Bible Teaching

Calvary Temple Teaching Library

I AM Pt.7

Amen! Let's turn to Exodus 34. We've been looking at the attributes of God from a practical perspective, not just to study and look at the theological perspective, but getting to know who Father is, that's what the attributes are all about. They're just the revealing of our Father to a finite mind. God is not limited to what we perceive His attributes to be, but transcends all that we can comprehend about the revelation of Himself. Now think about that: all that you can comprehend God to be, He's far beyond that because your understanding is finite and God is infinite. We're limited, and so as God chooses to reveal Himself, it's limited by our finite understanding.

We're going to look a little bit this morning, in fact, and see that the biggest problem man has in his opposition to God is limiting God to man's own perspective. In other words, man in his unregenerate condition judges God and tries to place himself, his understanding, on the level of God's self-existence. It's important that we understand who God is. So, in our study we looked at some of the different aspects; we started off by looking at the greatness of God, we looked at the omnipotence of God, that He is all-powerful. As we studied the omnipotence of God, and we talked about Him being all-powerful, we found that He wasn't the most powerful of all other creatures. When we talk about God's omnipotence, He is not the most powerful of all other creatures, God is all-powerful! All other creatures--Satan, and every other being--whether it is Cherubim, Seraphim, angels, demons, mankind, have their power as gift and grace and its origin is God. There is no power that doesn't come from God. So we saw that in the warfare of light and darkness, it is not a dualism to where God is wrestling with the devil somehow and it's going to be the best two out of three falls. We saw that when we talk about the powers of darkness--and remember we're talking about the practical reasons why we're studying the attributes of God, because the Bible says, all power and all authority have been given unto us in the name of Jesus. As we go out and resist principalities and powers, when we're out in the highways and the byways preaching the gospel and compelling people to come, the devil is no match for us. Can you say "amen" to that? So when we begin to cast out demons in the name of Jesus, when we lay hands upon the sick, we should expect the power of God to manifest itself. So understand how much power that is;, it's unlimited, it's the origin of all power.

We said that we couldn't understand God's power without understanding other attributes of God that talk about His infinite being, His eternal state. Therefore, God's power is infinite, it is eternal, it has always been, and there is no limitation to it. We serve a big God, don't we? Now, what happens when we, with our little BB brains, try to comprehend infinity with a finite mind? We come to a limitation, don't we? So whatever infinity is, you know, the fish with the tail completed, the sign of infinity. We all know what the sign of infinity is, right? It's like a sideways eight, no beginning, no ending. When we think about the infinite God, the eternal God, whatever infinity is, and we cannot really comprehend it, we just can imagine, we see that man is limited by where we're introduced through time and space. The furthest we can go back--because we're created beings, we're creatures--so the furthest we can go back is to the beginning. Now, with God there is no beginning, He is the Causeless Cause; everything else has cause, God is the origin of it. The Bible says it this way, all things were made by Him, and for Him, and without Him nothing that is existed. So all things were made by Him and for Him. Time and space, this continuum that we exist in, is very interesting. God is outside of time and space. Think about that for just a moment. Go back as far as you can imagine, even with the scientists today--and I don't know how old the universe really is. I don't have any strong dogmatic stand on the age of creation. You know, there are the literalists that say, "Nothing is really older than 6,000 years, it just has an ancient appearance, God made it with old matter." So in that 6,000-year period that they do through the chronological study of the Bible, then you've got to cram dinosaurs and everything in it. I don't know the age of all things, but let's say that there was creation in an original state before the fall of Lucifer, which Isaiah seems to imply when it says "the earth was created perfect." Then in Genesis, we find it without form or void and darkness being upon the face of the deep. So if it was created perfect, then you have the fall of Satan, and God casting him to the earth and he has a temper tantrum, and now the earth comes to a place where it is without form or void. Then God re-creates the earth into the state that we know it today, and at that beginning, we have a 6,000-year countdown. I don't know, that's one of the possibilities; I'm not going to be dogmatic. But let's say there was a perfect creation prior to the fall, and in that period, the eons that went by and whatever existed, existed, and we begin to hear numbers like one hundred trillion years old. You know, let's go out past where all of the scientists are. Whatever date you put on matter, not only did God precede that, but God is outside of that because that still is in the time-space continuum. So here is eternity, if you please, for man's ability to reconcile it, and God is outside of it. He has no limitations, you cannot think about God in time or space. He always has been, and you go tilt. How can--see, all we know is creation, because we're creatures. "There had to be an origin!" No, there did not have to be an origin. You only think that way because you are a creature and we can only identify with things that have a beginning, and God has no beginning. He has always been, and He is perfect in His infinity, not only complete, but always right, and just, and holy, and pure.

We looked at the greatness of God and we looked at the goodness of God. In the goodness of God we saw His justice, and we saw His mercy, and we saw that everything that you and I are has originated from the heart of God. We deserve nothing but a devil's hell, but God loved us through the person of Jesus Christ and He sought us, we didn't seek Him. He redeemed us with His own blood. He's made provision for us to where He constantly gifts us with faith so that we have the ability to believe in Him, because without that, sin darkens our minds and we become gods unto ourselves. So God is constantly revealing Himself to us in His goodness and in His mercy, and He's seeking mankind, and made a provision of reconciliation through the blood of Jesus. So we can stand this morning and say, "God is good," amen? He intends all things for our good pleasure. He created them for our good pleasure; it's His good pleasure to give us His Kingdom. So when we begin to look at God, we see that He's a loving heavenly Father. We see Him always as the Father of the prodigal, beckoning us to return to Him, always ready to give of Himself, because God is love, and love is unconditional. But we saw that since God is a unitary being that all of these attributes of God are perfect, they are eternal, they are infinite, and as they operate, they are never--because of God being a unitary being--they are never in conflict with one another. In other words, God is never having to make decisions: "Do I be merciful, or do I show justice?" God will always do what's right, and His mercy is always just, and His justice is always merciful. Now in our limited being, we can't see that so we have to try and make distinctions and say, "Well, boy, God showed mercy there." No, God showed justice in a merciful way, because His mercy will never conflict with His justice; God will always do what's right. Since He is infinite and eternal, justice, however, may not always be met in a time and space compartmentalization that you and I are aware of. So we may think that people got away with things, but they don't because there is a day of reckoning when all men will stand before God and the secrets of all men's hearts will be made known. God is just, God is merciful, and God is love.

So when we look at how big He is, and how involved He is in our lives, and how much He loves us, we need to go back and see that the expression of His love is something that we sometimes take for granted. We think that God, then, is in need of us, that somehow God was lonely and He made us His creatures to have fellowship with. Remember God is a tri-unity, He's a trinity, and the one thing that helps us understand God is what we want to talk about this morning: God's self-sufficiency. God is totally self-sufficient and self-existent. He was before all things; He's the uncaused Cause of all things, the great I Am as He reveals Himself. The term Jehovah that's used of Him so many times--and we're going to look a little bit at the redemptive names of God--the name Jehovah, I Am, as He reveals Himself in Exodus, really talks about His self-existence and self-sufficiency. When we look at the terms of God and we talk about "El Shaddai," another of the names of God, the "Supreme One," it talks about His majesty, His power. "Jehovah" talks about, many times, His involvement with man, the expression of His character as it relates to His creation, and because of that we talk about the seven redemptive names of Jehovah, which we're going to make reference to this morning. How God interacts with us, how He reveals Himself to us, what He's done to make provision for us; but before we look at that, and you notice how many times I use the term "us," the good news for you and I this morning is this: God does not need us. That's good news, God doesn't need us. Now, how many of us realize so many times when we get into our biggest problems are when we become God's little helpers? We want to help somebody else out, so what we do is begin to inflict upon them our own conscience, our own understanding of the Scriptures. In disputable matters, our perception is always truth, and we forget that we are not the Holy Ghost. So when we talk about God's self-sufficiency, we need to understand, then, that all that needs to be done in any person's life to see them reconciled to God, to be in right standing with Him, to have all of their needs met according to His riches and glory, God is the author and the originator of that for our good. You don't have to try to get God to do anything that's right; nor do you need to assist Him in affecting it in your life or anybody else's.

