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Who Is God Really? The Meaning Behind His Names · Relish: a Christian podcast

• 0:01
  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity just sufficient to flavor to be
• 0:07
  pleased or gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what we bring to your table
• 0:12
  today might add some spice to your life,
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  welcome back to another episode of relish i'm alex zimmerman this is don patterson
• 0:23
  Pastor Don, how you doing?
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  Present. Good, good.
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  Yeah, if you know, last week we were talking about the names, name, what's in a name,
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  our names, the way the names get changed in the Bible from different people
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  based on their new identity, their new transition, and now we're going to talk about God.
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  Yes. Who is God based on the names that we get to see in the Bible about him.
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  So, God's name. Who is he?
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  Yeah. And Don is breathing this. God's breathing heavy. We already got him more out.
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  Well, okay. So how do you define the divine being that created all things?
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  Notice God didn't name everything. He let Adam do that. Isn't that neat?
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  Have such trust in Adam that he'd get gazelle right, you know? Yeah.
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  So then how do you name this God? Yeah.
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  And one of the ways that was in the Old Testament, the Tetragrammaton,
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  the three words, the three letters that we have translated Yahweh or Jehovah.
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  And you could see that even as a Yahweh. Yeah, the sound.
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  The sound of breathing. The in and out of a breath. The sound of breathing.
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  I mean, because he says, I mean, it is his breath in us that actually started
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  Adam going. You know, he breathed life into Adam and every breath we take, he knows about.
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  And so, uh, yeah, he's right there, right in every breath. Yeah.
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  So Yahweh or Jehovah in, in many translations, Jehovah, uh, would be a Englishizing,
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  I guess. Very, yeah. Of, of that, uh, tetragrammaton. Um.
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  Yeah. It's basically like the Y turns into somehow turns into a J and then they
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  added a bunch of owls or something and it made it into Jehovah. Right.
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  That's all it is. Or else it's just three. Well, and part of,
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  part of that is that the mystery behind it was, it was so holy to the writers
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  of the new old Testament that they wouldn't say it.
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  Yeah. And so there was no way to say, how do you say that? You know,
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  and if you don't say that for about three or 400 years, how are you going to recognize it? You do.
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  And so you don't say it. And those, those three letters, even though they don't
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  coincide it in any way, shape or for to Anodai were translated Lord, Adonai.
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  And so Y-W-H, Adonai?
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  I mean, that doesn't really figure up at all, but it was their way of holding
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  in such reverence the name of God that they wouldn't say it.
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  So you know what they did?
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  They took the vowels from Adonai and put it with the tetraglamaton,
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  the YWH and came up with Yahweh.
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  Okay. Yeah. Adonai. Yeah.
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  Okay. Anyway, that's how they ended up with us having Jehovah at all. Yeah.
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  So. And it's a wild way to get there, but I think it's a testimony to what happens
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  if we don't share it, we lose it. Okay.
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  And that's what happened. I see. They lost it because they didn't say it.
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  They didn't say it. Too holy to say. So we lost it all together.
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  And I think there's an, and maybe you're getting to this part, but.
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  Don't bet on it. But when Moses, because we're getting here,
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  and I'm just making sure we hit this part, is Moses goes and asks God, you know, who do I say?
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  Who are you? Yeah. And he answers with this, Yahweh, which means what? I am. I am.
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  Which i think to me is like you know the name,
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  you know we always want to be like you know okay i meet someone for the first
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  time like okay who are you then right
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  and so you start learning stuff about them and instead of god saying like oh
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  you know i was i'm the creator i'm the sustainer you know i did all these here's
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  all my accomplishments no he just goes
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  no i am i am.
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  And that is such a more, that's such a deeper, deeper answer than simply saying
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  a name, truly. Amen. Okay.
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  Amen. Because that, all he had to do was...
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  Proof his existence. Yeah. And then Moses could make, oh, wait a minute.
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  You're that. You're. Yeah. Yeah.
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  And start from there and go on. I am. And that's, I think, why Jesus does what
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  he does in John 14. Okay, we'll get there. Don't jump ahead.
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  Oh, sorry. Don't jump ahead.
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  Okay. See, this is why he's in control.
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  Well, I've got an outline. Oh, I'm not going to jump ahead, then I'm not going
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  to know what you did. Okay.
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  So I am who I am. Is that what it is? i am or i am who i am i am who i am yahweh okay other names,
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  or wait um well i have i have a cheat sheet i know you just got a thousand page
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  book of all the names and we're just going to read them off no i'm just kidding,
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  i just have one page okay we hit some jehovah right,
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  um the and the connection between yahweh and jehovah i think we've already established
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  yes sir the The Adonai is Lord, and that's a general term for Lord.
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  And that is what we see written in the Old Testament.
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  If you have a Bible and you go through it, it says L-O-R-D in big caps.
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  Adonai. Yes, that's Adonai.
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  So that's the Lord. That's like Lord of Lords, right? Or is that?
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  Lord of Lords, God of Master and Master. Because there's a lowercase one.
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  Right? Right. And that, yeah. And that's when like Jesus sometimes says,
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  you know, don't you call other people lords.
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  Am I right on that? Yeah. So, and that's more likely in the new Testament that it's that way.
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  But Lord would be a master of some sort, like a master of a slave could be a called Lord.
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  And so you got to separate those, those two.
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  But you'll notice that a lot of names in the old Testament have L with them.
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  Oh yeah. E-L. Just E-L. Yeah. Yep.
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  Right. If you don't flip the frame, that'll come out all right.
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  And that means the strong one.
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  And that is always a nudge towards God, the strong one.
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  And so Joel is like Joseph and Elohim together.
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  And so El would often be connected to a name because that individual would be connected to God. Okay.
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  And so there's El-A-Dion, the most high, Elohim.
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  Let's hit Elohim. Okay.
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  Heem or Loam? Yeah, Heem. Elohim. All-powerful creator. Yeah.
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  Really? But do you know where I'm going with this? Nope. We'll find out pretty soon.
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  Well, you see Elohim for other things in the Bible that are definitely not God. Right?
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  So they are. God plural. God plural. Okay. So these are the,
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  what, spiritual beings.
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  What are we talking about? Oh. I'm trying to add a different spot here.
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  Are you? Maybe I'm tricking Don here a little bit. And you can.
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  That's easy to do anymore.
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  Uh well so many times that we'll see elohim could,
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  be proof of the trinity as well father son so so uh,
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  when you go to genesis chapter one in the beginning was the word and the word was god,
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  and and then back down in 27 he talks about let us make them according to our
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  image our plural yeah and that's an elohim because it's plural okay and so uh,
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  there's some bible scholars Well, that's the plural of majesty,
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  you know, because he's just so big, he can't just be one.
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  But the other side of it is you can look at that word and say,
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  oh, okay, that's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
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  And it's three, so it's one, and it's Elohim because it's plural, plural God.
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  And so often Elohim will be Trinity.
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  However, it can be used of many gods or a host of gods.
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  Yeah, I see it as a like heavenly beings. Okay. And sure, you're thinking of Genesis 6. Yeah. Okay.
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  And I think there's another reference to it too. Job. Job, yeah,
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  would have an Elohim connected with that where the sons of God are gathered.
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  Yeah. And so that's plural of God. Okay.
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  And that Elohim would have been there as well.
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  And so that's why it was, here we talk about God being Father,
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  Son, and Holy Spirit, but he's not, he's still mono. He's still one God.
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  And then you have the Baal gods and you have the Asherah gods and,
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  well, you got more than one God. And so the Egyptians started looking at these
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  Christians and saying, wait a minute, wait a minute.
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  You talk about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you got three gods. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Don't, don't let this, don't let your eyes glaze over here too much.
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  I think this part's really fascinating and you might get to a point in your
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  Christian life where maybe you're challenged on this or something like that.
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  And I'm just saying that there, there is this, there's a really good and interesting explanation for it.
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  And if you want a really good like person, it would be, um, oh,
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  his name just escaped me.
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  Oh, dear. Oh, he wrote that book. He was a professor at the university, right?
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  Okay. You know what? I'm going to look that part up. Okay.
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  But he's got this book that he goes through all the different spiritual beings
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  that are talked about in the Bible and what these different words mean.
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  Oh, the guy at the U? Yeah. Okay. So anyways. Ben. Ben. No, I'll look it up.
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  If you want to go down to and talk about El Shaddai. Yeah. El Shaddai,
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  the all-sufficient one. Yes.
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  The God of the mountains, God of mighty, sufficient source of all blessings,
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  God all-powerful. Our problems are not too big.
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  I think that's probably the piece that I probably most anchor in El Shaddai
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  is he's, he's a God that is bigger than any problem that can ever be.
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  And so that's why I love that song, El Shaddai. Yeah. It was done by somebody famous.
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  Anyway, that's one of my songs I sing. Yeah.
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  That I just can't get past the fact that as I've lived my life,
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  God's always been there. And when the problems seem much bigger than I am, El Shaddai. Oh, yeah.
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  That perspective is huge.
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  Yes. Amen. Amen.
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  So. Now, go ahead. Michael Heiser is the person I was thinking of. Oh, yes.
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  Yeah. Yes, and he has a really fascinating interpretation of Genesis 6. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
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  You can, yeah, I tried to listen to a podcast with that. How's that going?
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  On the way here to kind of prepare, and I am not smart enough for it.
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  Oh, but his book is like thick, thick, thick. Yeah, listen, if any of you are
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  out there that are smart enough for it, God bless you, I'm not.
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  Yeah, and then you can interpret it and get it back to us. Yeah.
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  It's really, it's really amazing. Yes. And the one we always hear at Christmas time, Emmanuel.
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  Emmanuel, God with us. Yeah. You know, when, when Michael died,
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  we went through a pretty hard time so that when we adopted Jeff,
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  we named him after Charlene's grandpa.
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  Okay. Emmanuel. Awesome.
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  And as a way of saying, hey, we acknowledge that after all this, God is with us.
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  We lost one child, and it was time to celebrate.
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  Yeah. God is with us. So, Christmas time, Emmanuel, that's one of our special
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  times of recognizing what God has already done. Yeah. Yeah.
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  We already covered Jehovah, and Jehovah Jireh, God will provide, the Lord will provide.
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  Yeah. Yeah, that's actually in like a newer song.
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  Song who is it forest frank or is it josiah queen that's actually in it so if
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  you can imagine jehovah jireh fits into a lyric.
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  Okay. Anyways. With some work, huh? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A gyre.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just gyre always makes me think of a machine.
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  Gyrate. Like a gyroscope. Yeah, yeah.
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  So all these different names, what do they reveal about who God is?
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  Well, I think that's what's intent.
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  Much like the names that we studied in the last series, this is a way of saying,
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  okay, we can't get a handle of all of who God is. Yeah. Listen, seriously.
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  And so we're just talking about a name here, right? Right.
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  How do we, in our finite human language, explain an infinite God?
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  Yeah. Can't be done. Right.
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  So we work with, I mean, I think they were working with their language.
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  They were working with their surroundings and saying, you know,
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  this is God provider. This is God powerful. This is God Almighty.
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  This is God. My Lord is a banner. Yeah. Jehovah Nisi. Mm-hmm. Jehovah Rofi.
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  My Lord is my shepherd.
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  It's saying it as a declaration to everybody around, this is who my God is. Yeah.
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  Out of this experience, I can declare this as my God. Yeah. And it's the same one.
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  But it's facets. It's tributaries of the same one. Yeah.
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  Tributaries, not tributes of the same one. Yeah.
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  Attributes. Yeah, attributes, his character, all those things. Yeah. Yeah.
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  He's showing you exact, trying to show you who he is based on all of these different
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  ways that he names himself in a way. Yeah.
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  And so let's do a little parallel, see how, if we can really get our hands around it.
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  So if somebody met you and they saw Alex, the podcaster, would they really know
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  all of you, all about you? No. No.
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  No, not really. How about Alex the singer or Alex the hog farmer or Alex the
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  mechanic and electrician and woodworker?
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  And let's see, all the other things, preacher.
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  All those attributes you live into are not known by just Alex.
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  And so what they were trying to do, and I think we've still tried to attempt
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  to do it today, is who is my God? Who am I worshiping?
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  I'm worshiping Jehovah Jireh. I worship Adonai.
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  And what you're trying to do is exactly, I mean, what this episode is going
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  to come down to is that we are rooting ourself.
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  Our identity is found in God, right?
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  Yes. So like before God tells Moses what to do, gives him any commands, he tells him who he is.
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  Yes. I am. I am who I am.
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  That's where you start before he gives him anything to do.
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  And you see that, you know, when Peter gets renamed too, he's like,
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  this is now you, you know, Jesus is, you know, Jesus, and we'll get to Jesus yet a little bit. Yep.
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  Because he's going to give us a lot of I am's too, but before God,
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  so Moses, our obedience flows from God's identity. Right.
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  I think if we. Into our identity. Yeah. Into our identity, in that order. Right. Yes.
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  Otherwise, and God can exist on his own. With everything we give him as a moniker.
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  But we then, as his people, carry his identity into us. So what does that mean we're carrying?
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  It matters. It does matter. Yeah. It does matter. So,
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  how does Josh say it? Josh has a way of saying it. May we reveal Christ well in our lives.
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  As if there's a piece of that identity of Jesus and who he is in us that through
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  us, he is wanting to reveal.
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  It's more complicated than it sounds. Or not. Or not.
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  You know, sometimes a lot of those things that are very black and white,
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  simple, but maybe difficult to do because we are who we are.
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  Yeah. Because of our sinful nature. True. Yeah.
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  Can we hit the I am just a little bit because...
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  Or did we hit the I am, what that communicates about God's nature,
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  his everlasting, his alpha-omega-ness, right?
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  Yeah. And I think we need to maybe put it in the context of that bush that Moses saw.
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  Moses was drawn to the bush because it was not consumed, but it was on fire.
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  It was on fire, but it was not consumed. And it brought, oh,
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  wait a minute, how's this happened out of Moses?
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  And so in that situation, he meets God, probably his first time and say,
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  oh, I haven't heard a talking bush before. And this is very weird.
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  And then he's drawn to the bush because of the miracle.
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  He's hearing God's voice because God's present.
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  And he's amazed and wondering, how is this happening?
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  And God says, I am.
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  You are not dreaming. This is not a distortion. You are, you have not,
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  uh, just gone into some days I am right. So get real.
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  Yep. And, and I got a mission for you.
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  And then of course, then he harps around about that. But the,
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  I am part of that is saying, Moses, get real. I'm here.
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  I got something for you to do. I am.
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  Yeah. Nothing. He doesn't, he's a part from creation. Part from creation.
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  That means that that bush doesn't have to burn because I don't want it to burn.
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  And so it becomes one of those things that Moses could say, okay,
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  this does not make any sense, but it doesn't make sense because it doesn't have to.
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  God works around what normally makes sense. Yeah.
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  Nothing can make God not good. He's good all the time. He depart from everything
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  that creation is, even though he did it.
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  Right? Right. Yeah, and so we try to.
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  Answer the question of who God is, because we want to know who we are sometimes. Am I wrong on that?
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  Well, yeah. Most of the time we come from the other side.
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  I know that I am, but are you? And so then if I know who I am and I'm not really happy about who I am,
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  I start to respond to, oh, wait a minute, there's something out there beyond
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  me that I, oh, so why would he reach out to me in this burning bush?
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  You know i like that and and so we we go to the burning bush and okay well this
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  is strange never seen this happen before and and god announces himself yeah here i am,
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  yeah when we look inside of ourselves and try to figure that out for who we are instead of it.
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  Sometimes we're telling ourselves who we are based on how we're experiencing
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  life and we're rooting it to things that change all the time and when we do
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  that if you're going to root yourself to something that's always changing,
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  you're going to, everything's going to change around.
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  It's going to be spinning. It's going to be chaos. It's going to be,
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  you know, it's, it's, you're going to be shaking around, but God isn't changing.
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  God is always God. He is. I am.
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  He is. And when we anchor ourselves to him, you've got a solid foundation. Amen.
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  And when I say anchor yourself to him, I'm saying like, you know who you are
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  because God told you who you are. Exactly.
• 21:46
  Yeah. Well said. I couldn't say it better. Oh, boy.
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  Okay. And it's amazing because it reroutes our thinking about the world.
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  Yeah. To consider that I am Don, but he is. Yeah.
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  God is above all this. And he knows beginning to end and he knows what's supposed
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  to come next. And even I was in an accident several weeks ago.
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  Even that sits in the midst of all of his will and has a place for me to uniquely be.
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  One he's called. Yeah. So how does that? And he has this all worked out.
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  If we just submit to him. Yeah.
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  Of course, submitting probably we have trouble with. We do sometimes. That's true.
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  When we live in a, I think we talked about this last time, but when we,
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  our obedience flows from God's identity, knowing who God is,
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  that's where our obedience is going to flow from. Yes.
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  And who he is and who that tells us who we are.
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  Right. Yep. Exactly. All right. Um, hang on to that. Yeah.
• 22:55
  And we ran long again. I thought we were going to get this done in 20 minutes, but boy.
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  Well, see, that's what happens when you get a preacher on. Yep.
• 23:04
  They get windy. I know. Sorry. The gift of gab. Well, we're.
• 23:09
  Yeah. How are you going to land this one, bud? Nearly half done.
• 23:12
  Uh, we're going to, we're going to plow through the next one.
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  Next, next week's episode is going to be really good because.
• 23:19
  Oh, It interviscues a little bit of, I'm not going to say controversy,
• 23:24
  but like Jesus claiming to be God.
• 23:27
  I mean, back in the day, that's pretty controversial and still is for depending
• 23:31
  on who you're talking to. So we're hitting that one.
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  And by God's grace, we will wrap up this name series and we hope it blesses
• 23:40
  you. Yeah, we'll do it. Yeah.
• 23:43
  All right. We'll see you guys all next week. Lord willing. Bye.
• 23:47
  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
• 23:51
  ministry by sharing it with others.
• 23:53
  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
• 23:56
  and His calling to us in our daily lives.
• 23:59
  Thank you again for joining us, and may God bless your day.