Speak the Name

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

I am super excited about this—such a powerful image. The awe of what Moses would have seen when he turned the corner to see the blaze upon this bush. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Before we get started, and unfortunately I don't have a slide, you can write it down and come back to the video and review. I want to list three huge resources that are super friendly for you —just pick up their books and start reading. Great scholars. One is Dr. Carmen Ames. She recently released a book based on her dissertation called *Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters*. And she is a believer and her book is absolutely amazing and I think everybody should get it.

It was a great resource for this message and the next few messages over the next few weeks. Another great scholar is Christopher Wright, W-R-I-G-H-T. He has a book—a big book—called *The Mission of God*, and it is absolutely amazing. And the third one is Dr. Michael Heiser. He wrote a book called *The Unseen Realm*. I think some of you guys have already checked that out. He also has a podcast called *The Naked Bible Podcast*, which is really interesting. So check that out. These are a couple of the resources that I use to try to put into scope this message today.

Three Great Scholars

So as we start out a new cycle, a new year in our calendar, I felt compelled to refocus on a direction and to get a good foundation to start the year out. That's always a good idea. A good launching pad because it's so easy to get distracted with life—with the news that pops on and is just completely fear-driven because that's what keeps us glued to the TV. So we're always worrying about something going on in the world. Politics—I know we're not in a time period right now where any of us are preoccupied with politics. Kids aren't distracting at all. They suck the life out of it. Marriage, right? There are things in our life, and the reason why they're distractions is because they're also priorities, right? They're also priorities. And sometimes it's too easy to jump on these priorities, but to allow our faith and the mission of our faith to kind of fall by the wayside.

Refocusing Our Foundation

So this week I wanted to read a section of the story of the Bible—not where God is introduced, but where God introduces himself. And this is a section of the narrative that has many educated opinions concerning the Hebrew language, but it also carries with it tremendous implications for us all as the readers. We know from Genesis 1 who this God is. We know who he is. But now in this section of the story, we get a first-person glimpse of who this God is to us. So we're going to kind of orbit around Exodus chapter 3. Go ahead and turn on your Bibles or turn with me to Exodus chapter 3. Go ahead and get there.

And if you're unfamiliar with the background of the story here, I will fill you in. In Genesis 1 and 2, God is introduced as pursuing a relationship with mankind. And how does he pursue this relationship with the opening chapter of the Bible? He creates a place where he can dwell with mankind. Pretty straightforward. He creates this world where mankind can dwell and he can dwell with them and where they can live as his image bearers, imaging him throughout creation, imaging him throughout the world. And their job is to go out into the world and produce even more image bearers. And this allows God's love and grace and mercy and creation to flourish through them.

That was the job of mankind in Genesis 1. Man was given a task to continue creation, continue administering God's kingdom and God's character within creation. The Bible starts out with a garden and it ends with what? A huge city, a magnificent city. There's an evolution that takes place with God's will going forth. And it expands to fill the entire earth as Zechariah 2 pictures it. But what happens? Mankind succeeds. Mankind fails, choosing their own wills apart from God's direction and wisdom. Violence breaks forth right after. All of creation is undone. A reset button is hit with the flood. And a new Eden comes into the story with a new type of Adam having dominion over the animals in the ark, right, between the waters.

From Garden to Exile

But this new type of Adam leaves the ark. He's going out to carry out the vocation given to mankind. Here we go. And he goes into his vineyard and he eats the fruit, just like Adam and Eve did, and he falls. Corruption continues to thrive. The Tower of Babel raises up. Then in Genesis 12, the narrative goes from this macro view of all of creation and world events and flood and all these things, and it zooms into this one family, this one man, Abram. This is the man that God is going to choose to begin the restoration back to this Edenic place in Genesis 1. The rest of Genesis is about his family and their journey and the drama within it.

And finally, after 50 chapters of this story, the first book of the Bible ends with the descendants of Abraham thriving and succeeding in the land of Egypt. Now you're caught up. We turn the page. And what do we find? Are the Israelites still thriving and they're ruling over Egypt and they're living the bougie life in Egypt? No, no. Things have become quite bad for them. The beast of Egypt has grown into this huge political powerhouse, now having so much power, but also having so much to lose. And so what does any nation do that has too much to lose? They need to set up some security measures, insurance, right?

