Archives for February 2014

Factors Requiring the Revelation of the Son
Text Ref. 8
God became dissatisfied with His relationship with His people on two counts that were interrelated: 1) His people did not know Him as intimately as He desired; and 2) they were in general only an outwardly righteous people. They would often fail even in their outward show of righteousness because their inner man (their heart) was not changed from its old sinful nature, the nature that all men have inherited from Adam. The Law had brought a certain outward conformity to God’s standards, but it had failed to make them a truly righteous nation. That is, they did not have a righteousness that started on the inside and mani¬fested itself outwardly in their daily activities.
God had known this would happen. Nevertheless He did not give up on the Israelites quickly nor easily. This has been true of God through the centuries. He has wanted so greatly to have a very close relation¬ship with man. Before the Israelites (both kingdoms) ( ) finally compelled God to reject them, He had been trying to establish that rapport with them as a sort of lead-in to close communion with the entire race of men. The Israelites were to be the people to bring God’s truth to the world.
It did not work out according to God’s temporary blueprint and He had to use every stratagem of love to bring all Israel back to Him. It was not successful, as He knew it would not be. But before casting Israel aside, God pled with them as though His very existence depended on their faithfulness. It was only the love of God that made Him pursue them, entreat them and cling to them. And even now that love is straining at its self imposed restrictions, wanting so much to restore the Jews to a richer and fuller relationship with God. But the time for that is not quite yet except for individual Jews who acknowledge Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
During the years of Israel’s backsliding, God never gave up on His plan of unfolding His ineffable person to all mankind.( ) The plan had at its center the simultaneous revealing of His plan of salvation for all mankind. And no amount of defection by the Israelites could turn the plan aside nor could any power of darkness derail it. God’s wisdom and love and power had yet to be disclosed to a world that desperately needed such a revelation.
It seems that, after man’s fall in the Garden of Eden, the same Elohim who had said in the beginning, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26a), had said within His multi dimensioned Self, “Let us RE-make man in our likeness.” But in reality God had decreed this an eternity ago because He knew just that long ago that man would fall from his position of favor and innocence. But the mercy and love of God operate in spite of the existence and pervasiveness of sin. It is, in fact, sin that makes it all so necessary.
God indirectly foretold the fulfillment of His plan of salvation when He told the Israelites through Moses, “The Lord (Jehovah) will raise up…a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me: unto him ye shall hearken.” Deut.18:15. This Prophet, Moses informed the people, would be God’s answer to their plea made in sheer terror that God should not speak to them anymore out of His terrible glory on Mt. Sinai. Ex. 20:19. The coming Prophet would be an intermediary between them and Jehovah.
In his day Job also needed an intermediary. But unlike the Israelites on Mt. Sinai, Job had chided God because he (Job) could not argue his case before God as he might before mere men.
“Oh that I knew where I might find him!” Job cried in his abject misery. “I would order my cause before him and fill my mouth with arguments.” (Job 23:4)
But he had to concede finally, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him.”
Job spoke rashly in the bitterness of his spirit, but if God had actually come down before Job as He had before the Israelites on Mt. Sinai, Job would have been terrified speechless like his counterparts on Mt. Sinai. Job needed what the Israelites and all men need: a daysman, an intermediary to represent him to Jehovah because no man in his own right can stand before the consuming glory of God. Man is totally unfit and altogether unworthy to argue his case before this divine Supreme Court.
This presents a problem, a very serious and even fatal problem. If we cannot come before Jehovah who “will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:17)( ), if we cannot plead on our own behalf, what can we expect from Him who is Holiness and Righteousness personified? We who have lied and cheated, stolen, hated, perverted justice, been adulterers and sodomites ever since the expulsion from the Garden? All of us were all of these things by nature if not by actual practice. Sin is sin. It is not “great” or small”; it is SIN, utterly reprehensible.
But, just as the Spirit of God brooded over the face of a devastated world in its infancy and brought order out of chaos, God was determined to wrest peace and righteousness out of the havoc of sin into which man had plunged. Had He not been everything else to His children — Provider, Leader, even their Peace and Righteousness (which they forsook)? Could not God now, in Israel’s and all men’s most urgent and consummate need, fill that need? Could not this Jehovah tsidkenu, our Righteousness, cure their natural tendency to reject Him and in truth be their righteousness? Could not He who was Jehovah shalom, our Peace, be a source of true and lasting peace to them and beyond them to all men?
Considering the ultimate state of Jehovah’s righteousness and the woeful, sinful condition in which the Israelites and all men found themselves, God had to be all of these: peace, righteousness and salvation. If not, there could be only eternal damnation for every creature made in the image of God. This would be irony indeed!
Mankind was definitely at a continually worsening crisis, with Satan doing his best to destroy the only creature who bore a resemblance to his Maker.( ) The deteriorating crisis was symbolized graphically in backsliding Israel. Israel, along with all men, was wrapped up, laced and bound tightly by the very thing that God hates so much: sin. Jehovah was, and is, compelled by His own righteousness to eradicate sin. This is a death sentence for man because sin is part and parcel of his being. He was, and is, headed toward total and irrevocable destruction.
But Jehovah is an infinitely many-sided Person. Consider how two of these many sides pertain to man’s tragic situation. The first we have just seen: God’s utter abhorrence of sin. The second, which is seemingly opposed to this side of vengeful righteousness, is the love of God. We have read how God thundered His righteous demands from Sinai, frightening the Israelites out of their wits. But that is only one side of God. The same Jehovah showed His tenderness and, yes, His vulnerability when He spoke so soothingly to the Israelites through Jeremiah, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: Therefore with loving¬kindness have I drawn thee.” (Jer. 31:3)

