I AM THAT I AM

Series: RepentanceLesson #3

In this lesson we are going to be further occupied with the thought of “REPENTANCE.” This is our third lesson in the series. We dealt with “true and false repentance,” we have spoken about the cross, showing that the cross has to be preached, as to what it is, before men are confronted with what sin really is to God, how horrible a thing sin is to God. Until we feel about sin like God feels about sin, we can never truly repent. We come now to this thought, “I AM THAT I AM.”

Ex. 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

I. God Has No Origin.

1. When we think of anything that has an origin, we certainly are not thinking of God.

2. Aside from God, nothing is self-caused, or self created.

3. The human mind, being created, has an understandable uneasiness about the uncreated.

4. We do not find it comfortable to allow for the presence of one who is wholly outside our familiar knowledge.

5. We tend to be disturbed by the thought of one who does not account to us for His being, who is responsible to no one.

II. Philosophy And Science Have Not Always Been Friendly Toward God. The Reason Being, They Are Dedicated To The Task Of Accounting For Things, And Are Very Impatient With Anything That Refuses To Give An Account Of Itself.

1. The philosopher and the scientist will admit there is much they do not know, but that is quite another thing from admitting that there is something they can never know.

2. I think the highest form of earthly wisdom is to know there are some things you cannot know.

3. To admit that there is one who lies beyond us, who will not submit to our reason, requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess. So we face it by bringing God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him. Religion is always an attempt at that.

4. That is the reason you hear so much coming out of this cultic thing called the faith movement that says men are little gods. This is Mormonism, with other things thrown in.

5. Men tend to level God with themselves and since they cannot stop Him from being God, they will become gods themselves. This is the outworking of a proud human. He cannot cope with the fact there is one outside of him.

III. One Of The Great Tragedies Of The 20th Century Is There Are Millions Who Belong To Churches, And Go To Church Regularly Who Never Think Seriously About The Being Of God.

1. Few ever allow their hearts to gaze in awe at the “I AM.”

2. Such thoughts are too painful. We prefer to focus on our own good and how to improve our own image.

3. Some may ask, “What bearing does this have on my life?”

4. The answer is, we are the handiwork of God, so it follows that our problems and our solutions are theological. The answer to every problem of the human is in the knowledge of God. We came from God therefore our problems are theological.

5. Some knowledge of what kind of God it is that operates the universe is an absolute necessity to a sound philosophy of life and sane outlook on the world.

6. Man is a created being who himself possesses nothing, but is dependent each moment upon the One who created him. The Bible says, “In Him we move, we breathe, we have our being” (Acts 17:28).

7. The fact of God is necessary to the fact of man. Think God away and man has no ground for existence.

8. That God is everything and man is nothing is a basic tenant for the Christian faith and worship.

9. In this utter dependence of all things upon the creative will of God, lies the possibility of holiness and sin. We are ministers of God, whether you want to take the responsibility or not, the responsibility rests with you as to what is produced in a spiritual world. What we believe, and what we preach is going to produce spiritually what men see and believe to be the church. We are all a product of the ideas that come to us and what we believe.

10. One of the marks of God’s image in man is his ability to exercise moral choice.

11. The teaching of Christianity is that man chose to be independent of God, and confirmed his choice by disobeying a divine command. God’s command to the man was, of all the trees in this garden you may have. They are good for food, you can have them. But of the one tree, the tree of the knowledge good and evil, you cannot have. In the day that you eat thereof, you will die. Man had a moral choice. He chose to disobey God.

12. That act of disobedience rejected God as the ground of existence and threw man back upon himself.

13. “Self” at that point, and not God, became the center of that man’s world. He became his own center.

IV. A More Positive Assertion Of Selfhood Could Not Be Imagined Than The Words Of Our Text “I Am That I Am.”

1. Everything God is, everything that is God, is set forth in that unqualified declaration of independent being.

2. Yet in God, “self” is not sin, but is the sum total of all possible goodness, holiness and truth. That is God.

V. On The Other Hand, Natural Man Is A Sinner Because He Challenges God’s Selfhood In Relation To His Own.

1. In all else man may willingly accept the sovereignty of God; in his own life he rejects it.

2. For man, self becomes “God” and in this he unconsciously imitates Lucifer, whom he chose to follow.

3. Yet so subtle is self that scarcely anyone is conscious of its presence.

4. Because man is born a rebel, he is unaware that he is a rebel.

5. He is willing to share himself and sometimes even willing to sacrifice himself for a desired end, but to dethrone himself is another matter.

6. No matter how far down the social scale he may slide, he is still a king on a throne in his own eye.

7. Selfishness and lawlessness are convertible terms.

VI. Sin Has Many Manifestations, But Its Essence Is One.

1. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that position declares “I am,” and in essence says, “I am God.”

2Thes. 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

2. What is the temple of God? Your body! “Self” sits there as God, which is what he is talking about. “Self” sits there claiming himself to be the I Am.

3. That is sin in its concentrated form, yet because it is natural, it appears to be good.

4. It is only when the word of God brings man before the Most High, without the protective shield of ignorance that this frightful truth is brought home to the conscience.

5. In the language of evangelism, the man who is confronted by the presence of Almighty God is said to be “under conviction.” That is the only place he can truly repent.