So how does that affect us practically? Well, maybe you don't need to run yourself into the ground trying to evangelize everybody in the world. You know what? God can reach them without you. The fact of the matter is we have the privilege of being used in the ministry of the Kingdom of God. But what happens in the natural mind and in this ego factor of man, I want to show you something that happens--and you tell me if this hasn't happened in your life or in some other area. Maybe not as it pertains to evangelism, but let me show this. What happens is we begin to get into this works syndrome. Then we begin to get into a self-righteous syndrome, and then we begin to question God, why He's not doing more. Can anybody identify with what I'm talking about? "Why isn't God doing more, why are we not seeing a revival? I'm preaching the Word, bless God, I'm praying, and I'm fasting. God, why aren't you holding up Your end of this thing?" Now, none of us would dare say that, but we live that way, we think that way, we act that way. Now how do I know that? Because we think if we pray a little more, then we can finally somehow induce God into doing what we think He should be doing. At that moment, beloved--I'm talking about reaching souls--at that moment, you're creating the greatest sin that can be committed, because what you are doing, at that time, is questioning the sufficiency of God. What you have done is you've elevated man's perception, intellect, and ability, whatever it is, to God's level. You now are trying to hold God accountable to your perception of truth, justice, mercy, and love, whatever it might be. When you come to know God as the self-sufficient One, He did well before you came around. His provision to redeem man was accomplished from before the foundations of the world; there was a way of escape. He says in Romans that the knowledge of God has been placed within every man, and therefore man is without excuse. How many of us, in one way or another, found ourselves judging God like Job, and having to confront Him as He reveals a little bit of His majesty to us? We shared the council with you that like Job, we need to just put our hands over our mouths and say, "This thing is too great for me, I don't have anything to say, I am the creature."

It's very important that we understand, then, not just the majesty, the vastness, the greatness of our God, and that we not only understand the goodness of our God, His compassion and His desire to move in our midst, but we have to see that God has no need for this. God doesn't need us. He never needed us for fellowship, He doesn't need justice to be accomplished in redemption so that the devil can be whipped and evil can be overcome to feel better about Himself. God has no needs. Okay? That's what we're talking about in self-sufficiency. He doesn't need to let this world keep operating; He doesn't need you to love Him. He doesn't need you to evangelize for Him. God doesn't even need TBN. I know that would shock Paul Crouch. God does not need Pat Robertson and The 700 Club. Once we begin to see how big God is, how involved God is, and how self-sufficient God is, and how privileged we are to have His call upon our lives, we can begin to relate properly to the Kingdom of God. To just be about Father's business and not be driven with compulsions that are of the natural, carnal mind, limited in our perception of God's involvement in His creation. God's good, amen?

When we talk about this aspect of the sufficiency of God, and the greatness of God, one of the ways of getting to know Him is through His name as He reveals Himself. We talked about El Shaddai, Almighty God, the Supreme Breasty One, and the Succourer of all of His creation, Jehovah, I Am, the Self-Existent One. I am all that I need to be; I am all that you need Me to be; I will be all that needs to be to facilitate all that is. As He reveals Himself we begin to understand Him in His names.

Here in Exodus we want to take a look at the names of the Lord and start looking at a couple of different aspects. Let's look at verse 5 of the 34th chapter, and it says, "And the Lord descended in the cloud..." Moses is encountering the presence of God, the revealed presence of God. The Lord is going to give him a glimpse of the Shekinah. Now remember the Shekinah, the cloud, is not God. The cloud is what God is allowing to be seen in time and space, but God is a what? Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. So whatever you see isn't God, it's the revelation, it's the placing into the finite, the time-space realm so we can identify it, but it's not God; He's greater than that. When He talks to Moses, He says in Chapter 33, look at verse 19, "And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy." He's establishing His sovereignty here, this great--as you read through these passages again, possibly this afternoon, and you see the attributes of God, you see the revelation of Himself here, it will cause a rest to come into your heart as you establish His goodness, His justice, and primarily His involvement in our lives as He's condescended to become flesh and dwell among us in the person of Jesus Christ, and be made sin with our sin that we might be made righteous with His righteousness. It's all a free gift, it's God seeking us, we're not seeking Him. He that's begun the work in you, He will perform it; He will continue it until that day, praise God!

