GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 16 ~ ~ Isaiah 57:15 ~ ~ “For this is what the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Jehovah, says: “I dwell in a high and holy place,
And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Taken from Tony Evan’s book, “The Power of God’s Names”

Prayer:

JEHOVAH, You are worthy of all praise and adoration. You are the God who made the heavens and the earth. You set the stars in their places and hung the moon where it was to remain. You rule over all, and yet you also seek a relationship with your creation.

For that and much more, You are worthy of all praise and worship. I lift up your name—JEHOVAH–as I seek Your face. I honor You as you are seated on Your throne above all. You are the great and mighty God, who raises up kingdoms and subdues nations at Your choosing. In Your mercy, You sustain all life and passionately delight in our souls.

I come before you with a heart of repentance, knowing I often haven’t honored you as Lord and master of my life. You wait for me to come talk to you, to wake up and greet you, or to spend my evenings with you, but I have instead wasted time on futile distractions. You are the relational God, who desires to walk with me in the cool of the day, just as you walked with Adam and Eve in the early days of Your creation. Forgive me, please, for often seeking to walk alone and ignoring the blessing and joy of Your presence.

JEHOVAH, thank You for desiring to be close to me. Thank you for not only being high and lifted up but also dwelling with the lowly and with those who are not of high stature. Thank You for the goodness and depth of Your heart, which pours out love time and again in my life.

Our finite minds cannot conceive of the infinite God. All we’re able to grasp about our Lord is based on what He has revealed to us. A study of God’s names is a wonderful way to begin to discover who God is. As we consider each name and deepen our understanding of what it reveals, we’ll begin to put pieces together that help us to understand who God is and what He looks like.

In the previous chapter, we explored the name ELOHIM,–The all powerful creator. Genesis1:1-2:3 uses the word ELOHIM to speak of God’s creative genius and awesome power. It’s used to show us His multidimensional, multi-present capacity.

As we progress through Scripture, we soon come in contact with a name of God with which most of us are familiar. It’s also the name most frequently used throughout the Old Testament—6519 times. In our contemporary mindset, it’s God’s most famous name. This name is JEHOVAH.

Keep in mind that the word “god” can be somewhat vague. A number of religions use the word, “god” But in the Word of God, the one true God reveals Himself— His character, His specificity, and His identity—through His names.

To best understand the meaning of the name JEHOVAH, we need to take a look at the life of Moses. In Exodus 3, we find Moses struggling with his purpose. Through a series of events, the man with the promise of a great future has now become a very insecure person. He has blown his privileged upbringing by committing a murder. In his mind, he had been defending his blood relatives, the Hebrews, from the people who raised him, the Egyptians. The Hebrews didn’t identify Moses as one of their own, so when he killed an Egyptian who had been attacking a Hebrew, they simply saw it for what it seemed—a violent act of an angry man.

Moses was rejected from both people groups after this act of bloodshed and feared for his own life, so he fled to the desert and became a shepherd. Forty years of herding sheep in the land of Midian had reduced the once-confident leader to nothing much in his own eyes.

So when God shows up in the midst of a burning bush, revealing Himself to Moses and giving him a vision of his destiny to lead the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, Moses balks. After all, that’s a very intimidating request. In fact, Moses had been doing exactly the opposite of God’s request for the past four decades. He had been running away from Pharaoh, not running to Pharaoh. He had been fleeing fro Egypt, not racing to Egypt.

Yet, a spiritual principle applicable to all of us shows up here in Moses’s life. God didn’t set Moses free from the wrath of the Egyptians simply so Moses could be free. God never delivers someone from something just for that person’s own sake.

God’s greatest aim is always His own glory. God’s purposes on earth are for the advancement of His kingdom and His glory. God provided a way for Moses to escape his punishment in Egypt so that Moses could eventually lead an entire race of people out of Egypt to worship God (Exodus 8:1) God never delivers us so that we might forget Him. God always reveals Himself and delivers us so that we might worship and fully know Him.

But Moses balked at the bush, and so we are introduced to the name of God that we’re looking at in this chapter.—–JEHOVAH. Moses, fearful and afraid at God’s grand request, counters to God with a question of his own……….which we’ll find out tomorrow.

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