The Cry of the Enslaved

Pharaoh, scared of the growing Israelite population, started murdering the children. Not only that, Pharaoh began to burden the Israelites, enslaving them to build his big cities, making their lives harsh, exploiting them. So they cry out to God. And this story kind of sets the template for the rest of Scripture, a pattern in which we see vulnerable people crying out to God, God hearing their cries, God redeeming them, and then God judging their oppressors. This is the same template that later in the story of the Bible is actually laid back on Israel, right? After Israel goes into the land, they become very powerful, they build their nation.

Well, they also begin to seek riches and they begin to exploit the weaker nations around them. They begin to enslave the weaker people around them and these people cry out. King Solomon profits off selling weapons of war to other nations, exporting them from Egypt up to Anatolia. He's a warlord now, repeating the cycle and fueling the cycle for more violence throughout the world. Israel becomes the expansion of the beast that we see in Egypt. They become Egypt. And the cries of the poor go up, as Amos says and Isaiah says, the vulnerable and the weak, and it prompts God's judgment to come and send Israel into exile through the Assyrians and through Babylon.

God Remembers His Covenant

It is the cries of the poor and the weak and the neglected, the vulnerable, the broken people overwhelmed by the result of sin in the world and in their own lives that prompt Yeshua to usher in the vision of Isaiah's new heaven, new earth, the kingdom of God coming about, redeeming them, and God's wrath being poured out on sin and death through his flesh on the cross, as Paul puts it. So Israel is crying out in Exodus 3 to God amidst slavery to Pharaoh. Does God hear their cries? End of chapter 2. Yes. Israel cried out for help because of their slavery, and God heard their cries. It says that God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God remembered. Why is that significant? His covenant. See, we would expect in the story, if we were writing the story, I'm sure I would say like, God felt sorry for them, so he wanted to help. Or God yearned to help them because it's who he is. No, it just says God remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the reason scripture puts it this way is because the story here is stating that God remembered who he was. Not that he had to do something, not that he was forced—he didn't have to. No. He remembers what his promise was. He remembers what his mission was. It wasn't simply like, oh, now I have to stop everything because I'm in chains to this promise.

No, it's the fact that he remembers the promise and the mission of Genesis 1, and it was through Abraham that he committed that this mission, his mission, was going to be carried out. So yeah, he remembered the promises and the covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and it's time to act, to make sure his mission, who he is, the carrier, the one who calls us to be, steps in. And now he must act because this is who he is.

The Burning Bush

And so we turn over to chapter 3, and we see, starting in verse 1 (not verse 3): "Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame, a fire out of the midst of the bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned." So we have Moses minding his own business on the mountain of God because that's where any of us would be.

Later, this place is known as Sinai. I refer to it as Sinai. That should be familiar to you. And he sees a bush that's on fire. And I love this because this is exactly what any of us would do. And Moses says to himself, this is worth a detour to go check this out. That's what it says. He's like, hmm. He pondered to himself, maybe I should go check this bush out that's on fire over here. Come on, sheep. Something to note. Is Moses scared of the burning bush? No, no, no. What's he afraid of in the very last verse there? He's afraid to look at God.

See, this angel that becomes synonymous with God throughout the scriptures is physically there, and it scared Moses to see a figure in the fire. Luke picks up on this in chapter seven, verse 30. After 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of the burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. So biblical authors understand this. There was a figure in the fire. So in the past, we've discussed the overwhelming use of patterns in the biblical narrative. So here we have a figure that appears in the fire and the bush is not burned up. In the story of the Bible, in the narrative, where else do we see a figure in the fire, but the fire is not burning something up?

A Figure in the Fire

So this takes place in Exodus 3, and a similar example is found in Daniel chapter 3. And if this is a legitimate and intentional connection by the authors, I believe it is. It's pretty neat, right? Because it opens up the door for an interesting look at the manifestations of God involving fire, the theophanies that involve fire, the fiery oven that passes through the pieces with Abram, the pillar of fire that God speaks from in the wilderness, the burning bush, his throne being described by the prophets as being engulfed with flames, right? Manifest in the flames of the fiery furnace in Daniel chapter 3, being manifest in the tongues of fire that engulf the believers at Pentecost.

See, it's interesting though, because both Exodus 3 and Daniel present a time of tribulation. Israel is being persecuted. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were also being persecuted. And in Daniel 3, we have a fiery furnace. It's funny because Deuteronomy calls Egypt the blazing furnace. Are the people he rescued from Egypt that blazing furnace? How does this God meet with the suffering world around him? The suffering world of Egypt, the suffering world of Babylon, the suffering world of Iran and Lebanon, the suffering world of the U.S. and Mexico. Apparently, this God joins us in the furnace.

Not Alone in the Fire

The angel of the Lord joins Israel in Egypt to bring them out. The angel of the Lord joins the three in the fires of the Babylonian oven to bring them out. Yeshua joins us in the fires, takes the flames to lead us out. And the spirit of God becomes the fire that engulfs us to usher in a kingdom not of this world. I love the message of the Bible, how it transcends time, because the message here is no matter what fire you find yourself in, you're not alone. That's the character of this God of the Bible. There's another in the fire. There's another there. This is a constant description of who our God is.

And when we move down to verse nine, the story continues. "And now behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me. And I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?"

Who Am I? So here, Moses has an inquiry for God, this God that he's just met in flames, right? "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" And look, we get a glimpse of the personality of this God of Abraham. He just ignores the question, just ignores it. "God, who am I? How am I going to do this? I'm nobody. I'm not strong enough. I'm not mighty enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not." And God completely sidesteps Moses' question and responds, "I'll be with you." See, here in the text, it doesn't matter who Moses is. What matters is that God is with him.

Moses thought God was making a mistake. You can't use me. I'm a failure of society. I'm a fugitive. I'm a criminal. They hate me. I'm not esteemed. I don't even have a reputation. I've been on the run for 40 years and I'm happy just to be making it with these sheep and goats. How am I going to do this? This isn't about you. It's not about you. This is about what God is going to do through you and alongside you. Moses didn't matter. What mattered is that God was with him. It's God's mission, remember? It's God's mission and he will equip you to carry it out. Man, I hope that was for someone today.

The Divine Name

And so in verse 13, it's sad because many times we see this situation like Moses, like we see this situation as if Moses is trying to find out a secret password so he can go back to Israel and use the secret password of the divine name. Like he needs to know the name to convince the people of Israel that he's in charge now or something like that. Or I've seen some fringe sects try to dissect the name here to use for magical purposes—oh, it makes us more divine if we know the name or the phonetic spelling or something like that. I don't think that's it at all. I think Moses is just asking because he doesn't know—what's your name? Who are you? And before we go any further I want to make the point: God does not work based on how we say a name phonetically. God created the universe without sitting down and being like, "Listen, this is how you say my name." It didn't matter. This is like the biggest point in the story where he's actually getting personal. And it's with Moses. A lot of history has taken place. Why doesn't it really matter?

Because it's God's mission, not ours. It's God's creation, not ours. He's king, not us. We don't manipulate the God of the universe. So let's return to the story now. He didn't know it. You're the God of our family, but we don't really know you on that personal level. See, in the ancient world, to have knowledge of a God, any God's name was seen as a level of truly intimate relationship. Many times, names of gods given in public were shortened or abbreviated. They were nicknames, and only the true priests that mediated for that God knew the exact name so that they could cast it in the courts and use it and treat their God as a genie in the bottle or somehow manipulate their God by knowing the name because powers are in the name, right? We have this tradition of calling demons by their name. Why? Because the tradition is if you know the name, it's power over them, right? And so this was something that was very prevalent in the ancient world.

