The I Am Series

John 14:6—beginning of a mini-series

November 11, 2007

I AM

Our God is an amazing God isn’t He? What an amazing God we serve. I mean He is all powerful. He is just yet He is merciful. He created the heavens and the earth and yet He cares for each of us explicitly. What an amazing God. I just want to start off today by bragging a little bit about the God we serve. Do you ever just feel the need to do that? Do you ever just look outside and see all the wonders that God’s hands have made and just feel proud to serve such an amazing God. I mean…this world contains so much beauty. How is it that we sometimes forget just how amazing our God is? You cannot look outside and miss the beauty of God’s creation…yet somehow we have grown accustom to it. Just think though…as fall is coming the leaves on the trees change color in an amazing display of beauty. The sun rises and sets every day surrounded by a vivid explosions of orange and pink and blue all coming together. To the God who gave us the ocean, the sky, the stars, and the moon…isn’t He just an amazing God. And this…is the God that we serve. I mean…what do you say to a God like that? How do you fathom such an incredible God? There are so many beautiful portraits in this world that display the splendor and majesty of our God…its almost too much to take sometimes.

I am very excited. Today we are going to get into one of my personal favorite passages of scripture that I believe shows some of the most beautiful pictures of Christ that are found in all of Scripture. Actually we are going to spend the next three weeks on this one passage…in fact on this one verse of scripture. We could sum it up…but that just won’t do it justice. I want you to see greatness of the God we serve in this text so today is going to be an introduction to this scripture. If you want to turn in your bibles to John chapter 14 I will read it for you:

Jn 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Now we are going to spend a week on each of the elements of this verse and look at what each one means. This text is so rich and poignant with meaning that we really need to stop and dwell on it. I hope as we look through this text at all its details and intricate workings that you will grow to love it is I do. This whole series for the next month we are basically going to be talking about How Great our God is by looking at the exclusivity and uniqueness of His provision and love for us. And our God is a God that is so great we cannot sum it all up in a week…or even a month or a lifetime. What we can do…is with every breath that we take, with every move we make we can praise God for just how awesome and amazing He truly is. I cannot hope to touch or even fathom the greatness of our God. All I can do is try to wrap my mind around the trail of the back side of His already passed by glory and splendor. For our God is so great that to see His glory would be fatal to us. He is so great that our bodies cannot even look upon Him and live.

Today we are going to look at the first part of our text… I AM. A simple little phrase that says more than we give it credit for. Our God is so great that no one name can fully describe Him. God has many names. God is a God of love, mercy, justice, power, faithfulness, providence, righteousness, truth, wisdom. How do you describe a God like that? Have you ever wondered what to call God? Moses did. When God was sending Him to the Israelites to set them free from Egypt Moses asks:

Ex 3:13 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?’ Then what shall I tell them?” Ex 3:14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” Ex 3:15 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.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.