Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 8, 2019 | The Names Of God - Elohim

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September 8, 2019 | The Names Of God - Elohim · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Adonai Jehovah Jira El Shaddai Jehovah Sabaoth El Roy Jehovah Macedish Jehovah Nissi Elohim Jehovah Sidkinu El Olam Jehovah Rafa El Elion Yahweh Good morning this is a new series I'm very excited about it and those voices are voices of TBC children and adults.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to begin the series and this message this morning by having us all recite the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's bow our heads and say it together.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's your name?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You get that question maybe more than any other, don't you?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't mind it unless it comes from the same person who asked you five minutes before.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then you answer Donald Duck, because you know they aren't listening and don't care.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: But when people ask you your name, the answer matters because your name matters.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Your name's an important part of who you are.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your very identity is wrapped up in your name.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And your name matters to you.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: You appreciate people who remember your name because there are so few of them.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had someone over to eat the other day.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: They noticed how Melody's always calling me honey and darling and dear, and I heard them compliment her out in the kitchen how sweet she was to call me such nice names, and I heard her reply, honestly, I've forgotten his name.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Not really true.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us have very interesting names, names that our parents slaved over.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Letter by letter, names with meaning.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're named after a grandmother or favored uncle or famous historical figure.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you're little, your name actually says more about your parents than it does about you.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever name you have, you eventually grow into it, and it becomes who you are, and it begins before long to say a lot about your personality and about who you are as a person.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then we grow up and then we have children and we become name givers.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the names we give our children say a lot about us.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Parents who loved their family often give their child a family name.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Parents who are conservative often give their child an old-fashioned name.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Parents who want to be known as clever may give their child an unusual name.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Parents who love pop culture may name their child after their favorite singer or actor.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Parents who really love food may name their child after a favorite food.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Colby, Brie, Olive, Peaches, Kale.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel your pain, Kale.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or even after a favorite sandwich, which is how my grandson got his name Reuben.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that's I'm just I'm just I'm just kidding about that, though I told him that just to see how a three-year-old would react.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Melton and I thought a lot about the eight names that we gave our four children.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: We gave them names that had special meanings, and we gave them names of family and friends.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're pretty much stuck with the name that your parents stuck on you, though some people change their names entirely.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was in college, I uh switched from my middle name Roland to my first name Jim.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when people ask what they should call me, I always tell them Jim, unless it's a grandchild.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then I tell them Papa.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't much like the name that your parents stuck on you, then just wait.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: When you get to my home, says your Heavenly Father, I'm gonna give you a new name.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Which should prove to you beyond the shadow of a doubt that God really cares about names, that names matter to God just like they matter to us.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And not only does your name matter to God, but God's name matters to God.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: One reason we know that is that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and he gave them the model prayer that we prayed together a few minutes ago, he told us to begin with the words, hallowed be thy name.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first priority in our prayers.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing we got we need to ask for.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because after all, though a lot of us, as we recite that prayer, think that we're not asking something, we're declaring something, we're making a statement about God's name.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're not stating a fact of what is.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: We are actually requesting what should be.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: We are asking God to hallow, to make sacred, to make holy, to make high and lifted up his name, which is asking God to do what he already wants and plans to do.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Which is no more, no less than what prayer is meant to do.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's God's way of bringing you into kilter, into line, bringing your priorities into agreement with his priorities.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: God desires that his name be hallowed, that it be treated as holy and sacred and high and lifted up.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that should be our desire as well.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then our obvious next response to this is well, what is this name that we are supposed to hallow?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the first reason that I'm going to teach you the names of God this fall, because God's names matter to him.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so they should matter to us, and we should know what is the name we are supposed to hallow.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Names matter.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason I'm going to teach you the names of God this fall is that just as your name or names matter and reveal a lot about you, God's names reveal a lot about him.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that knowing God's names is a doorway into getting to know God personally, getting to know him better, which is the most important thing in this life and the next.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Getting to know God better, the supremely important thing.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: One doorway into getting to know God better is a doorway we've taken several times since I've been here at Topeka Bible Church.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's the doorway of God's attributes, studying God's characteristics, his attributes.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: He is omnipotent, right?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's omniscient, he's omnipresent, he's gracious, uh, he's all of the things that God is, he's unchanging, immutable, and so forth.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we've gone through that door a couple times, but there's another doorway to knowing God that I've never taken, I've never taken you through here at TBC, and that is the doorway we find in the Old Testament of the names of God.