The heavens declare the glory of God, yes. The idea that God is wanting to reveal himself to us, right? God is not unknown to people in the world in varying degrees because he's hard to find. He's actually quite obvious. God is obvious. And the only reason people don't see him is because they don't want to. They're wanting to see something else other than what they see. They don't want to recognize the God that they find themselves seeing. And yet God not only is content to reveal himself to us through natural revelation to the world that he has created and the things that he has made, he goes farther and he wants to tell us things with his words. He wants to tell us about who he is And yes, we call that special revelation or specific revelation. We call that the scriptures, the Bible. Of course, prophets would fall into that category before all of the scripture was provided, prophecy. But the point that we're focusing on is a very small slice of God's specific revelation, the words that he gave us, and that are his names. God's names tell us something about him. And it's kind of like when God gives you his name, it's like he's whispering something specific in your ear about himself. Here's another something about me. Let me tell you about myself. Let me inform you a little bit more about who I am and let that change you. The topic tonight is this question, who is, and this is a Hebrew word, Elohim. Who is Elohim? If you would, look in Genesis chapter one and verse one, we're only gonna read the first verse. Genesis 1, one. We're going to talk about God's specific revelation to us and natural revelation as well and look at the very first name we find him telling us about himself. We would have to look at the book of Genesis and the book of Genesis. We see this in the very opening sentence in the beginning. God created the heaven and the earth. God there in Hebrew is something sounding like this, Elohim. That's how we would say that. And that's the transliteration you see in your title there. It would look a little different. Technically, there's a little letter that you don't really say. That would go, it looks like an apostrophe kind of in front of the E, I didn't put that in there. If you have more questions, you can ask Brother Ittai in the back about all the intricacies of this word in Hebrew. But who is Elohim? Well, we saw last week that in the beginning, was God, but since the fall, man has actually been suppressing the truth about God. Man has been pushing God away. Man is not, the history of civilization is not a bunch of human beings you know, groveling around, searching, really seriously looking for the true God. And when we look at religions in the world, religions are not man's best attempts at finding God, they are man's best attempts at suppressing God. And we have to understand that. This world is not filled with people trying to find God through false religion, it's filled with people trying to push Him away through false religion. That's the story of civilization. This happened in the Garden of Eden, of course, when the fellowship that man had with God directly, God would spend time directly in the presence of Adam and Eve and walk and fellowship with them in the garden and reveal himself to them friend to friend, face to face. Without him revealing himself fully visually, he in a certain way would walk with them and he would speak through his voice with them and they would fellowship together. But when Adam and Eve sinned, They themselves created a distance and a separation from God, and they had to hide themselves, but it didn't stop there. Man has been developing false gods ever since that time. You have to remember that in the book of Genesis, people had a lot of knowledge about God. They didn't have to have an entire Bible, which is why we don't have an entire Bible from that period of time. The farther we got from the beginning, the more revelation we needed because the more distant we became from the upfront revelation that was given at the beginning. Remember, Abraham, when he was alive, if you study the math, Noah was still alive for the first stage of Abraham's childhood. So technically speaking, Abraham could have talked to Noah. Noah knew a lot of things about God. Why wasn't the world in full-scale revival in Abraham's time? Because Noah was still alive, the preacher of righteousness, right? The man who saw the flood. The man who lived through the flood. The man who made the ark that went into the flood and saw God's judgment on everybody who didn't believe it at the beginning was alive. and people were making up stories about the flood. To make it out to be something other than what it really had been. And the witness, the eyewitness was there. So it's hard to feel sorry for the people of that time. Look at Romans chapter one again. This is such an important passage to get a hold of. Romans chapter one verses 18 through 25. says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. And so from the beginning, people around the world have held a recognition of the truth. but handled it unrighteously. They have not responded to it honestly. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, talking about natural creation as well as that conscience within. For God has showed it unto them, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world. And that could mean since the beginning, when the world was created, it can also mean out of what we see in creation, It could mean both of those things all at once. But creation itself is God making himself obvious. These things are clearly seen, it says in verse 20, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, They had everything they needed to know. They had Noah. They had others. And they just said, I don't want that. And they went into full-scale paganness and idolatry. They became vain in their imaginations. Their foolish heart was darkened. They professed themselves to be wise. They became fools. They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, to birds, to four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts. So effectively, God says, if you're gonna give me up for that kind of stuff, I'm gonna give you up for a life that doesn't make sense. Because what you're doing doesn't make sense. You see me all around you and what I've made, you're rejecting me, so have at it. Have a life without me. See what that's like. And God actually can use a life without God in a person who's rejecting him in their life to cause them to want him. There's so much here, but let's talk about these gods. Let's talk about these gods. Here's one picture up here. Isn't this attractive? Isn't this compelling? This is Baal. This is an artifact of the god Baal. This is the guy here, the statue of the guy, not a real guy. That's the thing about idolatry, right? He's not even a guy. He's a statue. This thing is what all those, this is what all of those prophets of Baal were crying out to when Elijah met them on Mount Carmel. Oh, hear us! Hear us, Baal! And Elijah made fun of it. He said, well, maybe he's on a journey. Maybe he's busy. He'll come back, I'm sure. Maybe he's sleeping, maybe he's ill. Maybe his ears aren't working and so on and so forth. Just keep crying, come on, keep going, keep going. He didn't exist. He was just this figment of man's imagination, something that they could distract themselves away from the true God with. How did they get to Baal? And I don't have time, nor am I prepared to walk through all of the development of pagan idolatry from the very beginning. But let me give you a little synopsis here about Baal. The Canaanites, the people that we would call the Semitic people, the Canaanites, the people that lived in the Palestine area, where the Jews emigrated into, all the other peoples in that area had similar languages. The Hebrew's language actually is quite similar as well. They had similar religions and many of them worship this God called Baal. The Jews did not. Well, they eventually, some of them started doing it. But who is this Baal? Well, this Baal was a god that they developed and he was sort of like a, it's kind of fourth, what I've read, he's like a fourth generation in their mythology, a fourth generation from El. El was the Semitic name for god. It was a general name for god. It also was kind of a more of a direct personal name for the supreme god, though not the only god. And this is one of the ways that mankind has actually tried to push away God by multiplying gods. When you only have one God, it's pretty obvious how you're supposed to respond to that God. 100% obedience. 100% submission. But when you have all kinds of gods, you get to pick, you get to have a favorite, you get to be in charge, and you get to put all these other gods out there. And think about it this way, when you look at these gods, a lot of times these gods kind of are, they feature various powers or factors, right? This may be the God of fire. This may be the God of fertility and prosperity. This may be the God of metallurgy, metalworking, weapons. This may be the God of war. This may be the God of death. This may be the God of the sun and the God of the moon. What are you doing? You're compartmentalizing these gods and you're stripping, in your mind, the idea that there is a God who is all of this in one and parting it out, because when you part it out, you don't have a sovereign God to answer to. Now, there may be a chief God, I understand that, but it's no better than a lot of these Japanese, you know, type things we have going on today with a little, all these little power creatures or the latest thing is Skylanders or whatever, all these little cartoon characters, they all have these different powers. Personally, I'll just let you know as pastor. I'm not really high on that stuff because I think it's just a popular Shallow thin rendition of other stuff that mankind has taken quite seriously through the years I think we need to be careful about that and actually think about it at least But this idea of parting out powers to various beings is a way of distancing ourselves from the reality, the blunt, direct, uninterrupted reality of one God with all powers. There is no God in between. There is no mythology. There is no hierarchy of gods. There should not be in our theology because it is not in reality. There is one. And they recognized this kind of supreme God, they called him El, but as you follow their mythology through the years, this El, this is powerful God, the father of gods and men, this king, also had a wife. He formed Asherah, the female. So he created this female God, or Ashtoreth, you see that in the Old Testament. They produced 70 divine sons. kind of the first generation, the second generation of gods. And from these gods, they pulled some out in their thinking and they gave them powers and names and all these kinds of things. However, one man says, despite El's primacy in their mythology, he is increasingly depicted in myths as physically weak, indecisive, senile, and