Turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter three. Exodus chapter three. Last week we asked a question, we asked a question about a Hebrew word, a Hebrew name for God, and what was that name? Elohim. Elohim. We also talked about another L. When I say another L, what do I mean? another God, right? Or a variety of gods. Why do we have a variety of gods talked about and worshipped throughout history? Beginning in the times when people had Noah around, when people had people around who knew God, who spoke with God, There were false gods worshipped when Adam was still alive, and he knew God himself and could tell people about it. Why do we have all these other gods? because man pushes God away. Man makes up new gods to squeeze between the true God and themselves, to multiply gods, to weaken God, to push God into a farther place in their minds and in their views. That is what God does. That's what we do with God. Man has been doing that throughout history. And one of the gods that we talked about was Baal, right here. The god Baal, this is one archaeological find of one of his statues. And he was an El, E-L, the name for a god. But he was not Elohim. Elohim is the name used only for the god of the Bible. That is the only time this word is used. And in fact, it's used 2,570 times in the Old Testament, beginning in what verse? Genesis 1, verse 1. In the beginning Elohim. the strong, the powerful, the mighty God, not just any old God, not just the God particular to the Hebrew nation, but the God of gods, the sovereign, the powerful, the mighty God. And then we talked about what he did in the beginning, God created. How many of you noticed God in creation at all this last week? You thought about it. Maybe the next morning after the Wednesday message and then you forgot. But you've thought about it, right? I hope you have. You've thought more about God. God is wanting to reveal himself to us. That's why he tells us his names. Now tonight we're gonna talk about a new name and that is the name Yahweh. Yahweh. And if you heard people try to pronounce the Hebrew version, you get some variety here and there in the way that it sounds. This word, Yahweh, is another name for the God of the Bible, the true God. This is not the word that is used in Genesis 1. It's not used much at all in Genesis until you get to about the time of Moses in Exodus. It really is originally just four sets of consonants in the Hebrew language. Yod, hey, vowel, and hey is close to how you would pronounce those, those four consonants. And in the way the Hebrew language was written, they would write in consonants. They were trained to see the vowels. Though they were not written and they would just pronounce the words as they knew to pronounce them, based upon grammar and spelling rules, they would mentally, orally supply the vowels, but only write in consonants. And this is the word for this name of God, this personal name of God. The name Elohim is a technical categorical name for God. It identifies him for who he is. This name is a personal revelation about who he is to us. And I'm gonna talk about that. If you follow down through history, you would arrive at a time where there were some men called the Masoretic Scribes. The Masoretics copied down the Old Testament scriptures, and because of the Jewish carefulness not to use God's personal name in vain, they actually found a clever way to avoid ever saying God's name and yet still refer to him so that they didn't have to use his name. And they used the consonants, these four words, and they supplied what scholars would call the Ketivkere. The Ketivkere is a way of taking another word or taking another set of letters, vowels or whatever, inserting them into a different set of words so that you would see one thing but say another. So when they wrote Yahweh, they added these vowel sounds from this Hebrew word Adonai, which means Lord, and they put them into the consonants like this. We don't really know for sure that this is how you pronounced this or that these were the vowel sounds placed between the letters in the beginning. We don't know that for sure. Many people are very comfortable saying that's probably how it was. There are still some that aren't sure. That really is irrelevant. But the way you would look at this set, you would see this set of letters. You say, how do you go from A to E? I see the O to O and the A to A. How do you go from A to E? Adonai. If you say it that way, you could hear it, right? Adonai. That would kind of be the idea. And so you get this. Now, you wouldn't look at it if you were a Masoretic scribe or a Jew, just being careful, you wouldn't look at this and say, Yehawah. You wouldn't say that. You would look at this and you would say, Adonai. You say, that doesn't say Adonai. Right. That's what the Kevtiv Kerei is. It's a way of writing one word, triggering you to say something else even though you're thinking something else. Does that make sense? It's a way for the Jews to not say God's actual name, but still keep on talking about him. And that's what they would do. What did the King James Bible translators