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We begin our study this evening by reading together in the book of Exodus, chapter three. The book of Exodus, chapter three. While you find a place, let me say that if you wish to read ahead for Monday's meeting, then still the passages to be reading are anything that you can see up to chapter nine, or if you have the time, up to chapter eleven.
But this evening we begin to read in chapter three at verse eleven. And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be the token unto thee that I have sent thee. When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain. Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers has sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name?
What shall I say unto them? God said unto Moses, I am that I am. And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me. I am hath sent me unto you. And God said, moreover, unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
And let's take the time now just to read two passages from the New Testament that shall serve us as a commentary upon these verses. And first of all, the gospel by John and chapter seventeen. The Gospel by John and chapter seventeen, verse six. I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were, and thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word.
Now they know that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee. For the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them, and they received them and knew of the truth that I came forth from thee, and they believed that thou didst send me. Verse twenty: Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their words, that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me.
And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given unto them, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that thou didst send me and loveds them even as thou loveds me. Father, that which thou hast given me, I will, that where I am, they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee, and these knew that thou didst send me.
And I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known, that the love wherewith thou lovest me may be in them, and I in them. And one final verse from the book of the Revelation and chapter eleven. The book of the Revelation, chapter eleven, a verse that we take completely out of its context, but the point of which you will presently see. Revelation eleven and verse eight: And their dead bodies lie in the streets of that great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.
God give us good understanding of his holy word. I dare say that many of us here present tonight have noticed that this world of ours is becoming progressively smaller. Days were when the journey from Cullybackey to Belfast was a matter of some hours, if not a whole day. Now you can do it in a half an hour or so. Days were when the journey from Belfast to London was a matter of a week or more.
Now you can do it in fifty minutes. Days were when the journey from London to New York was a matter of months, and it was frequently doubtful whether you ever arrived or not. And now, not only with the good permission of the Americans, does Concorde land in New York, a very few hours after it takes off, but Sputniks and astronauts go round our world, buzzing away merrily, and complete the circuit of our whole little planet in a few moments, a few minutes at the most. And our world is shrinking and becoming a very small place, sometimes difficult to find enough elbow room, and say the psychologists, we are therefore getting all of us more aggressive.
It's not only geographically that the world is becoming a smaller place, but you will perceive that your agnostic and atheist friend have made for themselves this planet of ours an exceedingly small place. They say that as far as we human beings are concerned, our life on this planet is all there is. They deny to us any future beyond life on this planet, any inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and fading not away, reserved in heaven for us when our journey on this planet is done, that they totally deny, and us shrivel life to the meager space of some seventy years.
And as if that were not small enough in itself, they then tell us that there is no vertical dimension to life even while we are here. That our world and our little universe is a closed shop. There is no eternal God out there with whom, even in this life, we can have relations. No God out there who may give to our seventy years a quality of eternity as we live these seventy years in fellowship with him. They say that's all imagination to be dismissed with our fairy stories that we learned in the nursery. So life has no future beyond this planet, and life has no eternal dimension now on this planet.
And so believing, they contrive to make life for themselves an exceedingly small thing. Nor is it only agnostics and atheists that manage to live as though there were no God out there. But many a man and woman who professes vaguely to believe in the Creator, nevertheless goes about his and her daily business as though there were no God, and lives his or her life through this world as though this world were all, as though this life were everything. If you want to put a name onto that attitude, the attitude that lives in this world as though this world were all there were, then the name that the Bible would put on it would be worldliness.
And if you ask further for an illustration of what worldliness is, you will find none better than what we find here in the opening chapters of the book of Exodus. You will have observed that our last verse that we read from the New Testament points out that the ancient nation of is, uh, the Egyptians under their pharaohs adopted a certain spiritual attitude, and therefore, when the writer of the revelation comes to talk about Jerusalem city in Palestine, the city where also our Lord was crucified, he says that that city, though called Jerusalem, though once upon a time the city of God's kings, though placed in the land of Israel amongst the Israelites themselves, spiritually speaking, that city of Jerusalem had become no better than a veritable Sodom and a veritable Egypt.
Now, all of us are aware, I suppose, of what Sodom stands for. If I were to call any modern city in this world a Sodom, you would know exactly what I meant. But perhaps if I were to call Belfast an Egypt, you wouldn't immediately know exactly what I meant. Let us ponder then some of the features of this ancient Egypt that turned Egypt for the people of God into a very prison house of slavery. And as we inquire into that, we shall find Egypt become for us a vivid practical picture of what the New Testament will mean when it talks about the world in its pejorative sense.
Egypt in Moses' day, you remember, was ruled by a Pharaoh, and it is a Pharaoh that mostly we hear. He ruled it apparently with a rod of iron and ruled the Israelites in Egypt certainly with a rod of iron. This was the Pharaoh that tried to make Eg- Israel forget her past, her glorious past of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This was a Pharaoh that tried to make Israel disbelieve that there was any future apart from Egypt. And when Moses began to preach to his contemporaries that there was an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, Pharaoh openly laughed at the man.
