Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 3, Exodus 3.  I want to read verses 13-15 to get us started this morning.  Exodus 3 beginning in verse 13.  “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?’  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.’”  Let’s pray together.  Father, we thank You for Your Word.  We thank You for the opportunity to read this text of scripture.  Thank You for preserving the story for us.  Father, we ask that You would give us ears to hear this morning, that You would speak to us, that You would give us ears to hear what the Spirit of God would say to us.  And not only ears to hear, give us a mind to understand, give us a heart that is good soil,  for when the seed is planted it will grow in us.  But, Father, most of all, give us hands and feet that are swift to put all this truth into practice as we begin here at Atlantic Shores Baptist Church.  We thank You for Your faithfulness.  We thank You for guiding this church through this season.  And we just pray that You would bless us even today as we begin together in Your Word.  And we pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.

0:02:09.0

Well, we are living in a time when everything we thought was nailed down is coming loose.  Have you noticed that?  Everything you thought you could count on, all the values, all the traditions, some of the foundations, they seem to be coming apart at the seams.  Social revolutionaries are working really, really hard to try to get us to think and act and even believe differently than we have before.  They’ve been relentlessly attacking our Judeo-Christian values for decades.  And in my opinion, they’re doing a pretty good job of weakening the moral foundation of our country.  Ravi Zacharias is one of the great Christian apologists of our time, and he agrees.  In fact, he made note of the cultural shift that is taking place in our generation.  He says, “We are facing one of the greatest crises is the history of religion.  Truth is being cast aside in the name of tolerance and cultural relativism, all under the guise of a new spirituality.”  He goes on to say, “Having become accustomed to abundance and the bliss of multiple choices, we have now have a spiritual supermarket before us from which we may select whatever form of spirituality we desire.”  Ravi Zacharias hit the nail right on the head.  And some of you are saying, “Well, that’s a good thing.  That’s a good thing that we have choices.”  We love choices as Americans, don’t we?  We love choices in the cars that we drive.  We love choices as we go to the supermarket in the food that we buy.  We love choices, well, I guess, even in religion.  And we’re in this supermarket of spirituality where whatever you want to believe is okay.  And you’re okay and I’m okay, and every opinion and every value system and belief system is equally valid.  The problem is all of that is that the uniqueness of Jesus somehow gets lost in the midst of all of that.  And even Bible-believing, church-going Christian who name the name of Christ are having a difficult time today articulating why Jesus.  Why Jesus in the midst of the spiritual supermarket and the diversity of thoughts and ideas and beliefs that we have, especially when those revolutionary idea makers come at us like gale-force winds and try to change the way we think and we act and we believe?  How do we as believers articulate the uniqueness of Jesus?  Why Jesus in the midst of the culture that we’re in today?  And so I want to begin a series of messages by that title today, “Why Jesus?”  And we’re gonna talk about seven reasons He is still the One and Only.  Knowing who Jesus is and what He can do for you is vitally important.  Equally meaningful is being able to articulate why Jesus is unique in the midst of a diverse culture, the diverse culture in which we live.  I’m gonna dare to ask the question this morning, why Jesus and not Mohammed?  Why Jesus and not Buddha?  Why Jesus and not one of the many, many if not hundreds of gods you can find in Hinduism?  What makes Jesus so unique?  It’s a question that I think is the question of our day, and it’s a question that we as Christians need to be able to articulate and answer.  And during this series we’re going to be in the Gospel of John to find answers to that question, because John provides some material for us in his gospel that the other gospel writers don't include.  The Holy Spirit led John to include, among other things, the seven “I AM” statements of Jesus.  These are self-declarative statements that Jesus made.  He said things like, “I am the Bread of Life.  I am the Light of the World.”  He said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”  He dared to say, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man comes to the Father but by Me.”  And as we get to know Jesus, who is the Great I AM, it will help us understand why He is unique and why we can say that He is still, after 2000 years of church, still the One and Only.

