2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Ones,
The Lord compels me to write these messages to you each day by virtue of the content of His life-saving words found in the Bible. They force me to think through some of the most salient issues with which we are faced and to examine the status of my own heart-attitude. I believe that is what our loving Abba wants all of us to do. To that end, He deserves all the glory and thanks for energizing me with continuing and ever-increasing enthusiasm for His word which seems to be a part of my very being. Encased in this is my prayer that you will feel that same enthusiasm and acknowledge the essential nature of God’s word to your lives too. The bottom line is that God wants us to know Him, because He loves us so much and wants us to do what has to be done to prepare for eternal life with Him. Today, we will look at a few more citations revealing God as Adonai, our Lord and Master. If space permits, we will then move on to the meaning of God as “I Am Who I Am.”
Paul in RO 10 wrote about salvation being for all. The understanding here is that if Adonai had His way, everyone would repent and come to faith in the Son. That gives us some inkling of the depth of the love our Lord has for mankind. To that end, Paul wrote in RO 10: 8-10, a key passage revealing God’s will for us. “What it says is this: ‘God’s message is near you, on your lips and in your heart ’-that is, the message of faith we preach. If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised Him from death, you will be saved. For it is by our faith that we are put right with God (justified); it is by our confession that we are saved.” Many good people agree that accepting responsibility for one’s own thoughts and actions is a measure of maturity. In this passage, the Lord is asking us to become mature by doing exactly that. His intent here is not to evoke guilt; we do enough of that on our own. Instead, it is His desire to view the attitude of our hearts by this confession and to bring us salvation and forgiveness.
God doesn’t always get His way with some people. We see this in MT 7: 21-23. “Not everyone who calls Me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what My Father in heaven wants them to do. When the Judgment Day comes, many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord! In Your name we spoke God’s message, by Your name we drove out many demons and performed many miracles!’ Then I will say to them, ‘I never knew you. Get away from Me, you wicked people!’” The message here is clear. It is not one’s deeds that save him, it is his faith. Christ further elaborates on what He is teaching the people in MT 7: 24-27 with the example of the two house builders. “So then, anyone who hears these words of Mine and obey them is like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain poured down, the rivers flooded over, and the wind blew hard against the house. But it did not fall, because it was built on rock. But anyone who hears these words of mine and does not obey them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain poured down, the rivers flooded over, the wind blew hard against that house, and it fell. And what a terrible fall that was!’” Our Lord and Master, Adonai, makes it clear how we can please Him. His commands are not incomplete, empty orders impossible to understand or obey, as those of a human master might be. Because they are so clear to us, His underlying compassion can be seen in them.
The gift of God’s grace has many wonderful ramifications. A crucial one can be seen in what Adonai, our Lord and Master, inspires Paul to reveal in RO 6: 16-17. “Surely you know that when you surrender yourselves as slaves to obey someone, you are in fact the slaves of the master you obey-either of sin, which results in death, or of obedience which results in being put right with God. But thanks be to God! For though at one time you were slaves to sin, you have obeyed with all your heart the truths found in the teaching you have received.” How undeserving of the grace offered us by Him we are! We were His very enemies when our Lord gave His life on the cross for us. Yet, this great sacrifice was made, so that we could be the recipients of His excellent grace just for turning from our sin and accepting Him as our personal Lord and Master, our Adonai. It is my hope that having taken the time to examine all these Scriptures in which God or Christ is referred to as Adonai has convinced you, as it has me, that our obedience to Him is even more precious to both Him and us than we originally thought.
We can now turn our attention to God as Jehovah, Who calls Himself “I Am Who I Am,” the self-existent One. The name, Jehovah, is from the Hebrew word, “Havah,” which means, “to be” or “to become.” We must think of Jehovah as “the Being Who is absolutely self-existent.” This is a difficult concept for the human mind to grasp. That is because we find it easier to think in terms of cause and effect. The best way we can understand this is accepting God as the Creator and everything else as the created. Moses came face to face with this concept in EX 3: 13-15 at the burning bush. “But Moses replied, ‘When I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is His name?’ So what can I tell them?’ God said, ‘I am Who I am. You must tell them: ‘The One Who is called I AM has sent me to you.’ Tell the Israelites that I, the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have sent you to them. This is my name forever; this is what all future generations are to call Me.’” Our loving Abba wants us to know Him as the alpha and omega, the self-existent One, the Source of all that is good in this world.
PRAYER: O Lord, how profound Your love for us is! You inspired Paul to make clear how we can be deemed acceptable to You and give us clear direction for how we should communicate the content of our hearts to You. We have been commanded to believe Your teachings in our hearts, not just our heads. You have told us to confess with our mouths the faith we have and to live that faith “in Christ.” These are not empty commands, but ones that if obeyed will not only fulfill Your will but will also bless us with eternal life. You have made Your will clear to us in directing us to take responsibility for our own thoughts and actions, to eschew hypocrisy, and to build our spiritual houses on a solid foundation. That foundation is Christ, the Rock. When we follow Your commands, nothing that nature or the devil can do will deter us from gaining eternal life with You. We can share in Christ’s victory over death. When we stand humbly before You, we are like Moses in EX 3: 5 when You told Him to take off his sandals because he was standing on hallowed ground. You are our alpha and omega, the self-existent God, Jehovah, Who wants us to know You so well that we will know both Your sovereignty and our responsibility to respond to it. To that end, we acknowledge in humble reverence You as the Lord and Master of our lives. We pledge You our worship, adoration, trust, obedience, honor, glory, praise, and thanks this day and always. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, the Lord leads me to examine Scriptures that elaborate on Him as I AM WHO I AM, the self-existent God, Jehovah-the Alpha and Omega. Every time I study the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit teaches me something new. That is why I never tire of going over them time and time again. God wants all of us to have this experience, of that I am sure. So, Dear Ones, that is my hope for you as you read through these messages about God’s very nature, as we learn it from the names for Him used in the Bible. We can rest assured that when we regularly spend time with Him in prayer and study of His word, that we are building our spiritual houses on a solid foundation that transcends the grave. His deep love for each of us is woven into the stuff of which that foundation is made. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn