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- Well, as you who were here last week know, we did not finish our lesson on God's self-revelation, so we're going to continue tonight.
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- We got to look last week at the first two blanks that are on your sheet, and for those of you who weren't here, maybe you didn't bring your sheet back with you, the answers there are general and special.
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- God has revealed Himself in two ways.
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- He has revealed Himself through general revelation, and that word general means general in two ways.
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- It's general in the sense that it reaches an audience that is nonspecific.
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- It reaches the audience of the whole world.
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- Every man, woman, and child in the world gets to see the sun, gets to feel the air, gets to breathe that air, and gets to eat and all those different things, and that's an example of general revelation.
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- God revealing Himself through the cosmos, and as Dr.
- 01:04
- R.C.
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- Sproul pointed out in his lesson on systematic theology, it is a wonder that we have cosmos and not chaos.
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- When we look out into the universe, we see an orderly arrangement.
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- We don't see disorder.
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- We see an orderly arrangement, and that is an example of a guiding hand or a guiding creative force, and so that is part of general revelation.
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- It goes to a general audience, and it is of a general type.
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- What we learn about God in general revelation is not specific, but it is still important.
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- We learn the unspecific things about God, one, that He is creator, two, that He is creative, three, that He is powerful.
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- All of these things are general things about God.
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- That information does not save, but that information does make us culpable to Him.
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- Romans 1 tells us that.
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- Romans 1 tells us that every man, simply by nature of knowing that God exists, from the nature outside and the conscience within him, is condemned because he knows God exists, and he suppresses that truth and unrighteousness, and he lives serving himself.
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- He serves idols, refusing to serve the God who exists.
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- He replaces that God with a God of his own making.
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- That's general revelation.
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- General revelation is enough to damn.
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- It is not enough to save.
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- The second kind of revelation that we talked about last week is special revelation.
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- It is special in that it goes to a particular audience, and it is of a supernatural particular type.
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- Scripture is the high-water mark of special revelation.
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- It is not the only kind of special revelation, because throughout the Bible, it wasn't until Moses penned the first five books of the Bible that there was even a Bible, and yet there were people who lived before him who lived to God, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, all of these people who lived prior to Moses, and they were able to relate to God through special revelation such as visions and dreams and audible speaking that God did.
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- The Bible says God spoke in various ways and various times to our fathers through the prophets, but now he speaks to us through his Son.
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- And so we know that the Scripture is the high-water mark.
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- It is what we have today that is special revelation from God, and there is a subset of systematic theology that usually goes before theology proper.
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- You know, we are in theology proper, the study of God the Father, the study of the nature of God.
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- That is what the study is that we are in right now, theology proper.
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- But there is a study that usually goes before this called bibliology.
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- What is bibliology? Study of the Bible.
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- It is understanding what the Bible is and where it came from and how we understand it.
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- And that study usually comes first.
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- The reason why I chose not to put it first in this course is we literally did it right before we took our break in August.
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- We did a several-month-long course in the history of the Bible, the history of the text of the New Testament, the history of the text of the Old Testament, the languages and all of those different things.
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- We did a very long study, and I felt like rehearsing that again was a little unfair to those of you who were here.
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- So if you are interested in bibliology, I would recommend going back and listening to our series on Apologetics 201, because that is what it is called.
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- It was Apologetics 201, and it is on our Sermon Audio page.
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- And you will see there where we talked about things like King James Onlyism.
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- We talked about the history of the text of the New Testament, Greek and Hebrew and all those different things, and it is there.
- 04:52
- But I do want to make a point tonight, before we get into the names, and I am going to rush it a little bit because I want to get to the names, but I want to say this.
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- Even though we are not going to go over bibliology, there is something that we always need to keep in mind when we think about God's special revelation in the Scripture.
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- The Scripture carries two very important qualities that every believer should recognize.
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- It carries the quality of being infallible and inerrant.
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- Infallible and inerrant.
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- Most of you have probably read our Statement of Faith here at the church.
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- Those of you who are new guys might not have, but our Statement of Faith says we believe that the Word of God, the Scriptures, the 66 books of the Bible are infallible and inerrant.
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- Now, is that just a stutter? Is that saying the same thing twice? No, it's not.
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- Understanding the difference and the mutual relationship between infallibility and inerrancy is very important because a person or a document can be inerrant without being infallible.
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- You say, what do you mean? Well, I can make a statement that's inerrant.
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- I can say something that is true.
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- And that statement by itself can be without error.
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- It can be perfect grammatically.
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- It can be perfect in subject.
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- It can be perfect in content.
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- But that don't make me infallible because I say a lot of other things that are wrong.
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- I can say something that is true.
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- I can say something that is without error, but that doesn't make me infallible.
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- Inerrancy is the result of infallibility.
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- But they are not the same thing.
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- Infallibility means it cannot err.
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- Inerrancy means it does not err.
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- And we as Christians affirm both about the Bible.
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- We say, one, it does not have the capacity to fail.
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- And as a result, it does not fail or err.
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- And that's why it's important to understand the distinction and the difference.
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- Because there are people who believe, yes, the Bible's true, but it doesn't have to be.
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- They'll say the Bible's inerrant, but it's not infallible because it was written by men.
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- Or they'll say it has limited inerrancy.
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- It's only inerrant where it talks about things that are in regard to faith or in regard to God's nature.
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- But when it talks about those 603,550 Jews in the wilderness that were gone after they had left Egypt in the Exodus, well, that number may be a little exaggerated, you know, because we don't have to be inerrant.
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- You know, you have to understand how inerrancy is a big deal because we get down to the very issue of the Bible talks about the very words are themselves inerrant.
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- And like I said, we went through a long litany of things like textual variations and all that.
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- We're not going to redo that.
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- But ultimately, the point is this.
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- We talk about inerrancy because it is how we understand the Scripture.
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- I remember very keenly, very important, one night, a man who came to my house.
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- I've told you all this story, a few of you.
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- A man came to my house, he sat on my couch, and he told me, I don't believe the whole Bible is true.
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- And he was a member of the church, and we were talking.
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- First, he was asking me about Calvinism, and he was asking me about that, and I was giving him answers, and I said something from the Bible, and he said, well, I don't believe the whole Bible is true.
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- My first response was, you're in the wrong church, but that's first.
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- But my second response was this.
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- We can no longer have a conversation about Calvinism or any doctrinal conversation because as soon as you say, I don't believe the whole Bible is true, and I say, well, here in Romans 9, Paul says, Jacob, I love and Esau, I hate, and he quoted Malachi, who was essentially quoting the principle that was given to us in Genesis.
- 09:03
- And when I say that, you can say, well, I don't believe in Genesis, or I don't believe in Malachi, or I don't believe in Romans 9.
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- Once you give up inerrancy, once you give up infallibility, the Bible becomes just a pick-and-choose game.
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- And I can take this part over here because I like it.
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- I like when Jesus says that God is love, but I don't like it when he says that if your right hand causes you to sin, you ought to cut it off.
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- It's better to enter into heaven maimed than it is to enter into hell with your whole body.
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- When Jesus says that, we prefer he didn't say that, so we'll just take our little pen knife and cut that part right out.
- 09:46
- But I want to make a mention of this, and this is...
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- I said I wasn't going to spend all my time on this.
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- When it comes to infallibility and inerrancy, we have general and special revelation.
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- Both are infallible.
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- General revelation and special revelation are both infallible because they are revelation from God.
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- But what's very fallible? Interpretation of the revelation.
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- When a scientist looks at the world, and he tries to interpret that revelation from a scientific perspective that's opposite God's perspective, or without the perspective of God, he will likely come to a conclusion that is wrong because even though the revelation was infallible, his interpretation was fallible.
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- Same thing happens with the Bible.
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- We've got an infallible Bible.
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- We've got an inerrant Bible.
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- But we've got a bunch of preachers and a bunch of people that don't take the time to study what it says, or they only study the parts that agree with them, and they take out the parts that don't, or they study the four or five verses that agree with them, and they quote them over and over and over, like those folks that dress real nice and come to your house on Saturday morning and wake you up and want to argue with you about the Trinity because the word Trinity ain't there? Well, Jehovah ain't there either.
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- We're going to talk about that in a minute.
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- But the whole argument is they're taking bits and pieces and not looking at the whole, and they're interpreting it incorrectly.
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- So interpretation is important.
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- As John MacArthur has said, the meaning of Scripture is Scripture.
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- The meaning of Scripture is Scripture.
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- So if you are propounding a false meaning, then you're propounding a false Scripture.
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- You're not propounding the truth.
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- You're not proposing the truth if what you are saying about the Scripture is false.
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- So it's important not only that we have the revelation, but that we interpret it properly.
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- We believe that God gave us the Bible, and that's why we believe it's infallible.
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- As a result, we believe the Bible is inerrant.
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- The special revelation of Scripture gives us the most expressive understanding of who God is and what He is like.
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- And as a result, in our next series of lessons in Theology Proper, we're going to be going through the attributes of God, the communicable attributes and the incommunicable attributes of God.
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- That will be our next two lessons in this series.
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- But prior to the attributes of God, tonight we are going to look specifically at His names, which, in a sense, expresses a part of His attributes.
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- And this will roll into the next lesson very easily because His names talk about who He is.
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- And as a result, when we look at who He is by His names, we're giving ourselves, as it were, a preview of what we're going to look at in our time of studying the attributes of God.
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- All right, so our first name that we're going to look at tonight.
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- Do you have your handout ready? There are three common Hebrew names for God.
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- The first name for God is Elohim.
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- Elohim.
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- If you have your Bibles, somebody turn to Genesis chapter 1.
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- Actually, I probably wouldn't have to tell you to turn there.
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- Genesis 1, 1 and 2.
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- If somebody can just quote it.
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- Who wants to quote it? All right, who wants to read it? Somebody read it out loud for me.
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- Don't all run at once.
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- Thank you.
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- The first words of the Bible.
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- In the beginning, God.
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- In Hebrew, it is Elohim.
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- That is the name that is used.
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- The very first word that references God and His nature and His name is the word Elohim.
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- What is the most complex issue with this particular name is Elohim is plural.
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- That's right.
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- Now, isn't it the foundational belief among the Jewish people, by the way, they're the ones through whom this book came, the book of Genesis, which means the book of beginnings.
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- Isn't it the most foundational idea among the Jewish people that God is one? And yet, we have a plural expression of God's name because the name is actually the El.
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- The Elohim is what makes it the plural.
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- So the very first time we see the word God, we might be tempted to translate it gods, but that isn't appropriate.
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- That's why no true English translation has ever done that.
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- So you understand when I say it is plural, I'm not saying we should translate it in the plural.
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- You say, now wait, now you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.
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- No, no, no, no, just you have to understand something.
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- The term Elohim is referencing one God, but it is also referencing him in what is called the majestic plural.
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- The majestic plural, it is something that was done in the ancient world.
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- It was very common to any time you spoke of regal or powerful or authoritative figure, you would never use the singular.
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- You would always use the plural.
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- Kings would refer to himself as we and us because of his majesty and his kingdom expressed his plurality.
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- It wasn't just him, it was we.
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- And this is why later in Genesis 1.1, let us make man in our image and according to our likeness.
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- And people say, well, that's a reference to the Trinity.
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- Possibly.
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- Possibly.
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- I would say if it is, it's veiled because it certainly doesn't express the fullness of the Trinity in that passage, but certainly it could be a veiled reference to the Trinity.
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- However, we know this.
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- The term Elohim is plural.
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- Later, the term let us make man is used.
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- And these are majestic terms of plurality, which the Bible uses to describe God and his splendor and his transcendence, not in his multiplicity.
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- It's not saying there's more than one God.
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- And no one has ever interpreted it that way, especially the Jews who say in Deuteronomy 6, what? There is one God.
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- That is the prayer of the Jewish people, the Shema.
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- Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one.
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- Right? That was the prayer of Israel.
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- And so certainly they were not confusing the understanding of God being one and God being many in this use of the term.
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- Elohim is a majestic plural.
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- The next word that you will see sometimes, especially if you ever do study Hebrew, you'll see this word come up a lot.
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- It is the word Adonai.
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- The word Adonai.
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- I'm going to read to you.
