His Name is Father - Glenn Dallmann

Thank you. Good morning. I want to start with just a little commercial. Something about Minnesota, a place that's very dear to me. There it is. Flaming Fine Youth Camp. I've been going to this camp since I was just a little kid. And every summer they're looking for college students to help out as counselors. And the way that they do the summer counseling, it's for the months of June and July. You spend the whole time in the beautiful north woods of Minnesota. It's on a lake. You'll like an hour from the nearest town. So if you like roughing it a little bit, this is the place to go. It's also a great opportunity to make an impact on kids. So look it up on the website. If you have interest, find me, you know, Sean knows how to find me. And I'll put you in touch with a guy who's recruiting counselor. So a little bit about Flaming Fine. Let's go to the next slide. Some of us, I believe, have a problem. And that's we don't know God's name. And when we don't know someone's name, it is so hard. In fact, it's impossible, I believe, to get to know them. Without a doubt, I don't know most of you. If I looked really hard, there's maybe I could pick out about 10 names and that maybe I have a little bit of relationship with you. But for the most of you, you don't know me. I don't know you. We don't have a relationship. And this is the condition that some of us also have with Creator God. We don't know his name. Some are of 22. It's a Sunday morning and I meet a guy named Garrett Best. Nobody told me he was coming to York. I did know him from anybody. He's just, there's a visitor at UCLA. And so I meet him and we exchange our names. Hi, I'm Garrett. Hi, I'm Glenn. Where are you from? What do you do? I'm chair of the Bible department. Wow, cool. And so we had coffee. And then we had lunches. And for a while there, we were getting together almost every month. And right now, I consider Dr. Best, one of my personal friends. And we might go a month or two without really seeing each other interacting with each other, but because we know each other's names and because he and I share some history, we have this familiarity with each other. We know each other. We have a relationship. So York University has a new president coming in this summer. Dr. Tim Westbrook. Before that announcement was made, I had never heard his name. I didn't know anything about him. And I reached out to him on Facebook one day. He said, "Hey, my name's Glenn. Congratulations." And he reached back and said, "Hey, my name's Tim." And so we started messaging back and forth. And through all of that, he found out that a long time ago, I was a graduate of something called the Harding School of Biblical Studies, which I believe if I understood right, he is an administrator of right now. And a couple weeks later, I get a t-shirt in the mail of this program. And so I'm looking forward to getting to know him. And already, he and I have exchanged our names. And there's a little bit of personal meaning happening between Dr. Westbrook and myself. Out of curiosity, is anybody here's name Heidi? Do I have any Heidi's in here? Just raise your hand this morning. Okay, there's not right now. Okay, well, here's something happens to me. Every time I meet someone named Heidi, I get a jolt. And the reason being is, my wife's name is Heidi. And that name has very important significance to me. It is deeply embedded in my soul. There's so much emotion and memory and intimacy and friendship. 26 years of life together so far. Well, even a couple more beyond that. For children, we've raised, and we're doing life together. And so when I meet another Heidi, I'm having to reset. This is a different Heidi. I have to build a new relationship with and a new connection to that name. Here's my point. Names open the doors for relationship. If you hope to get to know someone, we begin by learning their name. And with that name, we start to attach all of our experience with them, our emotional connection to them for good or bad, right? Sometimes someone will say a name like, oh, I already don't like that person because I knew someone else for that name. And we have to relearn. Many of you struggled to have a relationship with the creator God. And I know there's many reasons for this. But I want to talk about just one reason. God is not God's name. God, that word, is a title. And it's almost impossible to have a relationship with someone's title. Tim Stafford once said, God is not just a power. He's an all-powerful person. God is a person. One of the most important stories in the Bible is the story of the Exodus when the Israelites are delivered from 400 years of enslavement to the Egyptian pharaohs. As this build-up is happening, the Israelites are praying to God. God saves us, but they really don't know who he is. The memory of him is somehow passed. And God calls on a guy named Moses. He says, Moses, you are going to deliver my people. And Moses says, choose someone else. I don't want to do it. And he has lots of excuses. And so one of the excuses is, I don't even know your name. Who am I going to tell them wants to deliver them? And so this is what God says. Well, Moses here says, suppose they ask me your name, what should I say? 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. God also said to Moses, say to the Israelites, the Lord. Whenever you know the Testament, you see Lord capitalized, it's symbolizing this name Yahweh. Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation. I'm told that this Hebrew word, Yahweh, sounds like the Hebrew words I am. And so God gives his personal name to Moses. And then for the generations, thousands of years, the Israelites came to know the Creator God by his personal name, Yahweh. And in fact, God is saying in this name, even though you don't know that history I've had with your people, I am the one who was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I have been a part of your family's history for generations. I know you, and I want you to know me. Here's my name. A part of this Exodus, the Israelites are journaling in a desert wilderness, and they do some horrible, horrible things against God. God is so irate, rightfully so, they says to Moses, I'm going to wipe them out, we're going to start over. And Moses says, God, don't do it. So God relents, he forgives the people, but then this is what he says to Moses. He says, Moses, I'm not going to go with you guys. You're going to go to the promised land. I'm going to help you out, but I'm not going to go with you. And Moses boldly says to God, he steps up and says, if you don't go with this, I don't go. And that's where we pick up this verse. God is so pleased that Moses said this. And Yahweh said to Moses, I will do the very thing you have asked because I am pleased with you and I know you by name. That says, I know your name, Moses. You and I have a relationship. So the Moses says, here's so bold. Now show me your glory. I want to see you. And Yahweh said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you and I will proclaim my name Yahweh in your presence. And here's a part of what that name means. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. God says to Moses, I know your name. And then he says, here's my name and Yahweh and Moses were friends. For thousands of years, Israelites knew God through this name Yahweh until the climactic appearance of Jesus. It would be a challenge to find a soul in this world who's never heard the name Jesus. I know there's some people out there who've never heard it, but you have to look pretty hard. Lots of people don't really know him. I get that. I'm just saying the name, this name is so important, so much history and relationship is captured in this name. And this same Jesus came to say, I'm here because I want you to know the Father. I want you to know God. In fact, he says, the one that I call Father because that's his name, you can call him Father. Here's what Jesus had to say. Now this is eternal life that they may know you. You see the relationship that they, all people, you, me, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Your relationship with God starts with you knowing his name and calling on that name. And then it grows by learning God's story. That's what the Bible is all about. It tells us the story of God, who he is, what he's done, and what he's doing even now today. In the same way that you would come to me and say, Glenn, I heard you from Minnesota. Tell me about that. I could tell you some of my story. The Bible tells us God's story so that we can connect with him and know him. I want us to end with saying the Lord's Prayer together. I'm going to have the words up here. Here's a prayer that Jesus taught his followers to say, and it's a prayer that connects us relationship with God or Father. Let's say this together. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.