His Presence Is In His Name

Welcome Summit Church at our campus locations across the Triangle. My name is JD. I'm your guest pastor for the weekend.

I'm glad to be back with you. This is the beginning of a new season here at the Summit Church. There are lots of things happening. Some of our campuses are going to more services this weekend. One of our campuses is going to a new location. Our North Durham campus is going to Riverside High School, a high school with double the capacity they had. Opening a new campus here in the Mebane area. Which will be our night campus. I expect you'll be at Mebane next week.

That's awesome. A lot of stuff happening. We're also beginning a new series today which ought to carry us for about the next five weeks. The series is called The Name. 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. 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.

They called you Fred or Beatrice or Jeff or whatever is 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. Knowing that name is extremely important because it's how we know him. 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. I'm not even really sure he exists, much less know him. I feel like there's something out there. Maybe that would explain some things, but it raises a lot more problems. I don't even know if he exists.

A lot of people I've found will make a statement like this. They'll say, well God, God I understand. There had to be something behind everything. I just don't understand what the big deal is about Jesus. You Christians always make him such a big deal about Jesus.

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. I'd watch them worship and I'd kind of look at my heart and be like, nothing.

There's nothing really happening in there. Listen, I knew how to play the game. I knew when to raise my hand in worship. I knew how to run my spiritual face and grunt a lot. Guess what Christians do with each other? They grunt back and forth when you're really spiritual.

I knew how to do all that. I just knew if I were being honest that inside there was this kind of like, I don't connect with God the way I connect with a person. 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. By the way, what I've figured out is that a lot of people are faking.

A lot of people are making the fake grunt when there's actually nothing really behind that. 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. This could be a great series for you to bring friends to for the next five weeks.

I really cannot overestimate the importance of the next five weeks for us as a church. That book that I haven't forgot about in the seven years since I graduated from college. That statement was this. Let me turn this guy for us here.

Here it is. 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. 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. 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 will 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.

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. Our text for the next few weeks is going to be arguably 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 Exodus 34, 6, and 7 is the most quoted verse in the Bible by other writers of the Bible?

It's called the 13 medot. That's what the Jews referred to it as. The 13 attributes, that's what medot 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. 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, in case you don't know how to count. 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.

He just 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. 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-necked 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 at the top of your field. He's just going to pour out blessing, and you've 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. 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, in 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 fiancé 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 our 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 punished 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 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? 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. 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 going to 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? If you lean Democrat in your politics, you probably just thought of Donald Trump.

And if you lean Republican, you probably just thought of Hillary Clinton. But 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.

Think about it. Moses had all those things in this previous part of his life. 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 he passed away.

We just recently marked the one year anniversary of that. 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 going to get married.

I know that I'm never going to 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 in an early death with Jesus, I would take cancer with Jesus every single time. That's what Moses sees about God.

Here is 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 going to make you my sole possession, God, if I'm going to 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 going to 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 going to follow Jesus, the only joy in it is when you go all the way. I don't mean to be mean, but I know that I'm looking at a number of people that you're 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. 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 into the place, and there's a lot of people in the room, because 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. It's like going through Halloween every week where you have to dress up like something you're not and act a part that you don't really want to 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 going to 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 man 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 pass 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 Ten 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 5, 34, verse 5. 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 6. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord. By the way, any time 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 7, 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 34.7 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 34.7 is not the last verse in the Bible. In fact, the Gospel of John, John chapter 1, the Apostle John opens up describing Jesus in the exact same language of Exodus 34.

You might never have picked this up. But John chapter 1, 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, he's 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 7. Then John is going to 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 it 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, verse 7, 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, he 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, verse 7.

All the Bible talks about him. There's a story I tell to my kids whenever we talk about the gospel. They always say, Daddy, tell us the king's story. I heard the story as a true story. I doubt that it's true. It's probably not, but whatever.