An Ancient Prayer

So I have a classic example here because I love history. You guys like history? Good, good. So I have a classic example. It's a famous prayer found etched on stone in ancient Sumer. It's in Akkadian. And Sumer is like, think Babylon, but ancient, ancient Babylon, way back. And here we have an individual crying out who's a pagan. And as we read it, I want you to observe the level of how he perceives the gods or goddesses he assumes he's serving. So FYI, this translation is by Robert F. Foster. It has an emphasis by Dr. Carmen Imes, whose book I recommend if you want to check that out when you get home.

And here's the prayer that we found: "My Lord's angry heart, please be reconciled. May the God that I don't know be reconciled. May the goddess, I don't know, be reconciled. May the God, whoever he is, be reconciled. May the goddess, whoever she is, be reconciled. Oh my Lord, many are my wrongs, greater are my sins. Oh my God, many are my wrongs, greater are my sins. Oh my goddess, many are my wrongs, greater are my sins. Oh God, whoever you are, many are my wrongs, greater are my sins. Oh goddess, whoever you are, many are my wrongs, greater are my sins. I do not know what wrong I've done. I do not know what sin I've committed."

And the prayer goes on. Do you see it? This guy has no perceived relationship with any gods, right? And he doesn't even know who he's praying to. He doesn't know how to pray. It's hard not to feel a sense of anguish for him. Whoever you are, please hear my cries. Whatever your name is, are you there? The man is so desperate to know the deities ruling over him. He's like shotgunning it. Just male, female, God, goddess. Who are you? Come hear me. Did I commit a sin? Please forgive me. I don't know. He's desperate to know a God and he's desperate to please them.

The Character of Our God

Not so with the God of Israel. Not so. Here's how God responds to Moses' request about knowing his name personally. "I want to know you more" in verse 14. "God said to Moses, 'I am who I am.' And he said, 'Say to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.' God also said to Moses, 'Say this to the people of Israel. The Lord, the God 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, and thus I am to be remembered intimately throughout all generations.'" The Lord reveals his identity to Moses. This is who I am. I am. And I love that. The potency of this section of the story and what it says about the character of our God stands in complete contrast to the story of every other pagan God during the time.

I Will Be Who I Will Be

Not only is man wanting to be close to God, God wants to join them. Yes, this is my name. This is a section of scripture that is overwhelmingly focused on by Hebrew scholars, just FYI. This chapter is one that is typically used in biblical Hebrew courses because of so many different nuances and examples of the biblical Hebrew language. So I'm not going to try to tell you something new that I've discovered, because there are many, many men and women who have committed their entire lives to studying ancient Semitic languages along with biblical Hebrew. So I want to talk about what they say for a minute.

Okay, we're good? Okay. So this phrase, I am who I am — all of your Bibles should have a footnote there. And if you check out the footnote, it actually says, I will be who I will be, right? It's future tense. And in Hebrew, it's Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, right? I think I have a slide there. Do I have a slide? Did it pop up? Yeah, here we go. I will be who I will be. Ehyeh, asher, Ehyeh. And so this word, Ehyeh, I am or I will be, comes from the word hayah, to be. And if you write that word or say that word in a first-person imperfect future, it becomes Ehyeh. This is how we know what the word's from. So, to be, in a first-person form, imperfect: I will be.

God is responding to Moses, who asks, who should I tell Israel sent me? I will be who I will be. Tell them I am. Tell them, yeah, I am the one that brings forth, the one that causes to happen. It will come for me. It will happen because I'm involved. It will be done by me.

And notice verse 15. He just tells them, this is what you're to call me. This is my name. Notice verse 15: "Say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever." So here we notice there's another name, Lord, right? Lord. And this is what we call the Tetragrammaton. It's the four Hebrew letters that make up the divine name that from this point forward is used throughout the Hebrew Bible. We don't ever see this other name used. It's YodHeh-Vav-Heh, right? Everyone's familiar with this.

The Tetragrammaton

So the consensus is that when God says his name is Ehyeh, and then he turns around and says this name is Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, he's not speaking about two different names. He said, Ehyeh is my name. I am. The issue with that is you can't pray that name, right? What happens when you try to pray that phrase? It doesn't work. It's first person, right? I will do. I bring forth things. I am. I love you. You would have to make Ehyeh into a third person in order to pray it. You bring forth, right? You cause to happen. And pretty much, there's a way that Hebrew works — the end result is that a yod sound gets placed in the front of the word in order to give it a third-person tense or form.

And now, instead of Ehyeh, we have Yahyeh, or Yahweh, Yahweh. The Y consonants and the Vav consonants in the Semitic languages were interchangeable. We see this so many times in the Dead Sea Scrolls, even in Isaiah. It's pretty neat. But yeah, they were interchangeable, and that's where we get the confusion of the Y sound or the W sound, regardless. The same goes for the Aleph and the Heh. Yahweh — it's where scholars get this idea of this name going forward: the one who is going to, the one who will do, the one who will be present, who will sustain moving forward, who will cause to bring forth. So the idea is that God is speaking his name in the first part of this verse in first person, right?

What is your name? Ehyeh. But we say it in third: you should tell the children of Israel, Yahweh, or Yahyeh, is with you. He is the God. Tell Israel that he is the one that will be. Ehyeh, Yahweh. We don't say it in the first person grammatically — it's weird — but it's also the intimate name of God that only he has the ability to refer to himself as, right?

A Name Only God Can Speak

In fact, sometimes you guys hear about people who are really into the sacred names of the Bible, and they want to figure out all these names so they can say them correctly. So there are some people who want to use this — they understand the intimacy of the first person of this deified name of God — and if you use that while you're praying, it's actually blasphemy, because you make it about yourself. So if you were to pray, "Oh, praise, I am the one that causes all to be," it doesn't work. It's blasphemy. You've inadvertently taken upon yourself the name that can only be spoken by God himself. But he gives us the third person to refer to him.

Another thing that's interesting is that in the Hebrew, it's an imperfect form, which means I will do, I will be who I will be, and I will do going forward. Yahweh is translated as a response. So he says, I will do, I will be this God, I am going to do these things. Tell the children of Israel to call me the one that did cause these things to happen. It's a response in the name. Do you see how beautiful that is? Do you see how beautiful that is? Whenever we pray and think about the character of our God, we should be reminded that no matter what situation we're in, he's already promised that he will — moving forward, in the future, we know in the past, we know in the present — he will cause these things, his will, to come to pass.

And when we respond, you are the one that has caused all things to come. You are the one that does. And I just — I really get excited about that. So, that's me.

The Name Is a Verb

To summarize, I'd like to quote a Jewish biblical scholar, Nahum Sarna. I felt the quote was appropriate. He says: "This phrase has variously been translated, I am that I am, I am who I am, and I will be what I will be. It clearly evokes Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, the specific proper name of Israel's God, known in English as the Tetragrammaton" — that is, the four consonants — "The phrase also indicates that the earliest recorded understanding of the divine name was as a verb derived from the stem haya or hava, taken from the earlier form haya, to be." Stop right there. The name of God is a verb. Let that soak in.

Continuing: "Either it expresses the quality of absolute being, the eternal unchanging dynamic presence, or it means he causes to be. Yahweh, or Yahyeh, is the third person masculine singular, is the corresponding first person singular." He has a divine name — it's sacred to him, and only he can use it. And ours is the response of who he is in his character. The Bible is so cool, right? The Bible is so cool. The authors of the Bible are so neat, because that's how they put this together. That's how they put this together.

When the Name Stopped Being Spoken

And since we're talking history — do you guys like history? So if we keep reading, I want to quote Dr. Sarna on something else, another point, because this is a tradition I had in my old church of God, when we would say God. So in the later second temple period, something changed in the name. We don't know how long the tradition lasted. We don't even know where it really started. But here's what Dr. Nahum Sarna goes on to say about the history of the name — and this was important to me, because I grew up with this tradition of saying the name like this: "In the course of the second temple period, the Tetragrammaton came to be regarded as charged with metaphysical potency, and therefore ceased to be pronounced.

It was replaced in speech by Adonai, or Lord, rendered in the Greek Kyrios." Often the vowels— So again, what he's saying at the very end there is, we assume that the name, based on this section of scripture, is Yahyeh or Yahweh, but we don't really know, because how can you? We don't have recordings. It's truly the best guess — the culmination of Jewish and Christian scholarship today. But has anyone ever heard the name Jehovah? Like I grew up in church — Jehovah Jireh, you know, like it was just me? Okay. Yeah, so in the Middle Ages, Jewish scribes began implementing these vowel points — these little vowel points, something the original Hebrew did not have.

