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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.
Gary Hashley
Well, good morning and welcome to another installment of Ask the Pastor. I affectionately think of it as stump the chump, but that's just my mind and the way my mind tends to work. This question was turned in at KCMI that was forwarded on to us, and the question reads this way. "I've noticed in the Old Testament, when it talks about the Lord God, LORD is all in capital letters. In the New Testament, it's used with lower case letters: Lord. What is the significance of these?" Well, that is a very good question, because how do we know God other than as He has revealed Himself? And one of the ways He revealed himself is in this thing we call the Bible. But in the Bible, another aspect of God revealing Himself is through His names. There's not just one designation. There's not just one name for God, and so we need to then spend a little time and do a little study to learn about God based upon His names. There are three primary names for God that we find in the Bible. There is Elohim, there's Adonai, and there is Jehovah. Elohim, Adonai and Jehovah. Elohim we meet real early in the Bible. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," capital G, lowercase O, lowercase D. Let me read to you from Lehman Strauss's book. "The first person," he says, "L signifying unlimited strength, energy, might and power. Allah, signifying to swear, declare or make a covenant. These two roots, when brought together in the name Elohim, mean infinite strength and absolute faithfulness. Thus, we are introduced to the God of the Bible as the one with whom nothing is impossible." And who always keeps His word. Elohim is the strong faithful one. So when you come across the word God, capital G, little o, little d, it is the English rendering of Elohim talking about God's power and God's faithfulness. No wonder in Genesis 1:1, "in the beginning God created," the power of God, "created the heavens and the earth." So Elohim is one of those you run into. Then you find Jehovah, which appears with the all capital letters. Whether it's the word Lord in all capital letters, or the word God in all capital letters. And it's the translation in English of Jehovah, the name Jehovah translated God. All capital letters about 300 times, and Lord, all capital letters about 6,000 times. It's mentioned in scripture more than any other name of God. It's derived from the Hebrew word "havah," meaning to be or being. When Moses said to the burning bush, "who do I tell the Hebrew people you are?" He said, "tell them, 'I am who I am has sent you," the one who is to be. The idea is of course, that of existence, self existence. Thus Jehovah is the eternal existent one, self existent one without beginning, without end. The same yesterday and today and forever. God is now what he always has been and what he will remain forever. So when you do see it in all capital letters, LORD or GOD, it's Jehovah. But then there's a third term, Adonai, which you see as the word Lord with a capital L and then a lower case o r d. And of course, that name has to do with authority. It has to do with reigning over, and others being under the one who makes the rules. The one who puts the rules into place, and the one who would punish for the breaking of the rules. And so those three primary names are really important for us to learn from, because they tell us things about God. So yes, capital G, little o little d from Elohim. Capital G, capital O, capital D are all capitals with the word Lord, Jehovah. And then Lord with a capital L and a little o r d, Adonai. Now, those names are often compounded, Almighty God: Elshaddai. Most high God: El Elyon; Everlasting God: El Olam. Then with Jehovah, there's Jehovah Gyra that talks about being the provider. Jehovah Rapha, a healer; Jehovah Nissi, our banner. Jehovah Shalom, gives us peace; Jehovah Tsidkenu, got our righteousness. Jehovah Shama, the God who is present. So yeah, it might be simpler in some ways if there was just one name for God, but God reveals Himself as the self existent one, as the strong one, as the faithful one, as the giver of peace, as the one who provides for our needs. And all those are part of what we find in the Bible with the names of God. Brad, looks like you're ready to jump in.
