I Speak Because I Am | Sunday, June 7, 2026

Amen. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Anthony. Good morning, Cross Connection. It is so good to see you all here. You can have a seat. We are glad that you are with us this morning as we get into the Scriptures.

This morning, we are starting a new series. You might have noticed there is a new image here, and it might look a little strange to you. Our pattern of how we do things here at Cross Connection Church for the last several years has been to go through the Scriptures line upon line, book by book. We have been in the Gospel of Luke so far this year. However, during the summertime, for the 12 to 13 weeks of summer, we take a pause. So, we will not be in the Gospel of Luke this morning or throughout the summer. We will return to Luke in September.

Instead, we are going to do a series called "Fly on the Wall." That is why you see this image here. This series will explore some passages in the Scriptures, both Old Testament and New, where we have conversations between God and one other person, or maybe just between two individuals. These intimate encounters allow us to be a fly on the wall and listen in on the conversation.

Before we get into the Scriptures, I want to highlight one other thing as we are now in June. Today is what we call Promotion Sunday because all of our kids in the children's ministry are moving up to the next grade. This also means that we have a number of former high school students who graduated in the last couple of weeks. We want to recognize some of our students who have grown up in our youth ministry: Lily Springfield, Isaac Garcia, Ryan Paulson, Lucy, Kayla, and Ari. All of them graduated in the last week or so, and we ask you to pray for these students as they step into a new stage of life.

You might remember back to that time, the anticipation, and maybe a little bit of anxiety. So, please be praying for these students. My oldest son notified me the other day that he is now a senior, which is kind of frightening for me, and I feel old. It is a crazy thing! But God is still good, right? Amen.

As we start this morning, I wanted to pose a question—one that, in many ways, is the underpinning question for one of the pivotal turns in our cultural history. The question is: How do you know what you know? This really is the underpinning question for what we now look back on in our understanding.

The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in our culture mark what we know as the Enlightenment. Some of the big names of the Enlightenment at the very beginning include René Descartes. You may have heard that name before; he is famous for the phrase "Cogito, ergo sum," which translates to "I think, therefore I am." How many of you have heard that before?

Following René Descartes was John Locke, who built upon the idea of "I think, therefore I am." He proposed that when we come into this world, we arrive as a tabula rasa, or a blank slate. According to Locke, we fill this blank slate of our knowledge through sensation and reflection. These concepts have led to some of the most amazing advancements in human history, including medical technology and scientific discovery. John Locke is well-known for his view of the blank slate, emphasizing that personal sensation, reflection, and experience are essential for acquiring knowledge.

Next came David Hume, the great skeptic of the Enlightenment. He proposed that we should be skeptical of all testimony and anything anyone tells us. We should question their authority and only believe or trust in things that we can ascertain or comprehend through individual personal experience. Following Hume was Immanuel Kant, who further developed these ideas. He introduced the concept of "daring to know" and encouraged self-discovery and individual self-directed rationality.

These thinkers significantly shaped what we know today as Western knowledge and contributed to much of the scientific discovery we see. They were grappling with the question of knowledge, which in philosophy is referred to as epistemology: How do you know what you know? Even though they challenged our understanding of knowledge, here we are, 200 years later, still wrestling with the same question.

This question is being challenged once again by the developments in our culture related to artificial intelligence. With the advent of generative AI, we are faced with the question of how we know what we know and whether what we see is actually real.

Created with AI, you can create some pretty amazing things, including videos, photos, and all kinds of content. It is not atypical for me at this point for someone to send me a video and ask, "Have you seen this? This is unbelievable." I often have to tell them, "That's not real." We are really challenged with the question of how we know what we know, which relates to epistemology and knowledge. These questions bear significantly on not just what we know, but also on what we know about ourselves.

So that question still lingers in the air: How do we know what we know? This morning, I want to make a claim that I am thoroughly convinced of: we know almost nothing apart from Revelation. Everything that we ultimately know has its basis in Revelation. Much of what we think we know is not derived from deduction and discovery, which are the high points of the Enlightenment and everything that followed. While it is largely true that we can come to knowledge through deduction and discovery, so much of what we know is actually by disclosure, by Revelation.

We deduce and discover very little of what we know apart from Revelation. Most of what you know has been received through disclosure from authoritative testimony. This applies to many aspects of our lives. For example, your birth date was not something you discovered or deduced; it was disclosed to you. The very thing you know yourself by—your name—is not something you came to know through deduction or discovery. It was told to you that George Washington was the first president of our nation. That fact is known to us through disclosure, not through discovery or deduction.

Similarly, the fact that this is the 250th anniversary of our nation is also disclosed to us. The knowledge that your heart pumps blood throughout your body is not something you personally deduced through study; it was told to you, and you believe it based on authority. Someone you trust conveyed that information to you, and you accepted it.

However, there are people who constantly tell us things that we do not really believe because we do not consider them trustworthy sources. This skepticism has been especially pronounced in the last five to six years in our culture, where we have become increasingly doubtful of the expert class and the information we are being given.

It is becoming even more difficult to discern information because so much is generative and not originating from an authoritative source. It is just being generated on the fly. Do you realize that somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 percent of the content that you see on social media today is AI-generated? This brings us to the question of how we know what we know. Revelation is key, ultimately, to this. Revelation by authoritative, trustworthy sources is essential.

Now, that word, "revelation," in the post-Enlightenment era that we live in, has become challenging for our culture to accept. In 2026, there is almost too much skepticism surrounding the concept of revelation. Most of what we know came by revelation; we received it by disclosure, and we believe it because we regard it as coming from authoritative, trustworthy sources. Unfortunately, revelation has kind of a black eye in 2026. It has fallen on hard times because it seems to hint at something beyond this world, while we live in a highly naturalistic, physicalist reality.

Most of the people we interact with today do not believe that there is anything beyond this world other than what we can see and grasp with our senses. This perspective is very much an Enlightenment way of thinking, and since we live in a post-Enlightenment culture, that is the mindset that has been instilled in us. When you start to talk about revelation, people often react with skepticism, thinking, "Oh, you're one of those people. You believe that information came from an outside source." Yes, as Christians, we do believe that, and it is amazing because even many of the conclusions we reach through deductive reasoning and discovery come to us in the form of "aha" moments that almost seem magical.

Have you ever had this experience? I frequently find myself trying to solve a problem or work on an idea, and then while I'm on a walk, it just comes to me. The thought appears seemingly out of nowhere. Where did that thought come from? Have you ever considered that? It feels almost magical, as if it just shows up all of a sudden. I had this experience a few weeks ago while trying to figure out a problem I had been working on for several weeks. I was walking through my house when, suddenly, something came to me from somewhere, and it was the answer to my question. It worked. Where did that come from? In some respects, it almost seems like it came by revelation.

Revelation is a reality in daily life. It discloses knowledge to us of wonders that we could not know apart from revelation. One of the greatest wonders that is only known by revelation is the knowledge of the divine. The things of God come to us by revelation. However, because we live in a culture that is highly naturalistic and has been told for a very long time that there is no God, as soon as you mention revelation, it is often met with skepticism. People may think we cannot trust anything that comes from revelation, but there is so much that we know only through it. We did not deduce it or discover it; it came to us. Therefore, the knowledge of the divine is by revelation.

Paul speaks about this in the opening words of the book of Romans. Romans chapter 1, verse 20 says, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even God's eternal power and Godhead." The knowledge of God's existence comes to us through the things that have been made. Creation speaks to us of the existence of God.

Point number one, if you're taking notes this morning: the knowledge of the divine is disclosed to us in creation. It wasn't only Paul who observed this; King David, 3,000 years ago, wrote in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork." He goes on to say that there is no speech nor language that these things cannot be comprehended by. The language of creation, or what some theologians have referred to as the book of creation, speaks in every single language. "Day unto day utter speech, night unto night it reveals knowledge." The heavens declare the glory of God.

Theologians refer to this as general revelation. Through three modes of general revelation, we come to the understanding that there is a God. What are those three things? The first one is consciousness. What is consciousness? It is your self-awareness, the feeling of what it feels like to be you. Consciousness encompasses not just your self-awareness but also your awareness of everything around you—creation. Thus, consciousness hints at the creator. Your awareness of creation speaks to us of a creator.

General revelation is conscience, your awareness of right and wrong, goodness, beauty, and truth. This is what the great philosopher C.S. Lewis writes about in "Mere Christianity." We have this knowledge of a conscience, a consciousness, and creation, and all these things come together to disclose knowledge to us.