It still serves an illustrative purpose. The story says, supposedly 1,000 years ago, there was a king, a Viking king, who had a small little country that he was sovereign over, and he had the reputation among his people of being the fairest king that ever lived, also the most loving king that ever lived. Well, he comes out one day and says, money's being stolen from my treasury.

Now, his people loved him because he was so fair and so loving. He said, you know that anything that you need, if I can meet your need, I'll take care of it, but you can't steal from me because that's sabotaging our kingdom. Well, the people, you know, nobody knew who was taking the money, but a week went by, and the king came out a second time and said, money's being taken every day from my treasury, so I'm gonna have to give a penalty. Whoever gets caught stealing gets 10 lashes with the whip.

A couple weeks pass by, money continues to be stolen. He comes out a third time and says, I'm gonna have to double the penalty to 20 lashes. Another week or so pass by, money being taken every day, and so the king comes out, and the king says, money is being stolen, and it's gotten really serious. 40 lashes for whoever gets caught stealing, which was, in essence, the death penalty for them. Two days, according to the story, after the king made this pronouncement, they caught the thief.

They caught the thief red-handed. It was the king's mother. Whenever I told this story the first time, my kids are like, oh! And I say, what is he gonna do? Because he's the fairest king that ever lived, the most loving king, and one of my daughters, says, well, she said, Dad, if he was fair, he couldn't just let his mom go, because if it was anybody else, he'd have to punish them. I said, that's right. And he said, but if he's loving, how could he kill his own mother? I said, that was the dilemma that the king was in.

So the king said, I need a day to think this over. And so he goes back into his chamber, and he emerges a day later, and he says, the law is the law. Justice is justice. The law says she must be punished.

She must be punished. So they take the mom out to the post, and they tie her hands up, and the guard rips off the back of her shirt, and the guard takes the whip, and he pulls the whip back, and he's about to bring it across the back of the king's mother, when the king says, stop! And the king walks over to his mom, and he takes off his royal robe, and he lays it on the ground, and then he takes off his shirt, and then he walks up to his mom, and he takes her, and he hugs her really tightly so that his bare back cocoons her whole body and so that not a part of it is visible, and then he looks back at the guard, and he says, now hit her. And the guard says, I can't, because I'll hit you when I'm trying to hit her. And the king said, that's not your concern.

I told you to hit her. And as the story goes, the king gives all 40 lashes, but the king is there to absorb the sting of every single one of them. 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 could 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. The name of Jesus is the name into which God has now loaded all of his power. You want to know where the power and presence of God are? They're in his name. And that's probably what I would say is the one big idea that I want you to walk away from this message with. In fact, you may want to write it down.

It says this. God's presence and his power reside in his name. You see, when God passed in front of Moses, it doesn't say that he saw a brightness. That's how, if I told you this afternoon you were going to see God's glory, you would think, oh, there's going to be like some big vision and some, no. It says that when God passed in front of Moses, he didn't see a brightness.

He heard a proclamation, a proclamation of a name. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones says there is, a British pastor says, there is no passage in the Bible that more clearly depicts for us what it's like to be in the presence of God. The presence of God is not a warm, tingly feeling. The presence of God is not the hair in the back of your neck standing up. It's not the crescendo in a choir special. It's not when the pastor goes on an alliterated roll and says everything that starts with the letter P and there's like 19 words and you get goosebumps and you say hallelujah. That's not the presence of God. The presence of God is when the spirit of God takes the name of God and the love of God and begins to make it real in your heart by declaring to you his glorious name that he has saved you and he renews his covenant with you in that moment.

That's the presence of God. When I was, after Veronica and I had been married about seven years, her wedding ring needed a small repair on it and so we were gonna take it to a jeweler and so she was gonna take it one afternoon and she stopped at a restaurant to meet a friend for lunch and she had the ring in the pocket of her coat and evidently at the restaurant it fell out because that was the last we ever saw it and so I remember because I had mortgaged my entire future to be able to purchase the ring in the first time. It's not the kind of thing that you just replace and back then I didn't have insurance on it because I was young and stupid and so I'm just nothing and so you can't just go out and so I remember we paid like $50 to get her something to put around her finger so guys wouldn't hit on her and so I didn't tell her but I started little by little to put some money away because I was like, I gotta get the money to buy this ring and so I saved for what felt like a long time and there's a jeweler in our church and I went to him and I said, listen, this is what I got and I drew the ring. Now, if you ever see me draw anything, you know how humorous this is. I was like, it's a one of a kind, I've never seen it. It had all these little things on it. Can you make this ring?

And he's like, well, so I drew all these different diagrams of it and he says, I think I can do that and so he worked on it. I said, this is all the money I got. He came back and I'm telling you, he came back with what looked like the exact replica of that ring and so on one of our anniversaries, I take my wife and basically I try to reenact our engagement and I go through the whole rigamarole and I get down on one knee and I pull out this ring that she has, doesn't know that I've gotten made and I said, I wanna give you this. The first time I gave you this, I did not know what I was doing because we had just dated for a year and I didn't know the real you because we both lied to each other for a solid year and now I've lived with you now for over a decade and I know the real you and I still wanna spend the rest of my life with you and I hope if God gives us 40, 50 more years that every single moment is gonna be spent with you and so I wanna ask you again, will you marry me and spend the rest of your life with me? Now, in that moment when she took the ring the second time, she did not become more my wife than she was the moment before, right?

Legally, we've been married for over a decade but in that moment, there was a renewal of the covenant and the sense of my relationship with her was renewed. When the spirit of God brings you into the presence of God, that is exactly what happens. The spirit of God, Romans 5, verse 3, sheds abroad in your heart the love of Christ. Romans chapter 8, verse 15, the spirit in you cries up, I'm a father, my daddy, and you begin to sense that you are a son and a daughter of God as God declares his name.

His name to you. In scripture, power and presence are always tied to the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus is how you're saved, right?

The first sermon ever preached, Peter stands up and he says, Acts 2, verse 21, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Do you ever think about why it's worded that way? Why would you just call on the Lord? Why would you call on the name of the Lord? Why would you just call on the Lord?

Because the name is where God has put all of Jesus' power and everything that belongs to Jesus is in that name, and you've got to take that name to yourself because everything, all the blessings of salvation go with it. I have a friend who, let's just say, is a man of considerable means. A few years ago, he calls me in November and says, Hey man, I've got this private jet and I'm contracted with the pilots of this jet. To use a certain amount of hours, and I'm not going to be able to use it by the end of the year.

Do you know anywhere that you might want to take your family somewhere by the end of the year? It's only like six weeks. And I'm like, let me worry about it.

Yes. And so, he tells me where to go, and I just go to this private hangar. So, I show up and I go into this private hangar, and I'm telling you, the moment I set foot in the private hangar, it was obvious to me and everybody in there, I did not belong.

I mean, I've got my four kids and my wife. We look like the Clampett family coming on vacation. And everybody kind of looks over, like, who is this?

We don't recognize him. And the lady at the front desk has just got this look of death on her face, like, this is not where you're supposed to be. And I kind of walk up to the front of the thing, and she's looking at me with suspicion, and I said, I'm the guest of, and I said this guy's name. And when I said that guy's name, her entire demeanor just shifts, and she's like, oh, you must be Mr. Greer.

I said, actually, it's Dr. Greer, if you want to be technical about it. She said, oh, we've got your plane ready. She goes, how can we make you, what would you like to drink? Can I get the bags for your kids? Your kids want to watch TV? Do they want candy?

I got all kinds of stuff for them. You guys just sit back. This is going to be a great experience. All that happens, not because my name is Mr. Greer, Dr. Greer, J.D. Greer, or anything. It happened because of the name of this man that had been suddenly tied to my name, and all the blessings of that room and that private jet got transferred to me because I was connected to him. When you become a Christian, it means that Jesus' name gets associated with you so that all the blessings of salvation begin to become yours. I am saved not because the name of J.D.