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- You know, we're using this book as our textbook.
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- This is the Moody Handbook of Theology.
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- If you want a copy, you can get a copy on Amazon.
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- They're only a few bucks.
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- Here is what this says about this word Adonai.
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- Adonai, in its root, means Lord or Master.
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- It's usually translated Lord in English Bibles.
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- Adonai occurs 449 times in the Old Testament, 315 times in conjunction with Yahweh, which is the word we're going to look at next.
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- Adhon emphasizes the servant-master relationship and thus suggests God's authority as Master, one who is sovereign in His rule and absolute in His authority.
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- Adonai should probably be understood as Lord of all or Lord par excellence.
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- It is also possible to understand Adonai as a personal address, my Lord.
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- O Lord, my Lord.
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- We read that in the Scripture.
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- That is, O Yahweh, my Adonai.
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- That's the two terms used together.
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- The proper name of God, which we're going to look at in a minute, Yahweh, O Yahweh, my Adonai, my Lord, Master.
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- So that's that term, Adonai.
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- All right, so now the big one, the big cheese, the one everybody always cares about, especially those people who come to your door on Saturday morning.
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- It's always Saturday for me.
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- It is the word Yahweh.
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- Yahweh.
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- In Hebrew, it is a four-letter word.
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- It looks like that.
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- Somewhat.
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- Of the languages, of biblical languages, Hebrew is my weakest.
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- So forgive me.
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- My primary study has been in the Greek language.
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- But this I know because this is what is called the tetragrammaton.
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- The tetragrammaton means tetra, meaning four, and grammaton meaning letter.
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- It's the four-letter name of God.
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- And we actually don't know how to pronounce it.
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- We take a stab at it with Yahweh.
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- Because it is Yod, that's that little letter there, He, Vod or Wau, sometimes pronounced one way.
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- This is where we get the Yahweh or Yahveh from Jehovah.
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- And then you have He again.
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- So Yod, He, Vod, He or Yod, He, Wau, He.
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- And so that would either be Yahweh or Yahveh.
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- And here's where you're going to have some fun.
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- If you take Adonai and you put Yehovah, now we're getting closer to those guys on Saturday morning.
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- Because now we got that with the inclusion of the hard O, you get Yahovah.
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- And as hopefully you know, in the Hebrew language, there is no hard J, J, J, J.
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- There actually was no hard J in Greek either.
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- So Jesus wasn't Jesus.
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- He was Yesu.
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- There's no J.
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- J is a Germanic sound.
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- It's later.
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- So Jehovah would have been Yahovah.
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- Sorry.
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- Right and low.
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- So these are all expressions of that name.
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- Does it matter? Well, it matters to me.
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- But here's where it really matters is how this name is used.
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- This name is used to describe God in His transcendence.
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- Everybody turn to Exodus chapter 3.
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- I need readers tonight because I only have my Greek Bible.
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- I don't have my Old Testament with me.
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- So if you'll open to chapter 3 of Exodus, and somebody's going to need to read verses 14 and 15 to me.
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- And God said unto Moses, and he said, Thou shalt not say unto the children of Israel, I am.
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- I am.
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- And God said moreover unto Isaac, and the God of Jacob hath sent me unto you.
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- This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
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- Absolutely.
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- Thank you.
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- I want to read from our book now.
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- Although there is considerable discussion concerning the origin and meaning of the name, this common designation is likely related to the verb to be.
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- Thus in Exodus 3, 14 and 15, which you just read, the Lord describes I am who I am.
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- The Lord has sent me to you.
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- This is my name forever.
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- This has particular significance to the I am.
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- So you've heard that phrase, right? I am.
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- Honestly, one of the great revelations of my life, and maybe I should use the word illumination, not revelation, but one of the great illuminations of my life was when I realized what that meant.
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- Because as a child, I would hear that said, and it really came across very weird.
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- God says, what's his name? I am.
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- Well, it sounds like he's stopped in the middle of the sentence.
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- Right? I mean, because I am isn't a complete thought.
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- It's a stopping point that seems to have a need for a continuation.
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- When you say I am, you usually say I'm going somewhere.
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- Or I am here.
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- Or I am there.
