Rabbi Schneider - God's Covenant Name Yahweh

TOPICS: To Know Him by Name Season 3

We're gonna continue straight away, my beloved friends, in our series today. And we're gonna be talking about God's personal name as revealed to Moshe, Moses, Yahweh, a breathy Yahweh. Now this name, this personal covenant name of God, Yahweh, appears almost 7,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. I want you to think about this. Yahweh appears 7,000 times in the Old Testament. We call the Tanakh in Hebrew. Most of you know that now. And yet you'll never hear Jewish people today refer to God as Yahweh. Instead, they'll refer to Him as Lord, the Hebrew word being Adonai.

So in place of "Yahweh", traditional Jews will call Him "Adonai Lord", because traditional Jewish people feel that His name is so sacred that we shouldn't say it. But the point that I strive to make is if we shouldn't refer to our Father by the name He gave us to refer to Him as, and if we shouldn't refer to Him as Yahweh, then why is He used 7,000 times in the Hebrew Bible, and everybody from Moses onward in the Old Testament referred to our Maker that entered into a covenant with us as Yahweh.

Now, the name Yahweh comes from four Hebrew consonants Yud Hei Vav Hei. Yud Hei Vav Hei is sometimes called the Tetragrammaton. In Hebrew, we don't have vowels. We just have the consonants. So God's sacred covenant name that He gave to Moses, Yahweh, is composed of these four Hebrew consonants. But how do we know how to connect the Yud to the Hei to the Vav to the Hei? How do we know what that sounds like? So, for example, if you have, let's say, two consonants together, let's say a B and a T, but you don't have a vowel between them, how would you know if the B and the T were strung together to form the sound bit, but, bat. How would you know?

You need the vowels to know how it's pronounced. And so in Hebrew, because there's no vowels connecting the consonants together, because again, there are no vowels in the Hebrew language, what the scribes did is they put accent markings below the Hebrew letters. And the accent markings serve as helping us to know which vowel sound we should include with the pronunciation of the consonant. So these accent markings were added by the scribes to help people know how to read the Hebrew. But listen what happened. The scribes put the accent markings in the wrong places over Yud Hei Vav Hei, God's covenant name, because they didn't want the pagans to know how God's covenant sacred name should be pronounced. And so they disguised it. And then what happened is the Y sound in Hebrew got changed to a J sound as it became translated into English.

So you have two things going on. You've got the accent markings over the wrong place of the consonants in the Hebrew name of God. And then the Y sound became a J sound over time, which is just a development of language. So when I say the Y sound became a J sound, here's an example. If you go to Israel, or have been into Israel, when you enter Jerusalem, there's a big sign on the side of the road that you're entering Jerusalem. And there'll be English, you'll see it in English letters, and then you'll see it in Hebrew. So when you read the English, it says Jerusalem, J-E-R, right? Jerusalem. But when you read the Hebrew, it doesn't say J, it says Y, Yerushalayim.

Okay, so the translation of the Hebrew into English became a place where the Y was being pronounced as J. And so in modern times... think about this. Have you ever heard of the song "There's No One Like Jehovah"? There's no one like Jehovah? There is no one like Jehovah. You know why there's no one like Jehovah? Because there's no God named Jehovah. That is just the Christian understanding of how to pronounce God's name. Because of the fact that the ancient sages disguised how to pronounce His name by putting the accent markings over the wrong places in the consonants, and because the Hebrew began to be pronounced in English from a Y to a J.

So rather than being pronounced Yahweh, the church says Jehovah. But there is no God named Jehovah. Remember that song Jehovah Jireh? Same thing, there is no Jehovah-Jireh. It's Yahweh, and Jireh is not pronounced Jireh, it's pronounced Yireh. And so this is all interesting, but let's get back now to our foundation. We're going to look into the Word of God to discover where the Lord first revealed His sacred covenant name Yahweh, to His people. I'm going to begin today in Exodus chapter 3, and then we are going to take a look at Exodus chapter 6. So we go first of all to Exodus 3. And Moses meets God. He meets his Creator. He meets the God that loved Israel at the burning bush.

Let's pick up there now in verse 14. "God said to Moses, 'I Am Who I Am'; and He said, 'Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I Am has sent me to you.' God, furthermore, said to Moses, 'Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'The Lord,' and here we go, Yud Hei Vav Hei, Yahweh, the Lord's revealing His name, 'the Lord...'" If you look in your Bible, it's going to say "the Lord". But every time you see in the Old Testament The word LORD in all caps, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, what is actually in the Hebrew is not the word LORD, it's Yud Hei Vav Hei, Yahweh. The translators actually did a great disservice by translating Yahweh as LORD. Because when you think of LORD, it's somewhat impersonal.

But Yahweh is actually a personal name. And so you refer to the Lord and you have reverence, you have awe and love, but that's not God's name. So great disservice in my view when the translators took God's name and translated it Lord, but that's what you see almost 7,000 times in your Old Testament. So let's continue on. "And then the Lord says," picking up, "God furthermore said to Moses, 'You shall say to the sons of Israel, 'The Lord, there's Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.' This is my name forever. This is my memorial name for all generations".

