Names …
We all have them … be dumb if we didn’t, amen? You can’t go around saying “Hey you over there” all day. Names make sense … but how often do you think about your name … or names? And I do mean “names” plural … because we all have more than one name. For example, I have three names officially … “Gordon” … “Arthur” … “Pike.” I also have the Roman numeral “II” after my name … Gordon Arthur Pike the Second … indicating that there is more than one of us running around with the names “Gordon” … “Arthur” … “Pike” … and, in fact there is. My father. He’s just “Gordon Arthur Pike” … there’s no Roman numeral “I” after his name.
I was taught that the “second” was very important. It was drilled into my head that my name was “Gordon Arthur Pike the Second” … “second” … not “Junior”! My mom would correct anyone who tried to put “junior” after my name because she once had an uncle named … well, nobody knew his name because everybody called him “Junior” till the day he died. So, thanks, mom! I sincerely appreciate not getting stuck with the name “junior” … seriously!
In our culture, my first name is my “given” name … the name that my parents gave me … “Gordon.” I’ve been called “Gordo,” “Gord,” or “Gordie.” “Gordo” means fat in Spanish … no comment. I don’t like “Gord” or “Gordie” because it makes me sound like some kind of plant.
Then I have a last name … a “surname.” My “surname” is my family name, which tells you which tribe or clan I belong to … the “Pike” tribe or “Pike” clan. The name “Pike” is all about my heritage. It connects me to all the Pikes in my family that came before me … my grandfather and grandmother …. My great-grandparents … my aunts and uncles … cousins. My surname connects me with the people in my nuclear family as well. We all share the same last name … Gordon Pike, Marie Pike, Ron Pike, Scott Pike, Emily Pike.
Technically, that’s my tribe or clan name on my father’s side. I also belong to the “Dufraine” clan on my mother’s side … which is why I find the way that they use surnames in the Spanish or Latino culture so interesting. They keep both their father and their mother’s clan or family name. For example, the name “Manuel Perez Rodriquez” means that Manuel is a member of the Perez family on his father’s side and a member of the Rodriquez family on his mother’s side.
The heritage … or historical or familial connection is so important in some cultures … like Japan or Korea or China … that the surname or family name comes first. So, in my case, I would introduce myself as “Pike Gordon.”
My name … “Gordon” … is an Anglo-Saxon name that means “from the three-cornered hill” or “from the marshes.” The name “Pike” is also Anglo-Saxon and is usually translated as “someone who resides on the peak of a hill.” Hummm … I see a pattern here. So … when you put the two names together … Gordon Pike … is means “someone who lives on the top of a three cornered hill” or “someone who lives on top of a three-cornered hill in a marsh.” Neither are very exciting … but there you have it.
That’s three of my names. I have other names too. To the IRS, I’m 051-68-0996. Now … if you were quick enough or clever enough to catch that, I have to tell you … that’s not my real Social Security Number … I just made that up. G-mail knows me as “pastor … dot … pike.” Sometimes my name is “Pastor Pike” … just “pastor” … “Pastor Gordon” … and “Pastor G.” My all-time favorite name is “Dad.”
Now that I’ve pointed that out, I hope that all of you realize that you have many names yourselves. Most of us probably don’t know what our given and family names mean … or if we do, we probably don’t really think about what they mean a whole lot … until it’s time to name a baby, am I right? Then it becomes serious business. A major deal. The new parents spend hours pouring over books of baby names … surfing baby name websites … and yes, there are tons of ‘baby-name websites’ on the internet. The new parents hash over family names, Biblical names. Name after name is proposed and rejected. “No … that one’s too weird” … “That name will get him beat up … a lot” … “that name has too many suggestive names that rhyme with it.” And the arguments, amen? “What’s wrong with ‘Orville’? That was the name of my favorite uncle.” “Yeah … well, my son’s gonna be named after some popcorn guy over my dead body.”
