We welcome you if you're visiting with us today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the head of this church. I want to invite everyone to turn in God's word to the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, Exodus 3, verses 13, 14, and 15. We've looked at this passage in the past already under the simplicity of God. And as we look at the attributes of our great and majestic God, we would do well to look at this passage again as we consider the aseity or the aseity and immutability of God. These are just more theological terms that simply mean the independence of God, the aseity of God, and the immutability, the changelessness of God, all right? just for the sake of context here, is Moses, 80 years old, tending his father-in-law's sheep. He sees a burning bush that is not consumed, that is aflame, but is not being burned to a crisp, and he draws near to it, wondering what it is, and God, through the burning bush, speaks to Moses. And this is what God says in his word, Exodus 3, 13. Then Moses said 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 said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, 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 and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Amen. Let's pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, as we turn now to your word and to, Father, to you, as we encounter you in your word. Father, we pray that you would open our eyes to see wondrous things from this written testimony, and that, Lord, we would draw near to you with confidence and with true faith, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that Father, we would see you as the one true living God, the God of gods, the God who alone exists. The God who alone is independent and depends on nothing and no one. The God who, because he is independent, is changeless, does not change, does not mutate, does not evolve. Father, you do not learn, you do not grow weary. Father, you are the everlasting God. From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Father, help us, help us to draw near to you by faith. We ask these things now, in Jesus' name, amen. There is a poem that caused some stir recently in some homeschool circles that we inhabit online. The poem's name is Creation. You can look it up. It's by James Walden Johnson, who was an American poet, and he was known for many, many pieces of works, many pieces of written works. And in the poem creation, he begins that poem by saying these words. He starts out with these lines. And God stepped out on space, and he looked around and said, I'm lonely, I'll make me a world. Let me repeat that for us this morning. This is the poem, the poem's beginning. And God stepped out on space and he looked around and said, I'm lonely, I'll make me a world. And what do you notice from that poem that perhaps shocks you or perhaps seems somewhat off? The picture of God that we have in this poem is very distinct. It's very different from the picture of God that we have in the Bible. The picture of God that we have in this poem is actually quite unbiblical and yet quite common. Let me explain. For the God of James Walden Johnson's poem to exist as God, he must create the world. He is dependent on a creation outside of him. That's because the creation of the world helps to relieve his state of loneliness and possibly boredom. However, if God does not create the world, then he remains in a deficient state of loneliness that is left unaddressed. And so according to the poem, there is a deficiency in God. However small, however minor, deficiency nevertheless remains in God that he must address with the help of something outside of himself. He's lonely, he has to create the world. But what does the Bible teach? What does the Bible teach? In our text this morning, Exodus 3, verse 13 and following, God says to Moses, go to the people of Israel and tell them who I am. Tell them my name, right? Moses says, who will I tell them sent me, right? These are a hard people. Israel is hard-hearted. They're somewhat stubborn. They're not gonna believe me if I just go without a name. without the authority of the one true living God. And so what does God say? God said to Moses, Exodus 3, 14, I am who I am. And God said, say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. God necessarily is. God necessarily is. He is the God who is. He is the God who exists. But where does God get his existence from? From where is God? God simply is. God is, if we wanted to answer that question, God is from himself. God exists of himself. And this is a significant point to understand in order to understand something of the majesty of God. This is what theologians have called over the years, the aseity or the aseity of God. It's a English word from Latin, from two Latin words, ase, A-S-E. In English, aseity is A-S-E-I-T-Y. In the Latin, a means from, and se, S-E means self. So in other words, when we speak of the aseity of God, we're saying that God derives his being from no one and nothing else but his own self. John 5, 26 tells us, Jesus says there, the Father has life in himself. So let me put this in a number of manifold ways for us to understand. God is self-existent. God is uncaused. It's not so much that God is his own cause. God is uncaused. God is uncreated. God is life. God has life in himself. He does not need anything outside of himself. He is absolutely independent and self-sufficient, without conditions, without qualifiers, absolutely independent. We take God and we contrast him with creatures and creation. Our lives are completely incomplete. We're not independent, but we have constant need to depend on things outside of ourselves. Right, we have deficiencies