It is a blessing to be here with you this morning. I will tell you that if you're sitting here expecting a traditional thanks, giving day message, you're not going to get one. But I believe that we'll have much we can give thanks for. We are actually going to be in the Old Testament if you have a Bible with you or the electronic means to look it up.
We are in the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 3. The Lord has allowed me the privilege over the last few weeks to camp out in Exodus and different contexts. And this past week our school Health Action Academy has a high school retreat. We do every fall.
We take all our high school students away somewhere for three days to focus on building their relationship with Christ, with one another and with the staff. And last week we did that. It was an awesome time. We went to Bayside Camp.
The weather was beautiful. Everything worked well. We had our ups and downs. We had a student who came to the saving knowledge of Christ in the midst of it.
But one of the things we were looking at, we were looking at this passage and four questions that we all need to answer. And it's coming from this passage where we have our first encounter between the man Moses and the God of the universe. So to give you your quick recap of the events up to this point, I assume most of you are well familiar with the Moses story. But if you're not, here's the scenario.
God had chosen a people through Abraham and he had brought them at his appointment to time. This family of families brought them into Egypt and he settled them there. And then at first things are really good and then things change. There's a change in leadership structure and who's in power in Egypt and the children of Israel fall out of favor.
They're no longer a favored group in Egypt. And so they begin to become a persecuted group and Egypt in fall into slavery and for 400 years. They experience slavery. They experience the harshness of being a dominated people.
However, when you are the people of God, it doesn't matter how much you're persecuted. You cannot lose the promises God had given and God had promised. He was growing them into a nation. So even though in the midst of their persecution and their suffering, they continue to grow.
To the point where the King of Egypt furlough goes, this is a problem. We've got a problem here. We've got these group of people and they're just getting too big. We need to do something.
So he comes up with a plan for population control where he calls in the medical staff, the midwives and says to them, okay, every time one of these Hebrews, women has a baby. If it's a girl, fine. If it's a boy, you know what to do. A quick post-birth abortion and it's all looked after.
Except these midwives fear God more than they fear the King of Egypt and so they won't do it. And then he just makes a law and he announces to the nation, you Hebrews, every time you have a baby, if it's a girl, fine. If it's a boy, you throw it into the river. Full stop.
And then the story, the narrative focuses down to one family. One family and they have a baby and it's a boy. And at first, mom and dad try to hide this baby, try to keep him because they love him and they know he's special and he's precious and they don't want to simply destroy him. But that's a challenge because all of us who have had children know that there is something unique that God has equipped little infants with and that is the cry that penetrates concrete.
You cannot long conceal a child because children do not conceal well. And so eventually she realizes that she can't hide him any longer. The law is clear. He's a male.
He gets thrown into the Nile to be destroyed. So mom trusting in the God of her forefathers obeys the law. But nobody said anything about personal flotation devices. So she takes this basket and I'm sure by the leading of the Holy Spirit, she waterproofs it.
She puts her child into this basket and she puts it into the Nile. Now oftentimes I've seen in some of our old Sunday school literature, you see her pushing into this little river. The Nile, of course, is not a little river. One of the two great rivers on the planet, a massive waterway and she pushes her baby out into this river, heads her daughter, follow along to see what happens.
I love just letting my sanctified imagination picture this. Here's this massive waterway filled with traffic, filled with predators, filled with all kinds of things because it's a central focus to this whole kingdom and there is one little basket with one little baby in the midst of all this current and traffic and predators and where does he land but in front of the one person in the entire kingdom, humanly speaking, who can save his life. That's the awesome picture of God right there. God at work.
And so this Egyptian princess opens up the basket, she sees the baby, she falls in love with the baby, she takes the baby and the baby is now going to be hers. No death sentence on him anymore. And then now she has to care for the baby and the baby's little sister Mary and pop up and says, ma'am, you're going to need somebody to wet nurse this baby. I can find you someone.
And she goes, oh, that would be grand. I'll pay her and she'll be covered. And I look at that and I go there again. Says so much about the character of God because God is carrying out his plan for the ages in what is taking place in that moment.
She's carrying out his promise to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob in that moment. But he also cares about one brokenhearted mom who thinks that she just had to give up her child. You see, that's who God is. God is huge, massive eternal picture.
God is, I care about what's happening in your life right now. And so baby gets to go home to mom. Mom is getting family allowance first time in history, caring for her child, raising him in the fear and admonition of the Lord until he is weaned, which we know from study of ancient history, then in Egypt and in that culture you weren't weaned until you were about four. So he's had an awesome daycare experience.
We're told in Hebrews that he knew who he was. He knew who he was of who he was a part of. So sometimes in those wonderful movies we watch today where Moses suddenly has this epiphany as a grown man. Oh, wait, maybe I'm Hebrew?
No, he knew who he was. And of course we have that moment where Moses now is a full grown man as a prince of Egypt tries to bring about change for his people on his own and he fails and he runs away and he finds himself in the backside of the desert, where he meets a girl, starts a family, becomes a shepherd and prepares to live out the rest of his life. Until this moment, Exodus chapter three, let's pray before we look at the text. Our Lord and our God, we praise you.
We praise you for you are awesome and glorious. We praise you because you are loving and merciful and compassionate. We praise you because you were holy and just. We praise you because you oversee all things.
Lord now, as we look into your word, as we read the story of this real historical individual who had a real encounter with you, Lord, we know that it is here not just for our knowledge but for our edification. So Lord, as we look at Moses' interaction with God, I pray that you would be using it to speak to us. Lord, I pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Minds, understand the most of all hearts to be changed.
For your glory in Jesus Christ, amen. So when we come to the beginning of Exodus chapter three, Moses is approximately 80 years old. 80 years old. He has been 40 years of prince Egypt and then that culminated in a disastrous failure.
And now we spent 40 years living in nowhere, being a shepherd, mattering to no one, except his family. And I'm sure in Moses' mind at this point, this is how life is going to play itself out. This is it. I'll see my children grow up, see them Mary.
I'll look after sheep. That's life. And then verse one. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father in law, the priest of Midian.
And he led the flock to the fireside of the desert and came to horrib, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him and flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought I will go over and see the strange sight why this bush does not burn up.
Because Moses spends his time looking after sheep. Anything that's a distraction is a good thing. So Moses goes, oh, a bush burning in the desert in the dry season is not unusual. But the fact that the bush keeps burning is.
So he wanders over. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush. Moses, Moses, and Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer, God said.
Take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob at this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering.
So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of the land into a good and spacious land. A land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perazites, hevites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go.
I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. Up to that last phrase, I think Moses was probably pretty excited about this development. Because he's had this encounter, the God who he can identify is the God of his forefathers, says he's heard about the suffering of the Israelites, he's concerned about them, he's going to bring them out of Egypt, he's going to give them the promises that were given to his forefathers, it probably sounds really great to Moses at that moment. Yes, amen.
Awesome. Praise the Lord. This is great. And then God comes to that last phrase.
So now go. I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. At this point the scenario has changed for Moses. All of a sudden he is now part of what's going on.
And Moses begins to ask questions. Moses is going to ask four questions and I believe that these questions are questions that every human being needs to ask and get the answer to. So his first question he asks, but Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? The first question he asks is the most fundamental question of the human experience.
Who am I? Who am I? In this whole story, who am I? And that is a question every one of us you and I grapple with.
It's a fundamental question. Who am I? And how you answer that question will determine much of your life direction. And God is fundamentally concerned with how you answer that question.
That question is permeating everywhere. And what the interesting thing is in our modern day is that there are less and less answers to that question and more and more questions. So when I say to a human being, who am I? The world society around us goes, that's a good question.
You don't know anything about yourself. You don't know your gender. You don't know your identity. You don't know anything.
None of it is known. It's all a mystery. You don't know where you're fitting. You don't know what's right.
You don't know what's wrong. You don't know personal truth. Oh, and just there's this huge quagmire of questions. Not so with God.
Because God wants us to ask the question, who am I? And then God begins to give answers. He begins by the beginning of his whole narrative and Genesis and says, who are you? You are the intentional creation of the God of the universe.
That is who you are. You exist because the God of the universe before the foundations of the world were set chose for you to exist. That's pretty huge. I often tell students, you may have been told by your parents, oh, we prayed for you and we planned for you.
Or you may have been told by your parents, you are a surprise. Or you may have been told by your parents, you threw off our plans. Or you may have been told nothing by your parents because your parents just aren't even in the picture. But I say, know this, fundamental.
Every human being exists because the Lord of the universe chose for you to exist. He gave you the breath of life beyond just biological happenstance. You exist because the Lord of the universe wants you to exist. So that's the first part of the question.
Who am I? The second part of the question comes when I look at my life and go, why is a human being that does everything seem to go wrong? And see the second answer to that question of who am I is I in my natural self and a sinner. Dead in my trespasses and sins.
And I need to accept that created by God for his purpose, broken by sin, dead in my trespasses and sins. But then who am I? I am the person that God so loved. The sense is one and only son into the world to lay down his life, to pay for my penalty of sin so that I can become a new creation, that I can be called one of the children of God.
That is who I am. And that's the question each of us has to ask who am I? I am the intentional creation of God. Who am I?
I am dead in my trespasses and sins. And for some of us that's where we are right now. That's the reality of the condition. But then there is the third part, who am I?
I am redeemed by the blood of Christ if I put my trust in the finished work of Christ. And see God comes to Moses at his point in the journey and his answer is very simple. God's response to him is, and the Lord said, I will be with you. And that is the ultimate end for us if we have put our trust in Christ, who am I?
God is with me. And dwelled by his Holy Spirit of promise, the seal of my inheritance. Who am I? Everything else is secondary to that.
Who am I? I am a teacher and I am a husband and I am a father and I am a son and I am an uncle and I am a soldier in the army and numerous other things. But ultimately everything else is secondary to the fact that I am a child of God through the finished work of Christ. So that's Moses first question and God answers it for him.
Then in verse 13 we come to the next question. 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? So Moses second question after asking, who am I?
Is he basically saying, God, who are you? God, who are you? Who are you? And God gives an answer.
God says to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you. 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.
Go assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob appeared to me and said, I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you out of your misery in Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, Amorites, parasites, hevites and Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey. So Moses says, God, who are you? Which is a very important question for Moses because Moses has grown up in a kingdom with a pantheon of gods.
And his people, the children of Israel have for over 400 years lived in this pressure cooker of deities where there is a God for everything. There is a God for the Nile, there is a God for the sun, there is a God for the harvest, there is a God for life, there is a God for death. Everything is just permeated with gods, pressured the identity of all these deities. And for the children of Israel and for Moses himself, their story of who God is has been probably very much pressured by all this false theology.
And so Moses is saying, God, who are you? What name? All these gods, they need to, they all have names. What's your name?
And God says to him, my name is Yahweh. Active present. Always active, always present. And then, Speaker recently said one of the beauties of the name Yahweh and one of the tragedies is that in Jewish culture being so afraid that they would say the name of God disrespectfully will not say it aloud.
So if you were listening to a Jewish person read this passage in Hebrew when they come to every place where it says Yahweh, they would say aloud, Adni, one of the other names of God because they were so concerned with disrespecting God by saying his name. And yet, this is his name that he gave to the children of Israel. And the one speaker said, if you listen to it, said we've often viewed it as a breath. Yahweh.
He said, every time we take a breath, this Jewish believer said, I think of the God who is active and present with me. Yahweh. It is important for us to also answer that question. Who is God to you?
I've shared this before when I was a young man and I was working my summers at Malagas Bible camp one summer I was there before the rest of the staff arrived just doing fixing jobs. And a group of men were coming up to do a repair on our little bridge. And I was there by myself and the men arrived and they were men that I had met before. And one of them came up and said, Stephen, how's the day?
It was a beautiful sunny June day. And I said, it's a glorious day. God is good. Because sometimes when you're like 19, you want to sound spiritual in front of older men.
And one of the men walked up to me, Mr. Weldon Cameron, and he walked right up to me, nose to nose, and he said, you know what brother? If you were lying on a ditch right now and the pouring rain with two broken legs, God would still be good. I had no response to that because I had to go away and just roll that through my grain.
It's like I was just meeting it as a nice compliment. It was a sunny day. But he laid on some seriously heavy theology because one of the things we have to think about when we think about the question, who are you God is one of the big questions is, do you believe that God is good? That is an essential part of our theology proper, the nature of God.
Do you believe God is good? And that's a hard question because in our day we have skewed the meaning of good. So I'll give you an example. At our school we recently had saved up money and we had this little soccer field because that is the be all and end all where people spend their free time.
Except it was a dirt field because they trampled the grass to death as they played on it all the time. Well a number of families over a number of years made donations and we were able to this summer put down artificial turf. So we have a little turf soccer field. And the students came and it's like, oh little best, you're awesome.
Oh you're so wonderful. And it's like, oh that feels good. Then we told them there were certain rules about the use of the field. And we had to share it with the younger students because the whole school family is paid for it.
So that meant when the little ones played, the big ones couldn't pretend they were an old or messy and blast the ball and knock over a five year old. Well all of a sudden we were miserable individuals. We were terrible. Oh that's cool.
They do nothing nice for us. Five minutes ago we were awesome because we gave you a turf field. Now we're terrible because we gave you rules around how to use it. And oftentimes we can view God that way.
When we pray for something and God says yes, like God is so good. We pray for something and God says no. And it begins to weaken our theological position. When we pray for healing and we receive it, awesome.
We pray for healing and it doesn't come. We question it. And this becomes something that we have to decide. By looking into the word of God, not on our circumstance, is God good?
And the answer is yes. Was God good when he called out Abraham? Yes. Was God good when he brought them in Egypt and protected them from the famine?
Yes. Was God good when he permitted them to become slaves in Egypt? Yes. Still good.
This is important for us, especially as believers in Christ. Do we believe that God is good? Moses has his answer from God, that God who God is. Then we come to the next question at the beginning of chapter four.
Moses answered, what if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, the Lord did not appear to you? So the first question was, who am I? The second question is God, who are you? The third question is, God, where's your proof?
God, where's your proof? That is an important question. And it's a question where we may not vocalize it, but at times we wrestle with it in our hearts. Where is your proof?
So God gives Moses some signs. Then the Lord said to him, what is that in your hand? The staff, he replied. The Lord said, throw it on the ground.
Moses threw it on the ground, and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Again, I love trying to picture this. Here's Moses standing here with his staff, six to eight feet long, sturdy staff that he uses to protect the sheep, to guide the sheep. And he's 80 years old.
He may also like to lean on it from time to time. And God tells him, throw it on the ground. So he throws it on the ground, and the moment he throws it on the ground, that piece of wood, which he's probably been attached to for quite some time, suddenly becomes a snake of those dimensions. And from the part of the world where Moses lives, big snakes are bad business.
So he runs away from it. While he's still processing, what has just happened? And then the Lord says to him, reach out your hand and take it by the tail. Now, those of you who are acquainted with snakes, we all know, or we learn quickly, there's certain things you don't do with snakes.
I, as a boy, experienced this lesson firsthand, where I saw one's a little garter snake and I was quite taken with it and I reached down to grab it, but I was slow and it was fast. So I femented to grab it in the upper part of the body, but grabbed it by its tail end, and picked it up and then discovered the amazing muscle control of snakes as it quickly twisted around and muckled onto me, because it didn't like the fact that I grabbed a tined ant. Moses would know this. You don't grab a six or seven-inch-foot long snake by the tail, unless you trust God more than your own understanding.
And in this moment, Moses has to make a choice. Does he trust God more than his own understanding? And we're told he reaches down, grabs it by the tail, and in that instant it becomes a staff again. Where's the proof?
Here's the first proof. Do you trust me more than your own understanding? Because when you do, you will see I will accomplish my purposes. And he gives the second.
That he says to him, this said the Lord is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you, then the Lord said, put your hand inside your cloak. So Moses put his hand inside his cloak. And when he took it out, it was leperous like snow. So here's Moses.
He's still grappling with the whole snake staffing. He may be looking at his staff a little more suspiciously now, but now God says, take your hand and stick it under your clothes. So he does. And then he pulls it out.
And now his hand is infected with leprosy to the point where the flesh is dead and rotting. The most terrifying among the diseases possible in the ancient world was leprosy. And suddenly he's leperous. In advanced stage in his hand, that is terrifying.
But then comes God's statement to him. Now put it back into your cloak, he said. Just like with the staff, snake thing, it's one thing, just suddenly have your hand become leperous. It's another thing to go and put it back against yourself because they believed it was contact to contact transmitted.
So all of a sudden my hand's leperous. Now God tells me to stick it back against myself. Trust God or your own understanding. Moses sticks it back against himself and when he takes it out, it's healed back the way it was before.
So Moses put his hand back into his cloak and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. Then the Lord said, if they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.
God gives proofs that he is able. He shows these the Moses, then Moses goes to the children of Israel and God uses proofs. He uses the nine plagues in Egypt to show the children of Israel and the Egyptians that he is indeed the true God because each of the plagues connects to one of the main deities in Egypt and he shows that he is real and they are not. All the journey for the children of Israel make through the wilderness.
God is constantly showing them signs, proofs of who he is. Ultimately, all of those going to one single great proof, the cross of Jesus Christ. The proof that God is all he says he is was manifest in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Is God good?
Yes. Because he sent his one and only son to the cross. To pay the penalty for human sin, for whoever believes on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ so that they will be saved. Is he powerful enough?
Yes. He went to the cross and at the cross every sin is paid for. Every sin is paid for. It is that big.
We had this conversation with the teenagers about the massiveness of that. That every sin brought to the cross is paid for. That becomes our proof. When I am living life as a follower of Christ and I go, oh, I can't do this.
I've messed up. Then I turn back to the cross and see the sufficiency of the cross, not only for my salvation, but for my sanctification, the cross is sufficient for me. When we need proof, we look to the cross. We often are not of the ilk to use physical symbols and such, but there's value in that.
Sometimes we need a reminder to look to the cross. When we gather together on Sunday morning in the first service around the Lord's table, that is a reminder of the cross. And that's the proof. When we come in weary, that's the proof.
When we come in broken down, we remember, wait. God through the cross has restored me, has redeemed me, has made me a new creation. He's going to finish everything. He started in me because of the cross.
And when I think of myself more highly than I ought and I think that I've actually doing pretty well on my own, and then I see the cross and I'm going to wait. That's what it took. It took the cross to make me acceptable to God. It took the cross to give me the strength to live every day.
It took the cross of Jesus Christ. That's the proof. Then we come to his fourth question. Moses said to the Lord, oh Lord, I have never been eloquent.
Neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant, I am slow of speech and tongue. We can boil this down and basically what Moses is saying is, I don't have what it takes. How am I going to do this? How am I going to do this?
That's a question that we face every day in one way or another. Whether it's in our work or in our relationships with our family. I can remember facing that when our first child was born and living in hell in the world, am I going to do this? And God gives a beautiful answer.
Moses couches it in the term of his ability to speak because he knows what he's going to have to do is going to involve speaking to powerful people. And so he focuses it all on his ability to speak. Some have suggested at times that maybe he had a speech impediment that doesn't seem to fit well with the language, that and the fact that the Egyptians were very critical of any physical defect. So he would not have been kept as a prince of Egypt if he actually had a physical speech impediment.
What he's meaning is he's just not as quick as other people. You know those people when you interact with them and they've always got a good, quick comeback and maybe you're the kind of person like me that I have a great comeback that comes to me about four hours later. It's like ah! Oh yeah, okay.
Whatever his reason he's basically saying, you know, how can I do this? And God's response to him in his context is perfect. The Lord said to him, who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute?
Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I? The Lord? Now go.
I will help you speak and will teach you what to say. For us, thanks to the cross of Jesus Christ, thanks to him, if we put our trust in him, we have the statement as Peter tells us in 2 Peter where he says that we have been given everything we need for life and godliness. Everything that we need, that because of what Christ accomplished on the cross, we are free and able to do whatever God calls us to do. So if God calls you to be a mom, then in Christ he is able to give you everything you need to be the mom you need to be.
Because he's infinitely more concerned about your children than you and I will ever be. It's the same. And dads, you're often getting persecuted in our current culture for the way that dads are described as either being lazy or inept or whatever. In Christ, dad, he is giving you everything you need to be the dad he's calling you to be.
As men, as women, I talked with the students, I had them stand up, I had the young men stand up and say, young men, we don't need boys. We need men. And God will equip you with everything you need to stand in this culture. To be what God has called you to be.
To put on the whole armor of God given to us through Christ and then to act. The same women, we need women of character to stand up in this world and say this is what it means to be a woman of character, dependent on Christ empowered by him to do what God's called us to do in this world. In this world filled with questions but no answers. We have four questions but God gives us the answer.
Who are we? We are created by God. And if we know Christ redeemed by him, given value and purpose. Who is God?
He is active and present. He is able and willing to do his perfect will in our lives. The proof of it is the cross and the proof of it is the testimony of every believer in Christ. I love it in the Psalms where it says what the redeemed of the Lord say so.
When God does something in your life, tell somebody about it. Tell somebody about it. When God is faithful to you, tell somebody about it. Because maybe the person you're telling is wrestling through the same thing.
And the adversary and our sin nature in the world is like, no, you're on your own. There's no hope. Tell someone about it. And then when we ask that question, how can I do this?
We look to his word and we see that the one who was gone before us. The author and finisher of our faith has made it possible for us. And through this we have much to give thanks for. Because he is able and willing to do a work in his people today.
And you look at Moses and it's important to note at the end of this particular passage, Moses was not convinced. He wasn't. Notice his response in verse 13. Moses said, oh Lord, please send someone else to do it.
Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses. And he said, what about your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you and his heart will be glad when he sees you.
You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth. I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will teach the people for you and it will be as if it were your mouth and as if it were you were God to him. But take this staff in your hands so you can perform miraculous signs with it.
Moses, after hearing God's answers to his questions, still was in a place. Of going, I can't. Yep. Yep.
Yep. But God doesn't let him off. Brothers and sisters, if you are in Christ, the beautiful thing about our awesome heavenly Father is he is not going to let you off. God loves us too much to leave us when he has so much more for us.
So if you are saying, God, I can't do this, I am too weak, then he is going to show you where your strength comes from. If you are in a place where you're like, no, I can't do this because I keep failing and falling back in the sin, then he will show you where your strength comes from and he will draw you closer to him. The only time where he will let you sit in a position for a period of time is if you're obstinate and you say, I don't want to. Then the Lord will let you experience what that is like.
We have much to be thankful for because in Christ we know who we are, we know who he is, we see the proofs and we know we have all we need. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you are the answers to our questions, that our identity is found in you and through you, that who you are is all you've described in your word, that you are good and holy and just and powerful and merciful and loving. Lord that you show us who you are through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
And Lord, then you equip us as we come to you with everything that we need. Lord I pray for each gathered here, for each family represented. Lord, first that each person would know Jesus Christ and have accepted his finished work upon the cross as the payment for their sin and will become a child of God. And Lord, for those who know you, who put their trust in Jesus Christ, that we would repeatedly ask ourselves these questions but look to you for the answers.
You've reminded again and again all that we have in Christ, all that you've called us to, all that you are able to do in and through us, for your glory. Lord, that we can be the lights in the stark world because we know the answers to the questions. And your answers are always true. Lord, as we go into the rest of this weekend that we may rejoice in you and in our many blessings.
We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.