Chapter 1: What does Sinclair Ferguson say about the importance of God's name?
At the end of the day, all will be well. He is all-sufficient. His promises will come true. He really cares. He is willing to save you. And He will never, ever leave you and never forsake you. But that is one of the reasons we should study Scripture and learn true theology. It anchors us in the truth of who God is. It's not to pass a theology exam, although that's a good thing.
It's to know who God is. Welcome to the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. We've been studying theology this week as we feature messages for you from Sinclair Ferguson's new series, Theology for All. And it really is for all. Dr. Ferguson is warm and pastoral and so clearly teaches and explains these key areas of doctrine.
And when I listened to this message for the first time, I had to text clips to my family as it was so edifying and encouraging. So I do encourage you to share today's message and to request access to all 36 messages along with the study guide and a Renewing Your Mind journal when you give a donation before midnight tomorrow at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343.
Well, let's get into today's study. Here's Dr. Ferguson on God the Lord. We're still really at the first section in our study of Christian theology, doctrine, the teaching of Scripture on every aspect of what we need to know about God and what we need to know about ourselves and our world.
Chapter 2: How does understanding theology help us know who God is?
And in the last session, we tackled this great doctrine of the Trinity. And we were thinking there at the end about the practical application of God as Trinity to our Christian lives, to our worship, to our fellowship together. I want to focus more narrowly in this study on the fact that God is the Lord.
You know, in the Bible, there are various names by which God is known, but there is a special name that we find. I think it's used about 6,000 times or more in the Old Testament Scriptures. It's the Lord. And usually in our modern English versions, you can tell that the same Hebrew word is being used for the Lord because Lord is usually in block capital letters.
And that's an indication in our English translations that what lies behind the translation is the name Yahweh, sometimes called the tetragrammaton, the name with four letters. We know it as the name of God. But of course, whenever the Jewish people use it, this name Yahweh is so holy to them but they refer to him as Hashem, as the name.
To me, it's one of the great paradoxes that God says, this is the name by which I am to be known, but we don't pronounce that name. So much so, actually, that you would find even Hebrew scholars, Old Testament scholars, pronouncing those four letters in slightly different ways. which gives you a sense that there has been a long time when among God's own people that name ceased to be pronounced.
And it's a name that seems at first sight to appear, and it will only be when we move on to later studies that I'll explain that statement. It appears, first of all, of course, when God meets with Moses at the burning bush. And Moses is attracted to this phenomenon in the desert. It's a bush that's on fire and yet doesn't seem to be consumed. He goes near to it, wondering what this is.
And in the course of his engagement with God, as he asks God what his name is, God says, I am who I am. I am is my name. And when you go to your people and they say, well, who has sent you? You say to them, I am has sent you. Now, it's always been interesting to me that in the narrative of Exodus chapter 3, two things happen.
The first is that there is this bush that's on fire that attracts Moses' attention. And he comes near and the voice says, take your shoes off your feet because this is holy ground. And intriguingly, I think that's the very first time in the Bible the word holy is actually used.
As Moses comes, as it were, face to face with this staggering manifestation of who God is, then in a way Moses is a bit like Isaiah in the temple. or perhaps even like the seraphim there who cover their faces and cover their feet in the presence of this infinitely holy God. And Moses, interestingly, is attracted to this.
There's something in a way that repels us about holiness because we are sinful, but there's also something that attracts us because it's beautiful. God is infinitely beautiful. and Moses is being attracted to engage in Him. But the thing that really fascinates me is this. At the end of the day, when God says, I am that I am, He is saying there is actually nothing like me.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the name 'Yahweh' in the Bible?
He is transcendent and other than ourselves. And yet what Moses is experiencing here, as we experience in our own Christian lives, is that this great God and not another has become imminent. He has come near. You see, when we speak about the transcendence of God, that He is above us and beyond us, and then speak about the imminence of God, that He is near,
What we are actually saying is it's the transcendent God who is imminent. This is the wonder of what happens in Moses' experience. And then if you fast forward, this is what happens at the incarnation, isn't it? This is the miracle of the incarnation, that the Son of God takes our human nature and yet remains the Son of God. But the baby who is lying in the manger,
is still the Son of God, the transcendent Son of God who is upholding the universe in which He Himself lies by the word of His power. He is the Imminent One. He has come near to His people. The fire is not dependent on the bush for its burning energy, but the fire is nevertheless present in the bush.
