your aid. It's the same verb in Hebrew. I have visited you.

God will surely visit you. I have visited you. God said, I have known your sorrow.

I have seen your affliction. How meaningful that is coming from Joseph at the end of his life, when so much of his life had been wracked with suffering.

For him to say on his deathbed. The Lord God will visit you. He will be with you.

He will care for you. The people might have thought we've been in oppression now for 400 years.

Where is God and why would he allow this? And the leaders need to know that God is not aloof.

God is not absent. God is not arbitrarily unconcerned about their suffering. He is near.

He is a witness. And now the time has come for him to act. It's a way of saying, I know your sorrows.

Therefore, sit back and watch what I will do for you. And that brings us to the third point.

I will bring you out of the affliction of Egypt. It reminds these leaders that God is going to do a great work of deliverance.

They need to be patient and they need to trust him. Whatever Moses says, do. However bizarre and however urgent it seems, do it.

Trust that God is indeed bringing his people out of affliction. This is part of his promise.

This is part of his mercy. And the fourth and last thing that God sends Moses to teach these leaders is that he will bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

In other words, the promise given to Abraham remains a promise for them. And there still remains a rest for the people of God.

He promises them an inheritance, everlasting, a land. The fullness of their redemption here typified in the promise of the land.

God was going to deliver them into the land flowing with milk and honey. As we said, the imagery is in the place of wilderness where every drop of moisture and every green sprout is hard won.

To say it's flowing with milk and honey. Milk and honey are the costliest, most precious agricultural products.

That would be only if you had tremendous abundance and luxury and a lot of manpower and time to cultivate.

Could you ever dream of having milk and honey? That's not subsistence living. That's luxury living in ancient terms.

And God says this land will be flowing. It's a picture of a return to paradise in seed form.

Notice here, salvation is not only from something, but it's to something.

God doesn't say, I'm going to free you out of the house of affliction and then pat you on the back and say, have fun.

Good luck. See you around. He doesn't free us from the bondage of sin and say, well, it's been a ride.

I'm glad I could have helped you. Go marry on your way now. He hasn't really freed us from something until he's brought us all the way to something else.

Otherwise, we'll stumble right back into bondage, right back into misery and affliction. God's salvation is from bondage to blessing.

From the land of affliction to the land of Edenic presence. Salvation is from something to something.

From captivity and slavery to blessing and freedom to a land flowing with the goodness and fat of the earth.

The exit from Egypt already assumes an entrance into Canaan. And you want to know that as a believer.

God doesn't save people halfway. And there's a lot of people who want to name the name of Christ and they act as though Jesus was half a savior or a savior for half of life.

That's not the gospel. God doesn't deliver people halfway. He doesn't get them to the end of their crisis and then allow them to live for themselves ever after.

Jesus redeems his people all the way. He who began a good work in you, he completes it until the day.

It's not hard to imagine the elders receiving this from Moses. But they would need to continually remember these four things.

When the times were hard and the people were stubborn and Pharaoh was flexing his might and the people were coming clawing at the garments of the elders saying, we can't go on like this.

These leaders would have to remember Moses coming to them from the Lord God himself in theophanic presence and saying, this is the

Lord your God, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and his promise is sure.

He's known all your sorrow. He knows it still. And he's going to bring you out of your affliction.

Trust him as he moves because he is going to bring you to a land of promise.

They would have to constantly remember these four things and hold on to it tightly in their own minds and hearts so that the people could then hold on to it.

When they were wrestling and struggling with doubt, they could look to these leaders and say, whatever else is collapsing in my life,

I can't doubt this man is walking by faith and by God's grace, I'll walk by that same faith.

If he's willing to walk with God, if he will persevere in the Lord, then I will persevere in the

Lord as well. The other thing I see here is

God sent Moses essentially with a gospel message.

Moses going to these leaders in Egypt was Moses going and preaching the gospel in seed form.

Moses going with the gospel veiled, as it were, because that's what the storyline of Exodus is.

It's the gospel veiled, the gospel in miniature. And so he comes with a very good news of God, that he's not ignorant to the suffering.