Many Offices, One God

As we have noted, humans in their finiteness are complex creatures who all function in a variety of positions but each one is still one person. Much more than the puny human, God is infinitely convoluted in His Person and fills a limitless number of roles in His creation. Yet He remains one Almighty God. For example, God referred to Himself as “the Almighty God [El Shaddai]” on one occasion when talking to Abraham. (Gen. 17:1) God told Moses much later in the history of the Israelites that El Shaddai was the name by which Isaac and Jacob also had known Him. (Ex. 6:3) But God had another more specific and personal name (and yet He remained one God) that He revealed to Moses when He met Moses at the burning bush. (Ex. 3:13, 14)

Text Ref. 6

On this occasion God had commissioned Moses to deliver the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt. Moses demurred, saying, “When I tell the children of Israel that the God of your fathers has sent me to you, they will say, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I tell them?” God then gave Moses the specific and personal name full of majesty and significance. He said, “I AM WHO I AM. Say to them, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ Thus shall you say to them, ‘The Lord God (Jehovah Elohim)…the God of Abraham…of Isaac…of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever.” Ex. 3:15. (Ref.,  (Clarke n.d., 306, vs. 15 notes.)Which is His name forever: I AM or Jehovah? Both. They stem from the same verb and are both indicative of God’s eternal being. In the Old Testament, wherever “LORD” is spelled with all capital letters it is used in place of “Jehovah.” (Dummelow 1943, 51, “What is his name?”)

Jehovah or Yahweh (the earlier form of the same word) was in the original text. Jehovah derived from Yahweh which in turn derived from the Hebrew JHVH (pronunciation unknown), the name of God that the Hebrews considered too sacred to utter. So whenever they would come across the tetragram­maton JHVH in their reading, they would substitute “Adonai,” meaning “My Lord,” for the sacred utterance.

Hebrew was at first written without vowels; they were not a part of the written language. When vowels were added later, the scribes combined the vowel signs of Adonai with JHVH and so brought into being the word, Jehovah, variously rendered Yahweh, Jahveh, Jahweh, etc., all forms derived from the one word, JHVH.

J.R. Dummelow, in his “A Commentary on the Holy Bible,”  (Dummelow 1943) informs us that “Jahveh” is similar to the Hebrew verb, “jahve,” meaning “he is.” God was Jahveh (He is) to the Israelites, but in referring to Himself as He was talking to Moses, God said that He was “Ehyeh (I AM).” By these expressions God was stressing that He is completely independent of any outside source, including time itself; He only of all beings has the power to stand unrestricted and alone.

There is more to this holy name. Scholars assert that it can also mean “I will be,” thus denoting God’s constancy and faith­fulness: He will always exist so that His creation, man in particular, may fully depend on Him. There is absolutely no one else on whom so much and so many depend and who never falters under such a heavy burden.

Another meaning contained in Yahweh is “He who CAUSES to be” or “He who creates.” We can now begin to see the full significance in the name Jehovah.

We can sum it up this way: Jehovah is He who created all things, who exists completely self?sustained and will always remain constant and unchangeable. His “being” is the only true existence; it is absolutely self?contained and dependent upon no one and no thing. His being reaches back an eternity and extends forward into infinity. No other entity can ever dream of making this assertion.

Even with this condensed definition of Jehovah/Yahweh we do the name an utter injustice. Our minds are limited, but our spiritual side senses there is so much more to it. As we probe into its significance we find meanings of strength and self?reve­lation and glorious majesty. (Clarke, Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the New Testament n.d.).

To put a very complex subject in absurdly uncomplicated terms (how can one really reduce this immense God to a simple statement?), God simply IS. He is, unaffected by past or future, unlimited, invincible, all?wise, all?powerful, everywhere present, sustained by His own Person. God needs no one, needs no one’s consultation or acquiescence, did not come into being by creative fiat nor will He ever cease to be. He is Yahweh. He is Jehovah.

Text Ref. 7

There were also Jehovah combination names that arose from God’s many functions in relation to His people. Many times in the long history of the Hebrews descending from Abraham, God would, in His unique way, very effectively fill a need. It was because of this comforting habit of Jehovah’s being there and being what they needed that the Jehovah combination names came about. For instance, on one occasion God provided a lamb of sacrifice for Abraham so that he did not have to slay his only son of the promise. Abraham in his overflowing gratitude named the place Jehovah-jireh (Clarke, Clarke’s Commentary, vol. I n.d.), 141, verse 14 notes, meaning “God will provide.” (Gen. 22:14) At another time God “healed” the bitter waters of Marah so that the Israelites could drink of them and not die of thirst or poison. God made a covenant with them there that if they would diligently hearken to His words He would not afflict them with the diseases he had brought upon the Egyptians. “For I,” God told the Israelites, “am the Lord that healeth thee [Jehovah-ropheka].” (Ex. 15:26)

There were more of these Jehovah combination names such as Jehovah-shamma (the Lord is there), Jeho­vah?tsidkenu (the Lord our righteousness) and others. We cannot adequately deal with them here. They all, along with the more generic terms of Eloah, Elohim and El Shaddai, were references to the one true God.

To wrap it up: The evolution of the names of deity, ranging from God (Eloah, Elohim), God Almighty (El Shaddai) and various other names that were just as impersonal, to the more personal Jehovah (Yahweh) and its many descriptive combination forms was in step with the gradual unfolding by God of Himself to His people. He had first become a personal God to individuals such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then to an entire nation: Israel. To this people He was a great, majestic yet loving God who tenderly carried them through a flood of adversity brought on by their own idolatrous and carnal excesses.

God’s relationship with Israel was one of a kind, never having happened on that wise with any other nation before or since. He was to them Yahweh, a personal God, and they were to Him His peculiar people: they belonged only to Him. To bring it down to us: The Father whose identity we have been seeking is the same Jehovah or Yahweh who began His dealings with mankind by introducing Himself first to the Israelites.