0:06:33.5

Now, to fully understand these “Great I AM” statements, we really need to start in the Old Testament.  And we need to start with a guy named Moses.  You remember Moses, don’t you?  He’s the guy that looks like Charlton Heston, in case you forgot.  And it’s best to understand Moses’ life as a sort of like a three-act play.  He lived to the age of 120 before he died on Mount Nebo, just on this side of the Promised Land.  Act 1, the first 40 years of his life, he grew up in Egypt.  And you know the miraculous story of how he was taken out of the basket there in the Nile River and basically adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter.  And he grew up, the Bible says, in all the wisdom, in all the learning, really all the privilege of Egypt.  He grew up in a wealthy household as Pharaoh’s daughter… and he went to the best of schools.  In our vernacular today we would say that Moses was Harvard-educated.  And by the time he reached the age of a young man and even in to his 40’s, Moses was quite a dude.  I mean, he had a lot going for him.  Well-educated, well-trained, well-prepared.  The Bible says he was very eloquent; could stand before people and just spin a yarn and speak very eloquently before people.  But one day that very confident Moses took matters into his own hands.  You remember the story in the Old Testament?  And there was an Egyptian and a Hebrew slave that were kind of in battle with each other, and Moses sided with the Hebrew.  And he struck the Egyptian, killed the man dead.  It wasn’t a good day for Moses.  He acted out of his emotions, taking matters into his own hands.  And he tried to cover up his murder there and… but word spread.  And it became very obvious to Moses that he had only one choice.  He fled to Midian.  He fled to the backside of the desert.  And there he met a woman who was the daughter of a Midianite priest named Jethro.  And for the next 40 years, Act II of his life, he spent on the backside of the desert doing manual labor for his father-in-law, taking care of his stinky, smelly, stubborn sheep.  I mean, for a guy like Moses, that was the last place he thought he would end up.  And so for the second act of his life, the next 40 years of his life, he’s on the backside of the desert.  And it’s at the age of 80, at the age of 80 that the once-confident Moses, who is now feeling a bit insecure and that confidence as evaporated—he kind of wondering who he is and why he is here—that’s when God showed up and spoke to him from a burning bush.  I read just a few minutes ago a little bit about the conversation.  Let me read it again.  Exodus 3:13, let’s pick up the conversation here.  “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?’”  The Lord speaking from this burning bush says to Moses, “You’re my man.  You’re my leader to go back to Egypt and to lead the Hebrew slaves out of Egyptian slavery.  And Moses says, “Yeah, but if I go to them and I tell them that You sent me, they’re gonna say, ‘Well, what’s his name?’  I mean, who am I go to back there?  What’s his name?”  And the Bible says that God said to Moses, “Tell them, ‘I AM WHO I AM sent you.’”  I AM WHO I AM.  That’s His name.  Now, did you know that there are over 80 names or titles by which God reveals Himself in scripture?  I’ve got one name with three parts; a first name, a middle name, got a last name.  I might have a few nicknames.  My wife has a nickname or two that she’ll call me by; that’s between us.  I won’t share that with you this morning, okay.  Some people have called me some really good names on occasion, all right.  But I don’t have 80 names or titles.  God does.  And every one of those name and every one of those titles in scripture reveals something about who He is, about the person and nature of God.  I find it interesting, almost a little bit strange, that God would pick this one.  I AM WHO I AM.  I mean, what kind of name is that?  It sort of reminds me of an old Dr. Seuss character.  “I am Sam.  Sam I am.  I love to eat green eggs and ham.”  You ever heard that before?  I mean, I’m a pretty simple guy, and it just made me think about that.  And I thought, What kind of name is this, that He would reveal Himself to Moses, tell Moses to go back to Egypt and say the people of Israel, “I AM has sent you”?

0:11:24.5

Well, the name in the Hebrew literally means Yahweh or Jehovah.  It’s translated “Lord” in our English Bibles in the Old Testament.  In the New Testament in the Greek language it’s ego eimi, I am who I am.  And it literally means the absolute and all-sufficient One who works on our behalf.  So the once-confident Moses, who now is filled with all kinds of insecurities at the age of 80—and who among us is not, if we’re honest with ourselves—when he hears the word or the name I AM WHO I AM, it was meant to evaporate all of those insecurities and give him a God-confidence as he went back to Egypt and represented the I AM WHO I AM.  Maybe a little Greek grammar helps here in the English.  “I am”, if I remember from my grammar class, is the present tense of the verb “to be”, right?  I see the grammar teachers out there saying yes.  So, in one sense, the Lord says “My name is ‘I be who I be’”.  Isn’t that a good one?  And the grammar teachers are saying, “No, that’s not a good way of saying it.”  But that kind of works here.  And it reminds me of what Shakespeare said.  “To be or not to be, that is the question.”  Shakespeare viewed life as a big question mark.  But, friends, when God shows up, when the Great I AM shows up, when the One who is called “I be who I be” shows… it’s not a question mark.  It’s an exclamation point.  There’s no ambiguity in His mind of who He is or why He is there or what He is up to.

