Sunday School - Back To Basics Part 2

Well, Father, we do come before you thankful, Lord, for your blessing, thankful for this arrangement that you've given us this morning,

where we can gather and receive the imparted word, which is able to make us strong.

Lord, I pray that we would get a glimpse, a taste of who you are and what you've done and

accomplished for your people.

May you bless and lead our conversation by thy spirit.

In Jesus' name, we do pray.

Amen.

Last week, we talked about the Bible.

And we've seen the Bible kind of as obviously foundational as the

authority to which we can now answer the next fundamental question, who is God?

Any thoughts or questions from last week's lesson before we jump into this week's about the Bible?

Anything that I missed?

Anything that you want to comment on?

Well, if that's the case, I want you to go to Genesis 1.

Quick pop quiz.

How many books are there in the Bible?

How many in the Old Testament?

How many in the New Testament?

How many authors?

40.

Over a period of how many years?

1 ,500 years, give or take.

Some estimates have it really low, like 1 ,200 years.

Others will have it up to 2 ,000 years.

And it really depends on where you place Moses.

Because everyone assumes that Moses was alive during what's commonly called the

Second Kingdom.

So Egypt has First Kingdom, Second Kingdom, Third Kingdom.

These are dynasties, these are eras, epochs in Egyptian history.

And everyone assumes that he was alive during the Second Kingdom.

I would put him actually at the tail end of the First Kingdom.

So I would actually say the Bible's probably around 1 ,600 years.

From the writing of Moses to the writing of John, you probably have about 1 ,600, 1 ,700 years.

But 1 ,500 is a good average, so.

In Genesis 1 .1, we see verse one.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was

hovering over the surface of the waters.

In the beginning, what?

God.

Is there anyone who can make such a claim?

God is the eternal, self -existing God.

And today's lesson is gonna be, who is this God?

And the first thing we have to establish is that God is the creator.

So I want you to write that in there.

The Bible teaches us that the God of the Bible is the creator of everything.

Now this is in a stark contrast.

Really, you have to put this into the context of the times.

In the context of the times in the Mideast, Eastern context, most

religions and pagans didn't believe in a singular God

who created all things.

Instead, everyone had a sort of pantheon of gods.

They were polytheists, meaning many gods or more than one.

And Christianity and Judaism stem from an Abrahamic

monotheism, one God.

Mono, one, theism, God.

Yet in the context, all these different gods actually had a role in creation.

And so you'd have one particular God who's in charge of making the waters, one God in charge of making the

sky, one in charge of the stars and the heavenly host.

There's a God for just about everything, even animals.

There's a different God of different livestock and different kinds of animals.

And these gods were the ones who were kind of in charge over those little areas of creation.

But the God of the Bible introduces something revolutionary in the development of human

religion, and it's that there is one singular God who created all things.

That's, again, revolutionary.

We don't think much of it because we grew up in a monotheistic context and we all agree and affirm that God is one, but yet

this is earth -shattering.

And really, it is earth -shattering also to some degree if you grew up maybe in a Mormon context, right?

So one of the beliefs that is common in

Mideastern ancient religions, as is actually common in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

Saints or the Mormon Church, is that God didn't create everything out of nothing.

Anyone know what the scholarly term for that is?

Yeah, ex nihilo.

And so to create everything out of nothing.

And the Bible teaches that God created everything out of nothing.

Yet most pagans and even Mormons today believe that

God didn't create out of ex nihilo.

Instead, he created by organizing already preexisting matter,

right?

So really, they don't have the power to breed things into existence, but that he just

merely rearranges and organizes cosmic matter.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, I would take this to be pretty inclusive of everything that there is.

When he talks about the heavens, notice that he uses the plural in the Hebrew.

Moses uses the plural here, and it's translated in the plural.

The heavens and the earth, singular earth, okay?

That means, based upon also not only Old Testament but New Testament theology, Paul talks

about the three heavens.

We can then deduce that when Jehovah created everything, it's mentioning the heavens and the first,

second, and third heavens.

What do you think are the first, second, and third heavens?

There's sometimes debate and controversy over that.

How would you take that?

What do you mean by that, like the Mormons?

No, no, just kind of.

That's right.

I think you're on the right track.

I would say that when Paul talks about the third heavens, the first heavens, obviously, is the one that,

it's the air around us.

It's the stratosphere that we live under in this bubble called earth, and then you go up there and you get

to outer space, cosmonaut, a Russian cosmonaut, I think in one of the first cosmonauts to go into

space, in 1959, I think it was, he says that he had went up to the heavens and he saw no

God, right?

And so, and yeah, it's because he didn't go far enough.

That's the second heavens.

The third heavens is the dwelling place of God.

