The Names of God

Creator – Elohim

Jealous – Qanna

The Everlasting God – El Olam

The Most High God – El Elyon

The All-Sufficient One – El Shaddai

Lord, Master – Adonai

LORD JEHOVAH – Yahweh

The LORD Will Provide – Jehovah-jireh

The LORD That Healeth  – Jehovah-rapha

The LORD My Banner – Jehovah-nissi

The LORD Who Sanctifies – Jehovah-mekod-dishkem

The LORD is Peace – Jehovah-shalom

The LORD of Hosts – Jehovah-sabaoth

The LORD Is My Shepherd– Jehovah-raah

The LORD Our Righteousness – Jehovah-tsidkenu

The LORD Is There – Jehovah-shammah  

Isn’t it incredible that if we would review our prayers, we spend almost all our prayer time with our grocery list asking God for the things we need.   God would like for us as His children, to say, God, I love you.   He loves to hear from His children.  He’s grateful when we come to Him in prayer. He is a God who loves to supply. 

We need to come to God often with our worship because worship is that which God seeks from His people.  Prayer and supplication are important but to come to God for no other reason, but just to worship Him, is what is really dear to the heart of our Heavenly Father.

We have an awesome God and we don’t demonstrate and express our love for Him as much as we should.  The reason we don’t love Him as much as we should is probably not because we don’t want to, but because we really don’t know Him as we ought to, for to know God is to love Him.  To really know Him is to be overcome with Who He is, and out of that experience, within our hearts, we worship and love Him.  He is such a great God.  He is holy.  He is righteous.  He is love and His goodness endures forever.  

Worship is something that helps us to celebrate God.  We worship God when we sing or verbalize His praises.  Worship is turning our hearts toward Him with praises from our innermost being ascending to our Father.  It’s not just saying the words with little thought and less heart, but we celebrate Him when we join together earnestly in prayer and in song. 

Worship is not grudgingly giving.  We are to give with a cheerful heart, realizing that all we have is given by God to us to use for His glory.  Worship is not music done poorly or even great music done as a performance.  We are to participate in music and singing for His glory. 

We worship God as we read His Word or listen to others preach or teach and seek to conform to His Word, the Bible, and to reflect the example of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Worship done rightly is a celebration of God. 

The buildings, the churches and the synagogues, places of worship of the true God, Jehovah, are the Lord’s houses and we are His people.  God has ordained that when we come together, that we are to worship our Heavenly Father, for He is awesome, great and mighty.  When we realize who God is and what He is to us, we can’t help but worship Him. He is worthy of our praise! 

Today, let’s think about the characters in the Word of God, in the Old Testament.  They really knew how to celebrate Him.  In fact, if you go through the Scriptures, you’ll discover that when God would come to their rescue in some meaningful, special way, they would be overcome by who God was.  They would then do two things.  One, they would build an altar.  Second, they would give God a special name, added to Jehovah, a name that had meaning to them in light of the experience they had just gone through.  There are eight of these names in the Old Testament and they are an incredible blessing when you see them in the light of Scripture.

Let’s look at the 23^rd Psalm.  In this Psalm we’ll find one of the names of God.  It is one that David gave to the Lord. 

Psalm 23:1

[A Psalm of David.]
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 

Regarding the Hebrew word Jehovah-raah: The Lord My Shepherd,  the word Raah means shepherd.  It isn’t hard to realize why David would choose this title, is it?  When you first meet David in the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament and his father Jessie has him out in the field taking care of the sheep and Samuel comes looking for a new King for Israel and goes through all the sons of Jessie and the Lord doesn’t put His approval on any of them, Samuel asks, “Do you have any more sons?” 

“Oh yes, he’s out in the pasture with the sheep.” He sends for him and David was brought from the fields from caring for the sheep to be anointed the future King of Israel.  Did David understand what it was like being a shepherd?  That was who he was and even after he was anointed as the King, he went back to the field to care for the sheep.   He didn’t become King immediately.  Fifteen years passed between his anointing and his reign as King of Israel.  All this time he spent his time caring for the sheep.  Remember, he said he’d saved the sheep from the bear and the lion. 

When David tried to think of a way to celebrate God, he probably thought just as I have been a shepherd to the sheep God has been my Shepherd, Who has cared for me and protected me from harm each day and supplied my daily needs. 

Here in Genesis we read about love and devotion and obedience to God… demonstrated.

Genesis 22:2 (GOD speaking to Abraham)

Then He said, Take now your son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

Abraham had been told by God to take his son to the mountain to be sacrificed to God. That would be a tough assignment.  Isaac was around 20 years of age at that time, not a little boy. 

When they got to the mountain, Abraham bound Isaac and put him on the altar, and he was about ready to take his life.  Just as he was about to begin obeying God’s instructions, God intervened, and God spoke to Abraham. 

