Names | Maker - Psalm 95:6–7 | March 15

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And this is what we're entering into. It's not necessarily a new series because

we did end the last year talking about certain names of God.

So in some ways, it's a continuation. In some ways, it's new.

What I want us to be aware of and to remind you of as we return to this idea

is that if we know who God is,

we'll know who we are and we'll ultimately know what we should be doing in this life.

These aren't, I would say these aren't particularly names. The only name that

God gives himself really is Yahweh.

These could be described as names, certainly.

We could also describe them as titles, almost like professions,

or even more so, perhaps, profound descriptions of who God is.

And not just who God is, but these profound descriptions speak to our deepest

need to know who we are as well.

That we find our identities, not in titles, not in these titles,

but in the one who holds them perfectly.

When we think about the word maker, not only do we think about the fact that

we are therefore made, but we also think about us as makers are perfected.

What it means for us to be a maker is perfected in what he is as

a maker when we think about god as love not only does it mean that we are loved

but it also means and shows us how we are to love if y'all are like looking

really hardcore at this there might be some errors oil oily you know god's pretty

god's pretty oily okay he's he's anointed,

Yeah. Okay.

So again, we don't find our identities in these titles themselves.

We find our identities in the one who holds them and the one who perfects them.

And all of the, all of the ways that we embody them are imperfect and fall short,

but he fills them full of meaning and purpose.

As I mentioned, the word love, if we want to know what the fullness of love

is, we look to God and then we reflect that love in the best of our ability

as the Spirit empowers us to.

And so we get to know who we are as we know who God is. So we start in this

word maker, and I chose this specifically rather than the word creator.

I want us to walk away with this phrase, if you'll move it to the next slide.

And I invite you all to stand up with me. I want you to know that he is the

maker, that we are not self-made, that we are God-made.

What he makes belongs to him, and God is not finished with what he has made.

If you say those words with me, he is the maker.

We are not self-made. We are God-made.

What he makes belongs to him, and God is not finished with what he has made.

Perfect. Thank you guys. You can go and sit down.

So I just want to kind of go through those statements, that catechism almost,

if you will. He is the maker.

He's not some distant architect. He's not an impersonable force as some religions

are prone to describe God as.

The Bible speaks of God as the maker.

And the reason I chose this word is because depending on the translation that

you read, but probably most translations have this appear at one point or time in another.

But you'll encounter these verses along your reading, particularly in the Old Testament.

Job has a bunch of them. Shall mortal men be more just than God?

Shall a man be more pure than his maker? And when you encounter this word maker,

oftentimes it doesn't occur like a ton in the Bible.

So I'm not saying like you're going to encounter the word maker and it's always

going to be this, but when you encounter the word maker as a proper title description of God,

you find this word capitalized in a strange way because we wouldn't normally capitalize maker.

In Proverbs, it talks about who mocks the poor reproaches his maker as reproach to his maker.

The Lord is maker of them all Isaiah 17 all that day shall shall a man look

to his maker and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy one of Israel Isaiah

45 woe unto him who striveth with his maker.

Isaiah 51, forgettest the Lord thy maker. Over and over again,

this title, Hosea, for Israel had forgotten his maker.

We encounter this word, which in sense is the same idea as creator.

I'll admit that. But we encounter the idea in other ways as well.

In the book of Isaiah, God's people cry out to him with this confession in Isaiah 64.

And yet, O Lord, you are our father. we are all the clay and you are the potter.

We all are formed by your hand.

Isaiah reaches into this imagery of a potter shaping clay.

Our neighbor is an excellent potter. She sells her work at all the big festivals.

If I had to try and make something out of clay, it would look like a kid's ashtray.

Why do kids make ashtrays?

Exactly. I don't know. I don't know why in pottery class.

Kids always made ashtrays, but clay cannot form itself. It yields to the hand that shapes it.

Isaiah is reminding us that human life is not an accident and not self-constructed.

