Are you still officially the Pastor Emeritus, or
are you now the past Pastor Emeritus?
At any rate, he told me to introduce
him by saying that an old sinner has
come back to visit.
Well, that might well be, but our conversations
with Dr. Owen and the things that we
always hear from him indicate that he's quite
a long ways down the road of sanctification
and has much, much to say to us
about our topic this morning.
I'm greatly looking forward to hearing Dr. Owen
speak to us this morning on the deity
of Christ.
I won't take any more of the time
that you could be spending listening to him.
I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Owen.
Thank you very much indeed.
It's good to see your faces again.
I've missed so many of these faces, and
some that we've perhaps not seen before.
I can't even see any of you clearly,
nevertheless, but I know you're there.
Shall we just commit ourselves to the Lord
before we begin?
Heavenly Father, we confess, not as a matter
of form but of fact, that without you
we can do nothing, nothing.
And yet, in the knowledge that you are
with us and your promises are given to
us, and your Holy Spirit enables us, we
can tackle anything in your will.
We come in our weakness this morning, and
we pray that you will take each of
us, whether our part be speaking or thinking
and listening and comparing Scripture with Scripture in
our thoughts, that we shall do all things
with the enabling that you give to the
everlasting glory of your name and the profit
of your redeemed people.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well now, a subject has been given to
me, and I'm going to try to keep
to some kind of order.
I hope you can put your hands up
two minutes after 10.30, and I know
that that is a sign for me to
shut up, and we'll have some questions, God
willing.
I've got some notes here, and in order
to try to be as brief as I
can, because so many of the aspects of
this subject invite comment, and not just comment,
but invite worship.
When you deal with a subject like this,
you find that your heart goes out to
the object of your faith, and it's not
purely academic.
There is something which draws the soul and
warms the spirit and brings the glory and
the glow of heaven into your soul when
you deal with holy things, and particularly so
when you deal with the person of our
Lord and with his work, though the person
of Christ is my subject this morning, the
deity of Jesus Christ.
Now this is no purely academic or trivial
subject.
It may be important at this time of
the year that your RRSPs are safely deposited,
as we hear on the TV these days,
but this is far more important, that you
are quite sure that Jesus Christ is competent
to be your Savior, competent to save you
now and hereafter, and basic to that issue
lies this question this morning, is Jesus Christ,
God, the second person, or is he anything
less than that?
If he can be shorn of his deity,
he is at the same time shorn of
his capacity to be your Savior and mine.
It is as serious as that, and so
I ask you to give me the tools
that I want to bring before you.
Let's give them our wholehearted attention this morning.
At one time, my family, my parents and
brother and sister and I lived in a
little town in South Wales.
We were on the outskirts of the town.
Two miles up the road, there was a
mental institution, an institution for the mentally sick.
Now, many of the patients there were allowed
out of the grounds occasionally.
They were quite harmless, and they would come
down into the town and they would pass
the end of our road.
One of these men, I'm going back now
to 1938, leading into 1939.
One of these men was a very familiar
man.
He came down with a tash, it was
exactly the Adolf Hitler tash, mustache, and he
called himself Adolf Hitler.
And whenever he came out, he came with
a bundle of chalks in one pocket and
two or three pencils in another pocket, and
he would stay at a gate or a
door or whatever he could write on, and
he would write, first of all, a swastika,
and then, Adolf Hitler has been here.
Now, he wasn't always able to finish that,
but you would see wherever you went, shops
of doors and various places, this little swastika,
either in chalk or in pencil.
Then came 1939 and the outbreak of the
Second World War, and the real Adolf Hitler
came forward, but this guy still believed that
he was Adolf.
And when you met him on the street,
he expected you to salute him and call
him Adolf.
Is that a picture of our Lord Jesus
Christ?
Was he deluded?
Were his disciples led astray?
Or was he really God incarnate?
Now, it's as serious as that.
That's the issue before us.
Now, the way I want to travel this
morning, and you can pursue this in your
own thinking because I can't complete this, but
I would take about four different ways.
I would begin by asking the question, what
is meant by the deity of Jesus Christ?
What do you mean by the Godhead or
the Godhood of Jesus?
A second point that I would come to
is this.
What was the consciousness of Jesus himself?
What did he think of himself inwardly, in
himself, and, of course, as expressed in his
words and revealed in his actions?
How did he think of himself?