Oh, Moses, he said, when will you go up? I mean, haven't you got beyond your nursery stage yet to go and tell people and believe that there's some wonderful fairy land way out there across the blue? Oh, Moses, come off it. You're just distracting the Israelites from the realities of life by holding up before them visions of some land flowing with milk and honey out there in the beyond. It's nonsense, Moses. All there is for these Israelites is this Egypt, these bricks, these stones, these kilns, these treasure cities. That's all there is. And don't you go upsetting those people and making them restless by preaching them pie in the sky or an inheritance in Canaan.
Egypt is all there is. A ruler determined to make Egypt that tiny little place for Israel in which life should be nothing else but sleeping and working and eating and eating and sleeping and working, and that's all. And a prince who, in order to do that, was prepared to stand up and defy Almighty God, saying, who is Jehovah? I don't know Jehovah, nor do I care about Jehovah. If there is a Jehovah, let him keep his fingers out of my Egypt. I rule here. And as we listen to that man and his defiance of God and his treatment of God's people, we shall be dull indeed if we do not see in him a prototype of that other far more sinister figure of whom our blessed Lord spoke.
He spoke, you will remember, and we have the record in the closing chapters of the gospel by John, of a certain sinister power whom he called the prince of this world. Nor did he refrain from admitting that he was its prince. And the rest of the New Testament adds to our Lord's testimony, says the Apostle Paul in the epistle to the Ephesians in chapter two, that the present race of men and women, unregenerate and without God, they live their lives subject to the domination of the prince of the power of the air.
It is none other than his satanic majesty, who, having introduced rebellion against the Creator into this planet and into the race of men is keen to keep within his own hand the power over men. His it is, the idea that men must be kept from acknowledging the reality of a God out there. His satanic majesty wants men to think that this little planet is for them all there is, that there is no God out and beyond the universe, no God who one day can poke a finger into our affairs. Satan it is that sets the current of thought, the fashion of opinion, that peddles his ideas of atheistic evolution, all to persuade men that there is no God out there.
This universe is a thing of chance, and as far as man is concerned, this little planet and its environs are a closed shop, a self-contained flat, into which man may, uh, retire and shut the door. There is no God who can come in and interfere. The prince of this world. Nor does he content himself with us infiltrating the minds of the unregenerate. Constantly and without remission, he attacks our hearts who know God, and is forever doing his favorite trick of taking this world and all its lovely things, all the good gifts that God himself has given us that we might use them and enjoy them.
He takes those lovely things, and with them, instead of letting them bring our hearts nearer to God and ever nearer, he uses those lovely gifts to take our hearts away from God, to make us forget God, to make us live as though God were not. And oh, what a sad, sad thing is this worldliness. For God is no miser. He has given us richly all things to enjoy, but the multitude of his physical gifts, his mental gifts, his aesthetic gifts were meant to lead us ever more closely to him, that when this physical temporary life is done, indeed when the old planet itself has long since burned up to nothing, we may have formed a fellowship with God that shall go on living and existing, and enrich the eternal ages of heaven.
Satan, I say, take those gifts. And quite perverting them from their purpose, uses them to attract our hearts away from God. Our Lord summed it up in a parable that he spoke, which originally given applied to Israel, but may well be applied to us all. He likened Israel and the nation to a vineyard that a man created once and let it out to husbandmen. They were to work this vineyard, they were to enjoy its fruit, but in due season they were to acknowledge the owner of the vineyard, and when he sent for his tribute and rent, they were to give to him the fruits of this vineyard.
But they got it into their head that they would like the vineyard for themselves. They would like to own it. They would like it to be theirs. They resented the notion that every now and again the owner might send his men to collect the produce. And therefore, on a day when they saw the owner's agent coming down the road to get the produce, they ran out and seized him, and they beat him, and they sent him away empty. Presently, as they scout behind their greenhouses, they saw the very sun and air coming down the road, and they took counsel, and they said, this is the air. Now come, let's kill him.
We've only got to kill him and sling him out, and the whole vineyard will be ours, and we shall be free forever of any interference from the outside. And that they did. And they took the son and heir, and they killed him, and they flung him out of the vineyard, muttering under their breath, and now forever the vineyard is ours. In actual fact, it was done. In Jerusalem city, it was done. As Pilate and Herod and the Jews took counsel together, and seeing the Son of God, the Creator, come, they took hold of him and slew him and cast him out of the world and hung him on a cross twixt heaven and earth, thinking that if only they slew him, then the vineyard would be theirs.
Hence it is that Jerusalem City in the New Testament is called, spiritually speaking, Egypt. They who had for many centuries been out of Egypt, supposedly redeemed by the Passover lamb and singing the praises of God in his temple, had so slipped in heart that they had returned in heart to the old Egyptian attitude. Hands off God. We want the place for ourselves. In Egypt, of course, it was an easy attitude to slip into. For the Egyptian economy depended, so we are told, on the Nile.