Our lives are formed by the intentional work of the maker.

The same hands that form the first humans from the dust still shape our lives

today, patient and deliberately, purposefully.

In the gospel of John, it opens up with talking about how God created everything

through him and nothing was created except through him.

And John's, of course, speaking of Jesus here as the word of God,

the lamb of God, God himself.

And he makes this sweeping claim that everything that exists exists.

Because it was created. And it came into being through not just God, but every aspect of God.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit was authored in this creation.

The mountains, the stars, atoms, life itself, nothing exists independently of the maker.

Every part of reality traces its origin back to the created word of God.

The universe itself is not self-generating, It is sustained by the one who spoke it into existence.

I don't know. This cough makes me sound like I'm more emotional than unusual. So...

And in Psalm 95, this is the one I love. And this is where that word maker comes back.

This is how the psalmist responds to this truth with worship.

It says, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord,

our maker, for he is our God.

We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care.

We recognize God as the maker.

And the natural response to that is worship. The natural response to that is humility.

The natural response and coming into contact with a God who did not make himself,

but made everything that exists is to fall on our knees to the one who's formed us,

the one who not only made us, but also watches over us and cares for us, who shepherds us.

And the Bible pulls out even further in Psalm 19, the heavens proclaim the glory

of God, the skies display his craftsmanship.

Creation is not silent.

Everything speaks. The skies declare the glory of the Lord. Theologian T.M.

Moore captures this idea when he writes, One of the central teachings of scripture

is that the natural world is not at all natural.

It is the creation of a supernatural God. What we routinely call nature is in

fact creation. What we casually call nature is actually the work of the maker.

Mountains are not merely geology. Stars are not merely cosmic accidents.

Rivers are not simply water finding its level. They are the result of tensional design.

The world around us is not random. It is crafted. And once we begin to see creation

this way, the universe becomes more than just scenery in a pretty background.

It becomes a declaration, a testimony of the God who made it all.

So what I want to do for the next five minutes or so.

Because I'm going to read just all of the marvelous ways that God has shaped the world around us.

I'm going to actually kneel down while I read this.

I invite you, I welcome you to stand up, raise your hands to kneel down.

I invite you to pull out your phones.

I don't often do that. Pull up in a notes app, write it down on a piece of paper in your Bible.

Write down a way that, whether it be in the descriptions that I am reading out,

or whether it be a thought that occurs along the way, something that captures

your attention about the God who made it all.

You can write down more than one thing. It doesn't have to be one thing.

I want us to do this throughout the rest of this time that we spend with the

names of God too. Be sure to keep a,

of not just the impact of what it means for God to be our maker or for him to

be our shepherd or our savior or whatever the name it might be,

but how is that impacting my life right now as well?

Keep a running track of this, but I invite you to do that now.

You can kneel, you can stand, you can, like I said, take notes,

close your eyes, keep them open, whatever you need to do.

I'm just going to read sort of an adaptation of several different things pushed

together, describing the God who made it all.

This is the sun, the strength, his strength on display.

Every morning the sun rises and most of us hardly notice anymore.

But that blazing light in the sky is not small. It is a star so massive that

more than a million earths could fit inside of it.

If the earth were the size of a golf ball, then the sun would be almost as big as this room.

And it is not even nearly the largest body in our heavens, in our universe.

It is not even close to being the largest star.

A furnace burning thousands of degrees, 93 million miles away,

and still we feel its warmth on our skin.

Every morning it appears exactly when it should. The scriptures say this was

intentional and the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.

It is like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding.

It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.

The sun rises at one end of the heavens and follows its course to the other

end. Nothing can hide from its heat.

The sun rises it's like a runner bursting from the starting line,

like a bridegroom stepping into celebration, like strength moving across the sky with joy.

It's not just a star, it is a witness.

The maker is strong, the maker is ready. The maker fills the world with life and warmth.

The night arrives and the sky deepens into darkness and suddenly the heavens

fill with light, star after star after star.

