SPEAKER_00: My reading is on page fifty-nine of the Church Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The reading is Exodus chapter three, verses one to fifteen.
SPEAKER_00: Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
SPEAKER_00: There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.
SPEAKER_00: Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up.
SPEAKER_00: So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight.
SPEAKER_00: Why the bush does not burn up?
SPEAKER_00: When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush.
SPEAKER_00: Moses, Moses.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses said, Here I am.
SPEAKER_00: Do not come any closer, God said.
SPEAKER_00: Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Abraham God of Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: At this Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.
SPEAKER_00: So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, Amorites, Perizites, Havites, and Jeshusites.
SPEAKER_00: And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
SPEAKER_00: So now, go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: But Moses said to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?
SPEAKER_00: And God said, I will be with you, and this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you.
SPEAKER_00: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.
SPEAKER_00: Moses said to God, Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name?
SPEAKER_00: Then what shall I tell them?
SPEAKER_00: God said to Moses, I am I am who I am.
SPEAKER_00: That is what you are to say to the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: I am has sent me to you.
SPEAKER_00: God also said to Moses, Say to the Israelites, 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.
SPEAKER_00: This is my name forever.
SPEAKER_00: The name you shall call me from generation to generation.
SPEAKER_01: And it's called the supremacy of the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, in th all things have been created through him and for him.
SPEAKER_01: He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
SPEAKER_01: And he is the head of the body, the church.
SPEAKER_01: He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy.
SPEAKER_01: For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Peter.
SPEAKER_02: Good morning once again, and uh so just like you've heard from the introduction, this series in this summer would be looking at really who is God?
SPEAKER_02: And it's it's it's uh it's a question.
SPEAKER_02: I think I encountered this question many years ago with my five-year-old daughter when she came back from Sunday school.
SPEAKER_02: Uh confident dad who's a Christian, she said to me, uh, hi dad, today they told us about uh God creating the whole earth.
SPEAKER_02: I said, Oh, awesome, that's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02: Then she looked at me and she said, But who created God?
SPEAKER_02: So I said, Um, no, God wasn't created, he just is.
SPEAKER_02: She says, How?
SPEAKER_02: I thought I knew how to answer a five-year-old, but I struggled for about 15 minutes.
SPEAKER_02: I couldn't really give her a sensible answer.
SPEAKER_02: Because as much as there's this general assumption among us all Christians that we really know who God is, it is when you pay attention to the details, then you find out that as simple as the question is, it is massively complicated.
SPEAKER_02: Complicated in the sense that God is not this being that you could just simply say, Oh, look at God, he's like this or he's like that.
SPEAKER_02: As a matter of fact, when Moses tried, or when he wanted to see who God is, God said, No, you can't see my face.
SPEAKER_02: If you do, you will die.
SPEAKER_02: It is it is it is this God that words cannot even begin to describe.
SPEAKER_02: Because God is as much as person, uh as much as possible, uh different things to different people at different times in terms of our encounter, our experience, and our knowledge of who this God is.
SPEAKER_02: So, this morning, what I will do, thankfully, there will be so much to talk about when it comes to God and who he is in terms of uh what we'll be looking at in the summer series, but I will focus much more on the existence, that's the self-existence and the independence of God.
SPEAKER_02: And when I started looking at this, I found that that even talking about the existence of God alone uh it's it's so much.
SPEAKER_02: But I'll focus on just three things that is his self-existence, his independence, and I'll conclude by how we know him, essentially uh in this series.
SPEAKER_02: Because, like I said, looking at God and who he is is it's it's amazing because Exodus gives us just what we read this morning, and please have these two uh passages that we read in mind, both Exodus and the ones we read in uh Colossians.
SPEAKER_02: Because in Exodus there is just this encounter between Moses and God, we see the totality, at least this little snippet, of God, God's presence with his people.
SPEAKER_02: Because what he told Moses was, I have heard you know the cries of my people.
SPEAKER_02: It is time to kick start now this project of establishing the nation that is going to be the nation of nations going forward, fulfilling a promise.
SPEAKER_02: But the question came with Moses, it says, and Moses asked God, and he says, Okay, you've introduced yourself to me.
SPEAKER_02: We have this discussion, but when I go, who would I say send me?
SPEAKER_02: Who would I say send me?
SPEAKER_02: And this is where we now see this word, I am, who I am.
SPEAKER_02: Now, the word Yahweh, of course, comes from it, and it just simply means one who is.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, God is just simply the embodiment of existence itself.
SPEAKER_02: So the other word you could substitute with God is just simply existence, nothing more, nothing more.
SPEAKER_02: But it's more complicated than that.
SPEAKER_02: Because life itself, so there are two, let me say, parallels in looking at God or who God is.
SPEAKER_02: That is the physical in which we try to describe God.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, we can describe God as the creator of the universe, we can describe God as love, he is this and he is that.
SPEAKER_02: But then when it comes to the essence of God Himself, now we are looking at life from which everything came out of, from which everything emanated.
SPEAKER_02: So we would say, therefore, that God is self-existent, he's absolute, he's independent of any other reality.
SPEAKER_02: There is no other reality in the universe or anywhere else that you could describe because whatever you look at, whatever you describe, that is just simply God.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing else.
SPEAKER_02: It's just it's impossible to just to it's impossible to describe or to compare because there's nothing to compare with.
SPEAKER_02: So this is where again some of the challenge, some some of the challenges would come when you're talking about God and his self-existence.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, we're saying he doesn't need anything to exist at all.
SPEAKER_02: That's there's just nothing, there's no comparison to saying who he is or what he is, or how you could say, oh, um the element of his essence is dependent on anything else.
SPEAKER_02: It's it's just not.
SPEAKER_02: The second thing is his self-defining.
SPEAKER_02: Because even in this, everything else is defined in the essence of who God is.
SPEAKER_02: That is, so whichever thing you look at, either in terms of essence, elements, or anything, just simply comes from God Himself.
SPEAKER_02: The entity, the I don't know, it's just so no wonder the psalmist or David will just jump into singing.
SPEAKER_02: Because when it comes to describing God, words do not even begin to describe it.
SPEAKER_02: Language, words do not even begin to describe it.
SPEAKER_02: That's why, again, when you go into Revelations and you see, you see how John begins to want to describe God in Revelation chapters 1, 2, and 3, we find that he only sees this radiance, this beauty, this glory of who he describes as God.
SPEAKER_02: But there isn't any other thing to describe God with.
SPEAKER_02: So, in terms of God's self-existence, therefore, what we are saying here is that when it comes to looking out our God who is the creator of the universe, who is outside time and outside his creation, then we begin to struggle to how to even begin to describe what we do not know, what we do not see, and what someday, by his divine mercy and grace, we will now stand before him and all these answers will be before us.
SPEAKER_02: Because the questions are enormous, as much as they may be simplistic, and it's good because as Christians, we come into knowing God through different ways and different experiences, but in coming to understanding this God that we serve now takes us into another level, which is what I'll be looking at in a moment.
SPEAKER_02: But then we talk about his independence.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, we're looking at God's assaying.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, we are saying again, like Isaiah said here, he said, Remember the former things, those of long ago, I am God, there is no other.
SPEAKER_02: I am God, there is none like me.
SPEAKER_02: I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is to come.
SPEAKER_02: I say, my purpose will stand, I will do all that I please.
SPEAKER_02: Because again, the question of creation is embodied in the question why?
SPEAKER_02: Why did God create the universe?
SPEAKER_02: Why did He create us?
SPEAKER_02: There is a purpose, and we begin to see this purpose in the scriptures, either from actually right from Genesis all the way down to Revelation, and as we look for the second coming of Christ, we know that there is a plan.
SPEAKER_02: We know that there is a purpose, and we know that God will fulfill that purpose.
SPEAKER_02: Now, the beautiful part of this thing we're talking about is that we are part of God's purpose.
SPEAKER_02: That's the beauty of it.
SPEAKER_02: We are embodied in that purpose for which God created the universe, chose to create the earth, and then he created us in his own image.
SPEAKER_02: Then we know that when we look at when we look at the big picture, we are seeing ourselves within the context and the purpose of which God is fulfilling that purpose.
SPEAKER_02: And we are not at all, no matter what science says or no matter what atheists talk about, we know that we are embodied in that purpose.
SPEAKER_02: And all we need to do is to stand back a bit, look at the bigger picture, and continue to celebrate God's goodness.
SPEAKER_02: That right from the beginning, the from the beginning of creation, that is, like we've been told in Genesis 1:1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_02: And the earth then was formless.
SPEAKER_02: And it says the spirit was hovering over the waters.
SPEAKER_02: And then he said, Let there be.
SPEAKER_02: And then the words, now in the spirit of God started the art of creation, or let me say, started creation as it is in the earth that we know, but there is so much we do not know.
SPEAKER_02: So, so much.
SPEAKER_02: I was looking at the pictures from NASA website, uh, the NASA website, and the the pictures that have come from the universe, amazing pictures, extraordinary pictures.