And so this is God's, get this church, this is our Lord's covenant name, it's His personal name, and it's His name forever and ever and ever. In fact, we're going to be studying further in this series how Yahweh connected His name to the different things He does and did for His people. We're going to be looking at Yahweh Yir'eh, Yahweh Nissi, Yahweh-Tsidkenu, Yahweh-M'kaddesh, Yahweh Ropheka or Yahweh Rapha and how the Lord revealed Himself as Yahweh and then connected His name to what he does for His people. And what this helps us to understand is that the One that we're in relationship with is a person. and the name that was used when God made the covenant with Israel was in the name Yahweh, so God's covenant name is Yahweh, and then what the Lord did throughout the Torah is He met Israel's needs in conjunction with His name Yahweh.

And depending on what the need was that He met, He connected His name Yahweh to what He does for us, what He did for Israel, and what He does, beloved ones, for you and I today because you have been grafted in, according to the Word of God, to the commonwealth of Israel. So what Yahweh did for Israel, He now does for all those that are in covenant relationship with Him, Jew and Gentile, man and woman alike, that are in relationship with Him, that are in relationship with the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Yahweh, all that Yahweh did for Israel, being their provider, being their healer, being their victory, being their sanctification.

We're gonna go into all this as we further down the trail in the study of His name. He does the same thing for those of us that are in covenant with Him today. But before we move on, I wanna just spend a little bit more time here in Shemot, we say in Hebrew. Exodus 3. "God said to Moses, 'I Am Who I Am;'" From the earliest time that I began to read the Word of God after the Lord revealed Himself to me in 1978, when I really began to study the Scriptures, I was so fascinated and had such joy whenever I thought about how God revealed Himself as I Am Who I Am. Because to me, no one thinks of that and makes it up. Only God could have thought of that and said that, because that is who He is. He is the ground of all being. I Am. He's always been, He always is, and He always will be.

And we see this repeated often in Scripture. I am He who was, who is, and who is to come. So when the Lord revealed Himself to Moses, He says, "I Am Who I Am, and my name is Yahweh, that brings me joy. Another thing that I think is fantastic to think about and meditate on as we're kind of driving understanding from who God wants to be to us through this presentation of Himself to us as I Am Who I Am is that wherever you are, God is here, He is near, He's with you. Listen, He's in the present. I Am Who I Am is the God who is present. I Am Who I Am". He's always present. He is going to be in your future, even as He was with you in your past, if you didn't know it. And another thing I love about this, think about this, I Am Who I Am, He is continuous, unfinished action. Meaning God's alive. He is always in motion. He's always moving. He's alive.

It's just like a physical person that's alive. Their heart is always beating. God's heart in the spirit is always beating. He's always alive. And that just kind of wakes you up and helps you to know that you're alive. When you know God's alive, it helps you know you're alive. So this is just, to me... people, you know, try to argue there's no God. I could say so many things, as many of you could, to refute that stupidity and that rebellion to claim there's no God. There's so many great logical statements and truths that could be brought forward to say, you know, that's total foolishness. You know, the man that says there is no God, the scripture says, is a fool. But one of the things again, before we move on, that I love is when God said to Moses, I Am Who I Am, to me, no one could have thought about that. No one could have thought of even saying that, but God Himself.

And so this is just an introduction to God's personal sacred covenant name. We're going to continue on the next episode in this series. We're going to be looking at Exodus 6, where the Lord continued to expound on His name. But I want to just encourage you to appreciate this revelation of knowing God through the Hebrew roots of your faith. This is something that the Lord with joy is reaching out to you today with. It's like, come out of paganism, right? Because a lot of the things, I'm just being very frank, in the church have pagan roots. But what God is doing is He's bringing us back to our Jewish roots. And that's why Jesus said to the woman at the well in John, "For woman, you don't know what you worship". "We know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews".

So next time you're maybe in a church service and they're singing that song, Jehovah Jireh, you can celebrate it, you can have a good time, you can enjoy it. But remember, it's not Jehovah Jireh. It's Yahweh Yireh. We're going to get into that specific name, covenant name, Yahweh Yireh. And I think as you study this deeper with me, as you go down this trail of truth to discover who our Creator wants to be to us by discovering His Hebrew names and titles, it's going to strengthen you, my beloved brother and sister. It's going to root you and ground you in truth. And as a result of that, you're going to get stronger, you're going to rise up in faith, and you're going to break off the shackles of darkness and the enemy from your life.

So next time you're maybe in a church service and they're singing that song, Jehovah Jireh, you can celebrate it, you can have a good time, you can enjoy it. But remember, it's not Jehovah Jireh. It's Yahweh Yireh. We're going to get into that specific name, covenant name, Yahweh Yireh. And I think as you study this deeper with me, as you go down this trail of truth to discover who our Creator wants to be to us by discovering His Hebrew names and titles, it's going to strengthen you, my beloved brother and sister. It's going to root you and ground you in truth. And as a result of that, you're going to get stronger, you're going to rise up in faith, and you're going to break off the shackles of darkness and the enemy from your life.