I Am

Today's scripture reading is from Exodus 3, 13 to 22.

Then Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they asked me, What is his name?

What shall I say to them?

God said to Moses, I am who I am, and he said, Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

God also said to Moses, Say this to the people of Israel.

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.

This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey, and they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us, and now please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.

But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand.

So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it.

After that he will let you go, and I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and when you go you shall not go empty.

But each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing, you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters, so you shall plunder the Egyptians.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Am I on?

Yep, I'm on.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It looks like uh you weren't you weren't blown away.

Which uh yeah, yeah, which was uh which is uh good something to be thankful for.

Um I I grew up in Florida and so uh have been through a lot of hurricanes, and be especially because my dad is not the type to evacuate.

And uh that would that felt just the same uh as as one of those.

That was quite a windstorm we had.

So glad that we're able to gather together this morning.

Uh let's let's pray together.

Holy Father, we were reminded of the immensity of your power.

Where even your creation, Lord, none of us could stand outside and say to the wind, stop.

We have no technology that we could develop that can make the wind cease from blowing.

Holy Father, you are above all things.

You are all powerful.

We are your humble creatures in your care.

Lord, pray that we would be reminded of the immensity of your power and the promise of your love towards us in that power, that we would take great security in it and great comfort, that you are our rock, you are our refuge.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

This morning, uh, there's there's a uh a bit fewer of you than last week.

Not sure why that is, but this morning we're continuing uh back through Exodus.

We're getting back into our Exodus text, and uh uh we are still at the burning bush where the angel of the Lord is uh speaking to Moses and is calling Moses to go back to Egypt, the land where he was born, and to call the Lord's people out of Egypt.

And Moses has been a bit resistant to this process.

It's uh a shocking thing to be called to do, and a shocking circumstance to be called in with a bush that is burning and not consumed.

And out of this, uh the we've been in this conversation for several weeks now, and the part that we're going to focus on from the long text that was read today is really the name of God today.

Because it is today that God reveals himself to Moses as the I am.

I am who I am.

Tell them that the I am has sent you.

And so we're really focusing on the existence of God, that God is.

Now, of course, that's implied, hopefully, every Sunday when we gather that we are worshiping the God who is, the God that is there.

But as we see the name of the Lord this morning, we're going to see what this name means, and how does the way that the Lord tells his name to Moses imply his absolute power, his absolute being, his absolute transcendence, and then how he continues to go on to refer to himself as the God of A, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and declaring that that is the name by which he will be by which he will be known throughout all generations.

As we see that, we see that this radically transcendent, all-powerful God is also the one who cares for his people, condescends to our level, and binds himself to us, even taking into his own name the names of the people that he has made his promise to.

So we have a great hope that we can see in today's text.

And I thought it was a particularly interesting week to uh uh move through a text about the existence of God.

Um, I don't know how many of you are on Twitter.

I'm not on Twitter, which is a bit of a flex, I acknowledge, saying I'm not on Twitter.

But there's uh uh but an uh it information it kind of has the type of thing where if you need to know it, it finds you.

So you don't, this is actually kind of a life hack.

You don't need to be on anything.

Uh you if you need to know it, you it'll find you.

And so interesting things that happen on Twitter seem to always pour out into the real world and they seem to catch them.

I don't feel too uninformed.

And uh one of the things that poured out of Twitter this week was X.

I'm dating myself.

One of the things that poured out of X this week was uh a bit on Richard Dawkins.

Now, if you uh were a uh Reddit user uh from 2006 uh till I don't know, 2012, then he was probably one of the reasons you were on Reddit.

Uh he's referred to as one of the four horsemen of atheism.

Uh, they just can't resist our biblical imagery.

And uh Dawkins is really, in a sense, he was he was sort of like the king of the new atheists.

Um he uh became well known as an evolutionary biologist.

Uh he invented the meme, uh, the concept of the meme.

