August 21, 2018 Show with Joseph Jacowitz on “The Names of God”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday. And this is the 21st day of August 2018.

Before I introduce my guest, I have two people that I want to thank from the bottom of my heart. First of all,

I want to thank my webmaster here at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Eric Nielsen, who flew up, actually he drove up, he actually drove all the way from Illinois to Carlisle, Pennsylvania last week and updated the equipment here in the studio of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio entirely at his own expense, just out of pure love for this show.

Eric is not a paid webmaster, he's a volunteer, and he does everything he does for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exclusively for love for the show and infinitely more important, out of love for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And he is a dear brother in Christ, an elder at the Community Evangelical Free Church of Champaign -Urbana,

Illinois, which is a Reformed congregation within the Evangelical Free denomination.

And so we thank Eric from the bottom of our hearts for doing this. Also today, the oldest son of the woman who led me to Christ back in the 1980s,

Christopher Richardson, he was of enormous help to me working out some bugs on my laptop, which is crucial for the broadcast of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio because all the sound, the commercials that you hear and so on, they come out of that laptop, and that was the only thing that wasn't updated by our webmaster.

So Christopher Richardson came to the rescue and he knows infinitely more about computers than I do. So thanks a lot,

Christopher Richardson, for your help today. Well today, I'm excited to have back on the program a returning guest, one of my favorite guests and someone who has quickly grown to be a very dear friend of mine, and I'm speaking of Pastor Joseph Jakowicz.

He is founder of First Love Radio, the network that has been streaming

Iron Sharpens Iron for a number of months now, our new network. He is also founder of First Love Publications and First Love Missions, and he is one of two pastors at Christ Bible Church in Dublin, California.

Today we are going to be discussing the names of God, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend

Joseph Jakowicz. Chris, it's a pleasure to be with you. And while many of our listeners have heard you on the program before, for those of our listeners discovering you for the first time, because it seems like new people are being added to the audience every day, why don't you tell our listeners first of all about First Love Radio?

First Love Radio began last August, about a year ago actually, or maybe a little less than that.

It's an online global internet radio station operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It has its own programming. Of course it carries your show. Iron Sharpens Iron, Monday through Friday from 1 to 3 p .m.

Pacific time and 4 to 6 p .m. East Coast time. And we are just delighted to have you really anchor our entire radio station, your program, and we've gotten quite a bit of positive feedback from listeners about the program.

And I just enjoy it very much because you cover such a variety of issues that face the church and believers today of issues of great importance.

But we have other genres besides your talk show. We've got four or five sermon programs that last an hour or less.

We've got Unshackled. We've got several other types of programs, and we're still developing others.

We just added Mike Burris, The Christian Companion, which airs from 4 to 6 p .m.

Pacific time. And Mike is a long -time broadcaster and a good friend and a very talented brother.

And so we're very excited about his program, and it's designed to help believers get through the late afternoon hours and into the evening hours, at least here on the

West Coast, as we prepare our thoughts and our lives for the evening.

And so we're encouraged by the growth of First Love Radio. We've seen quite a bit of growth over the last six months.

Seems like word of mouth is spreading the word, and we're having listeners tune in and listen for longer and longer periods of time, for hours at a time.

Many are keeping the radio on in the background, and they're just staying tuned.

We have a lot of quality programs that focus on the teaching of the Word of God. Our station is

Word -oriented. We don't have a whole lot of fluff. So we've got quite a bit to offer, both in the milk of the

Word and the meat of the Word. We focus on expository teaching and preaching.

We have shorter programs lasting for like a minute with Pastor Anderson. He just jumps in throughout the day with one -minute teaching updates on various topics.

We have four or five -minute little teaching vignettes that we're adding.

So there's quite a variety of programs, but most of them, if not all of them, center around the

Word of God, because it's the Word of God that changes people. So we're growing, and I'm very encouraged by the direction that God is taking

First Love Radio. And we invite our listeners to really share First Love Radio.

That's the way we grow. As the Lord blesses us, He puts it in the hearts of people who are blessed and edified by the programming, to share it with others.

Well, I hope the Pastor Anderson you mentioned is not Steve Anderson, the anti -Calvinist,

King James -only pastor in Arizona. No, no, I think it's Richard Anderson.

I could be wrong about that. I was saying that jokingly because I knew that you would never air a program like that since he hates the very things that you find most precious in your life.

Thank you. Well, I know that you immediately follow Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Tell us about that program that you are involved in. Well, it's a sermon -oriented program.

There are four or five of them on First Love Radio, where Peter Sarkis, our programming director, in developing and polishing our programming schedule,

I've asked him to put a sermon program in every three or four hours, and mine comes right after you.

It is one of my sermons, and I'm going through the book of Hebrews right now in our morning service.

Peter draws from the archives of I don't know how many years of archived sermons he has of mine, and he puts it in the slot, so it's as simple as that.

And you also are founder of First Love Publications, and that's where I first met you face to face is when you were manning a book table right next to the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitors booth at the G3 conference. It was such a joy to be able to be right directly next to you and to see all the people, many, many, many people, hundreds of people milling around First Love Publications table.

Tell us about that ministry. First Love Publications is a ministry that officially began in 2006 with the publishing of our first book,

The New Testament Missionary, by Cliff Heller, who was a longtime missionary to Papua New Guinea and a good friend.

And we've added quite a number of titles since then, about 50 titles, and we give away our books free of charge, not only books, but booklets and tracts.

We have five different categories of publications from devotional, pastoral, doctrinal, apologetics, and evangelistic.

And so we have a website, and believers and people go to our website, which is firstlovepublications .org,

and all of our publications are listed there with a brief description. And we supply these free of charge to anyone who orders.

Our warehouse is located in Lexington, Kentucky, and from there we take our orders that come in from the

Internet, from all over the continental United States, even Hawaii and Alaska, and we mail them out.

And we just feed people who are hungry for the Word of God without charge. The Christian publishing industry today is a $4 billion -plus industry, and the vast majority of this literature is sold, you know, through the buying and selling process.

But we circumvent that process and go directly to believers, whether it be through orders that come into our website or through our missions work.

The missions arm of First Love Ministries is called First Love Missions, and we go on four or five mission trips a year for a week or two at a time to countries like Nigeria and Nepal and the

Philippines. And we hold pastors' conferences with 200 -plus pastors, usually at a conference, and we send the pastors away with an armful of books free of charge, providing tools for them to sharpen their pastoral and preaching skills that the benefit of that would distill down to the saints, the members of their churches, and from there keep on going.

So we supply these publications. We have about 40 more that are on the horizon to be added to our catalog.

And anticipating your next question about First Love Missions, we launched

First Love Missions last August. So it was August with First Love Missions, and it was, oh,

I think maybe six months ago we launched First Love Radio. But First Love Missions focuses on, like I said, going around the world to different locations, holding pastors' conferences, as well as Bible conferences and churches, calling hundreds of people to hear the

Word of God through teaching and seminars. And we always bring tens of thousands of books with us to give away at these conferences.