The third, the conviction of those who lived
with him and saw him at close quarters
over a period of three years, saw him
live, heard him teach, watched him in his
ministrations of mercy and kindness and power, saw
him die and rise again from the dead.
What did they think of him?
And then, to make it complete, I believe,
one would have to look at the confession
of the Christian Church, or the confessions, the
credo, statements of the Church, down through the
ages.
And I believe, though I can't go through
all of this this morning, I can just
take examples from each one of these, I
believe that in the history of the Christian
Church, the Orthodox Christian Church, the historic faith,
Jesus Christ is always seen to be God
and the Son, the second person of the
Godhead.
Now then, to the first question, what really
are we claiming for Jesus when we speak
of his deity?
What is it?
What does it mean?
In brief, it is nothing short of the
claim to be God.
Now, you may well think that is a
tremendous claim, and, of course, it is.
It has been made by no other sane
creature that I know of throughout the course
of human history.
It might have been made by a deranged
man such as this dear man Adolf.
Jesus Christ claimed to be divine in the
sheer, absolute sense.
Now, how can I explain that in brief?
Well, let me put it to you like
this.
What do we believe about God?
What does the Bible tell us about God?
What does the Church believe about God?
Let me put it very briefly and succinctly,
and perhaps it is an oversimplification.
The Christian believes that there is a personal
God, Creator, Ruler of the universe, a God
who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.
I'll repeat that.
There is a personal God, Creator, Ruler of
the universe, a God who is infinite, eternal,
and unchangeable.
That is a minimal Christian view of God.
Now, when we come to the Lord Jesus
Christ, do we have to detract anything?
Do we have to take anything away from
that, or can we posit these factors to
Him?
The Bible doesn't ask us to withdraw anything
whatsoever, but the attributes that we attribute to
God are equally attributed to Jesus.
For example, He, too, is eternal according to
the Scriptures.
He preexisted His own birth.
The birth of the Virgin, the conception in
the Virgin's womb, was not the beginning of
the life of this person.
It was the beginning of His life as
the God-Man here on planet earth.
But it was not the beginning of the
person, the Christ, the Savior.
He preexisted His birth.
Or, come again, when the Bible tells us
that, in the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth.
Can we believe such a thing about Jesus?
Does the Bible make such a claim about
Jesus?
Where was He?
Now, you know your New Testament, I'm sure,
as well as I do.
You remember how John begins his Gospel.
Very early, he says, In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
Without Him, he goes on to say, there
was nothing made that was made.
Paul goes further, and he says, All things
were made by Him, and, listen, for Him.
And He is the heir of all things.
He was involved in the making of all
things.
He was, all things were made by Him
and for Him, and He is the ultimate
heir.
You were made for Him.
I was made for Him.
This church was built for Him.
I mean, it's people.
The whole cosmos is in existence for His
glory, and if it does not serve His
glory, it does not serve the purpose of
its existence.
That is true of the individual.
It is true of society.
Or, come again, God is infinite, eternal, and
unchangeable.
Does the New Testament ask us to forget
that when it tells us that Christ is
God?
No.
You attribute all these things to the Christ,
the Son, as well as to God, the
Father.
I am, he said, Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and the end, the first and the
last.
He is everything.
Before Abraham was, I am.
In the beginning was the Word.
He is before all things again, another quote
from St. Paul, and it is in Him
that all things consist, which means He is
the one that holds the whole universe together.
We are talking a lot today about a
nation falling apart.
There are very few safety pins, very few
things that glue us together.
What is it that glues the universe together,
the ages together, that makes some sense and
some unity running through the millennia?
The New Testament says, the Son of God
is the one that glues the ages together
so that the purpose declared at the beginning
of time continues to be wrought out little
by little, line upon line, through the ages,
until at last He will consummate His purposes
and all things will redound to His glory
and praise.
That's what we mean.
And you see, I have only to say
this, to elicit in all of us who
are believers in Him, the desire to bow
and worship.
Being this, He demands and He deserves the
worship of His people along with the Father
and of the Holy Spirit.
Now, it was because of this kind of
testimony, mine is only but illustrative of the
whole, because of this kind of testimony that
early in the history of the Christian church,
the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated.
Now, the facts were there before, but the
facts were related one to another into a
doctrine.
Nothing was put in paper that was not
already factual in the revelation before.
And the doctrine of the Trinity says that
the Godhead constitutes three persons in one undivided
nature, co-equal the one with the other,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When you and I were baptized as Christians,
we were baptized into one name, baptized into
the name, my name, sorry, I shouldn't have
said that, into one name, but three persons.