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- Or I am going there.
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- Right? But in this sense, the term I am, this phrase where the idea of Yahweh comes from, is the idea of God's self-existence.
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- And some of you may have heard this before.
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- I've said this several times.
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- If I say I am, I can't say that unqualified.
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- Because I am because of a myriad of factors.
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- I exist because of a myriad of things.
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- I exist because there's a right atmosphere around me.
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- I exist because there's enough air moving in and out of my lungs to keep me going.
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- I exist because my heart is beating to the point that the blood is being pressed to the places in my body that it needs to go, and it's coming back, and it's rejuvenating itself, and it's continuing again.
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- I am because I get enough food.
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- I am because I get enough water.
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- I am because I get enough sunlight.
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- I am because of so many different reasons.
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- And if any of those things didn't happen, I would cease to be.
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- Right? In fact, in the Greek, the phrase is a me.
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- Right? And that is the form of the word to be.
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- Okay? So we'll draw a line there.
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- The form of the word to be.
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- A me means to be, to exist.
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- Right? And when God says, I exist, He didn't say it the way you do.
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- In fact, R.C.
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- Sproul made a big fuss one time because he said, God doesn't exist.
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- And everybody, R.C.
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- said God doesn't exist.
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- No, he says God doesn't exist.
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- He is existence.
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- It's in Him.
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- He doesn't simply exist like we exist, but God is.
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- He is.
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- He am.
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- He always be.
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- God's transcendent nature is so unlike ours in that sense.
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- He is beyond time.
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- He is beyond space.
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- He exists in a sense that is outside of our understanding of to be.
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- And so the only way He can describe Himself to us is I am.
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- Not I was or I will be, but I always am." And Yahweh is the expression of God's self-existence.
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- He is.
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- And so that is how we can understand this this phrase.
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- Now, real fun, just thing, in case you don't know, some of you do I know because I've taught this before.
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- If you're reading your Old Testament and you see the word Lord, L-O-R-D, with a capital L but a lower case O-R-D, and God is the subject, because sometimes Lord will be talking about a person, Lord was an address that was used for men and things like that, but if God is the subject of Lord and you see L-O-R-D, lower case O-R-D, then that is always using the word Adonai.
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- That tells you in English that you're looking at the word Adonai.
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- But if you see in your English translation, and this is pretty universal, I haven't seen an English translation yet that doesn't do this, most of them do, especially your good ones, your NAS, ESV, King James, all these, you're going to see L-O-R-D, all capital, that is the Tetragrammaton or the name Yahweh.
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- So just for study purposes, if you're reading and you come across little O-R-D, you know that's Adonai.
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- It's the title.
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- If you see the capital O-R-D, then you know that is the proper name or the name Yahweh.
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- Sir? It's an expression of Yahweh.
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- The I am who I am is an expression of that same phrase.
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- Yes.
- 28:04
- See, well, that's an entirely different conversation, which I will get to when we get to Christology, because Christology, we're going to go over the I am statements of Christ.
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- Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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- Jesus said, I am.
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- When the guards came and said, I'm looking for Jesus Christ, I am.
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- Boom.
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- I like, do you remember when Peter was, he walked, Jesus was walking on the water, and they said it's a ghost or whatever, and Jesus said, fear not, it is I.
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- It's not what it says.
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- In Greek, it says, fear not, I am.
- 28:38
- And it's ego, me.
- 28:39
- Ego, me in the Greek.
- 28:44
- That's ego.
- 28:46
- And then me, that would be ego, me in Greek.
- 28:52
- And that is the phrase, I am.
- 28:54
- And Jesus uses that of himself several times.
- 28:58
- In fact, probably the most important time was when he did, spoken in John, I think it's John 8, when the Pharisees said, you know, you're not even 50 years old.
- 29:09
- How could Abraham look forward to your day? And Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am.
- 29:15
- Ego, Amy, I am.
- 29:17
- And so, yeah, so that, so yeah, when we get to Christology, we're going to go over that more.
- 29:21
- Jesus using the sacred name for himself.
- 29:23
- And absolutely, absolutely.
- 29:25
- Okay, so let's go over these names.
- 29:26
- Let's at least get them down, because I got a lot I'm going to erase these.
