Elohim

Well, Happy New Year in person. I know you heard from us on video last week, but this is the first time I’ve been able to stand before you on a Sunday morning in the new year and wish you all the blessings of the new year. I’m so thankful again to the church for praying for us during our trip to Indiana. We experienced the presence of God and were able to learn a lot of things. Hopefully, in the weeks and months to come, we’ll be able to put those things into practice and continue to do the work of the Lord, being part of the work the Lord is doing around the world.

It was so encouraging to see how God is moving so powerfully. Sometimes we kind of live in a bubble, not seeing what is going on, especially in Africa, Asia, and parts of the world where the church is growing by leaps and bounds. But just as much as the church is growing, the need of the hour is very great. We left Indiana fully inspired and very convicted in our hearts to continue to pursue the heart of God. We pray that the young men and women, including myself and all of you, will become greater ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ in the years and decades to come.

I want to thank the church for praying. Thank you for all the guests that are here this morning. We welcome you to our church, and especially with this new schedule, thank you for adjusting to it. We really appreciate you bearing with us throughout all the changes we’ve been making, and we pray that God will continue to bless each one of you. I have more announcements towards the end, but one thing very quickly I want to point out is that yesterday we started our 21 days of fasting and prayer as youth and young adults.

This means giving up a meal. Some might be fasting entirely for that whole day, some might be giving up social media for the day, some might be turning off the television for a day, and some might be putting their smartphones away for a day. These are all various ways to fast before the Lord. A lot of times, we think of fasting just as food and water, but that’s not really all what fasting is. Fasting is giving up anything that is very near and dear to your heart. I’m letting them pick what they want to fast from. As parents, you know what’s very near and dear, so ask them to put that away, fast, and pray. Every night, we’ll have a prayer on Zoom, Monday through Thursday. Then on the weekends, we’ll come together to worship the Lord. For the next 21 days, we’ll be waiting upon the Lord, fasting, and praying. We pray that God will bless this time together, just like we did last year as well.

So, what is in a name? That is a famous question that Juliet asked of Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet.” What is in a name? Oftentimes, I have been asked, maybe because I’m from India, “What is the meaning of your name?” The problem is that I have no idea. I don’t think it has any kind of meaning at all. In fact, I only know of one other person that shares the same name as me, and I only know one other person, who is kind of famous and is a sports writer, who shares the same name as me. Even in India, my name is very unique. So, to the people that ask me, “Why are you named Sanil?” The only answer I can give is this: I was born during a time in which our parents loved to make all the names rhyme. So if you have Sajan as the firstborn, Saji as the second, then it doesn’t make sense to name you Sunil, which would have been a very common name. You have to name him SunSanilil so that Sajan, Saji, and Sanil all rhyme together. See, my name absolutely has no meaning, and it does not mean anything at all. But I’m thankful for the name that the Lord has given to me in my life.

Names sometimes mean a lot. You all know the famous actor John Wayne. If you watch the old western movies, John Wayne is a very popular figure. He’s going around shooting people, conquering, and putting towns under his control. But do you know that he was not born as John Wayne? His name was Marian Michael Morrison. If you wanted to be an action hero, if you wanted to be someone that people looked at as this great, strong person, “Marian” doesn’t quite cut it. So, he changed his name to John Wayne. Names mean something, and the way you have names communicates a lot.

Do you know that in 1977, fish merchant Lee Lands traveled to Chile and discovered a fish that was known by the locals as “toothfish?” The locals wouldn’t eat that fish because they thought it was too oily. Thirty years later, the Americans took hold of the toothfish, changed its name, and almost every single person here has eaten it. On your restaurant menu, it’s called the “Chilean Bass,” and we pay $25-30 a plate to eat it. Why? If it’s called “toothfish,” you wouldn’t order it. But if it’s called “Chilean Bass,” it becomes more appetizing to your palate. Names make all the difference in the world.

Canadians discovered oil from a plant, but the name of the plant was so unfortunate. It was called “rapeseed.” Nobody wants to buy oil from rapeseed. So, in 1988, the FDA took the oil from the rapeseed plant and changed its name to “canola oil.” All of us buy it because “rapeseed oil” just doesn’t cut it. And what about the prune? The problem with the name “prune” is that it brings to mind laxatives. So, companies like Costco changed the name to “dried plum,” and sales skyrocketed. Names make all the difference.