And so when the Bible uses the term, God created the heavens, plural,

I think it's referring to the vastness of not just the space in our stratosphere, but in outer

space, and then, of course, in the very presence of where the angels worship and unbroken chain of worship.

And so God is the one who created everything, the heavens and the earth, out of nothing.

The God of the Bible is the creator of everything.

Let's look at Romans chapter one, verse 20 for a moment.

These are two verses that, if you're into creation, you need to have this memorized.

And it's Genesis one, obviously, and then Romans chapter

one, verse 20, which says, for since the creation of the world,

his invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature have been

clearly seen and being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

Speaking of God's eternality and speaking of God's creative work, the scripture says that

his invisible attributes, that God is an invisible force, or force

is not the right term, but he is an invisible being, and his invisible

attributes, though, are clearly seen and perceived by that which he has visibly made, namely

us, creation.

Just like we see a building, we can deduce, logically, that there's a builder, there's an architect, there are people who came and

built, so then when we look at the marvel of creation, we can properly deduce that there was a creator.

And it is really so palpable, the scripture says that men are without excuse.

What do you think that means?

How, then, are men without excuse?

How do you convince a blind man that there's a son?

You can feel it, right?

But you can have a hard -hearted blind man say, I've never seen it, right?

And I didn't see it, therefore, it must not exist.

How really pathetic, but also sad,

that we base reality around our senses alone.

And true, our senses are important, God gave us senses so that we can determine whether things are real or

true or not, but they are not the determining factors.

As an eye specialist, I was informed that I am also colorblind.

And I never knew this.

Supposedly, I'm colorblind with the color red.

And I said, what are you talking about?

I see red perfectly.

And so, for me, I've always assumed I knew what red looked like.

Now, I don't know what's real anymore.

And so, you can't base reality just upon your senses, because your

senses are still subject to the fall and the corruption of man and the sinful world that we live in.

And so, we have to go base upon something even higher than our senses.

And that's an authority that we can appeal to.

And last week, we established the Bible as the authority that we appeal to because it's the Word of God.

The Bible is not subjectively the Word of God, it is objectively the Word of God.

There's no ands or buts about it.

And we can prove it, really, not just through logic, but most importantly, through the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Like, that trumps everything.

And so, we look at the scriptures here, and it says, for since the creation of the world,

his invisible attributes, both his eternal power, so God's power is eternal,

unchanging, which is consistent with his nature.

His nature is that he's an eternal being.

And his divine nature, they've been clearly seen, they're being understood by what he has made,

so that man is without excuse.

Clearly, then, God is the creator of everything.

Yeah, which is, as opposed to apologia, which is to make a defense.

Now, about the God of the Bible, I want you to know that the God of the Bible is not just

a, in the world, there's a lot of different

ways in which people can describe the creator.

One of them is kind of a theistic view, right?

And the theistic view is very more, okay, there's a God, but he's kind of

detached from reality.

He's detached, he doesn't care.

I think this is the God of Einstein.

Einstein perceived, if there was a God, that he'd be kind of like the blind watchmaker,

right?

So, he'd be the one, he made the watch, he set it in motion, and then he just forgot about it, and he's not

interacting in the time and space that he created.

And so, this is commonly referred to as the Einstein theory of God, of the blind

watchmaker.

And yet, that's not the God that we find in scripture.

The God we find in scripture is not an impersonal God.

He's not a God that's detached from his creation, nor, though, is he dependent upon his creation, as if he

needed us, or needed something from us.

But rather, this God chooses to be a relational or personal

God, and that's why I want you to write in the next part.

The God of the Bible is a personal or relational God.

Now, what are attributes of a person?

Describe me some attributes of a person.

Will, okay, now break down that word more.

What is will?

We always talk about will, especially in the context of Calvinism, Arminianism, right?

But what is a will?

Sure, that's part of it.

Anyone else have an idea or a thought?

Consciousness is required for will, absolutely, but it's not necessarily one and the same.

Will is to have the cognitive and physical ability to carry out

desire, okay?

And so, in order to have a will, obviously, you have to be conscious, you have to have

desire, there has to be, there are qualities that come with will, right?

Just look at how we use it in modern vernacular and how we use it day to day.

I will go to the store.

I will not go to the store, right?

So, will is the mental fortitude of making a decision and then having the

ability to follow through with it.

I will do this, I will not do that, right?

And similarly, God is a personal God, and he has a will.

What other attributes do persons or personal beings have?

What other attributes?

Think of yourself for a moment.

What do you got?

Sure, yeah, God certainly does have all those things in abundance,

but more so, let's just go real fundamental.

Let's go to, what's that saying?

Tax brass or brass tax, whatever that means.

What do you all have that's unique to you?

That soul, right?

But even more basic than that, your parents gave it to you.

A name.

DNA is true, questionable whether God has DNA, but

you have a name, and your name is intrinsic to you.