So we not only teach them at the seminar the Word of God through preaching and teaching, but we also provide the literature for them to give them ongoing instruction after that.

So that's the distillation of First Love Missions, First Love Radio, and First Love Publications.

And you are one of two pastors at Christ Bible Church, Dublin, California. Tell us about that ministry. Yes, our church,

Christ Bible Church in Dublin, was formed in February of 1990, so we're coming up on our 29th anniversary.

We have a website, ChristBibleChurch .org, ChristBibleChurch .org,

and we're an evangelical Reformed Baptist church in the East Bay of Northern California, about 30 miles east of San Francisco, where Dublin is located.

Actually that's our mailing address in Dublin. We actually meet in San Ramon, California, which is the next town.

And we've been going, we have two pastors and four deacons, and we're reaching out with the gospel locally with ministries to San Quentin, the state prison here, and Jamestown, California, two prisons.

We preach at a rescue mission up in Richmond. We have a street evangelism, passing out tracts.

We have a few street preachers in our church who go out with other believers evangelizing. We also have a ministry at UC Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley, where we have a study there, and we do quite a bit of evangelism in and around Sproul Plaza, that famous plaza where so many movements were started, the peace movement, civil rights movements in the 60s.

So we're reaching out with the gospel as well. Do you have to wear full body armor when you go to Berkeley?

No, but our brethren are not only looking up vertically in prayer to God, but they're looking over their shoulder horizontally to make sure that there's no group of angry protesters marching towards them.

Well, we will be giving, God willing, the contact information for all of your ministries before the end of our program again.

But I'd like to give our email address for those of you listening who would like to ask a question. The email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Before we go into the subject at hand, the names of God, I also want to whet the listening appetites of our listeners by having you give a little promo or introduction to my interview this

Thursday, God willing, with Tom Evans, the new president of Family Radio, Family Stations Incorporated.

And this is really a history -making moment, isn't it? It sure is. It's a major announcement.

It's a major event because I think it is the first significant interview, if the first interview, period, that the president of Family Radio, Tom Evans, is giving since he has become the president of Family Radio, which actually is about seven years ago.

Harold Camping, the former president and general manager of Family Radio, who is very well -known in evangelical circles, most people know about him, but Tom is a low -key guy and unassuming and very humble man.

So many people don't even know who took over from Mr. Camping when he died about five and a half years ago.

And Tom was already on the board of directors, but Tom took over. And there's been so much misunderstanding about Family Radio because, to be honest, they have not,

Family Radio has not really gone out of its way until now to correct misrepresentations and misunderstandings and just simply a lack of knowledge of where Family Radio stands doctrinally in their view of Mr.

Camping's teachings, which did get Family Radio and Mr. Camping in a lot of trouble with a lot of listeners.

They lost quite a bit of listeners. But I'm here to let you know that as a former

Family Radio employee of 20 years myself and one of only three pastors who were employees of Family Radio, Family Radio has taken a tremendous turn for the good back into mainstream

Christianity. They're not on their way back to mainstream Christianity in terms of their views about the

Bible and their separating themselves and rejecting the false teachings of Harold Camping.

But they have already arrived, and Family Radio is in the process, they are gearing up to roll out, to have what we would call a coming -out party.

And I think this interview on Thursday is going to be the cannonball. It's going to be the coming -out party of Family Radio, letting people know where they stand on Mr.

Camping's false teachings and other really important issues.

What is the future direction of Family Radio? And listeners are encouraged to write their prayer requests, their email prayer requests, even ahead of time,

Chris, to you. And I think the show is going to go by like the speed of light.

There's going to be so many issues that are going to be discussed related to Family Radio. There have been websites constructed on the internet.

There have been groups formed within churches and throughout

Christendom, all related to recovering and healing from some of the difficulties and the pain that many people experience from Mr.

Camping's teachings and his positions. Well, all of these positions and policies are in the past, and Family Radio has changed from the inside out, from the bottom up.

And Tom Evans is no better person and representative than Tom Evans to explain to the

Christian world and our listeners where Family Radio is at now. I've been meeting with Tom and talking with him, and I'm just so encouraged, as well as many of the senior staff at Family Radio.

Many of them are my friends, but I'm just so encouraged. And this is a really, really big event on Thursday.

Tune in to First Love Radio, to Iron Sharpens Iron. There's two websites you can go to to listen to the program, and please invite your friends.

Invite your friends. Invite anyone that you know that was a former Family Radio listener and is perhaps disenchanted or disgruntled.

Please bring them to the radio. Encourage them to listen on Thursday, this Thursday, two days from now, from 1 to 3 p .m.

Pacific Time, 4 to 6 p .m. East Coast Time, Eastern Standard Time.

And I think most of the misconceptions or questions that listeners have will be answered.

Great. And I might as well also plug a couple of the other programs I have this week. Tomorrow, after a very long absence,

Richard Bennett, the founder of Berean Beacon, is going to be my guest. Richard Bennett is a former

Roman Catholic priest who is a Reformed Baptist evangelist and author now, and has been for many years.

And he is going to be on the program to discuss the nature of God. Then, of course, as we just heard,

Tom Evans, president of Family Radio, will be on Thursday, the 23rd of August. And Friday, the 24th of August, we have an anonymous guest.

I've only done this one or two other times ever, but we have an anonymous guest who is a missionary in China, and he is going to be sorting out fact from fiction in regarding to the

Christian Church in China. He's also going to be giving our listeners some updates about how things have changed in China in regard to the

Christian Church and the government's oppression, which is getting stronger again than it had been for quite a long time.

So mark your calendars for that. And on Monday, we're going to be addressing a subject that we never addressed on this program in its history.

Paul Trask is going to be on. That's August 27th. He is a former member of the

Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, the RLDS, which is today known as the

Community of Christ. It is a cult with just some differences from the larger

Mormon cult, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. But I am excited to hear

Paul on Monday to give his testimony of how he was saved by the true

Jesus Christ of Scripture and by the true gospel of Scripture.

And that's Monday, August 27th. But once again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

If you have any questions about the names of God for our guest today, Pastor Joe Jakowicz, that's

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

And by the way, this is a little reminder for those of you who have written to me many, many, many times with questions.

Always give me your city and state of residence, even if you sent in a million questions, because my memory is not that great.

And I'd like to announce to our audience where our listeners are writing from, because it gives our audience an idea of the scope and breadth of our listening audience, which is global.

We have listeners in all 50 states and at least 25 different foreign countries. So please always remember to give us your city and state and country of residence, even if you've sent in questions a million times.

Well, let's start with the names of God issue. Pastor Joe, why is it, first of all, that you wanted to discuss this issue?

Well, the names of God are very, very important because they reflect who God is. And I think it'd be good to begin by talking about the names of people in the

Bible, because it gives important context in approaching the study of the names of God.

Because Chris, our name, your name, my name, Chris, Arnzen, Joe Jackowitz, sets us apart from other people.

It identifies us as individuals. But in the Bible, a name is much more than an identifier, because a name tends to be closely connected with our culture.

A person's name and even the name of a place were created from words that had their own unique meaning.

So the people in the Bible, for example, were very aware of the meaning of their names much more than you and I.

I don't even know if you know what Chris means. Well, I know what Christopher means. It means Christ bearer.

OK, good. But men or people like you and I who are much more in tune to the meaning of our names are less common than most people.

Most people don't know the meaning of their names. But in the Bible, they understood there was a vital connection between the name and the person.

A name somehow represented who the person is, that is, his or her personality or character.

This means, for example, that choosing the name of a baby was very important in the

Bible. In choosing a name, the parents would use a few factors, such as the circumstances of the child's birth, their own feelings, their gratitude to God, also their hopes and prayers for the child and their dedication of the child to God.

These were all factors in naming a child. For example, the name Isaac reflected the laughter of his mother,

Sarah, at his birth. Esau was named Harry because of his appearance.

Moses received his name because he was drawn out of the water, as we read in Exodus. So she called his name

Moses, saying, because I drew him out of the water. Actually, it's pronounced Moishe, but the

English version is Moses. Now, a popular custom of Bible times was to create names by using the shortened form of the divine names,

El or Yah, and adding it to the beginning or end of the name.

It would be adding the syllable El or Yah. You and I would pronounce Yah, Jeh, as in Jehovah, at the beginning or the end.

For example, Elisha, which means God is salvation, at the beginning of the word is

El, Elisha. So a lot of names added El or Jeh or Yah to the beginning or end of it.

For example, the king Jehoiakim, which means the Lord has established. The name

Yah for Jehovah was added to the beginning in the words Je. Daniel, which means

God is my judge, El is added to the end of his name. And Isaiah, the

Lord is salvation. At the end of Isaiah is Ah, which is where we get

Yahweh from. So that's very important. Sometimes, very specialized names that related to the circumstances of the parents were given to the children.

The prophet Isaiah was told to name one of his children Maher Shalal Hasbaz, which means speed the spoil, hasten the prey, and pointed people to the coming

Assyrian invasion of Judah. Hosea was told to name his daughter

Lo -Ruhamah, which means no mercy, and name his son Lo -Ami, meaning not my people.

Both of these names show God's displeasure and wrath toward Israel. Moreover, the change of a name can also be important in the

Bible. Abram's name was changed to Abraham in relation with his new calling to be the father of many nations.

And God gave Jacob the new name Israel, which means prince with God, as well as God strives, as we read in Genesis 32.

And he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and men and have prevailed.

Sometimes God will give a person a new name in response to a turning point, a radical positive event in the person's life.

Simon's name was changed to Peter because he was a rock in the church, not the rock upon which the church was built.

That is Jesus, of course, but he was a rock. Saul was renamed

Paul, which was a Greek name. Saul is a Hebrew name, but Paul is a Greek name.

And that was appropriate for one who was called to be the apostle to the

Gentiles. But nowhere is the connection between a name and the reality that it signifies more important than the names of God.

One of the greatest ways to know God is by the names he has given of himself in the

Bible. We learn about nature or about the nature of God and the character of God, not only by doctrine and theology, but by his names.

The names of God are very important in the Bible, Chris. And when you and I read the Bible and our listeners read the

Bible, they need to pay close attention to the names God uses of himself because there's a lot of theology about the being and nature of God in God's names.

And so getting back to talking about the names of people, the names of people are important as well with regard to ancient

Hebrew culture, where a name meant a lot more than just what you called somebody.

It reflected a person's character. You know, I could only wonder, I don't know if you've ever heard of a name of a brother in Christ from the 19th century who wrote a phenomenal book that has just been recovered from the ashes of history and has become a very popular book with solid ground

Christian books. But the author's name is Ichabod Spencer. And you can only wonder why his parents named him

Ichabod, which means the glory has departed. Yeah, maybe he was a bad boy and he didn't get named till later on.

Perhaps, I don't know. Or they just didn't want this extra mouth to feed. Who knows?

But maybe we can find out one day. Very interesting. But so a person's name usually in the

Bible revealed his character or his personality. Now, that's not a hard and fast rule, but in many cases it is.

For example, Satan means opposer or adversary. Devil means accuser or slanderer.

And this tells us about the devil's character as the opposer and accuser of both God and man. Another example is the name

Jacob, which means supplanter, trickster, or heel grabber, which describes

Jacob's personality perfectly. As he lived out his name, tricking and deceiving his brother

Esau and stole his birthright, and also tricked his uncle Laban and took his lambs.

Indeed, in many cases, names reflect the character of a person in the Bible. A name can also explain

God's purpose in a situation. For example, the name Nabal, who was Abigail's husband, literally means fool in Hebrew.

You talked about Ichabod, right? Well, who would name their child fool? But being foolish reflected

Nabal's character in a historical situation in which Nabal refused to help

David with provisions after David had shown so much kindness to Nabal by protecting his flocks and so forth.

In fact, can we pick up on Nabal when we come back from our first break? Sure. If anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you have a question for Pastor Joe Jakowicz on the names of God, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Joe Jakowicz of First Love Radio right after these messages from our sponsors.

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God willing, he is going to go into open -heart surgery. That's Friday, August 24th. Please pray that our great physician,

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We are now back with our guest today, Pastor Joe Jackowitz, founder of First Love Radio, and we are discussing the names of God.

If you have questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And Pastor Joe, before the break, you were beginning to discuss Nabal. Yes, we were talking about Nabal's name,

Nabal who was Abigail's husband, which literally means fool.

Can you hear me? I hear you fine. Okay. So Nabal refused to help

David with provisions, and his wife Abigail goes out to meet

David on his way to destroy Nabal and his workers, his servants, and so forth.

And Abigail describes Nabal's character to David as she pleads for his life.

In 1 Samuel, she says, Please let not my Lord regard this scoundrel Nabal, for as his name is, so is he.

Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. In other words, he's foolish. And so Nabal's name represented his character.

However, when it comes to giving names to children in the Bible, how would parents know what the child's character would be like, or personality would be like ahead of time, in order to choose a name that would describe the child's personality?

Unless the parents had insight prophetically or providentially or by the command of God.

Well, in the case of Jacob and Nabal's names, it's obvious that their parents were given insight providentially into their future characters.

But this is the exception rather than the rule in the Bible. In most cases, the factors that determine a child's name were related to family or culture or religion.

In my personal situation, the decision to name me Joseph was influenced by my family and culture.

In the conservative Jewish tradition, boys were named after deceased family members.

So I was named after my great -grandfather Joseph Weissman, who was on my mother's side, my grandmother's side, from Russia.

However, unlike the names given to most children in the Bible, or otherwise, every name for God teaches us about His character or nature.

In every single case in the Bible, God's name always represents something about God's being and His character.

So all the names of God in the Bible provide revelation about who God is.

His names are not merely titles assigned by people, but are His own descriptions of Himself.

The names that God gives to Himself are a form of revelation. The names that humans give to God are often a testimony of something important God did for them or a great event.

Pardon me. But in a broader sense, the names of God provide a summary of what the

Bible and creation teaches about God. His names are like a mini systematic theology which describe and define much of what we know about God from the

Bible. So if God's names are an extension and reflection of His person and His character, we need to be very careful,

Chris, how we use His name or speak about His name. You see, if we use God's name frivolously or irreverently, we're speaking of God's character, not just His name.

We're not just taking His name lightly, but we're speaking about His character or nature frivolously and irreverently.

In fact, we have a question that relates to that from a listener. We have

John in Bangor, Maine, who asks, I have learned that the name

Jehovah is actually a mispronunciation or an anglicized version of Yahweh.

Should we no longer sing the name Jehovah from our hymnals or use it when we describe it in speaking and preaching, etc.,

because it is a mispronounced name? Should we not exclusively use, when we are speaking about that specific

Hebrew word, the name Yahweh? Well, I'll talk a lot about that in a minute, but to answer your question directly, no, we should continue to use the name

Jehovah or Yahweh, but most anglicized speakers or English speakers use the name

Jehovah or Lord. And it's the closest thing to what we know the name

Jehovah is. Actually, no one knows the exact pronunciation of the name Jehovah, which comes from the word

Yahweh. Yahweh is the closest thing to what we know the name sounds like.

But in the original Hebrew, there were no vowels. There was just four consonants,

Y -H -W -H, which theologians call the tetragrammaton, which means letters.

And it's a theological term just meaning letters. That's all we have are four letters.

Now, was that the way that God intended it when he breathed out that word in Hebrew in the

Old Covenant, or was that a way that the Jews prevented themselves from spelling out his name?

Because I understand the Jews, even to this day, do not, if they're Orthodox, that is, they are afraid of using his name because they are afraid of accidentally using it in vain.

Yes, it was a tradition and a custom that the Jews started many, many centuries ago, thousands of years ago, probably 3 ,000 or 4 ,000 years ago, based on superstition, not based on any command in the

Bible, that they revered the name of God. They put the name

Jehovah on an altar and worshipped the name rather than looking at the bigger point, which is we're to worship

God and we're to reverence his name, but we're to use his name because it is the name of God, just like in the case of many humans, not all, but many, which define who we are and our characters and what we're like.

So like I said earlier, we learn a lot of information about the very nature of God by understanding the meaning of God's names.

But if you're not able, if you're not even going to pronounce his name or use his name in conversation, you're not even going to get past that to understand what his name means.

So God gave us his name to not only understand who he is and his nature, but to differentiate between him and the other false gods of the world.

And so going back to my question, though, what was just the consonants used in that name intentional or as far as removal of vowels, or was

God's original breathed out name only containing consonants?

No, it was intentional. I think that because we do not speak the direct language of the

Bible, which was Hebrew and Aramaic, the language of the Old Testament, Hebrew and Aramaic, which is the language that the word

Yahweh used to enunciate God's name. We, the

Hebrew originally only had consonants. There were only 22 consonants in the

Hebrew language. There were no vowels. And Hebrew began to become a dead language after the

Babylonian and Assyrian captivities, when the Jews in the Diaspora were spread throughout the whole world, they began to speak the languages of their captors.

And Hebrew began to be a dead language. So about the 7th or 8th or 9th century

AD, a group of Hebrew scholars called the Masorites, that's where we get the term

Masoretic text. The Masorites invented a system of vowel pointing, where they created vowels and they inserted them in the words and in the sentences of the

Hebrew, the Old Testament, so that when you translated the Hebrew, which only had consonants from Hebrew to another language, like English or like Spanish, the translators would understand what the words meant because the vowels would be there to help them define and comprehend the words of the

Hebrew. But if all there were consonants and nobody spoke

Hebrew anymore, they would not only not understand how the word would be pronounced, but they wouldn't understand therefore what the word meant.

So providentially God raised up the Masorites to preserve the Hebrew language from becoming a dead language.

So only the Jews understood the name Yahweh. They spoke the name

Yahweh, it didn't sound exactly like that, but Yahweh is the closest pronunciation that we can get to the original.

But it was spoken and understood very clearly in the Old Testament because the

Jews, when they wrote and when they spoke, they added and supplied the vowels to the spoken

Hebrew. And when they read the Hebrew language, they added in their thoughts, they added the vowels because they spoke the language every day and knew what the words meant and knew how the words were pronounced.

It's interesting to note that I heard someone criticizing our mutual friend

Dr. James R. White. When he was reading the Shema in Hebrew, he used the name

Yahweh. And someone I heard say, he is not reading that correctly.

The Jews would never say that, they would say Adonai. And James said that he's using

Yahweh because that's the way it was originally read, and it only became Adonai out of superstition, as you were saying before, out of a fear of using the name of the

Lord in vain. Yes, the Jews really mutilated the translation of the

Old Testament, not only in the Hebrew language, but in transliterations of Hebrew into other languages because in their superstitious fear of offending

God by saying his name, they substituted Jehovah or Yahweh in the text for the word

Adonai. They took out Jehovah and put Adonai in there, which is a different name for God.

It is a biblical name in the Hebrew, but it is the general name for God, where Yahweh is the redemptive name for God, and it has other connotations as well.

The Jews really messed that up, and James is 100 % right. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now.

This is a longer break than normal because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, they require of us this longer break because they air their own commercials and public service announcements during this time.

So please be patient with us as we take this longer break and use this time not only to write down questions for Pastor Joe Jackowitz on the names of God, but also use this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers so you can more successfully and more frequently patronize them.

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So please try to patronize our advertisers as often as you can. If you would like to send in your own question for Pastor Joe Jackowitz on the names of God, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after this station break, God willing, with more of Pastor Joe Jackowitz of First Love Radio and the names of God.

I've got to tell you, for my money, Chris Arnson's radio program is just the best.

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We just have a few announcements before we return to our interview with Joe Jackiewicz on the names of God.

First of all, we have coming up right around the corner a couple of events in the

Jacksonville, Florida area that I have personally orchestrated with my friends at Switzerland Community Church of Switzerland, Florida, a suburb of Jacksonville.

First of all, on Friday, September 7th at 6 .30 p .m., we are hosting at the

Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary's Jacksonville campus a lecture or lectures by our friends

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Dr. Michael L. Brown of the Line of Fire radio program in the

Fire School for Ministry. They are going to be addressing the theme, A House -Mended Christian Unity in a

Culture of Outrage at 6 .30 p .m. Friday, September 7th. For more details, go to switzerlandcommunitychurch .org,

switzerlandcommunitychurch .org. Then, the following night, also at 6 .30,

at the Switzerland Community Church this time of Switzerland, Florida, there's going to be a debate.

Dr. James R. White and Dr. Michael L. Brown are on the same debating team. They are debating two men who profess to be

Christians who are ordained ministers who are also openly involved in the homosexual activity.

They believe that this is completely acceptable in the new covenant in the eyes of God. The debate theme is,

Is Homosexuality Consistent with New Testament Obedience? That's Saturday, September 8th, 6 .30

p .m. at the Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland, Florida, a suburb of Jacksonville.

For more details, once again, go to switzerlandcommunitychurch .org, switzerlandcommunitychurch .org.

Then, coming up in November, the 9th and the 10th of November, the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is once again having their Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania. This year, the theme is the Glory of the Cross. The speakers include

David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn. I will have, once again,

God willing, an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitors booth there at the conference. For more details, go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org. Click on events, then scroll down to the

Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology. I hope to see you there. Then, coming up in January, the event that you've been hearing

Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio and Phil Johnson of Grace TU, the ministry of John MacArthur, and James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, you've been hearing them promote this on my program.

The G3 Conference is being held, God willing, from Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th, at the

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. G3 stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory, and this

January's theme is The Mission of God, a Biblical Understanding of Missions. Keep in mind that if you have

Spanish -speaking and bilingual friends, tell them that the

G3 Conference has an exclusively Spanish -speaking edition on Wednesday, January 16th, that they can attend.

But the English -speaking conference, as I said, is Thursday, the 17th, through Saturday, the 19th, and they have a long lineup of phenomenal speakers, including

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Conrad M.

Bayway, Tim Chalies, Phil Johnson, as I just mentioned, Josh Bice, the founder of the

G3 Conference, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, who I mentioned earlier,

Stephen J. Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late

R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many more are on that lineup. If you'd like to attend, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com, click on G3 Conference 2019.

And also, if you would like to, in addition to attending, you would like to man your own exhibitor's booth.

If you have a business or a parachurch organization or a church that you would like to be publicized in the crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people that they are expecting to be in attendance, then you can register for an exhibitor's booth as well, just like I will be manning,

God willing, during the event from the 17th through the 19th of January. Then last but not least, if you love this show, you don't want it to disappear, you love the guests and the topics that we address, many of which are rarely heard ever on other radio programs or TV programs, then please donate to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio as much as you can and as frequently as you can.

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That's also the email address to send in a question for Joe Jackowitz. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. If you have a question about the names of God, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And Pastor Joe, we have a question for you from Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Harrison says, can you take the name of the Lord in vain even when you are saying something that otherwise might be appropriate?

Let's say that you are in a restaurant waiting for your food to be served, and it is taking a long time, and when the waiter or waitress finally arrives with your food, you say, thank

God. Is that taking the Lord's name in vain or is that an acceptable expression? Um, yes and no.

I think if you say thank God without sarcasm and with the right motive and attitude of heart, then it's acceptable, because the words must match the heart, must match the theology.

But if you're saying thank God in a sarcastic way while you're rolling your eyes at the it is not a good use of the name of God in that context, you would border on violating the third commandment.

Because if God's names are an extension and reflection of his person and character, we really need to be careful how we use his name and how we speak his name.

Because if we use God's name frivolously, like I said earlier, we're in trouble if, and that's why

God gives us the third commandment and says, you shall not take the name of the Lord your

God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Actually, the holiness of God is reflected in his name.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus teaches us how to pray. He begins by exhorting us to sanctify the name of God.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Or holy is your name.

So we are taught to begin our prayer with a fresh sense of the holiness of God and his name.

I think it's the case with using God's name everywhere we go. God's name is holy because he is holy.

Because God's name is a reflection of his character. So if God's name is holy and is to be revered and respected, it means that God is holy and therefore is to be revered and respected.

And so I would ask not only this person, but anybody, that in your speech and in your thoughts, do you respect and sanctify the name of the

Father, the name of the Son, and the name of the Holy Spirit? When others speak disrespectfully and loosely of the name of God and Christ, does this offend you?

Are you uncomfortable? Are you grieved? And is your response appropriate to the situation?

You see, as Christians, Chris, we are stewards of the gospel of Christ and the doctrines of the

Bible. And as such, we are responsible to teach the world about the names of God, their significance and their sanctity.

Because we read in Malachi 1, from the rising of the sun, even to his going down, my name shall be great among the

Gentiles. For my name shall be great among the Gentiles. Again, in Isaiah 57, for thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy.

One more, in Psalm 14, let them praise the name of the

Lord, for his name alone is exalted. So we need to be very careful about how we use the name of God, even in a situation like this man describes in the restaurant.

And we have another listener, Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, there is an overlooked verse that I don't believe is used often enough by those of us who believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace, that is just another proof of the sovereignty of God and salvation.

And I am referring to Matthew 1, verse 21, where we read, she will bear a son and you shall call his name

Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

This is a definite statement. It is not that he will try to save his people from their sins, or that he will try to save everyone from their sins, or that he will make men savable.

It is a specific statement of definite certainty. He will save his people from their sins.

It seems to address the doctrine of definite atonement and unconditional election at the same time.

Do you agree? I agree. But the spotlight in this program is on the name of God, the names of God.

But yes, in the area of sovereign grace, this verse definitely teaches particular redemption and the sovereignty of God and salvation.

But if you look a little bit before in the verse, it says, you shall call his name

Jesus, and this is definitely related to the name Jehovah. And I wanted to go next into the name

Jehovah. Are we allowed to do that? Because Jehovah is the most frequently used name of God in the

Bible, and is commonly translated LORD with a capital

L and smaller letters and caps. But the name is rich with significance and meaning.

It occurs 6 ,823 times in the Old Testament, and actually has no vowels in it.

In the Hebrew, like I mentioned earlier, it is spelled Y -H -W -H, and the modern spelling of his name is

Y -A -H -W -E -H, meaning Yahweh, and so the translators inserted the vowels to help the reader pronounce it.

But we really don't know for certain the exact pronunciation. Now the Jews considered the name

Yahweh, like I said earlier, so sacred that they would never pronounce it. In their

Hebrew translations to English, Jewish translators would actually remove

Yahweh and replace it with Adonai, which means Lord. In fact, around the 9th century

AD, the vowels of Adonai were combined with Y -H -W -H,

Yahweh, to make the artificial name Jehovah, which became the way

Jews spoke Yahweh. Eventually, Jehovah became the common way to say

Yahweh in early translations of the Bible, such as the King James Version, though it's not the correct way to pronounce

Yahweh. But it's the closest thing we have, so we pronounce it that way. Now, Y -H -W -H,

Yahweh, comes from the root word I -M. You've heard of that before, Chris, right? Yes.

Which means the self -existent One. Jehovah comes from this root word

I -A -M in the English, which means the self -existence of God.

Now, I -M teaches much theology about the nature and character of God.

It teaches us that God existed from eternity past and was not created.