As we come into this hour of persecution, and we come into this hour of perversion that's upon this nation, don't panic, God's not finished with us yet. Can you say, "Praise God" for that? He's just continuing to work His glory in us, He's continuing with His creation to express His will to man. He says, "I will reveal Myself to you," or "Nobody can see Me. Nothing in the natural realm can look upon Me and live; it will undo you." "...I will make all my goodness pass before thee...[verse 20]...Thou canst not see my face..." There is no pure, total interaction between the natural, supernatural as it pertains to the majesty of God that will allow anything in the natural to not be undone at His revelation. So He has to continually express Himself in that that can be tangible but not destructive. He says, "You can't look upon my face, but let me tell you what I'm going to do. Thou shalt stand upon a rock And it shall come to pass [verse 22], while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by." Does God have a hand? "Yeah, God's got a hand!" He does, but it's not what you think it is. You see, when God begins to talk in these terms, it's only so we can identify with Him. Now God is capable of revealing Himself in any form that He desires, but don't think for a moment that God's up there and He's six foot, 180 pounds, but He's spiritual, He's got all of the markings of a human being. No! Is God some type of nebulous gas form? No, because gas is natural gas. God is a, say it, spirit. What is spirit? Isn't spirit something like Star Trekky stuff, isn't there at least something going buzz, zing, ping? No, God is a spirit. There is a realm that we cannot identify with, and it's beyond our finite ability. So God, then, as He reveals Himself to us, will use whatever methods are necessary to communicate. Okay?

Now, He said "...[I] will cover thee with my hand while I pass by...(verse 22)." Now the reason I know that God isn't in a body like this, even a spiritual body that's just big--now remember we talked about omnipresence. Omnipresence doesn't mean that if this is the extent of all of creation, all of the universe, the size of this podium, it doesn't mean that God is omnipresent which means He's as big as the universe and all this is operating and God is this big. Omnipresence means not only that God covers all of this space, but also He is, in His entire being, entirely in every portion of this space. So, once we understand that we can't understand, then it makes identifying easier. So we receive these truths; what we are seeing here are truths of how God is relating to us. He says, "I'm going to pass by and I'm going to cover you with My hand. And I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My back parts: but My face shall not be seen. So you'll get a glimpse of this form that I've put into the natural time and space realm so you can identify Me, and in that identification you will sense My presence just like the Shekinah cloud. You will sense My presence." Just like you and I in prayer when the visitation of God takes place in our lives. There may not even be a tangible expression of the glory of God, but His manifest presence is known by a sensing in our spirit, by perceiving of a cloud, by perceiving of an image, whatever it might be, but the fact of the matter is, God is no more present when it is manifest than He is present when He is omnipresent. You know, when you "feel" God's there! He's no more there then than when you don't "feel" that He is there. That ought to cause some rest to come into your life; God is always present. "I am the very present help in your trouble, I will never leave you nor forsake you," praise God! When it manifests is when we need it, when it manifests is when our faith is waning, when God needs to give us a little boost here and to encourage our hearts when we're fearful, when we're downcast, then God encourages us here. With Moses, this is what's taking place as he's being overwhelmed with these people that he's trying to lead out and he realizes it's too great for him. But He says, "You can't see My face. You're going to know me more intimately than any other man, but I'm far beyond what you will ever comprehend Me to be, Moses." So in this He says, "Prepare yourself," and then we come into the 34th chapter and verse 5 says, "And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord."

We're talking about the attributes of God, and you'll be able to learn about individuals through their names. Remember, names meant something at this time; a name actually had a meaning to it. When we talk about "Israel," the prince with God, as opposed to "Jacob," the supplanter. Today our names don't mean a lot, but names meant something and we begin to see as God reveals His name, He said, "I'll reveal My name to you, you'll learn something about Me," and it says He proclaimed His name, verse 6. "And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord...." The Lord. Who is the Lord? Who is this One that we call Yahweh, Jehovah? "...The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin...(verse 6 and 7)." "Aw, praise God, man, that's how I always knew God was Santa Claus, the good fairy, grandma!" You know, people have that wrong concept because we said God is unitary, and they only see segments of God. God is good, He is merciful, far beyond any of those little examples that we use, but look what it goes on to say here. He is all of that, "... and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation (verse 7)." Because you must understand that He is a terrible God.

Verse 12 says, "Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land...[with Satan, with the god of this world and become snared in the wisdom of the world and the ways of the world. For to be a friend of the world is to be the enemy of God, the Apostle tells us. But here's how you will relate to natural mind, and natural man and the philosophies of the world, verse 13] But ye shall destroy their altars..." Those who profess themselves wise but are fools. Those who deny God's existence because it can't be brought into the laboratory and dissected by their finite intellects, "Because I cannot understand God, He doesn't exist!" What is man saying, then, about himself? "I am what? God. God ends here, God will answer to my understanding. God will answer to my definition; God will reveal Himself to my investigation or He doesn't exist."