0:13:08.9

Louie Giglio is a pastor in the Atlanta area and pretty well known for his college ministry.  And he wrote a book several years ago by an interesting title.  It’s titled—let me see if I can get this right—I Am Not But I Know I AM.  And in Louie’s book he suggests that God was saying to Moses at this time, “I am at the center of everything.  I am running the show.  I am the same everyday forever.  I am the owner of everything.  I am the Lord.  I am the creator and sustainer of life.  I am the savior you need.  I am more than enough.  I am inexhaustible and immeasurable.  I am God.”  And no wonder, no wonder that was meant to evaporate every insecurity that Moses had when he went back to Egypt so he could stand strong before Pharaoh and strong before the people of Israel and say, “Let my people go.”  He was going in the name of the inexhaustible, immeasurable Great I AM, the One who says, “I am God.”  And so every Jew for every generation from Moses forward understood Yahweh, Jehovah, in the Greek language ego eimi.  And so when Jesus evokes this name, we shouldn’t be surprised but the response.

0:14:47.4

Turn in your Bibles with me to John 8, John 8.  And right in the midst of one of the conversations and interactions that Jesus has with a group of people, there’s an interesting conversation here.  John 8 beginning in verse 56.  “Jesus says, ‘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’’—now, listen to this—“‘before Abraham was,’” ego eimi, “‘I am.’”  I am.  And the scripture goes on to say, “So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.”  Why did they pick up stones to throw at Jesus?  Because they knew exactly what He was saying.  He was claiming deity.  He was claiming to be the Great I AM.  I know some people who say, “Oh, no, Jesus never claimed to be God.  That was just something trumped up by the early apostles to inflate His persona as the early church started.”  Hogwash.  You’ve never read the Bible if you say that.  Here’s one of many places, many places, where Jesus claimed to be God.  He couldn’t have done it in a stronger way than to say, “I Am Who I AM.  Before Abraham was, ego eimi.”  And it’s why the Jews reacted so strongly to what this guy was saying.  They knew He was equating Himself with the Great I AM.  And so one of the things we can say—before we get to the seven exact reasons Jesus is still the One and Only—one of the reasons we can say He is the One and Only is because He is the eternally self-existent One.  He is the Great I AM.  When you make a claim like this, you’re either a little bit loony and you need to be checked into the funny farm, or you’re a liar and the greatest con artist that ever lived, or you’re exactly who you say you are and we need to pay attention to Him.  And, of course, I’m in the third category there.  I believe Jesus is exactly who He said He was, the Great I AM.  He is the eternally self-existent One.

0:17:03.9

But He’s much more than that as the Great I AM.  He’s also powerful—get this—powerful beyond measure.  Turn with me now to John 18, John 18.  And now I want to fast-forward in Jesus’ life and ministry to the night before He was crucified.  He’s with his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane.  We get the sense in scripture that He went there often during his ministry to have some quiet time and just get alone with his disciples.  You remember He invited his prayer partners, Peter, James and John, a little bit deeper into the garden to pray with Him, but, you know, they fell asleep.  Jesus prayed.  They fell asleep.  He woke them up.  They fell asleep again while Jesus was praying.  And all the prayer time is passed, and now, in John’s language, the hour has come.  And Jesus grabs His disciples, and He comes out to a portion of the garden there.  And that’s when a battalion of Roman soldiers show up.  Some scholars believe as many as 600 Roman soldiers showed up in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus was crucified, led by none other than Judas.  And they were there to arrest Jesus.  Let’s pick it up in John 18:4.  The Bible says, “Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’  They answered him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’  Jesus said to them,”—here it is, ego eimi—“‘I am he.’  Judas, who betrayed him, was standing there.”  Now, listen to this, “When Jesussaid to them, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.”  Friends, that’s power beyond measure.  All Jesus had (0:19:00.0) to do was speak His name, and 600 Roman soldiers fall back like bowling pins.  He didn’t have to call on an army.  He didn’t pull out any weapons.  He just said, “I am he.”  And that name echoes through the hallways of eternity, so powerfully that it blew these guys back to the ground.  He’s still the One and Only because He’s powerful beyond measure.  He’s the one who speaks the worlds into existence at the moment of creation, all the way back in Genesis, the Bible tells us.  He says, “Let there be light,” and there’s light.  Calls into being that which does not exist and starts the whole creation thing.  And His name is powerful.

