To anyone who reads this and lives in the Bay area, you’ve just GOT to come to Blue Oaks Church on Sunday. For those of you out of the area, please make sure you tune in to the podcast version. Please.
We just started a series on Moses and without a “spoiler alert”, let me just say it’s amazing. The creative team gets a “first taste” of Matt’s coming sermons on Monday nights. He shares his talk with us, then we discuss and brainstorm and just soak in the beauty and depth of the passages he shares from. It’s glorious 🙂
Moses gives us such practical examples to knowing, listening to, trusting, yielding to and following God. He shows us through both his strengths and his weaknesses, his successes and his failures. He was a real guy whom we can relate to in countless ways. The truths he discovers about God are timeless and so applicable to us today.
I don’t want to give anything away, because Matt will share it beautifully this weekend. But one of the things that so impacted me on Monday night was God’s name, Yahweh. You will hear on Sunday the aspects of this name that were given to Moses to enable him to do what God had planned for him. Things you’ve probably never heard before. Things that will enable YOU to do what God is calling you to, as well. Truly life-changing, action-starting, momentum-building things.
I went on to study a little further into this name, Yahweh. It’s original spelling was with four consonants YHWH (Yod Heh Vav Heh – Matt will cover this more fully) because it was only to be written and not spoken – His name too sacred to speak.
Yahweh is the name that God gave Himself. A PERSONAL name filled with all the holiness of who He is. A name that truly says WHO He is – (I AM who I AM – Everything! No beginning, no end). As John Piper puts it, “He packs the weightiest truth about himself into a personal name. Infinite greatness and personal knowability are in the name Yahweh.” Oh, I love how you said that, Mr. Piper! 🙂
When Jesus came to earth, He literally carried the name that meant “Yahweh saves”. The personal name of the personal God who came in the flesh to save us. Jesus. Yod Heh Vav Heh come to earth.
Isn’t it amazing that God chose His most personal name (like my name and yours) to sprinkle 5,000 plus times in His love story to us? To remind us once again (5,000 times!) that He desires more than anything a relationship with us. To be personally involved with and known by us. How does this not blow our minds daily??? The God of the universe giving us his most personal information and asking us to be His friends, His children, His bride? Yahweh is our intimate God. WOW!!!!
Today I will let His name roll around my tongue. I will say it slowly, lovingly, whispering each letter – Yod Heh Vav Heh. Every breath carrying a syllable of my very personal God.
Exodus 3:14-15 –
God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM (Yahweh) has sent me to you.’”
God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, (Yahweh) 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 you shall call me
from generation to generation.
