Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.
Rest from all of that labor and say God did it in Jesus. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series we've called Saver as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now, an audio album called Saver. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries, either a CD album or a digital download of these audio messages. So as you listen into today's messages, go deeper as we send you today's special offer.
Contact us at PastorAlan.org, that's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860, 877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Alan Wright. Talk about something that is endlessly deep in a fairly simple way here because I want you to see this. That actually, if we could put back up the Exodus 3 text, the verb that is rendered here in Exodus 3, 13, that then Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God your father has sent me to you, they ask, what is his name?
What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. The words that are used there is simply the Hebrew verb for to be. It's hayah. And literally what this says is God said to Moses, I am being that I am being. I am that I am. But he's not yet given his name.
But then you continue on in the text to the next part of it. Say to this people of Israel, I am has sent you. He still has here is left it with this sense of just using the verb to be in Hebrew until he comes to this. Say this, the next verse, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord. And when you see the Lord right there, that's the first time he gives his name Yahweh. Now the reason that that's important is because does it not then make sense that what God is doing is before he actually says, here's my name, Yahweh. What he says is he uses the verb from which Yahweh is derived, which is the verb to be. And he just says, I am being that I am being.
You can tell him that I am being sent you. And then he comes pointedly, he says, the Lord Yahweh has sent you. In other words, the essence of his name is making it clear is that he is the one who is. And that is foundational. There are many implications of this, of course.
The first is this. The most important thing that you can know about God is that he is. He exists. He is not an idea.
He is real. This is the first and most important thing you can know about God. You hear me often talk about Andy Griffith show, one of my favorites. One of my favorite episodes is Mr. McBevie. Opie, little Opie, comes to his paw and tells him about a man he called Mr. McBevie who went high walking amongst the tops of the trees, who wore a silver hat, who had a jingle as he walked and had extra hands and said that he could blow smoke from his ears.
And at first, Andy thought, well, this is cute, you know. But then one day Opie came and he brought a nickel or a quarter or something, said, look what Mr. McBevie gave me. And Andy said, Opie, this has gone too far. And he threatened Opie with a spanking if he didn't admit that Mr. McBevie was something he'd made up.
And Opie said, but Paul, I can't say that because he is real. And Andy is torn with all this until one day they're walking through the woods and there is Mr. McBevie. He was a telephone linesman who climbed around up top of the poles and the top of the trees. And he came down and he met Andy and he had a silver hat on. His tools were his extra hands. And Andy said, I bet you can blow smoke out your ears.
And he took a cigarette or something and blew like he could like the smoke come out of his ears. And Andy was never happier in all his life to realize that Mr. McBevie was. God is. Though the Israelites were suffering in their slavery in Egypt, God appeared to Moses and He said, I am. Your suffering and slavery and difficulties of life do not change this, I am. It is also to say that God by existing and being real stands in utter contrast to idols that are made by man. The human creation of an idol is mocked in the Scriptures because idols cannot do anything, but what is more important to say is they are not actually real. And God is saying, I am.
I am real. It means thirdly, that no one made God. He is by definition, the one who exists. He is fourthly, the one who is the ground of all other existence. Though not an Orthodox theologian, Paul Tillich gets at something that is quite deep and true when he says God is the ground of all being. Because God is, it means that everything else is and nothing is except for the fact that God is. If God had not existed, then nothing else would exist.
All of this goes far to say when we sing of the resurrected Jesus that because He lives I can face tomorrow, we are essentially saying because He is and He is alive and He is real that I have all hope. God is. It means also that God is always present and He's always in the present.
It's a mystery that's hard to speak of, but you can't think of God so much in the past because it's our past, but to God every moment's in the present because He's in eternity. He's eternal. And He's therefore at all times at all places.
We're speaking of mysteries now. But when we say He was and is and is to come, what we really are saying is that from our time perspective, we can refer to the time in which God was there, but from His perspective, He's always there. So He is present, active in every moment. When Moses was going to lead the people, he pleaded with God for His presence to go with them. Exodus 33 14. And he said, My presence will go with you and I will give you rest. And he said to him, Moses said, If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. And so the Lord appeared to Moses. In Exodus 34 5, when Moses is in the cleft of the rock, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. So what this text says is Yahweh descended in the cloud, stood with him there and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. And Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious slow to anger.
In other words, Moses said, I need your presence. And God said, I'm going to show you this. And He put him in the cleft of the rock. And what did He do?
He gave him His name over and over. Yahweh, Yahweh, I am, I am. I'm here.
I'm here. I exist. I exist.
I'm present to every single moment. It means also that He is who He is by His own definition. You don't define Him. Nobody defines Him. He defines us.
We don't define Him. He doesn't bend His identity. Other identities have to be shaped by Him. To be I am also means He already is who He is. This is important theological point because it means that He's not becoming something else. God's not in process of growing up or discovering Himself. That means therefore to us, there's no unreliability in God because He's not fickle and changing in His nature.
There's no shadow of changing in God. He is the great I am. It means that He's named in accord with who He is. As important as it is, everything He does, His name, the chosen, revealed, personal name of God is about who He is, not just what He does. All He does flows out of who He is. This is where I turn us to the implications for us because you, like God, having made in His image, are foremost a being who is. It is to say that who you are as a person is what makes you valuable.
It is not your performance. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most, right now, in a hurried, worried season, God invites you into the present. Modern-day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program, and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness, living in the present, is God's idea, and the Bible unveils the way. Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment, in the moment, every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.
That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.
Here, once again, is Alan Wright. And for any of us who have grown up with any shame-based thinking, this is one of the deepest solace and greatest comforts you could ever have. And I would say to sum up most of my Christian growth over the last 25 years, it has been growing into an ever-increasing awareness by the grace of God that I am of utmost value just because I am. And that's been a hard thing to learn.
If you grow up in a family where there is a big emphasis on performance, you can end up translating that to your own mind to say, I am valued only to the degree that I can do. But in actuality, you are, first and foremost, a human being. And beloved, you are remarkable whether you're a Christian or not. You are remarkable because God has made you just because you exist.
We have no idea. Just the human body, just the human cell, just the idea that there was initially one cell that then divided and then divided. And at some point, that cell, that original stem cell that would one day become your hundreds of billions of cells that form your brain got turned on for it to know to become a brain cell that would then lead you to everything that you say and do and think and imagine and feel all came from this unbelievable, unbelievable design. That cell is so fascinating that the Harvard trained physician, the former dean of Yale Medical School, Lewis Thomas had this to say of it.
I love this. He wrote, the mere existence of that cell should be one of the greatest astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.
If anyone does succeed in explaining it, he writes within my lifetime, I will charter a skywriting airplane, maybe a whole fleet of them and send them aloft to write one great exclamation point after another around the whole sky until all my money runs out. Just to think of one cell and the complexity and majesty of who you are, that has been made into the image of God is astounding. But beloved, you are not just a collection of cells and a physical being, but you are a person. You are a soul. Oh, you are more than the collection of all these cells because you can't dissect you and look and find a cell and say, oh, there you are. I have found you. There you are, Bob. I see you right here in this cell. No, you are a person who has a soul and a consciousness and a personality that is complex and beautiful and wonderful and fantastic.
C.S. Lewis wrote on this glorious nature of humanity by saying, there are no ordinary people. You've never talked to a mere mortal nations, cultures, arts, civilization. These are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.
But it is immortals with whom we joke, work with, marry, snub and exploit immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. He said next to the blessed sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. You are, you are glorious, marred by sin, broken in this fallen world and absolutely glorious. When you think about whether you have value because whether you got the promotion at work or whether you did well on the test or whether you beat your competitor out or whatever it might be, what you need to remember is that you are no mere mortal, but you are the pinnacle of the creation of I am made in His image. Fast forward 1,500 years after Moses and Jesus is interacting with those religious leaders that often persecuted Him and John chapter 8, one of the most fascinating texts and one of the greatest proofs that Jesus absolutely called Himself God is John chapter 8 verse 53 and following. Are you greater than our father Abraham who died and the prophets died?
Who do you make yourself out to be? And Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me of whom you say He is our God, but you have not known Him. I know Him.
If I were to say that I do not know Him, I'd be a liar like you, but I do know Him and I keep His word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you're not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham? And this is the line verse 58, Jesus said to them, truly, truly I say to you before Abraham was, I am.
And they all knew what He just said. He said before Abraham was, and He's referring to Himself and says Yahweh. He said, I am who I am.
And that at verse 59 is when they picked up stones to throw Him because that's the moment they said He's blasphemed and called Himself God. It means, beloved, when you accept Christ into your life, you accept I am. And to be in Christ is to be in Yahweh. Everything that is true of the nature of God in His name becomes your identity as well. He lives in you.
It means that you have Him with you at all times and in all places. But what it means is that because God came in the person of Jesus Christ, if you accept His saving work, what you're accepting is that Jesus, the perfect I am in the flesh, who was utterly holy and sinless, that He deliberately went to the cross so that if you would trust Him, He would become your sin. And you by faith would be regarded from now on by God as the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God, the great holy I am, imparts to every believer His own holiness so that every bit of strife in your life that worries about whether I can be accepted because I don't know if I've done enough can rest from all of that labor and say God did it in Jesus. So therefore, my life is not defined by what I do nearly so much as who I am.
And I, made in the image of God, having come to faith, saving faith in Jesus Christ, have been restored unto God and made into His child. This is all to say if God puts the priority on being and doing flows out of being, it is to say that being with one another, love is the priority. And let your life be full of every wonderful activity and every glorious part of your vocation and every good thing that God would ever call you to do. Let it be full of all that. To be before you do is not an invitation to do nothing, but it is to say that the contentment and solace and joy of your life and mine that enables us to savor each moment in the moment and count every blessing and be mindful of God's presence, all of this begins with knowing God is Yahweh and you are in the great I am. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright and today's teaching be just be it's in the series saver and Alan is back with us in the studio sharing a part in good news thought for the day here in just a moment with so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now in a hurried worried season God invites you into the present modern day life coaches call it mindfulness but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion mindfulness living in the present is God's idea and the Bible unveils the way pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day when you make your gift today we'll send you pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment every day of your life the gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries this broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support when you give today we will send you today's special offer we are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty that's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty or come to our website pastor Alan org back here in the studio with Alan Wright and I like how you said there at the end and it's not we say just be it's not negating the other parts of that in him we live and move and have our being so this is a good news well I think that it's out of our being that we do everything and we get that backwards sometimes we think that what I do and how I perform will determine who I am it's just the opposite and I just want to say again particular to anyone who's struggled as I did for much of my life with performance anxiety the shame that says you haven't done enough yeah you know aren't enough to be accepted and just hear the gospel again in Christ you're accepted in the beloved which means that you don't have to become someone else in order to be loved by God just be who you are if you only caught part of today's teaching not only can you listen again online but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free find out more about these and other resources at pastor Alan org that's pastor Alan dot org today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries
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