His Presence is in His Name

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. This afternoon you had to choose. You could have everything in the world without God or you can have nothing in the world and God.

Which of those two things would you choose? Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host Molly Vitovich. You know, some people imagine God as a watchmaker in the sky who set the world in motion and then stepped away for a long coffee break. They think he's probably out there somewhere, but there's no way to know what he's like.

Others think of God as a mysterious impersonal force without thoughts or emotions uncaring of the world he created. But today pastor J.D. kicks off a new teaching series that encourages us to discover how we can know God both intimately and personally. We're headed back to the Old Testament book of Exodus. So let's get started. We're also beginning a new series today. It's called The Name and it is about the name of God. If you have a Bible, Exodus 34 is going to be the passage of scripture.

We'll be in for the next five weeks. The basic idea is that God has a name and it's important that you know that name. Just think about how important your name is to you. Imagine if someone that you loved or was close to you, your spouse, just always used the wrong name for you, you know, and he called you Fred or Beatrice or Jeff or whatever's not your name. Or even worse, if they just described you by characteristics like my wife walks in and I say, hello female, greetings human. That would not lead to intimacy.

It would not lead to connection. But that's exactly what we do with God quite often, is it not? We refer to God by a classification or we refer to him by a description, but God has a name. And knowing that name is extremely important because it's how we know him. And as I hope to show you in the weeks to come, it's how you know more of his presence. It's how you know his power. All his presence and all his power are accessed through your knowledge of his name.

I'll show you what that means. For a lot of people, I have found God is a mystery. They believe in a deity, but they often wonder like, what is God like? Can you know God?

Is that possible? Or maybe that's you. Maybe your question is even more basic. Maybe you say, I'm not even really sure he exists and much less know him. I mean, I feel like there's something out there and maybe that would explain some things, but it raises a lot more problems. And I don't even know if he exists.

Or a lot of people I've found will make a statement like this. I'll say, well, God, God I understand is there had to be something behind everything, but I just don't understand what the big deal is about Jesus. You Christians always make him such a big deal about Jesus and I don't get that. There are some of you who like me, you believe in God, but you've really struggled throughout your life to have any real, what you would call relationship with him. I say like me, because I was like that for many years. I struggled really to love God. I wanted to, I knew that I was supposed to, but I just couldn't work up the emotions to do it. I'd hear other people talking about God and they'd get emotional and they'd start to cry or they'd watch them worship. And I'd kind of look at my heart and be like, nothing. There's nothing really happening in there. I would imagine that there are a few of you, maybe a lot of you who, if you were honest, would say you're pretty much in the same place.

And by the way, what I've figured out is that a lot of people are faking. I think this series could be a game changer for many of you. During this series, I think some of you may find true faith for the very first time. For others of you like me, you might discover that path to really knowing and loving God. In college, I read a book called Knowledge of the Holy written by a guy named A.W.

Tozer. And there was a statement in that book that I haven't forgot about since I graduated from college. And that statement was this, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

I've given you guys a lot of statements over the years that sound like, your friends are the future you, you'll be the same person you are five years from now, except for the books you read and all that kind of stuff. The most important of those statements I've ever made to you is this one right here. What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, ever risen above its religion. A man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

You will become like what you worship. You are shaped by what you worship. The most determining fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives of God to be like.

What you believe about God becomes the most important thing about you because it will define your life like nothing else. In fact, I would say that many, if not most, of our emotional problems are connected to our view of God. For example, if you think of God as capricious and untrustworthy, then you will feel anxiety about your life. If you think of God as a judgmental tyrant, then it will turn you into a fearful, insecure person. If you think of God as aloof or distant, then you'll feel insignificant. If you think of God as an angry warlord, it will turn you into an intolerant bigot. If you think of God as a warm, tingly, sentimental, but powerless love force who looks down on the rest of us because we are not as enlightened as she is, it will turn you into a UNC Chapel Hill professor.

All right? So what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you because it will define you and shape you like nothing else in your life. So our text for the next few weeks is going to be what is arguably one of the most, maybe the most important passage in the Old Testament, Exodus 34, 6, and 7, where God declares his name to Moses. Now, you look at me and you say, well, you say every passage is the most important passage in the Bible.

And maybe you're right, but here's why this one is legit. Did you know, here's a little Bible trivia, that the Exodus 34, 6, and 7 is the most quoted verse in the Bible by other writers of the Bible. It's called the 13 Midot, that's what the Jews referred to it as, the 13 attributes, that's what Midot means, 13 attributes of God that describe the most essential characteristics of God. This verse was like their John 3.16. You could always tell who the Jews were in the Colosseum because they had posters that said Exodus 34, 6, and 7.

