It has been a while since I’ve given you, dear reader, any words and especially a long while since I’ve given you anything Genesis related. My family has been on the road having quite a long and busy vacation. There has been hiking, hot springs soaking, surviving temperatures in the triple digits, and more driving than anyone without a CDL should ever have to do. It has also been a joyful time of quiet and rest and joy as well. The Holy Spirit has been stirring up plenty within me causing to me to refine my focus and renew my drive. I may get to writing a fraction of it into a blog post at some point, but for now…I step on the high wire without a net and I’ll see if I can get across so that we may continue our journey into the Deep.
I’m going to start with a brief caveat. What we have before us today seems simple and straightforward. I can assure you that I am going to do my best to get it right, but I cannot help but be wrong in some aspect. God is SUCH an infinitely beautiful and complex being that even language cannot contain Him. My getting this wrong will be only through ignorant omission, not through commission. How can we talk about Him and all and be fully correct when we cannot even know the fullness of Him on this side of the veil. Rabbis once said that to hold any image of God in your mind was idolatry because it could never be accurate. Language is temporal, and I have to let that go. It is a vapor. It is the rain drop on a hot sidewalk that makes a brief mark and then is never seen again.
We will pitch our tent today in Genesis chapter 2 verse 4 where we read for the first time the phrase “the LORD God’.
This is the very first time that we read this phrase in this way. Previously it is simply “God” as if that is His name rather than the generic title of what He is. The word in Hebrew is familiar to many of us as “Elohim”. This title can be used for any god or goddess including all of the false ones. It can even be used for angels, judges, rulers and anyone considered to be godlike, which I found to be rather strange. Even the works or possessions of God could be referred to as “Elohim”. The great and the mighty of their day could be called “Elohim”. Needless to say I can hear some sacred cows tipping over in the background, but the word is used how the word is used.
In verse 4 we find the first usage of God’s “proper” name…Yaweh or Jehovah, which means “the existing one” or “the eternal”. It is a fine distinction, but I prefer “the existing one” because it establishes a great truth…that He is the only one that exists permanently. All else is in a state of flux and impermanence with constant becoming and being followed by non-existence. Even our eternal souls that will go on for eternity, in one place or another, at one point did not exist. He, Yaweh, is the only one the has always existed, the only one who can claim to have been at the beginning that will be at the end of all things.
There is a significant amount of digital ink cast across the digital ether regarding which is the proper usage and spelling of the name. I’ll leave all that to the side for you to sift through if you consider it worthy of your time. Basically, you can look at three sites and get five different opinions. I didn’t find it helpful or worth much of my time because, in the end, the definition is the same; The LORD God is the “existing one”.
When He tells Moses to reply to any questioning Israelite leaders that “I am that I am” has sent the once Egyptian prince turned husband of a shepherdess this is what is meant. When the scriptures later refer to God as the one who “was, and is, and is to come” it directly refers to Yahweh, the “existing one”. He is the only object of permanence on a constantly shifting landscape. He is the fixed North Star on a spiritual plane. He does not change. His methods may change, given that we rarely see God interacting with humanity in exactly the same way throughout, but His motivations, His desires, His goals, and His essential nature do not change.
So, the big question comes in the form of “Why does the name change occur here?”
If we look at the structure of Genesis there are a lot of people who look at this with the idea that this is a second creation account and that provides quite a bit of confusion. Why is there a second story of the creation of mankind? And why has God made man out of order since there is at this point no vegetation?
In a very rare move for me, I take a more conservative view of this section. I believe it is a closeup of a moment that came before. God allowed for the vegetation to spring up, granted it permission, but it had not yet fully done so. The potential was there but had not yet been reached. I see no conflict or shenanigans between this narrative and the previous one.
The point is this; I believe the name used for God changes from the generic “Elohim” to the specific “Yaweh” because this is the true beginning of the story. This is the story of God’s direct interaction with the humans he created.
Names are strange things. My wife somehow knew that our son was not a Gareth, which was the name I picked out since she got to decide our daughter’s first name. I had to agree, as miffed as I was, because looking at him the name didn’t seem to fit at all. What in the world is that? A name fitting? Shouldn’t you just be able to slap any name on anything and it stick? Nicknames are the same way. Once they stick, you’re stuck. We recognize the weirdness of names in trying not to name farm animals. Something weird happens when you kill a chicken that you have named. People used to not properly name their child before the age of two or three because odds were pretty good that they might die. Somehow the grief was harder to bear if it had been named.
When God is referred to as Yahweh it is the name by which He called Himself in front of Moses. It shows us the single most important characteristic of God; His permanent state of existence.
When we ask where has God gone in a certain situation, or wonder why He has abandoned us, we find ourselves asking a fundamentally flawed question. It’s so flawed, and we know it’s flawed, that we always modify it with the word “feels”. Why does it feel like He is gone from our lives. Deep down we know the truth. He can’t disappear or go anywhere else because He is all around us regardless of how we feel. Paul says that in Him we breathe, and move, and have our being. He’s literally all around us. Paul further declares that neither height, nor depth, nor heaven, nor hell can separate us from the love of God. Why? Because He is the God who exists. He is Yahweh. He is omnipresent and permanent.
It is so strangely easy to doubt the permanence and presence of God, especially when it is the first thing He declares about Himself. We can shut down our sensors, deliberately ignore, and even reject the notion of God’s existence, although not without some psychological kickback from reality. But…we are so blessed to have His assurance from the moment He created human beings that He is a permanent fixture that can be relied upon. There is so much amazing hope in just His chosen name.
Centuries and maybe millennia later when the Temple is built, the LORD comes to Solomon and tells him that a Temple cannot contain Him. But, as a favor to Solomon’s dad, David, the LORD would make His name to live there. He promised to place proof of His existence, Himself as “Yahweh”, the existing one, into the building. When just the name hit the temple in a cloud it was so difficult for the priests to do their jobs they had to give up. That is to say that the reality of God’s existence was so thick…that they couldn’t do their jobs.
Now that name lives inside of each of us, proving to us that He is “the existing one” who exists within the person of the Holy Spirit within us.
Finding Narnia 
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