“God has not only inspired the pages whereon His names appear, but He has announced or revealed His names specifically to men with special reference to the meaning of these names.”
Lewis Sperry Chafer
This week, we are studying the names Adonai and Jehovah. As we track the revelation of God’s names in the life of Abraham, Adonai is first used in Genesis 15:2 when Abram refers to God as “Lord” (Adonai). Adonai literally means “Lord” or “Master” and refers to the supreme authority or power of God (Zodhiates, CWSB H136). Similar to Elohim, Adonai is plural, indicating the plurality of the triune God.
In our study of El Elyon, we observed that God is the Possessor of heaven and earth (Genesis 14:19). Since He owns everything, we must acknowledge His Lordship over all that He created, including us. “Adonai is more than a name, it speaks of a relationship” (preceptaustin), and the response we should have as His bondservants. God’s total possession requires our total submission. Abraham could never have known God’s sufficiency as El Shaddai until he bowed to Him as Adonai.
The Greek word for Adonai is kurios, which signifies sovereign power, supreme authority, and absolute ownership. “In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to less than 20 times as Savior (soter) and over 700 times as Lord (kurios)! When these two titles are mentioned together, Lord always precedes Savior” (preceptaustin). We don’t make Jesus Lord, He already is! We have the opportunity to confess Him as Lord, acknowledging His rightful ownership of every detail of our lives. One day, at the final judgment, “every knee will bow, of those who are of heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11 NASB95).
Glorifying God involves both confessing and bowing to Him as Lord. In the Philippians 2 passage mentioned above, it is not just the confession of the tongue but the bowing of the knee that God ultimately requires! Have we bowed to Christ as Lord? Not just in salvation, but in everyday surrender.
“‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
Matthew 15:8 (NLT)
Jesus said, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46 NASB95). He then proceeded to tell the story of the wise and foolish builders. I had never seen this story in its proper context until I studied it. When our lives do not acknowledge Christ’s Lordship, Jesus compares it to the foolish builder who built his house on the sand. When the rains came and the wind blew, the house immediately collapsed and great was its fall. However, the wise builder “dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock” (Luke 6:48 NLT). When the floods and winds came, that house stood firm and could not be shaken because it was built on the rock.
Have we built our lives on God’s Word, or do we merely pay lip service to it? This is something we must consider. When faced with a storm of life (and there will be many), it will be obvious what foundation we’ve built on. The foundation should be Christ, and the only way to build on Him is by hearing and heeding His Word. John 14:15 says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (NASB95). The word “keep” means to carefully observe and watch over (Zodhiates, CWSB 5083). Do we take the time to guard and carefully observe His Word? Jesus is the Living Word. As bondservants to Adonai, we should take every part of His Word seriously. Anything less forfeits revival. To truly experience Him, we must desire to know Him through His Word (James 1:22).
“The truth about Adonai is directly opposed to the modern self-centered mindset, which in deception and delusion proclaims, ‘I am the master of my own fate, the author of my own destiny,’ the age-old lie pawned off by the devil” (preceptaustin). We are not the masters of our lives; Jesus is! Bowing to Him as Adonai involves obedience to His Word. But we can’t do this in and of our own strength! We need His grace to do through us what we could never do on our own. This grace is beautifully expressed in the name Jehovah, which means “the Self-existent One (synonymous with Yahweh). He is not just sufficient to meet our every need; He is the source within Himself to meet that need.
Both Adonai and Jehovah are mostly translated as “Lord” in the Old Testament, with one differentiating factor between the two. Adonai is translated as Lord (capital L combined with lower-case letters), and Jehovah is translated LORD (all caps). Recognizing “Lord” as Adonai and “LORD” as Jehovah lends the reading of Scripture greater depth and meaning. The name Jehovah/LORD is used at least 6000 times in the Bible, its first occurrence in Genesis 2:4. However, it isn’t until Exodus that God gives the definition of His name when the Angel of the LORD (pre-incarnate Christ) appeared to Moses in a “blazing fire from the midst of a bush” (Exodus 3:2a NASB95).
“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’; and He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ “
Exodus 3:14 NASB95
Alexander Maclaren beautifully connects God’s self-revelation with the burning bush, writing:
“That is to say, the fire that burns and does not burn out, which has no tendency to destruction in its very energy, and is not consumed by its own activity, is surely a symbol of the One Being, whose being derives its law and its soure from itself, who can only say, ‘I AM THAT I AM.’ You and I have to say, ‘I AM THAT WHICH I HAVE BECOME,’ or ‘I AM THAT WHICH I WAS BORN,’ or ‘I AM THAT WHICH CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE MADE ME.’ He says, ‘I AM THAT I AM.’ All other creatures are links; this is the staple from which they all hang. All other being is derived, and therefore limited and changeful; this being is underived, absolute, self-dependent, and therefore unalterable forevermore. Because we live, we die. In living, the process is going on of which death is the end. But God lives forevermore, a flame that does not burn out; therefore, His resources are inexhaustible, His power unwearied. he needs no rest for recuperation of wasted energy. His gifts diminish not the store which He has to bestow. He gives and is none the poorer. He works and is never weary. He operates unspent; He loves and He loves forever. And through the ages, the fire burns on, unconsumed and undecayed.” (preceptaustin emphasis added).
What a gorgeous picture this gives us of the meaning of Jehovah. He is not only the source of physical life (Acts 17:28a), but also the source of spiritual life. He not only gives us the grace and power to follow Him, but He also promises to accomplish His purposes in us as we yield to Him.