One of the great arguments for the existence of God is called the cosmological argument. It states that everything that begins to exist has a cause, and since the universe began to exist, it follows that the universe has a cause. The conclusion we draw from this is that the cause of the universe is God. For every sort of physical, tangible thing, like these glasses right here, if you stumbled upon them in the wilderness, you would not assume that they came about by random chance over billions of years. You would say, "No, this thing that exists, that came into being, had a cause. Somebody made this."

The very fact that these exist tells us that there is a maker, and it reveals more about that maker. What do we learn from this general revelation of the existence of something like this, or something much more complex, like our bodies or our eyes? These complex things that exist speak to us about something that made them. That maker exists, and that maker is intelligent, possessing some sort of intelligence to know how to create these things. Additionally, the maker has the power and resources to make them. Those are the core things we learn through general revelation.

Point number two, if you're taking notes: through general revelation, God discloses His existence, His intelligence, and His power. God is intelligent. God is powerful. These are the most basic things we can comprehend through consciousness, conscience, and creation. God is; God is intelligent; and God is powerful.

However, general revelation has limits. It kind of stops there. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork. We believe and know that God is, that He is intelligent, and that He is powerful, but there is much we cannot know about God by simply deducing information from ourselves or this world. The two major things that general revelation does not reveal to us are what God is like and His nature.

What is God like? His will, God's nature, and God's will are hidden from us in general revelation. General revelation is great, but it is deficient; it doesn't go far enough. Through general revelation, there are many misconceptions about God. I'm sure you have encountered some of these, and perhaps you have had them yourself.

We live in a broken world, and because of this brokenness, we can misunderstand or miscomprehend what God is like by simply looking at the world around us. One person may look at the beauty of creation and the awesomeness of the cosmos, concluding that God is beautiful and must be kind because of the amazing things He has made for us to enjoy. That is one conclusion someone can draw from observing the world.

However, another person may look at the same world and see the destructive forces of fires, floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes. They may perceive all the chaos of the cosmos and conclude that God must be capricious, unkind, distant, or uninterested. I'm sure you have interacted with people who hold these conceptions. Perhaps you have experienced this yourself.

Consider the love and devotion you feel for your own children. When our first child was born, I was struck by the instinct to give my life for that child. This overwhelming sense of love leads us to conclude that God must be like that; He must love us, would never judge us, and must forgive all because of the way we feel toward our own children.

Yet, as time goes on, perspectives can change. Another person may reflect on the neglect or abuse they experienced and, as a result of the malevolence and brokenness of this world, conclude that if there is a God, He must not be interested in them. They may see Him as detached, distant, callous, or indifferent.

Thus, looking at the data of the broken world we live in, we can arrive at different conclusions and misconceptions about who God is. If we are to know what God is like—His nature and what He desires—then God must reveal Himself to us. This self-disclosure comes not just through general revelation, but also through the heavens.

Declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork. However, through special revelation, God speaks in a language that we can comprehend and understand. This is where our culture struggles with revelation, as many come to it disbelieving or questioning whether there could be a God. Consequently, they assert that if there is a God, He is not interested in speaking to us.

Yet, is there anywhere in the Bible or in human history where God speaks in a language we can understand and reveals Himself? I would argue that one of the greatest examples of this is found in the book of Exodus. If you would take out your Bibles, we can look at Exodus chapter 3, which contains a very famous and familiar story. Many of you may already know it.

In Exodus chapter 3, God reveals Himself and shares something of His nature and will, telling us incredible things about who God is and what He is like. I’m going to ask you to stand as we read a large section of this passage this morning. This is one of the greatest revelations of God in Scripture.

It says, "Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, 'I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.'

So when the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, 'Moses, Moses!' He said, 'Here I am.' Then God said, 'Do not draw near to this place. Take the sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.' Moreover, He said, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

The Lord said, 'I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, and the Jebusites. Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now..."

Therefore, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" And He said, "I will certainly be with you, and this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain."

Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The Lord God of your fathers has sent me,' and they say to me, 'What is His name? What shall I say to them?'" God said to Moses, "I am who I am." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you.' Moreover, God said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, 'The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob appeared to me, saying, 'I have surely visited you and seen what is done to you in Egypt, and I have said 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, to a land flowing with milk and honey.'"

