Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas

NT Framework - Purposeful Name

• Jeremy Thomas • Season 6 • Episode 191

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Four letters, a name unpronounceable, imbued with such deep meaning and a rich promise it is beyond our ability to comprehend unless He had instructed us. 

More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com 

This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).

Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner. 

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, a smaller bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02:

Let's go to the next one, Genesis 12. This is Abram before he was renamed Abraham, right? And you have verses 1 through 3, which are famous verses for the promises that later become a covenant in chapter 15. The covenant, the Abrahamic covenant. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country, which was verse 31 of the previous chapter, was Ur of the Chaldeans. So go forth from Ur of the Chaldeans and from your relatives and from your father's house. Now leave all your family. Now that's not by the way, is this easy to do? Just leave all your uproot and just leave everyone? No, it's not. Okay, but he's to go forth from his relatives and from his father's house to the land, he says, that I will show you, and there I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, make your name great, so you, Abram, shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, Abram, and the ones who curse you, I will curse. And in you, Abram, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And so Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Well, that wasn't exactly on the agenda, right? He's a relative. But he went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran, which is outside of Ur. Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan. Now they're there. This is promised land. Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the Oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. So if this is going to be his land, well, there's people that are in the way, all right? The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your descendants I will give this land. Okay? This land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. And he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and I on the east. And there he built an altar of the Lord, and he did what? He called upon the name of the Lord. See, he's beginning to understand the promise of God that God has you know has is making to him, the significance of it, and he has appreciation and worship because he's learning who God is. He's learning about God. And it's when we learn about God that God is revealing himself, he's glorifying himself, he's showing himself off. Let's go over to Exodus chapter 3. Isn't Exodus 3 the burning bush?

SPEAKER_01:

And then Exodus 6. Is this the burning bush? I don't have this one again. I think it is. Now you know here in the first part of the chapter, the angel of the Lord appearing to him in a blazing fire from the midst of the bush, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Verse 2. Behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush wasn't consumed. This is a strange sight, right? So Moses, I've got to go see this thing. And as he gets close, of course, you know, he says, Don't come near, take off your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you're standing is holy ground. So he does this, and then God identifies himself in verse 6. He says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. So this is the covenant line. God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Interesting because he'll come back later and he'll look at the back of God. Well, look at that passage. So the Lord says, I've seen, surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I've given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters. I'm aware of their sufferings. And so he's come down, of course, to deliver them. He's going to use Moses. But Moses asked in verse 11, he says to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? Okay? And verse 12, he said, Certainly I will be with you. Okay, that's kind of a key phrase. You get down here in verse 13, and Moses is saying, Okay, well, if they ask me when I go to deliver them, who who are you, or what is his name? The end of verse 13, he says, What shall I say? You know, what am I going to tell them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. The Hebrew verb is repeated there twice. Okay, I am who I am. And so you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am hath sent me to you. There's a lot of discussion about this name, but a name is what captures someone's essence, their nature, their being. Come over to chapter 6, because this this event in the burning bush was significant in that God was revealing something about himself that had never been revealed before. So Exodus chapter 6, verse 3, or 2 and 2 and 3, God spoke further to Moses and said to him, I am Yahweh. Now you see that capital Lord, L-O-R-D, all caps. That's the Hebrew tetragrammaton, meaning four letters. They don't, it's a consonantal language, so they didn't have vowels. So you had to know how to pronounce it just from growing up around it. But the pronunciations were lost, so we don't know how to pronounce this name. When I say Yahweh, I mean that's not exactly necessarily the pronunciation. Um, it's really just four letters, four consonants, y-h-w-h, you know, in the Hebrew. And so God spoke and said, I am Yahweh. And I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty. Okay, El Shaddai, there's a name of God, a title, El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know God by this name. Now, the thing is, if you go back to Genesis and you read Genesis 1 through 50, you read the whole thing, you're going to see the name Yahweh used over and over and over and over and over. So you can see the liberals would come along at this point and say, point out in the Bible, say, Well, see, here's a contradiction. Exodus 6.3 says, God didn't make himself known by that name. But if we go back there in Genesis 1 through 50, he uses that name over and over and over. Therefore, the Bible has a contradiction, the Bible's wrong. They don't understand the point. The point is, he did not make known the significance of the name. What is the significance of the name? In its first understanding or connection, it's what we saw in Genesis, I'm sorry, Exodus 3 in the burning bush. I am who I am. Now, what is going on in the whole burning bush thing? I mean, we know there's a bush, it's on fire, it's not burning up, we get it, right? Or do we? Do we get it? Do we understand the significance of what was going on there where God says, I am with you? Moses is like, who's gonna go with me to you know deliver these people? And God says, Hey, I am with you. The picture of the burning bus bush is a picture of Israel in her fiery ordeals. Was she in a picture? Was she in fiery ordeal in Egypt? Well, you better believe it. The taskmasters, I mean, this went on for 400 years, generation after generation. What is God saying to Israel? He's saying, I am with you in your fiery ordeals.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.