Tuesday, August 14, 2012 <br> <br>Who are you God? <br> <br>What is your name? <br> <br>Imagine you’re an Israelite, a slave in Egypt, forced to make bricks. You stoke the kilns all day long, feed the fire, put the bricks in and pull them out again when they’re baked. And every day you come home dusty and sweaty with nothing to look forward to but doing it again the next day. <br> <br>Imagine you’re a Hebrew woman whose husband is away all day at the kilns and you’re at home pregnant -- praying it’s not a boy because Pharaoh’s put all the baby boys under a sentence of death. Somewhere at your grandmother’s knee before it got so bad you remember hearing about a God who promised your ancestor that his offspring would be his people and that he would be there God. <br> <br>But that was a long time ago and you can see a lot of gods in Egypt but this God of Abraham – where is he? Most of your fellow Israelites have given up and started worshiping their neighbors’ gods. <br> <br>Then imagine you’re Moses, raised as Pharaoh’s grandson, with all kinds of privileges, but you never forget your people. Your heart goes out to them and you want to save them but all you get for your efforts is rejection and you end up running to Midian to save your own life. <br> <br>And one day while you’re out tending sheep you see a bush on fire, and it seems strange that the fire doesn’t go out. So you go closer and a voice speaks out of the bush, a voice that hasn’t been heard for 400 years: <br> <br>Exodus 3: 4-15 <br> <br> “Moses! Moses!” <br> <br>And Moses said, “Here I am.” <br> <br>“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. <br> <br>The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey . . . the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” <br> <br>But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” <br> <br>And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. ” <br> <br>Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” <br> <br>God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” <br> <br>God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers —the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob —has sent me to you.’ <br> <br>“This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.” <br> <br>Moses raised his own issues first, but once he was convinced there wasn’t any way to get out of going back he raised the other big question: <br> <br>What is your name? <br> <br>When he asked God “what is your name” he was asking him to pull back the curtain and reveal himself. He knew the people were going to want to know. They didn’t know the Lord. They weren’t much different from Pharaoh who would later say, “Who is the Lord that I should do what he says?” <br> <br>Who are you Lord? What is your name? <br> <br>In the Bible, the name of the Lord is his character, his identity; the revelation of his nature. When the Bible says, “Glorify the name of the Lord,” it means, “make known who he is; worship who he has revealed himself to be.” <br> <br> When Moses asked, “What is your name?” he was asking “Who are you?” He was asking for a revelation of who God is in relation to his people – who are you to us? What is your heart towards us? He needed to know because he knew the people would need to know. <br> <br>And God answers, “I AM.” <br> <br>“I AM who I am.” <br> <br>Is that an answer? Well, in one sense it is. It says that God is self-existent, beyond comprehending; altogether different from all the pagan gods the Israelites had gotten to know. <br> <br>But in another sense it leaves the question open. God was saying, “I AM and I will fill in the blanks for you more and more as time goes by. Right now I am revealing this much about myself: I see you and I hear you and I am deeply moved by your suffering. And I act – I don’t stand back aloof and uninvolved – I intervene in history. In fact, I have come down to rescue you.” <br> <br>That was a beautiful starting point for knowing God, for knowing his name and through the entire book of Exodus God continues to fill in the blanks and reveal who he is. <br> <br>The same is true of the entire Bible, God continues to fill in the blanks and reveal who he is to his people and every time he opens up and tells us more about himself it just keeps getting better. We know more and more deeply how good he really is, how giving of himself to us he really is. And in the end we know that God’s name is “I AM everything. “I AM everything you need, everything you ever desired.” That’s my name. <br> <br>We need to listen to God tell us who he is because we’re like the Israelites -- unless God reveals himself we’re going to fill in the blanks with negative thoughts. We’re predisposed to do this by the Fall – Satan redefined God’s character when he tempted Eve – he made him out to be selfish and withholding, he described him as someone who only cared about himself and that lie still resonates in our hearts. We need to hear God tell us who he is. We need to let his Word break through all our dark thoughts and bring us home to him. And one of the most powerful names he gives us is “husband” – powerful and beautiful and mysterious. <br> <br>God says, “I am your husband.” <br> <br>“I have married you. I have chosen you. I have bound myself to you because I love you. I’ve made you my own, I’ve given you my name and I’m sharing everything I have with you.” <br> <br>Husband means all of that and more. God describes his love in the most intimate terms when he calls us his husband. He is promising to know us spiritually like a husband knows his wife physically. He is revealing his tender desire to be deeply united to us, in the very closest kind of love relationship. <br> <br>God hasn’t held anything back. He gives us all of himself and he wants all of us in return. <br> <br>“I AM your husband.” <br> <br>If you read the history of God’s people in the Old Testament you know the story -- this marriage was broken, not by God, but by his people. He says the same thing in Jeremiah and Hosea and Ezekiel – “Even though I was a husband to you, you played the harlot. You went after other gods.” And of course that means divorce; that means the marriage is wrecked – right? <br> <br>No. Amazingly God refuses to let his people go. He promises to marry them all over again. Listen to God in Isaiah 54:4,5: <br> <br>“Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame. 
 <br>Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
 <br>You will forget the shame of your youth 
 <br>and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. <br>For your Maker is your husband —
 <br>the Lord Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; 
 <br>he is called the God of all the earth.” <br> <br>And when does this happen? When does God take us in his arms like a husband and comfort us? <br> <br>It happens when Jesus comes. Jesus the bridegroom who comes seeking his bride, who loves her so passionately he lays down his life so all her sins can be forgiven – even her sin of adultery. Jesus who adorns her with the beauty of his own life. Jesus who gives her his name and cares for her like his own body. Jesus who knows her intimately by his Spirit, who takes away her barrenness so she can bear fruit for God. Jesus who at the end of the ages will sit at the wedding feast of the Lamb with his bride and rejoice. <br> <br>“I am you husband,” says the Lord. He is revealing his deep, intimate love for us. He wants each of us to receive him as our husband, to know him as our husband, to love him as our husband in the privacy of our own hearts.
The Names of God Bible (Hardcover)
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One of the best ways to get to know God on a deeper level is to know the names and titles both he and his people give to him. Now the bestselling author of Praying the Names of God reveals the richness of God's character and love found in his...
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The Names of God Bible (Leathersoft)
For a gift of $40.00 or more
One of the best ways to get to know God on a deeper level is to know the names and titles both he and his people give to him. Now the bestselling author of Praying the Names of God reveals the richness of God's character and love found in his...
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