Now, it doesn't mean that you're the only one who shares that name.

There's a lot of people who share the name Brian, but if someone, if I'm walking down

the street and I heard my name called, or you heard your name called, what would you likely do?

Turn around and see.

Especially you, you've got a kind of a rare name.

So, the rarer the name, the more you'll be looking around.

But you have a name, and your name is really a sense of, it's an attribute, it's an

extension of you.

It's how you identify.

Now, God, the God of the Bible, has chosen a name for himself by

which he chooses to be identified with.

And the Bible reveals to us that name in Exodus chapter three, if you can turn there,

starting at verse 13.

Exodus chapter three, verse 13, where the Lord says, Then Moses said to God,

Behold, I am about to come to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to

you.

And they will say to me, what is his name?

What shall I say to them?

What a curious question.

And it's curious because the Israelites knew they had a particular God.

The Hebrews in Egypt even understood that they had a particular God.

And they also understood likely what his name was, because when you look at the Old Testament

book of Genesis, the name appears often in that book.

And it's even quoted as Abraham calling him that.

But it goes beyond this.

He's asking him, how do I know you're who you are?

How do I know you're the God of Abraham?

How do I know?

How do I demonstrate this?

How do I prove it?

What's your name?

Another way of saying it is, really, who are you?

Because your name is so important.

The first thing you do when you introduce yourself to somebody is you do what?

Say your name, hi, my name is, and then you receive their name.

It's the first thing you do.

And so God is establishing, kind of in this moment in redemptive history, reestablishing a relationship with

his people, with his redemptive people.

And he goes on to say in verse 14, and God said to Moses, I am who I am.

And he said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am has sent me

to you.

I am.

I think in the Hebrew, don't quote me on this, I think it's eh -hyeh, eh -leh -eh -hyeh, which

is, can be translated as, I shall be, really, more accurately, it should be

translated, I shall be what I shall be.

Versus I am that I am.

I am that I am really became catchy because of the King James Version.

It translated that way.

The King James Version is responsible for a lot of the translations in modern English because it's the most popular

English translation, also set the tone for a lot of beautiful literature.

So you know, most translations would prefer for it to, Psalm 23, to say the Lord is my shepherd rather than saying Yahweh is my

shepherd because the Lord is my shepherd is far more familiar, far more poetic, just sounds nicer, rolls

off the tongue nicer.

We can blame the King James for a lot of translations.

It's not a bad translation.

Translating I am who I am or I am that I am is not a bad decision in

translation, necessarily, but it's not the most accurate.

The most accurate rendition of the verbs that God uses of himself is I

shall prove to be what I shall prove to be.

That would be the most accurate way of looking at it.

And so what God is communicating is I'm the God who's gonna show up.

I'm the God who's gonna prove to be who I say that I am, right?

And does it stop there, though?

So a lot of people would say, a lot of pastors make this mistake of saying, well, God's name is I am.

That's God's name.

No, it's not God's name in terms of his personal name.

You see, what God is doing is he's actually doing something quite brilliant.

He's getting to the intent, to the heart of Moses' question.

Moses' question is not, how do I pronounce your name?

That's not the intent of Moses' question.

The intent of Moses' question is who are you and how do I know you are who you say you are, okay?

And God says, I shall prove to be what I shall prove to be or I am that I am, okay?

And he says, I am has sent you, okay?

And now, this is a significant term, obviously, because Jesus later identifies as the I am.

But verse 14 gives us more insight as to the fuller extent of the answer that God gives to Moses.

And God furthermore said to Moses, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I'm reading from the Legacy Standard

Bible version, and it says, Yahweh, the God of your fathers,

the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

This is my name forever.

And this is my memorial name from generation to generation.

What is the memorial eternal name of God that he has revealed himself by?

Yahweh or Jehovah.

Either the King James Psalm 83 .18 says that thou may know that thou alone whose name is

Jehovah art the most high over all the earth.

Many English translations, the ASV as well, popular translation in the turn of the 20th century,

was a popular Bible that used Jehovah.

Obviously, that name has been hijacked by the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And since then, Christians have actually ceded ground of the divine name to

the cults instead of reclaiming that which is rightfully and properly ours, which is the name of our God, whether it be

Yahweh or Jehovah.

And so God reveals his name as Yahweh, Jehovah.

That's his eternal name.

So what he does, again, it's quite brilliant in responding to Moses.

He gives the explanation.

I am that I am is actually the verbiage of the meaning of the name Yahweh.

So if you look at the name in Hebrew for Yahweh, it's four letters.

It's often called a tetragrammaton or tetragrammaton, which is a lot, that term

tetragrammaton is Latin for four letters, okay?

And there are four Hebrew letters that make up the divine name.

In Hebrew, it's Yud, He, Vav, He, Y -H -V -H,

okay?

And so the Hebrew does something funny because there's no

consonants in the writing of

ancient Hebrew.

Or no vowels, there's consonants, there's actually no vowels.

And so you have to insert the vowels into the consonants, and it's like trying to spell

building with only the letter B -L -D -G.

It's very hard to, it might be difficult to try to figure out, okay, how do you actually pronounce this?

And so over time, the Jews started to follow a tradition

of not pronouncing the name because it was, in their view, too holy.

And because they had a fear of blaspheming the name, they decided that they're just not gonna say the name anymore.

So every time that they would see the name, the tetragrammaton, they would say the Hebrew word Adonai, which is Lord.

Now guess what?

We as Christians, we've followed in that same tradition for better or for worse.

Most of our translations where the word Yahweh or Jehovah appears, you'll see in big,

bold letters, the Lord, capital L -O -R -D.

And we do so following the Jewish tradition that was

started really about the Second Temple period.

Now I don't think that's a good tradition to follow.

I think that that's irresponsible.

I think we should translate the divine name as best as we can.

But I actually think that Yahweh is not even the correct pronunciation.

Yahweh actually makes very little sense in Hebrew.

I have a friend who's a Hebrew scholar and he teaches at the University of Tel Aviv.

I've had dinner with this guy.

I've been on his podcast.

He's not a Christian.

He is a Karaite Jew.

You ever heard of a Karaite Jew?

Not a carrot Jew, Karaite.

And a Karaite Jew is kind of like the sola scriptura of Judaism.

They are Jews who follow only the Torah, not the rabbinic tradition of the Talmud.

So they're really cool.

They're really like the more biblical Jews who follow the Bible more closely than the rabbinic Jews

who follow the rabbinic teachings.

And so this is a man who's a Karaite Jew and he has actually been a part of the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And he has found instances where you find the tetragrammaton with the correct vowels.

And the vowels, if you were to pronounce them, would be, the divine name would be pronounced

Yehovah.

Yehovah, okay?

That's how you'd pronounce the divine name.

That's according to his scholarly opinion and the discoveries that he has made, which then actually puts us in a really interesting spot

because the Christian church for the last 600 years has been using a form of that in the

name Yehovah or Jehovah, okay?

So the divine name, in my opinion, has actually never disappeared.

It's always been around.

Jehovah is not the most accurate way because it'd be a Y.

The emphasis would be difference because we use a Germanic translation of the tetragrammaton with the word Jehovah.

It's very Germanic.

It's Jehovah, you know?

The emphasis is on the ho part versus the Hebrew Yehovah,

va, would be the emphasis.

So, which would then make a lot of sense because the name Jesus in the Hebrew, anyone know what

Jesus' Hebrew name is?

Yeshua or Yehoshua?

It's the same word for Joshua.

Yehoshua means Yehovah, Yahweh is our salvation.

So Yehoshua would make a lot of sense if the name was Yehovah

versus Yahweh, which makes very little sense in Hebrew.

But that's neither here nor there.

If you wanted to learn more information on that, you can look up Nehemia Gordon on Amazon.

He's got some great books on the divine name.

And a quick side story with him.

You know, he's a very intelligent guy.

I mean, he's a scholar, top scholar.

And he and I had dinner for about two hours when I lived in Canada.

He was friends with my mentor, and so I got to spend time with him.

And he said, all right, Pastor Brian, why don't you give me your best reason for Yeshua being the

Messiah?

I said, all right, I've been waiting all night for this.

So I spent about an hour just going through the scriptures with him, proving and demonstrating from the scriptures that Jesus

Christ, that Jesus is the Christ.

And he's very contemplative, you know, going like this, listening like a good Jew would, like a good rabbi, listening.

And just, he wasn't combative.

He would just ask, he would stop me and ask me a question, and I would answer it, and then he'd just continue to be

contemplative.

And why don't you squash that like Jesus squashes the serpent's head?

Where is it?

I don't know, just underneath you now?

That's fine.

And anyways, this guy goes on to say, after I give him this whole beautiful presentation of the gospel and of

Jesus being the Messiah, he said, well, I'll tell you what.

If Mashiach comes, which is Messiah, if Mashiach comes and it's Yeshua,

I won't be surprised.

And I was like, ah, that's such a great admission, but it's not far enough, man.

You need to know Jesus now.

But he was very gracious, and we had a great conversation.

And he's had me on his podcast, which is actually a pretty big podcast, a couple years ago.

And so I want you to write this down.

The God of the Bible is a personal God.

He relates to us in his revealed name, and you can put whichever name I just revealed to you.

You can put Yehovah, Jehovah, or Yahweh.

So now I think there's something important.

About the divine name, and I don't think that Christians today do enough

service or justice to the divine name, which is why, actually, my preferred translation of the Bible nowadays is actually the

LSB, the new translation that just came out from the Master's Seminary, and they use the,

they translate the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh.

Now, although I don't think Yahweh is the correct pronunciation, I much prefer using up pronunciation than no

pronunciation.

The Lord is a substitution of the divine name.

It's not a translation of the divine name, okay?

It's like if we took the name Jesus and inserted the word rabbi.

You probably wouldn't like that very much, would you?

Because it's taking something away.

It's taking something away that was originally there, okay?

Now, no one disagrees that the Tetragrammaton was originally there in the Hebrew Scriptures.

It'd be a silly thing to say or argue.

And I think, also, we do not make loud the heart of God when we follow Jewish

fables and traditions, and we insert them into our Christian doctrine,

ecclesiology, and translations.

And so, I don't think there's any reason for us not to translate the Tetragrammaton in the Old

Testament.

And so, I think there's some couple of good scriptural precedents for that, one of them being Isaiah chapter

12.

Now, are you reading from the KJV, brother?

Yeah.

I want you to read Isaiah chapter 12,.

Verse two and four,

two and four.

Shall ye say, praise the Lord, how often do ye declare this to him?

Amen.

So, according to verse two,.

You'll trust in the Lord, who?

Jehovah.

And so, the Bible clearly teaches us that the name Jehovah is of great importance and value.

Verse four says, we're to give thanks to Yahweh, call on his name, not call on

his name, not substitute his name, not erase his name, but to call on his name, make

known his deeds among the peoples.

Now, there was a danger in Israel, and as this

tradition was developing of substituting the divine name, God actually makes mention of it to his

prophets, because in Jeremiah 23, I want you to turn there,

God is pronouncing judgment upon his people.

And one of the things that's happening contextually here is during this time, the

Israelites were beginning to worship Baal again, or Baal, Baal.

And now, do you know what the word Baal means?

It means, it's a Semitic word, which means Lord or Master, okay?

Now, notice what the word of the Lord says in Jeremiah 23, verse 27.

It says, I'm gonna actually start in verse 26.

How long?

Is there anything in the hearts of the prophets who prophesy a lie, even these prophets, of the deception of their own heart, who

intend to make my people forget my name by their dreams, which they

recount to one another, just as their fathers forgot my name because of Baal?

So notice what they were doing.

They were worshiping other gods.

In fact, they were forgetting God's name, and they were worshiping a god named Lord, okay?

We gotta be careful we don't fall into that same trap, forgetting God's name, not mentioning his name.

I'm thankful that we use the hymnal that we do, because a lot of our hymnals use the name Jehovah

in our hymns.

And again, I'm not a legalist when it comes to using one particular version of the divine name.

If you wanna use Jehovah, Yahweh, Yehovah, those are all great.

Again, as long as you're doing your best to translate as faithfully as you understand and can, the

touch of grammaton, I think that that's admirable, and I think the Lord rejoices in that.

But forgetting God's name totally and taking it out of our vocabulary, I think it's just shameful.

And one of the reasons I really believe Christians don't use the name Jehovah, for instance, as much as they used to,

is because of the Jehovah witnesses because if you use the word Jehovah in a conversation with someone,

the first thing that might pop up is, are you a Jehovah witness, right?

And so we don't wanna be associated with that, so we just don't use it, you know?

And we actually, and I've actually documented this as a fact

because the Jehovah witnesses took on their name in 1931, okay, when you read all the great preachers,

Spurgeon among them, Spurgeon used the name Jehovah often in his preaching.

And then you have, around the 1950s, a revision to the ASV,

the ASV and the King James were the most popular Bibles in the early 20th century, and best

-selling, most popularly used Bibles.

Then in 1951, you had a new translation called the Revised Standard Version, which was a

revision of the ASV, and that took out the name Jehovah completely and it was just substituted with Lord, and the King

James uses the word Jehovah, I think, seven to 12 times, something like that.

The ASV used it 6 ,800 times.

But then you had more and more translations coming out that just didn't use the name Jehovah at all, or Yahweh even.

And it wasn't until the last 20 years that translations have really started turning back and starting to use the divine name again.

So the Christian Standard Bible of 2001 uses the divine name 70 times.

2004, they came up with another edition, used the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh 700 times.

And then they unfortunately reverted, they came up with a new edition, now they have it zero times again.

But there are other translations now like the LSB, which uses the name Yahweh.

And so you're kind of seeing a resurgence in Christians using, recognizing the divine name.

Now again, this is from the Master's Seminary, John MacArthur, John MacArthur uses Yahweh now.

So I'm well pleased with that.

Any thoughts or questions on this aspect?

This is the Legacy Standard Bible.

This is an update to the NASB.

