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Wednesday, July 13, 2016

God (אלהים)

When we left the Israelites last week, they had just spied out the Promised Land and came back frightened.  Out of the twelve spies, only Joshua and Caleb thought that they should go in and take the land as God had instructed them.  The other ten were terrified and incited the rest of the Israelites to fear as well.  So, God sent them back into the wilderness.
Tomorrow you must set out for the wilderness..." (Numbers 14:25 NLT)
It seems strange to say it this way, but their fear drove them to rebellion.  God said that they were being given the land.  God told them to go in and take the land.  God said that God would deliver the land into their hands.  Fear told them not to go.  So, they listened to fear and turned their backs on God.  They didn’t believe that God was big enough for the task at hand.  We can end up doing the same.
Then God gave the people all these instructions: "I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. "You must not have any other god but Me. (Exodus 20:1-3 NLT)
It doesn’t matter WHAT we allow to be more important than God in our lives.  What matters is THAT we let something or someone be more important than God in our lives.  When we do that, we shrink God down to a size that is smaller than our problems, our relationships, or our ideologies.  We make God fit into a box that we can control, move, and put on a shelf.  The problem with this, however, is that God cannot be shrunk down.  God is God.
The Hebrew word for God throughout the Old Testament is Elohim (אלהים).  This word has made scholars scratch their heads for thousands of years.  That’s because the Old Testament consistently teaches and affirms that their is only one God and that God is one, yet the word “Elohim” is in the plural.  Our One God is somehow in the plural.  We understand this a little bit more now as we learn different aspects and attributes of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Each of these three “persons” help us understand more about God, but they do not teach us everything there is to know about God.  God is infinite.  We are not.  Whatever we have learned about God, there is still more.  I find that comforting.  That means God is bigger than any problem I face.  God is bigger than any struggles we have – even as a city, state, country,  world, or even universe.  God is God. The word Elohim, in the plural, reminds me that whatever I think God is…there is more.
How about you?  What helps you remember that God is bigger?




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