And the Nile, apparently, as far as the Egyptians knew, was independent of the rain. Its waters came, and they flooded every year and were the secret of the land's fertility and therefore its wealth. And it seemed to them that Egypt then was self-contained. It didn't even depend on the rain from outer space, up in the clouds. It was a self-contained thing. Yes, the Egyptians had their gods. They worshipped the Old Nile. They worshipped this god and that god and the other gods. But when it came to the absolute God, the creator of all things, the Jehovah Great I Am, then the Egyptians were for dismissing him and taking no notice whatsoever.
Egypt therefore stands, as I say, a vivid picture of what worldliness is. Then how should God deliver his people? How would redemption ever begin? You will immediately notice what God didn't do first. He didn't first of all bring his plagues upon Egypt, and killing all the Egyptians, break the fetters of the Israelites and let them run free. That certainly might have given Israel their physical freedom.
It would have done very little to break the slavery of their hearts and correct in the Israelites' heart that baneful attitude common to all men that is called worldliness. If ever Israel were to be li- to be delivered not only from Egypt physically, but from Egypt spiritually, it would have to be by something deeper than mere physical judgments on Egypt. And it proved to be this. When God would begin to break that bondage, he first of all appeared personally to Moses, his servant, and filled Moses' heart and vision with the glory of the reality of Almighty God.
And secondly, he sent Moses to Israel as the great apostle to come from God to Israel, with this glorious message that God had sent him to set the people free and to bring them to their great inheritance. Moses had the sense to ask, but when I go to these people, you know, perhaps they won't believe me. When I go along and say to them, but look here, the God of your fathers has appeared to me, and he's come down to deliver you. What if they won't believe?
Then said God, what you will do, Moses? You will come to them and you will tell them my name and making me known to them, you will provoke in their hearts the faith to trust you. And as they learn to trust you, they will learn to trust me. And believing in me, they will believe in you, and together we shall bring them out. That's what must be first, Moses. First you must go and provoke in them a profound faith in you and in me and in my name.
Those of us who know our New Testament cannot help perceiving in that situation an early prototype of that greater reality that is the strategy of God for our redemption. For the redemption of Israel out of Egypt was, after all, but a primary run through, an elementary lesson. There remained the great problem of the redemption of the world, the redemption of mankind. Not from bondage to a pharaoh, but from bondage to the god of this world and all his infernal design.
And how should it be done? How should I be delivered from that slave mentality of thinking this world is all? It was done this way. But down into our world came our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, telling us that he had been sent from God. I have come forth from God, he said. Have you got it? And on that very last occasion, when he stood to say his farewell words before he went to the cross, he called his apostles round him to make it abundantly clear what lay at the heart of all he had been saying.
Let me tell you straight, he said. I will no longer speak in parable to you. I will tell you plainly. Now, this is it, gentlemen. Mark it well. Have you got it? The significance of me, Jesus Christ of Bethlehem, is this, that I have come forth from the Father. Do you believe it? Do you believe, as you see me stand two feet here on your earth, on your planet? Do you believe, in fact, that I began not in that manger where Mary bore me, but pre-existent Son of God, that one with God, I have come down from that world, sent by the Father into your world.
Do you believe it, gentlemen? I have come forth from God, and presently I shall go back to the Father. You will presently see me impaled upon the cross, and your heart shall have sorrow, but then you will have joy, exceeding joy, and your joy no one will take from you, for you will see that I shall rise again and I shall go back to the Father. Gentlemen, do you believe it? Do you believe there's another world for anybody to come from? Do you believe there's another world for anybody to go to? Do you believe that I, Jesus Christ, am the apostle of God, sent from the Father into this world to bring you not only forgiveness of sins as the great Passover lamb, but to lead you presently back to that glorious inheritance from which I came?
Do you believe it? And still today, that is the message that Jesus Christ brings us primarily. He will talk to us later on about the forgiveness of our sins, but there's no point in having any forgiveness if this world is all there is. Therefore, the first question arises, says God to Moses, go to those Israelites and tell them I've sent you, and get them to believe that you, Moses, as you stand in front of them, have met the living God face to face, and that you come from him.
Moses, the apostle of their faith, prototype of our blessed Lord, the great apostle of our faith. Ah, but then said Moses, tell me, what shall I say when I come to them in their grinding poverty, in the torture of their slavery, thin and emaciated and kicked and beaten, till they feel this world is such an unjust world, and that all the talk of God and kindness and love is mere illusion, self-deception, tales invented by grandmothers to comfort children when they're afraid of the dark, with no reality.
Oh God, how shall I get them to believe when they've got great shackles round their wrists and iron on their feet, when their days are hard and their nights are bitter? How shall I get them to believe that there's a God who cares, and that a God that's interested them, in them, and a God that is prepared to deliver them from this slavery? When they say to me, what is your God like? When they say to me, what is his name? What shall I say? You will perceive that that was one of the uppermost parts of our Lord's own ministry.