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are about 20 names of God in the Old Testament, and if we go through that door, we will discover a lot about who God is, because he gave himself most of those names.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So to study those names is to learn who God is, what his personality is like, and knowing them will enrich your prayer.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to suggest that you pray these names.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: It'll enrich your prayer and your worship as you pray and sing these names.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's right down our alley.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because in my tenure here, in the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of good God-honoring worship music.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the songs, admittedly, aren't all that good poetically or grammatically or musically, but one thing's unmistakably, it's irrefutable, that by and large, these songs, these worship songs that have been written in the last 40 years, focus on God and try to honor God and glorify Him.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what we're noticing.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that as worship songs move more towards God, preaching in our country has moved away from God.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: That while worship songs are more Godward than they ever were, preaching is more manward than it's ever been.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's more occupied with relationships and with feelings and with our contemporary issues and our personal problems.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't really understand why that is.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: That songwriters should be focusing more on God and sermon writers should be focusing more on man.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand why it is that our songs are more vertical and our sermons are more horizontal.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's just something wrong with it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this fall, obviously, we're going to go really vertical with our sermons and look at God.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the second reason, because names matter second, because names reveal something about God.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: The third reason comes out of a verse in Psalm 9, which goes like this: those who know your name will put their trust in you.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The third and last reason I'm doing this series is really practical because we're low on trust.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Trust is under attack constantly in this day from the outside, from political events, from geographical and historical events, and it's under attack in our personal lives.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's harder than ever to trust God because of some of the stuff that I hear and pray for you, pray with you about.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Attacks on your health and on your jobs and on your friendships and relationships and marriage and children and so forth.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: But those who know your name will be able to put their trust in you.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So as we study the name of God, that will build our trust.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: His names build trust and it'll make us more content.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: It'll make us more relaxed, and as we trust him more, it'll make us able to risk more.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: The more risks we will be able to take to glorify God and make him known, the more bold we can be in our witness.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the more uh, maybe perhaps the less we will have to trust that we will put our trust in material things.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: The more we will set our affections on God, and the less we will set our affections on ourselves.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, that's all the introduction and why I'm doing this, and I think that's important.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to go to the first and most fundamental name, the name we're gonna cover this week, and it has to be the first name that you cover when you do a names of God series, for it is the first and most fundamental name of God.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, um uh the name Elohim is sort of an expansion of the Canaanite and ancient Near Eastern name of God, which is L.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: E.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: L, remember Hebrew's written backwards, and that sort of looks like an L, which is how it's pronounced, E-L.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So El, when the Israelites came across the Jordan to conquer Jericho and take the land of Israel, the Canaanite god, their Zeus, was the god El.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes in the Old Testament you have this word, especially as part of names like Elijah or Israel.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: He wrestles with God, Daniel or Samuel.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you find, rarely, the word Eloh, which is part of El, was used in the ancient Near East.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And later on, the Arabs took the same two letters or this same one, and it became Allah, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard that word, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're with me so far.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you just barely joined me here.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the first word we want to look at is the key and fundamental name for God, and it's called Elohim, and it not only is it the first mentioned in the Bible, in the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and earth, but as far as we know, it was the first pronounced name of God on earth, in earth's existence.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time we read about God's name pronounced on earth is by Eve to the serpent when she said, Elohim said, You must not eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So Elohim is the first and most fundamental name of God.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, it becomes used just constantly in Genesis chapter 1.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it's in verse 1.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, are you getting dizzy?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting really dizzy.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't bring my Bible up here, but as you know, it begins in the beginning, Breshit Bara Elohim, third word in Elohim, and then it gets used, and God said, Let there be light.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim said, Let there be light.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: 32 times in the first chapter, 35 times in the first story, which ends in chapter 2, verse 3, you have this word, Elohim, which is of course translated God.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely critical word.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to dig down into that word.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's used 2,750 more times in the Old Testament.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the second of the four things I want to tell you this morning is that not only is it the first and most fundamental name, but it's the very, the very word Elohim tells us that God is great.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean is that the last two letters of this word tell us that God is really special, that he's great.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that's true is that the last two letters of the word are the same as the letter S in English.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's the plural.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were to say, I have two cars, but you were to use the Hebrew ending, you'd say, I have two karim.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Abdul Jabbar.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: You'd say, I have two cars.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you say I have a couple of dogs, I have a couple of dogim, I have a couple of katim.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of children, you'd say child em.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Does this make any sense to you?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim, say it with me.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's pronounced as if it's E-E-M.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Say it together.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim, and the Eem is the S, is the plural.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Generally, it's the plural, which makes you ask, since we know, you and I know there aren't a plurality of gods, more than one God.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are three persons in the Godhead, but only one God.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is this a plural of number that there's more than one God?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: 150 years ago, people said yes, the Bible was polytheistic in the beginning.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it something else that I'm titling a plural of greatness, or some scholars call it a plural of emphasis?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here, this is interesting.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um is a plural of number.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me as Elohim.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: But here in the same verse in Deuteronomy chapter 5, we have, I am the Lord or Jehovah, your God, Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, no other gods before me.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: So as you go through the Old Testament, you'll find when it's speaking about the Canaanites or other pagans, and it uses Elohim, it's talking about their whole pantheon of gods.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: G-O-D-S small G.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it's used, it's the most common name for the Lord God, and really is it saying there's more than one in the beginning?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: God created the heavens.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a little whisper or hint that there's a plurality there.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Three persons and one God.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: But when Jacob, you know, finished wrestling with Elohim throughout the night, and the next morning said, I have seen Elohim and wrestled with him.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Was he saying that he'd wrestled with all three members of the Trinity or with more than one God who tag teamed?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it must be, uh Elohim must be a singularity that is used, the uses the plurals to indicate a single entity, Hero Israel, the Shema, Deuteronomy 6, 4, the Lord our Elohim, the Lord is one.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something special about this Lord, this God.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: He is great.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: He is uh, he's by the way, there are other words that use the plural in Hebrew that are not plural, like L'Hhaim.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of L'Hayim?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the plural on the end?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't mean lives, it means life.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a plural because life is great.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or shemayim means heaven, and that's the plural ending.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Water is Mayam.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: There are things that are so important, so cosmic and so great that they deserve the plural I am at the end.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit like the plural of majesty.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you were to go to Queen Elizabeth and try to tell her a knock-knock joke, she might say, We are not amused.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: The royal we.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or in Prince Caspian, High King Peter, when challenging someone to armed combat, says, says, uh, it is our royal pleasure to engage you in man-to-man combat.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are the God of the universe, then you have every right to say it is our royal pleasure to create the heavens and the earth, and to use the I am and to call yourself Elohim, the great one.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: The very word Elohim tells us that God is great.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if you start using that word in your prayers, as I encourage you to do, or as you sing this word Elohim, in some of our worship songs, make sure you understand that it has a halo around it of awesome greatness.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Third point is Elohim is God the powerful creator.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the single most important point.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: You'll probably like the fourth and last point best, but this is the single most important point about Elohim.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that it has, that it includes the hint of power.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Probably scholars think that these two letters E-L come from a root that means the strong one.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he's got all these muscles, but but it's always seems to be the word used in Scripture for God creating the world.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why it's all the way through Psalm 1.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's God the creator.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: He Elohim created the heavens and the earth.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: When you are marveling over the Grand Canyon, when you're marveling over the fall changing of colors or the stars at night, you are marveling at Elohim.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it would do you well to bow your head and to say, Oh God Elohim, I adore you, creator, great and powerful one.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: A passage in the Old Testament which sort of holds hands with Genesis 1 is David's song and Psalm 19, the first half of which is all about Elohim.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: The second half I'll take next week.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about the personal name of God Yahweh.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it begins like this the heavens declare the glory of Elohim.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: The expanse proclaims the work of his hands.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are three elements in each line the heavens and the expanse.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the sky, what you see especially at night.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or during the day, when you look up and don't look at the sun directly, or they're an eclipse.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then it personifies them as if they're speaking out loud to you from the skies that the stars are crying out.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim is great.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: They declare the glory of Elohim.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: They proclaim the work of his hands.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 adds to this by saying it happens constantly, day after day.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're pouring out speech.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Night after night, they're communicating knowledge.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then the writer backs up and he says, of course, there is no speech.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are no words.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Their voice is not heard, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't actually hear it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: You see it, and it communicates in your head, and yet their message, though it's silent, has gone out to the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the world.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is that message?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is the message that the great God Elohim is the creator of all of this.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastes 11, 5 adds to this by saying, we don't really understand it, do we?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: As you don't know the path of the wind or the body, how the body's formed in the mother's womb, so you can't understand the work of Elohim, the maker of all things.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're regularly reminded of this, as astronomers write in science magazines, about their startlement at the fact that, you know, 99.9% of the universe is completely dark matter, but then they find out that it weighs more than the rest of the universe combined, or the fact that you have these quasars and black holes, which have the same kind of power in them as if God squeezed the earth into the size of a golf ball.