I could keep going. The “Chinese gooseberry” doesn’t sound appetizing, but if I tell you it’s a “kiwi fruit,” you’ll buy it. The “bony fish of Hawaii” doesn’t sound great, but you’ve ordered “mahi-mahi,” which used to be the bony fish of Hawaii. Names make all the difference in the world. 

So, what is in a name? It makes all the difference. Lord willing, for the next several months, I’ll be focusing on a new series known as “I AM” on the names of God. Because unlike my name, the name of God matters. The way God communicates to us in his scriptures and what he calls himself makes all the difference in the world. God does not have a name. He had to give himself names to make himself known to us. He chooses several names in the pages of scriptures to communicate to us. We want to go through most of the names that God has mentioned about himself in God’s word.

What does it teach to us about God? How does it relate to our lives today? What does it communicate to us about the nature of God? That’s what we’ll try to do in the next coming weeks. Also, we read the names of God because if we turn your Bibles to Psalm 9:7-10, this is what God’s word says to us. 

Psalm 9:7-10 reads: “The Lord reigns forever; He has established His throne for judgment. He will judge the world in righteousness; He will govern the peoples with justice. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.” Look at verse 10, the key words: “Those who know your name will trust in you.”

That is why we are seeking to know the name of God. It is my prayer that each one of us, me included, as we learn more about our God through the names it has communicated to us, our trust in Him will grow. Because God’s word says, “Those who know your name, they will trust in you.” 

The first one we’ll be focusing on today is found in the first verse in your Bible, which is Genesis 1:1. God’s word reads, “In the beginning, God (Elohim) created the heavens and the Earth.”

You often hear me say this, but I love the beauty of God’s word. Moses is writing this hundreds of years later after this had already happened in the wilderness. He is writing this accompanied by thousands of people who are wondering where they’re going, what is going to happen to the future. The Holy Spirit inspires him to write the first word in God’s word: “In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the Earth.”

Look at the way it is written. There are a lot of things that this verse communicates that dash away every other philosophy in the world. It tells us that “in the beginning,” it doesn’t specify what time it was. Why? Because there was no time before Genesis 1:1. 

There was no time before that. At a time when there was no such thing known as time, Elohim, a god, created. This means out of nothing came something. And not only that, the heavens and the Earth were created by Him. This means the Earth as you know it, the universe as you know it, the heavens as we look up to the stars and the multitudes of galaxies that we sang about and talked about, the billions of them, did not exist before this act of Elohim. We do not know when this is. This could have been billions and billions of years ago or, as some people say, maybe six thousand or seven thousand years ago. Whatever the case might be, I don’t think you can prove from God’s word exactly when the beginning was. That is not my point here. Whether you are a young Earth believer or one who believes that the Earth and all the universes are millions of years old, I don’t think it contradicts God’s word. 

But Elohim, at a time we do not know, created the heavens and the Earth. And not only that, it tells us that He is the one who created time. There was no time before this. There was no space before it. By logical consistency, it makes absolutely perfect sense that only a being who is outside of time, only a being who is not limited by space, could create time and space. And we call Him the Elohim of God’s word.

Some people try to prove the Trinity by this word “Elohim.” I think that is a little bit of a stretch. The word “Elohim” is a plural word. Let me explain that to you. If you say the word “cherub,” you’re talking about one angel. But when you say “cherubim,” you’re talking about a multitude of angels. If you use the word “Seraph,” you’re talking about one kind of angel. If you add the word “im” to the end of it, “seraphim,” you’re talking about a multitude of angels. Just like that, “El” is the name of a single god. When you add “ohim” to the end of it, it becomes plural in nature. Some Trinitarians will look at this and say that God was communicating to us even in the early passages that, even though God is one, He exists as three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

Elohim created the heavens and the Earth. And this word is found in plenty in Genesis 1. More than any other chapter in God’s word, 35 times “Elohim” is repeated over and over again in Genesis 1. In the entire Bible, “Elohim” is repeated 2,500 times. 

When you come to Genesis 2 and you start from verse 4, the writer, Moses, changes the name of God. Suddenly he adds the word “Ja” or “Yah” to Elohim, making it more personal. Why? The focus of Genesis 1 is this: God is the almighty creator of the universe, the omnipotent one, the almighty God who, beyond time and space, created everything by the power of His word. That’s the emphasis of Genesis 1. That is why the word “Elohim” is repeated over and over again in God’s word.

