As much as Macklemore is a rapper, he is a motivational speaker, a preacher, a confessor, a scold. In almost every case, his yarn-spinning has a higher purpose, his stories vehicles for universal morals. He presents himself as someone to root for, and in so doing, he’s rooting for you, and everyone else, too.

That would explain why the Wednesday night performance of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis at the Theater at Madison Square Garden had the feeling of a tent revival as much as of a concert. Brimming with undeniable exuberance and quasi-religious fervor, and carrying the psychic exhaustion of years grappling with personal demons, Macklemore makes a sport of intimacy. Even as he’s bounding about, a string bean made of pure sinew, he’s an open book, looking to connect.

An overwhelming majority of “The Heist” — the first album from Macklemore & Ryan Lewis — is message music. There is the song about rejecting the usuriousness of major labels, “Jimmy Iovine”; the song about the lies underpinning consumer culture, “Wing$”; the song about the hollowness of dating a rapper, “Thin Line”; the song about the virtues of persistence, “10,000 Hours.” Ethics lessons abound.

These are the values and themes of the old hip-hop underground, independent rap’s late-1990s-to-early-2000s heyday, the womb for Macklemore’s style.