All right? So it is a very important verse, but we're going to walk through the story leading up to that verse so that we can unpack it for the next several weeks. Exodus 33, here's what's been happening if you go back one chapter, Exodus 33. The nation of Israel has just left Egypt and they're on their way to the Promised Land and they stop at a place called Mount Sinai where God gives them the Ten Commandments.

Moses goes back up into the mountain to get some more instruction from God and he ends up being gone a little bit longer than he was supposed to. So the people get scared, they panic, they think God's abandoned them, and so they make an image, a golden calf that they want to use as a substitute God. This is a horrible betrayal of God.

It would be something like if you took on a second job so you could provide some nice stuff for your spouse and your spouse used the time that you were at your second job to go have an affair on you. That's what the people are doing with God. So Exodus 33 verse 1, the Lord says to Moses, depart and go up from here and I will send an angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey. Now, in other words, I'm going to keep my word to you. I gave you an unconditional promise about this Promised Land. I will keep it to the letter, but I will not go with you lest I consume you on the way because you are a stiff neck people.

Now, most people, particularly Americans, would consider this to be a dream offer, right? God is going to give you all the success you have ever wanted. Economic success, military success, political success, everything you could conceive of that you wanted, God's going to give it and it's going to come with no obligation from God. He's just going to bless you. You're going to have the million dollar salary.

You're going to be the top of your field. He's just going to pour out blessing and you got no obligation to him. There's no temple to maintain. There's going to be no prayers that are required. There's no tithing. There's no religious obligation. Just blessing, free and clear, no strings attached. Verse 15, but Moses said to God, if your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here, for how shall it be known that we have found favor in your sight? Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct from every other people in the face of the earth? In other words, Moses said, God, you can keep all that success if it comes without you. If you don't go with me, I don't want to go.

Let me ask you to consider and answer honestly. If God offered to you everything you've ever dreamed of, you get the million dollar salary, you get the health, perfect health, you get a legacy, you get a family, a healthy family, and your kids grow up to be senators and congressmen and doctors, and you get everything you've ever wanted, just not God's presence in your life, would you take it? Moses said, not me, not today, not ever.

And I think he says that really for two reasons. Here they are, number one, because Moses saw God as beautiful, not just useful. Moses saw God as beautiful, not just useful. Philosophers say that when you find something or someone to be beautiful, you take pleasure in it or them without regard for their purpose. But for example, when you find somebody beautiful, you just want to be around them because of them. You just enjoy their beauty. It's not that they're a means to something else. It's just that you just find delight in them.

You find them beautiful and they are enough. If you are engaged to be married and the week leading up to your marriage, you found out that your parents who were very wealthy had made some disastrous financial decisions and as a result had lost all their fortune. And when you find that out, your fiance breaks up with you and calls off the wedding, you would rightfully feel hurt.

You would feel used because it would be apparent that your person you were engaged to was not into you for you, they were into you as a way of getting into your parents' money. Well, don't you see we do the exact same thing with God? There are many of us who come to God and we say, God, I need this, God, I need that.

And my relationship to you is going to be dependent on how well you provide those things that I want from you. I would dare say that I'm talking to a lot of people right now who you're kind of cool with God. You're distant from God because at some point God did not provide for you something that you thought he was obligated to provide. And so you've been angry at God and you've been on the outs with God because God for you was a means to something else. And when that something else didn't come through, you punish God by saying, I don't want you if I don't get that. But Moses had come to see God as beautiful in himself. He saw God not as a means to an end, he saw God as the end himself. He saw God as the ultimate reward, the ultimate prize. Is that how you see God? If this afternoon you had to choose, you can have everything in the thing in the world without God, or you can have nothing in the world and God.

Which of those two things would you choose? You are listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. For more information about this ministry, visit us online at jdgreer.com. Every day here at Summit Life, we share the transformative power of the gospel with people across the country and around the world. Through radio broadcasts, devotionals, blogs, and podcasts, we aim to make biblical teaching accessible and practical for everyday life. Our mission is to help people go deeper into their relationship with God and then share his love wider with the world. It's really quite simple.

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Visit jdgreer.com to learn how you can partner with us today. Let's work together to make the good news of Jesus Christ known everywhere. Now, let's finish up our teaching for the day. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Here's the second thing Moses realized that goes with that. He saw that without God, everything else was useless. He saw that God was beautiful, not just useful, and he saw that without God, everything else was useless.

Without God, he knew that all those other kinds of successes, they would fade. Today, you're on the top of your field. Tomorrow, you're the old guy fighting for relevance and respect. Today, you have a strong family, but tomorrow, you're all gathered around a graveside or you're trying to pick up the shattered pieces of a family left by a divorce. Today, you're beautiful, but tomorrow, things sag and droop and ache and no amount of eating right or working out or Botox or oil of Olay or whatever you use is gonna stop or hinder that. Furthermore, Moses understood that not only do those things fade, without God, those things end up fading you.