Brad Kilthau
Well, you know, Gary, you're saying that and it's right on. Of course, when we look at the names of God, it is to help us to understand more about who God is and the character of God. And kind of when you go through history and see the Jewish people and how they pen out scripture, how they read scripture in public squares and so forth. And then as you come down to the New Testament time, and we get, here in our Bibles---but when you go back to to ancient history, some of the things that I found that was very interesting is: we realized that for thousands of years, the Jewish people, they had a great expression of how to worship the Lord. And it's found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 it's called the Shema, and it goes this way here, "O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." And of course, these are all capital L O R D, "the Lord is one." "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." And Lord, as we see in that worship of the Jewish people to God, is the personal name of Israel's God. It's the personal God. Now, as we learn, of course you come back to Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3. And of course that's when God appeared to Moses and said, "Moses, I want you to go out and lead my people out of slavery, out of Egypt." And of course, there's Moses, you can just see him shaking in his sandals like, first of all, he's got to face Pharaoh. The second thing is, he's got to go back to his people who've already rejected him, and why would they ever follow him? And it's like, Moses turns to God and says, "well, what if the people asked me the name of God and who sent me?" And so God responded, and when you're studying the original language, God tells him, "tell them 'Ea sent me." Ea is the best way I could pronounce it. And when you study that, it means "I will be, I will be." And so you can just see Moses like, "how am I gonna use that? I Will Be sent me? It's not gonna work for me." And you know, God can obviously read our minds, as Moses is standing there, "I will be," should be only something that God would say to the people. So in the next sentence God tells Moses, basically the word, Yahweh, the God of our ancestors has sent me. "That's the way you will address the people. The God of your ancestors is the one who has sent me to come and to free you." Now, when you get to that word Yahweh into ancient Hebrew, again, it is actually a form of a verb. That means He will be, just as you were saying, Gary, He's always been, He's self existent. God is just simply there. He doesn't depend on anyone else for His existence. He never was created, He's always been, He will be. God has always. And so when we see this word, Yahweh, that's when we come to that appearing in the scripture, some 6,500 times in the Old Testament alone. Now, through the centuries, as we know the Jewish people, they wanted to honor the divine name of God. And so often they didn't wanna say His name, when it came to his name. As they were reading the scripture out loud, they thought it would be a great way to honor God by not even saying His name, because they were not worthy to say His name. And so when they read the Hebrew Bible aloud and they would come to the part of where they would need to say His name, they stopped even saying the word yahweh. And instead they said, Adonai, Adonai for the Lord, Adonai. And this practice continued throughout the centuries. And later on, when people started to translate the Bible, especially as we know coming into the English language, they somewhat had the same practice. Instead of spelling out the divine name, just translated L O R D all in capital letters. And more of that is when you think about the ancient scribes, you know, they wanted to prevent anyone from accidentally saying God's name out loud. And so they came up with a, I don't know, kind of a visual reminder to make sure nobody said it wrong. And when they would say, you know, again saying Adonai was a way that they could say the name of God in public and still show respect to God. But one of the ways they moved on with this, to make sure that no one said the name of God and used another name that would still honor God, but not be speaking a name of God, is they took the four capital letters out of Yahweh. They took the Y, the H, the W and the last H of the Divine name. And of course we see Y H W H, and then they inserted the vowels of the name Adonai. And so they took the vowels, a o and a, and they came up with a word, which is for a name for God, which is pronounced Yahuah. And so the Israelites and the Jewish people aren't gonna say Yahuah. So it was just a visual reminder, never to say even Yahweh, always go to Adonai and say it as Adonai. And then of course, when Christian scribes and so forth, translating scripture, a lot of them didn't know this history when they were even translating some of this. And so, some of them even started using the word Yahuah, which was an artificial word. Instead of saying Adonai or as coming back and saying Yahweh. And so they were saying, Yahuah. And until basically later on through this time of figuring it out, finally they came up with the true way of, they thought, of addressing God in a way that would be honoring and still not be saying His absolute name. They said Jehovah, and today, many Christians still use the word Jehovah. The title Jehovah describes the name of the Lord. Now, the main thing is this, the word L O R D in all capitals, it indicates that there is a divine name of the God of Israel. And we have to be careful sometimes that we don't confuse that. Because when we come into the New Testament, of course there's the word Aden, which is simply as you were alluding to, Gary, means Lord, L o r d, with the lowercase letters following. And of course, that name could be used to describe a king, you know, or to describe a guy that had servants or a guy that was just a shepherd over the sheep. He was a Lord of that. And so often the authors would use that: the Lord of all the Earth, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of Lords, and so forth. But I think behind all of this, this is what we gotta get out of. This is Jehovah, Lord, Adonai, Yahweh, all of these, it represents the original name of the God of Israel. And I guess the way we need to address the God of Israel, if you really wanna be serious about this and to say it properly, and you're worried about saying it wrong, it's just the one who was the one who is, and the one whoever will be. And to probably reverence the Lord with his name.
Gary Hashley
And I think we need to be very careful, because we've become pretty flippant with the name of God. Israel was very careful, even how they said it and how they wrote it. I agree with that. And we take it so casually and we use it as just an expression of excitement or an expression of fear or whatever. And we need to be really careful how we use the name of God.
Brad Kilthau
You know, sometimes that can even happen in our prayers, right? We can Lord, lord, lord, Lord, and not even realizing we're throwing that precious name of the Almighty God out there like that. Again, do we really mean to say His name? Do we really mean to say His name in a reverent way? You're right, Gary. We have to be very careful that each time we address Him and try to speak His name, that we have this high lifted up reverence for who we're speaking of.
Gary Hashley
I had a young man at Frontier School of the Bible when I taught there, who loved to start his prayer, "help me God." And something in me just cringed. I'm not saying it was horrible, but it just seemed a little casual when you're addressing the sovereign God of all things.