So it's essentially an NASB with some new modifications.

Actually, in my study of translations, and I've got a lot of translations, this is probably one of the more accurate ones.

I've got some issues with it, but no one's perfect.

Yeah, MacArthur has, his seminary has produced this new translation.

Right, yeah.

I think ultimately it's coming to the point, it's, they're replacing God's name with a false god.

Right?

And so that's the pitfall that they're falling into, that idolatry and false worship apostasy.

And I'm not saying that the Christian church has fallen to that, but I think there's a clear danger in

forgetting the name of our God.

God revealed himself to Moses, to the patriarchs, and chiefly through the

personal work of Jesus Christ for a good reason.

And his name is Jehovah, Yehovah, Yahweh.

And it's good that we remember that he is a personal being.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, back in those days, a name actually meant something, you know?

And Elijah, anyone know what the word Elijah means?

Eli and Jah, means my God is Jehovah.

Okay, that's what the word, Eli means God, Jah is a certain form of the name Yahweh or Jah or Jehovah.

So, beautiful.

So again, for that bullet point, the God of the Bible is a personal God who relates to us in his revealed name.

You could put Yahweh, or Yehovah, Jehovah, or Yahweh.

Any of those would work.

Any questions on that?

That one's a pretty important one, because we want to understand that God is personal.

Now, if we have an impersonal God, then it would understand, and I feel like there's a lot of Greek influence that got

into Christian theology pretty early, because you have, in about the third, fourth century, Christian fathers

who were saying that God doesn't have a name.

And it's like, yeah, that's Platoism.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

Clearly, God has a name.

But the Greeks had a lot of things weird, especially the Greek Christians, in relation to understanding the Hebrew roots of the

New Testament and understanding the name of God.

So for instance, the Tetragrammaton, have you guys ever seen a Tetragrammaton?

What it looks like?

Google search it real quick.

I was gonna have a presentation for us, but last week, the thing wasn't cooperating,.

So I wasn't gonna,

yeah.

Oh, there's a great reason.

So it's kind of a long story, but let me just show you guys this real quick.

So this is the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew.

This is what's called Proto -Hebrew, which is the more ancient form of Hebrew.

This is what, this is the Hebrew, likely, that was used during the reign of

David, so during the kings, the reign of the kings.

This is the Hebrew that was used.

Then they went into exile, and when they came back from exile, the script, the Hebrew script, began to look a lot more like the

Babylonian script.

And so Hebrew script began to look like this, okay?

So this is what Hebrew looks like today as well, give or take.

So these are all the Tetragrammaton and the three versions of Hebrew,

Proto, classical, and then post -Babylonian Hebrew.

And so this is four letters, yud, he, vav, he, and you actually read from left to right.

So Hebrew, you don't read from right to left.

You do it the opposite way, left to right.

So the reason why the Jews stopped pronouncing is actually twofold.

There was two things that coincided.

The first part was, FYI, I was gonna write a book on this, and I probably still will, because I

did a lot of research on this, with Nehemia Gordon's help.

In around the second temple period before Jesus, you see the beginning of

tension between God's people and the divine name.

How do we know this?

Well, there's a series of documents called the Septuagint.

You know all about the Septuagint, right?

And so the Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

So now Greek is becoming the language of the world.

It's like English is today, and probably how Mandarin will be in 100 years.

So the Jews, as they were translating the Bible into Greek,

they had a real fundamental debate as to what do they do with the divine name, because

they believe that God spoke Hebrew.

They believe that the words that God spoke to Moses was in Hebrew.

Therefore, they wanted to preserve the Hebrewness of the God of Abraham.

And so they left it untranslated.

They would actually put in these letters into the Greek, which is essentially

leaving it untranslated, okay?

Now, what happened is that people couldn't really pronounce that, especially if you're primarily a Greek

speaker.

In Greek, this actually looks like Greek numbers or Greek letters.

And unfortunately, it's not very good Greek letters.

The Greek letters, and people did this.

They tried just translating it, treating these Hebrew letters as if they were Greek.

And I kid you not, the result of how you pronounced it was pee -pee, okay?

I kid you not.

Because you know the pie from math, when you do math?

Okay, it looks very similar to the Hebrew, okay?

So they started calling it pee -pee.

And it doesn't have the same connotation to us today, obviously, but even then it was kind

of silly, right?

Like, it wasn't really working.

And so later versions of the Septuagint, actually,

begins to translate that to, there's no equivalent for Yahweh or

Yehovah in Greek.

So they start to use the word Adonai, or kurios in the Greek, which is for Lord,

okay?

So that's where you begin to see that tradition, okay?

Coinciding also with the fact that some of the Jews, as the pharisaical system was starting to coalesce and become

a thing, felt like God's name is too holy for us even to utter.