that we seek to remedy with something external to us, right? We need food, we need clothing, we need shelter, we need sleep, we need friendships, right? If you're ever bored, what do you go do? You go outside and play, or you read a book, or you do some cleaning, or you take a walk, right? You do something to address your boredom outside of yourself. to solve a deficiency you sense in your own life. And yet, right, God is not like that at all. The outside world for us affects us internally, right? I was just walking around the house yesterday, and I did what every dad does. He stubbed his little pinky toe, and it hurt. And that's the way we live. That is the world in this fallen world. That's the world of creation and creatures. And yet God has no deficiency. God has no incompleteness. God is not affected internally. He is not changed internally by anything outside of him. And this, of course, tells us about another adjacent doctrine. We're not going to take a lot of time to look at it, but let me just mention here the doctrine of the impassibility of God. The impassibility of God. That is, God has no passions. He has no feelings like you and I have feelings. That is to say, God's happiness is not increased or decreased by anything outside of Him, namely by creation. When we think about what was God doing before creation, this is a very difficult question to ask, to understand, to answer. John Calvin is reported to have said 500 years ago in a kind of tongue-in-cheek manner by a very curious mind who kept asking Pastor John Calvin, what was God doing? What was God doing before he created the world? And John Calvin says he was preparing hell for curious minds who keep asking what God was doing before he created the world. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, he said that. But what we do know from God's word is that God is eternally satisfied with himself. God is not lonely. God is not bored. God, with the greatest, most unimaginable fullness of joy and delight, is in relationship with himself. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, world without end, forever and ever and ever. Did God need? Did God have a need to create the world? May it never be. God has no needs. God did not create the world because He was bored, because He was lonely, because He had a need to do something. God created the world because He chose to. In His infinite wisdom, in His infinite knowledge, God chose to create the world. And that's it. And that's really the most we can say about the reasoning behind why God does things, why God did things in the beginning of creation, the beginning of time. And so we come back to our text, Moses, in whom can we trust? Who sent you, Moses? Who will we worship? And God says to Moses, to tell the people of Israel, to tell us, his people today, the one who alone has no need is the one needed by all creation and his people. The one who alone is independent is the one upon whom all creation and his people depend. Upon whom can you call and in whom can you trust? the God who is, who needs to entrust himself to no one and to nothing. Who can you call upon? The one who needs to call on no one to live, to act, to deliver his people, to sustain his creation. No one is needed. It's one of the things that we perhaps need to understand most importantly, most emphatically, No one is needed. No one is necessary. No one is indispensable except God. Except God. Richard Muller in his multi-volume work on reform dogmatic says, it belongs intimately and irreducibly to what God is that God is. Only God is absolutely necessary. Only God necessarily is. And God reveals himself to Moses as the self-existence God, the I am. I am who I am, the independent and the self-sufficient, the absolutely necessary God. And this God, who is necessarily existent, who is self-existent, who has no need, who depends on nothing outside of himself, reveals himself to Moses, furthermore, secondly, as the God who does not change. Notice what he says in verse 15. God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. The one who sent me to you is the one who gave the patriarchs this promise 400 years ago, hundreds of years ago. And He promised to the patriarchs a promise that was a partial fulfillment of a promise He gave thousands of years before that, in Genesis 3.15, to send a champion, a conqueror, the offspring of the woman who would crush the serpent's head. Moses, who sent you? The God who does not change, but is ever faithful, not only to creation, but to his people. And he is, first and foremost, faithful to himself. He's faithful and consistent with his own character. And this is the faithfulness we see most resplendently in God giving us his Son, Jesus Christ. Hermann Bavink, in his work, Reform Dogmatics says this, and I've included a quote inside your bulletin for your benefit. In the middle of that quote, he says this, God will be what he was for the patriarchs. what he is now and will remain. He will be everything to and for his people. It is not a new and strange God who comes to them by Moses, but the God of the fathers, the unchangeable one, the faithful one, the eternally self-consistent one who never leaves or forsakes his people, but always again seeks out and saves his own. He is unchangeable in his grace, in his love, in his assistance, who will be what he is because he is always himself. This is the God that Moses, that Israel, that the church, that you need today. A quote-unquote God who is subject to outside forces is a God who will constantly change. A God, quote-unquote God, who is dependent upon creation is a God that is not dependable. He is not an all-powerful, self-existent God. But the