In Exodus 6:3, God said something interesting to Moses. “I am the LORD [Jehovah]; and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by My name, LORD [Jehovah], I did not make Myself known to them” (NASB95 emphasis added). “The patriarchs knew God as the Maker of the covenant. Moses and the generation of the Exodus would know God as the One who fulfilled the covenant.” Although they were familiar with the name Jehovah (it is used around 160 times in Genesis), they had not come to know the application of the name, which refers to God who keeps and fulfills His covenant (Guzik, Ex. 6:3).
Jesus also referred to Himself as the I Am numerous times in the New Testament (i.e. the seven I Am statements in John: Bread of Life in John 6:32-35; LIght of the World in John 8:12; the Door in John 10:7-10; the Good Shepherd in John 10:11-16; the Resurrection and the Life in John 11:25-27; the True Vine in John 15:1-8; and the Way, the Truth & the Life in John 14:6).
“One of the most breathtaking occasions when Jesus claimed equality with the Father was when He said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am’ (John 8:58). The sentence immediately challenges our attention because of the extraordinary liberty it takes with our grammar. If the Lord Jesus had merely wanted to express His pre-existence, He would surely have said, ‘Before Abraham was, I was,’ but He says, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.'” (Roy Hession, We Would See Jesus).
Roy goes on to say, “He is the ever-present One, [self-existent] who stands outside of time, to whom there is no past or future, but to whom everything is present. Clearly, that is the first meaning of this strange mixture of tenses: ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’ And this surely is what eternity is – not merely elongated time, but another realm altogether where everything is one glorious present.”
The very name of Jesus is a derivative of Jehovah! The construction of Jesus’ name is: Je (from Je-hovah) and Sus, meaning salvation. Thus, Jesus’ name means Jehovah Saves, or I Am your Salvation!
“The special revelation which this name gives is that of the grace of God. ‘I Am’ is an unfinished sentence. It has no object. I am – what? Great is our wonder when we discover, as we continue with our Bibles, that He is saying, ‘I AM whatever My people need,’ and that this sentence is purposefully left blank so that man may bring his many and various needs, as they arise, to complete it! Do we lack peace?[ He is our peace.] Do we lack strength? [He is our strength.] Do we lack spiritual life? [He is our life]. Do we lack wisdom? [He is our wisdom.] Just as water always seeks the lowest depths in order to fill them, so is Jehovah always seeking out man’s need in order to satisfy it. Where there is a need, there is God. Where there is sorrow, misery, unhappiness, suffering, confusion, folly, oppression, there is the I AM, yearning to turn man’s sorrow into bliss whenever man will let Him” (Roy Hession, We Would See Jesus).
Jehovah (like Elohim) is a proper name of God, defining Him as the Source. All the other names describe His attributes. When we surrender to Him, we can experience His sufficiency. This post can’t fully express the wonder of His name, but I hope it has encouraged you to intentionally seek Him in every aspect of your life, even more than you already do. What a great salvation we have in Jehovah, the Great I Am.
“Grace, being what it is, is always drawn by need…It is God’s way of revealing Himself. Apart from our need, He is ‘I am that I am,’ but as He is allowed to become the fulfillment of our need, He is seen for what He really is. That is why a mere academic understanding of the things of God is never the way to see Him and to know Him. It is when we come to Him with our needs that then “thou shalt know that I am Jehovah.”
Roy Hession, We Would See Jesus
Week 3 Reflections
- Read the following passages and note the extent of Adonai’s Lordship: Deuteronomy 9:26; Psalm 37:12-13; Psalm 97:5; Psalm 114:7; Psalm 135:5; Matthew 7:21-23; (follow up to Matthew 7 – read John 6:40).
- Psalm 8 uses both Jehovah (LORD) and Adonai [Lord]. Note David’s response to God as Jehovah and Adonai in this chapter.
- Read Psalm 16. What should our response be to God as Jehovah and Adonai? How does this compare with 1 Peter 3:15 and Matthew 6:19-24?
- Read the following passages and note what Jesus is Lord of: Luke 10:2; Luke 6:5; Acts 10:36; Romans 14:9; 1 Corinthians 2:8; 2 Thess. 3:16; Rev. 19:16; Rev. 11:4.
- Read Exodus 3:1-15 and 6:2-6. How did God reveal Himself to Moses as Jehovah?
- Make a list of the attributes of Jehovah, the I AM, seen in the following passages: Colossians 1:15-19; Isaiah 41:4; Lev. 11:44; Psalm 11:7; Malachi 3:6; Isaiah 58:11; Lamentations 3:21-25; Hebrews 13:5; Psalm 34:1-8; Psalm 9:9-10; Exodus 34:5-7
Journal Prompts
Are you glorifying God by bowing to Him as Adonai in your daily life? Is there anything you have not surrendered to Him? Are you just giving Him lip service? He longs to have close communion with you as your Adonai, but this relationship requires you to bow to Him as Lord. Are you trying to get love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control out of your own strength? Have you ever realized that Jehovah IS these things? Have you let Christ be Himself in you? Take some time to pray and ask God to forgive you for the times you’ve tried to obey Him out of your own strength. We must be empty of ourselves for Him to fill us with all He is. Surrender afresh to Him today!
Resources
Wayne Barber’s audio sermon “Paul, A Man God that God can Use!” (Romans 1:1)
Simply Persuaded 