So we're just not gonna utter it.

Like, we're gonna know what it is.

So like, there's a fine tradition of rabbis knowing how to pronounce it, they just won't do it.

They'll only pass it down from rabbi to rabbi, but they won't ever verbalize it amongst the congregation.

Genesis chapter six, verse three is the first time we see in the Hebrew the word

El Shaddai.

El meaning God in Hebrew.

Shaddai is what we often refer to as Almighty.

Now, there's some mystery behind the name, or the term Shaddai in Hebrew, because we actually

don't know exactly what it means.

We're pretty sure it means Almighty, but we think it actually probably means more than just Almighty.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's some different renditions, and those will not be bad renditions, because it

may not necessarily mean exactly Almighty, but that's certainly a connotation with it.

And the reason why we actually use Almighty is because in the Septuagint, it uses the Greek term pankator, which

is the Greek word for Almighty, right?

So, okay, so it's close enough, so we use Almighty.

But the point is clear, he is, like there's no one greater, there's no one mightier.

From him is all power, to him is deserving of all power.

He is the epitome of power, right?

He's self -sufficient in the greatest way of using that

term, because none of us is truly self -sufficient.

If you were left on a desert island with no food, no water, you would not be

self -sufficient.

You are dependent upon other things to sustain you.

God is not dependent upon anything to be sustained.

He is literally self -sustaining in the truest sense of the word.

Pretty incredible.

Our God's awesome.

I mean, that's amazing.

Again, Revelation 1 .8 also uses that term, the Almighty, in the Greek being el pankator,

the Almighty,.

Todo

poderoso,

or strength,.

Podel, the name podel is to have strength.

Depends on the adjective and the verbiage of it.

But it certainly means to, you know, I think in more accurate ways, he's the one who has all dynamic power.

I think that would be a pretty accurate way of describing the word.

He's the one who has all the power, all the energy stems from him.

He's self -generating in that sense of his eternal power and will.

You know, it doesn't come externally.

It is generated from himself, okay?

So now we're talking, really, we're getting kind of a metaphysical discussion about who God is, which is good.

But God is also a lot of other things.

And this is just a short list.

There's so many things that we can list, but time will not permit.

God is love.

So I want you to put that as well.

Love is the next one.

We know this, 1 John 4 .8 says God is love.

Not that God has love, that's true too.

He has love for his people.

Not that God is loving, although that is true as well.

But why are those things true?

They're true because from him stems true love.

He is love.

He's the epitome of love.

It is an attribute of his nature, which again is at direct odds with those who believe that in a

theistic view of God, that he's just a God who made everything and then just sits back and lets everything play out

according to the laws of physics that he put in place.

But no, he's a God of love.

He interacts with his creation.

He stepped into his creation in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And finally for today's discussion, God is holy.

He's holy.

Now the word holy means to be cut and separate.

I actually really love, one of the other reasons I really love this translation is it's, I think the

only translation actually in English to actually accurately translate a certain word in Hebrew.

So in the Hebrew, in many translations it says, like when God says, I will make a covenant with you,

I will make, that's not the Hebrew.

You know what the Hebrew says?

It says, the Hebrew says, I will cut a covenant with you.

I will cut, okay?

So it's like, we would use that in today's vernacular as well, hey, let's cut a deal, right?

And so now that's significant for two reasons.

When God says, I will cut a covenant with you is because he's saying twofold.

Cutting is a, it's like an adjective that stems from the word holy.

So the connotation is separation, okay?

I'm gonna cut, I'm gonna separate you.

In that covenant making process, you're gonna be separated, okay?

That's what it means to be in covenant with me is that you're gonna be separated from the world, okay?

And another part of it is it actually is pointing towards the action of that covenant,

which is circumcision, the cutting of the flesh.

And those are the two very real thoughts in the Hebrew.

And so the LSB is the only translation that accurately translates that consistently throughout the Old Testament where

it says, I will cut a covenant with you.

It's really interesting, it's really cool.

And that's the connotation there is holiness.

And God is himself holy.

In fact, we see in Isaiah 6 .3.

We see in the year that King Uzziah died, the prophet Isaiah said, I saw the Lord high and lifted up and the train of his robe

filled the temple and he saw the stirrup from the turban singing, holy, holy, holy is Yehovah,

Yahweh of hosts.

The whole earth is filled with your glory, okay?

Pretty amazing.

Now you have a triad of holies there.

Not once, not twice, but three times pointing towards the

holiness of the Holy Trinity, of the Father, Son and Spirit.

Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh, the singular God of hosts.

Pretty amazing.

And so holiness is an attribute of God, which is why in the Garden of Eden, God had to cut, sever

ties with man, with humanity because they had become unclean.

It is opposed to his nature.

God cannot dwell in the presence of the wicked because it'll consume

them.