And this week, uh uh and and then in 2006, what really catapulted him to sort of mainstream fame was he wrote The God Delusion.

Uh any of you, how many of you have heard of that book?

Or yeah, so that that's pretty incredible, right?

Like a mainstream work or a work of philosophy just in general to have that sort of mainstream impact is pretty incredible.

And uh the God delusion is it has basically baked into it that what we are doing this morning is delusional.

There is no God.

He doesn't exist.

There's there is no God.

This is the claim.

And uh he uh you know regurgitated some old philosophers in that book and dodged some of our best arguments, but the impact of it has been pretty incredible.

Uh and for a certain generation of uh Christians and for a certain generation of Christians, of which I I think I'm a part of, he was uh the main opponent.

And for a certain generation of uh just people growing up, uh, especially like uh very very online people, he was a hero, uh and a real intellectual hero, kind of like in the vein of like a Jordan Peterson or something, like a mainstream uh intellectual.

Uh those are pretty rare, but he was he was one of them.

So this week, uh uh uh he said something that if I were to have heard Dawkins say this, or heard that Dawkins said this while I was getting my undergrad, it would have been, it would have caused just shockwaves through our university.

Him, Sam Harris, um went, I was at at CU when Sam Harris he was going on tour and he came through.

And so in the philosophy department at CU Boulder, when Sam Harris came through, it was like I it was like Beyoncé came through or something.

Like it was it was it was every we we couldn't believe it.

Um and uh so they're kind of in that same camp.

Listen to what Dawkins said this this week in an interview.

He says of England, his country, he says, I do think we are culturally a Christian country.

I call myself a cultural Christian.

You do?

That's a week old.

I'm not a believer, but there is a distinction between being a believing Christian and a cultural Christian.

So I call myself a cultural Christian, and I think it would be truly dreadful if we substituted any alternative religion.

That's quite a this could not have happened in 2006, and it is a sign of the times that it is happening now, and that someone like Dawkins can hold these two strange claims together.

One is what he also shared that church attendance is going down, and general belief in the existence of God is going down, and for those two things he is thankful.

To who, you know, but uh for those two things he is thankful.

But he desires the Christian culture that he grew up in and which he sees as providing some sort of framework for for his nation to persist.

Now he's a man of science, he likely desires some sort of internal consistency in his arguments.

How can he hold together such an apparent contradiction?

Well, he tells us right in that quote, where he says, I call myself a cultural Christian, I'm not a believer.

There is a distinction between being a believing Christian and a cultural Christian.

And this shows us what was really at the heart of Dawkins' project this whole time, and that's Dawkins believes in a clear distinction within the world regarding the types of things that can be known, and the types of things that we could call true or false, and then the types of things which can't really be known and are merely preferences.

So Dawkins, in saying that there is such a thing as being a believing Christian, and then such a thing as being a cultural Christian, what he's saying is to be a believing Christian has to do with whether or not Christianity is a matter of fact.

Does God exist?

Was Jesus God and man?

Did he die?

Was he resurrected?

These are all in the categories of facts.

But what type of lights do we put up at the end of March?

Do we put up Easter lights or Ramadan lights, which is what sparked the controversy, or at least his response.

That is just in the realm of preference.

You know, who what what are our ethical claims?

These are actually just preferences.

And now this is an old distinction, and it is a distinction of facts and values.

So in the world of facts, these are it is it is thought, someone like Dawkins would think, that in this category would be things like matters of history, it would be things like the laws of physics, like the existence, the re the real existence of God or not.

Those are just matters of fact.

But matters of value, such as what is what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, these ethical distinctions are not matters of fact.

These are mere matters of value.

These are simply aesthetic judgments, judgments that actually are not saying anything about how the world is.

They are really just us saying our preferences.

So, for example, in his framework, the statement Hitler was evil is really just the statement, icky, Hitler, yuck, boo, Hitler.

I don't uh he is not my preference.

That's those statements are the same thing.

Because the statement of a matter of fact that is a value judgment, that well, that is not the realm of facts.

And so he's saying I can hold this idea, God doesn't exist.

And that is simply a factual claim.

I'm not a believing Christian, but the ethics of the Christian God, I want to live in a world which prefers the ethics of the Christian God.

Now, the reason this distinction, and the reason he would not have been plain about this distinction in 2006, is because there was a broad ethical overlap in Christian teaching and in the culture at large.

But now that ethical overlap has really drifted, where there is a plain ethical distinction.

So the thinking back then, and there's a lot of talk of this, of like, look, the atheists are some of the best people.

You know, they're they're doing some of the best humanitarian work.

And so you can be an atheist and a good person.

A lot of the arguments and his arguments took on that very form.

In 2006, the ethical difference was not the meaningful difference between the atheist and the Christian.

At least that was the assumption, is that that wasn't a meaningful difference.

The ethics, ethics were the types of things that we all just know.

We all just know how to live, how a family should be structured, what is right, what is wrong.

You see, our ethical intuitions were so similar back then that they weren't really brought into question that much.

Therefore, the the point of disagreement was just in the, forgive me for using this word, the ontological distinctions.

Ontology is just the question of what is there, what exists, what categories describe things that actually exist.

And so there was broad consensus on ethics, and then we thought, okay, the difference between a Christian and an atheist is not an ethical distinction.

The difference between a Christian and an atheist is just an ontological distinction.

We say God does exist, they say God doesn't exist, and we can have that question, have that disagreement, and think there's no real ethical implication to this discussion, whether or not God actually exists.

But now, just consider this, some our memories are so short, but but Barack Obama ran opposed to gay marriage in 2007 when he was campaigning, or in 2008, that uh he he ran opposed to gay marriage.

This is not that long ago.

That there's enough of a of a overlap of a sex ethic between what the Bible teaches and between uh the culture at large that in order to be elected president, you had to at least feign or give give some sort of uh uh homage.

Thank you.

This is why Matt's here, to the uh to to this broader uh Christian ethic.

But now that type of position would seem almost untenable uh for someone perhaps running for president.

Uh now the distinctions between Christians and non-Christians are not so much in the ontological claim.

I mean, if I were to walk up and down Tennyson and say, I believe in God, I think that that would not raise uh many eyebrows.

In fact, most people would say, yes, I do too.

I believe in, of course I believe in some higher power.

I don't believe that all of this came from nothing.

Um but if I were to walk up and down Tennyson and say, I I believe that uh gay marriage is illegitimate and that there's marriage is only between a man and a woman, then the the distinction would would be immediately broad.

It would there would be an immediate distance between me, likely, and the person that I was that I was speaking to.

And so you can see how the ethical distinction is the more meaningful distinction now, and the ontological distinction is is lost.

You can see it, of course, homosexuality, marriage is real, gender is not binary, but a spectrum that's divorced from biological constraints.

Children in utero have no legitimate claim on their mothers because the mother-child relationship is not a is not a fact, it's a value.

Because relational things are the realm of values.

And so that is to be opted into based upon preference.

So now Dawkins wants back the Christian ethic, and he wants to continue destroying the Christian ontology, saying, I don't I don't like that Islam is having such a voice in my culture because the the negative effects of that religion are so plain that where it goes, things get so much worse for the people who live in those nations.

But he would say, but that has nothing to do with whether or not God exists.

My belief in God has no ethical dimension, those are totally separate.

But the fact values distinction is a false distinction.

And we can see this plainly in the Christian frame because our values that we have are not mere matters of preference, but these are the law of God given to us, which reflect and reveal the very character of God Himself, and therefore depend upon the existence of God for their legitimacy, and in the existence of God find their absolute authority in a sense where they are absolute matters of fact.

They are the the Ten Commandments are as real as gravity in the Christian frame.

There is no fact values distinction, not when there is a true God who is the true creator.

And of course, you can see that in just the examples that I just rattled off on the ethical differences between the biblical framework and our culture's framework.

Because each of the things that I listed homosexuality, uh, transgenderism, abortion, these are ontological questions.

And they're often framed as questions of what categories of things actually exist.

Because if marriage as a category is not an institution instantiated and created by God such that it has particular requirements for that to be understood and met and for marriage to actually happen, if instead marriage is just a commitment of two parties, then the category of marriage is actually what's being questioned when we're discussing homosexual marriage.

If God created them, male and female, and that there is an ontological reality to those categories, then the transgenderism question in the divorcing of the facts and values has an ethical dimension.

It is not merely a question of facts versus values.

There's the fact category of sex and there's the values category of gender.

Is there a real thing?

Is the mother-child relationship real?

Was that created?

Does it exist?

Does it actually adhere in the world?

God exists, and he exists in such a way where he determines the categories of existence.

And in determining the categories of existence and in understanding the categories of existence, then this determines how we respond ethically.

What is right and wrong, what upholds his ways, and what opposes his ways.

So Dawkins is saying the matters of fact and the matters of values are not relevant, but I would prefer if we had the world that flowed from the matters of facts that people misbelieve about the Bible.

The Bible's false.

It's not true, as a matter of fact, but it's a nice place to live.

And I prefer that England to the England that I'm seeing.

So this is where we arrive today, where we must have the grounds, the ground of our faith, be that God is, that God is absolute in authority, in power as our creator, that the world that he made and the one that he reveals to us in his world, in his word, is the real world.

And from that, this means that all of the ethical claims that he makes upon us, all of the law, the righteousness that he requires of us, are absolutely true.

And he has an absolute right in who he is to make those claims upon us.

So we'll see this today, and I wanted us to kind of see this from it from the beginning, uh, to kind of frame how we look at this text in that way, so that we might see that when we're saying that God exists, we are not just making a claim of existence like saying like Bigfoot exists.

And it's like, okay, that's cool, but it doesn't have like an implication for the way that I live.

When we are making a claim that God exists, this is a binding claim on who we are as a people.

So in Exodus 3.13, as we continue through this, God shows his name, reveals his name in this section.

So then Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name?

What shall I say to them?

Now, I think that this question that Moses poses is different from Moses saying, Why would you send me back to Egypt?

I think that in that initial question of why would you send me, I think there was a protest going on of don't send me.

This question seems to have more of a genuine curiosity.

And perhaps we see that Moses was really raised in Egypt, and he was really raised Egyptian.

And so he does not know the name of the Lord.

And so the Lord gives him his name, says, What is his name?

What shall I say to them?

When I go back to the elders of Israel and I say, The Lord has sent me, and they say, What is his name?

Now, perhaps the frame that he was thinking in is the the names of ancient Near Eastern gods, and really of all gods like sort of over the world, they're usually tied to just what that god rules over.

So if you're if you're Mars and you're the god of war, then when wars happen, that's your juris jurisdiction.

You're the god of war.

If you're Baal, you're the god of the storm, then whether or not it rains, well, that's your jurisdiction.

And so there's a frame of if I know your name, then I kind of know what it is that you're over, what what your jurisdiction is, where it is that you demonstrate your authority.

But he is about to find out that uh our God is not like those gods.

He is not bound by any jurisdiction.

Um, yeah, forgive me for this.

Batman has no jurisdiction.

He will find you.

There's that just went into my mind.

So this is the Lord's answer.

Exodus 3.14.

God said to Moses, I am who I am.

And he said, Say this to the people of Israel.

I am has sent me to you.

I am who I am.

That is very different than God of the storm.

It's very different than God of fertility or the God of war.

This is absolute.

I am who I am.

This is Yahweh.

It is a play on the Hebrew verb to be.

Our to be verb is, am, are, was, were.

Aren't you glad you're not learning English?

What a miserable conjugation to learn.

It's all in there.

He is.

Our God is.

Now this name means so much.

But in seeing the amount of ink that's been spilled over God being named the I am, it's a lot.

But I don't want us to miss just this, maybe just the simplest reading.

God exists.

Our God exists.

Now that means when you pray, you are not praying because prayer gets you into a meditative state and has these trackable psychological benefits.

You are praying because God is there, because our God exists.

We pray because we think he is real and that he hears us.

In this name, I am.

We can see that God is not from anything.

God is not derivative.

God is not a collection of parts that assembled into God.

God is not from any previous thing.

God is.

God is absolute existence, from which everything else that exists is derivative from, is finds its existence in a necessary relation to him as the creator.

Our God is.

So he says, I am the I am.

Theologians have referred to this as the asseity of God.

Asai is the Latin for of himself.

He is of himself.

Having in his being all that is being.

He is being itself.

And even that, the grammar doesn't work to capture what I'm saying.

Being itself adheres in him.

They say that the the greatest qu I always hesitate to say these things because I know some of you actually are physicists, but they say that the greatest question in physics is why why are there?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

And that's a pretty good question.

I don't know what an answer to that question would look like.

But God is beyond a question like that.

He is the I am.

Tell them that I am has sent you.

And I referred to this earlier, but I want us to see this.

That when we're talking about the existence of God, and do you see how category-breaking this answer is for perhaps the categories that Moses might have had or gathered from his ancient Near Eastern context of a God of something, he is not just the God of something, he is existence itself.

And so because that breaks down that category, we can see how it really breaks down the categories that the new atheists were really dealing in.

Because their question of existence, and you can hear it in some of their famous phrases, Dawkins was a beautiful writer, is probably.

He wrote beautifully, and he would say things, I can enjoy the beauty of a garden without imagining that there are fairies hidden within it.

And so I can enjoy the beauty of the world without having to imagine that there is some God and creator around it.

Now, that what he just set up there, that sort of argument, is a misunderstanding about the way the Bible talks about the existence of God.

Because the Bible is not talking about the existence of God like the existence of fairies, something we might find in what existence is like for us.

It's not talking about it like the existence of Bigfoot or Nessie or the Illuminati or something.

He's talking about existence itself.

That all existence finds its origin in the mind of God.

Because this God is.

So this claim is something like a claim of absolute ontology.

That all of the categories of being belong to the Lord, meaning that they are his as the one who, the only one who is of himself, everything else is from him as the creator.

That means that all of the categories of being belong to him.

Isn't it strange that we have five fingers?

Ten from, you know, if you put them together, per hand.

You know, these are these are particular details of the world that were decisions in the mind of God.

These boundaries that we experience are from Him.

They belong to Him.

You know, we don't find it strange when we walk around and we see someone with uh, we see each other with five fingers, and we don't think, ah man, sorry you don't have six.

And if someone's missing one, and we were to restore their hand, we we wouldn't make them have seven, like, hey, you know, while we're at it.

And we take those things for granted, and they they feel silly to us in uh in sort of these categories that we all have intuitions that we plainly agree on.

But then when we move into ethical categories that he has given to us, where he has described to us the dignity of human life, he has laid out things like you should not steal from one another, you should not lie to one another.

And then we think, well, the establishment of those categories, those those are not real.

Well, they exist.

All existence is from him.

So if we deny God, this is the this is the the conversation that I would have with Dawkins, and he would, you know, probably talk circles around me.

But I'd want to explain that your this ethic that you love so much depends upon, cannot be divorced from the existence of God.

That when we claim, when God says he is the I am, that means that all categories are his.

Matters of fact, matters of values, these all belong to him.

And if he is the one who is of himself, and we are the ones who are merely his creatures, then he has absolute authority to tell us what is right, what is wrong, what is required of us to be in his presence.

Now, this means that ontology implies ethics, fact implies value, ought.

There is an ought from an is.

Because God is the one who is.

So Moses is instructed to tell them, I am has sent you.

This word, Yahweh, will be translated Lord throughout your Bibles.

Depending on your translation, it might be all caps, which is nice, helpful.

It is not spoken when read.

We'd say Adonai, because it was held in such reverence.

And on this foundation that God exists, Moses is sent.

You can hear it all.

God had told Moses beforehand, I will be with you.

And Moses says, Why should I be the one who goes?

And God answers by tell not by saying, Well, Moses, because you're so qualified for this.

God answers by saying, He's he says, but I will be with you.

And you see, well, what does it mean that God will be with me?

Is he the God of the storm?

Are we gonna, maybe with wind like last night, we're just gonna blow the Israelites out and blow the Egyptians back?

There will be wind, it will be a factor.

But no, it means it means far more than that.

It means the one from whom all things are, the only one who is of himself, will be with you.

In verse 15, God continues in sort of his answer to what is your name, and what name shall I share?

And it and it I think that it's important that we see both of these together, because they they tell us about who God is.

God is of himself, he is simple, he has no parts or passions, he is immutable, he is, there are there are all of these um theological concepts, these truths about God, which flow from his name, that he is existence itself.

And so we see this unimaginable, the unimaginable transcendence of God, how high above us he is, and he is incomprehensible in how high above us he is.

In verse 315, God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel 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.

This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

So as we see this unthinkable transcendence of God, in his name I am, then he tells them, Here is how I am to be remembered throughout all generations, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

This means that this God, the only one who is of himself, who we can give nothing to.

You know, do you understand this?

Your righteousness does not benefit God.

Who can give him something?

As though he needed it.

Your unrighteousness does not threaten him.

God is God's fine.

Most unthinkable understatement.

He is absolutely satisfied in himself.

There's nothing from creation that he needs.

And then he enters into a covenant with these people who have sinned against him.

And he enters into it with these persons.

It's so small.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, just this thin lineage throughout history.

And he says.

This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Do not think that the utter transcendence of God means that he is not present.

Because God shows us that he is to be remembered by his presence, his promise to save his people.

So these these should be shocking when they're next to each other.

The one who is existence itself is also the one who says, Call me the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

You would take these persons' names into your name?

What is, how, so what does this mean about his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, about his promise to them?

How much more absolute could a promise be?

How much more absolute?

And this is what Moses is being shown here.

And so God tells him, Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, I have observed you in what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt.

This utterly transcendent God, who gains nothing from his people, but is absolutely of himself.

What is he like?

He sees the affliction of his people.

He will not let it stand.

This word for affliction here is used only to refer to unjust suffering.

That means this type of suffering where they didn't deserve it.

And God saw that of his taking place against his people.

And he says, I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt.

Who what does a promise from the one who is existence itself mean?

How could there be something more sure than that?

Our God is.

That the one who is the lawgiver, we can't understand the concept of law apart from him.

It becomes foolish and incomprehensible pretty quick.

See Sam Harris's career.

That's been his whole project.

We don't need God to make absolute moral claims.

And then he just does like a word salad.

And you end up standing right back in a position where you realize we need God to make absolute moral claims.

Now there's this strangeness of the presence of God, which I have to show because Jesus uses the name of God to describe himself.

And consistently throughout the book of John, in particular, he makes these I am statements, but there's one in particular that I want us to see, just the wonder of Jesus Christ, paired with this name, I am, and that saving promise that is made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that is affirmed to Moses here, that that saving promise finds its absolute fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Now, in John 8, I didn't clip the whole verse, the whole section, but I want to read it and just close with this.

I want you to think, how would God, who took on flesh, if he was fully God and fully man, how would that type of person speak?

And then I want you to hear this section in John 8, and I think you will hear it and think, basically exactly like that.

I think that's exactly how that type of person would speak.

So the Jews answered him, Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?

Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father, and you dishonor me.

Yet I do not seek my own glory.

There is one who seeks it, and he is the judge.

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

The Jews said to him, Now we know that you have a demon.

Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, If any one keeps my word, he will never taste death.

Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died, and the prophets died?

Who do you make yourself out to be?

Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.

It is my father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God.

But you have not known him, I know him.

If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar, like you, but I do know him, and I keep his word.

Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.

He saw it and was glad.

So the Jews said to him, You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?

Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

So they picked up stones to throw at him.

But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

The absoluteness of God and the presence of God are shown to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Do you see the utter weight of the absoluteness of the claims of God upon your life?

That the ethical smudging that we do is an utter violation of the one who is.

But the one who is has shown us the depth of his love towards us, in humiliating himself, taking on our form, so that he might fulfill all the requirements of the law on our behalf.

And so this is our message to the world.

God is, and his claims upon you are absolute, shockingly absolute.

We are talking about different categories of existence and of ethical claims here.

And this same God is absolute in his grace.

And his grace is freely on offer in Jesus Christ.

There is no promise more sure than the promise from the one who is the I am.

So let us wonder at that gospel together.

Are there any questions today?

How do we contend for the faith in a society that finds the cultural implications of Christianity appealing, but its core tenets reprehensible?

You know, the the conversations that we're required to have are always a moving target because culture's, you know, my impression of culture.

And especially now, it seems to be moving at a pretty steady clip.

I don't think that it's one thing that's wonderful about our current moment is that the fundamentals of our faith are shining very brightly.

And these are always good and meaningful.

It can feel like there's such a large gap to bridge.

But I think you'll find that the gospel still does the work.

That the ability that we as Christians have to make absolute claims of morality, to call evil things evil, and not just preference, I think that could be like a glass of fresh water to a thirsty world.

Our ability to offer grace in a culture that views forgiveness as participating in patterns of oppression when we desperately need forgiveness.

And the distinction is how do we contend for our faith in a society that finds the cultural implications of Christianity appealing, but its core tenets reprehensible?

Well, um uh my thought on that is, well, s to some people, the uh cultural tenets of our faith are appealing, but to many others, they are reprehensible.

And that that's the point of contradiction.

I think that that the the sharing of the same story, you'll see it does the work, it answers the questions.

People are floating in an ether right now, in a world that is completely meaningless.

And they're just trying to cope.

Because we we've convinced ourselves that we are very fragile people, and the meaning of life is to preserve positive mental states.

And that's a miserable existence.

And we have a story that says you are you're a sinner, you can be saved by the grace of God towards you.

Just all the categories just find their place again.

Okay, that was kind of half an answer, but hopefully helpful.

In 1 Corinthians 11 23, Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Paul continues, and he says, Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Jesus, on the night before he was betrayed, took the bread, and he broke it.

He said, This is my body, which is broken for you.

And he took the cup, and he said, This is my blood of the new covenant, and the new covenant is this promise that his sacrifice is sufficient to atone for our sins, and that by faith in him we might be saved from eternal damnation, and rescued from our state as sinners before the Lord, and brought into absolute righteousness, which is his very righteousness.

So this is the blood of the new covenant.

Paul instructs us in this that those who are to come to the table are those who are able to examine themselves and discern.

And so when we come to examine ourselves, we are examining our state as sinners before the Lord, as the Lord as the absolute one, the one who truly is, and us as merely his creatures who have rebelled against him.

But we remember that this God is absolute in his grace towards us in Jesus, that it is truly effective.

And so we come to the table expecting his grace.

So for those of you who've been baptized into Christ, and to those of you who can examine yourselves, we invite you to the table this morning to receive by faith this wonderful news that the absolute transcendent God made himself present to save in Jesus Christ.

Holy Father, we pray that you would bless this time of communion.

Lord, that we might remember who you are and your absoluteness, that we might be experience that that, in a sense, the terror and wonder of who you are, like we see Isaiah experience in the throne room.

Lord, and then that we might have the comfort, like the seraphim who flew down to purify his lips, Lord, that we have been purified by so much more by the blood of Christ.

Lord, we praise you that your gospel is true, that you are.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.