SPEAKER_02: You look at the galaxies, and my heart leaps for joy, and I think, wow, if these pictures alone would speak about God's glory and his goodness and his plans, just take a look at any of the pictures of either the Hubble's telescope or any other telescope that is there bringing those images from space millions and millions of miles away.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, whichever way science puts it, whether it is trillions of years back or trillions of years in the future, is completely irrelevant.
SPEAKER_02: Because God exists outside that time.
SPEAKER_02: And because he exists outside that time, we can only go into our scientific equipment and try to do a measurement only for our own good and for our own purpose, because God is eternal.
SPEAKER_02: So it's just that we want to understand, and whatever we debate, whether the universe or the earth is, I don't know, how many billions of years old, is completely irrelevant.
SPEAKER_02: Because in the existence of God, there is a purpose that stands clear from what God has said for us and what he has said for his creation.
SPEAKER_02: But then we also look at oops.
SPEAKER_02: Did I do that?
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Then we look at uh we look at John now, John 5.12 tells us about God's independence, of course.
SPEAKER_02: Because the absolute standard of who God is is his character and his glory.
SPEAKER_02: But even in the in God's in this trying to describe God in his character, we only speak about God being love, God being truth, God being just, and there are so many things we discuss, or rather we try to look at when we're looking at God, in his essence, but also in his characteristics or in his character that we can now relate to.
SPEAKER_02: Because these words are not like if you are describing me, for instance, you're saying, oh, uh, how is John or how is Steve or how is Hassan?
SPEAKER_02: And they say, Is he good?
SPEAKER_02: Is he this, is he that?
SPEAKER_02: That is an attribute to a human per to a human being.
SPEAKER_02: But with God, that word itself is who God is.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, when we say God is love, he's the embodiment of anything and everything that love is.
SPEAKER_02: And of course, his truth, his beauty, his everything that you can we can we can keep throwing all these words.
SPEAKER_02: I actually have seen a poster where they wrote the 100 names of God.
SPEAKER_02: And in these 100 names, actually much more, we could go through one after the other, describing God and his character and who he is in terms of his, let me say, his relationship to us as men.
SPEAKER_02: But it comes through Jesus Christ and in through Jesus Christ alone.
SPEAKER_02: Because then we see again, we step back a bit and we have a look at Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: We see the cross and then we see the complete independence of God and Jesus Christ because his mercy and his grace is shown through the cross.
SPEAKER_02: And this mercy and grace comes again through Jesus saying in John 10, 8, I lay my life because I choose to.
SPEAKER_02: I give my life because I have the power to put it down and have the power to take it up again.
SPEAKER_02: Now, God chose to intervene in his creation through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: So we see again the embodiment of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit choosing to express the love of Christ in the cross and what we have seen.
SPEAKER_02: Now, what we are looking at is God's self-existence, his independence that is demonstrated on the cross because of God choosing to come into his creation and continuously fulfilling his purpose.
SPEAKER_02: We go back again to the question.
SPEAKER_02: Who is God?
SPEAKER_02: Like I said.
SPEAKER_02: Because at the end of the day, the question is how do we begin to even describe it?
SPEAKER_02: How do we even begin to to how do we even begin to relate to what is omnipotent, what is omniscient, and what is what is just the essence of our existence.
SPEAKER_02: And of course, we could say he's a personal God.
SPEAKER_02: He's ever-present whenever we seek him, and from Genesis to Revelation, we know that we've seen God in every way.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, the signposts there right from the beginning where God will come and have a meeting in the cool of the evening with Adam and Eve, or it is what we just read with uh uh intervention through Moses when he called Moses to the burning bush and he had discussions with him, or he went with them in that pillar of cloud and fire throughout their journey in those 40 years in the wilderness, establishing them in the promised land with the prophets speaking, attending, and the priests, you know, the tabernacle, everything that discusses, I mean, that shows us the essence of God is been there in history.
SPEAKER_02: You could go from one book of the Bible to the other, and there is no book in the Bible that has not shown us God's presence indeed with man that culminates actually even with Jesus Christ on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: But of course, the presence of the Holy Spirit here with us.
SPEAKER_02: So God is ever there, he's personal to us in our different encounters.
SPEAKER_02: But of course, like we said, he's the creator, we know he's the judge, and we say he's the just judge.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, that whatever we go through, uh let me refer back to the video that we watched earlier on.
SPEAKER_02: You know, the essence of that singing and dancing with what this church was singing, and they say I'll praise and I'll sing, I'll turn around because next year I may not be alive.
SPEAKER_02: But while I have the capacity, while I have the Ability, I will praise my God.
SPEAKER_02: While I have life, like the Bible says, I will praise him.
SPEAKER_02: Irrespective of circumstances and challenges and issues, I will praise him.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: It only comes with the knowledge of knowing this God.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you do not know him, nobody, like I don't know if there's anybody that would give that would give their lives to a thing or a person or something they don't know.
SPEAKER_02: It is it is it is almost impossible for that to happen.
SPEAKER_02: But we come to the issue of exactly how do we know him.
SPEAKER_02: I'll conclude with asking the question, how do we know this God?
SPEAKER_02: Because Hebrews 11 says, and without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, he Bible says, when you seek him, you will find him.
SPEAKER_02: If you knock, the door will be open.
SPEAKER_02: Whatever we do, the Lord is there.
SPEAKER_02: He will not impose himself on us, he will not push himself on us, we will not, God will not force us to love him.
SPEAKER_02: As a matter of fact, we can do whatever we want to do.
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, he is a just God.
SPEAKER_02: In the context of all his purposes, at the end of time, the time on earth, we will all, like the Bible says, every knee will bow before the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: So that is a reality.
SPEAKER_02: Whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, it's irrelevant.
SPEAKER_02: The issue is his creation will come to him at the end of time.
SPEAKER_02: Now the issue here is how do we know him?
SPEAKER_02: And we know him again, not well, let me say both in the scriptures that we read, in all the uh books we read, people interaction and things we see around us, the miracles that we see in nature.
SPEAKER_02: But ultimately, knowing God comes from this personal encounter and interaction with Him.
SPEAKER_02: Because every other thing, every other thing we do or say will just be what people tell us.
SPEAKER_02: I can tell you everything about God, but unless there is that personal encounter, that personal connection, you will still struggle.
SPEAKER_02: It will be head knowledge, but we need to combine it with heart experience of God.
SPEAKER_02: And so as I conclude, let me say it is important that you know God personally, like many of us here do.
SPEAKER_02: If you do not know God personally, then there's an opportunity, and he's there waiting.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord is there, he's ever present, like Hebrews tells us.
SPEAKER_02: It's just simple faith, reaching out to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and saying, Lord, I want to know you.
SPEAKER_02: Now it's also, you may be a new Christian, but you may have been a Christian for so many years.
SPEAKER_02: It is always important to know that there are ample opportunities of getting to know the Lord more and more and more all the time.
SPEAKER_02: Because it's this knowledge of God that unites us, that gives us that assurance, that certainty.
SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of Christians every day are asking the questions about life, about ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: How do I know this?
SPEAKER_02: How do I know God is there?
SPEAKER_02: How do I know this is God's plan for my life?
SPEAKER_02: How do I know his purpose?
SPEAKER_02: In the context of the challenges I'm facing, how do I know he is there?
SPEAKER_02: How do I know that God will do this tomorrow, he will do that tomorrow?
SPEAKER_02: And really, that's why we pray.
SPEAKER_02: Because we bring God into our circumstances and everything that we do.
SPEAKER_02: So my challenge will be please do find your own way.
SPEAKER_02: It is a lifelong journey and a lifelong search to know God, to experience him, to understand who he is.
SPEAKER_02: Because the beauty and the glory of God cannot be described if you do not know him.
SPEAKER_02: It's just like, let me use myself as an example, but I'm sure it's true for all of us.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what happens the first time you fell in love.
SPEAKER_02: If you can recollect as way back as when you fell in love.
SPEAKER_02: You know, when when people fall, especially, especially youngsters, when they fall in love, they become something else.
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's difficult to begin to explain to your friend how much you're in.
SPEAKER_02: Actually, the moment they see you, they know something has happened to you.
SPEAKER_02: They begin to wonder which young girl is taking over you or which young man is taking over you.
SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, you cannot express to somebody else how you feel unless the person has been in love himself at some point or the other, one time or the other.
SPEAKER_02: That's how it is with experiencing God.
SPEAKER_02: That unless you experience God, it's difficult for anybody to begin to explain to you how it feels.
SPEAKER_02: And I pray that this is something that you will find in your heart to just reach out to the Lord and say, Lord, I want to know you.
SPEAKER_02: And there are opportunities for that.
SPEAKER_02: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_02: Our Father Lord, we thank you for your grace and your mercy.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you for your blessings.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you, Lord, because you are there all the time.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you, Lord, because, like you said in your word, when we seek you, we will find you.
SPEAKER_02: Dear Lord, we ask that for every one of us in church today, may we get to know you.
SPEAKER_02: May we get to commune with you even as we go into Holy Communion this morning.
SPEAKER_02: May you be really in our lives, in every aspect of our lives.
SPEAKER_02: May you be ever present, Lord, in all that we do.
SPEAKER_02: And may our experiences, Lord, be completely covered and surrendered to you so that you become the Lord, not just of the universe, but the Lord of our lives.
SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.