Greer has any notoriety to it, not because it has any righteousness associated to it. I am saved because Jesus Christ has given me his righteousness, and when his name got associated with my name, all the promises of God were given to me. Like Paul says, all the promises of God are yes in Christ Jesus. I didn't earn a single promise.

I don't have to do anything to maintain the promise. God gave it to me as a gift, and he said, you take the name, you get them all, you get everything. Calling out of the name of Jesus is how God raised his son from the dead. You ever wonder what God the Father said to Jesus after he'd been in the grave for three days and it was time to resurrect? Resurrect, arise, or whatever.

I mean, there's all kinds of songs about it. Listen, if my son had been dead for three days, I can tell you what I would say to him. I wouldn't be like, resurrect, be thou, resurrect.

I would say, Adam, get up! And it says that when Jesus, God called Jesus' name, the powers of death itself couldn't hold Jesus, and he burst out of the grave. And what that means is that when I call out the name of Jesus in faith over my chains and my condemnation and those things, those chains shattered just as surely as the bounds of death shattered over Jesus. It's like the hymn writer says, Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night.

Thine eye diffused, a quickening ray. I rose, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my soul was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee. Jesus is the name to which one day the knee of every creature in the universe will bow. Philippians 2, verse 9 says it this way, Therefore God has bestowed on him the name, the name that is above every name. By the way, have you ever heard somebody say that Jesus is not really God? Well, then how in the world does God give Jesus a name that is above every name, including his own name?

God's not going to give a higher name to somebody than he gives to himself. So of course Jesus is God, because he's got the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee would bow. Every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth. I sometimes wonder, like, why does under the earth, why did that have to be qualified? You know, evidently there's things under the earth that we are going to bow to.

It's all included. Philippians 2, verse 10, And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord to the glory. See, Paul's thinking about Exodus 34. To the glory of God the Father, it's all bound up in that name.

That means that one day, one day, I don't know who's going to say it. Maybe God the Father, maybe an archangel, I don't know, maybe one of us is going to say the name Jesus, and at that moment, the entire universe, everything living, everything past, present, and future, every king, every cynic, every scoffer, every doubter is going to be driven to their knees. Some of them will drop in worship, some will drop in fear, but all will drop in recognition that there is power in the name of Jesus, the name that is above every name. By the way, I think you get a picture of it in John, chapter 18. In fact, this is one of those little, every once in a while in the New Testament, something squeaks out of Jesus' life, and you don't see it much, and it's almost like it comes right back in, but it just, you know, this is one of them. John 18, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Judas and the temple guards are coming to take him to the crucifixion. And so they come up, and they're in the dark, and Jesus walks out to meet him, and he says, who are you seeking? And they say, Jesus of Nazareth. And all Jesus says, John 18, six, is, I am.

Evidently, he said it in Hebrew, Yahweh, the name of God, and it says that when he said it, they suddenly just fell backwards on the ground on their faces. I think that is a glimpse of what's gonna happen in Philippians 2, nine, when one day, somebody utters that name, and every living creature is driven to their knees, some in worship, some in fear, all in recognition that Jesus Christ is the Lord. The apostles, Acts 5, 41, says that they were willing to suffer for the name.

Why? Because they'd seen that name drive out demons. They'd seen that name heal the sick. They'd seen that name give sight to the blind.

They had seen that name give hearing to the deaf. Acts 4, 12, Peter would say, there is salvation in nobody else, neither is there salvation in any other, there is no other name given under heaven, given among men, so we gotta be saved through the name of Jesus. You ever wonder why Christians teach that salvation is only found in Christ? It's not because we're mean. It's not because we feel like, oh, we're special, and we're better than everybody else.

Exactly the opposite. It's that we understand that our salvation was not an easy thing. It was not something that anybody could fix. It wasn't a better program to live by.

It wasn't a few suggestions. Our problem, what we needed to be saved from, is we were dead in our sin, and we were under eternal crushing guilt, guilt that would have merited hell for us, and there's only one name that can bring life back from the dead and can remove that kind of guilt, and that name is the name of Jesus. So what we have to start saying is not, hey, whatever way you wanna get to God is okay. Choose the name that you like. What I say is my name ain't gonna work. Your name ain't gonna work. A demon's name ain't gonna work. Any other God's name ain't gonna work. The only name that's gonna work is the God who went into the grave, came back from the dead, and died for your sin.

That's the only name where you can find salvation, and when you understand that, you stop begrudging the idea that Jesus is the only way. You become grateful for it. If you were physically sick and the doctor said, you will die within the month, but I have good news. There is a medicine, one medicine, that can heal your sickness. It's in this pill. You take this one pill, and you will be healed. You don't hate the doctor for saying that. You don't begrudge the doctor for saying that. You're grateful to him for telling you that. You take the pill, and if it works, then you probably spend the rest of your life telling everybody who's got the same sickness you are there is power in that one drug. Pay attention to it and take it. Christians find the name of Jesus precious.

Why? Because we know there's salvation. The power to save that we needed was only found in him. Everything in the Christian life is in the name of Jesus.

That's why we find it precious. The Jews would not even write Jesus' name, or they wouldn't write God's name. They wouldn't write God's name.

They had such fear and reverence for them. The name of Jesus has a different effect on us. Yes, it is fear and reverence, but instead of making us cower backwards in fear, the name of Jesus makes us draw close in worship because the name of Jesus means literally Yahweh saves. I would say that if all you know, listen, is the name of God, if all you know is the name of God, then what the Jews felt, the reason they wouldn't even write the name, is probably similar to how you feel about God.

There's this sense of fear, dread, a sense of distance and alienation. When you come to know Jesus, that dread and alienation is removed, and in its place is put this invitation that draws you close. Sometimes just the mention of Jesus' name will fill my heart with a sense of wonder and hope because I know that when I have messed things up, and I know that when I feel like I'm at my lowest, I know Jehovah saves, and I know that God did not put His love on me because I had earned it. God put His love on me because God is a Savior, and that fills me with such hope, and like the old hymn we used to sing, Jesus, Jesus, there's just something about that name. Master, Savior, Jesus, like the fragrance after the rain.

Kings and kingdoms will all pass away, but there's something about that name. I would dare say that we could measure your relationship to God based on how much emotion you feel about the name of Jesus, and if you are one of those people who say, God, yeah, I get the big deal about God, but I don't understand what the big deal is about Jesus, I would say, I don't mean this to be mean, but I would say that just shows that you don't know God at all because all you know is a God who rules, a God who creates, and a God who judges. That's not a God you can be close to, but when you come to know the God who saves, you'll find that sense of dread and anxiety removed and in its place put an invitation that draws you close. Everything in the Christian life is in the name of Jesus, which leads me to the very final thing I want to say this weekend because it's going to carry you from here. Spiritual growth occurs as you press deeper into the name. You want to know how to grow deeper spiritually? God's presence and his power fills those who hear in their souls the name of God like Moses did. Paul, in the book of 2 Corinthians, is going to describe for you what spiritual growth looks like. This is going to be new for some of you and you may have read over this passage, but it's so important. 2 Corinthians 3, watch this.

We all, with unveiled face, later in this story, Moses is going to have to put a veil over his face. We all, with unveiled face, behold the glory of the Lord, like Moses did, and are being, see this word, transformed into the same image, same image of God, glorious, from one degree of glory to another. You know how God changes you?