It teaches us that God has life in Himself and depends on no one or nothing to exist.

The name I -M teaches us that God is greater than His own creation and that all things consist in Him and are upheld by Him.

And so the doctrines of God's eternity, the doctrine of His deity, His omnipotence, and His complete separation from His creation are all learned from the name

I -M. For example, we read in Exodus 3, 13 and following, Then Moses said to God, Indeed, when

I come to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me,

What is his name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am who

I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent you.

But Chris, Jesus Christ identifies Himself as the great I -M.

In John 8, 57, then the Jews said to Him, You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen

Abraham? Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Before Abraham was,

I am. I can see these Jews trembling as He said that.

I can see the ground shaking under their feet. But He said that He is,

Jesus is the I -M of the Bible, the I -M of the Old Testament. He is the self -existent

One. He is the One who has life in Himself. We read in John 1, All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The phrase, In Him was life, is another way of saying, I am. Nowhere else in the

Bible, Chris, does it say of anyone, In Him was life. Nowhere else in the

Bible does it say that Jesus has, or that they have rather, life in themselves.

Nor does anyone take the title, I am, to himself, except Jesus Christ.

This is a powerful truth. Now there's an interesting fact about the term, I am, that's very unique, that many people don't know, compared with every other name of God in the

Bible. The word, or the term, I am, is the only name of God that is both a noun and a verb.

Now, you learned when you were sitting in second grade with your dunce cap on in the corner, because you were not necessarily a great student.

Oh, thanks a lot, Joe. You and I learned in grammar school that a verb in grammar denotes action, right?

Yes. And action is based on life or energy. You can't have action without life.

So without life, there is no action. So there's a very relevant and direct application of the name,

I am, to the character and person of Jesus Christ. Christ's title and name,

I am, supports the doctrine that Christ is the creator and sustainer of the universe and of all existence.

He has life in himself, and that's the only reason why everything is held up. Christ's name,

I am, harmonizes with the doctrine that Christ is the only savior and redeemer of sinners.

Now, the angel said to Joseph, and this man's question earlier was relevant, and she will bring forth a son, and he shall call his name

Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Dead sinners cannot raise themselves from the dead.

So the term, I am, the title, the name, I am, of Jesus Christ relates directly to our redemption and to his saviorhood and to him being the redeemer and the sovereign, omnipotent savior who alone can raise sinners from the dead based on the life that he has in himself and the life that he gives to others in regeneration.

Doesn't Jesus say, I am the way, the truth, and the what? The life. The life. No one comes to the

Father except through me. So in the name, I am, we learn so much about the character and nature of God himself, especially about the person and work of Christ, that Jesus is the creator and sustainer, as John 1 says, and that he is the savior and redeemer, the only one that can create and sustain the physical creation and the only one that can create and sustain spiritual life.

Now, we have a listener that asks a question directly on Christ's self -identification as the

I am. We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks,

I don't know if you have ever interacted with Jehovah's Witnesses, but what possibly could they say in response to the fact that Jesus identifies himself as the

I am in the New Testament, and yet they reject that he is Yahweh? Well, like most other cults and false religions, they have to rest the scripture, twist the scripture to their own destruction or to fit into their view of God.

So they work very hard at doing that. They have replaced words in the

English translation, which implies they replaced the original words written in the autographs given to the writers of the

Bible that were not intended to be there, and so they've done a great injustice and disservice to those who appreciate the accuracy of translation.

Yeah, I don't know specifically if they changed that particular verse or not. I don't have a translation or a copy of their translation handy, but they definitely do work their darndest to strip

Jesus Christ from his throne as often as they can. Well, if they say in John 1 -1 that where it says, and the word was

God, if they insert the definite article A before God, they certainly are stripping

Christ of his deity. And to be the I am of the

Bible, you have to be God. You have to have life in yourself. You have to be the eternal self -existent one.

And so, at least in that verse, they would deny that I am is connected with Jesus.

Well, we have to go to our final break right now. It's going to be a lot shorter than the last one. So if you have any questions for Pastor Joe Jakowitz on the names of God, I would suggest very strongly that you send the questions in now because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with more of Pastor Joe Jakowitz and the names of God.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how

God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled,

Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org. That's providencebaptistchurchma .org.

Or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Chris Orenson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here. I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years.

His name is Dan Buttafuoco. Dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer, but not the type that typically comes to mind.

Dan cares about people and is a theologian himself. Recently, he wrote a book titled, Consider the

Evidence for the Bible. Ravi Zacharias wrote the foreword. Dan also has a master's degree in theology.

Dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states. He represents many

Christians in serious injury matters all over the country. Dan is an exceptional trial lawyer.

He wrote the test for the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for $1 million or more, and in approximately 10 different states.

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Dan. Consultations are free. There is no fee unless you win. Dan Buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878.

1 -800 -669 -4878. Or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. James White here, co -founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries, an occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm so delighted. My friend Chris Arnson will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

A Biblical Understanding of Missions. Speakers include John Piper, Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Josh Bice, yours truly, and many more.

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That's g3conference .com. Listening to Christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually.

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Please stick around on firstloveradio .org after Iron Trepans Iron Radio is over to continue being blessed by the unwavering proclamation of the gospel of sovereign grace.

Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. You just tuned us in. Our guest today for the last 90 minutes in the next half hour to come is

Joe Jakowitz, who is the founder of the aforementioned First Love Radio, and he is also the pastor of Christ Bible Church of Dublin, California.

Our theme today is the names of God, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. In fact, we just got a listener question from somebody who did not do that.

Please give us your city and state of residence, and we will read your question. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

That's chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And Pastor Joe, if you could pick up where you left off on the names of God.

We were talking about the name Jehovah or Yahweh, and the last thing

I wanted to say about it before we moved on to other names of God is the redemptive aspect of it, because in most of Israel's deliverances by God, as typified by the famous deliverance from Egypt and the

Red Sea, the theme of redemption is emphasized. And these deliverances and rescues from catastrophe are always connected with God's name,

Yahweh, which points us to the fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ, who delivers us from perhaps the greatest enemy of our souls, which is sin.

And so that covers the name Yahweh. I could say a lot more about that. But under the name

Yahweh, there are a number of compound names. In other words, names that have

Yahweh connected with them. The first one is Jehovah -Jireh. You let me ask you if you remember what that means.

Chris? Jehovah -Jireh? Yeah. That is that God is faithful?

Close. I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm sorry. But we're close enough where I can do that.

Jehovah -Jireh, the Lord will provide. There you go. There you go. So God has done that for you in ministry for all these years, and me as well.

But in Genesis 22, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son

Isaac. You remember that? I know that. However, when it was time to offer Isaac to the

Lord, God provided a ram in the thicket. In verse 14, we see

Abraham's response. So Abraham called that place Jehovah -Jireh, the

Lord will provide. And to this day, it is said, on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.

So Abraham names the place of provision Jehovah -Jireh, which means the

Lord will provide. Those who know the Lord, we are promised, shall lack no provision because He will provide.

And He has provided for us. We get another great picture of the Lord's faithfulness, which you define

Jehovah -Jireh as because it is closely connected with His provision. To provide for us in Matthew 6, the disciples were worried about their futures and what they would eat and drink and wear.

And Jesus told them to stop worrying because God knew that they had need of these things, and He comforted them with how

God provides for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. And consider what our Lord says in Matthew 6, 26.

Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your

Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? And so Jesus calls

His disciples to stop worrying about things based on the fact that food and drink and those earthly needs,

He provides for the birds of the air. He provides for the lilies of the field. Will He not also provide for us?

He says, seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

In the world, there is a lot of uncertainty, Chris, about the economy, future employment, retirement, the education system, but God wants us to know that His name is

Jehovah Jireh. He is faithful to provide for His people. Praise God.

We do have a listener. Let's see, we have

Kenneth in, let's see, Kenneth did provide his city and state.

We have Kenneth in Oakland, California, who says, please ask

Joe how his ministry is going at San Quentin State Prison. One of his former students is listening.

Oh, okay. I know who this is. Yes, the ministry there is going well, actually.

I preached at their chapel service with over 200, maybe 250 inmates last

Saturday evening at the San Quentin State Prison close to San Francisco, and it was a tremendous privilege for me to do so.

One of our members and a street preacher, and one of our missionaries with First Love Missions, Tim Oliver, accompanied me, and Jill Baxter, and one of our members, and it's really a team there as we reach out.

The weekly Bible study we have on Thursday night at seven in the prison is growing.

We're adding seven or eight new men to the study, and so the

Lord seems to be blessing that ministry. Well, praise God. Thank you, Kenneth, and keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and spreading the word in Oakland, California and beyond.

Well, if you could move on with another name for God that we should know about. Yes, it is Jehovah Nisi, meaning the

Lord is my banner, and the name Jehovah Nisi is given in the context of warfare.

The Amalekites and Israel were at war, and as long as Moses had his hands raised, do you remember that?

They were winning. Moses' hands being raised seemed to represent his prayers and therefore dependence upon the

God of Israel. We can also discern Moses was praying and depending on God by the fact that Moses builds an altar after the battle was won and calls it

Jehovah Nisi, the Lord is my banner, which means that God goes before them,

God fights their battles for them, and it says Moses built an altar and called it the

Lord is my banner. Typically, when armies went to battle, the flag would go out in front of them representing the power and spirit of the nation.

Every army has a flag. When I was in the Marines, we had a flag, a battalion flag, a regimental flag, a division flag.

Israel had their flag. Similarly, when Israel fought, God went before them.

He led the way. He was like their banner. He was out front, and he fought their battle for them.

However, this isn't just true for Israel, it's true for us. Our God always goes before us as Christians.

He makes our path straight, and he fights our battles. Look at what Paul said to the

Ephesians. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.

So like Moses keeping his hands up in dependence upon God, Chris, we must also depend on God daily to fight our battles for us because he's

Jehovah Nisi. He is the Lord, our banner. We read in Isaiah 40, but those who hope in the

Lord, those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.

They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. And so like Moses, we must wait on the

Lord and rely on him, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the

Holy Spirit that will be given to us. He will fight our battles. The Lord is our banner, and he will go before us to bring us each and every victory that he died on the cross to purchase not only our salvation, but our sanctification and glorification.

This is Jehovah Nisi, the Lord, our banner. And we have a listener from White Plains, New York.

RJ from White Plains, New York, says that does not the Hebrew name for God Elohim indicate a plurality in his oneness as the

Trinity would teach? Very, very good question. Elohim is a general name translated

God in the Bible. In Genesis chapter 1, the only name used there is the word

Elohim. But in Genesis chapter 2, the only name used there is Yahweh, and that's where man got into trouble and needed

God's redemptive help. But Elohim is the second most used name of God in the

Old Testament. The word El comes from a root that means strong or powerful, and therefore has the connotation of strong one or mighty leader or almighty powerful one.

And because Elohim's root means power or might, the name will commonly be used in verses that demonstrate the power or awesomeness of God.

For example, in Jeremiah 32 .27, I am the Lord, the

God, the Elohim of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me? But as you suggest in your question, there are

Trinitarian implications. And one of the interesting things about the word Elohim is that it is a plural noun that always is used with a singular verb.

For instance, we see this in the first verse of the Bible. In the beginning, God created, plural noun used with singular verb, the heavens and the earth.

The noun God is plural, and the verb created is singular. And because of this, many people have seen implications of the

Trinitarian doctrine in the use of Elohim. The word Elohim would then not only be a reference to God's strength, but it would also imply his plurality and his oneness at the same time.

He is plural, but at the same time he is one. He is one God manifested in three persons.

So as a Christian, we don't believe in three gods. We're not polytheistic. We believe in one

God who has revealed himself in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Three persons. And each one of those three persons is clearly identified in the Old Testament.

The great Shema that you referred to earlier, that James White uses in his debate, that reference.

When I was a little boy in Hebrew school in Brooklyn, we were taught every Jewish boy who went to Hebrew school and was bar mitzvahed had to memorize the

Shema, which is based on Deuteronomy 6 .4. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Achad.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The Hebrew word Achad means one.

So we have one God, but throughout the Old Testament, we have many, many references to the other two members of the

Trinity. God the Son and God the Father. For example, Psalm 2. Kiss the Son, capital

S -O -N, lest he be angry and you perish from the way. And in many, many other places, we see references to the

Trinity. Like in Genesis 1 .26, and God said, let us go down and confound their language.

So the plural pronouns, us and our, affirm that the plural ending in the word

Elohim is not just implied in the name Elohim, but is also in other references as well.

Now, since you are a Jew, a believer in Christ Jesus as your

Lord, God, Messiah, and King, do you know of how the

Jews, in their steadfastness, in a right way to maintain the concept of a monotheistic religion, how do they respond when they themselves must know if they speak

Hebrew? They must know that Elohim does refer to a plurality within the unity or oneness.

Do you know how they typically would respond to that? Well, I asked a group of rabbis about a year ago at the wedding of my niece in Miami Beach, Florida.

She is an Orthodox Jew and married an Orthodox Jew, and they had a wedding in a synagogue that my wife and I went to, and some of our family members.

And the next day we were invited over to the chief rabbi's house, and the men sat at one table and the women sat at another table, and they had their black hats and their

Quaker -type garb on and their long beards. And at the table with the men, there was about 20 of us, about four or five of them were rabbis, including the owner of the house, the chief rabbi.

The groom was sitting next to him, my niece's husband. And there was a Jewish doctor of theology there.

I think his name was Rothstein, Dr. Rothstein. And so suddenly in the middle of the dinner, the rabbi, you know, pats his hand on the table, gets everyone's attention.