We read this evening from his final prayer that he addressed to God in the hearing of his disciples before he went to the cross, giving his account to the Father of what he had done and what he had attempted and what he had achieved in his life ministry. Prominent in his ministry was this, oh God, they have come to believe. Oh, what a triumph is it? These men that I got around me, they've come to believe. Oh God, as I stand here looking down the centuries now, I can see them coming in their millions.
Men and women that are going to believe on you. How had it been done? I have declared to them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou lovest me might be in them, and I in them. You see, my fellow Christians, God has to do this with us all, hasn't he? If he's ever going to rescue us from worldliness of spirit and heart, then he's got to make himself known to us in such a way as his loveliness enraptures our soul and stirs our hearts and provokes our faith till our eyes are open to see what God is really like.
Our trouble so often is that we've listened long to the slander of the prince of this world. He started as a way back in Eden, didn't he? Suggesting to Eve that God was an old wet blanket that was wanting to keep men down and spoil their enjoyment. Forbidding this and forbidding that and making life difficult. And the old slander has spread its cancer even in our own breasts, hasn't it? Oh yes, there are days when we're prepared to stand and sing hallelujah. When skies are blue and circumstances are pleasing, then we're prepared to think there's a God up in heaven who loves us, and we praise him.
When things go wrong, and disappointment and pain and bewilderment come our way, then how insistent is the devil's insinuation? You really believe there's a God? And there's a God who cares? And a God who loves you? Wouldn't you better be advised to dismiss all dependence on him and faith in him and his character, and go out like the world does and try and make the best of this life and say, oh, bother any idea of eternity, and God, let me just live for myself and screw what I can of enjoyment out of this world. God, therefore, is going to deliver us from worldliness.
It will have to be as it was in this day, with Jesus Christ, his son and apostle, coming alongside of us and declaring the Father's name to us. Till that name and all its sense all becomes surpassingly beautiful and indescribably attractive. Till given the choice of all this world on the one side and God on the other, we should see God on the other. Till we've learned to read everything in life, its blessings and its apparent sorrows, as the gifts of a God whose love we have dared to trust.
Follow then Moses, if you will, in his own personal experience, and then as it becomes a picture to us of that greater than Moses, our blessed Lord. Follow him with me a moment, as God makes known to him, and he makes known to Israel the name of God. And first it was that Moses came to the Israelites, charged to tell them that God was the God of their past. Or as I say, Pharaoh had made Egypt a tiny little place for the Israelites, pushing their nose to the grindstone hour after hour till they had little time to think of anything else.
Now Moses came, saying he had met God, coming to this race of slaves and telling them a message which, if true, was marvelous. It ran like this. They hadn't always been slaves. No, indeed, they hadn't always been in Egypt, their nation. There was a God who loved them, and long before they had come into Egypt, long before their parents and ancestors had come into the house of bondage, God had been thinking of them and planning for them and speaking about them.
He had foreknown them. And in those past centuries, those Israelites had been so real to God, that God had spoken to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob about them, and talked with enthusiasm of all the plans that he had for that race that now was in Egypt. He had foreseen their coming. He had told Abraham how long their stay should be in that temporary Egypt, then how they should come out and what glorious things he would provide for them. Centuries ago, the gospel message went through Moses.
God had been thinking about them and planning for them, had foreknown them and foreloved them, and that God was going to be faithful to his covenant. Do you believe that gospel still? For still it's preached to us. One of the things guaranteed to break the grip of worldliness upon our hearts. To awake to the notion that God is the God of our past. Long before you, my Christian friend, came into this world a tooking little infant and were laid in the cradle, God had been thinking of you, talking of you, planning for you.
It wasn't an accident you came. It wasn't that you arrived in this planet by some accident, and God scratched his divine head, if I may so speak reverently, and said, now what shall I do here? He- here is Mr. Smith come. Now what shall I do with him? I wasn't expecting him to come here. Now I'm landed with Smith. What shall I do with Smith? No, it was that the divine creator who foresees and foreknows had anticipated Smith's coming. And in Christ had chosen us before the foundation of the world. Oh, this temporary little world wasn't the beginning, neither shall it be the end.
We've come passengers through this temporary planet, clearly temporary, every mark of it is temporary, but we come with plans of eternity behind us. God, the God of our past. Oh, it begins already, doesn't it, to add a dimension to life. As we discover the name of God. God, the God of our past. And the God who in that past has made sundry covenants and declares he will be faithful to them.
I am the God of Abraham, he said. Abraham, who is Abraham? And what about Abraham? Well, my man Moses, he said, I made a covenant with Abraham, don't you know? I covenanted with Abraham that in Abraham and his seed all the world should be blessed. And I covenanted with Abraham and with his seed that I will give him these vast territories here for his possession. Doesn't that excite you? And I hear some staid Christians say to me, but you know, yes, I would get excited if I were a Jew, but what on earth has Abraham got to do with me? Oh, my brother, let me spell out the riches. What's Abraham got to do with you? What have all those covenants to do with you that God made with Abraham and with his seed, promising him in the end worldwide inheritance?
