David Bahn – Reflections

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
²     Serve the LORD with gladness!
    Come into his presence with singing!

³ Know that the LORD, he is God!
    It is he who made us, and we are his;
    we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
    and his courts with praise!
    Give thanks to him; bless his name!

⁵ For the LORD is good;
    his steadfast love endures forever,
    and his faithfulness to all generations.

I am constantly making the point that when you see “the LORD” written in All Caps or Small Caps, it refers to the holy name of God, יהוה (YHWH). It’s the name given to Moses when he went to Egypt to rescue the Hebrews from slavery. It is God’s name. It reflects God’s faithfulness, self-existence, eternal nature, and relational nature. YHWH is not just a divine force. He is personal. We can have a relationship with him. He has made a covenant with his people and put his name on his promises.

“God,” on the other hand, Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) in Hebrew is a more generic name for deity. Elohim is used over 2,500 times in the Old Testament and appears in the very first verse, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Elohim carries the sense of God’s power and majesty as Creator. It conveys his supreme authority over all things.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, and agnostics can use the term God. Jehovah’s Witnesses wrongly insist that Jehovah is the only truly proper name for God. That is an English accomodation, taking the consonants of YHWH and combining those with the vowels of “adonai” (Hebrew for lord). Only Christians and Jews will use God’s sacred name, YaHWeH. Except Jews won’t even pronounce the sacred name of God. And Christians for the most part simply use the word Lord. The Jerusalem Bible, quite correctly in my opinion, uses Yahweh for God’s sacred name rather than translating it to LORD.

Why all this lesson about LORD and God? Psalm 100 says, “The LORD, he is God.” There may be a lot of confusion about who is God and who is the true God. But this sets the record straight: YHWH is God. Yahweh is the one true God. Yahweh is not just some tribal deity. He is the almighty creator of me and all that exists. It also means that Yahweh is also both transcendent (God) and personal (Yahweh).

For me, that means that when I pray to God, I pray to the One who is able to answer decisively and powerfully. It also means that when I pray to the LORD (Yahweh), I don’t pray to a generic deity. I pray to the One who has bound himself to me through a covenant that has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

That is why this means so much to me. Jesus claimed he was Yahweh when he said, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). When I pray to Jesus, I pray to the One whom every tongue will confess, “Jesus Christ is Lord (Kurios in Greek = the Hebrew YHWH), to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11).

The LORD, he is God. Jesus, he is God. He is above all. He is personally connected to us. We know him by name, and he has called us by name.