We're all staring at him. He turns to me and he says, So, Yosef, that's my name in Hebrew, why did you leave

Judaism and become this Christian? Wow. So, throwing up a one -second prayer to God, which was,

Help! 41 years in the

Christian faith, 34 of them as a pastor, all of the things that God taught me about the

Hebrew language, about Messianic theology in the Old Testament, all came to bear at one time.

I don't think I would have been able to handle it 30 years ago. But I went into a 20 -minute explanation of the

Gospel from the Jewish mindset, because you have to witness the people to Jews from the

Jewish mindset. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. To the Jews, I became a

Jew. To the Greeks, I became a Greek, Paul said. So I quoted about 20

Messianic prophecies about the Messiah from the Old Testament, and I began to do an exposition for them.

And I went into, for example, Isaiah 714, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name

Immanuel. Explaining Immanuel, meaning God with us, is a reference to the Messiah. It's a sign for a virgin to have a child.

Isaiah 9 -6, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, capital

S -O -N, referring to the Son of God, the Messiah. And the

Son has all of the attributes of divinity. He's called the

Everlasting Father, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace. And I laid all this out for the rabbis, and I said, surely you teachers of Israel, understand the

Hebrew. And after quoting about dozens of texts, I said, why is it that you cannot understand that these prophecies, especially

Isaiah 53, where we have a picture of a suffering Messiah, not some military dictator and deliverer who will come down from heaven on a white horse and defeat

Israel's enemies and set up some kind of new Israeli theocracy with the

Messiah at the head of it, but a suffering Messiah who would die for his people, as we read from Matthew 121, to save his people from their sins.

He would be punished. He would bear the sins. He would atone for their sins on a cross.

And I quoted Psalm 22, that the Messiah has to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

And so not only Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 depict a suffering Messiah, I said, how is it,

I said to them, that you do not understand this. And the one doctor of theology spoke up, well, we don't believe in the

New Testament. I said, I only quoted from your own Bible. I didn't even mention the

New Testament. And then I said, well, let me show you why you do not believe it. And all these elder rabbis with gray in their beard looked at me, riveting their attention on me.

And I said, Isaiah 6 prophesies that the Jews will kill their own

Messiah at his first advent. And the reason given there is that they will have eyes, but they won't see.

They will have ears, but they won't hear. Let's make the heart of this people fat and their ears heavy.

They see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and they be healed.

And then I quoted Zechariah 10 and 12 saying that when the Messiah comes again at his second advent, the

Jews will say unto him as he descends, what are those wounds in thy hands? And he will say, those with which

I was wounded in the house of my friends. And then it says, they will look upon him whom they have pierced.

And the guy next to me was this Orthodox Jew from Paris, France was there for the wedding as a guest of the rabbi.

He had his Hebrew Bible in front of him, his Hebrew Bible. He began to shake.

And I looked at him, his whole face turned red with conviction. Wow. And suddenly the rabbi looking around, the chief rabbi seeing all these, all these

Jews, these Orthodox Jews and the other rabbis just getting very restless, their body language uncomfortable with conviction.

He stamped his hand on the table and began to chant some Hebrew songs. He changed the subject.

But thank God I was able to get the gospel in there. I talked about sin. I talked about the need for both

Gentile and Jew to repent and put their trust in Christ. So in answer to your listener's question,

I hope that answers it. Actually, that was my question. Oh, your question.

And by the way, folks, I did not know that I was going to get that absolutely remarkable answer to that question because Pastor Joe had never shared this story with me before.

That is just utterly phenomenal that the Lord gave you that occasion. By the way,

I hope that this did not lead to a divorce before the marriage even began. No, it was the day after, so it was too late.

Wow, that's something. Well, I want you to have now three minutes of time to just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

Well, the names of God truly reflect the character of God, the love of God, all of his great perfections and attributes.

And I would encourage your listeners, Chris, to go deeper in studying the names of God.

There are so many more of his glorious names that we could have talked about, not only the compound names of Jehovah, which is

Jehovah Nisi, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Shalom, and Jehovah Roy, Jehovah Tzidkenu, the

Lord our Righteousness, Jehovah Shema, the Lord is there, Jehovah Sabaoth, the

Lord of hosts, and also the second main name of God, Elohim, and its compound subnames like El Shaddai, God Almighty, and El Elyon, the

Most High God or the Most High, and El Roy, the

God who sees, El Echad, the One God, Adonai, Lord, Master, Emmanuel, God with us, and then the

New Testament names, Theos, God, Kyrios, Lord, Despotes, Master or Lord, Abba or Father or Daddy.

And so, what can we take away from the names of God? Well, we can understand how to worship him better when we understand who he is through the identification of his names and the explanation of his character.

We can, it helps our prayer life. Our understanding and concept of God goes from the size of a penny to the size of a universe when in the study of his names we are just awed by the depth of who

God is in his holy being and nature. And so, I would encourage your listeners to indeed continue in a study of the names of God.

And once again, if I might, I wanted to remind your listeners of this very important interview coming up day after tomorrow on Thursday, the 23rd of August, two days from now from 1 p .m.

to 3 p .m. Pacific time with Tom Evans, the president of Family Radio.

You, Chris, have been chosen, I believe it's a very historical event, to interview Tom Evans, no better interviewer on Family Radio and their big comeback into mainstream

Christianity from a place of obscurity because of some doctrinal controversies that their founder

Harold Camping got them into. But I'm so excited. What's going on with Family Radio? And if you're on the

East Coast, listen between 4 and 6 p .m. And Chris, I'm just blessed to be able to talk with you again on this program today.

Well, I really thank you for helping arrange this interview. I'm so grateful that Tom Evans has chosen

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio above any other program to make these announcements.

And I am praying for God's blessings on not only the interview I'm having with Tom this Thursday, but also on Family Radio that they would never again drift back into doctrinal heresy and, dare

I say, apostasy. I thank God that this will once again be a platform for biblically sound churches to proclaim the doctrines of sovereign grace.

By the way, I just wanted to quickly note that Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York, was blown away by your answer to the question that involved the wedding of your niece.

And Tom is married to a Jewish woman. And she became a believer as a result of a trial that they had gone through when their daughter had overdosed on heroin.

And the doctors were not very confident that she would revive from this coma that she was in.

And she raised up out of that hospital bed with very little bad remnants of this experience physically.

And she committed her life to Christ, and she was baptized. So we're delighted to know that God's grace is working in this way.

Thank you, Tom, for writing in. And perhaps we will do an elongated program with Joe on this remarkable story he just told.

I want to let our listeners know that you can find Christ Bible Church of Dublin, California.

You can find out more information about that church from christbiblechurch .org. You can find out more about First Love Radio at firstloveradio .org.

You can find out more about First Love Publications at firstlovepublications .org. And you can find out more about First Love Missions at missionsfirstlove .org.

missionsfirstlove .org. Thank you so much, Joe Jakowicz, for being on the show. I look forward to your frequent return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater