Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I would just like to ask us to bow our heads and pray as we come to the study today. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would take the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart and that they all would be acceptable in thy sight, oh God, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.

We began a study about the names of God. As I mentioned, names were very important to the Hebrews. Names are very important to some of us, perhaps. When you travel the world, names mean different things to different people. Names mean different things to different cultures. But in the Hebrew vernacular, a name was used as the medium of the character of the person, a medium of revelation of what that person was like.

So, for us, the names of God are a source of theology. In other words, we can look at a name in the Bible, a name describing God, and say, "What does this name tell me about God?" It's a source of information. There is a strong element of divine disclosure in every name of God. This is a way I can get to know Him better.

Remember, we were talking about the different ways we can get to know God. For to know Him is the most important thing in the world. It's the most important thing in life. It's the most important thing that you and I should be about. We can get to know Him as we look at Jesus Christ, God in Galilean cloth, walking around on our earth, eating our food, sleeping in our beds, talking with words similar to the ones that we use.

We can get to know Him through the Word. You can get to know Him in Genesis, you can get to know Him in Leviticus, and you can get to know Him in Hebrews. Anywhere you open the Word of God, the Spirit of God will take the Word of God and reveal God to you. That's another way. Or you can take a walk and smell the flowers and see Him revealed in creation, as indeed He is, as Romans tells us. Or you can spend time with a Christian friend, and from their eyes, He'll beckon you, and from their lives, His love is shed until you lose sight of them and see the Christ instead.

There are different ways of seeing God—through a friend, through the Scriptures, or through His names. If you remember, we talked about Elohim, the Creator God, the sovereign Trinity, the one committed with omnipotent faithfulness, ratified with an oath to be true to a promise He had made first to Himself in bygone ages. What was that promise? To mend whatever was broken.

The Trinity promised Himself to mend whatever would break in any universe, in any time, in any dimension, in or out of time. If something broke down, the Trinity promised a restoration, a making again, to make all things new. And that's the name that meets us in Genesis 1: Elohim, the Creator, transcendent, mighty, omnipotent God. What a great thing it is to know that He who has promised Himself to be faithful and loving to Himself has also promised His creation and the creature that lives within the creation the same thing.

Nothing is too small for the transcendent God to understand. And yet, when we see the size of God by His name explained to us, Elohim, it's hard to believe He's interested in us. He's interested in my teenager, He's interested in my fears, He's interested in my sickness, or my headache, or my backache. Surely a God with all these things on His mind finds it difficult to come down to my size. Well, today we're going to see that in another name of God, this is possible.

What we're going to do today is look at actually two names of God that are spelled the same in our Bible, and this study will be in two parts. We're going to look at the word "Lord" spelled in two different ways and meaning two different things in your Bible. I want you to turn to Genesis chapter 18. The first word we're going to look at is the word "Lord" spelled with a capital L and small o-r-d letters.

This means Adonai and is not to be confused with the other "Lord" that you will read in your Bible translated L-O-R-D with capital letters, which means Jehovah. We're going to look at these two names. I hope as you begin to read your Bible, as we get through these studies, you're going to keep a little glossary. Maybe I can just give you a little reminder of what that is. You can write it down and keep it in your Bible.

I want you to start, and instead of reading English words, I want you to start and do a little Hebrew clever stuff. Instead of reading "God," every time you read "God," I want you to read "Elohim." "God" is the English word that's used to translate the Hebrew word "Elohim." So, instead of when you're going along in your Bible reading you say "God," in your mind say "Elohim," and that will bring all the ideas that we've already thought about to your mind.

Whenever you read the word "Lord" with a capital L and small letters following, start and say "Adonai." "Adonai" said to so-and-so, "Adonai" said this, "Adonai" did that, or this man is addressing "Adonai" every time you read this word "Lord." Remember all the other ones: El Elyon, God most high; El Olam, the one who's giving us the big picture, the revealer of the secret things; El Shaddai, the God who is enough, the nourisher, the breast, the one who is specifically the patriarch's God name.

Abraham used this name more than any other. Whenever you see in your Bible "God Almighty," that's El Shaddai. Whenever you see in your Bible "God Almighty," those are the English words that are used to translate El Shaddai. It's very interesting, if you just have a little read around the things to do with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Most times they address Him as El Shaddai, God Almighty.

