Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 22, 2019 | The Names Of God - Yahweh

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September 22, 2019 | The Names Of God - Yahweh · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a series if you're visiting.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's the third week of the Names of God series, which is our fall series.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we're taking one name of God each week.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to take the single most important name of God.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: This name of God is used more than all of the other names of God combined, nearly 7,000 times in the Old Testament.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Its name, the name is Yahweh.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So two weeks ago when we started, we looked at the name, or actually a title, Elohim, which is the creator God, the powerful God who created the world.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: The third word of the Bible is in the beginning, Elohim.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then last week we looked at Adonai.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Say that word with me.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Adonai.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: That means Lord and Master, and it's used of human lords and human masters.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh, but it's usually just with Adon, and then of God, it always has Adonai.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's Lord and Master.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning we come to Yahweh in Hebrew, uh, Yod uh Hei, Bob Hey, four letters there.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this is an amazing name, but I did hear a joke uh about it um recently, and I know I need to be careful because I don't want you to get singed when the lightning hits me.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm uh I hear that Jesus was having the first meeting with his disciples.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, he had he had asked them, he had said, follow me to Peter and Andrew and James and John and Bartholomew and Matthew and so forth.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we got them all together that first night and they were eating.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And after dinner, Jesus says to them, I suppose you wonder why I have called you to follow me.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Yes, and he said, Well, actually, the reason is that I'm the Son of God.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, No way.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Yahweh.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, that bad joke, um, which is Sam's fault.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's standing at the back and told me that this morning, a couple hours ago.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, um, that will come back and have genuine and valuable meaning at the end, though I promise I won't retell it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Man named Robert Fuljum, F-U-L-G-H-U-M, is the Unitarian Universalist ex-minister who's written warm and friendly books such as All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, and uh-oh.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well-meaning TBCers donate his books to the library when, our church library, when they're getting rid of their books, not noticing that Fuljam declares rather openly what Unitarian Universalists believe, which is that he does not believe in God.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: He says, instead, I believe in Howard, as in our Father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then he explains that what he believes in is in people, people named Howard and Robert and Susie, right here on earth.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I take those books out of the boxes and I drive them over to the public library, and I donate them to the public library because I not only believe in God, but I believe that he has a personal name, and that his personal name is important to him, and it's not Howard, but his personal name is Yahweh.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that the very first thing that the Lord Jesus taught us to pray when he taught us the Lord's Prayer or the disciples' prayer, is to pray that God's name be hallowed, that is, kept holy, high, and lifted up.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And his name is the name I'm going to teach you today.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the name Yahweh.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: This fall, as I said, we're teaching the names of God.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But there are names of God, and then there is the name of God.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: In a way, this is the only name of God.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: All other names of God that I'm teaching you this fall are designations of God or titles of God, but not personal names.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so immediately we're faced with a very bizarre reality, this very strange irony, which is that Yahweh is clearly the single most important name in Scripture or name ever spoken in history, and yet most of the world today does not know this name.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, many of God's own children don't know this name.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, many Christians, if not most, if you ask them, does God have a personal name?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: If they were to say yes, and you were to say, then what is it?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Would answer you that his personal name is Jehovah.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: This almost unbelievable situation has, you know, about the forgetting and the neglecting of the most important word or name ever spoken has come about for really in four historical steps or stages.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know how much you like history, and because even someone who nearly failed history in college, like me, has learned to like it, I'm going to tell you what those four historical stages are, and you'll you'll understand a little bit about this word.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The first, um, before I do, let me just remind you of something I told you last week, and that is in your English Bible, the one you're holding in your hand right now.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you see L-O-R-D in lowercase, that's translating the Hebrew word Adonai.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: We studied it last week, it means Lord and Master.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if you find L-O-R-D and all four letters are in caps, then that's then in the original Hebrew the word is actually Yahweh, that personal name for God.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Really quickly, sometimes you'll see capital G, capital O, capital E God.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that only happens when you have the words Lord, God, Yahweh, and Adonai are right next to each other, and so they save the word Lord for Adonai, and then they capitalize God for Yahweh.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you understood that, then you must really be paying close attention because that was pretty fast.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So uh again, here are the three words we've done so far.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: God in your Bible is Elohim, Lord is Adonai, and capital Lord is Yahweh.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So here are the four stages by which this most wonderful name that God gave to be used, to be adored, to be, to be sung, to be praised, to be loved, how this name has disappeared down through history.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Stage number one.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is the stage of the days of, you know, Moses, uh, David, the kings of Israel, and so forth.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a reverent stage.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Reverend Israelites, pious Israelites, godly Israelites, hesitated to use the name Yahweh for one reason because uh there was a third commandment in the Ten Commandments that said, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Yahweh, your God, in vain.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: That means to emptiness.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: That means don't even use it casually or carelessly or sloppily, and certainly not as part of a curse.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Leviticus says if you use it as part of a curse, if you use it as part of a blasphemy, you're gonna die.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: All the people should pick up stones and stone you.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they oftentimes didn't, we know that, but early on they did, apparently, and it was supposed to be done.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So holy and reverend Israelites realized how important the personal name of God was to him, and so they hesitated to use it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: They would only use it, let's say, with their families and perhaps family devotions when they were quoting or reading the Bible, and they would say Yahweh, or they would use it, you know, at the tabernacle and later the temple, and they would use the name Yahweh.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: They would use it, but only when they were sure that it was in a reverent setting.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so they hesitated to use it so it became used a little less often.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, when they did use it or when they did read it, this is what it looked like in their Bible Y-H-W-H without any vowels, because the old Bible, the Hebrew Bible, sometimes that you'll study if you go to seminary, lacks vowels.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: They did not use vowels in ancient times.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You just had to know the language well enough that you would supply the vowels.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in Hebrew, it's uh Yod uh He, in Hebrew letters, Yod, He, Vav, He, and here's Yod, He, Vav, He.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: These four letters are oftentimes, even today, not even referred to at all, just simply called the Tetra, means four grammaton letters.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, if you read something from the synagogue, the Reformed synagogue here in Topeka, if they ever talk about the divine name, they'll either mention the sacred capital N name, or else they'll call it just the Tetragrammaton, and you're supposed to know.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the holy name of God, lacking the vowels.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's stage one.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: The reverend Israelites, when they'd come to YHWH, would read it in the Bible, but they would hesitate to use it.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Stage number two, before the time of Jesus and at the time of Jesus, uh, reverence turned into superstition, the superstition that said that if you use it and you use it carelessly or whatever, God will zap you from heaven.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, you shouldn't use it at all.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we move closer to the time of Jesus, common people were told, you must not use this name.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So they didn't use it at all.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Only priests, it was said, could use the name.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then as we get closer to the time of Jesus, normal priests were said, you can't use the name, only the high priest can use the name.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then as we got to the time of Jesus, they said the high priest can't use even the name of Yahweh, but only once a year, the most holy moment of the year, when he goes in to offer the blood on the mercy seat on the Day of Atonement, and then he can use it one time.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: However, tradition said they tied this cord to his ankle because if he misspoke it, if he slobbered it, if he said it somehow wrong, their superstitious view was that God, being uh, you know, as legalistic as they were, would zap him and kill him, and therefore they would have to drag his dead body out, his charred corpse or whatever.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's during Jesus' time, and that's when you've moved from reverence to superstition, and so that's you can see, not even the Jews are using his name.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Take a couple of hundred years later, now the Jews are out of Jerusalem, they're no longer even using the Hebrew language, and when they come in the Bible to YHWH without any vowels, they have no idea how it should be pronounced.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, up till then, during Jesus' day, when they came to Y-H-W-H in their Bible, they were told to say Adonai instead of Yahweh.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime you see those letters, they said, say out loud in the synagogue, Adonai.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so they would do that, but then they forgot how to pronounce uh Hebrew, and so they took the vowels of Adonai, A-O-A-I, and they slid them in in their Bibles.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: They started writing those vowels to remind the people who are reading to say Adonai and not Yahweh.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened there is that uh you had Y-A-H-O-W-A-I-H.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not a real name at all, just sort of a hybrid, vowels from one name, consonants from another.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: They looked at the first three letters, by the way, and they said, Y-A-H, that won't work, because Y-A-H is actually the first three letters of the divine sacred holy name, Yahweh.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, like hallelujah at the end of that's the first part, that's the shortened form of Yahweh, or Isaiah, right?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So my Kaya, and so we've got to avoid Y-A-H, because somebody may accidentally say we, Yahweh, at the end of it, and then they'll die or whatever.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they just changed the A to an E and came up with Y-E-H, O, capital W, A, H.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Which doesn't seem to mean anything.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: But they understood when they came across this word, the Jews, Jewish readers did, that they should say, Adonai.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now you come to stage four.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Stage four is the time of Martin Luther, and a Protestant scholar took a look at Jehovah and not knowing the history of this, thought that that was genuinely the real name of God.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't afraid of the real name of God.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't like the Jews.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was a Protestant.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to say the name of God.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: He thought that was the real name of God, and so he took that as the real name of God, only he was saying it in Latin, and so Y in Latin turns into a J, W turns into a V, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we came up with the name of Jehovah, which is not a real name at all, even though when you and I hear that, that's what we associate with God.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I tell you as strongly as I can that no one, neither angel or divinity in heaven, recognizes Jehovah as the name of God.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would suspect that some of the angels in heaven think that God's foremost enemy, the devil, has waged a war against God's people from Israel to modern times, even knowing the true name of God, which is used deliberately by God 6,828 times in the New Testament.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Three times as often almost as the next most often used word, which is Elohim for God.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because God did mean his name to be known and used and praised and loved.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, today we use a name that's actually kind of weird.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to know what it's like to take the vowels of one name and the consonants of another and see how weird that is, take the vowels of your last name if you can and slide them into the consonants of your first name and see what you come up with.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you do that, Doug will would be Dig Will, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't be James, I would be Jamas Congon.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah would be G.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Rimaiah, you know, so it's not even a word, it's just a weird thing out there.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And just want you to know that even though I am responsible for having the name Jehovah stated in the sermon bumper, I did that because I didn't want to freak all of you out by using Yahweh Nissi, Yahweh Roy, and so forth.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that is how the name, the true name of God, Yahweh, got lost.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the next stage was, of course, after it started getting used, the King James Bible put it in there.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so thousands upon thousands of times you have in the King James and the New King James, the Bibles many of us grew up on, verses like Psalm 83, 18, that men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: God's going, no, it isn't.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Art the most high over all the earth.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the early 1900s, actually what we call a cult started in the middle 1800s, about 1860.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you have the Jehovah's Witnesses who, not knowing any of this and thinking that Jehovah is the true divine name, and why in the world aren't we using the divine name would knock on your door.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now they know better, so they don't say this, but for decades, even when I was here in Topeka would knock and they'd say, you know, what distinguishes us from you is that we love and use the divine name.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Jehovah.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: We are the Jehovah's Witnesses.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I asked them for a copy of the New World Translation, their translation, and in the beginning it says what sets our translation apart from all others is that we have respect and honor for the divine name, the sacred name of Jehovah, which is not really a name at all, is it?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: A Holman Christian Standard Bible is a Bible that I advertised as being excellent about 10 years ago here.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: It decided, uh this is the Southern Baptist came up with this Bible, and uh it, unlike the other translations, it decided we need to use the divine name, and so out of the 6,800 uses of the name Yahweh in the Old Testament, it decided to try one-tenth of them, 650 of them, and it turned them into Yahweh.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, people like me loved it, and in fact, I told you when I was talking about this translation, that's one reason I loved it.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, the voting public voted with their feet in their pocketbooks and were so freaked out by the name of Yahweh.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: What in the world is that that they didn't buy that Bible?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the new, the new Christian Standard Bible, which is they took out the word Holman, which again, I mean, how many words do you need in the word Bible?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now they've gone back and they do it like everyone else.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, so you will not see the name Yahweh in the Christian Standard Bible or in any of your Bibles, unless you're using an old King James or something like that.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Which is sad, isn't it?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: That the name God took for Himself, and I'm about to show you the name that has the meaning that you're going to like, perhaps better than any other name of God, that that name has been lost today.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we go to the passage in which God explains his name and introduces his name.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most famous passages in the Bible.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Story of the Burning Bush in Exodus chapters 3 and 4.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the hero of this story is none other than Moses.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're exactly right.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Moses is sort of the Lance Armstrong, Antonio Brown.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta watch out here.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's sort of the tiger way, he's sort of the guy whose best days are only a distant memory.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's been shamed because what happened is he grew up in Egypt, he grew up in the Pharaoh's palace, blessed by God, intelligent, and this is actually a good movie.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what movie this is?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Prince of Egypt, yes.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's about 3,000 times better than the movie I recommended from this pulpit that you go see called Noah.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I never recommended this because I was a little jumpy after Noah.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: This actually does a pretty good job, and it's the story of Moses.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, when he turned 40, he noticed, he saw that he was, he was a Hebrew, he saw slave masters taking advantage of his people.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: He killed one, and he had to run for his life.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: In Exodus chapter 3, he has now been on the backside of the desert, 500 miles away from Egypt for 40 years.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: He has married uh uh the daughter of a Midianite priest out there, and he has no life to speak of.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's babysitting, he's caring for, he's tending, he's shepherding the goats and the sheep of this Midianite priest.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we read, if you have a Bible, in Exodus 3, 1, that Moses is tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far, go ahead and open your Bible if you want, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: More literally, he led them outside his normal circle.