Covenants, Calendars and Clarity, Part 1

Well, every year I receive a flu vaccine as the recommendation of my doctor. What is a flu vaccine? A flu vaccine is a small dose of a virus, it can be the living virus or a dead part of that virus, that is injected in your body to protect you from the full attack of that virus. It causes antibodies to develop in the body about two weeks after you receive that vaccination, and these antibodies develop an immunity to the virus to provide protection against infection in case you receive a full attack from that virus. Well, for the next few sermons, I would like to take some time to inoculate my beloved Cleveland congregation from a number of spiritual viruses that are floating around the Church of God world. Some of these viruses have sickened people who once were spiritually balanced and had the right priorities and unfortunately have been involved in some things that have hurt them. My desire is to expose you to the ideas that some of these spiritual viruses promote and therefore protect you from acquiring a spiritual disease. And some of these are very serious. Paul warned against those who preach a different gospel. We know what the true gospel is. The true gospel is the good news of the coming Kingdom of God, all made possible by the fact that Jesus Christ became God in the flesh, lived the perfect life, shed his blood so that our sins were forgiven, and was resurrected from the dead so that you and I can have eternal life. That is the gospel. But many people want to make salvation issues out of things that are not part of the gospel, and that's what I want to talk about today, actually for the next few weeks. I feel compelled to discuss over the period of a few weeks various covenants, laws, sacred names, and calendars, and to bring some clarity to these issues. If you'll turn to Exodus chapter 24, we'll take a look at a covenant that we want to focus on today. God made special covenants with Noah and Abraham and David and Israel. He long ago decided to reveal important details of a plan he has to produce a holy people. The one covenant we want to focus on today is the covenant that God made with ancient Israel, with Moses as the mediator. It's known as the Old Covenant, because as the spiritual children of God, it was replaced with something that is superior, something that is better spoken of in Hebrews chapter 8 that we'll get to eventually. It is a new covenant, but let's take a look at this covenant that God made with the nation of Israel. Exodus chapter 24, and we'll begin in verse 1. Now he said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. And Moses alone shall come up near the Lord, but they shall not come near, nor shall the people go up with him.

So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all his judgments, and all the people answered with one voice, saying all the words which the Lord has said we will do.

So they were making a commitment. They were making a covenant with God. Verse 4, Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and he rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Then he sent young men of the children of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of the oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And then he took the book of the covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said all that the Lord has said we will do and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said this is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words. And Moses went up also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. So this is one of the number of times when the old covenant is reaffirmed in the Pentateuch in the original writings of the Bible. The word covenant here, from a Hebrew word that is pronounced birith. And it means in the sense of drawing blood, you may have noticed that there was blood as part of this covenant. It means a compact. It means a confederacy together, being in league with each other. So it's literally like having a very firm contract between one party or another. In simple terms, it's a formal agreement. A covenant can be between two nations. It can be an agreement between two people. Or a special relationship between God and an individual human or a nation. We know that God had individual covenants, for example, with Noah. He had a covenant with Abraham. He had a covenant with David. So that was his covenant with an individual. God also can have a covenant with a nation. And that's what we read about here. A covenant is more than just a mere contract. A mere contract oftentimes is just simply an exchange, like a financial exchange. A covenant involves loyalty. It involves commitment.

It involves duty. So that's why it is so important to God. Let's read another example of this being reaffirmed. Leviticus chapter 26. If you will turn there with me, again Leviticus chapter 26, and we'll pick it up in verse 6.

So we're being introduced to the covenant that God made with the nation of Israel.

Leviticus chapter 26 in verse 6, I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid. I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. I will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you.