Why is it important to us that God created everything? If you’ve been listening to me over the course of these many years, you know how strongly I feel about it. I think this is foundational to your Christian faith. If you falter on this one teaching of God’s word, that God is the creator of everything, then everything else will fall apart. You cannot, you cannot, you cannot be a believer and not believe in the fact that God created everything out of nothing because everything else falls apart if you don’t have that foundational teaching in place. Oh, how beautifully God has created everything! Oh, how beautifully God has created everything!

The other day, I was thinking, “What if this question was asked: Would life on Earth exist if trees were not around?” In fact, we were coming up here and we saw a tree that has almost all its leaves gone, right in front of our church. We looked at it and thought it looks kind of ugly the way that tree is, but then we started thinking: these inanimate, almost lifeless objects, trees, what do they mean for our life? You know very well, if you study your science, that if they are not there to take away the carbon dioxide and give out the life-giving oxygen, our life would not survive on the face of the Earth. We owe our very existence to the trees around us.

When you study the Earth and the way it’s formed, the way God created it, it’s absolutely beautiful. God made water to freeze and boil at just the right temperature, between -460 degree Fahrenheit and boiling at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 672 degrees on this scale of how hot and cold it can get. But if water froze just four percent of that range lower, it would rain at six degrees below zero. Where there are now vast fields of snow and ice storing water against the heat of summer, there would be winter floods and erosion. Everything would change if that was the case.

God knew that the ocean should not freeze at 32 degrees, or there would be too much ice. So, you know what God did? He added salt to the ocean water so it would not freeze at 32 degrees, in just the right proportion. So that all the fish, which are greater in number than the animals on land, could sustain their life in salt water, in just the right amount. Who decided that amount? Who decided how much salt to add? We cannot even decide how much salt to add to our food. But God decided how much salt to add to 70% of the water covering the whole world. Can you imagine?

Yet, He designed the water cycle in such a way that when it rains, it’s not salt that pours on you. Ever thought about that? It is the water from the ocean that goes through the water cycle and it is the one that falls on you. What if the water from the rain had salt in it? Just stop and think. God made it all happen in a finely-tuned way. He balanced all the seasons to make sure food is available not only for us but for every single animal in the food chain. God regulated everything so perfectly. It is not a matter of chance.

In fact, one of the great writers, Philip Johnson, says, “I don’t want to bore you with a lot of detail about the chance that even a single cell could come by chance. If I were to show that number, it would be astronomical. But those numbers don’t mean anything.” He quotes from a metaphor by Fred Hoyle by saying, “A living organism emerging by chance from a Prebiotic soup is about as likely as a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” Let me repeat that: A junkyard. A tornado hits the junkyard, sweeps everything up in the air, and after a while, you look up, and there’s a Boeing 747 flying through the sky. If you can believe that, then you can believe in the theory of evolution and stake your eternity upon a mindless philosophy that does not stand up to any logical or rational thinking. The brain that God has given you knows that everything is fine-tuned because Elohim created the heavens and the earth. That’s why we worship Him.

Psalm 68 is a very special Psalm in God’s word. Do you know why? In that Psalm alone, God’s name, Elohim, is repeated more than 26 different times. Let’s look through some verses in Psalm 68. Psalm 68:3 says, “May the righteous be glad and rejoice before Elohim; may they be happy and joyful. Sing to Elohim, sing in praise of his name; extol him who rides on the clouds. Rejoice before him—his name is Adonai.” So, the psalmist is saying that we, as children of God, should come before Elohim and worship Him. Why? Because He rides on the clouds. This imagery signifies that He controls everything. He is in charge of everything. Everything came from His power. But He also controls everything. Here’s the good news from God’s word: This Elohim, the great Creator, the Almighty God, is also a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows. That’s what makes this God so amazing.

Anyone can talk about a God who is distant, who made everything. At Urbana, one thing we heard from all the Muslims who are now believers is that in Islam, you are told very clearly that Allah cannot be known, nor is Allah interested in knowing you. A Muslim would say it’s impossible to know God, nor does Allah care about you. But the God of the Bible, the Elohim who created everything, does not forget the fatherless or the widow. He defends them. This Elohim, even in his holy dwellings, is near to the heart of every human. The psalmist continues in Psalm 68:6, “Elohim sets the lonely in families.” He finds homes for the homeless and leads out the prisoners with singing. But Elohim also ensures that the rebellious and ungodly are judged.