Astronomers look into the night and count galaxies. Inside our own galaxy alone,

there are billions of stars.

And the scriptures say something astonishing. He counts the stars and he calls them all by name.

Every one of them named.

Not because the stars need names.

The one who shaped burning suns scattered across galaxy also bends down to the human heart.

Just before that verse, the psalmist writes, He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.

It's not because the stars need names, it's because we do.

The maker of the cosmos is the healer of the wounded.

The same hand that flung galaxies into the dark also reaches gently towards the fragile.

As we watch the clouds move, crossing the sky, massive and quiet,

they drift above us like a moving ceiling.

David looks upward and suddenly his language fails him. So he points to the sky.

He says, your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens.

Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.

Where the clouds end, God's faithfulness continues.

The sky stretches until our eyes can no longer follow it.

Still, the maker's love goes farther. If you stand before a mountain range,

we react instinctively.

We fall quiet.

These towers that rise before us, these ridges that cut across the horizon,

ancient foundations that press deep into the earth, mountains feel permanent.

And yet the scripture say that there's something even larger.

You are glorious and more majestic than the everlasting mountains.

Mountains look eternal, but

the maker was already there before the first mountain rose from the earth.

Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world

from beginning to the end, you are God.

Before stone, before gravity pulled dust together, before continents shifted

and seas formed, the maker already was.

You stand beside a river and you listen.

Water moving endlessly forward, rolling over stones, filling the air with sound, feels alive.

The psalmist hears that rushing water and realizes something about God.

You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your rivers of delight.

Creation is not silent. Rivers preach. They preach abundance.

They preach movement. They preach joy that does not run dry.

And Jesus later steps into that ancient metaphor and speaks directly to our human need and thirst.

And he says, anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again,

but those who drink the water I give them will never be thirsty again.

The rivers point to the one who satisfies the soul. The maker writes the gospel into his landscape.

If you pick up a stone, you feel its weight, its stubborn solidity.

It does not bend easily. It does not move quickly.

So when David searches for words to describe God, his language turns towards

these stones, these rocks.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my savior.

My God is my rock in whom I find protection.

The strongest objects in the natural world become metaphors for the maker because

the stability we crave is not found in stone. it's found in him.

Even the animals speak, even the quiet creatures carry messages.

A deer moving through the forest, pausing, listening, searching for water.

The psalmist watched this moment and suddenly recognized his own soul as the

deer longs for streams of water.

So I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God.

Creation mirrors the longing of the human heart. We are thirsty and the maker

is the one who satisfies.

The universe is preaching. The scriptures say that this is happening constantly, all day, all night.

The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship.

Every sunrise, every constellation, every mountain ridge and rushing river,

the maker is revealing himself through what he has made.

Creation is a cathedral. the sky, its ceiling, the stars, its candles,

the ocean, its choirs, the world is not empty. It's alive with the voice of the maker.

And this is the one, the only, this is the only, only the beginning because

the maker of galaxies, the one who lights the sun, the one who carved the mountains

and filled the oceans has also revealed his name.

And every name tells us something, who he is, what he's like, how he draws near to us.

So we pause, we look up, we breathe in the vastness of it all,

and we remember that the maker is greater than we imagined.

Just spend the next 30 seconds in silence.

Looking up at the vastness of God, imagining his greatness.

He is our maker. Can kind of return, wake back up, return to us.

What it means that, that was worse.

What it means that he is our maker is that we are made by him. We are not self-made.

Our culture celebrates the idea of a self-made person.

One who builds a life from nothing the one who divines themselves

the one who chooses their own identity but there is a quiet problem with this

idea being self-made if you are self-made it all depends on you and it all rests

on your shoulders people who are self-made often are reinventing themselves

constantly giving themselves new titles new positions new authority,

because when identity comes from within us, it has to be rewritten constantly.

I remember just after graduating college, I was in Maryland for a few months

and I found myself hanging out with some high school students.

I met one of their friends who was full on in his emo phase and I said,

I remember that phase to which you may imagine he responded with, it's not a phase.

It's not a phase. Which upon reflection afterwards, I realized,

why is it a bad thing that it's a phase?

Phases come and go. They can last a long time or a short while.

He had so much stock into what he had made himself to be that it couldn't possibly be a phase.

We build so much on our own shoulders, the weight of what we are and what we must be.

Scripture presents a completely different pattern.

Scripture talks about what God makes, he names. What God creates, he names.

Throughout the Bible, the one who creates something is the one who names it.

And God has created everything.

He creates and he names the light and the day and the darkness and the night.

He names the skies, the heavens.

He names humanity. He gives them identity.

And that naming is an act of authority, his authority over all things.

All things are under his feet and establishes identity.

In the same God who names the stars, though they don't need names,

also gives the names to us who are so desperate for them.

Isaiah 43, it says, don't be afraid for I have ransomed you.

I have called you by name. You are mine.

God rescues, God calls, God names.

The apostle Paul, He presses even deeper into this when he asks the question,

essentially, what are we shaping ourselves after?

And Romans, you might not think of it this way, but he says a verse that we're

all familiar with, don't copy the behavior and customs of this world,

but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Every one of us is being shaped by something.

We talk about discipleship. We are all being discipled by something.

But are we becoming the disciple?

Are we becoming the person that we want to be, that God wants us to be?

What are we allowing to shape us? Paul points back to the maker and says that

transformation begins when we stop trying to make ourselves after some pattern that the world offers.

Instead, we allow God to make us and to remake us over and over again.

This is why the Bible doesn't begin with human achievement. It begins with God

making everything out of nothing. It begins with creation.

Before we even show up, before humanity ever acts, God builds and God defines.

God has already spoken. The maker forms, the maker calls, the maker names.

Our identities begin with who he says that we are. We are not self-made.

And when we understand that, something can change.

We can stop striving to invent ourselves.

We can start, we can begin to listen to the one who has made us, who has formed us.

We can be constructed. We can be formed. We can be made by God. We are God made.

What does it mean to be God-made rather than self-constructed?

In Hebrews chapter three, a little bit of wisdom, it says, for every house is

built by someone, but the one who builds everything, who built everything is God.

Just as a house cannot exist unless Josh builds it, our lives cannot exist apart from our maker.

We are not random. We are not accidental. We are intentionally formed by the

one who delights in his handiwork.

God, as our maker, reminds us that he is intimately involved in our formation.

He is not distant. He is not indifferent.

From the very beginning, he has been weaving together every part of who we are

with deliberate care and attention.

Psalm 139 says, for you are created, for you created my inmost being.

You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful. I know we are wonderfully made.

Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2 that we are God's masterpiece.

He created us anew. He made us anew in Christ Jesus.

G.K. Chesterton said that creation itself is the continual exuberant encore

of a God who delights in what he has made.

An encore is not the first performance it

is a joyful repeat a celebration of excellence the

word itself rivers mountains stars and

skies continue the world itself continue to

perform this encore daily every sunrise every flower every bird of in flight

is part of the maker's ongoing applause whether we doubt it or not we rejoice

in the truth that our maker actually delight in what he has made.

And we are tempted to doubt whether that is true or not. Every detail of creation

exists because it's God's present pleasure to make it so.

If God didn't delight in his creation, he would do nothing.

And then we would stop existing. But the scripture is clear that he holds it

all together and it is his pleasure to do so.

Being God made changes everything about how we see ourselves,

our identity, our self esteem is God esteemed, not self esteemed.

Our identity is not earned. Our worth is given, not self determined.

We are part of a masterpiece in progress.

I want you to hear these two things. I don't know if I have this written down

later because I don't memorize what I have to say anymore.

So I might repeat myself, but it's important.

There are two important details for us to latch onto here.