And the Lord revealing Himself to Moses says, "You're going to have to draw yourself away from the limitations of natural man." Now remember who Moses was. He was a man who was trained in the best schools. He'd been to engineering school. You think they couldn't build some stuff? How many of you remember when we were in Egypt and crawling through the pyramids? They could build some stuff, man! "What's that got to do with it? Don't you know the pyramids were brought down here by aliens?" Yeah, give me a break! "Well there could be no precise measurements like that that were made back in those days." Really? The circle, the wheel, pi, you can make it. He was trained in their medical schools; he was trained in their schools of engineering. They were scientifically the greatest empire in the world, and he was trained by the best. God says, "The one thing you have to learn, Moses, stay on the path you've been on when you came out from among them and separated yourself." He said, "I'll be here for you; don't allow the world to suck you back into their philosophies and their methods."

Look what He goes on to say, "But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God (verses13 and 14)." We talk about the jealousy of God. In the natural, "jealous" talks about a lack of character. For someone to be jealous talks about selfishness. For God to be a jealous God is only the revealing of His majesty, His infinite being, His perfect holiness, and His jealousy is a jealousy for I Am. In other words, when He says, "I am jealous," He says, '"I am self-sufficient, there is nothing that I will tolerate beyond My scope; you will subordinate yourself to My will for your own good." So jealousy, then, is not a lack of character, it's the expression of the love of God and the self-sufficiency, the self-existence of God as He reveals Himself to man. He doesn't need us, and yet He constantly, on a daily basis involves Himself in our lives. To what degree? He can call you by name, "Hey, Bubba, how you doing?" The hairs of our head are numbered; He knows the sparrows that drop to the ground. Are you not much more valuable than they are? When you understand the self-sufficiency and the self-existence of God and you begin to understand how insignificant we are, when you understand God and His vastness, understand it properly, God is unitary. He is not so vast and His self-sufficiency does not mean that there is an exclusiveness with God, because He, in His love, is intimately involved in every one of our lives. He knows, He cares, He is sufficient, but He expresses Himself for the eternal good and not necessarily the temporal.

When we look at God and we understand the doctrines, we can get ourselves into trouble if we don't always know that about God. A doctrine or one of the revelations of God, something that when you're in a situation like we're facing in our own lives right now, believing for divine healing to manifest and coming down again to this condition to where medical science--one of the doctors told me yesterday at the hospital he said, "Look, we just have to admit, cancer is still smarter than we are." I told him, "But God's greater than cancer." Amen? He said, "You know what"--we were one of the last ones on the list yesterday when the doctor came in. When he left he said, "I've been on this floor all day, and you're the first people I've come to that are smiling!" He said, "You know how that lifts my--you all have made my day!" Now, he's in there telling us bad news, and we were sharing with him the joy of the Lord. Amen? Oh, I'm not talking about the fact that we're always giddy. There are hard times, there are sad times, there are times when you're having to war with all of these natural thoughts, and I'm going to share that with you in just a little bit.

As we come to understand Him, we can't, then, take a doctrine, for instance Jehovah-rapha, the Lord who heals, and think that somehow because God does not express healing at the moment we deem it necessary, or in the way we think it should take place, or in the distribution according to our perception of justice. You know, I've laid hands on some real scum-balls over the years and seen them healed. I've seen God show His power on behalf of a lot of people, that from my perception didn't deserve it, but as we looked at the goodness of God, who does deserve it, amen? When we look at the goodness of God and the justice of God, who does deserve it? We are all debtors, praise God! There is no one that's in any greater reproach than another as it pertains to God's righteousness. So we get to know Him in His unitary existence and we begin to see these things working together in perfect agreement. We begin to see the sufficiency of God and His desire to express Himself for our good purposes, and it can cause us to rest, then, in these moments when we're wrestling with other revelations of Himself such as Jehovah-rapha, the Lord that healeth; by His stripes we are healed, the prayer of faith shall save the sick, the Lord shall raise them up, praise God; I am the Lord that healeth thee, I will take sickness out of the midst of you. We say: "That's His name, that's who He is!" Do you know what? He doesn't need to perform that at this moment on my behalf to be who He is. Should I say it again? Do you think that for God not to reveal healing to us as He revealed Himself, the expression, the Shekinah glory, the revealed presence of God, the revealed healing of God, do you think that God has to reveal it to be who He is? No, that's our finite comprehension. "Can He be Jehovah-Rapha and not heal everybody?" Yes, because He is, and not everybody experiences healing in this time-space existence! He doesn't need us. "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make noise?" Yes, nobody heard it! How do I know it made noise if nobody heard it? Because when somebody hears it, it makes noise. Amen? How do I know God is Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord our healer? Because He's revealed Himself as that, praise God! In His total self-sufficiency, He is not judged by anybody, there's no quota, He's Jehovah-Rapha if 51 percent get healed. He's Jehovah-Rapha if when we pray in faith and we really believe, there was no doubt in our heart and that this was the perfect will of God, then they get healed. You're not going to hold Him accountable, He doesn't answer to us!