And this is the great lesson that Moses is to learn about his God, about Yahweh, about God the Lord, that he who is utterly transcendent, who is altogether other than we are, is yet one who comes near to us as the transcendent God to show his grace and his mercy.
And if we had time together to work our way through this section in Exodus, especially Exodus 3, verses 1 through 12, I think we would see the ways in which God comes near in five different ways. And I think it is at least worth mentioning them. First of all, when he comes near, he comes near and he says to Moses, I am a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God.
And you may remember how he refers back to the ways in which he had come to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and how he had made covenant with them. And he says to Moses, I am that same covenant-making and covenant-keeping God. And what I've come to do, Moses, is to keep the promises that I made to your fathers. I will not let you down, but will keep my word.
So this is the first way God comes to us. He comes to us and he says, you can trust my word. Second, he says to Moses, I understand what's happening in the world because I'm omniscient. I know all things. And this is a wonderful thing to think about, isn't it, as a Christian believer, especially in those times when you feel nobody knows, nobody understands.
And it is true, isn't it, that even although we have very intimate relationships with other people, we remain a kind of secret and mystery. I don't think I've ever met a husband who would say, I fully understand my wife. And of course, you can't. You can't even fully understand yourself, never mind your wife or your children or your best friends. You can't fully understand.
but to think that He fully understands. What a blessing this is, especially, it's true, isn't it? Especially when you're in difficulties to say, Lord, nobody, nobody knows, even my nearest and dearest don't know. There are things I couldn't tell them. It might break their hearts if I told them, but you know, you know. So he is a covenant-making and keeping God. He is an omniscient God.
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Chapter 4: What does the burning bush reveal about God's nature?
It's the word Emmanuel, God with us. It's the word that Isaiah uses, isn't it, in his prophecy of the coming Messiah. He will be Emmanuel, God with us. It's the prophecy that is remembered in the New Testament. He'll be called Jesus because he'll save his people from their sins. He'll fulfill the prophecy of Emmanuel because he will be God with us.
And so you can see the connection between this wonderful experience that Moses has at the burning bush with the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's almost as though what Moses is experiencing is a kind of will not trial run of what is to come, but an indication to him of the kind of God his God is.
And that God will only fully and finally reveal himself to us in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. When people ask you, who has sent you? Then Moses say, I am has sent you. I am who I am. Just because of the way verbs work in the Hebrew language, some scholars have thought that those words, I am who I am, might be translated or at least nuanced, I am who I will be.
Not in the sense of I am something I'm not just now, but I will be soon. But Moses, if you want to know who I am, keep your eyes open on what I'm going to do. And whether that's a right translation or interpretation or not, it's a real truth, isn't it? That this is actually how we come to know God. We come to know God in the way he reveals himself to be in the things that he does.
And of course, when you think about this experience of Moses, you can't help fast forwarding from the book of Exodus through, for example, the actual Exodus where God showed his people who he was.
a God of majesty and might in delivering them, a God of providence in providing for them, a God of judgment in judging them, a God of salvation in redeeming them, a God of providence in protecting them, and a God who always keeps His promises in saving them. So there was this pattern in the Exodus that God was establishing.
And it's interesting that that pattern of the Exodus is picked up in the prophecy of Isaiah when he thinks about the people being in bondage in Babylon and about being restored to the promised land. He sees that event as a kind of further indication of the God who brings his people redemption in the Exodus. But Isaiah sees something very interesting, doesn't he?
He understands that the restoration to the promised land, that exodus from Babylon is not the exodus people really need. The exodus people really need is an exodus from the bondage of sin. And so he sees a figure who is clearly much greater than Moses appearing. Moses was the servant of the Lord. But Isaiah sees another servant of the Lord beginning to appear.
He doesn't fully understand who he is or when he will come. But in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and then, of course, most famously in Isaiah 52 to 53, the passage about the suffering servant, Isaiah sees, as it were, looking into the future that God is going to bring about another exodus. In a sense, a real exodus of which the original exodus was only like a picture pointing forward to the reality.
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