They rot your soul. You give your life for success and it consumes you until you become petty and jealous and fearful and less of a person. Don't we all know somebody? Can't you think of somebody who has the kind of success that we all dream about having that we're fighting to obtain, but they're just the shell of a person?

But the answer, the real truth is we're not really different from any of them because what you see in them is just a reflection of all of us. That when you have those things apart from God, they end up rotting your soul. So Moses says to God, he says, you can keep your Olympic gold medals. You can keep your million dollar a year salary. You can keep your loving, happy, tight-knit families. You can keep your healthy body. If those things come without you, if I don't get your presence, I don't want it because without you, I got nothing.

I mean, think about it. Moses had all those things. You know the story of Moses? He had been the prince of Egypt. He lived in the palace.

He was in command of the largest army in the world. And then he was driven out from that palace and he wandered in the wilderness for 40 years with nothing but God. Can I tell you something I've observed?

If you ever meet somebody who's had it all without God and then had nothing with God and ask them which they choose, every single time they will tell you, I'll take nothing with God. I thought of a young man who passed away in our church last year, tragically. His name was Noah Spivey.

His family is still very active in our church. Noah was a teenager who struggled with a very rare but very aggressive kind of cancer. And Noah, right before he died, filmed a video that we showed after his death here at the church. And basically in the video, Noah looks right at the camera and he says, he says, cancer sucks, but Christ is better. Now I typically don't use the word sucks in a sermon, but you know what? He earned the right to say whatever he wants.

And so it's his words. And what he's saying in a very teenager kind of way is, cancer has taken from me everything that I was looking forward to in life. I know I'm not gonna get married.

I know that I'm never gonna turn 20 years old. I know that nothing in life is actually going to be given to me, but Jesus is better than all that. And if I had to choose a healthy life without Jesus or cancer and an early death with Jesus, I would take cancer with Jesus every single time. That's what Moses sees about God.

Here's my question. Have you come to see God that way? Verse 17, the Lord then says to Moses, this very thing that you have spoken, I will do. For you have found favor in my sight and I know you Moses by name. So Moses, like a good negotiator, sees his opening and he asks for more.

Verse 18, then Moses said, please show me your glory. In other words, God, if I'm gonna make you my sole possession, God, if I'm gonna say, I'll have you, even if it means nothing else, I don't want just a little bit of you. I don't want you just nearby.

I don't want you in the room. I want all of you. I want to see it all.

Give me the full package. I've told you guys before, if you're gonna follow Jesus, follow him 100%, because the most miserable people on the planet are half committed, half hearted Christians, because you're just enough into the world to be miserable in God. And you're just enough into God to feel guilty in the world. If you're gonna follow Jesus, the only joy in it is when you go all the way. And I don't mean to be mean, but I know that I'm looking at a number of people that you are in that half committed place. And I've told you this before, listen, church is a terrible hobby, if that's kind of how you think of it.

And for many of you, that's what church is. Find a different hobby. I mean, this hobby, you get up early on Sunday morning and you drive to a place where you go through the nightmare we call the parking lot. And then you come in to the place, there's a lot of people in the room.

There's not a lot of room and you end up sitting in the lobby half the time. And then we're always up here pressuring you to volunteer and serve with the kids and give money. And then some dude stands on the stage and yells at you for 45 minutes.

This is a terrible hobby, right? It's like going through Halloween every week where you have to dress up like something you're not and act apart that you don't really wanna play. And we're all walking around looking spiritual and we're like, how are you? And you're like, I'm just fine, thank you brother, praise the Lord. And you know that you don't mean it, so you go back and you feel bad because you just lied to everybody.

Find a different hobby. The joy in this kind of place is only for those who have developed such a craving and a taste for God's glory that the taste of His glory outweighs all the pain of coming and being a part of a community like this one. So if you're gonna go with Jesus, go all the way or don't go at all because the most miserable people in the world are half committed Christians who are just enough into the world to be miserable in God and just enough into God to be miserable in the world. Moses said, I want all of you, I want all of you. Verse 19, so God said, I will make all my goodness pass before you then. And I will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. But he said, you cannot see my face for men shall not see me and live, but you will see the trail of my glory.

My face though can never be seen. Behold, there is a place by me where you will stand on the rock. And while my glory passes by, I'll put you in the cleft of that rock.