do? In some cases, they translated it in a way that sounds very much the same, only using normal English spellings. Jehovah is the idea. And that's how we arrive at the word Jehovah. This isn't actually the sound probably that Moses heard when God revealed himself to him at the burning bush. But this is what we've arrived at. And when we hear this set of sounds vocally, we're talking about this special name of God. The other way and the more prominent way that the New Testament or the King James Bible translators rendered this word, so that it's not hidden, is they use the word LORD, but they use all caps placing the other letters beyond the first one in small upper caps. So if anyone ever says, why doesn't the King James Bible use the word Jehovah? Well, it does a couple of times, but everywhere else where that special name is, it makes sure you do not miss it, that you know that's exactly what is being used. That's exactly the name that is being used. And in fact, Jehovah, that actual set of sounds is probably not actually exactly what God said to Moses anyway. So if this is something that some people will go to great lengths to say that this is how we should only and always talk about God, well technically that's not exactly what he said his name was either. But it's that name about God that we're talking about. Okay, so that's a little bit of a technical background. Sometimes there are questions about that. What does the word Yahweh mean? In a very, very basic sense, I am. It is the set of consonants that are used to communicate the Hebrew verb to be. It's a verb of existing, of being. It's very nebulous in a certain way. But when you begin to think about it, you find that it's very, very significant. Let's look at where this is used in a very pronounced way. Exodus chapter 3, this is kind of the key time that it's used, though it's not the first time that it's used. This is the really most important time. This is when the name really gets kicked off, so to speak, when God really formally introduces it. Exodus chapter 3, you have Moses. Moses is the man that God used to deliver the nation of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They'd been in slavery for, what, 400 years. It's a long time to be enslaved. How long has America been a country? A little over 200 years, right? When do we hit 250? Yeah, we got another decade or so, right? That's coming up, really. That's amazing. We're talking about being enslaved much longer than that. It had become really a way of life and history and identity. And so, all of this time, the Jews seemed to be getting farther and farther away from the reality of God, the God that called their father Abraham out of Mesopotamia. And here they are, so many years later, in bondage. And God calls Moses, and I won't walk through the whole story of Moses tonight, but God calls him who had been raised in Egypt, transplanted out to the wilderness where he was a shepherd for 40 years. And one day he was feeding the flocks or whatever, and he saw a bush that was burning. The bush was burning, but the bush was not being burnt up. It was continuing to stay the way that it was. And so he went. And he said, you know, he interacted with God and God was speaking in the bush. And here we have in Exodus chapter three, verses 12 and following. Well, look at verse 11. Moses said unto God, who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And God said, and he said, certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee. When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain. And Moses said unto God, behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers have sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, what is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, Am that I am and he reveals his name and he said thus Shout out say unto the children of Israel. I am Yahweh Jehovah hath sent me unto you It's interesting Moses said says there in verse 11. Who am I and isn't that the question we ask a lot? Who am I? We look at our past We look at our flaws, we look at our weaknesses, our impotencies, we look at our inabilities, our insecurities, our lacks, our gaping wounds, our failures, and so forth. Who am I? That's the wrong question. The question is, who is sending you? Who is behind you? Who is calling you? And Moses asked that question, who should I tell them is sending me? And he says, I am. He reveals this name. What is this name? What does it mean? Exodus 3, 12 through 15, we have this, an introduction of this name. Exodus 6, 3, this is an interesting study. I'll just step aside briefly to mention it and we'll move on. In Exodus 6, 3, the Bible says this about this name of God. God spake unto Moses and said, I am the Lord, the Jehovah. You can see the small caps there in verse two. And I appeared unto Abraham and unto Isaac and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, Elohim. But by my personal name, Yehovah, Jehovah, was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them. Now, if you do your real detailed study, you would find that if you look in Genesis 15, 7, God actually did use the name Jehovah with Abraham at one point. So they knew about this name, but it wasn't something they really understood. And what God is saying is it's at this stage in Israel's history that this name is going to be understood. You're going to find that I am Jehovah. What is the meaning? This word means, I think we could encapsulate it this way, different people say basically the same thing in different ways. It's a way of saying he is, he exists. Now he is self-existent. It's a theological way of talking about it. None of us are self-existent. We exist because God lets us exist. He made us exist. Your parents brought you into existence. You exist because of food and water and all these kind of, you are not self-existent. God is self-existent. He needs nothing and he exists completely. and that can go on forever and he will not need anything. He doesn't need you. He is self-existent. I think we could expand on this though and say this, I am always there or I am is always there. God says of himself, I am always there. I am everything that you need. God is always there. God is everything that you ever need. What does this mean to Moses when we look here in this passage? That wherever Moses would go, God was there. And whatever Moses needed at any time, God would be that for him. Would Moses go to Pharaoh's court afraid to challenge the Pharaoh of Egypt of the world? Yes. Was God there with him? Yes. Was God what he needed him to be at any given moment in that place? Yes. Was God with Moses when he stood before the nation of Israel? Yes. Was he what he needed him to be? Yes. Was God there when they stood at the Red Sea and they were behind being pursued by the Egyptians and in front of them they had nowhere to go? Was God there with them? Yes. Was he what they needed him to be? Yes. in the Red Sea, on the other side of the Red Sea, at Sinai, wandering in the wilderness, headed into the Promised Land, facing the giants, the Jericho's, the Ai's, and the Gibeonites, and on, and on, and on. God was always there, and God was always what they needed him to be. He would be that way for Moses. He would be that way for the nation of Israel. And in fact, one of the nice things about this word that you can get when you study it is to realize one of the things God is saying is not just I am present now and will be in the future, I have been present and watching over you these last 400 years. I've been here. I've been here in Egypt moving and working. It was God who brought Moses into existence. It was God who saved him in the bulrushes. It was God that arranged for Pharaoh's daughter to rescue him of all the odds. What are the odds that that would happen? very infinitesimal. They're microscopic and God arranged that so that he could care for the nation of Israel and place them under his wings and be what they needed him to be. God was always there. For future generations, he would continue to be there. I like what one man says. He says the Hebrew word translated remember And that is in verse 15. Let's look at that Exodus 3 15. Says I am that I am tell them I am has sent me unto you verse 15 Exodus 3 God said moreover unto Moses the shout out say unto the children of Israel the Lord God of your fathers the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me unto you. This is my name. What does it say forever? And this is my memorial unto all generations. And the idea there is remember. The Hebrew word translated remember here is significant in the Old Testament. It describes more than a mental act, a memorial. To remember something is to recall and then act accordingly. Thus, when God says that all future generations are to remember him as Jehovah, what God is saying is that from that point forward, all who know God are to see him as being present with them, and to act accordingly. Because God is present with us, we need not draw back as Moses did from any task to which God calls us based upon who we are. No matter how challenging the task may be, of course, because God is present with us, we do draw back from sin. We are aware that his eyes are upon us, and we are ever eager to please him. The person who lives in the awareness that God is present at every moment will live a very different life from the person who forgets and ignores God and forgets not just that he is present, but he is everything that they need. The only reason we wander from God is because we forget that he is there and that he is everything we need. We run to so many things. Let me ask you this question. What are you encountering in your life right now? What decisions are you facing? What surrender is God asking of you? What choices do you have to make? What difficulties are ahead of you? What conversations do you need to have? What issues in the past do you need to finally square up with and give over to God? What conversations do you need to have about the past with somebody? What forgiveness do you need to offer? What bitterness do you need to release? What obstacles do you need to step over to obey God? What steps of obedience do you need to make? Sunday we talked about Abraham offering a