Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon, May 17 2009
One of the things I try really hard when I meet new people is try to remember their names because it feels terrible not to be able to remember their names next time I meet them. I guess I could do what little children’s do about this. One of my daughters often tells me about other kids in her school classes. She would go on and on and tell me all about a kid, how much fun she had with her and how she considers her a good friend. I would ask her, “Mikayla, what’s your friend’s name?” Most of the time, she has no idea. For children, this is appropriate since their friendships are formed and shared when they play together. But, I also know that soon or later, she will need to learn to remember names of people she gets to know. So I keep reminding her that it is important to remember other people’s names, especially the kids she would consider her good friends.
Here are some suggestions from a web site called www.businessknowhow.com. The article is written for business people in sales. People in sales they know how important it is to remember well the names of their potential and current clients; I am sure we can learn something about how to remember names well from sales people. Here are some suggestions.[1]
- Repeat their name as they introduce themselves.
- Use their name a few times during your conversation.
- Later, record that person’s information in your organizer along with any personal or business information you learned during your conversation.
- Picture their faces as you state their name aloud several times.
- Picture them in different settings – imagine where you could run into them and visualize what they would look like in that environment.
- Focus on remembering the person rather than their name.
Listen to some of these passages from Hosea about knowing God. Hosea 4:6, “my people are destroyed from the lack of knowledge.” Hosea 4:14, “… a people without understanding will come to ruin.” Hosea 6:3, “Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him.” Having the knowledge, understanding about God, acknowledging him will require us to know God deeper and better.
My job as your pastor, as a preacher, as a teacher is to help you be fascinated, captivated, moved and inspired by who God is so that you adore and worship him, have plenty of good things to say about him. So, I’ve decided to explore who God is by studying the names he is known by in the Bible. The very first name that I would like to introduce to you is translated as God and in Hebrew is, <yhOa, Elohim.
Let me show you a clip from National Geographic web site about creation.
1. Elohim (<yhOa), The Creator
The Bible begins with Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The subject of this very first verse of the Bible is God translated from Hebrew word, Elohim (<yhOa). It is not the most common name for God in the Old Testament; Yahweh is the most common name for God. Nevertheless, Elohim occurs over two thousand times (2248 to be exact) in the Old Testament, making it the second most common name for God.
Elohim is plural form of El. And, El is the most common word for god, El, in the ancient languages group called Semitic languages which include Hebrew. But, Elohim is never translated as gods in polytheism when it is used for God of the Bible. Although it is plural in form Elohim is always used with singular verbs and adjectives in the Hebrew text to mean God, not gods. Scholars call this a plural of majesty or a plural of intensification meaning plural form is used to mean “great” and “highest,” and “only”[2] as a plural of absolutization or exclusivity as in God of gods.[3] Elohim although plural in form only is used to describe monotheistic God of the Bible.
When Elohim was used in the Old Testament to refer to God, it did not carry the theological understanding of God in three persons, Trinity. So, one cannot prove the theology of Trinity on the ground that Elohim is plural in form. Yet, as Christians looking back in hindsight, we can argue for a glimpse of Trinity in Elohim. In Genesis 1 in the beginning, God created by his word. “Let there be…” and there was. And, in John 1:1-4, in the beginning we see Jesus Christ as the Word preexisting already with God, and that the Word was God. And, “Through him [the Word] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has not been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” So, with the same phrase, “In the beginning” from Genesis and John, we see the unity of the Old and the New Testaments speaking for one reality of God in Trinity.
1 Corinthians 8:6 also speaks to this reality, “there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” So, in Elohim, we see the Father at work with his Son in complete unity.
2. Elohim (<yhOa), The Creator who created out of nothing.
The English translation of Elohim, God, is often abstract, impersonal, and static concept of deity in people’s minds. But, Elohim, God of the Bible as witnessed in Genesis is not an abstract reality, distant or uninvolved deity. What we see in Genesis 1 is God at work, actively creating through his spoken word.[4] “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” begins Genesis 1:1. We see God Elohim creating cosmos out of chaos, light out of darkness, habitation out of desolation[5] and ultimately creating out of nothing. Let me give you a helpful illustration about God creating out of nothing from Colin Gunton. He said:
God is not to be likened, let us say, to a potter who makes a pot from the clay which is to hand; he is, rather, like one who makes both the clay and the pot. This teaching, which baffles understanding and is often rejected because there is no analogy to it in human experience, must be understood as an interpretation and summary of scripture’s witness to God as a whole.[6]
Paul Copan points the following scripture passages to speak to the reality of Elohim who created out of nothing.[7]
- Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
- Romans 4:17, “God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” God creating out of nothing is one of the cherish biblical understanding
- Romans 11:36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”
- Ephesians 3:9, “God who created all things.”
- Revelation 4:11, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”
- Isaiah 44:6, “Israel’s King, and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and the last; apart from me there is no God.”
- Revelation 1:8, “I am the Alpha and the Omega… who is, and who was, and who is to come.”
- Hebrews 1:10-12 (Psalm 102:25-27), “In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain, they will wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.”
William Lane Craig asks, “Why does something exist instead of nothing?” He answers:
Unless we are prepared to believe that the universe simply popped into existence uncaused out of nothing, then the answer must be: something exists because there is an eternal, uncaused being for which no further explanation is possible.[8]
This eternal, uncaused being for which no further explanation is possible is spelled out for us from Genesis 1:1 as Elohim, God.
This is God Elohim whom Isaiah spoke in Isaiah 54:5, “For your Maker is your husband- the LORD Almighty is his name- the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.” And, Isaiah 45:18, “for this is what the LORD says- he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it, he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited.” Again, Isaiah 40:28-29, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LROD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” And, God asks in Jeremiah 32:27, “I am the LORD, the God [Elohim] of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”
God Elohim, who never gets tired or weary, who is strong and mighty, comes to you when you are down, weak and struggling, to strengthen you, to help you fight for the faith in your Elohim, your Creator.
3. Conclusion
When you come to God, Elohim, and when you call on him, you are coming to the presence of the eternal uncaused being who was before the creation which he created out of nothing, who is now, and who will be, beyond the confines of time, space, and material. It is this God, Elohim, who told Abraham and Sarah that they should expect a child to be given them in the impossible old ages. It is this God, Elohim, who did the impossible thing to deliver the Israelites out of the iron grip of Egypt. It is this God Elohim who sent his Word, his Son to us, to take the guilt, the consequence and the power of sin upon himself to die; and for nothing was too difficult for Elohim, he raised Jesus Christ, his Son from the dead.
To this God, who created out of nothing, who is all powerful, all sovereign, fully in control, all knowing, we now draw near in Jesus Christ. Should this change the way you and I pray to God when we call on him, God Elohim?
[1] http://www.businessknowhow.com/growth/remember-name.htm
[2] http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=349
[3] New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis: Volume 1. 405. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, © 1997.
[4] Wenham, G. J. (1998). Vol. 1: Word Biblical Commentary : Genesis 1-15 (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; Word Biblical Commentary (15). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
[5] http://ldolphin.org/nathanstone/
[6] Gunto Collin, The Christian Faith, p. 17
[7] http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/article_exnihilo_copan.html
[8] William Lane Craig, Philosophical and Scientific Pointers to Creatio ex Nihilo, Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation. 32.1 (March 1980), p. 2.
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