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's looking for grass.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's so little grass down there, as those of you who have been with me, the southern part of Israel, the Negev, know.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's gone, who knows?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's got to be like a hundred miles at least, walking away from his home with his herds, looking for grass, and he is at an unfamiliar place.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: He is at the foot of a mountain, and we read that he's come to Horeb or Sinai, depending on your translation, the mountain of God.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: He does not know that this is a great mountain.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: He does not know that in one year he's going to be back with two million Israelites, climbing that mountain, getting the Ten Commandments from God.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: He has no idea of this.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's unaware of anything.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's used to just day in, day out, and all of a sudden he sees something weird.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: The angel of the Lord of Yahweh, it says, appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is a thorn bush, that kind of a bush.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it didn't burn up.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like you or me, Moses thought, and I love the Bible for taking us inside the psyche, the psychology, and the minds of people.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: God's able to do that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so Moses thought, I will go over there and see this strange sight, why the bush doesn't burn up.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So far, he's just like you or me.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: When Yahweh saw that he'd gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Moses.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Moses.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So here he is, he's seen the bush.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: We got a photograph or a drawing or whatever it is.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and he sees, and by the way, for those of you who are KU fans, I want you to know this is your passage.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: May not be KU's passage anymore.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Kansas University seal.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the middle of the seal, you'll recognize Moses who is hunched over beside the burning bush.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't that make the cockles of your heart grow warm?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And don't they love the story of the burning bush over at KU?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you see circling inside here in Latin words, this quotation from Exodus 3 I will see this great vision in which the bush does not burn.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the way KU explains the seal is that this.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is simply a picture of a person who is who is a seeker after knowledge, you know.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I know, because we know the Bible, this is actually a story out of the Bible, and he is actually worshiping God, which in the 1860s, you know, okay, you started out honoring God in that way.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got a story, we've got a story that you, Jayhawk fans, should like, and that you uh, and that you wildcat fans will say we really need.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this is a story of the burning bush.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, Moses, Moses.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Here I am.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, Don't come any closer, remove the sandals from your feet, for you are standing on holy ground.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Notice here it's not father's plural.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where I'm going with this, what I'm gonna share with you, which is so incredibly remarkable, is that the name Yahweh is the most personal name of God.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a family name, it's a covenant name, it's a name of love.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim may be far off, you adore him.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Adonai may be the God, the Lord, you kneel down to and obey.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're hurting, when you're crying out, Yahweh is whom you want.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that this startling word, which everybody tries to translate with an S at the end, but is singular, I think he's referring to Moses' daddy.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's saying, Moses, you miss your mom and your dad, Amram and Jacobed.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the God of your dad, Amram.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm also the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, he says.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: At this, Moses hid his face because he knows it's dangerous to be in God's presence.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said, I've indeed observed the misery, I've seen the misery of my people in Egypt, and I've heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I'm concerned about their suffering, and I have come down to rescue them.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna rescue them from the land of the Egyptians, that furnace of the Egyptians, and bring them up into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: So go now, he says, I'm gonna send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to see something here.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: This account rests upon four verbs, the same four verbs that are used in the previous chapter and in the following chapter.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And these four verbs are that God has seen the misery of his people, he's heard them crying out, he knows about their suffering, and he's come down to rescue them.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: If this was not Yahweh, if this was Elohim, God might talk about his mighty power.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: If this was Adonai, he might say that he was the Lord of all the earth.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: But this is Yahweh.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to find out that when Yahweh shows up, Yahweh shows up with a statement that he's seen our trouble and he's heard our cry and he knows our suffering and he's coming down to rescue us.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the personal name of God means, the name that God chose to use more than all the other names that he has combined.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so Moses answers, I think, modestly, the way you and I would.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who am I?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my best days are behind me.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a has been.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: I used to be pretty famous down, but they don't know me anymore, not after 40 years.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a broken down shell of a man.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you know what he could say if he knew?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: He could say, compared to the pharaoh down there in Egypt, Amenhotep II.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Amenotep II, by the way, was one of the strongest pharaohs in all of Egyptian history.