Here are some actual names that probably could have used a bit more thought:
• “Hashtag Jameson” … not the symbol hashtag … which would have been strange enough … but ‘hashtag’ spelled out … h-a-s-h-t-a-g Jameson.
• How would you like your name to be “Pickle Parker”?
• Or “Gamble Moore” … as in “Gamble M-o-o-r-e.”
• “Mustard M. Mustard” … care to guess what this middle initial stands for? Yep … “Mustard.” Mustard Mustard Mustard … Some parent’s sense of humor is down-right cruel.
• An Egyptian couple named their daughter “Facebook.”
• You could do like these parents and name your child after your favorite video game …. “Ninja Quest.” There actually a human being out there somewhere with the name "Ninja Quest."
• Or your favorite brand names: Lexus, Armani, Rolex, Ikea. All of these are real people’s names according to the U.S. Census.
• One person named her son “Alucard” … which is “Dracula” spelled backwards.
• One of my favorites … and it’s one that’s a little more popular than you would think … is “Ab-suh-day” … which is spelled “A-b-c-d-e” and pronounced “ab-suh-day.”
• And the prize for seriously creepy name goes to a New Zealand couple who tried to name their child “Lucifer4real.” That’s “Lucifer” … the number ‘4’ … and the word ‘real’ all in one word … or name. Fortunately for the child, the New Zealand government stepped in and said, “No.”
• And last, but certainly not least, there was the infamous New Jersey couple Heath and Deborah Campbell who named their three children “Adolf Hitler,” “Joslyn Aryan Nation,” and “Honszlynn Hinler” … for real.
In the days of the Bible, your name connected you to your father. Jesus’ true or full name was not Jesus Christ. Christ is a title, not a name. His true Jewish name was “Yeshua ben Joseph” … or, in English, “Yeshua, son of Joseph.” “Ben” or “Bar” is Hebrew for “son.” For example, ‘Barnabas’ name means “Son of encouragement.” His original name, ‘Joseph’ meant “God shall add” … so if we go back to Jesus’ original and full Hebrew name it meant “Savior or Deliverer, son of God shall add.”
Remember, you and I have a “given” names … a name that was given to us by our parents … but some people in the Bible have “God-given” names. The angel Gabriel told Zechariah to name his son ‘John’ … which means “Graced by God.” An angel told Mary to name her son ‘Yeshua’ … which means “Savior” or “Deliverer.”
Sometimes God would give a person a new name to reflect a change in that person’s relationship to Him or their role in God’s plan. God changed Abram’s name … which means “High Father” … to ‘Abraham’ … which means “Father of Many.” His wife’s name … ‘Sarai’… which means “My Princess” … was changed to ‘Sarah’ … which means “Mother of Nations.” Jacob’s name meant “Holder of the Heel” or “Grabber” or “Supplanter.” Both meanings … “Grabber” or “Supplanter” … turned out to be prophetic because Jacob came out of his mother’s womb grabbing his twin brother by the heel and then later supplanting his brother Esau by tricking him out of his birthright.
One night Jacob … the “Grabber” or “Supplanter” … tried to wrestle with an angel and grab a blessing out of him. The result was a permanent limp and a new name … ‘Israel.’ ‘Isra-el’ has two meanings … “Wrestles with God” … that obviously makes sense … and it also can be interpreted as “God contends.” Nice word play … Jacob the “Grabber” became someone who “wrestles with God” or someone whom God has contended with.
The name “Isra-el” also has another powerful meaning … “To rule, to be strong, to have authority over” … as in “God rules” or “God is Powerful” or “God has Authority Over.” The most common translation or understanding of “Isra-el” is “He Who has the Power of God.” Wow! Think about it. The nation of ‘Isra-el’ is named after ‘Isra-el’ whose 12 sons formed the nation of ‘Isra-el’ … for the Palestinians and Muslims living with and around them, the name ‘Isra-el’ could have great theo-political significance, don’t you think? How would you like to live next door to a family or a country whose name is “He Who Has the Power of God”?
You know who started naming things long, long before we did? God! “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said” … what? “And God said, ‘Let there be light’: and there was light” (Genesis 1:1-3).
Did you see what happened here? In order for God to “speak” or to literally in Hebrew “sing” “light” into existence, He had to do what? He had to give it a name … “light.” In order to create “light” he had to speak the word “light” and before He could speak “light” into existence, He had to give it a name. The name “light” created “light” and it also described what it is … its nature … its characteristic.
And then God goes on naming and speaking the universe into existence. Let there be “sky” and “heaven” … let there be “water” and “land” … let there be “plants” and “animals” … “fish” … “birds.” And then … let there be “Adharah” … “man” … made in the image of God.
We were created in God’s image and so we were given the task of naming all the parts of his creation. “So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19) … and we’ve been naming things every since, amen? Cats don’t have names for birds or grass or trees. Dogs don’t have names for other dogs. Only humans, created in God’s image, makes sense of the world around them by giving things and creatures and people “names” … names that encapsulate … names that define … that “name” an aspect or a characteristic of the person or object that it names. Names help us to define, to categorize, and understand the world around us. They help us to communicate and understand and relate to each other.
Names not only help us to understand the world around us, they also help us to understand God … His character … His personality … His nature. God reveals His many names to us so that we can understand and communicate and relate to Him.
I want to be very clear from the start. If God had a thousand names … a thousand billion names … which He does and then some … that wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface of who He is and what His many, many, many manifold dimensions of His personality are. There is no one name and there are not enough names to capture God’s personality or divine essence, amen?
Before we hear what God is trying to tell us about Himself, I want to make a few points … well, three exactly … about why we’re doing this. Over the course of this series we are going to embark on a study on the names of God as a means of discovering who He is and who He has promised to be in our lives.
The first reason we need to pay attention to God’s name is that He commanded us to. It’s one of the Ten Commandments … number 3 to be exact: “Thou shall not take the name of LORD, thy God, in vain” (Exodus 20:7). This commandment is about more than a prohibition against cursing or swearing empty oaths in God’s name. If we turn the Third Commandment from a negative to a positive statement, it would read like this: “Take God’s name and honor it.” God is asking us to revere His name … to honor His name … to treasure His many names because they are precious gifts … windows into the heart and mind and character of God. Just thinking about that puts goose bumps on my soul. As Christians, we understand the gift of God’s names so we honor them in every aspect of our lives … we speak them with reverence and awe. Think about this … those of us who call ourselves “Christians” bear His name … “Christian” is our surname … our family name … and our behavior reflects on His name and on our family, amen?
We are commanded to honor God’s name and we are compelled to praise His name. “I will exalt You, my God and King,” David promises God. “I shall praise Your name forever and ever. Everyday I will praise You and exalt Your name forever” (Psalm 145:1-2). Here’s a thought: How can David exalt and praise God’s name forever and ever if he doesn’t know God’s name?
Knowing God’s names allows us insight into the person of God … and that insight into the person and character of God inspires us to do like David and praise God and worship Him. The more thatyou know about God … about His greatness and abilities … the more enthralled and the more in love with God you will become … and the more in love with Him you become, the more you want to praise Him. Because His names are without end … our insight into God is without end. We end up like David learning about God and praising God forever and ever, amen? Makes sense, right?
We are commanded to honor God’s names, we are compelled to praise His names because they are gifts from God that reveal His person and His character to us … and He does this for a reason … He wants us to be able to relate to Him. What we are studying are not the names that we have given to God but that God has given us in the scriptures … given to us out of God’s desire for us to get to know Him better. The more we know God, the closer we get to God. The closer we get to God, the more we know about God.
As we study each name, I want to challenge you to consider how God is using these names to reveal Himself to you. God simply isn’t satisfied with us knowing about Him … He wants us to know Him … as much as we can possibly know about Him in this life and forever in the next.
Now, what I’m about to show you is one of those things that you have read or head read or heard preached a thousand times and probably never noticed … and I wouldn’t expect you to given how names are such a common feature of our language and our world. You ready for this?
Believe it or not, God reveals the first of His many names in the very first verse of the Bible. From the very moment we open the Bible and begin reading and studying His Word, God begins revealing Himself to us. Now, we miss it because we read the Bible in English. We’re all familiar with the first verse, right? “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1a). The English word “God” in verse 1 is “Elohim” in Hebrew. “In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth” and the name “Elohim” is a very interesting and very revealing way for God to begin introducing Himself to us.
The name “Elohim” is used more that 2,500 times in the Bible. It is used 32 times in the first Chapter of Genesis alone. In fact, it is used for the name of God more than any other name in the Bible … which means that it must be a very important name and it must be a very important insight into the character and nature of God, don’t you think?
The first two letters of the name “Elohim” are “E-l” … which means, are you ready for this? “God.” The Hebrew word for “God” contains the word “El” … “God.” The word “El” also means “strong” in Hebrew. “God” … “strong.” Think about it. Who is the epitome of “strength”? God is strong. God is our strength. God is “El” … our strong God who is doing what when we first meet Him? He is creating … light … then earth … plants … and so on. “El” is God’s way of letting us know that He is our strong creator. Wow, amen? “El” not only has the imagination to create the universe around us but the power and the strength to control it and sustain it.
The name “Elohim” … and don’t worry, we’ll get to the last four letters of His name “Elohim” … the name “Elohim” reveals four foundational truths or principles about God. The first is that “Elohim” is eternal. “In the beginning.” Stop and think about that for a moment. If God was present at the beginning then God had to be there before the beginning, amen? In order for the universe to exist, God had to create it and, in order for God to create it, He had to exist before He created it … makes sense but how often has that truth gone unnoticed when we read “In the beginning”?
Genesis is a simple declaration that “Elohim” exists … that Elohim has always existed. It doesn’t provide an explanation for His existence because, well, it can’t. How can you explain the beginning of Elohim when Elohim has no beginning? The Bible simply opens with a foundational truth upon which all of the other truths and promises of the Bible are built … “Elohim is” … always has been … always will be.
Several years ago, the late preacher Dr. E.V. Hill spoke for 40 minutes at a Promise Keepers event in Chicago. His sermon consisted of only two words. Can you guess what those two words were? They were … “God is.” He repeated those two words … “God is” … over and over for 40 minutes … sometimes softly … sometimes shouting it … daring anyone to deny it. God is! He kept repeating it until 25,000 men joined him and began chanting and declaring this foundational truth about Elohim … “God is.”
What a beautiful way to open the Bible and to start our relationship with God. From the beginning, God is. And when this universe is gone, guess what? God will still be. God is … was … and ever will be, amen? … because God is … and if God is “El” … if God is “strong” …if God is creative and imaginative … if God is eternal … if God is the power that sustains His creation … then God … “El” has the creativity and imagination to turn bad into good … “El” has the power to atone for sin … “El” has the ability to bring order out of chaos … to turn a formless void into light and air and earth and planets. And if “El” has the creativity and the imagination … the strength and the power to do all this … if God is and will always be … then there is hope for the hopeless and help for the helpless. If God is then everything in life has meaning and purpose. If, however, you believe like the atheists, that God isn’t … then there is no hope for the future … there is no creative, guiding intelligence in the universe … it just popped into existence … it is nothing more than a continuous stream of coincidences that have no meaning or purpose … heading to an uncertain and most likely doomed future. I agree with David: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).
Remember when I said that we would get to the last four letters of the name “Elohim”? Well, I’m a man of my word. In fact, the letters “o-h-i-m” … well, actually the last two letters, “i-m” reveal the second foundational truth or insight about “Elohim.” The very first mention of God hints at the innumerable facets and characteristics of God that we will discover if we keep studying His Word and deepening our relationship with Him. How does the name “Elohim” reveal all that? Because the word “Elohim” is plural. When a noun ends with the letters “i-m” it is the equivalent of adding an “s” in English. For example, one angel is called a “cherub” or “seraph.” Two or more cherubs are called “cherubim” and a crowd of seraph are called … you got it … “seraphim.” Sound familiar?
“Elohim” is the only name used for God that is grammatically plural but always used in a singular sense. It’s confusing but I’ll show you what I mean. Look at verses 26 and 27 in Genesis 1. We see it in both the English and the Hebrew but you may not have noticed it before, so let me show you what I mean:
“Then Elohim [plural] said [singular], ‘Let us [plural]” … ever notice that before? ‘Let us [plural] make man in our likeness [plural], and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So Elohim [plural] created man in His [singular] own image. In the image of Elohim [plural] He [singular] created them; male and female He [singular] created them.”
This sets us up for the notion of the Trinity. God’s creativity can take on the form and manner of a father. We just read how He created the universe. God’s love can take on flesh … the Son of the Father who created the Universe. And God’s love can move through His creation like a sustaining wind or breath. At Jesus’ baptism, God the Father sent His Holy Spirit to anoint His Son, Jesus. God the Father … God the Son … God the Holy Spirit … and so much more … so much more, amen?
We’ve already touched on the third foundational truth that the name “Elohim” reveals and that is God’s imagination and creativity. God is … God always is … which means He was never created. If He were created, He would have a beginning and that which created Him would be greater than Him … and that can’t be because God is “El” … the very strength that created this universe and sustains it. You see, that which creates is always greater than that which is created. God didn’t create the universe and then the universe create God … though atheist would argue that the universe simply sprang into existence and we created God through our own creative imagination. Okay. Then who or what created all the matter that existed before the Big Bang, collected it all up, squeezed down into the size of a Tic-Tac, and then blasted it with enough energy to scatter it throughout the universe? That which creates is greater than that which it creates. Period! That is a logical and scientific fact.
What’s the first thing that Elohim claims to do? Create! In the Hebrew, Elohim “bara” … which means “to bring forth or to create out of nothing.” Out of nothingness … a void … Elohim bara … Elohim created light and dark … heaven and earth … sky and water and land. Out of nothing, Elohim bara the sun and the moon … Elohim bara the stars and planets … out of nothing Elohim bara us … and then Elohim bara life … a force that moves and breathes and baras other life. There I go again … more spiritual goose bumps!
The creativity and artistry of Elohim is all around us. Elohim brought order out of chaos … and continues to bring order out of chaos. And, as I said before, if Elohim can create a cosmos out of chaos, if He can turn nothingness into beauty … then there is hope for the hopeless and help for the helpless, amen? We are not random accidents. We are fearfully and wonderfully made … here by design and divine Providence and not by chance.
Which leads to the fourth and final foundation of God as revealed by His name “Elohim.” In the beginning, Elohim spoke and created the universe. For centuries, the notion that God is the source of everything in the universe served as THE foundational truth of the Bible and of our faith. In the Apostles’ Creed it clearly states that we believe in God, “Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth.” It’s right there at the top … like the Bible, the first thing that the Apostles’ Creed acknowledges is that everything that exists was created by God because nothing could exist if it weren’t for God … period!
That all changed 150 years ago when a man by the name of Charles Darwin published his theory … I want to emphasize that … his “theory” of evolution and natural selection. It seems, however, that the more you look at God’s creation, the more Darwin’s theories fall apart. To begin with, there is the problem of “ex nihilo” … that’s the creation of something out of nothing. In order for there to be a “big bang” there had to be something … some matter, some material … to gather up, compress, and then explode. All the matter in the universe may be moving in a certain direction and may have a built-in shelf-life but something or Someone … with a capital “S” … had to create all this and set it into motion. Logically there is no way to prove that all of this “just happened.” Former atheist and investigative journalist Lee Strobel sought to disprove the Bible and existence of God. Guess what? He found out that the heavens declare not randomness but the glory of a vastly creative and intelligent designer and he became a Christian and a believer in the Bible. In his book, “The Case for a Creator,” Strobel concluded that the central pillars of evolutionary theory “quickly rotted away when exposed to scrutiny” (2004. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan; p. 279).