- 29:36
- All right.
- 29:37
- So the next, the next subgroup that I have on your list is the, is the, is the compound names.
- 29:44
- These are ones you probably heard, especially if you, if you listen to Christian music, you've heard this one, El Shaddai.
- 29:52
- Yeah.
- 29:54
- El Shaddai.
- 29:56
- El Shaddai is found in Genesis 17, one, and it references God Almighty.
- 30:06
- By the way, El, remember Elohim, El is the actual word for God.
- 30:12
- For all of you nerds, and I am one.
- 30:16
- If you ever read a Superman comic book.
- 30:19
- No, this is important to me.
- 30:22
- The name of Superman in the comic books is Kal-El, from the house of El.
- 30:29
- They get this name from the word Hebrew name for God.
- 30:33
- Just an interesting little nerd side bit.
- 30:37
- Didn't matter at all.
- 30:39
- Kal-El, his father's name was Jor-El.
- 30:41
- If you remember Marlon Brando played Jor-El in the TV movie or whatever it was, that was the name, that was where they got the name.
- 30:49
- El.
- 30:50
- Oh, I'm moving on.
- 30:52
- I'm sorry.
- 30:53
- I'm moving on.
- 30:57
- Somebody will send me an email about that.
- 31:00
- Okay.
- 31:00
- Next one, El-Elyon.
- 31:02
- El-Elyon.
- 31:03
- I'm going to bring my sheet up here so I can get through these.
- 31:05
- El-Elyon.
- 31:06
- El-Elyon is from Genesis 14.
- 31:10
- This is God most high.
- 31:12
- Next one, El-Olam.
- 31:17
- This is everlasting.
- 31:19
- God everlasting.
- 31:22
- So El-Elyon is God most high.
- 31:27
- El-Olam is God everlasting.
- 31:31
- Here's one that I imagine most of you are familiar with.
- 31:34
- The Yahweh's are pretty popular, but the most popular is this one.
- 31:39
- Yahweh-Jireh, or sometimes people say Jehovah-Jireh.
- 31:44
- That one comes directly from Genesis 22, when God was, or Abraham was offering Isaac up on the mountain and God provided the ram to take the place.
- 31:55
- And there's a picture of Jesus Christ taking the place of the sacrifice and the ram became the substitutionary sacrifice.
- 32:01
- And Abraham, we will call this place Yahweh-Jireh.
- 32:06
- God provides.
- 32:08
- That's where that name comes from.
- 32:12
- Yeah, well, please, but we don't have time for tonight.
- 32:16
- Several more here very quickly.
- 32:18
- Yahweh-Nisi, N-I-S-S-I.
- 32:22
- That is the Lord, our banner.
- 32:24
- God is our banner.
- 32:26
- He is above us.
- 32:29
- He goes before us.
- 32:31
- And that's Exodus 17, 5.
- 32:35
- Yahweh-Shalom.
- 32:37
- What's that? The Lord, our peace, right? That is in Judges 6, 24.
- 32:46
- Yahweh-Sabaoth.
- 32:49
- S-A-B-B-A-O-T-H.
- 32:53
- Actually, it's Sabaoth.
- 32:55
- Sabaoth.
- 32:56
- Sabaoth.
- 32:57
- It's S-A-B-B-A-O-T-H.
- 33:01
- And it's Sabaoth.
- 33:02
- I said it wrong.
- 33:03
- It's Sabaoth.
- 33:04
- That's the Lord of hosts.
- 33:05
- The Lord of the hosts or the armies, right? 1 Samuel 1, 3.
- 33:13
- I better write this one.
- 33:20
- Makedashim.
- 33:23
- Makedashim.
- 33:24
- Makedashim.
- 33:25
- That should be it.
- 33:25
- That's two C's.
- 33:27
- M-A-C-C-A-D-D-E-S-H-C-E-M.
- 33:30
- Makedashim.
- 33:31
- And that, yeah, exactly.
- 33:34
- Sanctifier.
- 33:35
- God, our sanctifier.
- 33:37
- Exodus 31, 13.
- 33:39
- And finally, this one I'll have to write too.
- 33:46
- Yeah, that's exactly right.
- 33:48
- Sidcanu.
- 33:49
- And that is the Lord, our righteousness.
- 33:51
- The Lord, our righteousness.
- 33:52
- Now there are more, but I felt like that was enough.
- 33:59
- Yeah, and remind me where that is.
- 34:02
- Do you remember? He's our healer, but do you remember where it is? And it's Rafa.
- 34:10
- R-A-F-A, right? Or R-O-F-A.
- 34:14
- Yeah, but it's God, our healer.
- 34:16
- And like I said, they go on and on.
- 34:17
- And the names of God are as unlimited as he is in the sense of all that he does and the majesty and all.
- 34:23
- But yeah, those are just some that I gave you.
- 34:24
- Those were all taken from our textbook.
- 34:26
- I want to finish tonight with the New Testament because all that we just talked about are all Hebrew, right? El is Hebrew prefix.
- 34:37
- Yahweh is Hebrew word.
- 34:39
- There are four specific Greek words that we should also look at very quickly.
- 34:45
- And I know we're, time as it is, always never my friend.
- 34:50
- All right.
- 34:50
- First one, theos.
- 34:56
- The Greek equivalent to El is theos.
- 35:05
- It's where we get the word theology.
- 35:07
- It's all that.
- 35:09
- Most of you are familiar with theos.
- 35:10
- I don't really need to spend a lot of time with it.
- 35:13
- Probably where it is most important is in John 1.1.
- 35:19
- In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, theos.
- 35:25
- And the word was God, theos.
- 35:29
- And so that passage, and especially if you study it in the Greek language, in Archaean, halagos, pros, halagos, tein, tan, theon, kai, theos, ein, halagos.
- 35:40
- That's the Greek, John 1.1.
- 35:44
- And it tells us that the word was with pros, tan, theon, the God, kai, theos, ein, halagos.
- 35:56
- And God was the word is actually how it is in Greek, but because of the predicate nominative, the word halagos comes first.
- 36:03
- So the word was God.
- 36:06
- So we see that Jesus, the word was with God, that's the Father, and he was God in his nature.
- 36:13
- If you read a Jehovah Witnesses Bible, they'll say Jesus was a God, including the indefinite article, a.
- 36:21
- And that's wrong, because when we include the indefinite article, we are indicating that that noun is a quantitative noun, meaning that it is meant to express how many there is of something.
- 36:33
- But it's not.
- 36:33
- It's a qualitative noun.
- 36:34
- It means to express a type.
- 36:36
- Like if I say, Mark, you are man and I am man and Jackie, you are woman.
- 36:42
- Right.
- 36:43
- I could have said you're a man or I could have said you're the man.
- 36:46
- You don't want that when you're in the lineup.
- 36:49
- Yeah.
- 36:50
- But if I say you are man, that no longer becomes a quantitative noun, meaning I'm expressing amount.
- 36:58
- It's qualitative.
- 37:00
- I'm speaking of type.
- 37:01
- So when when the Bible says the word was God, it doesn't need an article because it's not expressing amount.
- 37:09
- It's expressing type.
- 37:11
- Jesus was God in his nature.
- 37:13
- That's why that is important.
- 37:16
- And and F.F.
- 37:17
- Bruce, Greek linguist, he said the only thing the Jehovah Witnesses prove by adding the additional A is their ignorance of Greek grammar.
- 37:27
- And they said it's unnecessary.
- 37:28
- Adding the A proves their ignorance of Greek grammar.
- 37:31
- All right.
- 37:32
- So that's the chaos.
- 37:34
- Very important.
- 37:35
- The next word is.
- 37:40
- Excuse me.
- 37:41
- No, I know.
- 37:42
- I just lost my brain.
- 37:47
- It's pronounced courios or curious.
- 37:51
- Courios is the word for Lord in your New Testament.
- 37:58
- Here's the neat thing, though.
- 38:00
- This word courios is the primary word used for Jesus Christ.
- 38:06
- And it is the word that Yahweh is translated to in the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was done several hundred years prior to Jesus coming.
- 38:19
- The word courios was translated from from Yahweh into Greek as courios.
- 38:25
- So Jesus is called courios, which means Lord.
- 38:28
- But it also is the Hebrew understanding would have been Yahweh or could it could have one of the one of the Hebrew understandings of translating into this word is Yahweh.
- 38:37
- So that word courios, very, very important Greek word, almost exclusively in the New Testament is referencing Christ.
- 38:47
- The next one in Greek is pater.
- 38:53
- This I actually have my Bible turned to this one, so I will read it to you.
- 38:57
- This is from Matthew chapter six and verse nine.
- 39:03
- Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
- 39:06
- I think about Andy.
- 39:08
- They said, Lord, teach us to pray.
- 39:11
- And he's been teaching us a lot of great things about prayer.
- 39:14
- Well, this is Jesus is giving us not a prayer to necessarily be recited, though it's important that if you learn the prayer, it's not bad to recite it.
- 39:22
- But he gave us the model of prayer and he said, our potter in heaven, our father in heaven.
- 39:32
- Now, that's what that word potter means.
- 39:35
- It's where we get the word patriarch, patriarchal.
- 39:38
- All those words are all rooted in the word potter.
- 39:41
- And it is it is a interesting truth that throughout the Old Testament, you rarely see father used of God.
- 39:50
- And especially not in the sense of relationship.
- 39:54
- Anytime fathers use of God in the Old Testament is almost always in the sense of creation.
- 39:57
- Like we talk about Henry Ford is the father of modern industry or or, you know, George Washington's the father of the United States.
- 40:05
- You know, these sort of those that type of idea of of being the first or the one who created or the one who produced.
- 40:10
- So when God's talked about his father in the Old Testament, it's almost in the sense always of God is the producer or creator or father of the universe.
- 40:17
- But when Jesus calls God father, he calls him father in the sense of father relationship.
- 40:24
- And that was actually very, very huge in the sense of a theological new.
- 40:31
- It was a theological unique thing to have someone talk to God as father and express that type of intimacy and relationship.
- 40:40
- That's why the Pharisees hated Jesus.
- 40:43
- He said, I am the son come down from heaven.
- 40:45
- They knew what that meant.
- 40:47
- He was blaspheming God if it weren't true, if it weren't true, because he was speaking of a relationship that was absolutely unique to him.
- 40:54
- And the last one probably you're all familiar with.
- 40:56
- It's an Arabic term, not Arabic, Aramaic term Abba Abba Abba is in Romans chapter eight.
- 41:07
- And we are told what in Romans chapter eight, we have been given the spirit of adoption by which we cry out Abba father, right? Abba father.
- 41:17
- And it really is.
- 41:19
- It's it's a it's an even more intimate expression of our relationship.
- 41:26
- Father.
- 41:27
- Yes, God is father, but he is also dad.
- 41:31
- Now, I do.
- 41:32
- I know some people pray daddy God.
- 41:36
- I don't take issue with that.
- 41:38
- I think it's a it's a little it doesn't ring to my ear.
- 41:41
- Well, when people do that, but I'm not saying it's wrong.
- 41:43
- And if people do that, I think it's fine because they're trying to express what Paul gives us in in Romans eight when he said, we cry out Abba.
- 41:56
- Dad, our father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name, and that I would say is the most precious name that we can call God is to call him father.
- 42:08
- Let's let's pray.
- 42:10
- Father, I thank you for the opportunity to be able to call you father.
- 42:14
- I thank you for the opportunity for that because of what Jesus did.
- 42:18
- We could not call you father if we were not adopted into your family and we could not be adopted into your family if we were not washed, justified and sanctified in the blood of the lamb.
- 42:31
- So tonight we thank you for him.
- 42:33
- We thank you for the adoption of sons, which comes when we are regenerated by your Holy Spirit and welcomed into your family by grace through faith.
- 42:42
- And father, I pray tonight has been encouraging to all of these men and women that are here tonight.
- 42:47
- And I pray that you would bless them to go from here and want to cry out to you and pray to you and thank you, as Brother Andy said, to thank you for all that you have done and all that you are.
- 42:59
- And when we return back again to continue talking about your attributes, Lord, may we just draw closer to you in this study in Christ's name.
- 43:06
- Amen.