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's the Bo Jackson, by the way, of Egypt.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: His mummy today in Cairo is larger than almost anybody else's.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's this physical specimen.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And his father and his friends wrote about him that he was the fastest runner.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: He was the Carl Lewis of Egypt.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's faster than any other person.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: They said that of all the people in Arch that could shoot archery, and I just shot you with my spit on you, I think, but said that he was the best archer by far in Egypt and told stories of the amazing, the amazing way he could shoot a bow and arrow.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he was the Robin Hood of Egypt.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: They said that he could row a huge skull for three miles without stopping and outstrip every other rower.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was so strong.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: They went on and on about his athletic ability.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, he was considered the greatest single fighter, the Bruce Lee or whatever of Egypt.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: He could fight anybody and defeat them.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is Moses, an 80-year-old has been.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you're telling me I can go down to Egypt and somehow I can pull out my people from Amenhotep II and Egypt.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, What?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say what he'd say if he was introducing himself as Elohim, the mighty creator.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say what he'd say if he was introducing himself as Adonai the Lord.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: He says what he'd say if he's closer than a brother.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I'll be with you.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: The single most common phrase that God uses to describe his relationship with his hurting people in the Bible, Psalm 23, when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You need not fear, for I am with you.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, don't worry about it.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be with you, I'll be there.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses then says, Listen, if I go and I tell them the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of their forefathers, has appeared, and I say to them, you know, He sent me to you, and they ask me, What's His name?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: What should I tell them?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's just not a throwaway question.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you ask what a person's name is in the Bible, you're asking for something more than we ask.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Our names are oftentimes, you know, the last movie our parents saw, you know, before we came around.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in the Old Testament, you know, a name is something special, something that gives you sort of a key to who they are and their character and their power.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob, you remember, wrestles the Son of God overnight, all night.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he grips hold of them and won't let him go.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Tell me your name.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And God answers him, I'll give you a lot of things, but I will not tell you my name.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Samson's father Manoah is visited by an angel.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: He feeds the angel.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: The angel says, Uh, I've got a great message for you.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Manoah says, What's your name?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the angel says, I'm going to make your son great, and he's going to deliver your people from the Philistines, but I will not tell you my name.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: In Mark chapter 5, Jesus goes to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and he sees a man filled with demons, and he wants to cast the demons out.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to have a crowbar in which to do it.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to have a handle, and so with a voice of power, he says, What is your name to the demons?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Demons have no choice but to answer.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Legion.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Using that crowbar, he plucks them out of the man, casts them into a herd of swine.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow, in a way, I don't fully understand.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: A name means more than just a name.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: A name means character.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses knows if he can tell his brothers and sisters, the Hebrews, the name of the God who will be with them, then they may believe him.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: What should I tell them?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the God who generally says, I'm not going to tell you my name makes an exception, which is why this is the most famous passage about God's name in the Bible.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And God replied to Moses, I am who I am.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: What in the world does that mean?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: To be verb.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one thing it means is, as I told you two weeks ago, a famous African-American preacher from LA could preach a whole message on God is.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: So somehow it means that God exists, and he exists completely apart from us, and he's eternal, he's unchangeable, but his existence is just there.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to tell us more about his name in a minute, but he says, that's what you're to say to the Israelites.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am, has sent me to you.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then he adds something more about his name.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: He says, say this, Yahweh, and that's not I am, that's he is.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh has sent me to you.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is my name forever, and how I'm to be remembered in every generation.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: What does he mean by Yahweh?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: What does he mean by this name in this context?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at the context of names in the Old Testament, it's more than just tearing apart the name.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's how is that name being used or introduced?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've summarized it because we didn't have the time for me to explain how I got this down from 12 things to four.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: But here are the single most important aspects of the name Yahweh, and you'll see right away it's not a trivial name, it's complex.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not flat and simple, it's rich and beautiful.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, Yahweh means the self-existent eternal God.