Why was that important to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob particularly? Because all of them had wives that couldn't have babies. All of them had wives that couldn't have babies. And this was the life-giver. This was the name of God that specifically talked about contravening the laws of nature, bringing life out of deadness, fruit of the womb particularly. This is the name that has to do with life and babies and all of that.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise to you, for example, when you're reading in 1 Samuel to find Hannah praying to who? El Shaddai. "Oh God Almighty," she did not say Elohim, the mighty Creator God, which she could have said, but specifically that personal aspect of God that the patriarchs had discovered as one after the other with a childless wife had prayed to who? El Shaddai. And God had answered, and babies had been born from dead wombs. El Shaddai.

And now we have this wonderful word "Adonai," Lord. Not Jehovah, another meaning altogether. Here in chapter 18, it's not the first time it appears. The first time it appears is Genesis 15, but I've chosen Genesis 18 to show you these two words against each other. We're not going to read the chapter, but I want you to follow me carefully. I am in the NIV, and if you're in the King James, you'll see it there as well, but just follow me quickly. The Lord—who's that? Jehovah or Adonai?

Guest (Male): Jehovah.

Jill Briscoe: Capital letters. Jehovah appeared to Abraham, and he was sitting in his tent door. I'll tell you the story in between to quicken the story up. Abraham looked up and saw three men. This is a theophany; it is a self-revelation of God in human form. Three men, the Trinity, in human semblance. We are not told that Abraham recognized the Trinity, but the way he addresses them tells us that he did. As he saw three men in human form, there was something about them that alerted him to the fact that this was deity visiting his tent.

And so, as deity visited his tent, he looked up, saw the three men, and addressed them in verse 3. "If I have found favor in your eyes, my"—who?

Guest (Male): Jehovah.

Jill Briscoe: "Adonai," small letters. "My master," he uses, "my lord," small letters. "Don't pass your servant." Then he begins to do extraordinary things. He runs to the herd and he gets a little calf, and he runs to the tent and he says to Sarah, "God's here for dinner. Hurry up, bake the best bread you've ever baked in your life, and I'll get the calf, and here's the meat, and let's prepare it." And he helps her to get dinner ready.

Now, Abraham was not in the habit of taking the form of a servant. Abraham was in the habit of having servants do this for him. He was the Adonai, the master. But here he is getting the meal ready for Trinity or for this man-God figure that has appeared at his gate. So he begins to talk with them. After he has served them, look at verse 7. After he's hurried and prepared this, while they ate, he stood near them under a tree.

The place of a servant, after preparing the meal for the master, is to stand nearby to watch, to be on tiptoe, to listen to the master's command, to run and get something that the master would ask for at his meal. And Abraham takes the place of a servant and watches them eat. He does not eat with them because he knows who they are and he knows who he is. And then they begin saying, "Where's your wife Sarah?" Well, Sarah's got her ear glued to the tent flap, of course. Wouldn't you have?

What has God come to dinner to talk to my husband about? Sometimes our husbands bring the boss home, and the wife hovers around the kitchen door maybe, just listening in, wanting to know what the boss has come to tell her husband about. Can you imagine what it would be like to be Sarah? Well, she wanted to hear. And then she hears God say to Abraham, "Your wife, where's Sarah?" And he said, "Well, she's in the tent." Only just. Everything except her ear was in the tent. That was through the tent flap.

She's going to have a baby. And what did Sarah do? She laughed. She thought that was the funniest thing she'd heard for years. "I'm going to have a baby? I'm 90 years old and I'm going to have a baby? You must be kidding." And God said, "Why did she laugh?" And suddenly Sarah came out of the tent flap aghast, prickles rising on her back. How did that man or whoever it was know that she'd laughed? And so she did a typical Sarah thing at this point in her life: she lied.

She said, "I didn't laugh." And God said, "You did laugh. You're going to have a baby." And that was the end of Sarah's conversation with the Lord at dinner, so that hadn't gone very well, had it? But never mind. Abraham continues to talk to God. And if you follow this, you will see all the way down, verse 16. Jehovah said, "Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am about to do?" Jehovah, the Lord, capital letters all the way down.

But at the end of the chapter, beginning as what is going to happen to Sodom is revealed to Abraham, Abraham is aghast because in Sodom lives his nephew Lot with his wife and his children. And as God reveals that He has come specifically to see if the stink of sin is as bad as He thinks it is, and to make sure before He destroys that city that there is no righteous men except a handful, being Lot and his family there, as He's come down to make sure before judgment falls that that is truly the case, Abraham begins to plead for Lot and his family.

As he does, he addresses God, and he addresses Him all the way through, verse 30, 31, Adonai. Verse 32, Adonai. Verse 33, Adonai. This is a favorite way that Abraham had, apart from his personal name El Shaddai, which was very precious and special to him, of addressing his God. It's interesting to me as I begin to read the story of Abraham, where he uses which names. That's significant, and this should bring a little light and color into your Bible study as you begin to read your Bible in this way.

Guest (Male): Adonai.

Jill Briscoe: Adonai means master. He is the master; we are the servant. There are two well-known earthly relationships which God chose to borrow to explain His relationship with us. One is the master to his servant and, secondly, wrapped up in this word Adonai is the relationship that you and I, most of us, know very well, and that is the husband to the wife. So, whenever you see the word Adonai used between men in the Scriptures, it's usually in that way.

In fact, in chapter 18, Sarah, after she's laughed, says, "Am I worn out and my master is old?" And the word master in the NIV is lord in your King James Bible, which is more correct. Capital L-o-r-d or small letters: Adonai. So, women would call their husbands Adonai as a matter of course. God borrows that picture, and He says, "Now, I am in heaven and you are on earth, but I am the master, the Adonai, and you are the servant." You might have many masters on earth, but remember, I'm El Elyon, the highest master.

Just as El Elyon speaks of the highest Lord God around, so this word Adonai addressed to God means He is the highest Lord of all. So these two pictures are rather precious in the Bible. Let's take each of them for a moment and think about them: the slave and the master. Slaves were unfortunately a common commodity in Abraham's time. He had bought Hagar, remember, from the Egyptians.

She was the handmaid or the slave, the servant, the bondservant of Sarah. Slaves were either bought from captives. If one tribe had raided another tribe or one city had raided another city, they would take captives. You either killed them or kept them. Death or slavery was what happened to you if you were taken captive. There was nothing in between. So slaves came out of the fighting that was rampant on the earth at that time.

When Abraham came out of Ur of the Chaldees and set off to a place he didn't know where he was going, God just said, "Take off, Abraham, there's going to be a land for you," he took with him many, many slaves. So Abraham was used to the idea of being a master over slaves. He was also used to the idea of being the slave of God. No matter how many people we have working under us or how many people we are responsible for, and maybe we are an Adonai to other people, we must never forget that God is our Adonai and that we must serve Him as a willing slave.

There was one thing that Israel did as the time went on that was rather a nice custom: the day or the year of jubilee. All the slaves were supposed to be given their freedom or the chance of it. If a slave didn't want to be free, the master could take that slave down to the public marketplace and, among witnesses, bore his ear through with a wooden peg against a doorpost and mutilate the ear of the slave.

Therefore, the slave would be wandering around with one ear that said everything to everybody that saw the slave. This slave has said two things: "I love my master, I will not go out free." History does not tell us of too many slaves that had their ears so marked. Not too many. I wonder about the Church of Jesus Christ. I wonder about you and I wonder about me. Many of us would say, "I love my master," but very few of us, perhaps, are willing to say, "And I will not go out free." Mark me, earmark me.

Are you marked? Do people look at your life and say they are marked for service? "When I look at that woman, she's always serving someone. There is something about a servant spirit about her, servant actions, servant occupations. In her free time, what is she doing? She's serving because she's earmarked, her character is stamped in an unmistakable fashion." That is a woman that has said, "I love my master, my Adonai, I will not go out free. I will not take the freedom that is offered to me. I will be a willing slave."

I suppose if there were more of us like that, then the work of the kingdom would get more easily done. Slaves had no time of their own, they had no money of their own, they did not choose who they would marry. Their children were their master's. Everything they had, everything they owned, was their master's. And that's the sort of Christianity the Bible speaks of. That's the sort of relationship that is not an option or a choice, and yet it is an option or a choice.

That is the relationship that the Adonai, God, who is the Adonai, calls His people to. And yet there are many runaway slaves running around the world saying, "Oh, I love my master, but I would like to go out free. I'd like to choose my time and what I do with it. I'd like to choose the clothes I wear. I'd like to choose the man I marry or whether I marry or whether I don't. And I certainly don't want my children to serve my master because I've got all sorts of ambitions for them, things that I never was able to do that I hope they do."

And we do not have the concept of God as Adonai, Lord. But that's all wrapped up in the name of God, Lord, my Adonai. God constantly uses this title and this picture as a picture of His relationship with us: master and service, earmarked men. There was a chorus, "Make me a servant, humble and meek. Lord, help me lift up those who are weak. And may the prayer of my heart always be: make me a servant, make me a servant, make me a servant today."

I think most of us sing something like this: "Make me a master, make me a lord. Give me a platform that all may applaud. And may the prayer of my lips always say: make me a master today." Sometimes, I'm afraid, that is more often true. The Bible says the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters. Is that true of us? My favorite Bible verse is Isaiah 40:5, which says the perfect servant, speaking of Jesus, is the one whose ear is always attuned that He might know how to give a word in season to him that is weary.

This is talking about the perfect servant and the perfect servant's ear. How is the perfect servant going to be always ready to give a word in season to somebody that is weary? By waking morning by morning to hear like one being taught. Jesus said, "I do nothing of Myself. I do always those things that please Him. I and my Father are one. It is He that dwelleth in me that doeth the works. I am listening, Lord, for Thee. What has Thou to say to me?" It's a wonderful hymn: "Master, speak! Thy servant heareth, waiting for Thy gracious word."

Is that our heart attitude? And then what about this picture of the servant always doing, waiting to be obedient? That's all wrapped up with this word Adonai too. It's very interesting to me to think of some of the greatest prophets addressing God in this fashion. For example, Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1, when Isaiah had this incredible vision and he looked through the door of heaven, wouldn't you have thought when he saw the Ancient of Days sitting on His throne, he would have addressed Him as Elohim?

I mean, he saw God sitting on His throne. Wouldn't you have thought he would have said, "I saw Elohim sitting on His throne"? Now, those of you that have already turned to Isaiah 6 know that he didn't. He didn't address Him as God: "I saw God sitting on the throne, Elohim." He addressed Him as Lord, small letters, Adonai. The thing that struck Isaiah as he looked at the throne of God in a vision was that it was the master that sat on the throne and he was the servant.

And that's probably why he came out with that wonderful statement, "Lord, here am I, send me." That is the language of a servant. He did not say, "There is Jehovah sitting on the throne, Lord, cleanse me," although he did ask for that as well. His first thought was, "What is my master saying to this servant?" And that was in his mind because he was at a point that his career was sort of facing a change. His mentor had just died, the King had just died, King Uzziah.

And now he didn't know quite which way his ministry would go, or he would go, or what he'd be doing, or what he'd need to do. And so, as he comes to God and God gives him this vision and then says, "Go and tell this people," the same people he'd been talking to already, the hardhearted people, the blind people, spiritually blind, the spiritually deaf. And He says, "Go and tell this same people these things, and they're not going to listen to you, and they're not going to be converted, but go and do it anyway."

Isaiah must have thought, "Look, if they're not going to listen, then why bother?" Well, there was only one reason why he needed to bother: because that was the Adonai sitting up there telling him, the servant, to go and do it. And servants do not ask questions. Servants don't say to their master, "Well, that's a bit of a silly thing to do. Why don't you send me to some heathen nation that's going to listen? I mean, if you know you're sending me to the same people that aren't even going to listen and you know that ahead of time, why bother going?"

But it is not for servants to ask. It is not for servants to ask. Years and years ago, that was the verse that sent me to some little old ladies in my neighborhood: little old ladies, one blind, one lame, one halt, one was deaf, one had heart trouble. And I remember as I began this ministry as a missionary to these little handful of little old ladies, saying, "Is this what missionary work is all about? God, I want to speak to the kids."

But I came to Adonai, Lord, who told me to go and tell this people, my neighbors, about Jesus. These were my neighbors. And you know, the mission field is between your own two feet, and that's just where you and I have to start: with our neighbors, where we are, with what we've got, not what we wish we had. And so I began with three little old ladies, and I began in sheer obedience because He's the master and I'm the servant.

And then the lady with the heart trouble had a heart attack and hopefully went home to heaven. And then the lady that was blind told me she wouldn't come out at night. I could never understand that. I mean, she lived in the dark; why couldn't she come out in it? But it was an excuse, which left me with the deaf lady. And so I screamed into this poor little deaf lady's ear Bible verses week after week after week. And I tell you, it was so ridiculous, I felt like Sarah laughing in my tent. It was so silly. How could life come out of this?

But He was El Shaddai. He brings life out of deadness. And one day that little deaf old lady alerted me to the fact that she'd heard more than physically what I was saying. The next week she came back with a friend, and then another friend, then another friend, and in the end I was buried under 80 little old ladies. By this time God had worked a miracle in my heart and I loved little old ladies. Starting off with not liking them at all, God worked the miracle.

They became my grandmothers, and my mothers, and my encouragers when my husband was away. They looked after my children, sent me little love notes, and baked me bread. And one day one of them said to me, "Wish our daughters could hear you, Jill." So I said, "Well, bring them." Well, they were about 60 or 70, so we were moving in the right direction. And then one day those daughters said to me, "Wish our kids could hear you." And God gave me my kids.

But He didn't give me my kids until I'd been faithful with one little old deaf lady for weeks and months. It took me an hour to go and pick her up from where she lived and an hour to go and take her home again. And I had to get a babysitter both ends to do it, and my husband wasn't there to help, and it was not easy. It was not easy to do. But God taught me that He's Adonai and I'm the master. And I had said, "Here am I, send me," and He said, "Go and tell this people." It was not for me to question and it was not for me to argue.

And that's what it means to be a servant. When we say we're going to be a servant, that's what it takes. Jeremiah, that timid man—Jeremiah was a very timid man—was approached by God who told him to go and do incredible things that were going to bring an awful lot of suffering and trouble into his life. And then God says to him this: "Don't be afraid of their faces." He was a man that was actually afraid of people's faces. Have you ever been afraid of people's faces?

Faces can be very, very frightening things. I mean, they're attached to bodies, I know that, but that's the bit you look at and the bit that scowls or frowns or glowers or has tight lips. Or the face of a hostile teenager: are you afraid of these children's faces? You've got to discipline them, and you're frightened they'll never love you again. And you're afraid of their face when you say to them, "No, you can't go. I'm sorry. That's how it is."

Are you afraid of the face of your neighbor when you knock on the door and say, "There's a super Bible study that I go to and I'd love you to come with me"? Are you afraid of a face that's way off, afraid of rejection in a face? Jeremiah was afraid of a face, and God begins to reason with him, and Jeremiah starts to give all these excuses: "I'm a little child. I can't speak." And then Adonai speaks to him. And Jeremiah responds and says, "Lord, Adonai, I'll go."

And sometimes it's that aspect of God's character alone that's going to get us to do what we have to do. Next time you don't want to do something you know you've got to do, get on your knees and use this term: "Oh Lord, Adonai, I'll do it." I mean, what else can you say if you acknowledge Him to be your Lord? You have to do it. You haven't got an option. You know, it's such a relief when you realize you haven't got an option and all you've got to do is find out what God wants you to do and do it.

Anybody can be obedient. You can, I can, the world can. It just means you do what you're told. Now, faith's another question. Faith's hard. Trust is hard. To trust that my children will make it spiritually is a hard thing. To trust that God answers my prayer, that's a hard thing. I find faith very hard. Other people find faith easy and discipline, obedience, hard. I happen to find obedience to be very obvious. Somebody tells me to do something, I can do it. I might not want to do it, I might not feel like doing it, but I can do it, and so can you.

And when I come to this word "Lord," I know that's what it's telling me to do. But to soften all of that, you come up with this husband and wife picture. For the title not only brings to mind the picture of a master and a slave, but the picture of a husband and a wife. "Thy maker is thy husband." Jeremiah 3:14: "I am married to you, saith the Lord." Jeremiah 31, verse 32: "I was a husband unto them," God speaking. Isaiah says, "As a bride rejoices over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee."

And so, if we're beginning to think, "Well, if God's just a big old lord sitting up there and I'm just a poor little slave, doesn't sound much fun being a Christian," maybe it isn't much fun sometimes. Remember that it's an awful lot of fun being married to the right man. It's a wonderful, wonderful gift of God, a good marriage. And if you think of yourself in terms spiritually as married to God, as He the husband and we the wife—and that's the picture in the New Testament too: Christ and His Church, the bride, the bridegroom and the bride. It's a beautiful picture right there in Scripture.

In Ezekiel 16, there is an allegory of an unfaithful wife. And again, we don't have time to read it. You should read that. It's a passage that I have only, I think, ever read once in my life until this week. And as I just spent a little time in there, it is an incredible story. It's an allegory that the prophet uses to explain what God feels like when His wife, us, is unfaithful, when we play the harlot, when we become people that prostitute our relationship and make merchandise our God, or we go after other gods.

Money, our god; wealth, it says, you've prostituted yourself for wealth. Any other god we make our husband, we are married to, we are giving to, we are submitting to, then we're in trouble. And the heart of Adonai, our heavenly husband, is wrenched with hurt. And as you read that passage in Ezekiel, you'll see that. It's an allegory of an unfaithful wife, and it's all about Adonai, the Lord, our husband, and the unfaithful wife Israel, and you can put yourself in there and ask yourself some questions: "Am I being unfaithful to God? Am I doing the sort of things that my heavenly husband would like me to do or am I not?"

Verse 32 of that chapter says, "You adulterous wife, you prefer strangers to your own husband." Now, I had to ask myself, is that true of me? Am I a spiritually adulterous wife, and do I prefer strangers to my own husband? That's a hard question to answer. We are to be faithful to our marriage covenant down here on earth because it is a picture, or it should be to an unbelieving world, of our covenant with our heavenly God, our Adonai, our master.

In fact, in 1 Peter 3, when Sarah is being described in her submissive attitude to her lord, her Adonai—there's the word again—we read about the sort of attitude that we should have: the quiet and submissive spirit to our heavenly husband, faithful to our heavenly marriage covenant, loving the Lord with all our heart and all our mind and all our strength.

So, when you read "Lord," read "Adonai" and ask yourself a question: "Am I a willing slave? Am I saying I love my master, I will not go out free?" And then ask yourself another question: "If my maker is my husband, what sort of a wife am I? What sort of a wife am I?"

Now let's begin to look at the second word "Lord" in our Bibles. And this is the word that's used 6,823 times in the Old Testament: Jehovah, Yahweh. From the Hebrew word H-A-V-A-H, to be or to have being, to be self-able to be without being dependent on any power or energy to exist. We are dependent on this being part of God to live. Our very life is in His hands, our breath is in His hands.

We, as I've often said, are just little dust people with dust minds and dust bodies and dust lives. But God dignified dust with divinity. He breathed into dust and man became a living soul. And the way that we enjoy that life proves something: that that life has come from somewhere. We are so dependent. I was thinking about this the other day when I had to go to sleep. I mean, I have to go to sleep every night. Every night I have to go to sleep.

Do you have to go to sleep every night? I mean, just occasionally you miss a night. When I'm traveling from here to the other side of the world or to Europe, I miss a night's sleep, and it takes you, they say, a whole week to really get your body and your whole self around from missing one night's sleep. And sometimes I think I just don't like going to sleep. I don't want to go to sleep. And I'm going to try and stay awake for a whole week; I could get so much more done if I didn't have to sleep.

Then I could catch up if I could just stay awake a whole week. Imagine. I can't, and nor can you. Every single one of us is so totally dependent in all the littlest, most unusual and normal ways. God is not dependent on anyone or anything. In fact, He neither slumbers nor sleeps. I will remember having trouble sleeping because I was worrying and I was full of anxiety about my children, back in those turbulent days of our kids when they were teenagers.

And I remember that verse coming to me: "God neither slumbers nor sleeps." So there's no point in both of us staying awake. I may as well go to sleep and let Him do the rest, do the watching, do the keeping. No point both of us staying awake. We are dependent. God is not dependent. And this word "Jehovah," Lord, capital letters, distinguishes the mastership and husbandship of God from the self-existence of God.

Guest (Male): Jehovah, Yahweh.

Jill Briscoe: All these are different aspects of God's character that we're thinking about and brings us face to face with perhaps the most important aspect in the whole of the Bible. The word Jehovah brings God down to our personal level. And just as a preview of what we're going to get into, because we're going to stay with this name for the rest of the series, the compound names of Jehovah are going to take us into all sorts of places in the Bible, all sorts of incidents, as we see how God revealed Himself in different ways.

But this name was revealed to the patriarchs, but the significance of it was not understood. And just as we end this session, turn with me to Exodus chapter 6. "The Lord said to Moses, 'Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh. Because of my mighty hand, he will let the people go.'" Verse 1, this is. "God also said to Moses," verse 2, "I am Jehovah." See the capital letters? "I am Jehovah. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as"—who?

Guest (Male): El Shaddai.

Jill Briscoe: God Almighty. Now we know why He did that. "But by my name Jehovah, I did not make myself known to them." Okay? Now, there's your statement. This is an unveiling of the character of God from Genesis right the way through until Jesus stands there and says, "Look at me, and you're looking at God." And as the men began to get to know God, He would appear to them in different ways at different times and tell them a little bit more about Himself, you see.

And so now here He is saying to Moses, "Now, they knew that my name was Jehovah because the name Jehovah was used in Genesis 2 and 3." Both the serpent and Eve spoke of God as Elohim before the fall. That's the only way they knew Him: the great Creator transcendent God. And they almost spoke of Him as though He were absent. When the serpent came to Eve and they had that conversation, Eve was talking about Elohim as absent: that He comes and walks with us in the cool of the day, but He's not here now.

Whenever you read about Jehovah, you think of Him as present. And He's introduced to Moses in Exodus 3 as Moses stops at the burning bush and God speaks to him and sends him to Pharaoh. Moses says, "Who shall I say has sent me? Elohim, the mighty God?" And God says, "No, Jehovah. I am that great I Am. I am the one who exists without having anyone else to help me to do so. I am the one who is, not the one who was or will be, but the I Am, the same yesterday, today, and forever. You tell him Jehovah sent you."

Guest (Male): Jehovah.

Jill Briscoe: And He told Moses to do that for a very special reason, because Jehovah is the name that speaks of redemption and that speaks of the bringing out of people who are in bondage. The beautiful picture that the Old Testament paints for us, a picture that you and I can find ourselves right there, because we're in the bondage of sin, we're bound, we're suffering because of it. And yet somebody came and brought us out of it. Who was that?

Guest (Male): Jehovah.

Jill Briscoe: It was Jehovah that Jacob heard about as he looked up into heaven and he saw a ladder. And at the top of him, transcendent, was Elohim. But who came down the ladder?

Guest (Male): Jehovah.

Jill Briscoe: It's Jehovah that comes down the ladder from heaven to earth, to a cross, and to my heart.

Guest (Male): Elohim... Jehovah.

Jill Briscoe: And that's the person that we're going to be studying from now on in, or that aspect, the Jehovah aspect of this great and mighty God, this Elohim, this El Elyon, this El Olam, this El Shaddai, this Adonai, this Jehovah.

Guest (Male): Jehovah... Elohim, El Elyon, El Olam, El Shaddai, Adonai, Jehovah.

Jill Briscoe: Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the precious ways You reveal who You are to us. For as we find out who You are and what You're like, then we can get to know You better. And we praise You for Your Scripture and how it clearly teaches us through many, many diverse ways the character of God. And we thank You today for teaching us that You are our Adonai. May we be obedient servants to Thee. May we not only be obedient servants, may we be loving wives to Thee, for Thou art our maker, our husband.

And Lord, as we begin to try and understand and grapple with our little dust minds the meaning of the word Jehovah, I pray that You will enlighten by Your Spirit our spiritual understanding. Help me to teach clearly and simply the great truths of God in this regard. And may we have listening ears indeed of a servant, ready to hear and ready to obey. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.