God, I pray that as we have the opportunity this morning to be kind of like the fly on the wall, listening in on this conversation, You would speak to us by Your Spirit through Your Word today. Continue to reveal to us something of Your nature and Your will, and may that knowledge of who You are, what You’re like, and what You like change our understanding. Lord, may it reframe for us the relationship that we can have and ought to have with You, and continue to transform us by the renewing of our minds. For we ask this today in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, "Amen." You may be seated.

As I said, this is one of the most familiar and famous passages of Scripture. Probably many of you know it well. If you grew up around the same time that I did, I remember when I was a kid on Easter Sunday, every Easter Sunday afternoon on TV was "The Ten Commandments" with Charlton Heston. You guys remember the story. I remember this story in part because of that. "Moses, Moses, take the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground."

This passage is familiar. It's a great story that our culture basically knows, even if you don't really know the Bible. You might vaguely remember the story of the burning bush. However, the problem with that is that for many people, it's just that—a story. It is presented to us here in the Scriptures, not just as a story, but as history. This is not fiction, and sometimes we need to remind ourselves of that.

This was an awesome thing that happened, awesome enough to distract or pull Moses in the direction to go and investigate what was going on. This bush is burning, but it is not consumed. There are many different opinions on what exactly was happening there, but that's kind of beside the point. The main point is that God stepped into history for a moment to speak, to reveal Himself, to disclose what He is like and what He likes, to reveal His nature and His will. General revelation doesn't give us the information that this passage of Scripture provides. We have to remind ourselves that this actually took place.

The realness of this was driven home to me a few years ago when I had the privilege of traveling to Saudi Arabia and actually climbing the mountain that is believed to be Mount Sinai. If you go and read Wikipedia, the source of all true knowledge, you will find that the view of Wikipedia and many people is that Mount Sinai is in the Sinai Peninsula. However, the evidence of history suggests otherwise. Midian, the place where Moses was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, is in the west of Saudi Arabia, near the Red Sea.

I had the privilege of going there with my friends Pastor Lance Ralston, Chuck Musselwhite, and David Guzik. We climbed to the top of Mount Sinai in Arabia, where you can see the archaeological evidence that the people of Israel were there in the valley. It's remarkable. We were planning another trip there this next year, but there is a problem going on in the Middle East right now that makes it difficult to go there again.

It is an amazing experience to go there and to see it, to realize that this took place. This was not just a story that we get told in Sunday school. This passage is one of the earliest and most complete revelations, special revelations of God in the Bible. In it, God's nature and His will are revealed. They are concealed in general revelation.

Revelation can lead to all kinds of misunderstandings and misconceptions about who God is, especially when we look at the broken world we live in. However, God speaks and makes clear who He is and what He is like. We need this clarity because everyone we know has an opinion or idea about what God must be like. Sometimes, that opinion or idea comes from their own experiences, or it may stem from reading Richard Dawkins' book, or it could come from their aunt or grandma. Whatever the case, they have a conception of what God is like, and we must ask ourselves: does it align with what He has revealed about Himself?

In this passage, God discloses His nature. In the opening book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, God is revealed. The first thing that is revealed about Him is that He is the Creator. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Shortly after that, twelve chapters later, He is revealed as the covenant maker. He makes a covenant with a man named Abraham, then with Abraham's child, Isaac, and then with Isaac's child, Jacob, and so forth. Thus, we see in Genesis that God is both Creator and covenant maker.

However, when we move from Genesis to Exodus, about 400 years have passed. The covenant that God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, along with the promises associated with that covenant, seem to have gone unfulfilled. Four hundred years later, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not in the land that God promised to Abraham. They are not experiencing the blessings that God had promised. Instead, they find themselves as slaves in Egypt.

At that point in time, it would seem that either Abraham didn't really hear from God, or God had given up on His people. If you were among the children of Israel 3,400 years ago in Egypt, you might have thought, "Well, we got rug pulled." To put it in modern terms, things are not the way we thought they would be. If God is real and if His promises are true, why are we experiencing what we are experiencing? Why are we in this devastating situation as slaves under the taskmasters of Pharaoh? Not only are we slaves, but we are being commanded to kill all of our male children who are born to us and throw them into the Nile River.

If you were in their situation all those years ago, it would be easy to feel a little bit angry. "God, we believed all the stories about You."

We believed all these great things that we were told. We believed that You were all-powerful. We believed that You were all-knowing, and yet You seem to be totally uncaring. Maybe you've been in a situation like that before. I heard all these stories from my parents and my grandparents, but things have not turned out the way that I thought they would.

To throw a little bit more sand in the gears, think about Moses. Moses was born in Egypt to an enslaved family at the very time when the decree from Pharaoh was that every male child was to be thrown into the Nile and killed. He was rescued from that. Not only was he rescued, but by a very interesting turn of events, he ended up being raised in the household of Pharaoh, under all kinds of privilege and great abundance. You can be certain that there were people from his Hebrew family saying, "You have been born for a purpose, and God has a plan for your life." He heard all these wonderful things through the first 40 years of his life, and then everything went sideways.

Now, it went sideways in large part because of his own arrogance and foolishness, which I'm sure none of you can relate to, but it did for him. He spent the next 40 years of his life as a shepherd. The people in Egypt hated shepherds, so he was degraded to the worst possible position. The King James Version says he was in the backside of the desert. I don't even know what that is, but it's nowhere. Let me tell you, it feels like nowhere when you're there. We've been to Midian; it's an amazing place, but it's still nowhere. He spent the next 40 years of his life tending sheep for his father-in-law Jethro in the backside of the desert. You can be certain it had to be going through his mind, "I thought things were going to go a little bit differently than this." Here he was, tending sheep in the backside of the desert, and he really didn't think this was the way everything was supposed to go. Maybe you identify with that; you've been in that place before, like Moses was all those years ago.

But then, it's there in that place where God shows up and speaks to him in various ways and at various times, as the author of the book of Hebrews says. God calls to him and says, "Moses, Moses." God knew his name. He probably felt pretty far from God as he was tending sheep in the backside of the deserts of Midian. Yet God shows up and says, "Moses," and he replies, "Here I am." God tells him, "Do not draw near to this place. Take the sandals off your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground." Then God introduces Himself in verse six of Exodus, chapter three: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac."

And the God of Jacob said, "I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I've come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey."

Point number three, if you're taking notes, is that in special revelation, God reveals His nature and His will. He does so in a voice we can comprehend. That's what's happening here in this place. God speaks to Moses by name in a voice, in a language that he could understand, and He introduces Himself. This is important. It's easy to miss and misunderstand God in the mess of a broken world. When you look at all the chaos of this brokenness, we can misunderstand or comprehend God in the wrong way.

But here, God shows up and speaks to Moses. After the children of Israel have been 400 years as slaves in Egypt, and after Moses has been 40 years tending sheep on the backside of the desert, God reveals Himself. There are six very important verbs that God uses to describe Himself in this passage. He says, "I have surely seen your oppression. I have heard your cry. I know your sorrows. I have come down to deliver you from the Egyptians and to bring you up to a good land of blessing."

Sometimes, it's really good to be a fly on the wall for a moment like this, as God has this private conversation with Moses and reveals Himself to him. He explains who He is according to His own word. This is so good and so important because we have a lot of opinions about what God is or what God might be like in our culture. I asked one of the AI programs the other day, "What is God like?" and I received twelve different answers. Well, if you believe this, you're this way, and if you believe that, you're that way. There are all kinds of different ideas about what God is like.

But what is God like according to His own self-disclosure? What does He say? As He is revealed here, He is not disinterested. He is not indifferent. He is not uncaring or apathetic. One of the other things this passage reveals is that He doesn't always show up in the way we expect Him to show up. He says here, "I am who I am."

Point number four, if you are taking notes, is that God is who He is.

Not always is God who I expect Him to be. But who is He? In this passage, He reveals Himself as the God who sees, the God who hears, the God who knows, the God who comes down, and the God who delivers to bring us into blessing. I love these six verbs. That is who God reveals Himself to be at Mount Sinai: the God who sees, hears, knows, comes down to deliver, and brings us into blessing.

But that is not only God at Mount Sinai; that's God at Mount Calvary, isn't it? Who is God incarnate in the flesh? Jesus. And how has He revealed Himself to be? The one who sees, knows, hears, comes down to deliver us, and brings us into blessing. That's Christ. Who do you think it was that Moses met at the burning bush? It's the same God—the one who sees, hears, comes down, and delivers to bring us into blessing.

That's not only God at Mount Sinai; that's God at Mount Calvary. I suggest to you that this will be the same God who shows up on the Mount of Olives—the one who sees, hears, and comes down, knowing us to deliver us and to bring us into blessing. That is God as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. No matter what the culture says, no matter what Richard Dawkins writes in his book, "God is Not Great," this is God as He discloses Himself.

And that's what the Bible is: the revelation of God. It reveals to us what cannot be known just through observation or deduction. Because through observation and deduction, just by looking at the heavens declaring the glory of God, we come to all kinds of misconceptions about who God is.

So, how has He revealed Himself? He reveals Himself as the God who sees, hears, knows, comes down to deliver, and bless. That is God as you get to know Him from Genesis to Revelation, throughout the Scriptures, and not only through the Scriptures but by His Holy Spirit. This is who He is revealed to be.

I love what He says to the people in Exodus chapter 6, a couple of chapters after this. Therefore, say to the children of Israel, Exodus 6, verse 6: "I am the Lord." And then here are God's five "I wills": I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt. I will rescue you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. And I will take you...

As my people, I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. God's five "I wills" are: I will bring you out from your burdens, I will rescue you from your bondage, I will redeem you with my strength, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. That's how God reveals Himself.

Now, contrast that with Lucifer. If you were with us about eight weeks ago, I did a message on Lucifer, who has five "I wills" in the book of Isaiah. He says, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mount of the congregation, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, and I will be like the Most High. Those are the five "I wills" of Lucifer.

Contrast that with God: I will bring you out from your burdens, I will rescue you, I will redeem you, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. Further, consider how Jesus is revealed to us in the New Testament. Let me read from Philippians chapter two: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. But He made Himself, Jesus made Himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father."

What is revealed there? God incarnate is the one who sees, hears, knows, and comes down to deliver and to bless. That's God as He has revealed Himself to us. That's how He wants to make Himself known to us.

Next week, we're going to discover this a little bit more, because there's another conversation on the same mountaintop between Moses and God, where God reveals more of His character. But here, how does God reveal Himself to us in the pages of Scripture? He hears, He knows, He sees, He comes down to deliver and to bless.

I think that everybody desires to know God. Even the people who will tell you that they're not sure there is a God, who say, "I'm agnostic, I don't know," or those who will emphatically declare, "There is no God," I think deep down inside, when we're by ourselves...

Ourselves desire to know God. Why? Because I think God made us to know Him. You were created to live life in connection with God, to know Him. We are desiring to know Him. The great Augustine said that our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God. We're all looking to know God.

Here's the awesome thing: God desires to be known, so He has made Himself known by revelation. This is how He reveals Himself; this is how He wants you to know Him. The God who sees, knows, hears, and comes down to deliver and to bless. I think there are many of you here today who need to be reminded of who God is as He has revealed Himself.

Every single person you will interact with today and this week—in your neighborhood, at work, just around the county—deep down inside is desperately desiring to know God. There are a lot of misrepresentations of God in this world. But this is how God has revealed Himself to us in the pages of Scripture: the God who sees, hears, knows, and comes down to deliver and to bless. I keep saying it because I'm hoping that maybe it will stick in your head. This is how God has revealed Himself; this is how He wants you to know Him.

He wants you not just to know about Him—that's called theology. He wants you to actually know Him in Christ Jesus, in relationship. That's why He came down to us, to deliver us from the bondage and slavery of sin, that we might know Him in relationship.

Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? Lord, we've certainly been given all kinds of different images of You in culture. There are a lot of opinions and conceptions about You. But God, You have revealed Yourself to us so that we might know You, that we might be in relationship with You. Jesus, You came down so that we might not only have the special revelation of the apostles and prophets, but we might have the personal revelation, where You came and lived here to reveal what it looks like.

When you say, "I have loved you with an everlasting love," and you come and demonstrate it by dying for us when we're far from you, you do so that you might deliver us and that we might know your blessing.

Lord, I pray that we here this morning would not only know this about you—that you are the God who sees, hears, knows, and comes down to deliver and bless us—but that we would also make that known. Our culture desperately needs this knowledge of you.

So, would you stir our hearts with the greatness of who you are, so that we would be ready, willing, and able to share it with a culture that needs to know you? For we ask this today in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, Amen.