I'd like you to notice that.
In Matthew chapter 26, in the Great Commission,
I've no time to go into it now,
we are baptized into one name, but there
are three persons that are involved in the
one name.
Now, here, of course, is a complete mystery,
and we have to take that.
There is mystery everywhere, but sure, there is
mystery here.
A philosopher friend of ours, dear friend of
ours too, just recently died, used to tell
me, there is a world of difference, he
used to say, between a mystery and a
mist.
I asked him, Reiners, what do you mean?
Well, he said, more than once, and I
asked him the question, I'd like to hear
him say it.
He said, in a mist, he says, you
don't know what's there, but where there is
a mystery, you don't know how it got
there.
There is no mist around the person of
our Lord Jesus Christ because he manifested his
deity in his words, in his actions, in
his attitudes, in his prophetic utterances concerning himself,
his coming death and resurrection and ascension and
sending forth of the Spirit.
In all of these things, we see what's
there.
How it got there, how God and man
can be united in one person without diminution
of either is something that we cannot, cannot
understand.
But he was as truly human as he
was truly divine.
He was so human, you might judge that
he was not God.
He was so divine, you might judge, if
you didn't know the fact, that he was
not human, but he was born.
And on the score of his humanity and
his deity, united in all glory in himself,
we worship him and we trust him and
seek to obey him.
Now, it is impossible to dissect the person
of our Lord Jesus Christ and to diminish
him down to the level of a man.
So many critics over the years have tried
to do this and tried to take away
from him, shear him as they shear sheep,
shear him of some aspects of his glory.
But you can't bring him down to a
simple manhood.
You see, not in his birth, because two
of the Gospels, two of the testimonies tell
us that he was supernaturally born.
And, of course, there are other evidences, but
Matthew and Luke tell us that.
No, no, he wasn't a mere human, nor
in his character.
He of all the sons of men is
said to have been faultless, sinless.
He claimed it himself.
He challenged his foes even.
Which of you convicts me of sin?
And he was not crucified because sin was
found in him.
He was crucified for other reasons.
Nor can we classify him as a mere
human because of his claims.
No human has ever made the claims that
Jesus made.
Listen to them.
He accepted what John the Baptist said about
him.
I indeed, he says, has John baptized you
with water?
But after me there is coming one who
will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and
with fire.
Just think of what that means.
He commands, he says, I will baptize you
with the Holy Spirit.
I have authority to send forth the Holy
Spirit of God and to come upon you
and to change you and to bring the
Spirit of God.
And as Peter puts it, the very divine
nature to human beings.
He will come upon you.
I baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
You can't do that.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church can't
do that.
There is no community of people that can
do that.
It's only the incarnate Son that ever dared
make such a suggestion that he could order,
in fellowship with the Father, the Holy Spirit
to come as another paraclete to assume the
role of the divine among people.
All things, he said, have been delivered to
me of my Father.
And no man knows the Father but the
Son, and he to whom the Son will
reveal him.
No one knows the Father except me.
No other individual of sanity has ever said
such a thing.
Philosophers and teachers and religious leaders have said,
well, I can help you.
Our teaching is good.
My teaching is good.
My philosophy is respectable.
And I've got something to contribute.
That's not what Jesus said.
He stands apart.
No man cometh unto the Father but by
me.
And either he is, as C.S. Lewis
said, an utter megalomaniac, or we must accept
him as the Son of God, truly the
Son of God.
Now, that brings me then to his own
innermost consciousness.
Let me just cull for the moment some
illustrations of what I have in mind.
I want you to imagine Jesus.
I want you to think of him now
among his disciples, particularly the last half, the
last 18 months or so of his earthly
life.
Shall we start with the confession of Peter
in Caesarea Philippi?
I want you to think of the way
he accepted from men, accepted as true certain
things they said about him, and how he
himself naturally, spontaneously spoke of himself in certain
terms.
Now take, for example, that confession of Peter
in Caesarea Philippi.
It started like this.
Jesus said, well, I won't enlarge, just come
to the point.
Whom do you say that I, the Son
of Man, am?
Now, notice, he didn't say, who do you
say I am?
He has already said what he thinks of
himself in asking the question.
What I think of myself is that I
am the Son of Man.
Now, Son of Man is really an English
translation of a Hebraism.
In some circumstances, it may only mean a
man, a person, man or woman actually.
The Son of Man, you have this in
Semitic languages, without going into details now.
