Observation: As Ezekiel begins his true, outward prophesy, he is instructed to act out the Lord's judgment against Israel and Judah. He spends over 14 months laying on the ground, 'laying siege' to a model of Jerusalem and eating rationed bread and water, and he shaves his head and beard then discards the hair in a number of ways. Throughout all this, he uses a specific name for the Lord, "Sovereign Lord".
This name is used 282 times in the entire bible, and 210 of those are by Ezekiel (of course I had to look that up). The Hebrew is also two words - "Adonai Yahweh" - which kinda translates "Lord Lord", however has a much deeper meaning for the Jews. Yahweh is the holy and unspeakable name of God, the 'Great I Am' ... the name he revealed to Moses. Because the Jews feared speaking it and thus breaking the commandment of using it in vain, the Hebrew word they use to mean "Lord" is Adonai, which means Lord or Master, and became the most-holy name of God actually spoken by the Jews. (Side note: While it's confusing due to how spellings changed over the centuries, the name Jehovah is actually a mash-up of taking the Tetragrammaton YHWH and mixing in the vowels from Adonai ... and some to this day consider the proper full spelling of the Tetragrammaton to be Yahowah.)
By using the phrase Sovereign Lord - Adonai Yahweh - over and over, the Lord is making a point to the Jews who are now in exile. It doesn't matter what the Jews call the Lord, he is their sovereign master, their Lord and God, and the one in complete and total authority. While these are the names of great reverence toward the Lord, some may revere one of these names over the other, and that doesn't matter ... he is both, he is all, he is truly the authority over the entire world, and he was always worthy of the devotion and obedience they failed to show him.
Application: One of the most amazing things about God ... the almighty creator of the universe who has all power and authority ... is that, when he reveals himself to people, he does so in a way they can receive. For the Jews in exile, who were now facing hardship and were likely to want to return to the Lord with humble reverence, he presented himself using both of his most reverent names ... the one he declared for himself, and the one the Jews adopted over 900 years.
He didn't correct them by declaring he was one name or the other, or confuse them by giving himself even a new name that would apply to their current issues. If they were now going to live as exiles, seeking to be reverent toward him while in the midst of living in a foreign land, he was willing to simply reveal himself as that Sovereign Lord they needed.
This is probably why the Lord has given the name Abba to me so often for himself. I would be crushed in my iniquity if I knew him only as the Sovereign Lord of the universe who had every right to curse and condemn me. Instead, he allows me to know him as my daddy who loves me. I don't always remember that, and I need to.
Prayer: Abba, my Lord and my father, I need you. I need you to take me in your arms and tell me I'm going to be okay. Looking back, I know I'm down right now, lower than I have been in years, and it feels like that's not a current condition but a trajectory. Please help me. Please pick me back up. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment