God's Excellent Name

GOD’S ‘EXCELLENT NAME’ - PSALM 8

READING

Psalm 8:1-9

1. INTRODUCTION

Psalms 8:1 … O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth.

In Psalm 8, we will look at God's name and its meaning for Believers today. In verse 1, we see two different words that are used for God; what do they mean?

* The first word is ‘LORD’ which is printed in capitals. This is the sacred, personal name of God, which we transliterate as ‘YHWH;’ this is called, by theologians, the ‘sacred tetragrammaton’ – the sacred 4 letters of God’s name. It is the name that is best known as ‘Jehovah.’

This personal name of God was considered so holy that when scribes wrote it, they took off their clothes, bathed, put on clean clothes, cut a new quill pen and wrote ‘YHWH.’ Once they did this, they would put on their original clothes, destroy the pen they used to write the sacred name and then they would continue their work. As this would occur 6,528 times every time the Old Testament was copied, you can see the amount of work and time involved.

* The second word in this verse for God is ‘Lord’ (‘Adon,’ from ‘Adoni’), which is in lowercase. This indicates the office of God, not His personal name.

To explain this, we think in terms of our head of state, Grand Duke Henri. ‘Henri’ is his name; ‘Grand Duke’ is his office. In Ps 8:1, ‘LORD’ is His name (‘YHWH’); ‘Lord’ is His office.

The verse continues with, “How majestic is Your name …,” where ‘addiyr’ [ad-deer] is the Hebrew word for ‘majestic.’ This word is very difficult to translate. Some applicable English words are large, powerful, excellent, famous, gallant, glorious, goodly, lordly, mighty one, noble, principal and worthy.

2. FIRST REVELATION OF JEHOVAH TO MAN

The first time God revealed His personal name to man was at the burning bush in Ex 3:2, to Moses. Let us consider Moses. He was a person so like us, who felt God sometimes takes too long to solve our problems. In Moses’ case, it concerned rescuing the Hebrews from the Egyptians.

Now, if God says it (in this case His promise to give them the ‘Promised Land’), then He will do it. If He does not do it, then He did not say it. This is an important lesson for us today.

God had certainly heard His people and would free them, but Moses was convinced he could help to speed things along. He even got to remove the first Egyptian, but then found there were around 7 million more coming after him. So, he had to run to the desert, into Midian. If we ever step out to destroy the Enemy in our strength, we may be successful with the first demon, but we stir up the next 7 … or even 7 million.

So, Moses was forced to flee to the desert in Midian, where he met a priest, married his daughter and became an assistant pastor – well he spent 40 years tending his father-in-law’s sheep. After 40 years of nothing but sheep, he was out one day and saw a bush burning, but not being consumed. Now, after 40 years with nothing but sheep for company that was very interesting indeed. Moses went to see it and met God. Now the NT tells us there was an angel in the bush, which is why it was not consumed (Acts 7:30-34) and from it, God spoke to Moses.

In their conversation, God gave Moses a commission, “Go tell Pharaoh, let My people go.” Now, let us put that into modern context. It would be like telling an industrial country the size of Britain, France or Germany to decommission all its electricity systems and destroy all its automobiles and trucks. It would incapacitate Egypt in no less a way. In addition, remember, this commission would be doubly difficult for a wanted criminal – Moses.

3. HEARING GOD, REALLY HEARING GOD

A lesson from Moses’ encounter with God concerns listening. Sometimes we only listen to God with our ears and not with our spirits – let Moses’ encounter explain.

Moses asked who he should say sent him. This is a good question when you are given such a weighty message. God replied, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: `I AM has sent me to you.’” (Ex 3:13,14)

a. LEARNING TO WAIT ON GOD

When God speaks to us, our spirit hears far more than our brain can translate.

An example to help us understand this is to consider a pebble thrown into a pond. You hear a loud ‘plop,’ but then you see a ring then more rings appear, until they eventually fill the surface of the pond.