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't understand how that's true, but we know something clearly from Genesis 1, which is picked up in Romans 1.20.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Admittedly, God here is not Elohim, because it's in Greek, not Hebrew.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if this is in Hebrew, when it's translated into Hebrew, Elohim is the word used.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul says in Romans 1.20, since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen and heard, being understood through what he has made.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, people are without excuse.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Don't argue with people about whether God exists or not.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: The argument's not between you and them, the argument is between them and God, because they do understand it, they've seen it.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: God has put that knowledge inside them, and says Romans 1, 18 through 20, they have repressed it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: They've had a little help from the enemy to repress it, but they've repressed it.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So God created the cosmos out of chaos.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: He created a beautiful, brilliant, organized universe out of watery darkness and blackness.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: He created design out of undesigned, impersonal nothing.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you begin to see the result of this.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: If God is really Elohim, the strong creator, then we, you and I, are here because of divine design and providence and life has meaning and order and purpose.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: But if Elohim doesn't exist, and Genesis 1 is a fiction, the universe was not created by God, then the rest of the Bible falls as well.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fairy tale because how can you believe the rest of it?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: If there's no Elohim, there's no Emmanuel, no Elohim, no resurrection, no Elohim, no heaven.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Death is the period at the end of our sentence.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if there is a God, if there is an Elohim, there is a design, purpose, meaning, and future.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the second point.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I hesitate to go into the third point because at this point, after you get to Elohim's God the power, at this point in a sermon, pastors are always building, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're adding stuff on.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: The sermon's getting richer and deeper.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I've decided to go more shallow.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've decided to subtract words.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've decided to go more basic, all right?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth point is only two words long.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim is.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim is.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I chose it because of remembering something that happened 20, 25 years ago.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: There was a movement in our country called Promise Keepers back in the 90s.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: 50,000, 60,000 men, believe it or not, and loads of them, 150 from Topeka Bible Church included, would drive to Colorado and fill up, help fill up a stadium out there, or later in Kansas City.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And listened over a couple of days to some amazing speakers.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: One of our favorite speakers ever during that decade of Promise Keepers was the Reverend E.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: V.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hill, now passed on to glory.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And be interesting, I would guess that there are some confused angels in heaven because his voice and God's voice, I think, sound exactly alike.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of the messages, one of those years that he went around and preached was a simple message, God is.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: It lasted 40 minutes.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And none of us breathed.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I kept thinking, how can somebody preach on two words from Genesis 1 for 40 minutes?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he'd say something, and then he'd repeat in his deep stentorian voice, God is.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes he would whisper it, and sometimes he would gravelly shout it, and sometimes he would cry it out, and sometimes he would sing it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end, of course, all of us were, you know, normal people were standing and shouting, God is.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And his point, of course, was that the most important single idea in Genesis, even more fundamental than God is the powerful creator, is just that God is.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Genesis 1 assumes that in the very first verse.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: He said, once you get it settled in your heart that God is, a lot of your other problems will get solved as well.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: He said, if God is, then bad can be made good.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sin can be atoned.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Chaos can be brought into order.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: If God is, he said, then there's hope for the hopeless and help for the helpless.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: If God is, then all of life has meaning, purpose, and direction.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: All of life is sacred and precious.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if God isn't, then we got ourselves a mess, he said.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to talk to you tonight about the is-ness of God, he would say.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I thought of that this summer when Melody and I were up two months ago to visit our daughter Adriel up in Nova Scotia.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And last night we went with them to a park where they had an outdoor musical.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: An outdoor musical that we knew we would love because it was the wonderful wizard of Oz.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: We were pretty excited about that, about our three granddaughters hearing that.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they were real entertainers up there, and you know, they went through the crowd, the audience outside, asked us where we were from, and when they found out we were from Kansas, they said they needed to start out with an apology for whatever would follow.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Weren't quite sure that we would care for it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was entertaining, but I must say it was entertaining in the way it's all Wizard of Oz has always been entertaining for me, and that is it's been entertaining in a disquieting way.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's because uh, you know, I'm aware the book was written in 1900 by L.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Frank Baum.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was a difficult time in our country, difficult time even in the Bible belt of our country, because in 1900, you know, we were 100, 150 years into beginning to doubt as a country, as a culture, just beginning to doubt whether God is.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Darwin was uh book published in Barwin was 40 years before this, but he was just part and parcel of this doubt that was starting to come across our country almost to devout people like a horrifying, menacing cyclone.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when I see or hear or read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I can't help comparing the cyclone in that book and the story of that book to the cyclone in our country of doubt about the isness, shall we say, of God.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, the story is a quest, but it is a quest which, unlike other quests, ends in disillusionment.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Al Frank Baum said as he wrote this book in his preface to the first edition, that all this was was a children's story, that unlike other children's stories, which sometimes scared little children, this was going to be a totally pleasant and happy, unscary story, which makes my wife laugh, because if you ask her when's the scariest moment of her childhood, it was watching the movie.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe the book wasn't, you know, as scary.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a fable about disillusionment.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's about discovering that the one of whom everyone in the Emerald City speaks in hush tones of reverence does not exist in reality, but is merely a human invention.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know whether Baum had this in the back of his mind, but I do know that he lived and wrote at a time when the question of whether or not God existed was really key.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this story he writes about, it seems like a normal hero's quest.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dorothy and her companions, four people in four difficult situations looking for rescue, don't seem different, like I say, from a lot of hero tales.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if the story had followed the traditional scenario, then it might have been what Baum claimed it was, a nice story that ended well.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: But what really ends up being different about this story is not that it avoided being scary, but that, like I say, it's a quest tale that ends in discovering that the so-called hero is really a humbug and doesn't really exist at all.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: All is not lost, of course, because when the four of them uh discover that the great and terrible Oz is not really who he says he is, when they get behind the curtain and watch him say, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, they uh things do work out.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dorothy does find her way home, not through this miracle worker who is no miracle worker.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the others sort of get what they wanted, but not the miracle that they wanted.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: They find out that they had it all along, or they've been developing it on their trip.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even the Emerald City turns out to be a scam, right?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because it turns out, Dorothy says, so um, isn't everything here green?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Dawes says, no more than any other city.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, but when you wear the green spectacles that I've given everybody, why, of course, everything looks green to you.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then there comes those moments in the play and in the book where I go, why did you have to put God words in everybody's mouths?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you have to have Oz saying, I'm the great and terrible Oz, a phrase that is taken directly from six places in the Old Testament about God?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that when they show up, you know, he says, Who are you and why do you seek me?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're not seeking him anymore, they're there, but why do you use a phrase that's probably the most common phrase God uses in the Old Testament to seek about seeking him?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And why then does he have Dorothy respond, respond, I am, I am small and meek?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's all just accidental, but I can't help feeling as though what we have here is a God behind the curtain.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when they hear his voice, and Dorothy and the others look all around and they don't see him, and seeing no one, Dorothy asks, where are you?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the voice answers, I am everywhere, but to the eyes of common mortals, I am invisible.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then we discover that this wonderful wizard of Oz is an old, balding, wrinkled man.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: When I turn to the Bible, and by the way, I should say this was not totally my invention.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: There are a couple of atheist websites that are famous.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most famous today, debunking Christianity in an article written this year, is entitled God and the Wizard of Oz Are One and the Same.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: I hate their title because it's false.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: It should be debunking God, not Christianity, because of course Judaism and Islam also say that God exists.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: But my problem here is that I say, you know what?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: I hope people understand that in the year 1900 this was so perfect for that age, because everybody was taught that God is, that God exists.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: School children, high schoolers, even college kids were taught God created the world.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: The reason the universe is the way it is is because there is a God and religion held sway and Christianity held sway and so forth.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so there were these quiet, unadmitted, hidden doubts about this, which only came out years later, so that our Eisenhower from Kansas stuck in God We Trust, someone reminded me after service on our coins in 1951 because he was scared that we had lost God.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the year 2019, everything is flipped, isn't it?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: No longer is everybody being taught in school that God is and that God is the creator.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: No longer is it radical to question this and to say that maybe there's nobody behind the curtain, that this invisible, omnipresent miracle worker doesn't really exist.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fraud being perpetrated on us by people who want us to put on rose-colored glasses.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: But today it's the opposite.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: The radicals are the people who say God does exist.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because our children are being taught that God isn't, right?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: That the universe was not created by a strong and powerful Elohim, but the universe came into being by random chance and time that produced perhaps a big bang, that a bang produced everything we see, that it was impersonal, it was not personal.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so the people that God is looking for are the people who will go to the Bible and recognize that Elohim is.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are people all the way through the Bible, Old Testament and New, who question everything about God except for this.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Job questions God's justice.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah wants to drag God into court for being unkind.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Paul wonders, everybody wonders about God, but not once in the Bible, you'll notice, does anyone ever question the fundamental fact of Genesis 1.1, which is that Elohim is, that he really does exist.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if you hold this truth today, you are the radical.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for this reminder that you are the great and powerful God, transcendent far above us.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore we can trust that you will summon light into the darkness of our lives and order into the chaos of our relationships.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And supply for us heaven.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: And though we do not understand today any more about you than we understand about the winds, we trust you.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: We trust you.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because you are our God and creator.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.