resigned. So as time wore on, he got weaker and weaker. Gradually, he was replaced by Baal, a fourth generation deity. According to a rather mutilated text, Baal and some Confederates attacked El in his palace on Mount Saipan. They wounded El, tied him up, and castrated him. In the ancient East, this mutilation excluded a person from sovereignty, and so they stripped him of his power by that act. Baal then carried off El's wife, Ashtaroth. She became his consort, and as the Old Testament records, was worshipped along with him by the Canaanites. El was forced to seek refuge at the end of the world. And that's why by the time you get to this Old Testament section where we're so familiar with the Canaanites, you find them worshiping Baal, this fourth down deity who supposedly attacked El and married Ashtaroth, El's created wife, and this is what's going on. Why does man do all of this? The story of humanity is a story of man trying to distance himself and explain away God. Because when you admit what is blatantly obvious, you have to answer to the true God. We do this today, don't we? In a different way. We don't always necessarily in the West multiply to ourselves idols. We don't generally worship things like this. But we do worship things. The more things you own, the more things own you, and you worship these things if you're not careful. How many things are there really in reality between you and God in what is important in this world? Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord your God with the top part of your heart. Right. Make him your number one priority. Right. No that's not what it says with all of your heart all of your soul and all of your might and the New Testament changes it to mind. How many guard gods are jumping around in your heart today and what is their level of importance. God needs all of us, all of our heart. Well, it is obvious all this kind of stuff is silly. I give you a little historical background there of man pushing away God. What is this? It's a watch. Now, some of you might even be more perceptive than that. But imagine that you're walking down the street or walking through a meadow. You all know what a meadow is here, right? There aren't too many meadows. There's flushing meadows, but not exactly a meadows. If you're walking through a meadow and you saw this laying in the middle of the meadow, what would you do? You would notice it. It would be rather obvious, right, that it was different. And why would you look at that instead of this rock over here and there and there and this stick and this twig and this stump? What would it be about that that you pick it up? Why is it so different and why does it stand out? Because it's something that man made, right? It's manufactured. The stones are not manufactured in a factory or something like this that man does. You would pick it up and you would look at it and you would pay attention and you would recognize this thing has a maker. This didn't happen. Nobody in this room would come to the conclusion that that thing grew there or just happened to show up. Nobody. You would pick this up and what would you do? You'd look around for what? Words, right? What's the brand? Is this a Rolex or a Rowex? You know what a Rowex is, don't you? It's a Rolex looking watch that they sell on different corners down in New York City. It's a pretend Rolex. I don't know what they really call it. There are people who like to sell stuff around the city, you know what I mean? They open up their jackets, buy this, and the name, the classic is they like to sell these oaky sunglasses, not oak-ly, oaky sunglasses. Sounds very similar. They're very cheap in every way. But you'd look around, and yes, what are the words? Can you see them? Rolex, and there's more information there. Folks, that's what we're supposed to do every day when we look at creation. And yet somehow some people still think and promote the idea that this stuff just happened. Oh yeah, the sun just happened. My kids today, we were riding in the car. I had to take my wife to an appointment so we went out and we were doing some bike shopping and we were coming back from the store and the kids were talking about math. 1 plus 1 equals this, and 1 minus 2 equals this, and 2 times 2. They're talking through their math facts, and it just occurred to me that didn't just happen, how these numbers work. It's too orderly. It's too consistent. It's too regular. And you can follow this pattern as far as you want, as far as your mathematic capacity will take you, and it will stay that way. You cannot exhaust that. There are too many things to think about in this world. It's like one big, huge, humongous Rolex watch that we're staring at every day and we say it just happened. The reason we don't come to the conclusion of God is because we have too many things cluttering our perspective. We, even as Christians, don't see him as obviously as we should for who he is. We fight idolatry. We fight clutter and loving other things and following other things. We don't ourselves come face to face with God as the one and only supreme God to whom we answer sometimes. So what is the name that we find on creation? What is the name that we find? Elohim. I've already mentioned El. You can see the underline here. El, the general name for the supreme God, though not the only God that the Semitic people used. Here's the neat thing. In the Old Testament, in the Hebrew language, that is the only place you're going to find this word El Ohim. It was not used in the vocabularies of any other Semitic people, only the Jews. It spoke of this God that they all spoke of, but it spoke of him honestly and specifically. At the very most, it speaks of a singular God with a plurality of persons. It could be a reference to a pluralistic singular God, such as the Trinity that we worship, one God. At the very least, it speaks of the all-powerful, majestic, sovereign God who is the one and only. This word is used 28 times throughout the first chapter. 