“I AM Has Sent Me to You”
Have you experienced times when you had great difficulty finding the will to endure? Days when you can’t find the strength within yourself to persevere, when you just want to give up? Times when you cried out to God saying, “I need strength. I need patience and I need it now!” We all go through rough patches in our lives when we need strength where weakness prevails, patience where courage has failed — times when we need a greater spirit of long-suffering. I have experienced such times. Maybe you are going through such a time now.
Is the birth of Jesus just a seasonal holiday? Society will put baby Jesus away after Christmas if he was in the picture at all. Our Advent message is a plea to all of us — Trust that God is coming to you at all times, especially when you are going through rough times. Our heavenly Father knows what you’re going through. Immanuel is with you, not just at Christmas but every day. With intentional devotion, through Scripture and prayer, the Spirit will indeed give you long-suffering, hope, peace, joy, and love. He will lift you up, give you renewed strength, and sustain you.
1. God Hears and Knows
Today’s Bible story tells how God answered the cries of Israel when they were suffering in Egypt. Remember the story of how Israel came to be in Egypt. When the land of Canaan experienced a severe famine, Jacob heard there was grain in Egypt. He took his family there They were refugees, but because Jacob’s son Joseph was Egypt’s second most powerful man, these refugees settled permanently in Egypt under the most favorable conditions. But on this side of heaven, good things don’t last forever. Let’s pick up the story generations later. The Bible says,
A new king, who had not known Joseph, came to power in Egypt. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. Let us deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further …” So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor … So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. (Ex 1:8-11,13-14)
We can’t imagine what they must have gone through and how they suffered. What do you do in your times of severe suffering?
The people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew. (Ex 2:23–24)
As Jesus tells us, our heavenly Father knows (Mt 6:32), but—this is important—the children of Israel did not know that God was coming to their help. From what they could see and experience, it seems that God has forgotten about them. He was not answering their prayer, but he most certainly was. God was preparing a great advent to rescue them. “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform” (old hymn). Whether we see it or not in our times of suffering, we can trust that our prayers to God are heard and being answered in God’s best way for us. “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear” (Is 65:24).
Suffering Israel did not know but God was sending someone to rescue them. Moses was an Israelite, one of them, but he had gotten into trouble with the pharaoh. So he fled from Egypt to the land of Midian. One day when Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, he saw the famous burning bush. “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned” (Ex 3:3). God spoke to Moses out of the bush, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their slave masters, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Ex 3:7–8).
All well and good, but now God gets personal and demands faith. “I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” (Ex 3:10; cf. Acts 7:30–39). Wow! If you were Moses what would you think? Sounds like mission impossible. Could we talk about this? Moses says to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God answers that question with a most solemn pronouncement, “I AM who I AM” (Ex 3:14).
Their prayer for help, our prayers for help when we need long-suffering, patience, strength, and courage are heard by the God who is. “I AM who I AM” period. Everything in life is transitory. Our suffering is only for a time. We are mortal. Only God always is, present tense forever. “‘To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him?’ says the Holy One” (Is 40:25). “I AM who I AM.”
2. “I AM Has Sent Me to You”
“Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Ex 3:14). “I AM has sent me to you.” God sends Moses. With signs and wonders, Moses brought promises of deliverance, and those promises sustained the people with long-suffering as they hoped for deliverance. So, I AM sent Moses, but there’s another who is sent.
Decades later, at the end of his life, Moses said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” (Dt 18:15). There is another prophet, a greater prophet than Moses, the ultimate “I AM” who is sent. Seven times in the Gospel of John, Jesus solemnly says, “I am.” Four times in John 6 he says, “I am the bread of life” (Jn 6:35, 41, 48, 51). “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12). “I am the door of the sheep” (Jn 10:7, 9). “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25). “I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:11, 14). “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). “I am the true vine” (Jn 15:1, 5). It wasn’t just some god who spoke to Moses at the burning bush. It was the Triune God speaking in the burning bush, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Triune God is a sending God. The Triune “I AM” sends Jesus to you and me. He says, “The very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me” (Jn 5:36). Again, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (Jn 6:29). Again, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me” (Jn 6:57). And yet another, “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Remember, Moses said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen.” Far greater than the exodus that Moses led out of Egypt is the exodus of our deliverance by the prophet greater than Moses, Jesus Christ (Acts 3:22).
You were ransomed ... not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. “He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God” (1 Pt 1:18-21).
Moses had done signs and wonders to point ancient Israel to God’s promise of deliverance. When Jesus did signs and wonders, the crowds exclaimed, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!” (Jn 6:14). “It is to him you shall listen.”
3. Believe that “I AM" Comes to You
Believe that the great “I AM” comes to you every day. Faith means living your daily life aware “I AM” comes to us as our “very present help in trouble” (Ps 46:1). Jesus promises, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). He encourages, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb 13:5). Listen to him! Even though you may still be deep in suffering, trusting the promise of Jesus’s presence will bear you up. It will give you hope, patience, long-suffering, and joy. One hymn says, “When all things seem against us, To drive us to despair, We know one gate is open, One ear will hear our prayer.”
In our first Advent sermon, I quoted Brother Lawrence who said, “The practice of the presence of God is to find joy in his divine company and to make it a habit of life, speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him at all times, every moment …” The quote goes on, “without rule or restriction, above all at times of temptation, distress, dryness, and revulsion, and even of faithlessness and sin.” Nothing is better for us than the safety and certainty of knowing we are in the presence of God. “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Dt 33:27).
4. Jesus Sends Us
Now, as Moses was sent by God, as the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sends you and me to bring his rescue to others. Jesus says, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn 20:21). Again, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21). Yes, He sends all of us into the world to be his witnesses, his missionaries to make disciples of all people.
That means we must proclaim the gospel to the people who don’t yet know that God sent Jesus into the world to bring us forgiveness and everlasting life, to save us. It also means that as believers we must encourage one another at all times, especially when a fellow believer is going through hard times. We are sent to carry, bear each other’s burdens (Gal 6:2). We, the different parts of the body, “should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it (1 Cor 12:25-26).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The believer lauds the Creator, the Redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of a brother. The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other’s benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians!”
The Bible is God’s Book of Advents to encourage us. When we pray for long-suffering in our times of trouble, God comes to bear us up and sustain us. The I AM at the burning bush, the I AM who is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is still coming to us through his Spirit and Word.
Advents abound. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:2–5). “Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thes 4:18). And remember, “I AM Has Sent Me to You.” He sends us into the world so that people can know He has come and is coming.