Sermon Tone Analysis

The Names of God

Today we start with a new sermon series, The Names of God.

Today we start with a new sermon series entitled “The Names of God”.

As I start on this new sermon series, I have asked the Lord to keep me mindful of the importance of giving reverence to His Name.

A Name in the Old Testament is not just a label assigned to someone, but it signifies the real personality of the person to whom the name belongs.

We can see this in the way God carefully assigned names to people in the Bible like

- When He changed the name of Abram to Abraham (Father of Many)

- When He changed the Name of Jacob to Israel (One Who wrestled with God and prevailed)

The meaning of the names God assigned to them described their personality and who they became.

So It is just proper that when we talk about the Name that God chose to call Himself that we do it with the highest reverence in our hearts.

Today we will study the most revered Name of God, His personal Name..

YAHWEH

From the text we read today this is the Name “The LORD” from “the LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you.”

Notice that the common name for God here is Elohim, which is the plural form of EL or the Mighty One.

So the reading really is “Yahweh, Elohim of Abraham, Elohim of Isaac, Elohim of Jacob has sent me to you.”

ELOHIM

Yahweh, the proper Name of God and the His most revered Name.

History of Yahweh

The Name of God Yahweh was the Name revealed by God to Moses in the text that we just read.

The Name Yahweh is special and very important because it is the Name that God revealed to Moses in the text that we just read.

The meaning of this Name is God, the One Who is absolutely pre-existent, the One Who is essential to life and existence, in other words, God is the..

“THE UNCAUSED CAUSE”

The “GREAT I AM”.

The original word in the Hebrew for Yahweh is composed of four Hebrew consonants called the Tetragrammaton.

יהוה

YHWH יהוה

The Israelites were very careful not to pronounce this Name of God out of reverence and fear.

For the most part they feared that in pronouncing the Name of God, they may violate the second of the 10 commandments:

The Israelites were very careful not to pronounce this Name of God out of reverence and fear.

For the most part they feared that in pronouncing the Name of God, they may violate the second of the 10 commandments:

Just some background..

The Name Yahweh appears in the Bible over 6,800 (6,828) times.

While the other Name of God, Adonai, which means Lord, appears 434 times.

Adonai

So in the Bibles we have today, whenever you see the word Lord with “ord” in small letters in the Old Testament, that is actually a translation of the Hebrew Adonai.

So in the Bibles we have today, whenever you see the word Lord in small letters in the Old Testament, that is actually a translation of the Hebrew Adonai.

Lord = Adonai

While the word LORD with “ord” in small caps in the Old Testament is actually a translation of the Name Yahweh.

LORD = Yahweh

One form of the Name Yahweh that is commonly pronounced is ..

Jehovah

However, scholars of the Hebrew Bible believe that the rendering of the Name Jehovah is not correct or accurate.

It came from an attempt to assign vowels to the Name of God, the tetragrammaton to assist in reading, but instead of assigning the correct vowels that are part of the correct pronunciation, they assigned the vowels from the Name Adonai instead, to come up with the name Yehovah which later became Jehovah.

Hebrew Bible scholars believe that the correct pronunciation is Yahweh.

However, scholars of the Hebrew Bible believe that the rendering of the Name Jehovah is not accurate.

It came from an attempt to assign vowels to the Name of God, the tetragrammaton to assist in reading but instead of assigning the correct vowels that are part of the correct pronunciation

That was an important background, so now we go back to the text that I just read.

The background of the passage we read here is at the time God appointed Moses to be the one to lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

Moses was in the wilderness tending the flock of his father-in-law when God appeared to Him in a burning bush.

He told Him to take off his sandals because the place he was standing on was holy ground.

God said He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and He had seen the affliction of His people who are in Egypt and heard their cry of suffering and that He will deliver them out of Egypt and will bring them up to a land flowing with milk and honey.

He told Moses: “I will send you to pharaoh, King of Egypt to bring My people out.”

Moses was like “who am I that I will go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

The Lord God said, “I will be with you”

Then Moses understood

Then Moses knew that he could not go to the children of Israel in his own name.

Even though he had been raised in Pharaoh’s court, he did not have the power or the authority.

But if he came in the majestic name of God, the Israelites would know that the God of Israel was about to set them free from Egypt, even if Pharaoh opposed Moses.

So he asked from

This was God’s reply:

Then He introduced Himself by His personal Name, Yahweh.

So we know that the rest is History.

But what is the significance of the Name Yahweh to us.

As we saw here the Name Yahweh, comes from “I AM”, other Bibles say “I am Who I am”

Yahweh conveys that God is timeless, He is eternal.

But one interesting thing is that “I Am Who I Am” starts with the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet Aleph is indicative of the future tense.

Therefore the Name of God can also be translated “I Will Be Who I Will Be”.

God’s Name tells us of His:

Timelessness.

Timeliness.

The Name Yahweh was important in Moses’ mission to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and it is also important to us.

Importance of God’s Name to us:

No one can resist Him.

He stands with us in the present.

He has gone ahead of us into the future.

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1.

No one can resist Him.

No one can resist Him.

When pharaoh first heard that the “Great I am” has sent Moses saying “let My people go!” that really should have been enough.

But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and he resisted God’s authority and he suffered catastrophic consequences because of that.

It is foolish to resist the Name of Yahweh.

To Israel and to us believers, God revealing His Name is a turning point.

He transformed His relationship between Himself and His people.

We can liken it to someone of importance, who you used to call “sir” or “your honor” or “Mr.

President” who suddenly, one day tells you: “you can call me by my first name.”

Will you resist that kind of offer of a personal relationship from someone very important?

That is the significance of God revealing His personal Name to us.

It is an offer of a personal relationship that is irresistible.

Sadly, the nation of Israel resisted this personal relationship and later turned to idols.

Idolatry is a violation of the first part of the first commandment, “you shall no other gods before me”, what are idols?

that it is in our heart and attitude, anything standing between our heart and God is idolatry.

This includes “money, career, family, personal ambition”, these are not bad on their own, but if they stand in the way of worshipping Yahweh then that is idolatry.

Let us not forget that there is a second part to the first commandment: The Lord said in : you shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything in heaven above or in earth beneath… you shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I Yahweh, your God am a jealous God.. and then He pronounced his curse on those who worship idols.

There is a curse..

Well the carved image is an image of Jesus or his saint or his mother, there is nothing wrong with that.

Well Yahweh said “you shall not make for yourself a carved image of even the likeness of anything or anyone who is in heaven above”.. and he said “you shall not bow to them or serve them” and then He pronounces His curse “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on children to the third and fourth generation.”

Cursed are those who serve graven images!

God has a special anger to those.

Some people wonder why life is so difficult, there is no peace, there is discord among the children, marriages break down, there is always financial difficulty in my home.

Well, break down your graven images and serve Yahweh, the One and true living God!

While God has an inherent anger to idols and people who have them in their homes.

There is another reason for His anger, if God offers you a personal relationship by revealing to you his first name, why in the world would you instead turn to a mere image, a picture or a poor representation of Him that is nothing less than a rejection of a personal God.