Genesis 22:12 – 14

¹²And He said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, since thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.”  ¹³And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and  Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead  of his son.  ¹⁴And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day. In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.

Abraham got the ram and offered it up to God as a burnt offering and Abraham called the name of the place Jehovah-jireh, The Lord Will Provide. 

Exodus 15:22–27 (GOD speaking in verse 26)

²²So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. ²³And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. ²⁴And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?  ²⁵And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them, ²⁶And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.  ²⁷And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters. 

The children of Israel are in the wilderness, no longer in Egypt as slaves.  Moses is leading them and they are thirsty.  In the wilderness there are little amounts of water. you don’t have a lot of water.  They came to a place where there was water and it was no better; no one could drink it. 

The place was Marah, and the people began to cry out to Moses.  Moses cried out to God.  God told him to get a certain branch and throw it in the water and the water would be restored to its normal taste.  Then Moses made an altar to God.  Verse 26 states “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.”  God became to Moses Jehovah-rapha – The God Who Heals. 

In the 17^th Chapter of Exodus, we study about another wonderful story.  Moses is leading the children of Israel and they have had some problem already with the water and they don’t care too much about the food, but one thing they hadn’t counted on was that there were enemies out there and they were about to be involved with the people of Amaleck.  The Amalekites were men of war. 

The Amalekites were gifted in fighting and the Israelites have been in Israel for 43 years.  They had been slaves and didn’t know anything about war.  The Amalekites didn’t want them coming through their country,  so here is Israel at war.  The Amalekites and Aaron and Joshua lead the troops down and they fight.  Moses was too old to fight.  He was around 120 years of age. 

Moses goes up to the mountain; I suppose he goes there to pray.  When he interceded with his hands lifted up, the Israelites would win and when his hands were tired and dropped, Israel would lose.  A couple of men were sent to hold up Moses’ hands.  

In Moses’ hand was the rod of God and when Moses lifted it up in victory, God intervened for His people.  Moses celebrated the victory and worshiped God by building an altar and giving God an added name because he had come to them in trouble and had given them victory, the name being Jehovah-nissi, The Lord My Banner.

Exodus 17:15

And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi:

Jehovah-nissi means The Lord My Banner.

Leviticus 20 instructs God’s chosen people, the Jews, with His commandments, rules, regulations and ceremonial cleansing requirements as the people were to worship God according to God’s Old Testament guidelines.  One thing you get from this book, as a clear picture, is that God is interested in His people doing what is right and doing it in the right way, following His instructions. God is interested in holiness. 

Leviticus 20:7, 8 (Jehovah God speaking)

⁷Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God.  ⁸And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them:  I am the LORD which sanctify you. 

This is the Hebrew Jehovah-mekod-dishkem:  The Lord Who Sanctifies.

It is He who makes one holy.  In the Book of Leviticus, as they come to grips with the holiness of God, they worshiped the God who sanctifies. 

In the Book of Judges, one of the interesting stories is about Gideon.  The judges were people whom God raised up because the Israelites were not living properly.  Every man did that which seemed right in his own eyes.  Sounds like today, doesn’t it, every man doing that which seems right in his own eyes. 

In the Book of Judges when they would get into trouble, the people would cry out to God in their misery and pain and God would hear them in His grace and He would send them a new leader.  They would then wear that leader out and repeat the same cycle over and over in the Book of Judges. 

At this time the Israelites were being terrorized by a group of people named the Midianites.  Everybody was afraid.  These were people who would swoop in a country and take all their food, their wives and their children. 

One day God needed a new leader, so He sent the angel of the Lord to confront this leader and when he gets to the place where Gideon is, he is hiding behind the wine press and he’s trying to put together a few pieces of grain, so that he can survive. 

The angel comes to Gideon, and he says, “Hail, O mighty man of valour.”  No doubt Gideon looked around and thought: Who is he talking to? 

Isn’t it wonderful that God sees what we can become instead of focusing on what we are?  Who of us would have any hope if God weren’t like that? 

Gideon became God’s leader and you know the story how God downsized his army until there was no question about who won the battle.  In the midst of all that, Gideon is trying to argue with God as to whether he was the right man for the job.  There is turmoil all around and he doesn’t know how to handle the situation.  Finally, he comes to terms that God has really called him to the task. 

Judges 6:24

Then Gideon built an altar there unto the LORD, and called it Jehovah-shalom: unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

Jehovah-shalom means The LORD is Peace. 

Jeremiah 23:5, 6 (GOD speaking)

⁵Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.  ⁶In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely and this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

The Lord Our Righteousness, that’s Jehovah-tsidkenu. 

If you know anything about the Book of Jeremiah, you’ll know that Jeremiah prophesied at a time of great sorrow. 

Another name for God is Jehovah-rapha, meaning The God That Healeth.  He is our Healer, our Great Physician.