That identity is not earned, it is given. So God gives us our identity.

The second one is the ultimate validator of who we are is not ourselves, it is God.

So just because you feel a certain way does not make it true.

But what God says about you is true.

So God gives us who we are, our identity, and God is the one who validates that identity, not you.

God has made us and what he makes belongs to him.

What I don't want us to see here is this idea of,

Ownership or possession, although that is definitely clear in the Bible.

In 1 Corinthians 6, it talks about that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit

who lives in you, is given to you by God.

You do not belong to yourself for God bought you with a high price.

That's definitely part of it.

But what I want you to see here with this idea that what he makes belongs to

him is this idea of formation, this idea of dependence, this idea of care.

That Jesus explains perhaps the best if anywhere else in John chapter 10,

John 10 · chapter mention

he talks about being the good shepherd.

One thing he says is that my sheep know my voice, that we would realize that

as he knows each star, he also has named and knows each of us.

And as a result of that, we belong to him because he is the one who cares for

us we are guided by him we are cared for.

The same maker who said the galaxy spinning watches over the smallest detail

of our life he counts every hair on our heads nothing is overlooked with him we are safe,

every thought every fear every hope every joy is known belonging to the maker

means our lives are not left to chance our chaos.

We are intentionally held, valued, and cared for.

To belong to God is to live with confidence, peace, and all resting in the hands

of the one who made us, who named us, and continues to delight in us every moment of the day.

And of course, that leaves one thing. God is not finished with what he has made.

God has made We are not self-made, we are God-made.

What he makes belongs to him and he is not finished.

We of course know the verse in Philippians chapter one that reminds us that

to work out, that he who began a good work in us, bring it to completion of the day of Jesus Christ.

That work that he continues, he will continue to work until it is finished.

The maker's work is ongoing. We tend to think of creation as six day and on

the seventh he rested, which means God stopped creating.

But God is creating and recreating us day by day. And I'm so thankful for it.

It is ongoing and it's evidence of who he is.

From the moment we were formed in the womb, God has been at work shaping,

guiding, and perfecting us.

He begins, he forms, he sustains, and he completes. Nothing is left unfinished.

Let me say that again. He begins, he forms, he sustains, and he completes.

Every detail of our lives, the joys, the struggles, the quiet,

the visible, everything, the invisible is held within his hands.

He is continuing his work in us.

History frees us from striving, comparing, and questioning our worth,

we can rest knowing that our identity, purpose, and future are held in the hands of the maker.

Every day is part of his ongoing work, an encore of delight,

care, and intentional artistry that will continue until the day he calls the work complete.

There's a verse, I didn't write it down, so I don't know where it's at,

but it talks about how until that when he comes and his saints are glorified

to him and all those who are believed worship him.

That when the saints enjoy creation for God's sake and by God's spirit,

when we enjoy and we rejoice.

In his coming, in his creation, God himself is delighted.

Do we ever stop to wonder all that God is saying and what he has made?

Do we long to see it again with fresh eyes to enter into the ongoing delight of our maker.

Every sunrise, every star, every mountain, every river, inviting us to look

again, to rejoice again, to live again in the wonder of what God has made.

I want us to finish where we started, but this time I'm going to ask our start,

and I'd like for you to complete the bold text.

So I'll say the light text and you say the bold text.

Made you? Are you self-made? I guess that should be we are God made.

What he makes and what he begins. Amen, God.

We rejoice in the Lord, our maker, not just the one who has formed everything and made everything.

You are that God as well.

Greater than this universe you created, larger than we could possibly imagine.

Stronger and more powerful.

But you are the God also who is intentionally involved in making us now.

I just pray for your will, your work to be done in us.

I think of that song that we sing sometimes, which says, I think it's,

if I'm not dead, then you're not done.

And so we just rejoice in that. And we pray and join in all of the works that

you are making in us and around us and through us.

And I pray that you would give us fresh eyes to stand in awe and wonder of you, the God who has made us.