I wish that I had the time to share with you the growing evidence that science has come up with which prove that the universe was not some random accident. A growing number of scientists are coming to the conclusion that there is too much order … too much precision for the universe to have just happened. More and more it is becoming obvious that the universe is the product of a creative and divinely skillful designer.
To me, personally, the universe itself is proof of the existence of its Creator … period. How can you look to the heavens and not see the hand of God at work? How can you look at the workings of the human body and not see the harmony and the balance? And we have yet to discover all of its secrets. How can we not look at a drop of pond water under a microscope and see the evidence of millions of microscope universes and not see God’s fingerprints all over His creation, amen?
Let’s go with the evolutionists’ belief that all of this was a random accident driven by the principle of natural selection. I truly believe that the reason our country and our world are going to hell in a handbasket is because we have allowed our foundation to come under attack and erode our fundamental belief that everything was created by Elohim.
The idea of evolution has come to touch ever aspect of modern thought. No other theory in recent times has come close to radically changing our view of the universe and our role in it as the theory of evolution. It has created a kind of schizophrenic view of humanity. On one level, we are basically animals struggling to survive in a universe where only the strongest survive … which, if you look around you, is not true. The slick, the quick, and the sneaky can thrive just as much as the strong, amen? In fact, according to the laws of natural selection, I shouldn’t exist at all because my ancestors, from whom I inherited the genes for my weak eyesight, would have been weeded out of the gene pool a long, long time ago by wild animals and stronger human competitors. The only reason I am able to survive today is that someone invented eyeglasses to make up for my visual deficiencies, amen?
On the other hand, the theory … not the fact … the theory of evolution also suggests that there is no God … just random chance … which creates individuals and groups who are only concerned with themselves and their survival … everyone else will have to fend for themselves … which allows us to be selfish and cruel to each other.
There is no room for God in evolution … unless you believe that evolution is part of God’s plan. For some, they believe that God created the universe, tossed up into the air, exploded it, and it now runs by certain rules and principles while God stands idly by and watches it unfold and run itself into the ground.
On one level, evolution says we’re nothing but animals struggling to survive. On another level, however … if there is no God, no Elohim, then that would make us gods of our own lives … controller of our own fates … which leads us to the serpent and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil … but that’s another sermon for another day. Still, the idea that the universe is nothing more than a random series of accidents allows us to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, good and bad. Morality is a human construct … an illusion … and all you have to do is look around and listen to see the results of this kind of thinking today, amen? If there is no Creator … no divine designer … then there is no one to sit in judgment over it all. No absolute guiding principles … just rules and guidelines that we make up for ourselves … which, if we made them up ourselves, we can change anytime we want … well, except for physical laws like gravity and the speed of light. If there is no God, if we are nothing more than complex machines driven by instinct who make up the rules as we go along, then we can get rid of this whole outdated notion of sin, right? No God … no divine purpose … no judgment … no sin … and no sin means that we have no need of a savior … no cross … and the resurrection becomes a hoax or a fairytale and the Bible is nothing but an ancient and a useless book full of errors and contradictions.
“In the beginning.” Right from the very beginning, Elohim challenges us to make a choice. Either we are the result of divine design and providence … or we evolved from slime and nothingness. Either life has meaning and purpose … or the only meaning and purpose we have is to survive … and for what? Either we are accountable to Elohim and under His authority … or we’re accountable to no one.
I am eternally grateful to Elohim for introducing Himself in the way that He did so early in the Bible. Brothers and sisters … He couldn’t make it any clearer, could He? The minute you open up the Bible it’s as if God has taken your face in His hands, is looking you in the eyes, and saying: “Read my lips … I am God … I am Elohim … I am your God … I am the eternal Creator and Sustainer of Life who made you so that I can love you and you can love me.”
