Bible in 90, Day 05: Ian sent you?

Exodus 1-15

*image courtesy of dimitri_c at stock.xchng

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2

Shakespeare was right about some things, but on this one I have to call shenanigans.  I won’t go into the linguistic debate about prescription versus description, but suffice it to say that I think the name of a person is quite different than the name of a flower.  A person’s name is bound up in who they are.  The combination of sounds that make up the name call to mind not just letters and syllables, but the person himself.  When you hear “George Washington” or “Britney Spears” or “Fred Flintstone,” your mind conjures up all kinds of facts, images, and even emotions related to that name.

When it came time for Moses to tell the people of Israel that someone had sent him to deliver them, what was he to say?  This is the very question on his mind in Exodus 3.  In asking God this question, he is also asking Him to identify Himself.  God replies, quite cryptically, “I AM WHO I AM.”  So, Moses is to tell Israel that “I AM” has sent him.  Good thing he didn’t have to email that in, imagine the typos…

“Ian sent you?  Who’s Ian?  Hey, does anyone know the divine Ian?”

God has done an amazing thing here.  This is the first time in recorded revelation that God revealed any kind of personal name.  Look in v. 15.  In the English, it reads like this:

“Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

Ok, so God declares quite clearly that His name forever, the name to remember is “The LORD.”  Do you notice how “LORD” is all caps?  There’s a reason for that!  It’s because this is a translation of an old custom of substituting LORD for the divine name.  That’s right, our God has a name!  In Hebrew, it is YHWH (originally Hebrew had no consonants).  If you add the vowels that we think go in there, it’s Yahweh.  This Hebrew words sounds a lot like the Hebrew for “I am,” the answer God gave to Moses.  This is why you may have heard the God of the Bible referred to as The Great I AM.

Now, why is this name significant?  First off, it sets Yahweh apart from any other supposed God.  He is not Ra, or Dagon, or Asherah, or Baal, or Zeus, or Jupiter.  More modernly, He is not Allah, or Vishnu, or Sophia, or Shiva.  It’s important to know what God you’re talking about, because (contrary to popular opinion) they are not many names referring to one truth!  Compare the traits of Yahweh with any other god mentioned in the Bible.  Compare Yahweh’s love, compassion, and involvement in the universe with that of many eastern gods of today.  You will find that Yahweh is indeed a unique God, because He is the true God.

Secondly, Yahweh is telling us something about Himself through His name.  Your Bible probably has some kind of footnote in v. 14 that says that “I am that I am” could be translated “I will be what I will be.”  The reason for this is that there is no tense in Hebrew verbs.

The less-boring, more-important thing is this: God is saying that He is the eternal one.  He is the self-being One!  He simply is.  God doesn’t not have beginning or end, and He doesn’t require us to exist.  He existed long before us, and will continue on forever!  He is the being one.

God is.

Let’s understand that our God is a specific God.  He has a name that represents who He is, Yahweh.  Let’s never take this name in vain, let’s never abuse it, and let’s never downplay it as one label among thousands.  Let’s remember that our God is the Eternal One.  He has no beginning or end, and He has no need of us.  Let’s also remember that even though He doesn’t need us for His survival, He still loved us by sending His Son, Jesus, to die for us.

Originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 28: The Bad Samaritan

2 Kings 15-25

*image courtesy of alitaylor at www.sxc.hu

Today we witnessed the down-hill tumble of both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  It wasn’t pretty.  If you’ve tried at all to keep up with which king was in which kingdom (which ain’t easy!), you may have noticed that all the kings of Israel were judged as wicked, and only some of the kings of Judah were judged as doing what was right in the sight of the Lord.  They both trace back to Jeroboam (the wicked king of Israel who set up the golden calves in Bethel and Dan, 1 Kings 12:25-33), or David.  Because of Israel’s idolatry, worship of false gods, and wicked kings, the kingdom fell first.  We also witnessed the birth of the people who would later become known as the Samaritans (1 Kings 17:1-6, 24-41).

In 722 B.C., Shalmaneser, king of Assyria deported the people of Israel to other lands, and brought people from other lands into Israel’s land.  This was to keep the people subdued.  When God’s anger struck the new settlers in Israel, Shalmaneser had some of the Israelite priests return to the land to instruct the people in how to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.  The people accepted some of these teachings, but continued worshiping other gods and simply blended the belief systems.  The Israelites left in the land also began intermarrying with these new people.  Thus, a new group of people arose who were both ethnically mixed, and religiously mixed.  This is why the hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans existed by the time of the 1st century (John 4:9; Luke 10:25-37).

First Kings 17:7-23 tells us that all this happened because Israel had sinned against the Lord.  The kingdom of Judah, unfortunately, doesn’t learn anything by watching this happen.  Even after the amazing reforms of Josiah (2 Kings 22-23), Judah still went after other gods and worshiped with idols.  God is a patient God.  He gave chance after chance after chance to both kingdoms in Israel.

And still they rebelled.

God sent prophets to warn the people.  He promised blessing if they would follow Him, and yet they rebelled.  He threatened cursing if the would not follow Him, yet they rebelled.  He sent disasters on them, trying to get their attention and draw them back to Himself, yet they rebelled.  Finally, he sent Israel off into captivity as He promised He would (Deuteronomy 28).  Even then, Judah did not listen.  In the end, Judah went into captivity at the hands of the Babylonians, just as God had foretold (2 Kings 20:12-21).

Let us heed God’s warnings in our lives.  Let’s not let sin so entangle us that we lose sight of who we are in Christ, and just how righteous He is.  Paul told the Corinthians that there were those who were weak and ill, even dead, because of sin in their lives (1 Corinthians 11:27-32).  Just as God sent warning after warning before taking Judah out of the land and into captivity, sometimes God may have to take a Christian out of the world to put an end to their sin and shameful blaspheming of Christ’s name.  Let us not be those who have to suffer the punishment of God before we repent.  Let us heed the warnings and turn back to Jesus in repentance, casting ourselves on His mercy.

Bible in 90, Day 8: The Worship of God

Leviticus 1-14

*image courtesy of marcos_bh at www.sxc.hu

Are ya still with me?  Hang in there!  I know today’s reading was not what we’re used to, but it is all God’s Word and we can learn from all of it.  Stay faithful and remember that at all times, the Holy Spirit is with those of us who are in Christ and will illuminate the Word.  “So,” you ask, “what do we get from today?”

I’m glad you asked!

So, we read five chapters of instructions to those who desired to worship God.  These chapters cover the proper items to bring for a burnt, grain, fellowship, sin, or guilt offering.  The next two chapters are instructions to the priests on what to do when a worshipper brings one of these offerings to the Tabernacle.  This is followed by three chapters on the priests themselves.  There is a lot of ink spent on the topic of the proper worship of God!  This shows me a couple of things:

Bible in 90, Day 6: Old and New

Exodus 14-28

*image courtesy of szajmon at www.sxc.hu

Ok, pop-quiz hot shot!  Name the seven dwarves.  Now name the titles of your favorite book or movie series (Twilight, Lord of the Rings, Matrix, etc.).  Now, name the ten commandments.  How’d you do?

Today we hit another highwater mark in the Old Testament- the Big Ten, the Decalogue, the Ten Words, that’s right the Ten Commandments.  They’ve been fought over, litigated for and against, and caused much controversy in America the last few years.  Hopefully you know me by now, I’m not going down that path right now.  But, for all the quarreling, campaigning, and protesting, do we even know what we’re fighting about?  These commandments form the basis for all the Old Testament law.  They serve as the grounds upon which the Sinaitic covenant and God’s relationship with Israel are built.

Sounds important!