living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of Israel, the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, is the one true living God who does not evolve. He does not mutate. He does not change. He does not learn. He's not learning with history and with creation. He does not forget anything. He does not get anything added to him or subtracted from him. In his essence, God does not change in his love, in his power, in his promises, in his wisdom, in his righteousness, in his knowledge, in his decree, in his will. Malachi 3.6 says, I, the Lord, do not change. That is why you are not consumed, O Israel. Psalm 90 verse two, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. James 1 verse 17, there is no variance. There is no shadow of change, right? You consider what shadows are. They're always shifting about as the sun changes position in the sky, our shadows change. But with God, there is no such variation or change. God is the immutable, changeless God. God does respond to this fallen, sin-saturated, ever-changing world, but He does so from His unchangeable character and nature. He does so with hatred against sin. He does so with a willingness to answer his people's prayers and with an eternal wisdom that has taken into account our sin and our suffering and how he will respond to all the various circumstances of our life and this world. This is the God that we need. And as we conclude this morning, let me simply give one point of application for us. How often are we confronted with a counterfeit God? How oftentimes are we preached and sold a bill of goods that is not true? How often are we told by the world, by our own hearts, by the messages that bombard us on a daily basis, you need this. You need this to complete you. No, we need God to complete us. We need God to fill our void, our emptiness. Or perhaps we're not told that we need this, whatever that is. Oh, we're told you, you are self-sufficient. You are independent. You are complete in yourself. And to this, we must also say, no, we are nothing without God. We are not self-existent. We are not absolutely independent. We are creatures. We need God. We are absolutely dependent and needy of him. To be told you need this to complete you, or you are complete and self-sufficient, in both instances, The lie of the world, the lie of Satan preached is that the creature can be exalted to the place of the creator. And that is never true, ever true. Creation, whether it's something outside of us or we ourselves, we're told is said to be the ground of all life and sustenance. And that's not true. The Bible tells us the truth. The Bible tells us that God alone is our life, that God alone necessarily is, that God is the one in whose light we see light. God tells us in Acts chapter 17, that he is the God in whom we move and live and have our being. John 5 tells us that it is the Father who has life in himself. Truly nothing and no one is ultimately necessary except God. Not food, not clothing, not riches, not shelter, not friendships. We need all these things. Don't get me wrong, we're creatures. We need all of these things. Matthew six tells us, right? Don't be anxious for food, for clothing. Your heavenly father knows that you need them. We're not ghosts, we're not immaterial. We need all these things, but all these things are given by God to point you to an even deeper need, which is your need of God. Food teaches us that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Sleep teaches us to rest in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins in life and in death. Clothing teaches us that God in Jesus Christ clothes us with himself. The riches and the wealth of this world teach us that God is our true inheritance. Our earthly homes and houses teach us that God is our refuge. God is our high tower. Even as we enjoy the things of this world, we enjoy them in Christ and for the sake of Christ. We are not self-sufficient, but we need God who is self-sufficient and self-existent. You and I are not independent, but we must depend on God who is independent. We change, we mutate, we, as it were, learn and grow and grow forgetful even in our later years, but we need the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God of Moses, the God of Israel, the God of the church, the God who is immutable and does not change. And in all of this, people of God, don't despise your helplessness. Don't despise your neediness. Don't despise your creatureliness. God means for you to lean into it. In his light do we see light, do we know, do we live, do we move, do we breathe and have our being? God is life and he gives life and he creates and he sustains all things. God alone is God, God alone is and he is forever. So why would we trust anyone or anything else? Amen, let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we thank you for the revelation of Christ, the revelation of your person and character, that you are the changeless God, the God who does not learn, who does not grow weary. Father, the God who is and is of himself. Father, help us to trust you. to turn to you time and again for all things, for you promise, Father, to provide us with all that we need, Father, and to give us, Father, not only the things of this world that we need, but to give us yourself in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the rich blessing of salvation. We thank you for the rich blessing of being reconciled to you. and Father, this relationship that we have with you, Lord. The most important relationship, Father, and in that relationship, Lord, we have every other thing, every other blessing, Father, that we need. Thank you, Lord, and we ask all these things and give you thanks in Jesus' name, amen.