And so, to preserve the sanctity of the name in their minds — the third person of Ehyeh, assuming Yahweh — they added the vowel points of Adonai, Lord, under the Hebrew name, so that when a reader ran across it, they'd realize that they don't match up. This is not a real word. Nothing matches up. This doesn't make sense. But oh, these are the vowel points for Adonai. So you don't pronounce the word. You understand the word. You see the word and you say Adonai or Lord instead—instead of pronouncing some divine name that they felt was charged with metaphysical power. When ancient Christian scholars began to translate these texts, do you think they were a little confused when they were trying to translate this word?

They did. So they did the best they could in the Hebrew letters with these incompatible vowel points, and they produced this name, Yehovah, or Jehovah, that came to be. And it's not really a real word, but that's how the Christian church began to cycle it for hundreds of years because of this misunderstanding in Christianity. And even today in many Christian churches, it's still a tradition—it's a tradition of how we refer to God. And I found that really neat and also beautiful at the same time because that's a tradition that I grew up with. So I love this stuff. It's so cool.

The Name Revealed

If you want more information on this topic, guys, I didn't go to school to this. I don't have a PhD in my name. I'm just regurgitating what I read, what I study, and trying to sum up what these guys have. There is a link on the video on YouTube that will be under here. It goes to Dr. Michael Heiser's paper on the word, the spoken name of God here. It goes into the nuts and bolts. It's amazing. So yeah, all of that—that's my nerd out moment. All of that—what I want you to actually take away—is that God openly revealed his name, whatever it is. God created mankind to dwell with him apart from knowing his name because it's his mission, not ours.

In a time where there is something only few people were allowed to have access to in other nations with other gods, in a time where there was no intimacy or relationship with gods anywhere, here on a mountain in the flames, ready to act: "I will be what I will be. I am. Tell them to call me the one who will cause these things to be done. Tell them that. Tell them my name testifies that they can rely on me, that they can trust in me. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." That is the takeaway from this text. And that's something that I will forever lean on for the rest of my life, no matter what I'm going through.

This is the God that we serve. This is the God that never leaves, that does not stay far. This is the God that joined us in the fire because that's who he is. That's his mission. This is the God that revealed himself through Yeshua walking the earth.

"I Am" Declared So at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, Yeshua was preaching, right? And he was speaking to the Jews and he said, your father Abraham rejoiced when he saw my day. And they're like, what day? What are you talking about? This is the day when the gospel message was actually acted out, when heaven crashed into earth, when God acted to bring the world out of the fire—the mission, remember? And it's right here. It's right in John chapter 8, verse 53. "So the Jews said to him, 'You're not even 50 years old and have you seen Abraham?' Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.'" Immediately they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

So here, if Yeshua was simply trying to say, listen, guys, I existed before Abraham. He could have said something different. He should have said before Abraham, I was. No, this is an intentional echo of Exodus 3. It's intentional. "I will cause all things to be. All will come forth from me. I am." And they flipped out and they picked up stones and they were like, let's kill him. Why? Because only one person has the absolute authority to say that name for themselves. This is the God that we're introduced to. The God with a mission and he wants to complete it with you. And he will do what he will do.

It will happen. That's his reputation.

God Comes Down to Act

Go back to verse 8 here. And I love this. Exodus 3 verse 8. "And I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of the land to do good, to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Parasites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites." So you notice that at the very beginning? He says what? I have come down. From where? You know the answer. You could say it. From where? From where? Yeah. I have come down from heaven, the realm up there. So why were temples typically on mountains? Or when the Bible refers to the pagan altars, they're up on what places?

High places. Why is that? Well, these places are naturally closer—it's better reception, right? You never see, oh yeah, this is the mountain of God. This is the valley of God way down here, this little creek. No, it's the mountain of God. And here we have this phrase, I have come down to deliver them. And it's the same phrase that's used in Genesis 11 when the people were building the Tower of Babel and the Lord came down to see the city and the tower. "And the Lord said, 'Come, let us come down and confuse the languages. Let us act.'" It's the language of God coming down to earth to take action. To take heavenly action on earth.

When God comes down from heaven, he's coming to do something. He's coming to act, right? Every time. John , "For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but to do the will of the one who has sent me." Verse 40, "For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." So if you go right before this, Jesus said to them in verse 32, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father that gives you the true bread of heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

When God comes down, it's to act. It's to do something. When Yeshua came down, it was to act. It was to bring heaven to earth.

Heaven to Earth

This is the way of our God—to join us in the flames of this world, to make himself known to us, that we recognize him as the one that will be and will do, the one who brings heaven down to earth. That's the mission, and that's always been the mission. Man, that's the gospel. Not that we would say a prayer for Yeshua and escape this world to go to heaven. No, the gospel of the Bible is that we would submit and serve and follow and pledge allegiance to this Yeshua so that we would be fellow ambassadors in bringing heaven to earth now, being his hands and feet now, right now, seeing a need and sacrificing to meet it.

This is the way. This is how we speak the name. We speak it through action. We speak it through faithfulness. We speak it and we understand that he will be in all things. And it doesn't matter who I am. It only matters that he is with me. And he, Yahweh, is the one that causes, is the one that does, is the one that equips, is the one that carries out. We can play around with yodes or vavs or hephel stems all we want in the Hebrew, but when you speak the name, it's an act of faith. It's an act of not making a sound with your mouth, but living it out with your soul.

The Name Requires Faith

Imagine being an Israelite and anticipating the miraculous rescue from the flames of Egypt. Moses, what's his name? The God that's gonna do all this. He will be, he will do. Future tense, he will. It forces you in that moment to choose to accept that and have faith that he will or he won't. You can't acknowledge the faith, the name, without committing to the faith or not. Do you believe? Do you have faith? Do you believe that in your circumstances God will not stop in his mission to show heaven on earth through his image bearers? That's the gospel of Exodus 3, carried forth and made manifest in Yeshua. That is who our God is.

The Focus is Him

I don't know where you're at today, but maybe you're focusing too much on who you are, your failures in life, your struggles in life, your reputation that you have, the history that you have. How can the mission of God ever be done by you? Here, all that matters is that God says, I will be with you. I will be with you. It's going to happen because it's who he is. It is his name.

Recognizing the Servants

So guys, before we conclude, I want to take an opportunity to call and recognize some of the biggest servants, some of what I would consider image bearers within this fellowship. And they serve to such a capacity that they're always so busy serving, you may not have even met them. So I'm going to give you an opportunity to meet them right now. And I'd like to invite Russell and Daniel Freeman up here. Come on, right up here. So guys, many of you know them. And hold on. Let's see. Hey, step right here. Here, hold this. You'll need this in a minute. So to tell you a little bit about them, not only are they amazing, guys, if you've ever been involved in ministry, you know that there's this whole joke about the 80 and 20%—the 20% typically give of their time and energy and finances so that the 80% can come to fellowship at church.

The 8% Who Give

It's kind of a joke, but it's actually a real fact. Within the 20%, there's like the 8% who go above and beyond. They're not just givers of their time and their energy and their money. They're givers of their absolute soul to their community around them. And these people right here are part of that 8%. They drive almost three and a half hours to come to Fit every week and go back home. So that's not the kicker. Yeah, they want to come fellowship. They'll drive three and a half hours to come here, volunteer with the kids and in the nursery, and then after services, they drive home so that you can be served, so that your kids can be taken care of. That's what they do. And recently, there was a need that happened with them. The van that they travel all these long distances broke. And it's going to be very expensive to fix.

When the Van Broke

And so they reached out. They said, "Hey guys, I know we need prayer. If any of you guys have any guidance in this, this is where we're at right now." They're at the point that when they welcome their new baby, they don't have enough seats in their car to drive home with everybody in the family. And so they reached out, and I'll just be honest, you as a community, you heard the voice of them, and you understood that they give and they give and they give and that they are servants, and you acted and took on the role of being the imagers of God and met that need as a community. And I just want to thank you today for meeting that need.

A Buick Enclave

Guys, I want you to look at the screen. So we have acquired a Buick Enclave for you. Enclave? Here are the keys. It's outside. You can drive it home.

Their Response

Oh, man, that's too much. Oh, that's too much, man. We drive two and a half hours here. Man, that's too much. That's too much. No, that's the thing though, man. I know there's people who are watching this. I know there's people who might even be in this audience that are struggling and say, "Hey, I could use that." So I feel bad, but I feel so blessed. I don't know what to say, man. I thank you for my family. Man, we can't take that. We can't do that. That's crazy. That's just nuts. So, really only my husband and Jenny knows this, but recently, a lot of you probably know I'm not from the U.S. Very recently, I've just come to the realization that when Yeshua says to his mother and his brother, "Who's my family? You guys are my family." And somewhere it hurts to say that, but I feel very, very blessed. Thank you. That's all we can say is thank you.

Gratitude and Reflection

Yeah, throwing you in the loop here. Totally sideballed you with this. Yeah, you did. Yeah, I know. It's okay. Thank you, though. Thank you. This is a community that you guys have been serving for so long. God, it is a good community, man. Yeah. It is. It really is. And thank you. Thank you for being examples of what it means to give. Because you guys do it not only every week, but throughout the week. But you guys don't even know how much they pray for you. We do. I'll tell you that for sure. We pray for Fit. We pray for the families, every single one of you guys that are here. And I don't say that so that I get something for it, but we do because I understand the struggles that I go through, and I understand the struggles that especially the men in this group go through because I talk to them about their struggles.

I know that some of the women, but I know Danielle knows. She has a group with them. But we know, and we pray for the blessing of Fit. We pray for a building of our own, for ministries, outreaches, for children's classes. And if I get that money, it'll be done. But I thank the Father for everything that you guys do, for everything. We do such a small part here compared to what all of the elders do. I mean, you guys really, you do most of it, but we do just a small little bit. We don't do that much. But we thank you so much. As soon as Matt said that, he told us that there was a fund going or something like that.

I mean, we both just bawled. He said he wanted a picture of it. Jason did. But we did. We bawled. And we said, "You know what, man? I don't care if there was a single dollar raised. It was the thought that you guys—honestly, I did not expect that. Even just a dollar, man, or nothing—it was just the thought that you guys considered us, and we just thank you."

The Community's Generosity

So I love you all. I don't know who did this, but God did it. This was the collective efforts of the community. This wasn't simply like Fit, botch, you will go. No, this was the collective efforts of the community that you've been serving for all this time. So we thank you guys. We love you guys. And we can't wait to see the fight that's going to ensue with who's going to drive it home. So, on a serious note, thank you guys for being the examples that model this type of behavior and generosity in this community. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Who wants to give him a hug? Go. Worship team, you guys can come on up.

Closing in Worship

Yeah, so we're gonna conclude services the same way that we always conclude services, and that's the same way we come in. Through praise, through gratitude to God, through worship, and through reciprocating the joy that only he can give to us. So please stand as we enter into this time of joyful praise. Alvina Malkinu, our Father, our King. Father, we thank you. We thank you for your name. Father, we thank you for the character that your name promises us. We thank you that you are the one who does. You are the one who will always be there, who will do. Thank you, Father, for being that. And we praise you, O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one who has caused all to happen. Thank you, Father. In the name of Yeshua, we pray. Amen.

Shalom. I'm Matthew Vanderels and I hope you enjoyed this message. Founded in Truth exists to build a community that bears the image of God and lives the redeemed life only Yeshua gives. If this message impacted you or if this ministry has been a blessing to you, we would love to hear from you. Send us a message through our contact form on our website and let us know how God has used this ministry to edify your faith and relationship with Him. Don't forget to subscribe by clicking here. And if you'd like to donate to this ministry and be a part of what God is doing through it, you can donate through our website at www.foundingatruth.com or by clicking here. We thank you for your continued support and we look forward to next time. Shalom. Info@foundedintuth.com