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

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law... and he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush... So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."... Then He said, "Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground."... "I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."... "I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry... 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."... Then Moses said to God, "...when they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?" And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM."... "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

How do you know what you know? Almost everything—including the knowledge of God—comes to us not by discovery, but by disclosure.

A New Summer Series: Fly on the Wall

This morning we begin a new series. Our pattern at Cross Connection is to go through the Scriptures line upon line, book by book, and so far this year we've been in the Gospel of Luke. But during the summer we take a pause. We'll return to Luke in September. In the meantime we're doing a series called Fly on the Wall—passages in both the Old and New Testaments where we have a conversation between God and one other person, or between two individuals. These intimate encounters let us listen in on the conversation.

Today is also Promotion Sunday, as all our kids move up to the next grade. We want to recognize our students who graduated in the last couple of weeks—Lily Springfield, Isaac Garcia, Ryan Paulson, Lucy, Kayla, and Ari. Be praying for these students as they step into a new stage of life, with all its anticipation and anxiety.

How Do You Know What You Know?

I want to start with a question that underpins one of the pivotal turns in our cultural history: how do you know what you know? This is the underpinning question of what we now call the Enlightenment.

At its beginning stood René Descartes, famous for the cogito—"I think, therefore I am." After him came John Locke, who taught that we enter the world as a tabula rasa, a blank slate, filling that slate through sensation and reflection. Then came David Hume, the great skeptic, who proposed that we should be skeptical of all testimony and authority and trust only what we can personally ascertain. Immanuel Kant developed this further, urging us to "dare to know" through self-directed rationality. These thinkers wrestled with the philosophical question of epistemology, and out of them came some of the most amazing advancements in human history.

Two hundred years later we're still wrestling with that question, and it's being challenged again by artificial intelligence. With generative AI, we're forced to ask whether what we see is actually real. People constantly send me videos asking, "Have you seen this?"—and I have to tell them it's not real. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 percent of the content you see on social media today is AI-generated.

We Know Almost Nothing Apart from Revelation

This is hard for Western culture in 2026, but I'm convinced we know almost nothing apart from revelation. Everything we know ultimately has its basis in revelation. The high points of the Enlightenment celebrate deduction and discovery, and that's largely true—but most of what we know comes by disclosure.

Consider it. You did not discover or deduce your birth date; it was disclosed to you. Your own name was told to you. That George Washington was the first president, that this is the 250th anniversary of our nation, that your heart pumps blood through your body—you did not personally prove any of these. They were told to you, and you believe them based on authority, because someone trustworthy told you.

And there are people constantly telling us things we don't believe because we don't regard them as trustworthy. This has been especially true the last five or six years, as we've grown skeptical of the expert class. Now it's even harder, because so much information is generated on the fly rather than originating from an authoritative source.

In 2026, the word revelation has fallen on hard times. It hints at something beyond this world, and we live in a highly naturalistic, physicalist culture. Most people we interact with don't believe anything exists beyond what we can grab with our senses—a very Enlightenment way of thinking. So when you mention revelation, people say, "Oh, you're one of those people." Yet even our deductive discoveries often come as "aha moments" that almost seem magical. Have you ever worked on a problem for weeks, then while walking through your house—boom—the answer just shows up from somewhere? In some respects, that comes by disclosure.

The Knowledge of the Divine Is Disclosed in Creation

One of the greatest wonders known only by revelation is the knowledge of the divine. The things of God come to us by revelation. Paul speaks of this in Romans 1:20:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Point one: the knowledge of the divine is disclosed to us in creation. King David said the same 3,000 years ago in Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork... There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.

Theologians call this general revelation. It comes through three modes. The first is consciousness—your self-awareness, the feeling of what it's like to be you, along with your awareness of everything around you. The second is creation itself, your awareness of the made world. The third is conscience—your awareness of right and wrong, goodness, beauty, and truth. This is what C.S. Lewis writes about in Mere Christianity.

One great argument for God's existence is the cosmological argument: everything that begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore the universe has a cause—and that cause is God. If you stumbled upon a pair of glasses in the wilderness, you wouldn't assume they came about by random chance over billions of years. You'd know something made them. The very existence of complex things—these glasses, your body, your eyes—tells us a maker exists, that the maker is intelligent, and that the maker has power.

Point two: through general revelation, God discloses His existence, His intelligence, and His power. God is, God is intelligent, and God is powerful.

The Limits of General Revelation

But general revelation has limits. We can know that God is, that He is intelligent and powerful, but there is much we cannot know by merely looking at ourselves or this world. The two major things general revelation does not reveal are God's nature—what God is like—and God's will—what God likes.

Because we live in a broken world, general revelation alone leads to all kinds of misconceptions. One person looks at the beauty of creation and concludes God must be kind and generous. Another person looks at the same world and sees fires, floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes, and concludes God must be capricious, distant, or uninterested. One person feels the overwhelming love and willingness to sacrifice they have for their own children and concludes God must love and forgive everything. Another person, remembering the neglect or abuse they experienced, concludes that if there is a God, He must be detached, callous, and indifferent. Looking at the data of a broken world, we arrive at contradictory conclusions.

So if we are going to know what God is like and what He likes, God must reveal Himself through special revelation—where He speaks in a language we can comprehend. And He does so, supremely, in Exodus 3.

God Speaks at the Burning Bush

This is one of the most familiar and famous passages of Scripture. If you grew up when I did, you remember The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston every Easter afternoon. But the problem is that for many people it's just a story. The Bible presents it not as fiction but as history. God stepped into history for a moment to speak, to reveal His nature and His will.

Its realness was driven home to me a few years ago when I traveled to Saudi Arabia and climbed the mountain believed to be the true Mount Sinai. Wikipedia and many people place Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula, but the evidence of history says no—Midian, where Moses shepherded Jethro's flocks, is in western Saudi Arabia along the Red Sea. I went with my friends Pastor Lance Ralston, Chuck Musselwhite, and David Guzik. You can see the archaeological evidence that Israel was there in the valley. It's remarkable, and it reminds you: this actually took place. This was not just a Sunday school story.

God Reveals His Nature and Will

In Genesis, God is first revealed as creator—"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"—and then, twelve chapters later, as covenant maker, making a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But by Exodus, 400 years have passed, and the covenant promises seem to have failed. Abraham's descendants aren't in the promised land enjoying blessing; they're slaves in Egypt. If you were among them, you would have thought you'd been "rug pulled"—things are not the way we thought they would be. We believed You were all-powerful and all-knowing, and yet You seem totally uncaring.

Think about Moses. Born to an enslaved family at the very time Pharaoh decreed every male child be thrown into the Nile, he was rescued and raised in privilege in Pharaoh's household. He surely heard, "You were born for a purpose; God has a plan for your life." Then everything went sideways—largely through his own arrogance—and he spent the next 40 years as a shepherd in the backside of the desert, a despised occupation in Egypt. He must have thought, I really don't think this is the way it was supposed to go. Maybe you identify with that.

But it's there, in that place, that God shows up: "Moses, Moses." God knew his name. Then He introduces Himself:

I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry... for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them... and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Point three: in special revelation, God reveals His nature and His will—and He does so in a voice we can comprehend. Notice six important verbs God uses to describe Himself: I have seen your oppression, I have heard your cry, I know your sorrows, I have come down to deliver you, and to bring you up into blessing.

God Is Who He Is

It's good to be a fly on the wall for a moment like this, as God privately explains who He is according to His own word. We have countless opinions about God—I asked an AI what God is like and got twelve different answers. But what is God like according to His own self-disclosure? He is not disinterested, indifferent, uncaring, or apathetic. Yet He also doesn't always show up the way we expect: "I AM WHO I AM."

Point four: God is who He is, not always who I expect Him to be. And who is He? The God who sees, hears, knows, comes down to deliver, and brings us into blessing. I love these six verbs.

But that is not only God at Mount Sinai—that is God at Mount Calvary. Who is God incarnate in the flesh? Jesus. And how has He revealed Himself? As the one who sees, knows, hears, and comes down to deliver us and bring us into blessing. Who do you think Moses met at the burning bush? The same God. And He will be the same God who shows up on the Mount of Olives. No matter what the culture says, no matter what Richard Dawkins writes in God Is Not Great, this is God as He discloses Himself.

God's Five "I Wills"

In Exodus 6, God says:

I am the LORD; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm... I will take you as My people, and I will be your God.

Contrast God's five "I wills" with Lucifer's five "I wills" in Isaiah 14: "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, I will be like the Most High." Lucifer's are all self-exalting. God's are all self-giving: I will bring you out, I will rescue you, I will redeem you, I will take you as My people, I will be your God.

Contrast it further with how Jesus is revealed in Philippians 2:

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 made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant... And 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 the name which is above every name.

God incarnate is the one who sees, hears, knows, and comes down to deliver and to bless.

A God Who Wants to Be Known

I believe everyone desires to know God—even those who say they're agnostic, and even those who emphatically deny Him. Deep down, when we're alone, we long to know Him, because God made us to know Him. As Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.

Here's the awesome thing: God desires to be known, so He has made Himself known by revelation—the God who sees, hears, knows, and comes down to deliver and to bless. Many of you need to be reminded of who God is as He has revealed Himself. And every person you will interact with this week, in your neighborhood and at work, deep down desperately desires to know Him. There are many misrepresentations of God in this world, but this is how He has revealed Himself.

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

Closing Prayer

Lord, we've certainly been given all kinds of different images of You in culture—a lot of opinions and conceptions. But God, You have revealed Yourself to us so that we might know You and be in relationship with You. Jesus, You came down so that we might have not only the special revelation of the apostles and prophets, but the personal revelation, where You lived here and demonstrated Your everlasting love by dying for us while we were far from You, that You might deliver us and that we might know Your blessing.

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