0:19:49.2

I was thinking about some of the ways power is expressed and utilized and all of that in our culture today.  Some people have physical power.  They’re big people.  (0:20:00.0) You ever been around a college or a high school or even NFL football team?  Oh my.  They’re just big massive people.  They have physical power.  You match that with, you know, the personal power that comes with an engaging personality, and, wow, you know, some people have physical and personal power.  And they walk into a room, and they just suck all of the oxygen out of the air.  And they’re just big people, and they’re just powerful.  I think of our United States military when they go into battle, into war.  No military exudes more power than the United States military.  And even the U. S. military has at it fingertips nuclear power, should the Commander in Chief choose to use that.  And let’s pray that he never does.  Cathryn and I and the kids, we spent a lot of time in Houston, Texas, years ago.  And, you know, we love Houston.  And if you travel south on I-45 just south of the city towards Galveston, you can stop off and get some sense of rocket power because the Johnson Space Center is there. NASA.  And it’s great to take a tour.  You drive onto the campus of the Johnson Space Center, and there’s this giant rocket—I think it’s from the Gemini series—just laid out horizontally.  And, you know, they’ve made a way for guests and visitors to walk around.  And it’s just…  it’s gigantic.  And you look at these huge, solid rocket boosters, and you get a sense of the rocket power that it takes to launch a man or a woman into outer space.  I also think of political power.  We’ve lived in the Washington, D. C., area for nearly a decade.  And, oh my, this place just runs on political power, where people who are trying to jockey themselves into some position to get, you know, some measure of that political power.  Yesterday afternoon I took a walk along the oceanfront here in Virginia Beach.  And, thankfully, we dodged a hurricane, but, oh, have you seen some of the waves down there?  I got a sense of oceanic power.  I mean, those strong waves pounding against the shoreline.  It reminded me of Psalm 89:9.  It says of the Lord, “You rule the oceans.  You subdue their storm-tossed winds and waves.”  But none of that describes the power that Jesus has.  Jesus has what I would call inherent power.  He just speaks His name, and a whole battalion of Roman soldiers falls down.

0:22:40.2

Here’s another reason that He’s still the Great I AM or still the One and Only.  He’s not only eternally self-existent, He’s powerful beyond measure.  But what I see in this name is somebody who is completely secure in His identity, completely secure in His identity.  Jesus says things like, “I am the Bread of Life.  I am the Light of the World.  I am the Resurrection and the Life.”  He doesn't say, “I hope to be the Bread of Life.  I really, really want to be the Bread of Life.  If I really work hard and dedicate myself to it, I might one day become a Good Shepherd.”  No, there’s no ambiguity in His identity.  He knows who He is, why He is here, the purpose for which the Father has sent Him.  He says, “I am the Bread of Life.  I am the Light of the World.  I am…”  And there are seven statements that He makes there.  And it makes me kind of look inside my own heart a little bit.  And I was preparing this week, I jotted down this little question for myself.  If Jesus is the Great I AM, then who am I?  Who am I?  “Why Jesus?” may be one of the great questions of our generation.  Right?  Why Jesus and not this?  Why Jesus and not some other belief system or value system or religious leader?  But the question of the ages for human beings like you and me is, who am I and why am I here?  And I want to suggest to you that over the next seven weeks as we dive into each one of these “I AM” statements, we’re gonna be almost looking into a mirror of sort because they’ll reflect back to us something about who we are.  As you get to know the Great I AM, you’ll travel further down the road to understanding who you are, who I am, and why we are here.

0:24:32.2

Some of you remember back in…I believe it was the 1992 presidential election.  Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire and businessman, ran for president.  And he was a political outsider, probably before his time because we’ve got a lot of political outsiders today that are gaining ground.  But Perot was one of the early political outsiders; actually formed a third party, if you remember that.  And he chose a rather interesting person for his vice-presidential running mate, a guy named Vice Admiral James Stockdale.   You’re saying, “Who is that?”  And that’s what everybody was saying back in 1992.  “Who is this guy?”  Well, Perot knew him to be a great American hero and a Vietnam War veteran, very decorated. Vice Admiral James Stockdale.  Well, at the first vice-presidential debate he was a little bit out of his element, because on the right side was a seasoned politician named Al Gore and on the left side was a seasoned politician named Dan Quayle.  And the three of them were debating for the vice-presidential nomination position.  And the other two introduced themselves in a very polished kind of way.  When it came time for Admiral Stockdale to introduce himself, he rather awkwardly asked a philosophical question.  “Who am I and why am I here?” he said.  And all the political pundits were saying, “Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re wondering.  Who are you and why are you here?”  And if you know anything about that debate, it kind of went downhill from there for Admiral Stockdale.  But a great American hero.  And he later came back and he said he started that way to indicate to people that, at the core, he was a philosopher.

0:26:10.4

Okay.  Well, Jesus is not a philosopher.  He’s not a political figure.  But the fact that He is the Great I AM begs the question, if we just reverse it a little bit, who am I and why am I here?  There’s no ambiguity in Jesus’ identity, but let’s be honest, friends.  We live most of our lives with some identity issues, don't we?  Just trying to figure who we are, why we are here.  And there are two basic identity traps that people like you and me will fall into.  One is the comparison game.  You know, we don’t know who we are and we’re not quite sure why we are here, so we compare ourselves to one another.  The apostle Paul addressed this in his second letter to the Corinthians.  He was defending his ministry against people who were comparing him to other preachers and religious leaders of that time.  And Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:12, “Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they  measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.”  In other words, Paul says, “I’m not gonna get engaged in the comparison game with you.  That’s an identity trap.”  The other trap is copying.  You know, you just…you don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but you look around and you just try to copy what somebody else is doing rather than understanding that, as a human being created in the image of God, every one of us—listen to this—every one of us is an original.  We’ve got too many Xerox people in the world today trying to copy what somebody else is doing.  Friend, turn to your neighbor right now and say, “I am an original,” because you are.  Just do that right now.  Turn to your neighbor and say that.  And I hope amidst some of the giggles and laughter, you can say that in a meaningful way.  “I am an original.”

0:28:12.2

I was wrestling with this whole idea—if Jesus is the Great I AM, who am I—just for my own self.  And I wrote down some words that became a personal declaration for me.  Let me share them with you this morning.  I am a child of God.  I am a sinner who needs a Savior.  I am being changed into the image of Christ every day.  I am who I am by the grace of the Great I AM.  If you want to know who Ron Jones is, that’s a pretty good summation of who I am.  That’s my declaration.  And I’d like for it to be our declaration throughout this series.  Can you say it with me?  Let’s just practice together.  I am a child of God.  I am a sinner who needs a Savior.  I am being changed into the image of Christ every day.  I am who I am by the grace of the Great I AM.  If those are just mere words for you right now and they don’t really reflect who you are deep down inside in your heart as a reflection of your relationship with Christ, my prayer is that by the end of today or by the end of this series you can say that with deep meaning.  Maybe add to some of it yourself.  But as we get to know this Great I AM, we’re gonna get to know ourselves better as well.

0:29:30.9

And that brings me to the fourth reason He is still the One and Only before we get to the seven reason, all right.  And that’s because Jesus who is the Great I AM, friends, He is uniquely qualified to satisfy our deepest needs.  Uniquely qualified to do so.  Nobody else can do this.  And this brings us to the seven “I AM” statements.  And let me just kind of give you an overview of where we’re going.  Jesus said to the spiritually hungry, “I am the Bread of Life.”  Jesus said to people walking in darkness, “I am the Light of the World.”  He said to people who need direction, “I am the Door of the Sheep.”  He said to people needing protection, “I am the Good Shepherd.”  He said to people who feared death…anybody fear death here this morning?  Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”  He said to people who want the free gift of eternal life…He dared to say, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man comes to the Father but by Me.”  And then for anybody who wants to experience intimacy with the Almighty, He said, “I am the Vine, and you are the branches.  Apart from Me you can do nothing.”  He is uniquely, uniquely qualified, friends, to satisfy every one of our needs.  I can’t commend Him to you any better than this.  He is eternally self-existent.  He is powerful beyond measure.  He’s completely secure in His identity.  And He’s uniquely qualified to satisfy our every need.

0:31:38.3