I Am Series

Sunday March 9th, 2008

River of Life Ministries, Pastor Michael West

Series: His majesty, His Names part one Sermon: I AM

Scripture: Psalm 9:10

(Scripture are taken from the NJB, although I use the AMP to preach with)

Psalm 9:10 Those who revere your name can rely on you, you never desert those who seek you, Yahweh.

Jehovah——I am, the self-existent One, Yahway God’s personal name given to Moses, also called the tetragrammaton or four letters—YHWH—which occurs about 6,800 times and is translated “Lord” in the Bible. It became common practice for Jews to say “Lord” or Adonai instead of saying YHWH. Yah or Jah—is a shorter form of Yahweh which is often combined with other names or phrases.

Hallelujah means—praise YAH—praise the Lord. Elijah means God is Yah or God is Lord and Joshua means Yah or the Lord is my salvation.

I AM—the self existent one. It means:

God never changes. His promises never fail.

When we are faithless—He is faithful and We need to obey Him

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, ‘I AM He Who is.’ And He said, ‘This is what you are to say to the Israelites, “I AM has sent me to you.” ’

Exodus 6:2-4 God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am Yahweh. To Abraham, Isaac and Jacob I appeared as

El Shaddai, which means all sufficient One, God of the mountains, God Almighty—but I did not make my name Yahweh known to them.

Exodus 34:5-7 And Yahweh descended in a cloud and stood with him there and pronounced the name Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed before him and called out, ‘Yahweh, Yahweh, God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in faithful love and constancy, maintaining his faithful love to thousands, forgiving fault, crime and sin, yet letting nothing go unchecked, and punishing the parent’s fault in the children and in the grandchildren to the third and out like a garment, like outworn clothes you change them;

Psalms 46:1 God is both refuge and strength for us, a help always ready in trouble;

Isaiah 26:4 Trust in Yahweh for ever, for Yahweh is a rock for ever.

Malachi 3:6 ‘No; I, Yahweh, do not change; and you have not ceased to be children of Jacob!

Christianity is the gateway into God and when you get into God you launch out into a wonderful journey into infinity with Him and you will never want to turn back. Infinity, no limit, no end.

It’s not a dash of grace here and there, it’s infinite grace and it cannot be measured. If ever there was a place where God stopped, then God wouldn’t be perfect. If God knew just about everything, then He wouldn’t be perfect and His understanding would be limited.

Psalms 147:5 Our Lord is great, all-powerful, his wisdom beyond all telling.

If God knew everything but one percent, you couldn’t worship Him, because you cannot worship what is not perfect. There is His power. Infinite power, but if someone else held a smidgen of that power and saved it up where God could not have it one hundred percent, then we couldn’t worship Him. He would not be worthy. And even if He was more powerful than all the other powers that be, He would not be perfect because He would be defective as an all powerful God.

If there was a blemish of imperfection in God’s goodness whereby He might favor one over another, then He could not be our God, He could not be our Father in heaven and if He had 99.9 percent pure love, that missing tenth makes Him not God.

Unfortunately today’s Christian’s worship a cheap little obscure god of the cosmos. A god they can call “the man upstairs.” My angel, my superstar, my bodyguard. The god Christians are reducing themselves to worship is one who, fills their pockets with more cash, helps me make the grade and win the game. This is not the god of Abraham. They have taken advantage of Jesus as the Servant, to being their servant who grants them what they want rather than what they need.

Let’s face it, Christians can create gods and serve them just as the heathen do and he can be made out of anything, even dark imaginations, but that god will never be like the True and Living God of Jacob and Isaac, the God of Noah and Moses. No, Christianity today is losing it’s strength and is becoming rotten inside. Although we look spectacular outside—white-washed and smell good and all the while going down the drain because of the god’s of modern Christianity and not the God of the Bible. Big fancy church void of depth in God the Almighty One.

Sure we pray and some pray hard, but we fall short of praying to the real God of the universe Who is interested in our hearts and end up praying to a god who is not all cracked up to what he should be and we make excuses of why this god doesn’t answer and blame it on “it’s not his will” or worse “our lack of faith.” Which the later is more true. Christianity is losing faith in God, God Who is all perfect.