son on the altar. That act of faith 30 years after salvation made his testimony very obvious. Has God led any men here to make a decision that is like that? that makes your faith very obvious, though it's risky. Why do we cower back? Why do we look at the Bible, see a command, an instruction, a promise, an opportunity, a vision that God has given to us clearly in his word, and we hesitate? Because we don't believe that he is there, and we don't believe that he is everything that we need. We don't. And if, and he hasn't, I'll assure you, but if God led me to lead all of you, I would be scared about this too, out to the bay here by LaGuardia Airport. And I said, let's march across to College Point. We're going to go to the Martinez house, but God has told me we're going to walk across the water. We're just going to walk across there. We're not going to go around on the Van Wick. We're just going to walk across. What if God actually led in that and God gave a word about that? And he's not going to, but what if he did that? You would think I was crazy. I would know that you thought that I was crazy. I would think that I'm crazy. And then perhaps he might have the police force running after us to save us from this cultic leader who is doing this crazy thing, right? I would never do that. But here Moses was standing at the Red Sea, the sun was probably setting, the army of Egypt, the greatest superpower of the world was at their back and he was standing there. And the only thing he could do is what God told him to do and that was to hold a stick up. And all of a sudden the waters parted and they walked across. And you know what? God was there and God was everything they needed him to be at that moment. The reason we don't see water's part, the reason we don't see God intervene in our life in significant ways, is we find other ways. We go down other routes, other paths, other things, and we don't make the hard decisions. We don't make the principle, the faith decisions. We make the decisions that admit, I don't think God is really here and he's not gonna bail me out. If I actually did what he said, it would be disaster. I can't do that. Look at my balance sheet. Look at my job policies. I would lose my job. Look at the situation. I think I would lose that person in my life. I think my reputation would be shot full of holes. I don't think I could, I know the Bible says this, but it's not realistic. I can't really do that. This isn't the days of Moses, you know. God says this will be my name forever. And the person who wants to know me by that name must take off their shoes and realize when you draw near to Jehovah, you draw near on holy ground. You follow him down the path of holiness. You draw near to a holy God. and you find that he is there. And he will be whatever you need him to be. Take off the shoes of your heart because God wants you to draw near to him, to know him personally, and to follow him with all of your heart. God led this nation of Israel out into the wilderness through the Red Sea and he proved to them that he was always there and he was what they needed him to be. He took their food away. He took their water sources away. He took their comforts away. He took all their specialty foods away. Why? Because he was cruel? No, because that nation was so permeated and distracted by all these fine things. They were missing out on the most important thing in all of the world, and that was a practical, personal understanding of who God really was. If we were bad off enough, maybe we are, it would be worth God taking our houses away, our bank accounts down to zero, and removing all of us from meaningful employment. It would be worth that. If God did that, could you imagine the meeting we would have here at this church? If we all showed up to prayer meeting tonight, we wouldn't have any jobs. We would have a packed house if we didn't have any jobs. And let me say thank you to those who came tonight who have jobs. And if any of you are sleepy, I'm not going to consider it a sin. I know. It's a blessing. You're here. But imagine that. Imagine we didn't have any jobs. The government disowned us. We no longer have tax write-offs. They don't recognize us. That's where the nation of Israel was going in Egypt. We had nowhere to go, nothing. Do you think that we would begin to sense God in a new way? I think we would. But you know, God doesn't have to do that. We can draw near to him. So that's what I would like to do tonight. And I think what I'd like to do with the kind of group that we have tonight is I'd like to have the men and boys go downstairs to the main room, and we're going to sit around and pray together. Let me make a couple of thoughts about this. Mrs. Castillo, where are you at? Could you lead the ladies' prayer time up here? Here are some thoughts Before we go to prayer, let's begin our prayer time up here and downstairs with a confession of our lack of awareness of God for who he really is, according to his true name, Jehovah, the one who is always there and the one who is always everything that we need. Let's ask him to increase our awareness of that.