And because of his love, he separated himself from humanity, so really it was an act of love that

Yahweh did when he separated himself from the garden because if not, he would have consumed humanity and they would have

been destroyed.

Yet, it was also in his holiness that he had to separate from

humanity.

And so, here we get a glimpse into who God is.

And there's so much more we can say.

There's so much more we can study.

But I hope this just at least whets your appetite, gets you thinking about what the Bible teaches about who God is, maybe some of the metaphysical

implications of who God is as to his attributes in nature.

Any other thoughts or questions in regard to today's lesson?

Yeah?

I shall be what I shall be.

I will be that which I will be would be an accurate translation as well.

And of course, the one that is mostly used in English translations following the tradition of the King James

is I am that I am, or I am who I am.

I shall prove to be what I shall prove to be.

Yeah, that's right.

Any other thoughts, questions?

In what language?

I don't know, maybe.

Probably.

Now, that's the name, what the name Yahweh means.

The name Yahweh literally means I shall cause to be,

again, proving the self -existence of God that all things stem from him, right?

So it's intrinsic into his very person and name that he's the creator, the source of all things.

So, they're pretty cool things.

So, that's a great question.

So, in Psalm 110, you have a verse, verse one says the Lord, that's Yahweh, that's capitalized in our Bibles, said

unto my Lord, Adonai.

So, the second Lord isn't referred to as Yahweh, okay?

So, that's very important there.

It says the Lord, Yahweh, Yehovah, said to my Lord, Adonai, in the Hebrew,

sit at my right hand until I make all your enemies a footstool.

Jesus takes that verse, I think it's in Matthew 21 or 22, and he says, who is David's

Lord, right?

And he proves himself to be the Lord over David because the Lord said to my Lord, this is David, a

Davidic Psalm, so David called the Messiah his Lord, okay?

And so, that was an important point.

That text in itself doesn't correlate with Jesus being particularly Yahweh because it doesn't call him Yahweh,

though it is, obviously, it is a claim of divinity there because

to be at God's right hand means that you are sharing the throne of God.

It means you're a co -occupant of the throne room of God, which only God can rightfully do.

So, yeah, so there are, so in the Hebrew, there is Adonai, which is usually a

title of divine reverence, and then there is Adoni, for Adonai,

and Adoni literally means like my Lord, like how we would use in Spanish the word senor to describe

someone who's older or worthy of respect, just like the titles of my Lord are used in English

culture to refer to someone who has ownership.

And so, that's how the Hebrew would differentiate.

Now, it's not true, there's Unitarians who say, and Jews who say that Psalm 110 uses

the word Adoni.

Now, it's true that some manuscripts do.

The oldest manuscripts that we have show that it's Adonai.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, yeah, because then they would understand that the word Adonai really is kind of a divine title,

not a divine name.

That's really the problem.

Last thing I'll say, the divine name is important because it's a name.

The word Lord is not a name, it's a title.

The word God, like if you ask an average American, really biblically literate, most American Christians as well, you

ask them, what's God's name?

They'll say, God.

No, it's like your name is not boy or girl.

Those are titles, those are descriptions.

Matter of fact, the word God is very generic in the Hebrew, very generic.

A lot of things were called gods.

Moses was called God, did you know that?

Exodus 7 -1, Moses is called Elohim.

He's God as unto his people.

The word God is used of Baal, it's used of other deities.

It's used of Samuel, that's right.

It's used so many times in so many places.

It's a very generic word because you know what the word God actually means in Hebrew?

Does anyone know?

It means strong one.

So, it actually means a little bit more than that.

That's just a generic term.

It literally does mean strong one, but it's more than that.

We get to the etymology of the word.

It means the one who's strong enough to make the rules by which you live by.

So, whoever was strong enough to make the rules, that was God.

So, that's why the judges are called gods in the Old Testament.

Psalm 82, we see a reference to other gods because they were making rules by which people were living by.

And so, whoever has authority to make rules, strong enough to make rules, that person was considered a

god.

And so, the word God is just really generic in the Hebrew, more generic than we actually think.

But the Bible clearly sets apart Yahweh, Yehovah, as a unique god.

That's why he's called El Shaddai, the Almighty God.

He's also called El Elyon, which is the Most High God.

He's given all these other titles to show that he's not just like other gods.

He is the Most High God.

He is the Almighty God.

And so, it's distinguishing him from other deities.

So, pretty fun stuff.

Let me pray.

Father, I thank you, Lord, for your goodness.

Pray, Lord, your blessing over the rest of our service.

We're so thankful, Lord, to be here.

We do pray for our brothers and sisters who are not well today, and we do pray, God, your grace and your blessing over them.

And we do pray, God, that you'd be glorified in our time together, in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we'll see you guys in a bit.