Bible Wonders -7 Names Of God Part 5

There's the wonder of springtime and harvest The sky, the stars, the sun By the wonder of wonders that clears my soul Is the wonder that's only begun Oh, the wonder I'll be torn The wonder I'll be torn So today on Bible Wonders, I kind of feel like I'm treading around in something that's extremely holy in my muddy boots, because this particular name of God kind of leaves the place that you could study in orthodoxy, so to speak, because Strong's Concordance doesn't have this particular name of God, although it's clearly in the Bible, and what Strong's Concordance does is it lumps it in with the name Elohim, which is what we talked about yesterday. However, this is clearly not the same. It is certainly not spelled the same.

And so if you don't lump it in as the same, then what is the difference and what's the significance of it? So again, I feel like I'm kind of in uncharted territories, because it's not spoken of in a concordance, you rarely see any Christian commentator speak to this particular name of God and how it's different. And I'm just going to name it the God of the 91st Psalm, because in the 91st Psalm, we see Moses once again choose this name to describe something very unique.

And also the Jews choose this name whenever they do their blessings, when you hear him say, Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe, that particular prayer that begins so many satyrs and different things you'll hear them say. And that's the name of God that they're using there when they say Adonai Elohai. Elohim in Elohai is simply there's no mem on the end of Elohai. Which when I originally started to think about it, I went because I knew there was no way you can look up this word in the concordance, because again, Strong's lumps them all into, you know, Strong's number 430, which is Elohim. But I thought of what Jesus cried from the 22nd Psalm, right?

Eloi, Eloi. Because it kind of sounds like that, but interestingly, there there's an Aleph and a Lamed, like we've heard El throughout our discussions of these names of God. And then there's a Yud, but this doesn't have the hey in it that the Elohai has that is, again, from the Jews' perspective, this is the fifth of the seven names of God that they isolate as being those that you'd get lashed if you didn't spell right.

So I misspoke yesterday a little bit in yesterday's episode about this being the fifth, because yesterday I said that Elohim was the fifth. Well, actually it's the fourth, because they lump together both Yahweh and Adonai as one, and then the number two is El, and then Eloach, and then Elohim, and today Elohai. Okay, so you can see many of them have this El beginning, and again, the concordance doesn't separate this one out, but we do find it throughout the Scriptures. You can find it in Exodus, because again, this is something that Moses was using. And when he wrote the 91st Psalm, you may know that the Midrash teaches, or the Jewish story so to speak, is that the 91st Psalm was written by Moses as he had finished the tabernacle, and he ascended the hill that was covered by the Shekinah glory.

So as he's walking into the Shekinah glory, he is writing the 91st Psalm, according to what, again, the Jewish oral tradition is on how the 91st Psalm came about. Well, when you look at the construction of this Elohai, it's different again from Elohim in that it does not have the Mem on the end, and so it's an Aleph, and the Lamed, which we've talked about, is that El idea of the father and then this love learning sort of shepherd person, and then you've got a hay, which we've talked about at length, is an expression. And then interestingly, we just have the expression of the yud. Now the yud's a very, very significant letter in the Hebrew language. It may be the most significant letter. It is the little that means a lot. It's certainly the smallest letter. When they say there's just a jot, that's the letter that they're talking about, is actually this yud.

And numerically, it is the number 10, which that's hugely significant because of all the numbers you think that things multiplied by 10 is a big part of, you know, the whole idea of math. But the idea of the yud is that you have this infinite God who had to shrink himself down in order to make a finite world. And there you have this concept of the God spark. And so when you look at this little yud, they can say it's the hand of God coming down, but it's actually a spark or just something that is essentially the particle, the God particle.

Right? And you'll find it at the beginning of the word Jesus, right? Because it's Yeshua. And any of those like Israel, there you find a word that begins with a yud or Jacob or so many of the Bible words that we know that start with that J sound are going to be this yud. So here we find it being the last letter in this particular name of God, and it comes after this hey, so it's telling you that it's expressing the yud. And Moses clearly is making reference to it in the 91st Psalm as his God that is expressing this God spark.

And again, I just feel like I've got muddy boots and I'm clogging around in here, but I do know one thing that I wanted to share with you is that the 91st Psalm for so many people is just a near and dear place in their heart. And one time, the Billy Graham Association had asked me to interview this man who had come out of North Vietnam. He was a pastor, and they said he had quite a story. And so I was hosting at the time.

It was called Robbie's Hobbies back then, but today the show is called Kingdom Pursuits. And they'd asked me to do this interview, and I thought it was interesting because Billy Graham associated never asked me to do an interview. And so he came in, and when he came in, he had several interpreters with him, and none of them actually, from my perspective, spoke very good English. And so it was very, very, very difficult to communicate with him and somewhat comical because, you know, as he sat down and I would say these things, people would go speak back and forth in Vietnamese, which is, you know, it just sounds pretty bizarre. And then they would look at me every time I'd ask a question like, I don't know how to say that. And so this is kind of how it went. But it was one, I will put it down as my most amazing interview and probably my favorite interview of anybody I've ever interviewed on the radio in all the years that I've been doing this. And so he sits down and I said, so the Billy Graham Association, you know, had you come in, they must have something that they really wanted you to communicate to our audience.

You know, what is your story? And so, you know, of course, they all spoke to him on what I had said, and he just came back with one word like, you know, and they interpreted as he was in prison. And I went, he was in prison in North Vietnam?

And they said, Yeah. And I said, Oh, that's interesting, because it probably had been but a few weeks and I'd watched Rambo for whichever one it was. Or you might remember, Sylvester Stallone was put in this little swamp and hung there with all the leeches and stuff. And so I said, Well, gee, when I think of a prison in North Vietnam, you know, I can't help but think of Rambo for where, you know, Sylvester Stallone was in this little swamp. And, you know, he had leeches all over him. And they looked at me and they said, Yes, swamp. And I said, What? And he goes, Yeah, swamp.

So I said, Explain that to me. He was in a swamp. Oh, yeah. Well, how long were you in that swamp?

Well, it was like six years, I can't remember exactly the time, but it was a long, long time longer than you would think. And so I said, You were in a swamp? Like, how did you sleep in the swamp? How did you eat in the swamp? You know, all these things that had gone on, and what he described from there on, was that all these people that were in this horrible, infested swamp were dying every night.

Now, if you want to read something interesting, all these people, all these other prisoners were dying all the time in this swamp. And I asked him, I said, Well, what were you eating? And he was like, What was in the swamp? And I was like, Whoa, and what were you drinking? And he said, What was in the swamp? And I was like, Wow, how in the world did you survive that?

And he said, Oh, there were people dropping all the time. You know, the life expectancy wasn't long in this swamp. And so as I began to understand the suffering that this man had been through all these years in this North Vietnamese swamp, I asked him a question I'm pretty sure that came from the Holy Spirit. I said, You know, I've had a chance to suffer through some things that God has allowed into my life, you know, some cancer and car accidents and things, you know, that looked pretty scary.

But every time God allowed something in my life like that, he always gave me some special provision, something that was just supernatural that he gave me so that I could make it through that. I said, What did God give you so you could live through the swamp? And he told me something I'll never ever forget. He said he gave me the 91st Psalm.

And I said, Huh? I mean, he gave you the 91st Psalm. And, like, the words of it, he goes exactly, you know, that from the way it was described to me, the man did not know the 91st Psalm when he went into the swamp.

But somehow or another, God gave this pastor the 91st Psalm supernaturally so that he had it in his heart as he was experiencing these years in this swamp. And so I was just, you know, wondering, Well, how did you get out of the swamp? And he said, you know, all this went back and forth in Vietnamese. He said, Good behavior. And I said, What do you what does that mean?

Good behavior? Well, he kept on leading other people in the swamp to Christ, and they didn't want a bunch of Christians on their hands. So they got him out of the swamp so that he would quit leading people to Christ. So as I was pondering that in my mind, thinking about the 91st Psalm, which I picked up immediately on my computer while I was doing the interview and I began to read it. I started to cry as I was thinking about this Psalm from the stand up point of being in the swamp. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, this Elohai. I wasn't terribly surprised that he could keep this man alive for six years in this swamp. But what absolutely blew me away was he clearly sent this pastor into this essentially death hole.

For all these people that may have belonged there. I mean, you know, rapists, murderers, whoever else was in this swamp, he sent these people a pastor, a way out that they would be able to have everlasting life. And so let me read that Psalm, especially the first few verses where it describes this Elohai God that Moses chose to describe this experience. It says, He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God.

And that's the word Elohai right there. In him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shall thou trust. His trust shall be thy shield and buckler. And thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night.

Can you imagine in this swamp with all these people dying? Nor the arrow that flyeth by day. Nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness.

Nor the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall by my side. And ten thousand at thy right hand. But it shall not come nigh thee.

Moving on to the last two verses, which I just dearly love. He shall call upon me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. Wow, this hymn is Elohai, this God that expresses everything that has life in it. In a dark world, boy do we need something to wonder about this life. Oh the wonder of it all, the wonder of it all, just to think that God loves me.