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, it means the relational covenant God.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter one, Elohim makes, creates the whole earth.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter two, when he makes Adam and Eve with his own hand using mud out of the ground, gives them, gives Adam his name and enters into covenant with him.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: It suddenly changes from Elohim in Genesis 2 to the name Yahweh, because he's talking about a relationship and a covenant that he has.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, this is the God who, Exodus 3, verse 12, remember, who is with us.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's present.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is that great phrase.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you're talking about the God who is with us, you're talking not about Elohim or Adonai, you're talking about Yahweh, and fourth, the God who is for us, who's on our side, who comes to save us when he hears us and sees us and hears our cry.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes to us.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's the gracious God.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we mean, that's what God means when he said Yahweh.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: He sees and hears and knows and comes.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: He is.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: He is with us.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: He is for us.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he is, and I put it in one phrase, he is the God who is here for us, Yahweh.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: The name above every name is a name that has everything to do with you, with him being closer than a brother, sitting closer to you right now than the person next to you.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is that amazing or what?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: This very name that we consider distant and alien and a little bit freaky, God means to be just the opposite to us, to be the kind of a name that we clutch to ourselves and absolutely love.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let me show you briefly a couple more verses and then I'll wrap it up.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: You get to Psalm 19.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: The reason, one of the reasons this is a favorite Psalm, not just of you and me, but of scholars, is that it splits the divine names in half.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: The first six verses are all about Elohim and use that word.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: The heavens declare the glory of God.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim, the firmament shows his handiworks, the sun comes out.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly we have a right turn, a 180 actually, in verse 7.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly we change to the name Yahweh.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's talking about his word, the word with which he guides us, the word with which he reveals himself.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when God talks about his word, he uses the name Yahweh.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because he wants to come to us and meet us every single morning or every single evening in his word.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: He wants us to have a quiet time.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Whereby our quiet time is not how much do we learn or how much do we memorize, as much as it is, I want to meet with you personally as your Yahweh, your relational God.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he says the law of Yahweh is perfect, reviving your soul.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's sure, making wise the simple.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is the God who is here for us.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Yahweh.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when he says, I am the Lord, that is my name in Isaiah 42, he is saying, I am Yahweh.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is my name, and I want you to know it.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if when we go to heaven we all wear name tags, he's not going to wear a name tag using one of his titles.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to wear a name tag using either the tetragrammaton or maybe just the word Yahweh.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying we're going to use name tags.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, I was just to show you this is the personal name of God, right?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said, in a way I don't quite understand, it's more than a name.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you have this interesting picture in the Bible of where we're not just told to praise Yahweh, we're told that the name of Yahweh is to be praised, the name of Yahweh is to be worshipped, the name of Yahweh is to be loved, the name of Yahweh is to be feared, the name of Yahweh is to be proclaimed.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: His name somehow can be identified with his person.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: His name is somehow to be identified with his person, carries the same power as his person, the same grace and love as his person.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: This name, Yahweh, somehow carries extra freight.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when we read Psalm 8, O Lord, O Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, we know it means he himself is majestic, but somehow his name is majestic in all the earth.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: When we read in Proverbs, the name of Yahweh is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we run to the Lord Himself in prayer, but we run to His name as well.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ask me to explain it.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just looking at the evidence of the Bible.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow God loves his own name so much that he says in Revelation 19 that when I return on a horse, yes, I'll have King of kings and Lord of Lords written on my thigh, but I will also come bringing a name that no one knows.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he means that no one knows because the people he's coming for in that day are all ungodly people who do not know him.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because the only name that I know of that he gives us is the name Yahweh.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's the capstone, all right?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: That you Yahweh of the Old Testament, the supreme God, and this is his name, comes to us in the New Testament as this is his name in the New Testament, Yeshua.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is the name of Jesus in the New Testament.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Jesus is the Greek name, but remember these are Hebrews, and they spoke Hebrew.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: So his name is Yeshua, and you find this name at times in the Old and the New Testament.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament is Joshua.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the name Yeshua is actually a combination.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the first part.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: The yeah is actually the first part of Yahweh, and the Shua, Hoshua, is saves.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hold it, you say.