28 times. This word, it means God, the mighty one, the one of strength, the one and only God. It is repeated 28 times in Genesis 1. It is a unique word to the Jewish vocabulary in scripture. And when we read this in Genesis chapter one, we are not reading a rendition of, oh, this is the Jews version of El, the generic God. No, no, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the one and only God and making sure that we get it right. You see, we can't go into Muslim territory and talk about Allah. Just like, oh, I believe in Allah, you believe, we don't believe in the same, the name means something. Perhaps we believe in the true Allah. Now, that could be said. We believe in the Bible Allah, or the true Allah. You have to qualify, and that's what this word does. It uses the general word, but it specifically qualifies. No, this is not exactly your God. This is the true rendition. the great God of strength and sovereignty. In the beginning, God, how do you respond or how should we respond to the fact of a creator God? How? What can we determine about this God just from the first verse? Well, what's that? He's the creator. We know he existed before the things he made, so he must have predated creation. We know that, right? Isn't it funny that when I tell you in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, how little that means to you? Just if you're honest about it. It doesn't mean as much as it should because the fact that he made the world doesn't naturally mean as much as it should. That's how bad we are. It should mean a lot. He was before everything. So here you have the being who existed before everything else was made. Everything else. That alone tells us we should what? We should probably obey anything that he says. Right? I mean, any other option is pretty ridiculous. We know he is a personal being because the design of the universe and its details show intelligence and purpose, meticulous detail and thought. This is a thinking God. This is a personal God. This is an actual person. He is clearly great and powerful. He didn't just start everything. He made everything, emphasis everything. That's a lot. That's a big a lot, and that's a large number a lot. And there's a lot of big things out there, and he made all of them. I mean, our friends here from Colorado, there's some big mountains out there, right? Those mountains are the result of what God made, being messed up by a bunch of water being dumped down all of a sudden and then left to dry. And then you have these mountain ranges. Who did that? God did it. It was like a boy playing in a sandbox. God did that to the mountains. Amazing. He is intelligent. He is inventive. He is imaginative. Everything we're still trying to discover, he already thought of and did. Think about how many animals are out in the ocean that no one has ever discovered before. We still have never found a live giant squid, but we know they exist. We haven't seen one yet, live. God could tell you right now where all of them are at. how healthy they are, how old they are, how they're related to one another, and what they're doing at this very moment in any part of the ocean. The final product of creation even suggests that he is benevolent, for what he has designed sustains and enriches the experiences of living creatures. He has designed the world in such a way that even though you probably paid very little direct attention to him today, He took care of you. The oxygen was there, the food was there, the transportation you rode got you here safely. You have clothing on and it's not disintegrating, thankfully. It's working, it's doing its thing. You're sitting on a chair and it's not collapsing. Who's responsible for all this care being lavished on you without you thinking about it? Elohim, the one true God. There's so much more to talk about when we look at the names of God. But let's not even focus tonight on all the pagan, heathen people around the world who are rejecting him through idolatry. Let's focus on ourselves. How much direct attention did you pay to the God of the universe today? Or have you been chasing other gods, lesser gods? It's a very challenging thought. We have some prayer requests to pray about tonight for our missionaries, as well as some prayer requests for some upcoming events in our church. But before we do that, I don't feel right about just marching into God's presence to whom we may have not paid a whole lot of attention to today, perhaps. Especially considering that he's the one that made the worlds. And then just start asking him for things. Let's focus in and recognize him. Call out an attribute, a name of his. Thank him for it. Thank him for who he is. Don't feel bad if you don't have huge, amazing words to use. Just talk in ordinary words. He understands. But just say something. Give other people a chance to say something, but let's recognize God tonight. Meditate on what he has made and what that tells us about him. Elohim, the one true God who is unlike any other.