And indeed, he's going to act and deliver and bring the people into a land of his presence. That's the gospel in seed form.

But notice that the whole gospel begins with God himself.

The first thing the leaders of the people must know is the first thing the people must know.

This is the Lord your God. This is Yahweh.

This is the great I am. The opening of the gospel is

God himself. The gospel is God himself. The great I am, who knows his people's bondage, who delivers them from their affliction, who leads them all the way into the security of his presence evermore.

That is the gospel. Well, we've already seen the prominence of the divine name, the divine being in the burning bush.

God's name is echoing back to his presence. This is thematic for the book of Exodus. God is going to establish his presence with the people.

How does he do that? In the glory cloud descending upon the tabernacle. It's the bookend to the book of Exodus.

God's glory dwelling in the midst of his people Israel. And how does he often recall that?

I will cause my name to dwell among them. The people who have been called by my name will have the presence of my name.

His name is, in other words, a variation on his presence. To speak of God's name is to speak of his presence.

And so the great I am emanating from the bush is also this picture of God's fiery presence dwelling in the midst of this vulnerable bramble of his people.

Yet they are not consumed. And so this is where we begin to see all these covenantal implications flow.

We began last week with the divine self -sufficiency of God. And now we see that self -sufficiency, that utter pure being of the incomprehensible

God turned toward his people in this condescending, intimate, covenantal way.

All of this corresponds to his name. The promised blessing to Abraham, which is here promised to the leaders of Israel at the end of Exodus.

This is all corresponding to his name. Think of the Aaronic blessing.

Number six, we close many services with this great benediction. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and his sons saying, this is the way you shall bless the children of Israel.

All right, again, you leaders mediating the leadership of God, this is how you will bless, encourage, comfort, remind, exhort the people of God.

This is how you will bless them. Say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

That's the Lord, that's Yahweh, that's the great I Am three times. So you have enigmatically this fullness of the divine name within the

Aaronic blessing. And what does he say? In this way you shall put my name on the children of Israel.

So the Lord's blessing, his presence, his desire for his people is another way of saying his name is put on his people.

Think of the prologue to the Ten Commandments. We'll be there sometime next year, probably, Exodus 20, verse two.

I am the Lord, Yahweh, I am. I am the

Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

You see, it begins with God himself. The Lord is with his people to redeem them.

Yahweh reveals first and foremost his mysterious being. I am who

I am. But then in developing all of the covenantal promise and the knowledge and compassion he has on his people and his plan to deliver them from affliction and his purpose to take them into a land forever.

That means that the aseity becomes relational. In other words, the divine name becomes the covenant name.

As Bruce Waltke puts it beautifully, I am who

I am for you. From who I am in myself to who

I am for you. That's what we see as we progress through the book of Exodus.

We begin with God's self -sufficiency, his utter otherness, his transcendence. Who is like the

Lord our God? But then that same God becomes near to us. His presence is imminent.

He is Immanuel, God with us. The God who is becomes the

God who is for us. Taken together, we see the ultimate exodus from the ultimate bondage.

This is how the great I am rescues and redeems his people. And ultimately, this takes us to the very end of the storyline.

We hear the leaders gaining a report of a faithful God, a promise -making and keeping

God who knows their affliction, who leads them out of bondage and takes them into the place of everlasting blessedness.

As we said, that's the gospel in miniature. Isn't that the storyline of the gospel all the way to the book of Revelation?

Is the book of Revelation not highlighting the God who knows his people's afflictions, who delivers them out of those afflictions and secures them in the place of everlasting blessing?

Unlike this miniature, the fullness promises a place where there'll be no more tears, no more affliction, no more tragedy, no more heartbreak, no more sorrow, no more

Satan, no more debauchery, no more defilement, no more stains, no more decay.

God's people raised in glory, though scarred, though tears washed from their cheeks.

Is sin and sorrow ever more banished coming to the goodly land by the nail -pierced hand of the goodly shepherd who laid his life down for his sheep and says,

Revelation 21, behold, I make everything new. And as I was reminded from a professor giving a lecture on the book of Revelation, Sean McDonough, when he says he makes everything new, time and all that comes with time comes full circle.

He doesn't break time and enter a new linear mode of progression. We don't enter into a timeless estate.

Otherwise, the scars on the glorified Son of God aren't there. So I love how he puts this.

He said, for this reason, I don't like to say that God is timeless, though he's distinct from time because he's eternal, the eternality of God.

But he's not timeless, he's time full. He comprehends all time.

And John seems to want to make that point very clearly. He is the end and the beginning. He is the

Alpha and the Omega. He is time in completion. No wonder the glorified

Son that welcomes us into the land everlasting is the scarred Son, is the one who looks like a slain lamb, though he is the

Lion of Judah. No wonder tears are wiped away as we enter in to a chorus of blessedness.

And all of the memories through all of the time and all of the afflictions and groanings of God's people become the topsoil of endless praise at the wonders of why we were led into this feast when thousands made a wretched choice and chose rather to starve than to come.

And what I love about John in the book of Revelation is he wants us always to remember that behind all of the cascading drama of redemption is the

God who is. I am the Living One at the very beginning of Revelation 1, verse 18.

And then we get to the very end of the book. Behold, the angel says, the dwelling of God is with man and he will dwell with them and they shall be his people and God himself will be with them and be their

God. Does that sound like Exodus to you? It certainly does to me. It's Revelation 21, 3. And then in chapter 22, the very end, there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the

Lamb shall be in it. His servants shall serve him. Does that sound like Exodus to you? It does to me.

Let my people go that they may serve me. They shall see his face.

His name shall be on their foreheads. Does that sound like Exodus to you? It certainly does to me.

That high priestly frontlet. Holiness unto the Lord. His name on their foreheads.

It's a way of saying their identity completely subsumed in his being. I belong to the great.

I am holy unto him. And there's no night there. No need for lamp or light of the sun.

The Lord gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever.

So behind the great tidal push and pull of this cascading drama of redemption, which takes these violent swings like the drowning of little

Israelite boys in the Nile River or the massacre of the innocents, or the very leaders that were meant to embrace the promised

Messiah, rejecting him and forcing him over to be crucified. These great violent swings of redemption throughout history and all the idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of time.

Behind it all is the God who is. Behold, I am coming quickly.

My reward is with me to give everyone according to their work. I am the alpha, the omega, the beginning, the end, the first and the last.

Behind it all is God himself. So how then does this draw us out of Exodus into the very story of the

Gospel? How do we get from the burning bush to the empty tomb?

Well, we have this theophany of the burning bush. It's where Moses is as we're sitting in Exodus chapter 3. And the way that we should think about theophany is always some significant revelation of God's self or God's desire to redeem his people.

Little Herman Bovink again, I've been still reading him and enjoying him, and he had this to say about theophany.

Special revelation in the days of the Old Testament is the history of the coming of Christ.

It's very insightful. I'll repeat it and keep going. Special revelation in the days of the Old Testament is the history of the coming of Christ.

We saw that in Genesis and we're still pursuing it in Exodus. It begins with the great promise of the serpent crushing seed of the woman in Genesis 3 .15.

And we pursue the coming of this promised one ever after until the fullness of time.

Theophany, prophecy, miracle, they all point toward Him. They all reach their fulfillment in Him.

He is the manifestation, the word, the servant of God. It is especially as the messenger of God that God himself is present to his people, the angel messenger of the covenant from Malachi.

This theophany reaches its climax in Christ, who is the messenger, who is the word, who is the image, who is the son of God, in whom

God is fully revealed and fully given. Do you see what Bovink is getting at? All these theophanies are revealing something about God, something about how he will redeem.

It's veiled and it's mysterious, but it leads us from Genesis 3 .15 by further steps until we come to the full realization of God's presence in the person of Jesus himself.

Jesus is, in that sense, the fullness of theophany, because Jesus is the revelation of God utterly.

This is not anything like a burning bush or any other angel that's mysterious and comes somewhat enigmatically through the narrative.

Jesus is the express image of God. Jesus is the word of God. In Jesus, the fullness of the

Godhead is made manifest. In John's gospel, we read it from Revelation.

John's gospel is especially interested in presenting

Jesus to you in this way. John's gospel, as perhaps you know, is wildly different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke have so much common material between them, we call them the synoptic gospels.

Syn with, they look the same, synoptic. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then there's the awkward cousin

John, because John's writing the gospel in a very different way, because the gospel is not merely a biography of who

Jesus is and what he did, and it's not simply a theological account either. It's sort of this hybrid.

There's no one genre that absolutely fits it, and so it's sort of its own thing.

And that's why, from the very beginning, the gospels were known as the gospel according to Matthew, the gospel according to John.

So even the book itself is not the gospel, but within that book is the gospel, the gospel according to these eyewitnesses, whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

And John, in his uniqueness, is especially interested from the very beginning of causing you to encounter the

Lord Jesus in surprising ways in light of the promise and fulfillment structure of the

Old Testament. And so how does John's gospel begin? With the beginning.

Where does John go to begin his gospel? Genesis 1 -1. In the beginning, it's meant to draw us right back to the whole storyline of God.

And we begin there with God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. How does

John's gospel begin? In the beginning, God. And who is this God?

It's the Word of God who is God. John's gospel then extends from Genesis right to Exodus.

And arguably, Exodus is one of the main inputs in the gospel of John.

So I hope as you read and as we work through the book of Exodus, we'll have many opportunities to see that.

That John is drawing all sorts of material and creating all sorts of allusions to the story and the frame of Exodus, especially in chapter 1,

Exodus 34. We have these echoes of the tenting glory of the

Word of God. The tabernacling presence of Jesus. He tabernacled among us,

John says. We saw His glory. The contrast is made between Jesus and Moses.

Here's the great mediator of God's presence to His people in the Old Testament. Moses. Shining face and all.

The law came through Moses. That's not a dig. That's how holy is this man that he was given the divine law.

But grace and truth came through Jesus. Full of grace and truth.

And that's itself drawing from Exodus 34. God reveals His name as full of loving kindness and truth.

Full of chesed, loving kindness, covenant fidelity and truth.

And John, in his own way, translates that. Jesus, full of grace and truth. So from the very beginning,

John says, if you want to know something about who this Jesus is as you're reading my gospel, look very carefully at Exodus 3 and following.

Look at the great I Am who is the very being of God Himself and all that He is for His people and run that through my gospel.

Now, how does he do that? Well, he gives you a series of what we could call absolute

I Am saying. Where it's very clear that Jesus is referring to Himself with the divine name.

And I'll explain that momentarily. But then he also develops that I Am name by giving certain attributes or a predicate to that name.

So we could begin in John 4, but probably the best place to begin is John 8, verse 58.

At first glance, this is the most obvious recognizable way that Jesus asserts

His identity as God, the great I Am. John 8, 58. Truly, truly.

Remember, this is formulaic for Jesus. It's a way of showing the emphasis. Don't read past this too quickly.

Slow down and perk your ears. Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was

I Am. Now, you're waiting.

You are what? Just like Moses was waiting for, you are what? But the text simply says, before Abraham was

I Am. Jesus is identifying Himself as the

I Am. Jesus says, not just in the bush, but before Moses.

And in fact, before Abraham. In fact, John 1, from the very beginning, I Am. Now, how do we know that Jesus was making a claim of divine identity?

Well, if you read the very next verse, the Jews want to kill Him. And as we read on, as He's continuing to teach, they say, this is chapter 10, 33.

For a good work we do not stone you. For blasphemy, you being a man, make yourself out to be

God. So they recognize what Jesus is saying when He says, I Am.

He's saying, I Am God. I Am who

I Am. This is the clearest example of an absolute

I Am saying. Not so subtly asserting that if you want to understand who

Jesus is, He's not a mere man. He is God Himself in the flesh. He is the great

I Am. There's several other places where the I Am is still absolute, but less clear.

One of the interesting things about the Greek language is you can use pronouns, but they're entirely unnecessary.

The pronoun or the idea of the subject is embedded within the verb itself. But whenever Jesus refers to Himself with an

I Am statement that seems to be absolute, He always uses a pronoun, which, again, is unnecessary.

You could just say, a me, it means I Am. But He says, ego a me, I Am. It's the same translation.

So we read right past it. But it seems to be very significant because that's how the

Greek translation of the Hebrew would relate the divine name, ego a me, I Am.

And so Jesus, in John's gospel, John is highlighting his teaching in a way that Jesus truly is the great

I Am. And then we move from the absolute sayings to the predicate sayings, where Jesus says, not just who

I am in myself, pure being, God eternal and infinite, but who

I am for you. That's what we've seen in Exodus 3, isn't it? We began with God, who

He is in Himself. And then as we move through the remainder of the chapter, who God is for His people.

And so in John's gospel, the same structure is preserved. Who is Jesus? He's the great I Am.

And then He describes what the great I Am is for His people. And so you have seven sayings.

That would be a way a Hebraic thinker would understand significance. Pattern of seven, a pattern of fullness.

There's seven I Am sayings where Jesus predicates something about His relationship to His people.

Seven sayings where Jesus says, I am. Let's gallop through them quickly.

First, in John 6, verse 35, Jesus says, I am the bread of life.

You'll notice with these I Am sayings that they almost always come out of a context where people have their focus on the wrong thing.

Perhaps they're faintly following Jesus, but then they're disturbed or unsettled by something happening to them or unfolding before them.

And it seems to be these moments when Jesus relates His I Am saying as a way of drawing their focus back to Himself and His great purpose for them.

So we begin with the bread of life and the context there is stomachs are hungry and the people are ready to leave.

People who are eager for manna to fall from heaven, perhaps, if we go back to the Exodus storyline.

But here Jesus says, I am the bread of life. John 6, 35, whoever comes to me will never hunger.

Whoever believes in me will never thirst. This is developed later on in the same chapter.

The bread that comes down from heaven, a reference again to the wilderness wanderings, a man can eat thereof and not die.

I am the living bread which comes from heaven. If any man eats of this bread, he will live forever.

The bread which I give is my flesh and I give it for the life of the world. And I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the

Son of Man, unless you drink the blood, you have no life in you. For whoever eats my flesh, drinks my blood, has eternal life, and I will raise him up on that last day.

So Jesus, first and foremost, presents himself to his people as the bread of life.

Here we have conceptually that which is necessary for sustenance.

If you don't eat, you can't live. The people would have died in the wilderness unless God had provided for them from heaven.

They could not eat sand. They could not do anything to provide for themselves. Their only choice was to starve and die unless God intervened to provide for them, unless something came down from heaven to give them sustenance and preserve their life.

And it had to be from God and not from them. It had to be from heaven and not from the ground up.

Jesus says, that's who I am. I'm the one that comes from heaven so that you don't perish in the way.

I'm the one who gives you sustenance and preserves your life. I had to come because you couldn't draw yourself up.

You couldn't muster anything up. I had to be sent to you. I am the bread of life. John 8, 12,

I am the light of the world. This is going back to the beginning of John's gospel.

He has this marvelous interplay of light and darkness. Men love darkness rather than light.

That's all coming out of this Genesis illusion that he begins with in the beginning. What was in the beginning?

Darkness. And so John is drawing out these creational images and it runs throughout the whole gospel.

And it comes here in John 8, this great discourse of how Jesus is the light of the world.

We're to understand darkness, of course, not as material darkness, but as moral darkness.

And Jesus says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.

As long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world. Jesus is still the light of the world, though he is not in the world presently in a human body.

He is the light of the world through his spiritual body on the earth, through the church.

The church is not to be hiding under a bushel. The church is light because the church is the body of Christ.

Christ is the light. Jesus says, I am the light of the world. John 10, verse 7,

I am the door. Verily, verily,

I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. The gate, some translations would say. Whoever came before me were thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear them.

I am the door. And if anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go out and find pasture.

This is, again, going back to Exodus and this imagery of Moses shepherding

God's people through the wilderness, leading them through the door or through the gate, as it were, into the promised land.

And Jesus says, I am the door. I lead my flock safely from a place of peril into a place of peace.

And then he develops this even further. I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

Could you ever imagine a shepherd giving his life for his sheep? Wouldn't it be absurd?

Shepherds, of course, slaughter their sheep, right? They raise them for wool and other products, and at some point also for meat.

Could you imagine a shepherd just being so troubled of heart, his little beloved sheep there, and he just says, you know what?

I'm going to put myself through the slaughterhouse. I can't bear to see this little sheep. And the sheep kind of dumbly walks away, ignorant to this great sacrifice.

If we think that comparison is ridiculous, how much more incomprehensible is the sacrifice of the

Son for us while we were yet enemies? He says,

I give my life for the sheep. I know my sheep. God says,

I know my people's afflictions. I will deliver them out of affliction. I lay my life down for the sheep, he says.

I am the resurrection, John 11, 25. Of course,

Lazarus's death brought all of these great questions and longings to mind, even though they had great hope that Lazarus would be resurrected and they would dwell with him again.

The sorrow of him parting took their minds away from the Lord who was with them and they became engulfed in the sorrow of this loss.

So it was so fresh, just a few days old. And when that meek, sorrowful, perhaps with a tinge of bitterness, though still modest, charge came,

Lord, he would still be alive if you had just come. But I know

I'll see him at the resurrection. And Jesus corrects him. Martha, I am the resurrection.

I am the life. And whoever believes in me, even though he's dead, he will live.

And so the gospel comes to those who are dead, dead in trespass and sin, dead toward God.

Wasted bones from Ezekiel 37, bleached under the sun out in the wilderness.

Can these bones live? You know, Lord, Jesus says,

I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth and the life.

John 14, 6. And here we again see the context. It's Thomas doubting.

Thomas is ever the doubter, isn't he? Still doubting even here, before and after the resurrection.

Thomas says here, Lord, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? You said you want us to follow you and we're willing, but we don't know what that's going to entail.

We don't know if we can trust you. I don't know if I can commit my whole life to you. I don't know what you're going to do with my life.

And Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.

If you had known me, you would know my father also. And from now on, you do know him. You have seen him.

So notice again, the I am saying is a confirmation that Jesus is the great I am.

You have seen the I am when you've seen me. You have heard from the I am when you've heard from me. And then the seventh and last saying,

I am the vine. John 15, I am the vine. You are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit. And apart from me, you can do nothing.

So you have images of this relationship God has with his people, who he is in himself, the great self -sufficient, self -existing of himself

God, time full and infinite and who he is toward us.

And we have images of initiation, the door, the way, speaking of process, divine, speaking of communion, of an abiding presence.

And what strikes me in every single one of these things is Jesus never says, I am like bread.

I am like a resurrection. I am like a door. I am like a way.

Jesus never says that because these are not mere metaphors. How deep do we have to go with the logic of creation here?

It's as though Jesus is saying the fact that my father designed sheep to function and have the needs that they do by way of shepherds was all so that you could understand something about me and my relationship to you.

And therefore, I am not like a shepherd. I am the shepherd. I am that which the concept of shepherding exists to depict.

The fact that there's places of danger and peril that can be blocked off from places of security and peace, that very function and dynamic exists to depict something of who

I am for you. I am the door. I am the way. I am the life.

I am the truth. I am who I am for you. The absolute

I am statements developing in his relationship toward his people, just like Exodus three begins with I am who

I am. And by the time we get to Exodus 33 and 34, it's I am the Lord, gracious and compassionate.

And he begins to unload and explicate all that he is for his people. This is what

John's gospel is doing. So then how do we apply this? Well, let me take you back to John eight a little before the great

I am as we come to a close with application. Who God is and who

God is for us, Jesus being presented in John's gospel, the great

I am and all that he is for his people, all those great I am sayings that we saw.

But, you know, the most significant one that at least I see here for some of you sitting here this morning is this.

John eight, 24. I said to you, you will die in your sins.

If you do not believe that I am. You will die in your sin.

There was a biography of Martyn Lloyd -Jones I read some years ago, and there was a little CD in the back cover, and I used to pop it into my

Mazda six on the ride to work day after day after day. And it was a 50 minute sermon from John eight, 24.

Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

The gospel is proclaimed, the invitation goes out. The Lord Jesus and his disciple

John have already been presenting who Jesus is, showing us who he is in himself, who he is for his people.

And John's in light of that saying, as you encounter this, this Lord, this word of God, this good shepherd, the sacrificial lamb, the

Passover, everything that Jesus is. When you encounter him, you must remember what

I've been showing you all along, not just who he is to his people, but who you must be to him.

You must be born again, he says in John three. From the very beginning, he's highlighting the fact that you are separated from this blessed one.

He is not the I am for you unless you have repented and believed, unless you believe that he is.

You will die in your sin. All the father gives to me will come to me, he says.

The will of the father who sent me is that of all he has given me, I should lose none. I will raise them on the last day.

When John is writing his gospel, he's constantly getting at this. What does he say?

Why does he say he wrote his gospel? We get it from John, the very end in chapter 20.

He says, these things I have written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.

And what's that name? I am. I am who

I am. I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the resurrection. I am the shepherd who laid his life down for his sheep.

When they were enemies. When they were stains and revilers and blasphemers,

I put myself through the slaughterhouse of wrath so that all the father would give to me would come to me because I'm the resurrection and the life.

I see their affliction and I will lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Friend, if you do not believe that he is, you will die in your sins.

Do not say, am I elect? Have I been born again? John's not interested in for you, for you asking those questions.

How do I know that I'm elect? What are the signs of whether or not I've been born again? Let me passively sit and wait upon the signs.

Do you know what John encourages you to do? What the whole Bible encourages you to do? Repent and believe.

Turn around and forsake from your sins, from your rebellion, from your hardness of heart.

Cry out to be saved like an Israelite slave in Egypt. Say, deliver me,

God. Believe that Jesus is.

Believe that he is the great I am, that he is the Messiah, that he is the Son of God, that believing you may have life in his name.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that Jesus is who he said he is?

Who the gospel of John says he is? Who the book of Exodus says he is? Who the whole

Bible says he is? Who all of his people say he is? Do you believe that Jesus is?

How can we know the way? No one comes to the Father except through me.

What does Zephaniah say in Zephaniah 3? The Lord's name is a mighty tower. It's a strong refuge for the humble.

Therefore, I said to you, you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

The I am is the eternal word by whom the heavens were made. All things made through him.

Without him, nothing was made that was made. In him was life and the life and the light of men.

This is him who in the beginning laid the foundations of the earth. The heavens are the handiwork of his hands.

Remember in Isaiah, he saw the glory of Christ and he spoke of him. The one in whom

Godhead is made known, theophany in fullness. This one who calls from Isaiah 45, understanding it's him there.

Look to me and be saved. All you ends of the earth for I am God. I am and there is no other.

Let's pray. Father, there's certainly believers here who gladly, zealously praise you this morning.

There's believers here who are weak and say, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. Surely there are unbelievers here as well.

And as it stands this morning, they will die in their sins.

Let us all believe upon you rightly. Lord, may we all repent and believe in whatever circumstance or state we find ourselves this morning.

Let us look to the one who is life. The one who has overcome death, the one who is the resurrection, who is the way, the life and the truth.

Help us, Lord, to understand first and foremost who you are to us so that then we can go even further and deeper into the great mystery of who you are in yourself, that which is bottomless and fathomless, that we may be lost in the wonder of your mercy and love.

Save your people, Lord. Bring us out of the house of bondage.

Hear our groanings and our sighs. Deliver us from the sins, Lord. That so easily entangle us.

Perhaps there's a believer here, Lord, with foxes in the vineyards, so easily besetting and bewitching sins.

Lord, save them. Don't let those offenses stack up into hardness and backsliding.

And then, Lord, the great sins, for we all compliment and flatter our sinfulness. Show us the guilt of our sinfulness,

Lord, as we'll see even tonight studying the confession. Show us the sad state of our nature and therefore the power and the glory of your redemption.

For all who call upon you shall be saved in this very way. We pray in your name.