Sermon Tone Analysis

Text :

Sermon Title : יהוה צְבָא֖וֹת – YHWH Tsaboath

Occasion : English Sanctuary Service

Location : Paya Lebar Methodist Sanctuary

MPP : Our God is the Supreme God as well as our personal God…

<pray>

Good morning/afternoon,

Today we are going to continue our sermon series on the name of God,

Which was started by Ps Wendy who talked about God being our banner,

Ps Chris who talked about God being our Shepherd,

And Ps Shih Ming who talked about God who sees...

And today we are going to deal with this term over here (יהוה צְבָא֖וֹת) that had been used close to 300 times in the bible...

And perhaps I should warn you that it may become quite technical...

<pause>

But I guess one question remains...

Why should we be interested about the name of God?

Why do we need to be so technical in our understanding of our God?

Is it enough for me to know that God loves me?

All these questions about the name of God lah, the nature of God lah…

Just leave them to those full-time people can already…

Leave it to all those theologians can already…

Leave them to you pastors…

All of you who are professional bible-studiers…

As for us, lay people,

We once a week come here 拜拜 can already…

I even go cell group once in a while 读圣经(read bible) jukob already

And I suppose this is not an uncommon perception…

In my conversations with some people,

the common response when I ask

Aiyah no need to know so much about God lah...

He knows me and after I die, I can go heaven can already...

Well, I beg to differ...

Remember that Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship with God...

And I know I sound like a broken record, but I feel that we all need to hear his...

Our God is not a man-made God...

He is the creator of heaven and earth and is a living God...

A God that is not aloft but desires to have a relationship with you...

Wouldn’t you want to know him better?

<pause>

Can you imagine if you just got to know someone and you are romantically interested in the person,

Don’t you want to get to know the person better?

Wouldn’t you want to know what is her favourite food, what she likes to do, where is her favourite place to chill at?

Otherwise, your relationship would be a very limited and shallow relationship...

Can you imagine this scenario where you tell your spouse…

“hi dear, you know our relationship is going to be a very efficient relationship...

Don’t expect me to know what you need or what ok...

Don’t tell me what you like...

Every evening, we shall report back to our home at 1800hrs for dinner which we will take turns to purchase on our way home of which the choice of food is in accordance to the preference of the purchaser and subject not to any negotiation...”

Can you imagine that?

That’s not a marriage relationship... that’s a contract...

That’s a computer protocol!

Isn’t that the same for God?

Many of us treat God the same way...

But that’s not his desire...

God doesn’t desire for us to have a transactional relationship with him...

God wants to have a personal relationship with you...

A relationship that will last for eternity....

And knowing that...

Wouldn’t you want to know what is he like?

Also, he is the one who has such influence in your life, aren’t you interested to know him better?

Also, if you have a shallow understanding of God, if someone ask you what’s the difference between your God and the gods of the other religions, how are you going to answer?

And I had just one example of that when I was in primary school,

One of my Chinese teacher said quite publicly that Christianity is a very new religion that was less than 2000 years old…

I knew that he was wrong but at that point of time, I didn’t have the words and didn’t know how to defend what I believed in…

It was a wasted opportunity for witness…

I hope none of us waste any opportunities like I did so, so many years ago…

Therefore, friends, I think there is much impetus for us to know our God better...

And one way is to study the names of God for His nature is revealed in his name,

and what our image of God is will determine how we react to Him,

and affect the way we look at life,

affect the way we behave and will affect us in the way we react when things go our way...

So, I think that it is crucial for us to understand God’s nature…

And it is by understanding God’s nature and allowing ourselves to model our lives after Him that we as a community of God is able to become a family blessed by God to be a blessing to the community and the nations…

Because you are the very face and presence of God to the community

<pause>

And today, we are going to look into the name יהוה צְבָא֖וֹת

Which I guess is obvious that we are dealing with two words here...

This word over here (יהוה)and this word צְבָא֖וֹת

And if you ask me how to pronounce these two words,

Well this word is easy to pronounce…

Which is tze-bo-ot…

But the first one, well… that’s a lot harder

Because in reality, nobody knows…

Really?

How’s that possible?

Well, you see...

This is because at Mt Sinai,

One of the commandments God gave was

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God”[1]

And the people of Israel took this warning seriously…

so seriously that they did not dare to pronounce the name of God…

So, even if they knew how to pronounce the name of God,

The pronouncement wasn’t passed down…

Then what about our scriptures you ask?

Well, if you look at the scriptures in the original text,

you will realise that the Hebrew language don’t have vowels in the alphabet…

they only have consonants…

this, you can see in this chart over here of all the Hebrew alphabets…

So, all the vowels were actually supplied by the readers who are already familiar with the words and context of the document…

So, this is what the original scriptures looked like in the past…