When we know Him in His vastness, in His justice, in His goodness, in His mercy, in His self-existence, that before us, before creation, He was totally content, there is nothing that happens in His creation that makes Him anymore gratified. "Boy it was a good day, did you see that guy get saved? Praise God, praise Me, I mean," God would say about Himself. You know, we say, "Praise God," He would have to say, "Praise Me, somebody got saved today. It was a good day today!" High fives to the Holy Ghost. He doesn't need any of this! So when you see, then, His involvement, how intimate He is, how involved He is, it's because He cares, praise God; He's not getting anything out of it. It causes us to rest in Him and see, then, since there is no keeping of score, I don't have to pray more, I don't have to fast more. There's not a merit system going on here, and it's His good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. God's for us, praise God, and so we're able to, then, when we pray, we can pray in faith and believe this is the will of God. When I pray I believe the revealed will of God, through the Word of God, is what I'm to seek, and that God will administrate it by His sovereignty, for His own purpose, for His own good, according to His own character. Therefore, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Amen?

Here we have the self-existent One, and He's revealing Himself to us through His names, and we'll not take a lot of time, but we've talked about Jehovah-Rapha in Exodus 15, "...I am the Lord that healeth thee" (verse 26), praise God. We rest in that, and we see, then, that God is still Jehovah-Rapha whether anybody gets healed or not. He tells us very clearly though we deny Him, He cannot deny Himself, "...I AM THAT I AM..." (Exodus 3:14). Therefore, faith is believing Him to be all that He's revealed Himself to be, and His purpose to perfectly administrate it in each of His creature's lives. Father loves you, and so we can rest in that.

He reveals Himself, then, as Jehovah-Jireh. You go on a couple of chapters into Chapter 37, Jehovah-Jireh; we find the Moabites and the war going on. The hands of Moses are weary, and his brothers, Aaron and Hur, come and they hold up the hands. As long as the hands are held up, they prevail, praise God. The victory's won, and He reveals Himself as Jehovah-Jireh, or Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord our Victor, our Banner. What if the hands hadn't been held up? Are there times when there is no apparent victory won on the battlefield? Yes, but beloved, God isn't judged by every individual skirmish of our lives. He's judged by the victory that was won at the cross, at that empty tomb, at the ascension, and the promise to return and receive a glorious church without spot or wrinkle. So that where He is, there we shall ever be with Him, praise God, the victory has been won. Amen? He is Jehovah-Nissi. But He doesn't need our understanding of that, our acknowledging of that, or our experiencing of that to be who He is, and that's why there can be no presumption, no jumping off the pillars with the false promises of presumption that the Lord will give His angels charge over us to bear us up. There is the awareness, but there's not the presumption. There's the faith, and the trust, and the acknowledging of the victory, and the expectation of it in this realm. Why should I expect healing in this realm and not as some say, "Well, you know, we'll all be healed when we die and we experience our new glorified bodies." Why should I experience it then in this realm? Why should I experience, or expect to experience Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord our Banner, the Lord our Victor in this life? Because this is the realm I'm living in, this is how He revealed Himself into this realm; this is how God said we could exist in relating to Him, the Giver of every good and perfect gift. If He's chosen to reveal Himself Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord our Provider; Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord our Victor; Jehovah-Tsid-Kenu, the Lord our righteousness; Jehovah-Shalom, the Lord our peace; Rapha, our healer; Ra-ah, our Shepherd. Then those were all expressions of His eternal being, of His essence, of how He intends to deal with His creation, and His good purpose for us, but none of those--and this is where people get into trouble in their theology--but none of those expressions, none of those expressions of His purpose, His intention, His provision, bind Him because He is sovereign, He is self-existent, and it's all administrated from His eternal, infinite perspective. It will be done right, it will be done perfectly, and it will be done for His glory. We believe what He's revealed and we rest in what He expresses, and everything that has breath, then, praises Him.

Father, we thank You this morning for who You are, and what You've revealed to us in Your purpose for us. As you've passed before us and we've seen Your name, Jehovah, not self-existent and self-sufficient to the exclusion of Your creation, but to the relationship with Your creation. Your creation does not dictate to you; you're not moved by emotion, by need, or tragedy. You have no need to respond based upon an emotion. There is no need in You; You are self-sufficient; You lack nothing. You don't need love; You don't need to be justified; You don't need to be understood, but You have revealed Yourself and Your intentions toward us. Your intentions of good toward us, and You've said that You would be our Shepherd, and our Healer, and our Provider, our Righteousness, and we rest in that; we rejoice in that. Each of us, by faith, partake the faith that You've gifted us with. It's Your gift, it's the grace of God that enables us to believe. So, therefore, I believe I'm believing sufficiently. I believe that I'm believing what You're enabling me to believe. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. All that's too great for me; I subordinate to the revelation of Yourself through Jesus Christ, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for You were with Him who was made sin with my sin, who became the propitiation that I could return home without shame, with boldness and call you Abba, Father. We will never comprehend You but through the blood of Jesus we do apprehend You. We grab hold of You, and You are sufficient for us, and we just say, "Thank You, Father, in Jesus' name." Amen.

Let's stand before the Lord this morning. Aren't you glad God doesn't need you? Aren't you glad that He's not motivated, moved by whims and by needs, and there's nothing in Him lacking. So every response to us is solely based upon His love and His justice and we rest that because He is immutable, He never changes, that we will always, at all times experience the full expression of Himself in perfect, infinite, sufficiency to cause us to be with Him and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

As Gary plays this morning, let's just take a moment and let your hearts rest now. The compulsion you may have of evangelism, the compulsion you may have of sanctification--now don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I didn't say, don't be about sanctification and seeking it with all of your heart and extending yourself as Paul said, "I press toward the mark..." Yes, go into the entire world and preach the gospel. I'm talking about the compulsions, the things that begin to make God answer to us, the delusion of thinking that we can somehow do something that would merit God's expression of Himself. It's His good intent and His purpose, the determinate counsel of God. He wants it more than you do; He wants it--for your loved ones to be saved more than you do, to be healed. He wants you delivered from that bondage of the sin in your life more than you want to be free; He's made a total provision for it. "Then why doesn't He just do it?" No, you work out your own salvation, but He loves you, and with every trial He's made the way of escape. He doesn't need you to be any better for Him to be better. His program is not a failure if you're failing; He is all sufficient. His works and His ways are perfect. His will shall not be thwarted, and so we rejoice that His work will be done His way for His glory, and someday we'll understand that, it will be revealed. Until then, we rejoice in the goodness of God, the truth of His Word, and in the revelation of Himself. Let's sing this together and delight in Him. Thank You, Jesus. "You Deserve The Glory and The Honor."

Oh sing it again, You are great! Oh we delight ourselves. There's no one like You, Lord. We stand in awe of You, the jealous God, jealous, You will not be anything other than what You are, and You will not allow Your creation to go in any other way than that You will. Those that have rebelled, Satan and his angels, men who in the grace of self-will choose to deny You. It is Your sovereign purpose to give us our free will, and Your sovereignty is fulfilled in Your justice applied to those who oppose You, but for those of us who choose to believe, make Yourself even greater in our sight. Help us with our limited perspective of You as we see through this glass darkly. We know that grace is sufficient to bring us into Your presence at this moment should the trumpet of God sound, but we want to know You more. We're not content with this limited perspective of You; we want to know You more; we want to be used of You to a greater degree. So we ask Lord, continue. You don't need us, but we need You, and we want to be used of You. So we say, "Here am I, send me, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen."

Before you go, turn to someone next to you and say, "We need Him, praise God." Amen. Go in peace, God's love go with you.

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