It's this to do with you, that if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to that promise. And all those glorious promises made to Abraham and his seed in those far off days, God will keep them and honor them and fulfill them to you. Oh, pray consider it, how once you Gentiles were afar off and strangers from the covenant of promise. Being without God and without Messiah, you were without hope in the world. Sorry thing to be without hope.
But so we were as Gentiles. God had made no promise to Gentiles as such. He had made promise to Abraham and to Abraham's seed for glorious things lying in the future, but not to Gentiles. Ah, but now in Christ, you were, who were once strangers from the far off, have been brought nigh, and in Christ, you Gentile, along with the Jews, have been made into one, and in Christ reconciled to the Father. So you are no more strangers. You are fellow citizens with those saints. You are of the same household as those saints, fellow members of the body, being built together into that glorious temple, Jew and Gentile, that when it is complete, shall adorn eternity.
God of my past. And the God who came down to this planet and supped with Abraham outside his tent door on those rude and plain benches such as Abraham had. That God hasn't forgotten Abraham, and he hasn't forgotten me. Oh, I'm not to be regarded as some flotsam and jetsam on the river of time. I come into this planet with God and his eternal plans behind me. I come here by his deliberate forethought that I might be joined to Christ and in Christ proceed to God's great eternal future.
Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. God, the God of my past, but God, the God of my future. Is it not so, and obviously so? And in two ways round, God talked to Moses and reminded him that he's not merely the God of the past, but the God of the future as well. I've come down to deliver them out of Egypt, but to take them also to an inheritance. God, the God of the future. And it needs little explanation to see that that God remains for us, God of our future inheritance.
Ah, but said God to Moses, as Moses stood there aghast at the great terms of this gospel, scarce daring to believe them, feeling perhaps it was all a dream, an overheated imagination, and craving for some certainty, and feeling to himself, how should ever I go and tell Pharaoh a message like that? He'd simply laugh me out of his court. Then said God to Moses, that Moses, I'm not merely the God of the nation's future, I'm the God of your personal future. Would you like a sign that it is I talking to you, and I am with you?
Moses, I give you a sign. When you have in fact delivered the Israelites out of Egypt and you brought them out, you and they shall worship me precisely in this spot on this mountain where now we stand. Did I hear you say that you didn't like that kind of a sign? You say that's a curious sign to give anybody. How did it comfort Moses that when he was brought out of Egypt, he would worship God on this mountain? Pray, why not give him a sign at once? Some mighty miracle now happening in the desert that to convince Moses of God's power.
If God is going to give him a sign, why give it in the future? Why? Because God wanted to impress upon Moses that he was the God of his future, and Moses could believe in the future. You see, says God to Moses, I see you standing here, Moses. For you ahead are dark days and difficult that shall challenge every ounce of your courage. As you stand here, you're saying to yourself, but how ever dare I go into Pharaoh? And what likelihood is that I shall ever bring the nation out? And how can it be done? And you're shrinking back from the future and wanting to get back to your few smelly sheep and take the safe line way up in the backside of the desert.
It says God to Moses, Moses, as I stand here this moment talking to you, I can already God of the nation's future, I'm the God of your personal future. Would you like a sign that it is I talking to you and I am with you? Moses, I give you a sign. When you have in fact delivered the Israelites out of Egypt and you brought them out, you and they shall worship me precisely in this spot on this mountain where now we stand. Did I hear you say that you didn't like that kind of a sign?
You say that's a curious sign to give anybody. How did it comfort Moses that when he was brought out of Egypt, he would worship God on this mountain? Pray, why not give him a sign at once? Some mighty miracle now happening in the desert that to convince Moses of God's power. If God is going to give him a sign, why give it in the future? Why? Because God wanted to impress upon Moses that he was the God of his future, and Moses could believe in the future. You see, says God to Moses, I see you standing here, Moses. For you ahead are dark days and difficult that shall challenge every ounce of your courage.
As you stand here, you're saying to yourself, but however dare I go into Pharaoh, and what likelihood is that I shall ever bring the nation out, and how can it be done? And you're shrinking back from the future and wanting to get back to your few smelly sheep and take the safe line way up in the backside of the desert. It says God to Moses, Moses, as I stand here this moment talking to you, I can already see you, Moses, as you will be. I can see you standing on this mountain, having brought the Israelites out of Egypt. And it's as real to me, Moses, as seeing you now is real.
God, the God of my personal future. Have you got some difficult task facing you next week? You got some exam or other, have you? Some difficult business problem to solve? Something you feel like shirking, you'd rather shrink back from it, you don't want to face it, you can't think how you're going through with it. My fellow Christians, dare to believe, can you, that God is the God of your personal future. He sees you not merely as you are sitting on that seat now, he sees you next Tuesday, as you will be next Wednesday, and where you will be a year from now.