Five of you shall chase a hundredth, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight. Your enemies shall fall by the sword before you, for I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you. So God says, if you are obedient, I will have all of these good things happen within your community, within your nation, because of the covenant that I have with you. Verse 10, you shall eat the old harvest and clear out the old because of the new. Your next year's harvest will be so big and so rapid you won't have a chance to finish off last year's harvest yet, which was abundant and huge. You'll have food coming out of everywhere. Verse 11, and I will set my tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people. So again, this is what is known as the old covenant, as recorded primarily in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And later, the Israelites were ready to enter the Promised Land. Once again, Moses reaffirmed what that covenant was in Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 1. I'll just read this. There's no reason for you to turn to it. Now it came to pass in the 40th year, in the 11th month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him as commandments to them. So again, in the early part of the book of Deuteronomy, that covenant was reinforced.

I want to take a few minutes to explain how the old covenant included God's law. We know them as God's moral law, the Ten Commandments. The old covenant included God's law, but it is a separate covenant, God's law, from the old covenant. Actually, God's law is part of any covenant in order for him to do business with anyone. It's a non-negotiable, and anyone that God has a relationship with and makes a contract with has a covenant that respects his commandments and his laws. So God's law was part of the old covenant, but the point is, is it also exists outside of it. So someday, when the old covenant is done away, God's law always remains. So I'd like to discuss this for a few minutes so we understand the difference. Deuteronomy chapter 5 and verse 1. Let's see what is so special about the Ten Commandments, what is so special about God's law, and how it was treated differently from the law of Moses. Deuteronomy chapter 5 and verse 1, And Moses called all Israel, and said to him, Here, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your hearing today, that you may learn them, and be careful to observe them.

The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Hureb, which is another way of saying Sinai. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us who are here today, all of us who are alive. The Lord talked with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire. I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up to the mountain.

So what Moses is reminding them is that they heard the Ten Commandments thunder from Mount Sinai face to face. They didn't want to look at God. They didn't want to hear it. They were terrified. They said, Moses, you go up and talk to this awesome, incredible being. We're too frightened, but yet face to face, God explained what his law was to the children of Israel. This is the giving of the Ten Commandments, as recalled by Moses, to the people. They were so important that they were given by God face to face, by God the Moses, in the hearing and presence of the people. They were so important that literally, and we'll read about this in a few verses, they were written by the very finger of God himself on stone tablets. Now, you can't mention to me anything else that comes to your mind where God ever wrote something personally with his own finger on a stone tablet. That highlights how important his law absolutely is. I raise, and I bring this up, and we have to talk about this issue, is many folks in the Protestant world believe the Ten Commandments are done away and that they're no longer valid. Others go through the New Testament and they say, oh wow, let's see. We find nine of the Ten Commandments are still valid today. We'll call it the Law of Christ. And sure enough, what is the one commandment that they don't acknowledge? The one that says, remember. Interesting the way human beings are, right? God says, remember? That's the one you want to forget. So, some resurrect, they dutifully look in the New Testament and they say, oh yeah, shouldn't covet. Oh, shouldn't steal. Oh, shouldn't commit adultery. Shouldn't do all these things, but there's one that they have a little bit of a problem with because that commandment happens to be a sign that identifies God's people. So, let me ask the question, was there something different about the commandments of God, the law of God, and the way it was treated, and the way the book of Moses was treated?

Let's allow the Scriptures answer the question. Deuteronomy chapter 10, beginning in verse 1.

It says, at that time the Lord said to me, you for yourself two tablets of stone, like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make yourself an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, hint, hint, Moses, next time, control your temper and don't break the stuff that I give you, which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark. So I made an ark of acacia wood, hewed the two tablets of stone, like the first, went up to the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand, and he wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments. Want you to notice what it doesn't say? The Nine Suggestions. It says, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord has spoken to you in the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me.

Verse 5, then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark, which I had made, and they are there just as the Lord commanded me. So we see here that the instruction was these commandments that God wrote with his own finger on tablets of stone were to be put inside of the ark of the covenant. It's very important for us to understand and appreciate.

Now let's go back in the book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 24, and let's see where the law of Moses, the writings of that covenant are placed.

Deuteronomy chapter 31 and verse 24.

It's going back about 21 chapters in the book of Deuteronomy.

So it was when Moses had completed the writing of the words of this law in a book, when they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, take this book of the law and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord, your God, that it may be there as a witness against you. So unlike the law of God, which went inside the ark of the covenant, this book, the book of the law, which happens to be what Moses has been writing, referred to as the law of Moses, is put beside the covenant.

I'm sorry, beside the ark of the covenant. Now, at this time, they're dealing with a mobile tent.

So people can see whenever that tent is taken down and that ark is moved, it's a reminder.

It's there. This is a covenant we made with God. It's exposed. It's there for people to glance at and say, oh, wow, that's right. We made this obligation with God. We made this covenant with God. So that is why it was a witness against them that we've got to be obedient. We need to do these things we said we would do. So why the difference? God's law was put inside the ark, and the law of Moses was put beside the ark. The reason is that what went inside the ark reflects God's value system. It is permanent. It reflects the character of God. Those are His commandments.

What went outside of the ark was intended to be temporary. God knew that it would be broken. These people were incapable of keeping a covenant with Him, and it was outside of the ark because it was an adjunct. It's something that would be there for a while, but was in essence temporary, not eternal like the law of God. Well, at this time, as I mentioned, the ark of the covenant would be kept in a portable or movable tent or tabernacle. But when 400 years passed and they opened the temple, they finally built a temple for God. So He didn't have to live in a tent anymore with His presence. They finally built a temple. What do you think they found inside the ark of the covenant? Let's go to 1 Kings 8 and verse 6. Let's see what they found inside of the ark of the covenant and what happened right after they discovered it. This is the temple that's been built by Solomon. 1 Kings 8 and verse 6. Then the priest brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place into the inner sanctuary of the temple to the most holy place under the wings of the carobim, for the carobim spread their wings over the place of the ark, and the carobim overshadowed the ark and its poles. The poles extended so that the ends of the poles could be seen from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from outside.

And they are there to this day. That's the time of the writing here of 1 Kings. I want you to notice in verse 9, nothing was in the ark except the two tablets of stone which Moses put there at Horeb. That was approximately 400 years earlier that Moses had done that. And the Lord, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, and they came out of the land of Egypt. And then in verse 10, and it came to pass when the priest came out of the holy place that the cloud filled the house of the Lord. You know what that means? It means God said, I accept this as my dwelling place. The cloud, like the cloud that protected them after they left Egypt, that same cloud now filled this new building that had been dedicated. And it was God's way of saying, I endorse this place. My presence is in this temple. I like it. That's what it meant when the cloud filled the house of the Lord. So the only thing that was in the ark were the two tablets. Again, why do you think God commanded Moses to put the tablets containing the Ten Commandments written on them inside of the ark? The ark represented God's presence on earth. It was regarded as his throne, the throne of the invisible, eternal God and his footstool. The commandments are his value system. They are the core of who and what he is, the core of his being. They are part of any covenant that God will make, and they include two portions that are non-negotiables. If you were to have a contract or to do something with Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, he would give you a contract that's his template. And though there are some things you may be able to change and modify in it and negotiate with him, parts of that contract are going to have what he considers to be non-negotiables. No compromises, no cutting short, some things that are very, very important to him. And the same is true for God. There are two things to God that are non-negotiables. Number one, love and respect for God. How to worship him, when to worship him, worshiping him in the way that he desires, not using his name in vain.