In Genesis 48:15, Jacob, in his final words, blesses Joseph, saying, “May the Elohim before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully, the Elohim who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, bless you.” How many of you can say that this morning? That God, the Elohim, the mighty creator of the universe, has been the shepherd of your life, the provider of your life, to this very day? The psalmist ends Psalm 68 in verse 35, saying, “You, Elohim, are awesome in your sanctuary. The Elohim of Israel gives power and strength to his people. Praise be to Elohim.” That’s what God calls us to do. Don’t live your life as just a bunch of molecules or as if you’re here by chance. Your life has purpose and meaning.

God created you. God has a purpose for you. God cares for you. God is concerned for you. Even when everyone will turn away from you, God will not turn away from you. He is the great Shepherd of your life, the master of your soul, the commander of everything that you do. He is the great God, worthy of adoration, worship, and praise in your life. Elohim.

What are some things that I want to leave with you tonight?

First, our God, Elohim, is the Creator and sustainer of our life. The last several weeks have been a wake-up call for those of us living in our 30s, 40s, and 50s. We’ve seen pastors, missionaries, and evangelists, people we grew up with, passing away. You don’t have to grow old to die. You don’t need diabetes, heart disease, or high blood pressure to die. You might not even get the chance to lay in a hospital before you pass. You may never get to choose when your life ends. Recognize Elohim all the days of your life, for the God who gave you life is also the one that determines its span. The breath in your lungs is for praising Him, for He is the sustainer of your life. Medical science, doctors, or your exercise regimen doesn’t determine the length of your life. Ultimately, it is in the hands of God and God alone.

Second, our God, Elohim, is a righteous judge and a sovereign ruler of the universe. You might not always get the justice you deserve in this world, but serve Him faithfully. A day is coming when Elohim will set all things right, for He is sovereign and the righteous judge.

Lastly, our God, Elohim, is the almighty God in the heavens, yet He cares for us. Think about the testimonies of our Muslim brothers and sisters. How deeply does the God of the Bible care about us? How earnestly does He want to know and commune with us? Your concerns matter to Him; your needs matter to Him. This great God desires communion with us. But sometimes, as His children, we forget our Creator and live without acknowledging His presence. Yet, He remains gracious and merciful. There are people in this world who may not live up to their names, but the God of the Bible always lives up to His. As we explore His names in the coming weeks, I hope to impress upon you that God always lives up to His name.

I’ll end with this: in their book, “Freakonomics”, economists Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner point out that one of the first acts of parental power comes in the naming of a child. It is actually one of the acts in which the child has absolutely no say, and sometimes you feel sorry. Many believe the name carries great significance. The case of the Lane brothers may argue differently.

Back in 1958, a baby boy was born into the Lane family. His name was Robert. The father chose the name Winner, so Winner Lane. How could the young man fail to succeed with a name like Winner Lane? Even before he did anything, his father named him Winner. The Lanes had another son several years later. For reasons quite unknown, and it’s a true story, Robert, the father, named the baby boy Loser. Even before he takes one step, he is kind of against all odds. So, you have Winner Lane and Loser Lane. 

Guess who did good? Contrary to all expectations, Loser Lane succeeded. He graduated from college and later became a sergeant with the New York Police Department. His colleagues did not want to call him Loser, so they call him Lou. And what of the brother, the one they cannot misname, Winner Lane? The most noteworthy achievement of Winner Lane, now in his mid-40s, is the sheer length of his criminal record: nearly three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem. One went the total opposite direction of what his name meant. Loser Lane became a winner in life, but Winner Lane became a loser in life. These two brothers did not live up to their names. One overachieved and the other one grossly underachieved.

The God of the Bible, Elohim, never changes. Let me leave you with one thought. It is this: do you know that you would not be able to sit down today if Elohim was not on the throne of the universe? I’m not talking about life – the force of gravity. If it was 9.7 or 9.9, you would not be able to walk, you would not be able to sit. In fact, your entire skeletal system would crumble because of the lack of the proper force of gravity. How gracious is God that the majority of the people in the world do not acknowledge Him, walk as if he doesn’t exist. Yet, the Bible says he holds everything together by the power of His word, the maker of the ends of the Earth, maker of the universe. Elohim, may His name and His name alone be praised.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are our creator. We thank you that you are our righteous judge. But we thank you, O God, that in spite of who you are, the Almighty One, you still care for us, defending us, providing for us. Let your name alone always be lifted up in and through our life. We pray that you be with us, O God, as we now celebrate your suffering and your sacrifice for us on the cross. It’s in the name of the Lord Jesus that we pray.