He sees you already. And he makes known his promise to you about the future, that you may dare trust him and count upon that future as real as your present is and as your past is. What a glorious salvation it is to have a hope, to have a future, to have a future that you dare believe. And to say the God that has led me thus far already sees me as I shall be, and I dare to trust him and walk out into the future that God has planned for me.
Oh, how it begins to get us more elbow room, doesn't it? And open out this otherwise narrow little life. God, the God of my past, and God, the God of my future. And next? God, the God of my present. What shall I tell them your name is, he said. Who are you? And what are you really like in your heart? You've told us what you did in the past and what you said to Abraham then. You've told me what you're going to do in the future, but God, tell me, what are you really like in your heart?
Whoever stood and asked the question? We live in a thrilling universe, don't we? And how wonderfully beautiful it is on the surface, and sometimes how ugly it is. I never did such see much beauty in crocodiles myself, but perhaps daddy crocodiles see beauty in in mummy crocodiles. I don't know. I never did see much beauty in them myself. It's a mixed up old world, isn't it? Some things beautiful and some things look horrible. It's a fascinating world, isn't it? Oh, there's the beauty of that sunset. There's a fear of the old volcano and earthquake, is there not? Oh, there are those lovely little dogs, if you happen to like dogs, and there are those horrible old viruses.
That's an amazing world, and it's terribly complicated. Why let the scientists at it, and they confuse and confound things that otherwise would be simple, and start talking to you about quarks and charm and particles and neutrons and positrons and all such things as that. It's a marvelously complicated world. Tell me, the heart that lies behind it. Yes, I'm prepared to trust its wisdom. It's obviously a bigger brain than I've got that lies behind this universe, but what about his heart? What's his heart like? What's he like himself? The name came back as follows: Tell them, Moses, my name.
I am that I am. Eternal, unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Universes may come and go, but God remains. I am that I am. Yes, this little world on which we stand is a temporary thing. Our very bodies shall one day decay or be changed.
But the God who invented and created us, the God whose idea we are, hear him now tell us what his heart is, what his character is. I am that I am. Did he love us yesterday? Then he loves us today and will love us tomorrow. For he never changes. Did he plan for us before the foundation of the world? The plans remain true today, they will remain constant tomorrow, for he never changes. Has he given you good gifts today? He'll give you good gifts again. For with him there is no variableness, neither shadow casts I turn in.
Oh, where else shall I find refuge in this impermanent world? Where shall I find something solid and eternal, save here? Ah, did he love you yesterday? Yes, I'm persuaded he loved you yesterday. For before the foundation of the world, he had not only invented you, but so loved you that he determined that when you sinned, even then he would not abandon you, but would provide a sacrifice for you, that you might be forgiven. Oh, how shall I tell out its wonder?
A little child gets a toy, it's all gleaming and red, and the old clockwork inside goes wonderful today, and next week it breaks. Or the child gets tired at ease, it gets thrown on an old cupboard and eventually out into the dustbin. A man gets his Ford and a woman her Singer sewing machine, but eventually they're not good enough, they're not modern enough, and he must have a Mercedes-Benz, and she must have I don't know what. We get tired of things, don't we? They become our toys. Some men treat other men like that.
They use them when they can get advantage out of them, and when they cease to serve their purpose, they throw them on the scrap heap. And I say, what shall God do with me? Oh, I find myself in this little world, so impermanent. God created me, you say, but yes, I know, but what will he do with me? Will he get tired of me? My clockwork is broken, you know. Didn't you know that? Old paint is worn off in places, and the old rust has got right through my machine.
My personality is marked by sin and broken. Oh, say, what will he do with me? Will he get tired of me one day and... swing me over the battlements of heaven onto the scrap heap of eternity? Back comes the answer from the mouth of God through Moses. Go and tell him. Go and tell him down there in that temporary world, Moses. Go and tell him what my name is. I am that I am. If I created him, I shall remain loyal to him.
Hey, does he love me like that? Yes, indeed. Ah, it is no fairy story, for he who planned and devised that there should be a lamb tells me that as far as God's counsels were concerned, the lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. And he loved me once. He loved me big enough to give his son to die for me at Calvary. Oh, tell me, will he go on loving me like that? The God of Calvary in AD twenty nine or whenever it was. What's he like? And the voice comes back, but I am, but I am.
And if I loved you when you were yet a sinner, and I gave Christ for you when you were yet an enemy of mine, I should go on loving you to the remotest bounds of eternity, for I am that I am. And I look forward, and if I mistake not, there's a, there's a grave looming up. Ah, death, death. What will you do to me? And when I close my eyes on this temporary planet to my little years here, oh death, what will you do to me?
Will you lose me in some forgotten cupboard of the universe and God forget me? And the voice comes back, now no longer through Moses, but through God himself incarnate, that blessed apostle of our faith, as he stood here in our world, surrounded by its graves. And the Jews came to him and they said, are you greater than our father Abraham? He's dead. And are you greater than the prophets? They're dead. And everybody around here is dead or dying. Are you greater than them? And with the majesty of God, he replied, before Abraham was, I am.
And in that moment, the grave gave way. And the apostles were given to see right out and beyond. For for the great I am, all live unto him. And I begin to see it. I form a relationship with that great I am. You know, it's like heaven begun, isn't it? It's like eternity begun. For if he would befriend you, that would be it, wouldn't it?
He would never change. Ah, we have had human friends, God bless them. And sometimes they forgot us. Or sometimes they died and left us solitary. But if you could form a relationship with this God, because he is unchanging, the very relationship would be eternal, and death itself couldn't destroy it. It is precisely that that he offers us. This is his name. The great apostle of our faith, coming forth from God, coming into our world, stands before us and says, this is life eternal, and I have the power to give it you.
This is life eternal, that you should know God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. Know you God like that. Moses, doubtless as he listened, found his heart thrilled to its core. One of the virtues of Moses was that he never allowed himself to get, uh, carried away too far by flights of imagination or emotion.
And he presently bethought himself that, wonderful as this sounded, how should he convince the Israelites that it was true? I mean, if it's true, it's wonderful. But when I come to them and I tell them all this, it's likely, says Moses to God, it's likely, isn't it, that they won't believe? They will say, Moses, we've heard that kind of stuff before. Mothers used to tell us that when we were kids, you know, that God was going to deliver us one day, and they told us stories about all Abraham and Isaac, uh, you know, ancient history stuff and fusty and musty, and they told us this yarn, but it never has happened, and how can there be a God anyway, Moses?
Man, use your eyes, look at these, look at these chains, look at our miserable hovels, look at the injustice of Pharaoh. What's the good of your standing there and telling us there's a God? There's too much evil in the world, Moses, for there to be a God. What shall I do, says Moses to God? What shall I do to convince them? Said God, I'll give you a sign or two, Moses. They're a fair enough question. There is a lot of evil in the world, isn't there? And sooner or later, we shall all have to make up our minds whether there's any God behind this world or not.
The evidence will be of all sorts and kinds. We shan't expect to find all of it, uh, in the Old Testament either. But we might as well make a beginning where Moses made a beginning. Oh, you want some evidence, says God. You want a few signs. Righto, Moses. What have you got in your hand, Moses? Oh, he said, a rod. Well, throw it down on the ground. He threw it down on the ground and then let back in tremendous fright. For the old rod that he imagined was a dead stick turned itself into a serpent, a lethal poisonous snake, and Moses jumped yards. He hadn't realized that he held anything so potentially lethal in his hand before. Phew, the thing apparently had the power to turn into a snake.
Well, it might have poisoned him. And God comforted the man's heart, you know, and said, well, now grab hold of it, Moses. And he grabbed hold of it, and it turned back into a stick. That sufficed Moses for the moment. Did I hear you say it wouldn't suffice you because you're not quite sure how, uh, whether it actually took place or not? Oh, you're not a Christian, I see. Fair enough question then. Uh, what, what have you got in your hand or in your breast pocket? Is that a fountain pen? Did I see you've got a pen in your hand or in your pocket there? I should let go of it at once if I were you. Do you know that's potentially lethal, that pencil? Why, if they took just a little snippet off the top and managed to prise the old atom loose, why it would blow you from here almost to eternity with the top of that pencil.
Do let me remind you that you live in a fantastically dangerous world. The marvel is how you've survived so far, isn't it? Why, we've already discovered some atoms are a little bit unstable. You're best to keep away from them if you can. Wind scale and other such things frighten the life out of some people. But it has merely opened our eyes to the fact that this world of us is a potentially lethal place. How does it manage to keep going, I wonder? Why, if it weren't for that stuff up aloft there some miles that encircles our world, the old cosmic rays would come through and fry us, as the speedy ovens fry our beef steaks these days, with infrareds and ultraviolets and infrareds and ultraviolets and the whole caboose of, uh, waves and particles coming in from outer space.
What an incredibly dangerous world this is. What keeps it going? Want another sign Moses is God? What put your hand into your bosom, old chap. So he put his hand into his bosom, bring it out, and there it was, gone white, woof, gone white as snow all over. He got the leprosy. Oh, he didn't know his cells in his hand, uh, and in his flesh had got the power to turn into such corrupt nonsense before. Well, he learned it now. What have you got in your hand? Put your hand in your bosom. Do you know there's a multitude of cells, aren't there?
Millions of cells in your body. Aren't they marvelous? Yeah, I say, how do they manage to keep together? For one of these days, uh... something could happen, couldn't it? An old virus get in. And when he's got in, made a mess of that cell, the old cell itself has got a thing inside called a lysosome that will eat up the mess, and that will then be the end of that cell. It is a fantastic arrangement. How do those tiny two cells that we get from our parents come together and form eventually a living person?
How do they know to do it? How do they manage to stay together, all these cells in my body for the seventy years or so that I need them? And if they don't believe that, says God, I tell you what you could do, Moses. You could take your staff and, uh, and haul a few drops of water out of the Nile and put them on the land. So Moses did that, and presently the waters of the Nile on the land turned into blood. I don't know what the conversat- con- conservationists would have said about it, but you know, it is an interesting thing to ponder, isn't it? We do depend on the water supply, and some of the pundits are getting a little bit worried, aren't they, in these islands, whether eventually there will be enough water to go round, and fearfully worried they get about the possibilities of pollution.
What keeps the whole show from not getting polluted anyway? How does it happen that this little thing that we call Earth goes wobbling around in space, and space is absolutely lethal? Poke your nose out of the front door of this world, up there a few miles up, and the very first time you poke your nose out, unless you're beclad in all sorts of mysterious gear, you'll perish at once. We live in a world that is utterly hostile. How do you suppose it has become stable enough for us to live on it, and the cells of our body keep together stable enough for us to exist, and matter itself around us keeps stable enough not to disintegrate.
Are you going to tell me it's all by chance? Well, if that's what you believe, I will have to congratulate you on the strength of your faith. There isn't anything you wouldn't believe. I have an agnostic friend, a colleague of mine, and I'm sure he won't mind me telling you, but he is an agnostic. And when on times I sit down with him at lunch, he delights to pull my Christian leg. Sooner or later, he'll bring the conversation round to it, and my faith in God and my faith in Christ.
He professes to believe there is no God. But even he said to me, you know, he said, Gooding, the thing that, uh, sometimes make me think, if anything was going to make me think, is what I find happening every springtime. Not only is this world beautiful, but how staggeringly beautiful it is. Oh yes, it's got its ugly things. But if the whole thing is simply by chance, how does it manage to be so staggeringly beautiful? And secondly, how does it manage to be so staggeringly beautiful so regularly? Every springtime. Oh come.
The very planet around us, when we begin to open our adult eyes to see the wonder, wonder of it, as it goes lurching around in space, trying to follow the sun, whither the sun is going. We come to realize how, how on the one side, perilously dangerous the whole business is, then the sense of the marvel that it's here at all, and that it works, and that it is so fantastically complicated and so fantastically beautiful. Speak to our heart that behind it is a mind that designed it and designed us on it, a God who keeps it together, that it might be a stepping stone for us, his creatures, to become his children and journey to his heaven.
Finally, Moses thought about it and prepared himself to go to Pharaoh and preach the message. Then once more he felt he was too weak to go. Said he, God, this is all very nice, but I am, uh, I am a poor speaker, uncircumcised lips and tongue. I wouldn't know what to say. I, my words would stumble, and I can't speak very well. You know, God, I have a disability. Said God, Moses, I'm the God of your disability as well.
Moses, who made men's mouth? Who made the blind and the dumb? We are not to suppose that God himself directly makes people deaf or dumb or blind. For a multitude of thousands of causes lie in between the original creation and what happens to each individual born. But you know, in the last analysis, nothing happens but what God permits. Have you got some disability that nags you and chains you...
and frustrates you. And you feel there can't be a God who allows such a major disability in your life. You feel it frustrates the life work that you could have done. And you feel it is all so unfair. I say, daren't you believe that behind that disability is God himself? You say, but how can I believe it, that God would allow such a thing to happen to me? Well, friend, I know it's hard.
It's harder not to. For if it isn't God behind it, then it's a freak of chance, and it's meaningless. But if there is a God who has permitted your disability, as he permitted Moses' disability, he's a God big enough to take you, disability and all, and use you now significantly in this life, and use even that disability itself to be a means in his, in his hand of preparing you for greater glory.
You say it's hard to believe that. My friend, it's desperate hard. It depends what you think of God, doesn't it? Or if it's true that he loved you enough to give Christ for you, then friend, he was loving you like that when he allowed that disability to overtake you. Though you cannot understand, if you know his love, you may dare to trust his wisdom and rest assured that the God of your past, the God of your future, the God of your present, God, your creator and redeemer, is the God ultimately behind that disability that can turn it to your blessing now and
to your greater glory and enjoyment hereafter. The Lord bless his word to our hearts, and shall we just take time to sing a verse or two in his praise before we commit ourselves to him? To thee with our evening praise. We ask that by thy spirit thou shalt write thy word upon our hearts, that we may ever and ever more deeply trust in thee and in thy name. We thank thee for sending Jesus Christ, thy son, into our world, and we pray that even as we believe in God, we may also believe in him, and live with him, and thus with thee now, and walk boldly and joyfully through this life with him home to thy great eternity.
So bless thy word, and keep us faithful to thyself through that same Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