There's a second part that's very important to God. Love and respect for your fellow human being, because they were created in the image of God. And like you, they also have the potential to be a member of the family of God. Therefore, you don't steal from them. You don't lie to them. You don't covet their possessions. You don't defile their spouses by committing sexual acts with them. So these two things are non-negotiables with God. I mentioned earlier that God had a covenant with Noah. And sure enough, if you look in Genesis 7.1, you don't need to turn there. I'm just going to talk for a few minutes. You will see the Scripture says, God says to Noah, you are righteous before me in this generation. What is righteousness? It meant that he obeyed God's law. He came from a righteous lineage. Soon after Adam and Eve sinned, people of the earth fell into two camps in the early book of Genesis. One was the way of Cain. Very soon Cain committed polygamy. He had multiple wives. And his lineage, as you look at early Genesis, this was very wicked. Then there was the way of Seth. And Seth was a very righteous lineage. And Seth's lineage tried very hard that stay close and have a relationship with God. So by the time you come to Noah, God can say to Noah, because of his non-negotiables and the covenant that he makes with Noah, you are righteous before me in this generation. God said to Abraham, and we know about Abraham's covenant, to bless his descendants as the stars in the heavens. God said, you have obeyed my voice, kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. That's Genesis chapter 26 verse 5. Again, the non-negotiables that are going to be part of any covenant that God makes with anyone. Regarding David, here's what his son Solomon said, talking to God in 1 Kings 3, 6. And Solomon said, you have shown great mercy to your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in truth, in righteousness, and up rightness of heart with you. So again, these are these non-negotiables that's part of having a relationship with God. It's his law. It's God's eternal law. So let me shift gears in a little bit here and talk about the details of the old covenant or the law of Moses. Here are some of the details. I have six things that I'm going to mention. Number one, it was between God and the nation or the tribes of Israel. It's really a stretch to call Israel a nation because the tribes were usually at each other's throats. There was like squabbling brothers in a family. They were always fighting and bickering and causing problems with each other. And, in fairness and reality, there was very little unity in what we call the nation of Israel. But it was between God and these tribes. Secondly, God was redeeming them from bondage to a physical nation. That physical nation had been very strong and it was Egypt. And he redeemed them from Egypt and was bringing them into a physical land that he had promised going back to Abraham. Number three, the mediator of the covenant was Moses. And most of the time, except for what we saw on Mount Sinai, for most of the time, God spoke directly to Moses, no one else around, and then Moses would go and write down or relay to others what the agreements were regarding the covenant. The fourth thing is that the promises offered to Israel were primarily physical. They included land, prosperity if you were good, and obedient, a good physical health, national security, and the opportunity to become God's treasured nation. These were all physical promises that were a part of this covenant.

Number five, the form of worship was a continual offering of animals and food offerings as a reminder of their sins. So there was constantly a shedding of blood. There was no way to stop the need for sacrifices because sin created the need for a sacrifice to be a temporary atonement until the time of Christ so God could continue to have a relationship with the people. So every day there were animal sacrifices that occurred in the temple. And then the sixth point is that the relationship with God was formal and it was physical.

It was based on blessings for obedience, punishment for disobedience. Very few people were offered God's Holy Spirit. There were a few individuals like David who did have a very deep relationship with God, but then on the other hand, in all fairness, he had his own relationship, his own covenant with God. So that's one reason he had a deeper relationship than was offered to most others.

I'll give you this background because I would like to now discuss the name of God. Some individuals claim that God has a sacred name and they have a right relationship with him requires that we use his sacred name.

One group that I won't mention by name says that it's even a salvation issue in order to be saved. You need to call God by this particular sacred name. What made me begin thinking about the need for this sermon is an email that I received in November. My response I passed on to the deacons and to the deacons and deaconesses, but the person who wanted to visit church wrote this.

He said, I have a question for you. The United Church of God closely follows the Holy Scriptures, but I noticed that you use the generic title God and the Roman Catholic Church created Jesus Christ. Why not use their actual names, especially in worship?

What it was hinting at is that he feels that there is a sacred name for God that should be uttered, that must be uttered, because any other name used for God that isn't that one is somehow inferior or deficient. So let's talk about that. Let's go to the scriptures and look canidly and find out what the scriptures tell us. We'll go begin by going to Exodus chapter 6 and verse 1, and usually the place that most people start when they talk about a sacred name for God.

Exodus chapter 6 beginning in verse 1. It says, then the Lord, and you'll notice if you have like a King James version of the Bible, Lord is in all capital letters, and that comes from four Hebrew consonants that are known as the tetragrammaton or YHWH, and I'll explain a little bit more in a minute what that means. And the Lord, YHWH, said to Moses, now you see what I do, what I will do to Pharaoh, for with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.

And God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. YHWH. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob, as God Almighty, as Shaddai. But by my name, YHVH, I was not known to them. I want you to just hang on to one thing that I'm going to bring up a little bit later.

He says, my name here, he says, but by my name, the Hebrew word for name is Shem, S-H-E-M. So he's saying, by my Shem, YHVH, I was not known to them. Okay, so I'm saying it's his name. Verse 4, I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage in which they were strangers, and I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant.

Of course, that's the covenant he made with Abraham. Verse 6, therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord, YHVH, I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

Okay, so that's what the scripture says. And some claim, starting out with this scripture, they claim that the only acceptable name for God is to pronounce the Hebrew form of YHWH.

Now, the first difficulty I have with that is using their reasoning then. Well, then apparently Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had an inferior faith in a relationship with God because God said that they didn't know me by this name. They knew me as El Shaddai, yet God still made a covenant with Abraham, did He not? Even though they didn't pronounce this name. So that's the first question one needs to ask. It's also good to understand where this comes from and what it means.

As you see in your scripture, if your Bible has those letters capitalized, this name appears in the Hebrew scriptures as four Hebrew letters. Hence, they get the term the tetragrammaton.

It's closely, as close as we can do it in English, it's represented by English consonants YHWH.

And it's pronounced something like, and the reason I say something like, is there are a lot of other possibilities and no one knows for sure, it's pronounced something like YHWH or YHWH. And it means the self-existent one. It means the eternal. And this became the Hebrew name for God and they treated it as sacred. The best definition we could have in English for what this means is, I am ever existent. In other words, I have always existed, I exist now, and I will continue to exist in the future forever. I inhabit eternity. It's the closest that we can get to English to what those Hebrew consonants originally meant.

Now, the Old Testament text was preserved for centuries only using consonants. The exact pronunciation of the words with their vowels was preserved only by oral usage. Hebrew is a very ancient language and it's not very precise. And that causes a problem for people studying Hebrew because ancient Hebrew did not write down what its vowels were. Only after a period of time, remembrance by oral history, did they begin to put what's called vowel points around Hebrew words so that people would know how to pronounce them. But without the right vowels, you can have a Hebrew word that can mean two or three diametrically opposite things if you only have some consonants to work with. So, this was done by oral usage and they passed this down from one generation to another.

In time, these vowel sounds were written down sometime around the sixth or seventh century. And at that time, the Jewish scholars of the day created symbols to represent the vowels that they had been saying orally just by oral tradition. They added up these symbols or points, they added them to the text of the Old Testament, and they contained vowels now for the consonants that were written down. So, according to the Jewish tradition, it was regarded as not to be uttered. And that's what created the ambiguity and the confusion of how to pronounce this name today because it was considered so sacred that they would not pronounce it. So, instead of that, pronouncing what Y-H-W-H originally meant, they would say adonai as a substitute word. Well, in time, what they did are they took the vowels that were in the word adonai and added them on Y-H-W-H to remind them to say adonai. Alright, because it's the same vowels, so it's kind of double reinforcement that this word is so sacred. I better not say it. But when I see the vowels for adonai, I will immediately say adonai instead of pronouncing this sacred name.

So, most Hebrew scholars today admit that the exact vowel sounds and pronunciation of Y-H-W-H are not certain. Even the consonants are uncertain, and Y-H-W-H could be J-H-V-H.

No one really knows for sure. And in spite of a prohibition to announce the name, it's interesting that many of the names of biblical characters include YAH within their names. For example, in 2 Samuel 12, 25 at birth, Solomon is called Jedidiah by Nathan the prophet. Jedidiah in Hebrew is Yedidiah, and it's translated. It means beloved of YAH. So, that's part of the name YAHWEH. YAH is in just common names of people in the Old Testament. So, if people tell you they know how to pronounce it, they're only making a best guess. Most feel that YAHWEH is a close approximation of the way the word was originally pronounced. Now, if this word and its exact pronunciation was so important to God, he would have preserved it and made it crystal clear. God does not expect people to keep things that have become a result of confusion, hiding things, losing distinctions of a language to make it difficult or impossible or a best guess in order to do something. The things that we need to know and understand regarding salvation are clearly revealed in Scripture. They are not a guess. It's also interesting to note that YAHWEH, if I can use that as a pronunciation, that there are several compound names for God in the Old Testament that are based on those same four letters YHWH. For example, YAHWEH JIRA is the name translated, the Lord will provide in the English. That's what Abraham said when God provided a ram in place of his son in Genesis 22. YAHWEH NISI, it means the Lord is my banner, and it was pronounced at the God's defeat of the Amalekites in Exodus chapter 17.

Now let's go and take a look at another Scripture in Exodus chapter 34.

I want you to remember that Hebrew word that we looked at just a few minutes ago in Hebrew 6 that meant name Shem. He said, my name, my Shem, is YHWH. Now let's go to Exodus chapter 34, verse 14.

Exodus chapter 34, verse 14, a statement made by God, for you shall worship no other God for the Lord whose name Shem is jealous, is a jealous God.

So is His name YHWH? Is the Shem YHWH? Or is the Shem jealous, that happened to be a Hebrew word that means Kana? It means I want you exclusively, I'm not going to share you. I get sensitive when you start worshiping other gods, when you start borrowing things from other gods and attempt to worship me, that bothers me because I want you all to myself. I am your creator and your God.

So God apparently has more than one name. The same creator who says I changed not in Malachi chapter 3 and verse 6 states in Exodus 6 that his name is YHWH and in Exodus 34 that his name is jealous.

So what does this mean? Well, maybe the real problem is that mere men are trying to reduce the awesome greatness and majesty of God into a simple name like human beings have.

You cannot have a name for someone as majestic and awesome and great as God at some simple phrase like, you know, Greg or George or Herman or Matthew. You cannot confine God to a name like that.

That's bringing God down to a human level of his if he were a human being. By saying that God has one sacred name, is taking him and his majesty and greatness and trying to bring it down as humans would do, remaking God in our image and creating a special name for him and calling it a sacred name, something that the scriptures do not call it. The Hebrew word Shem means the idea of definite and conspicuous position of honor. The word Shem means a mark or a memorial of individuality in context. And this is what we need to understand in context. Both Yahweh and Kana are descriptions of his individual character and honor. They are not limiting names like human beings had. You cannot do that to God. Let's take a look at Isaiah chapter 57 and verse 15.

Isaiah chapter 57 and verse 15.

The prophet Isaiah wrote, For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name Shem is holy.

I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble heart, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Again, these are all names that reflect the different qualities of God. There is not a single sacred name for God, but many wonderful characteristics reflected toward a sacred God. It isn't the name that's sacred, it's the God that's sacred. And I think we need to understand that and not allow ourselves to be confused or to begin to believe in a different gospel. God wants us to recognize and acknowledge him for what he is. Therefore, it is the one core meaning of a name that is important to a God. Not sound, not the way you spell it, not trying to pretend you can do it like a Hebrew does.

It is his name that describes who and what he is, and that is transferred from one language to another.

The bottom line is that we can all use God's names as they are spelled and pronounced in any language. As an English-speaking person, I use the word God. To a German, it's God. To Spanish speakers, it's Dios. To Greeks, it's Theos when referring to God in any language. His name means the ever-living, supreme, eternal God. So it's not the language that's sacred, it's the God who is sacred. So is it wrong to say Yahweh or Jehovah, Yeshua or El Shaddai or God? Of course not.

All of these are wonderful names for God, and I would encourage anyone to mix up their vocabulary so we don't sound like a broken record. And oftentimes in sermons, just variety. I will say Jesus, and I will say Christ, and I will say Christ Jesus, and I will say to Messiah, just to add variety to the conversation and to what we're saying. So these things are all wonderful.

The problem happens when an individual thinks that there's only one right and proper Hebrew name for God as if somehow he's a human being. As if somehow you can address God by this special name that opens up doors for you and makes you special. And I've had discussions, of course, with all of us in the past about the challenges we can have in thinking that we know something, that we're the smartest person in the room, and that we've got to tell everyone else about what we know, and that is just not a good thing. I want to mention one other thing regarding this topic. This discussion that we've had here might be interesting to me if our relationship with God was to be a mere worshipper, like someone who lived under the Old Covenant. It may be interesting. It may be worth studying and being concerned with.

But I'm going to tell you how we should address God. Let's turn to Matthew 6.

Matthew 6, and find out what Jesus Christ tells us how we should address God.

Matthew 6. We'll pick it up here in verse 8. Therefore, do not be like them, for your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. In this manner, pray therefore, our Father in heaven. You see, brethren, we don't live under the Old Covenant. We are not mere worshippers of God. God has brought you, through the power of His Holy Spirit inside of you, into a close, intimate relationship with Him. I had an intimate relationship with my parents.

My mother's name was Velma. I didn't call her Velma. That was her formal name. Because of the privilege of being part of the family, I got to call her Mom. Far more enduring, far more in loving, and it was indicative of having a close, intimate relationship with my own mother. In the same way, brethren, what is important for us under the New Covenant isn't to try to repeat some so-called sacred name that people have discovered under the Old Covenant, but to follow the example of Jesus Christ Himself and recognize the privilege that comes from being part of God's spiritual family, and to be able to go to Him and say, Dad, Papa, bother, these are my needs. These are the things that I need help on. That's the kind of relationship, brethren, that we want to have with God. What I've been discussing is part of something that's known as the Hebrew Roots Movement. And though it can be very interesting, and it can be fascinating, studying Hebrew roots and Hebrew culture, we have to be careful not to take it too far. Because as we'll see, maybe in the next sermon, maybe in the final sermon, as we'll see in the future, the New Covenant is totally different. It has nothing to do with physical promises. It has nothing to do with people who are limited to the genetic DNA of Abraham. It is a worldwide covenant. It's in a language so that everyone could read it. Because by the time of Jesus Christ, ancient Hebrew had become like Latin. Only religious scholars studied it and knew it. Even the common people did not speak Hebrew on a daily basis. We'll see next time that Jesus Christ often spoke in Aramaic. Because those are the communities that he preached in most of his ministry. The common language of the day was not Hebrew. It was a different language called Aramaic. So, in concluding today, I'd just like to kind of wrap up some of the things that we discussed and maybe tie them together. We need to understand that Hebrew is not a sacred language. It's simply one of the many fine Semitic languages that existed at the time of Moses. God inspired Moses to write the Old Testament in Hebrew so that the people that he called could understand his law. He wanted to communicate with them. He wanted to have a relationship with them. If God had called the ancient Hittites to be his people, he would have communicated to them in Neshite, which is a totally different language. Later, God inspired the prophets and psalmists and others to write in Hebrew because he wanted them to understand his thoughts and pronouncements, especially when they were disobedient. He wanted to give them a warning in a language that they could understand. We respect and study Hebrew because God inspired most of the Old Testament to be written in this ancient language. Our interest in ancient Hebrew is to discover God's will for Israel and for us not to elevate a human language. We study the Holy Scriptures because it is the inspired message of God that is holy, not a language itself. That is why we dutifully study the Hebrew language, not to elevate it, not to make more of it than God ever intended, but to study it so that we can figure out and understand the message that God has for us, not the language itself. So, in conclusion today, today we've discussed God's law.

We talked about the law of Moses and how it differs from God's law. We talked about the descriptive names that God has, and we were cautioned about not falling into a trap of thinking that there's only one sacred name for God that must be used. Next time we'll discuss the Hebrew calendar. We'll discuss what Israel did to break its relationship with God, and then we'll see why it was replaced with a new, a better, a superior covenant and what that means for all of us. Have a happy SAP.