Bible Wonders - 7 NAMES OF GOD PART 1

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? Today on Bible Wonders, let's wonder about the names of God, specifically the ones that the Jews believe. There are seven names for God, and when we look at those names in Hebrew, I think there's something phenomenal that we can ponder on.

We're just going to do three or four of them today. So the first one you may have heard many times, we would pronounce in English Yahweh. The letters in God's names were so important to the Jews, again, as you're honoring the name of God, that they would literally give lashes to a scribe who misspelled any single one of these letters in the seven names that we're going to go through over the next few days. So what I'm going to do is go through these letters and see if you can wonder with me how they come together to picture God in a unique and beautiful way. So when you look at Yahweh, it starts out with a yud. So that yud, as we've talked about before, is if you can picture the hand of God. It's the smallest letter, because it's the little that means a lot, and it's literally like the hand of God coming down.

And it's the letter that starts the name Yeshua, and it's the letter that starts the name Israel, and it's the letter that starts the name Isaac, and the list goes on and on. So it's kind of cool that, of course, you know, here we find in Jehovah, and of course, if you went to the I Am statement, once again, you've got this yud, which is the hand of God coming down. And the second letter is a hei, which if you could picture the original script of this letter, it was a little guy with his arms and legs out saying, hey! So it's kind of cool that the letter is named a hei, and it means behold, or expression. If you look at that and combine the two ideas of a yud, meaning the hand of God expressed, I mean, how cool is that in so many ways? And then a vav, which again is just a straight line, but it means like a chute or a ladder that's coming from heaven. So here we have the hand of God that is expressing as it's coming down from heaven, expressed. Again, another hei.

So it's yud, hei, vav, hei. That second hei is kind of neat to try to wrap your heads around in Jehovah, would be this idea of God's hand expressed, and then coming down from heaven in expression. So you may have heard the term that God is love, and I think we'll see in some of the other names. So it's like the love of God that's coming down from heaven. It's him expressing, and his expression is going to be love, whether that's in discipline, or judgment, or in grace.

All forms of love. So it's kind of cool when you realize that Yahweh is this, again, hand of God expressed, coming down in expression. So this is quoting right from chabad.org. It says, And so that's an aleph, a daleth, a nun, and a yud. So that aleph, we've talked about this before, it actually has got two yuds. It's a yud above and a yud below, and it means the hand of God coming down, and the hand of man coming up, and between them is this vav, but it's this vav on its side. And the Jews say that that vav is the Torah. It is literally the ladder to heaven, so to speak. So the way that the hand of God touches the hand of man is through this vav between, which is the Torah.

And of course, anybody who's ever studied the Bible knows it is a great way to touch the hand of God. But it also is the beginning letter of the word father. So that abba, that aha sound, and the same as Adonai, you see, it means leader or the alpha. You know, I'm the alpha and I'm the omega, but the alpha male, so to speak, it all comes from this aleph, and that's the first letter of Adonai. And with that concept of father, it's the first letter in the name Adam. And it's the first letter in the name Abraham.

And certainly he is the leader. He's the Lord, right? A dalad is the letter that would come out of David's name, like dalad vav, dalad is David's, David the king that slew Goliath, and was known for serving God in oh so many ways, which is shown in this desire for God to serve us, which he certainly has done, and in every which way you can possibly think that we wouldn't be here without that. So this aleph, the father sort of serving us, then the next letter is a nun, which we've talked about many times, it means seed. So he's planting faith seeds. This is the father who is serving us by planting faith seeds. And again, the last letter is a yud, which we talked about that yud is the little that means a lot, it's the hand of God. The hand of God is pretty cool, Adonai.

So those are the first two. The next, and I think we'll end here for today, is just the name El, which means God. And you probably recognize that from names like Elijah, and so many town names that start with El in the Bible. But it is a very short form of the word God. And it's very, very commonly used in the Bible.

But to me, it's one of my absolute favorites, because the letters in are just absolutely gorgeous. In fact, the second letter, which is a lamed, which would be the letter that got me interested in the Hebrew letters all to begin with. So El is actually, again, an aleph, followed by this lamed, and that aleph again, the hand of God coming down through the Torah to a hand of man, you know, kind of reaching up. Well, the lamed is the letter that begins the word love, not like English. But it also means to teach, and there's a beautiful correlation between that word teach, and love when you think about it.

Because if you've ever been in love, man, you cannot find out too much about the person that you're in love with, right? And so once you have learned, again, which starts with an El, in English, it's interesting how these words were formed, you know, and when he confused language at Babylon, they still have a fashion of the same thing they originally were meant to have. So you get this picture of this, essentially, you know, aleph, hand of God reaching down through the Torah, hand of man in love, but also in teaching. So when you look at the word disciple, it's an enthusiastic learner.

Well, it has everything to do with this lamed. And so when you think about it, that God is handing down the Bible through this lamed El, it's love, and it's learning. And I think the same reason that you're listening to this podcast is why I study the same information, is it gives you the sense of delight to learn things about God, or to learn things about those whom you love. And naturally, when you do that, you want to teach it. It's just a beautiful form probably has more facets to it than my mind can possibly get its hand around as does Yahweh and as does Adonai. But all these pictures are just diamonds of how God is expressed as the infinite being that's inexpressible. Something to wonder about.