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: I thought you said that Yahweh, the name Yahweh, means that he's close to us and with us, and he comes to save us.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: I say, yes, you're catching on.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh really means the God who's so close to us that he saves us when we're in trouble, and the name he took on when he came as the second person of the Trinity was Yeshua, which means Yahweh saves, which is why the angel said to Joseph in his dream, you shall give him the name Jesus or Yeshua, for he will save his people from their sins.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeshua, the name of Jesus, and almost certainly what he was called on earth, means Yahweh is salvation.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Stay with me just a moment.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the Pharisees are attacking him, they're hating him already, and Jesus provokes them by saying this.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you truly, before Abraham was, I am.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: In Greek, I go, Amy, same words used in the Greek translation of Exodus 3.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they took up stones to stone him, knowing that he was calling himself Yahweh God.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: In a remarkable turn of events, one of the perhaps ten most famous New Testament scholars in the world, taught my son-in-law, I met him when I was over in Scotland, Dr.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Richard Bakham, wrote a book about a half a dozen years ago, a shocking book, which offended a lot of people, Jesus and the God of Israel, in which he explains that the Yahweh of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New Testament.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: He basically was making the most strong claim for the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ that anybody possibly could.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: But he's simply saying what I've been telling you this morning.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh in the Old Testament turns into Yeshua in the new.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you what I'd like from you.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I'd like from all of us as a church.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I would say, can we distinguish these three names?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim, you, what?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Worship.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Adonai, you obey.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh, you love.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so what do we do with this name?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Praise Yahweh, declare Yahweh, pray Yahweh.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're told to praise Yahweh in the Bible.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're told to declare, witness Yahweh, and we're told to pray Yahweh.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain what I mean really quickly.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna, uh Jeremiah will come out in a minute and we will actually praise Yahweh using that name.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I suggest that you think about that.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Find ways to use that name and praise.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, declare Yahweh, the greatest, the most cosmic tragedy in the entire world and the entire universe is that most of the people on earth not only do not know the personal name of God, but they belittle God Himself.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: They ignore Him, they think more about the color of the wall of their living room than they do think about God.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: They mock Him, they criticize Him, they do not know Him, and yet you and I know that within a few feet of where we sit, there are thousands of people within a few miles of where we sit, there are hundreds of thousands of people whose lives would be utterly changed if they only knew God, if they only knew Him personally by His name.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why we are told, declare the name of Yahweh.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, declare Yahweh.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Tell what kind of a God He is, that He is a God who hears, He is a God who listens, He is a God who comes to rescue us and desperately wants to save you.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'll only turn to Him and see how He came to you in love, Yeshua hanging on a cross and believe in Him, He will give you eternal life and the forgiveness of sins.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: He'll give you something that you can't imagine, this entirely new existence in which you have a personal relationship with Yahweh Himself, the God of the universe.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is that incredible?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder he tells us to declare Yahweh and promises that if we go out and tell people about him, I will be with you.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's gonna be hard going down to Egypt.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's gonna be tough.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in a tep's down there.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you it'll work out.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you I'll be with you.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you I'll have your back.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, pray Yahweh.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: You say, How do I pray Yahweh?
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds so weird to me.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a suggestion for you.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: You start a prayer like this, maybe this week.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dear Lord Yahweh.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then you pray a request, and then at the end you say, In the name of Yeshua, I pray.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of Jesus, Yeshua, Yahweh, Yeshua.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you want to do it like most believing Jews today, Jewish people who have come to Christ, oftentimes end though in in the Hebrew.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you to listen carefully and say this with me.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: They end this way.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Beshimba means in.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Shem, S-H-E-M, like Shem, Ham, and Japheth means name in the name of Yeshua.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Say this with me.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Beshim, Yeshua, Amen.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bishim Yeshua Amen.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bishim Yeshua Amen.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, dear Lord Yahweh, we come to you thanking you for the beauty of this name, how majestic your name is in all of the earth.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a strong tower.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're running to it, running to it, running to it, because we know that you, Yahweh, sees our trouble, hear our cry, you know our suffering, and you come down to rescue us.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: You rescued us in the person of Jesus Christ, and you keep rescuing us.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Please, Heavenly Father, as we praise your name, as we declare your name, as we pray your name, would you be with us as you've promised?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.