6. Man cannot come to God, except the Father draw him. This is conviction. This is the place where man is confronted with himself, and brought under conviction. He is convinced that he is a sinner by nature, and a rebel against God. This is the place where he can repent, because with conviction comes the power to repent.

7. Christ referred to this in these words, “And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement to come” (Jn. 16:8).

VII. These Words Were Confirmed At Pentecost. When They Heard The Word They Were Pricked In Their Heart And Cried “What Shall We Do” (Acts 2:37).

1. They saw themselves for the first time as sinners. They saw “self” for what it is.

2. This “what shall we do” is the deep heart cry of every man who suddenly realizes that he is a usurper and sits on a stolen throne.

3. However painful, it is precisely this acute moral consternation (shock, bewilderment) that produces true repentance and makes a robust Christian after the penitent has been dethroned and found peace and forgiveness.

4. The only thing that can bring man to this place is the faithful preaching of the word of God. We must preach the law until a man’s heart is exposed.

5. You cannot get a man saved until you get him lost. You cannot get him to repent and turn form the direction he is going, until he is convinced by the word of God that he is going in the wrong direction.

6. When the rich young ruler came to Christ, his question was, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mk. 10:17). There was admission that he was a law breaker. There was no place for him to get in and repent until Christ by the ministry of the word brought him to the place where he saw the covetousness of his heart. He went away sorrowfully.

7. You don’t have to repent, he didn’t. He turned away. But there is no hope for him, apart from repentance.

8. Someone has said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” We may also equally declare that, “The essence of sin is to will one thing.”

9. To set our will against the will of God is to dethrone God and make ourselves supreme in the little kingdoms of man’s soul. You find this in Pentecostal theology today.

10. There is a reliving of Romans 1:18, where Paul talked about “holding the truth in unrighteousness.” He went on to say, “when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, but came to worship the creature more than the creator.” They set themselves up as being greater than God.

11. Today you have the worship of religious celebrities. If you call a prayer meeting and tell people only Jesus is going to be there, they won’t come. But if you tell them, one of the big religious celebrities is going to be here, they will come. Such has become their god.

12. This is sin in its evil root. All other sin springs from this.

13. Sins may multiply, but they are yet one. Sins are, because sin is.

14. This is the rationale behind the much maligned doctrine of natural depravity, which holds that the impenitent man can do nothing but sin and that his good deeds are really not good at all.

15. This is what the Bible teaches. Man in his fall became deranged, and totally depraved; there is nothing about him that is good. There is nothing in him that can produce good. This is hard to accept by “selfish” man.

16. His best religious works God rejects, as He rejected the offering of Cain.

17. Only when he restores his stolen throne to God are his works acceptable to God.

VIII.The Struggle Of The Christian To Be Good While Still Bent Toward Self Assertion, When There Still Lives Within Him A Kind Of Unconscious Moral Reflex, Is Vividly Described By Paul In Romans 3.

1. Paul’s testimony is in accord with the teaching of all the prophets, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way…” (Is. 53:6).

2. There is no more accurate description of sin anywhere in God’s universe than that statement made by the Apostle Paul in the third chapter of the book of Romans.

IX. The Witness Of The Saints Of All Ages Has Been That An Inward Principle Of Self Lies At The Source Of Human Conduct, Turning Everything Man Does Into Evil. It Is Not Environment, Or Good Breeding; It Is That Inward Principle In Man.

1. To save us completely, Christ must reverse the bent of nature.

2. He must plant a new principle within us so that our subsequent conduct will spring out of a desire to promote the honor and glory of God. So what must happen?

3. The old self must die, and the only instrument whereby he can be slain is the cross.

4. When we see that this self is the root cause of all sin, then we are truly seeing what God sees. In conviction, we see ourselves as a rebel against God. It is only then that repentance is possible. Only then is it possible for us to turn from our wickedness to Christ.

a. If we are truly birthed of God, then, when confronted by the word of God this is the experience of our life.

5. If you bring people to the place where repentance is possible you will have to be true to the word of God.

6. In the preaching of the word of God, and the law of God, we bring the sinner, like Jesus brought the rich young ruler face to face with the fact that he is a rebel before God. We have then brought him to the place where his opinion about sin has changed. He really sees himself as to what he is, a selfish being, sitting on a stolen throne. He is his own temple, this body, which is to be the temple of God. But now that self has usurped that place, and in conviction, he sees himself there.

7. We must preach the gospel until he sees himself as God sees him.

8. Jesus brought the rich young ruler to that place, He lanced that corruption, that boil of covetousness and showed him that repentance was turning from self to God. That is what repentance is. He has the power to repent.

9. The young ruler, when he saw the truth, went away sorrowfully. He had much possessions and that was his god. “Self” was his god. He went away sorrowfully, but the power to repent was there.

10. God doesn’t toy with human emotions. If God convicts, then God gives the power to repent.

11. Bring a man by the word of God to conviction, then the power to repent is there. If he will do the proper job of repenting, the grace of faith will come.

Eph. 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

12. With repentance comes the grace of faith or the power to believe. With the believing comes the new creation.

13. That is the path of God. Preach the word, be faithful to it, and bring men to the place that they see themselves. Urge them to repent. With repentance, not only is their

opinion about sin changed, but their feeling about sin is changed. They see sin as God sees sin.