Not by telling you to act better. God changes you by transforming you into a glorious person who begins to do gloriously because you have a heart that has become itself glorious. You begin to obey God because you crave God. You begin to be generous because God has made you a generous person. You begin to do righteousness because you crave righteousness. The way that God changes you is not you coming in here every week and me yelling at you and motivating you and telling you to be a better person.

That change won't last. The way that God changes you is he creates in you this sense of I want you. I don't need to be compelled to obey.

I just want to know you. So it's not that I obey because I have to. It's obey because I want to and I seek you and I desire you.

That's the transformation he's talking about. So he goes on, chapter four, verse one. Watch, there shouldn't be a chapter break here.

Whoever put the chapter break here ought to be punched in the throat. Second Corinthians 4, one. Therefore, having this ministry with my ministry preaching by the mercy of God, we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word.

What's a disgraceful underhanded way? It's anything that I use to get you to obey that is not driven by a desire to know more of God. For example, if you obey, God will bless you and God will make you rich. Give a little money here and God will multiply and give it back to you.

If you don't give, you're a bad person and you should just feel bad about yourself all the time. That is a disgraceful underhanded way because I'm trying to motivate you to obey to get something lesser than God. I'm not using God to get you to obey.

I'm trying to say, use God as a means to an end that is disgraceful and it's underhanded because God is his own end. You know why you should obey? Because God is better than anything else you can give your life to. You want to know why you should obey? Because God has given himself for you. We're going to put up all this get rich quick and get all this better life now junk and put that behind us that's graceful and underhanded because it's trying to motivate you to the greatest treasure by putting a lesser treasure and making the greater treasure a means to the lesser treasure and how stupid is that?

So Paul goes on. For what we proclaim is not ourselves. In other words, I'm not standing up here saying, be like me. Become like me. Be a good husband the way I'm a good husband. Read your Bible the way that I read my Bible.

Give money the way that I give money. I'm not telling you to become like Moses. I'm not telling you to become like David. I'm not telling you to dare to be a Daniel. I'm not telling you to become like the apostles.

I'm not telling you to become like anything. I'm telling you Jesus became sin for you. Because I know that when you understand truly understand that name when you understand that Jesus became sin for you then you will 2 Corinthians 5 21 become the righteousness of God in him. You want to know how God changes us? It's not by exhortation.

It is by revelation. Because God is not just after obedience. He's after a whole new kind of obedience. An obedience that grows from desire.

An obedience that where you obey because you crave God. And that can't be fixed by me yelling at you every week. It's fixed by God taking the blinders off of your heart and letting you see the glory of God. Lord now indeed I find thy power and thine alone can change the leopard spots and melt the heart of stone. So what I proclaim is not myself.

What I proclaim is not some evil underhanded way. What I proclaim is that Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left the crimson stain.

He watched it white as snow. And so now when I look full in the face of that I become the kind of person who wants and seeks glory. That's what spiritual change is. Do you want to see God's glory?

Do you want to go all the way with him? Then why don't you do what Moses did? Number one ask God to see it. Then number two put yourself in a place where you can encounter it week by week. You need to start reading the Bible daily with us. That's a great place to start. We have a daily Bible reading plan in the church. You need to start today and read along with us. You need this covenant that you're going to be here for the next four weeks and that you're going to walk with us as we unpack this series and you're going to say God I just want to see you and I want to know you and I want to be transformed.

I want all of you. That's putting yourself in a place to encounter the glory of God. Why don't you bow your heads at all of our campuses if you would? Father I know that there are people listening to me right now at one of our campuses who have never come to know you as Jesus. They've only known you as God and they've felt distant from you.

They've felt like you were aloof. They've feared you because you were a judge and I pray God in these moments in these weeks to come they would know you as Savior. I pray that they would repent of their sin and receive the gift of your name that you have offered to them that they would trust you as their Savior. God I pray that they would do it today that they would receive this gift of salvation and Father I pray for our church that you would take the blinders off of our eyes so that we would see glory and we would become glory and we would learn to follow you because we seek you and see you as the greatest treasure. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.