And then I'll cover you with my hand until I've passed by completely. Then I'll take away my hand and you shall see my back, but my face cannot be seen. So God tells Moses to take the 10 commandments. And he's supposed to stand there in the cleft of that rock and Moses holds them in his hand. And the glory of God passes by verse five, 34 verse five. The Lord descended then in the cloud and he stood with Moses there, watch this. And he proclaimed the name of the Lord. Moses had asked to see the glory of God. And what he got was a proclamation of the name of the Lord verse six. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord. By the way, anytime in your Bible, you see Lord in all caps, it means the proper name for God, Yahweh or I am is how we would say that. The Lord Yahweh, the Lord, a God who is merciful and gracious. A God who is slow to anger. A God who abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness. Verse seven, keeping steadfast love for thousands.

Watch this. Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. Does that last phrase sound like a contradiction to you?

It should, if you're paying attention, it will. God forgives sin and iniquity and transgression because he loves people infinitely, but he will by no means clear the guilty. Well, if he's not clearing the guilty, whose sin is he forgiving? How can you be guilty of sin and then not be guilty and God not clear you yet still forgive you somehow anyway?

Does that make sense? That is a contradiction. And if Exodus 34, seven were the last verse in the Bible, it would end as a contradiction. And by the way, Moses didn't understand how the contradiction resolved, which is why he only got to see the backside of God's glory. Because it was something that was a missing piece that he did not understand.

He just had to kind of shrug his shoulders and say, well, I don't get it, but I guess that's the way it is. But Exodus 34, seven is not the last verse in the Bible. In fact, the gospel of John, John chapter one, the apostle John opens up describing Jesus in the exact same language of Exodus 34.

You might never have picked this up at John chapter one. And the word Jesus became flesh and he dwelt among us. Dwelt is the same word for tabernacle. Just like they had a tabernacle in Exodus, Jesus is going to dwell among us. He's the tabernacle, literally just tabernacled among us. And we have seen his glory, right? Glory is of the only son from the father, glory that is full of grace. That's a direct quote from Exodus 34 and truth is the Hebrew word faithfulness.

So it's a direct quote of the same characteristic of Exodus 34 verse seven. Then John is gonna go on to say, verse 18, no man has ever seen God at any time. The only God who's at the father's side, that's the one who has made him known. Not even Moses could see God because Moses was a sinner and sinners who see God die. But John says there was another one who came, Jesus.

He was God, he had God's glory. And Jesus is going to live without sin, which means he can see God, but then Jesus at the end of his life is going to be smote dead in our place. Jesus is going to resolve the contradiction of Exodus 34 seven, because Jesus is going to suffer for the guilty so that the guilty are not cleared, but Jesus is going to suffer in their place so that they can be forgiven and God can love them infinitely while still his justice is upheld. You see this verse, like all verses in the Old Testament sets you up for a contradiction that can only be resolved in Jesus. Because in Jesus, we see the justice of God exalted and we see the compassion of God upheld so that God could save sinners. God could love the guilty. God could be just. He could forgive them, but sin would be paid for.

That is the name that is being proclaimed. What Moses saw the backside of, we get to see clearly in Jesus. Moses got put in the cleft of a rock and got to see the trail of God's glory. We are put in Christ and get to see the full face of God's glory by looking at it in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the only one who can fulfill Exodus 34 seven.

All the Bible talks about him. The gospel teaches that God is just and therefore there must be a penalty for sin, but the gospel also teaches that God is infinitely loving. And so God poured out on Jesus the wrath that was reserved for you and me so that God could love us eternally and God forgive us and God could satisfy his justice. Substitution is the mystery of the gospel that Moses did not understand. Moses could not understand it and that's why he only saw the backside of God's glory. You and I understand that Jesus Christ was the justice of God and the compassion of God. He died in our place and the justice of God was upheld and the compassion of God was extended and you and I can be saved and God's justice can be upheld and that's why we say we see his glory face to face. In Christ, we've been given a privilege that Moses was denied to see God's glory face to face. That's the powerful first message in our new teaching series called The Name here on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You know Summit Life is here for you every day on this radio station and online thanks to the generosity of listeners like you. We are so grateful and when you join our team and donate today, we'll say thanks by sending you our new featured resource called I Am Seven Weeks in the Gospel of John. Have you ever felt a deep longing to understand Jesus more fully and to truly grasp the depths of his identity and mission? Available in both print and digital versions, this study will guide you through the seven I Am statements of Jesus found in the Gospel of John revealing Jesus in his own words. Each week you'll unpack a different I Am statement with this in-depth study exploring its meaning through insightful commentary, carefully selected scripture passages and thought-provoking questions that will challenge, grow and inspire you. We just finished the full teaching for this content yesterday here on the program so you can always go back and listen as well for more insights. Ask for your I Am study guide when you give today by calling 866-335-5220 or get this study when you donate online at jdgreer.com. Don't forget to check out the gospel partner page as well to learn more about what it looks like to be a part of our monthly giving family. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again tomorrow when we'll continue this new teaching series about the intimacy that comes from knowing, truly knowing God's name. Join us Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.