So, it may simply mean that.
And it could mean that in some places
in the New Testament, the reference was to
his humanity.
Could be.
I wouldn't argue for it, but I wouldn't
argue against it.
But there are some places where it is
absolutely clear that when Jesus referred to himself
as the Son of Man, he had a
most amazing picture of himself.
He did it against the background of the
picture of the Son of Man that we
find in Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and
14 there.
Now, let me read that to you.
I hope I can put my finger on
it.
Can anyone read for me Daniel 7, 13,
14?
I'd be grateful.
Blake?
Oh, here we are.
I've got it.
Here we are.
I've got it.
In my vision at night I looked, and
there before me was one like a Son
of Man.
This is Daniel speaking.
Coming with the clouds of heaven, he approached
the Ancient of Days, which is the title
for God, and was led into his presence.
He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power.
All peoples, nations, and men of every language
worshipped him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will
not pass away, and his kingdom is one
that will never be destroyed.
Now, I say to you that there are
some places in the New Testament where Jesus
unequivocally has that in mind when he speaks
of himself as the Son of Man.
You ask me, where are they?
Let me read three to you.
In Mark chapter 8, verse 38, he's referring
to the future.
When he, the Son of Man, comes in
his Father's glory and of the Holy Angel.
Still a little clearer.
Matthew 13, 26, 27.
Men will see the Son of Man coming
in the clouds of great power and glory.
And the third is this.
You will see the Son of Man sitting
at the right hand of the Mighty One
and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Now, when you compare these with Daniel 7,
13, and 14, you will see that evidently
the Lord Jesus Christ is thinking of himself
as the Son of Man in terms of
that portrait that was given to Daniel.
Now, therefore, it is a very lofty term.
One whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom that
will never pass away.
One who has divine glory and excellence and
power that can never be taken from him.
The Son of Man!
Whom say ye that I the Son of
Man am?
Simon Peter came to his confession.
You, he says, are the Christ.
The Son of the Living God.
The Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.
There is much more within that term, Messiah,
than we generally appreciate, I think.
First of all, it means that God had
appointed him, God had chosen him, and God
had anointed him with the Holy Spirit without
measure.
As the epistle to the Hebrews tells us,
he gives not the Spirit in measure to
him.
Whoever says that they are filled with the
Spirit and have the power of the Spirit,
Jesus more.
There are no limits, no qualifications.
He had the Spirit without measure.
And he came, just as the prophets and
the priests and the kings in the Old
Testament were ordained for ministry of God, so
was he.
There is more to it than that.
He was anointed in order to anoint.
He was anointed in order to fulfill his
ministry in terms of Isaiah chapter 61, as
he tells them in the synagogue in Luke
5, I think it is, when he went
back to the synagogue in Nazareth for the
first time during his public ministry.
He says, this day, this scripture is fulfilled
in your presence.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
He has anointed me to do this, this,
this, and that.
But it goes even beyond that.
He is the one who will baptize us
with the Holy Spirit, as we've made reference
already.
He is the Messiah, the promised one of
scripture, alongside of whom there is no other,
for God has not appointed another.
Peter said, you are the Christ, the Son
of the living God.
Caesarea Philippi, you know, had been a very
religious center.
I cannot go into this in detail.
You can check it up.
But if you know the history of Caesarea
Philippi, there were about five very important religious
centers there and temples.
One was a temple to the old Greek
god Pan.
It was his reputed birthplace.
That's a mythical deity, of course.
There was another very large, white temple there,
dedicated to the emperor, Augustus.
And the emperor was worshipped there.
But there were many, many other mythical deities
that had their shrines there in Caesarea Philippi.
And that's where Jesus posed his question.
Whom say you that I, the Son of
Man, am?
Simon Peter said, you are the Christ, the
Son of the living God.
Not the Son of God.
There are so many gods around, you have
to distinguish.
But the distinction is this.
The living God.
Not the mythical deity that never lived.
Not the emperor that is living and dying
at the same time.
The mortal man.
But the living God, Jehovah, the great I
am.
And not a son, the Son of the
living God.
And he accepted this.
And he went on to say, blessed are
you, Simon Bar-Jonah.
Flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you.
You've got this from my father himself.
He has revealed it to you.
You see, he accepts it.
And this is in written into his own
consciousness, wherever you go.
I think, for example, of those great ninefold
statements in John's Gospel.
They appear very simple at the beginning, but
you know, they are very, very profound.
The nine I am's of Jesus.
Here is his consciousness.
This is how he thinks of himself.
I don't know whether it is necessary for
us to go with the late Dr. G.
Campbell Morgan and one or two others, Europeans
particularly, who understood these I am statements of
Jesus in this way.
G.
Campbell Morgan particularly used to say that when
Jesus said, I am the light of the
world, what he did was this.
He took the Old Testament title of God,
I am, and he added to it a
characteristic of the great I am incarnate before
your eyes.
That is the eyes of his contemporaries.
I am the light of the world.
I am the door, etc.
Well now, whether that is necessary or not,
the deity of our Lord is coming out
in what he says.
Just look at a few of them.
I am, I quoted, the light of the
world.
What does this say?
What it says is this, that Jesus sees
this world in the dark.
It's a world in the dark.
It's a world unillumined.
And he says to his people, I am
the light of the world.
He that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.
He switched the lights on.
And he is the light.
I am the way, he says.
What way?
Well, in the context, it's quite clear.
He had said that he was going to
the Father.
And one or two of them didn't know
quite what was happening.
Where are you going to and how do
we know the way?
Well, he says, I am the way.
Come with me, follow me, believe in me,
trust in me.
I am the way to the Father.
No man comes to the Father but by
me.
I am the way.
No one else has ever said that.
The highest we humans can get to is
we can point the way.
John the Baptist pointed the way.
Behold the Lamb of God that takes away
the sin of the world.
And every preacher worth his penny is a
pointer of the way.
Like a signpost at the end of the
street or out in the countryside.
Showing the way, pointing the way.
He said, I am the way.
I am the truth.
Truth means, philosophically and theologically, correspondence to reality.
That which corresponds to reality.
What is the reality?
The reality is God, the Father to whom
he is going.
And the heaven to which he is going.
And what he is going to build for
his people.
I am going to prepare a place for
you.
Those are the realities here.
He says, I am the truth.
Corresponding to reality.
I represent the whole truth of God, my
Father, of the eternal world that you can't
see with your eyes.
I am the truth.
Come again.
Move on.
These are very, very profound statements.
I am the bread of life.
He's already said he is the life itself.
Life is in him.
But I'm the bread of life.
I not only impart eternal life, but I'm
the sustenance of it.
He that eateth of me, he that comes
and eats of me, devours of me, feeds
upon me, will never die.
And then he speaks of himself.
He points to the living water of the
spirit, which he can give and which will
quench the thirst of the souls of men
that drink it.
Then again, he is himself the good shepherd.
With all that that meant for the ancient
Jews of his day, and means for us
if we have read some of the good
books that are around.
And again, not only the good shepherd, but
the door into the sheepfold.
I am the door.
It's through me you get in.
And through me you get on.
And again, I am the true vine.
Let me read to you.
He claims, says someone, he claims here to
be the life tree of regenerate humanity.
All that is truly fruitful and lovely must
branch forth from him.
All spiritual life must wither and die if
it is separate from him.
He stands consciously between heaven and earth, and
is the communicator and the sustainer of life
from its beginnings to its end.
It's no wonder the apostle Paul said that
all the fullness dwelt in him, and we
are complete in him.
Prayer may be offered in his name, and
it is heard.
Looking at some of his contemporaries one day,
he said this to them.
John 8, 23, he says, you, he says,
are from beneath.
I am from above.
You are of this world.
I am not of this world.
He anticipated his death, and he told us
what was going to happen afterwards.
I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, I will draw all men unto me.
He spoke of his own resurrection, and he
spoke of his own ultimate coming to consummate
his purposes.
He is indeed law of death and of
destiny.
He that believes in him has the assurance
of eternal life.
Now, I'm coming to the end.
Just a few words about this.
What about his followers?
What did they believe?
Let me just, just, these are purely illustrative.
Let me just come to this main statement,
the main series of statements by them.
First of all, they called him Lord.
Now, and you understand, if you read Luke
chapter 1, for example, the fulfillment of the
Old Testament in the birth of the Lord
Jesus, you will find that the title that
Luke there uses a number of times for
God, for Jehovah in the Old Testament, is
Lord, translated Lord, kurios.
Now, the New Testament used the same title
for Jesus Christ.
Now, sometimes, again, sometimes the title kurios can
mean something less than God.
As, for example, with a woman at the
well, in, I think it's verse 19 of
John 4, when she met Jesus for the
first time, she didn't know anything about him.
And she said, Sir, you are a prophet.
Now, the word kurios translated Sir, meaning reverence.
But when you come to the end of
John, and Thomas bows at his feet, and
he says, My Lord and my God, the
designation Lord assumes an altogether different sense.
It is now qualified by the concept of
God.
He links it with God.
He wouldn't use the word Lord if it
meant something less than God, when he uses
the word God afterwards.
And when you come into the New Testament
and into the epistles, that is what you
find.
The Lord is risen indeed.
He's Lord now.
And then, whosoever shall call upon the name
of the Lord shall be saved.
And incidentally, you know, you're familiar with the
fact that Paul says that in Romans 10.
But Paul in Romans 10 is quoting from
Joel.
And in Joel it is said that whosoever
shall call upon the name of Jehovah will
be saved.
Paul takes that passage from the Old Testament,
and instead of using the word Jehovah, he
says, whosoever shall call upon the name of
Jesus shall be saved.
Jesus, you see, is Jehovah.
And the New Testament writers do this remarkable
thing.
They take excerpts that speak of Jehovah in
his fullness and his glory in the Old
Testament, and in the New Testament they attribute
it now to Jesus.
They were convinced that Jesus was God incarnate.
The other one I must, with this I
will have to close.
The other word is the word God, of
course.
I've already referred this morning to John 1
.1, and the word was God.
And I've referred also to John 20.28,
my Lord and my God, said Thomas.
In Romans 9.5, Paul has a very
remarkable statement too.
From them, he says, that is the Jews,
is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who
is, listen, God over all, forever praised.
In Titus 2.13, he says, we wait
for the glorious appearing of our great God
and Savior, Jesus Christ.
In Hebrews 1.8, the writer to the
Hebrews takes Psalm 45 and verse 6, and
he attributes it to Jesus Christ.
And this is how you find it written
in Hebrews.
But to the Son, he, that is God,
says, your throne, O God, will last forever
and ever.
2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 1 begins
like this.
He's introducing himself and referring to those to
whom he is writing.
Writing to those who, through a righteousness of
our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, have received
a faith as precious as ours.
Have you got it?
In the consciousness of Jesus himself, in the
conviction of those that were around him, and
ultimately, they are the primary witnesses to it
all from within our human race.
Jesus was no mere man.
He was not simply a good man.
He was not simply a great man.
He was not simply a wise man.
He was not simply a holy man.
They believed him to be God incarnate, and
worshipped him, and honored him, and obeyed him.
And they tell us that when we read
of heaven from this vantage point, and when
we get there, we shall find that the
praises of heaven are given jointly to God
and the Lamb.
Am I being good?
One minute after 25.
Now, there may be some questions.
I don't think I can answer them.
Here's a term in the Old Testament.
Well, there's a guy here called Blake Walker
that you might consult on this.
Well, anyway, since he's over here just now,
I won't call upon him.
But we're glad to see him, by the
way, and he's a good lady.
You know, the name arises—oh, did you hear
the question?
Mrs. Walker says she's often been puzzled by
the name for God, I Am, at I
Am.
In order to be brief, let me put
it like this.
The name itself arises out of the Hebrew
verb, to be.
And it can be legitimately translated in the
present or in the future.
God is thereby saying, I am the one
who is, and who will be.
And that's the thing that he wants Pharaoh
to know.
Go and tell Pharaoh, I am a sensual.
I'm not a dead deity.
I'm not a mythical deity.
I'm not a mere concept of the mind,
but I'm alive.
I've met you in the bush.
I've talked to you.
I've called you by name.
And I told you to take your shoes
off your feet.
And I commanded you to go.
Tell Pharaoh, I am the—it's another way of
saying, I'm alive.
You see, the Jews themselves might have concluded
that God had died by this time, too.
But they'd been there for 400 years, and
promises had been made to their fathers.
But if they had read the scriptures, and
if they had the book of Genesis to
read properly, they would have read that they
would spend 400 years in Egypt, and then
after that, he would take them out, and
the sins of the Amorites would be fulfilled.
However, I won't go back into that.
Does that help, Mrs. Watson?
Yes.
I think the nuance is like this, you
see, that Moses is going to tell Pharaoh,
and particularly tell the children of Israel, that
the living God has sent him.
Now, we mustn't think of it just as
a bare statement like that.
Men who met the living God in the
Old Testament, and I believe that people who
have dealings with the living God today, have
something in themselves that vindicates their claim.