United Church of God
Sermon Transcript — April 9, 2007

YHVH - The Covenant God

Mr. Richard Pinelli

As you probably noticed, we had the discussion by Mr. Welty when he discussed the most well known event in Israel's historic trek from Egypt to the promised land. It occured on this last particular day of unleavened bread.

Early in the morning about thirty-eight hundred and fifty years ago the children of Israel, as he pointed out, did cross the Red Sea and the armies of Egypt were destroyed by the hand of God. I thought it was interesting to note that in Exodus 13, four times God says, "By strength of hand." "By strength of hand," showing supernatural and powerful interventions that would occur, that would be done on behalf of the "children of Israel" in crossing the Red Sea as he so aptly read to us this morning.

We traditionally teach, in the Church of God, two major deliverances that occured on this day of unleavened bread. Final deliverance from Egypt through the Red Sea, but also forty years later, the destruction of Jericho on this day. Forty years later God gave them a foothold in the "Promised Land."

I want to ask a question today because we want to take you down a road that perhaps we've not covered before. And that is the question, "By whom did this deliverance come?" "By whom did this deliverance come?" Not by Elohim; it was not by El Shaddai; but it was by another name which represents to us something most unique and very important both in the lives of the Israelites and also in the lives of Christians.

I'd like you to turn with me if you would this afternoon to begin the sermon, to Exodus 6. You've probably seen this scripture many, many times but I'd like to just simply amplify it for you, and discuss it with you here in Exodus 6. This is a story about how the God that delivered Israel was made known to them at this particular time in their history. This is found in Exodus 6:2.

Exodus 6:2 - It's says, And God spoke to Moses and said unto (to) him: "I am the Lord." This is the way He begins the overall approach that He's going to use to deliver the children of Israel. He said, "...I am the Lord." Now if you have a little, small number in your Bible, which I have which is one. It simply tells you that this particular statement, "... I am the Lord," it says in the Hebrew, YHWH.

We will discuss that particular name this afternoon because we realize that, for those who know His name, for those who know His name, they will put their trust in Him. And there is a unique aspect of God revealing Himself as "the Lord." Notice what He said,

Verse 3 - "I appeared to Abraham, (to) Isaac, and (to) Jacob,"... not as YHVH, but as El Shadaii, the almighty God. He goes on to say, "... but by my name, Lord or by YHWH or YHVH, I'm going to talk a little about that in a moment, He said, "...I was not known to them." Now when Moses wrote the book of Genesis he did use the term Lord. He did use the term that is found here, YHWH, but he brought it from the knowledge that he had from this particular time, and going back, because he knew who he was who was working with them, but God worked with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shadaii in a certain type of relationship that He had with them. But now He reveals Himself to the children of Israel as this Being under this particular name, and the name of the Lord we realize, will become for us in this sermon a high tower. It will become the place that we will look to, in that sense of the word, that the name itself and its pronunciation is not the important thing. It's what it represents to us as the people of God, and it is going to be where the righteous will run to it, and they will be saved. They will be secure. They will be set on high. This is what it says through dozens and hundreds of scriptures in the Old Testament.

So He goes on to say in verse 4 - "I have also established my covenant with them...," that is with Israel, " ...to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were strangers.

Verse 5 - "And I have (also) heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered My agreement, or My covenant.

Verse 6 - "Therefore say to the children of Israel: 'I am the Lord; (I am the Lord;) I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptian, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.'" And so we begin to realize as we look at what happened in the plagues that were poured out upon the Egyptians. We realize that God, in this particular approach and in this name, and by this way that He operated He was now going to show the children of Israel His great power as this covenant God.

Now it's called by the name of four letters from the Hebrew. I think we must understand that the name is often called a tetragrammaton. It simply means the name of four letters and the word is spelled YHVH or YHWH, and sometimes it's a JHWH. We have a problem because of the fact that about the thirteen hundreds we had people who took vowels, and they stuck them into this particular name; the e's and the o's and the a's and it became Jehovah. This is the term that came around the Twelfth or Thirteenth Century. And yet it is not used in the Hebrew so therefore we recognize it's not by pronunciation but by its meaning that we are going to look at this.

The problem is that there was such reverence for the name by the Jewish that the scholars simply said they're not sure exactly how the name is pronounced. We have called it Lord. That's a term that we have used in the church for years and some translations, especially I believe going back to things like the Moffatt translation translated it: "The Eternal." We've used that in the church for many years, we've called Him "The Eternal."

This word Lord, L O R D is used about seven thousand times in the Old Testament and is rendered also eight hundred times as the word God but you will find that it is always simply YHWH or JHVH, again that simple understanding of the four letters of the tetragrammaton that it is, but it's the meaning that we want to look at today.

Let's go back to Exodus 3:13 for just a moment. Exodus 3:13 we see another amplification of the meaning of "The Eternal" under a different term but it still is the same thing. It is the same Being and He's operating the same way, but I thought this would be helpful to be a transition into understanding who He is. It says here in:

Exodus 3:13 - Then Moses said to God, "Indeed when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say un to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?"

Verse 14 - And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM...." Now that's an interesting name. "...I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, "I AM has sent me to you."

Now why are we discussing this particular name this afternoon? What is the importance of it? Why should I discuss this in relationship to what happened when the children of Israel were taken out of the land of Egypt and by the mighty hand of God they were delivered. Four times it says that. Then they go in to Jericho and they wipe out Jericho under the name of this Being and by His authority, and they take a foothold in Jericho. Why should we do that? Why should we take a look at this particular term?

It is a term that relates to the past. It is a term that relates to the present. It is a term that relates to the future. And so what this great Being was doing, He was saying to them, "Look, I Have Been, I AM, and I Will Be," and what He begins to reveal is how He will go about doing that as this particular Covenant God.

It has to do with you and me as you will see this thing unfold before us because there's a beautiful line that runs from the time of the children of Israel all the way through the wilderness wanderings. All the way through the early part of the first covenant, all the way to the New Testament when it finds its place in an answer that is given so that men would know what is going to happen. Who is going to do it? How it's going to be carried out. And this is most unique because we recognize that the one that we serve, Jesus Christ, is the One who was the God of the Old Testament.

A lot of people, believe it or not, over the last few years, did not understand. I was shocked at how many people did not recognize that God, the Father was not the one that was dealing with Israel . It was Jesus, the Christ. It was the One who was the God of the Old Testament. And He is the one that has carried out with the children of Israel the First Covenant and He is the One that is the mediator of the New, and He is the One that we are working with, and He is the One that is working with us as the people of God.

Let's go over to John 8 for a moment and take a look at a scripture here in John 8 and then we see start unfolding for us some beautiful, fantastic concepts that this great Being is showing us first as the God of the Old Testament, first as the Covenant God, and then later in the person of Jesus Christ carrying out the Father's will and obviously carrying out His as well with it.

This is John 8:56. We recognize that Jesus was dealing with the Jews. There was a lot of arguing about who was His Father; they were very nasty in telling Him that He was born of fornication and He said, "You don't even know My Father. You have no idea who He is because Jesus was the One who came to reveal the Father. But we recognize that these individuals did not realize who they were dealing with. They did not realize that this was the Son of God. This was the One who actually created their forefathers, and therefore they were dealing with Him. Look at what it says here:

John 8:56 - It says, " Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and (he) was glad."

Verse 57 - Then the Jews said to Him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and (have)You' ve seen Abraham?"

Verse 58 - And Jesus said un to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." And this particular word is most unique because we recognize that before Abraham, Jesus Christ began to open up to the children of Israel an understanding of His relationship with them as the YHWH, as the Covenant God, as this Being who would deliver them from the outside of them to the promised land; through going before them, standing behind them, and working with them in the sense of the word, an external way. They did not have the heart; they did not have ability to have within them the things that we have today but nevertheless He did work with them.

Now He was with the Father as Elohim. It says, "Let us make man in Our image," and so you see, these two great Beings, the Father and the Son before they were known as the Father and the Son, there in Genesis 1,2. But we realize that, when you look at this particular statement, "I AM," you have to realize He had an eternally existed state. He had been alive and had been going all the way back into eternity as the one who was "I AM."

He was there at the creation. He was a part of the "Let us make man in our image." He was the spokesman as the part of the family of God. He was with the Father as Elohim, and He was with the Father who covenanted with the creation through Jesus Christ in the beginning. Adam and Eve, and many of those individuals going from Genesis 2 all the way through until we see Him revealed in Exodus 3 and chapter 6.

He was El Shaddai. He was the One that met with Abraham. He was the one that went with the angels and had a meal with Abraham. He dealt directly with man because He was the "shad." Now what that word actually means in the Hebrew is that it means "breasted." It means abundance. It means, like you think, you know of milk of the breast. We recognize He was simply pouring out the "shad" or the blessing upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into the bosom of these individuals by blessing them and enlarging their territory as they came one right after the other.

Now Jesus Christ said one other thing, and I want to take you there for a moment, and this is over in Revelation 1:8. Let's go over there for just a moment and look at this as we put together, I think, a most beautiful story of how we are the recipients of what happened and the concepts that were given back in the book of Genesis and later.

This is Revelation 1:8 - He goes on to say, and of course, if you've got a red-letter Bible you'll see this is Christ speaking. He said, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end," says the Lord,"who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." So he begins to define for us His eternal existence from going back in eternity and always forever going forward.

Christ was and is "the Alpha and the Omega,... which is, was, and is to come." He always was and that is He always is and He is ever to come. He is the Eternal one. This is what we read back in chapter 3 and chapter 6.

This YHVH or YHWH or I AM is a title expression not only of self-existence, but of an unchangeableness of character; an absolutely unchangeableness of character because it says that He always was, He is and He will be what He was and is and will continue to be that way. There is no variableness with this Being. Remember what He said in Malachi 3:6 ?

Malachi 3:6 - "I am the YHWH, (the Lord) and I change not...." So we begin to understand that He is not a liar, He is a truth bringer. He's the one who is going to bring us the truth and He never lies. And He stands behind His word. He always will carry out what He has said. Therefore we recognize that this particular name is really a name that was delivered to the children of Israel when they entered into a covenant with this Being who is our Savior, Jesus Christ. The name of a covenant relationship for both man and for Israel as represented by Jesus Christ who was simply the God of the Old Testament.

Now you can read for yourself over in I Corinthians 10:4 . This gives you one example and I can give you dozens of them. The sermon today was not intended to prove that Jesus Christ is the God of the Old Testament but:

I Corinthians 10:4 says, for they drank of that spiritual rock (drink). That spiritual Rock that followed them, that is the children of Israel , (and) that Rock was Christ. So that by itself, the only definition I will give you today to prove that, but I think you'll see that Revelation 1:8 and putting together with the other scriptures makes us understand, gives us the understanding of who and what He was, and is, and will be.

Therefore, the name YHVH is the name of a covenant relationship for both God and man by which we can enter into that relationship not pronouncing any name, but understanding how He brought that covenant from the beginning through His name, all the way through to the present time except of course, it was physical with Israel and spiritual with the people of God. Jesus Christ, truly, as it says in the book of Hebrews, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Truly He is that because that's what He was, that's what He is, and that's what He will always be.

Therefore all of the names that I handed out to you, the sixteen names of this YHVH attributed to Him in the Old Testament, are found first as the promises of God made to Israel; then to all mankind in the person of Jesus Christ who becomes Savior, Lord, and Master to all of us, and we will see how we take those names from the Old Testament, the concept of what He promises, and brings it into the New Testament.

The only difference that we have between the old and the new is the fact that there was a physical relationship only for physical blessings for the majority that were entered into by God and Israel. The same promises are drawn into the New Testament under a New Covenant where both the spiritual and the physical blessings are promised. And this is so unique because as we move out of the Days of Unleavened Bread I don't know about you, but it's so encouraging to go through the days and to have a self-examination, but I think coming the end of them and seeing what the days have meant to you shows us that we have the ability to have within us the power of God to do the things that need to be done; to master, to overcome that particular sin or sins that so easily besets us as members of God's church.

This is encouraging. This is inspiring to many of us who have looked at the work of Christ as the God of the Old Testament and then how He came to do something in the "New" that is profound for the sake of His children to bring many sons to glory. So when God called the children of Israel out of this world they became a part of the Church in the Wilderness, as you well know. He revealed to them His Laws and at the same time He revealed to them by what name He would do that, The Covenant God.

Now we recognize that in the New Testament we have what? We have calling out of the world. We have the ability to become a part of the spiritual body of Christ. We have the ability to understand His laws, and we have the ability to internalize those laws as they could not do because they did not have the heart in them that it could be done.

So the one who sits at the Father's right hand, it is by His name and by His authority, and by the work that He will do through that name to reveal His character, to reveal His attitude, to reveal His active work that He had toward Israel as a nation under the Old Covenant, but for you and I as church members and individuals, we come under the terms and the conditions of this New Covenant.

And what it means is that we've got the kind of help that the children of Israel could only understand outwardly. They could only understand by the seas being opened and by the manna that came or by the quail that came or by the water that was given to them. It was an external relationship and nothing was going on within them except for a few individuals for whom God gave another spirit; of His spirit to those individuals like Joshua and Caleb, as was mentioned today in the sermonette this afternoon. They had another spirit that followed them, or they had under this spirit with them as it says in a couple of places so we recognize something unique.

Now let's go over to John 6:53. John 6:53 tells us something that we do every Passover. We renew something with the God we serve. A unique thing has happened under the new covenant. A new thing which symbolically we do but in reality something else does occur with it. Let's notice:

John 6:53 - Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you." We all agree. We all agree that by taking that piece of unleavened bread that we are symbolically partaking of the body of our savior. By taking that small amount of wine in that glass we are symbolically saying we are partaking symbolically of the blood of our Savior. But Jesus said in:

Verse 54 - "Whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." Now what's He saying to us? He's saying that what you do symbolically and internalizing physically is what He as this great Being is going to do for you and with you and in you and through you as a human being. That's what He's saying in essence here if you read and look at what He's talking about. He's amplifying the New Covenant. He's amplifying the growth that's going to come from within an individual, not necessarily all things from without.

You and I have the blessing of seeing this YHVH give us things on the outside as the Old Testament saw, but we see this great Being as He lives in us, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God's Son. We see Him also doing things within us that He could not do with the children of Israel because they did not have the ability to have that. Notice what it says:

Verse 56 - "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in Him." Jesus said it another way. He said, "I and My Father will make Our abode with him." That is our dwelling place. We'll make our home with Him. John 14:23.

Now we read a little bit this morning about faith. We read a little bit about the exercise of that faith, of Christ within us. Let's go back to Galatians 2:20. The apostle Paul makes a statement, the old King James I like a little bit better in this place, but nevertheless the meaning still remains basically the same. This is over in:

Galatians 2:20 - He said, " I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me;..." How does He do that? By the power of the Holy Spirit. What did we do when we took the Passover? We internalized our belief. We internalized our trust. We internalized our acceptance of Jesus Christ's body and blood and Him living His life all over again within us and doing it within us what He promised to do.

It's profound when you look at the rest of the verse because he said, "...the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith in the son of God..." Old King James has it, "...I live by (the) faith of the Son of God...," meaning both he had faith in Him, which is active toward Christ and also there is that faith which is now being produced within the individual as well as we read in Ephesians 2:8 and 9; that it is a gift from God. If you remember the old booklet on "What Kind of Faith is Required for Salvation" that we put out years ago. The point is that we see here that - "...I live by the faith in the Son of God or of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

So we recognize that this great Being, who worked with the children of Israel and showed His power, showed His ability, now turns around and within us is able to work with us and develop within us what he wants to develop in each one. Colossians 1:27 - It tells us simply a very profound statement, but yet a very basic principle.

Colossians 1:27 - He said, " To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Sons of God, daughters of God, that's what we are. Christ has promised to come and make His abode...You just renewed that covenant with Him when you did that on Sunday night. You just simply asked Him to renew within you what He promised He would do; eat My flesh and drink My blood because in that you will have eternal life abiding within you. Christ in us is the hope of glory.

Interesting scripture over in I John . You don't need to turn there. I John 4:4 - It says, "...greater is He that is in you than He who is in the world." And the mastery of Pharoah, the mastery of the human being that He used by the children of Israel is that Being called YHVH, who does bring about in the New Testament the work that Christ promised He would do within us.

I've given you a list of the name, and I've shown you in this particular list that there are sixteen applications of this particular word in the Old Testament. You have that list in front of you. I am not going to go through each one of those. I just simply want to show you that you can do a word study; you can do an evaluation of what He did in the Old Testament and then look at what He does in the person of Jesus Christ in the New.

We see some things that I think are very important, such as number three. The Lord will provide or see. You see that example when He caught a ram in the thicket, or He placed a ram in the thicket so that Abraham could sacrifice the ram instead of his son, Isaac. Remember that? That was that time as well. Now He wasn't known to Abraham as the Lord who provides, as the YHVH. He was known as El Shadaii; but nevertheless we see Him as the one who provided for him and then we see the same Being in the New Testament doing it physically outside and doing it spiritually inside because Paul said, "My God shall supply all of your needs." We talk about, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added onto you." That is a work outside that He does, but He also adds something spiritually within us as individuals in the body.

We come to the fourth one. I'll save that for a few minutes because I want to cover that in a little bit more in detail. The Lord our Banner. The one who goes before the children of Israel to fight. He was always set before the enemies, and of course, the enemies feared. The enemies ran for cover because when God was their Banner they simply feared, and they lost heart, and they moved away from the children of Israel.

The Lord who sanctifies, or sets you apart; that's what He did to Israel in the forty years in the wilderness, and also as a nation after they went into the promised land.

We drop down to number ten. The Lord our peace, and we recognize that there's something unique about the fact that God did send peace during the time that these people, when they obeyed God, they had peace with their enemies. This is also true as well.

The Lord of hosts, that means the God of armies.

The Lord is my Shepherd. I think we understand as David showed this in Psalm 23. That's where the word comes from in Psalm 23 as the Lord, my Shepherd.

The Lord our Righteousness. We recognize that He's the One that is going to make us righteous as was pointed out this morning in the sermon as well, and the Lord is Present. I just wanted to show you that the presence of God would be with the children of Israel in many different ways, but God is present with us as His servants, His children by being in us and with us in so many experiences that we go through.

Now I'd like to, just for a few minutes evaluate just one of those words; just to show you how it's amplified just a little bit from the Old to the New Testament. Let's go over to Exodus 15:26. Again, this is just a short exercise for the purpose of showing you how you might apply all of these words, but this afternoon I'm only going to take this one example.

This is Exodus 15:26. What had happened was that the waters of Mara were bitter and what needed to be done was that they needed to have the waters either delivered by God into a condition that they could drink or they would simply go thirsty, and so the people were complaining in verses 22-25. God showed him a tree. He cut it down. It was cast into the waters and the water was made sweet as verse 25 said. There He made a Statute and an Ordinance for them, and there He tested them. And so it was the first test of what their attitude would be. It's obvious that they failed it for forty years because they didn't have the faith within them.

You know, it's interesting is it not that when you see them after they come through the Red Sea . Have you ever noticed what it says there after they came through the Red Sea? They believed God. I thought it was interesting. They believed Him after the miracle of the Red Sea , not before. And you'll find that one of the things that was talked about today in the sermon by Mr. Welty was the fact that it's the faith that you have internalized within you that you develop and you build before the event occurs; before you go through it.

The children of Israel had, I call it dead faith because it was something they had after the event. But here we see that they also went through something. God healed the waters and He said in verse 26 -

Verse 26 - ...if you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all of the Statutes I will put none of the diseases (up)on you which I have brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord Who heals you. Or as it is here in the Hebrew, Yaweh,or as we say YHVH rope or ropeka, the Lord Our Healer, but it's also called the Lord, our Physician. The Lord our Healer, or the Lord our Physician.

So He first revealed here in Exodus 15:26 when He covenant with Israel after healing the waters of Mara. He covenanted with them and in this passage we see healing from without. We see the healing of the waters in this particular case. But the interesting problem is that we also see that man himself who needs to be healed because out of the treasures of the heart proceed all the streams that either minister life or death to the man himself, and all that is around him. Really, this is what you come down to; that God our Healer has to go internally into the lives of each one of us to heal that stream. Otherwise, we simply have the problem of life and death.

The Bible says for us to choose life instead of death. It is Jesus Christ, who is the God our Healer who does this. Now lets broaden this a just a little bit by turning to Matthew 9:12. When Jesus heard concerning the fact that His disciples, He and His disciples ate with the tax collectors and sinners, and they were very appalled at the fact that Jesus was dealing with this group of people that were known horrible sinners to the minds of the Jews and the Pharisees of His day.

Matthew 9:12 - ...when Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." Now Jesus went to the publicans and the sinners, the tax collectors, and all of those individuals because He recognized that they were willing to deal with something in a broader way than the Pharisees and the Saducees. They were not willing to deal with the concept of repentance, and so we recognize Christ was showing His understanding of the word about needing a physician was quite broad.

He was showing that there is healing through repentance, not the physical healing of the human body other than in a few cases where it says if a man is anointed and therefore if he has commited sin they will be forgiven, James 5:14. We're talking about the fact that He was showing here that spiritually people needed to be healed. People needed to be saved. They needed to have mercy and compassion shown to them. And as He said in -

Verse 13 - Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice...For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And so we begin to see that Christ had a broader perspective of the God, our Healer. He saw it not just from the fact of physically healing an individual or healing the waters that were there in Mara, but He was showing by the very fact that sin had cut them off, they needed someone who would bring to them the spiritual healing as well that was needed.

So He was not only the God that healed on the physical level; He was the God that healed on the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual levels as well. And this is something that we recognize within the church. That is, there's more to it than just simply the one aspect of healing. There's more to it than just that. Let's go over to I Peter 2:24 and see the same thing as it is written. We talked a little bit about this at the Passover.

I Peter 2:23 - who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.

Verse 24 - Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes we were healed. So we see Christ is giving us a broader perspective of healing. Peter is giving us the fact here that in the Word of God it shows being healed from sins of guilt, from sin's power. It is referred to as healing as well.

In the earlier times the idea of health and healing had a much larger content, and it covered the complete wholeness and wholesomeness of an individual's existence. It had to do with their mind. It had to do with their body. It had to do with their emotions. It had to do with all of those things and as the God our Healer, He only showed Israel from certain aspects of that approach, but when Christ came to live in us He came to give us the ability to be delivered in all of those areas; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and that seems to be indicated by what the apostle Paul said earlier in the book of I Thessalonians 5:23. Listen to what it says. He said concerning the whole man:

I Thessalonians 5:23 - Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you, that is, set you apar t completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, you begin to see how great this Being is. You begin to understand that as He worked with the children of Israel from the outside He works with us both from the outside and from the inside to bring about this wonderful ability to be completely whole: body, soul and spirit. Now we're not talking about immortal soul. We're just about the different aspects of the human being, but I think you see it's a complete thing.

The word heal in the Old and the New Testament has a number of meanings. First and foremost it means to cure; as a diseased person is restored. Secondly it means to repair; as a building is reconstructed; and it also means to mend, as a garment is mended. Those are three basic meanings that you will find. There may be a couple more, but those are the basic foundation upon which the concept heal is operating both in the Old and New Testament.

Now let's just for a moment take a look at four uses of the word. First of all, let's look at number one, and that is to heal the land or body of water. Remember the examples over in Chronicles where God simply said that He would heal the land. We talk about things that have to do with the land vomiting you out over in Leviticus 26. We see that in Deuteronomy 28 as well, for the land could not sustain the iniquities of the people. We're getting mighty close to that now. I think that in some ways we are suffering for the fact the land needs to be healed.

The body of water needs to be healed. The beautiful example in the book of Ezekiel 46,47, when the waters flowed both ways out of the temple of God in the milennium. They're going to go down to the Dead Sea and it's going to become the Live Sea. It flows out to the Mediterraneum and as it goes out into the Mediterraneum you're going to see the fish and all of the life in the ocean begin to come back because the Bible says, wherever these waters go, they heal, and you have to say it's not dealing necessarily in this case with just the human body; but it's dealing with the creation of God that He's going to bring it back to what it should be.

Secondly, we recognize according to James 5:14 the removal of bodily infirmities. We see that as well. And then you come back to number one, which I think we all recognize, and that is God's great grace in restoring spiritual life. There's just something that Jesus Christ does in us as human beings to bring about a healing. Let's notice over in Mark 2 for just a moment. This is:

Mark 2:5 - When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven you." Now wait, wait, just a moment. We've got a physical situation, and then He turns around with this need for healing, and He says, "...your sins are forgiven...." Why did He do that? Why did He start first of all with the fact that his sins were forgiven? It's very simple. Christ first addressed Himself to the worst malady of the afflicted man and what He did know is that the man's secret was that his sins needed to be forgiven. He had done things that needed to have forgiveness and then from there we see the second act of that and that is that he was physically healed as well. But He pointed out in verse 10 that the Son of Man does have the ability to forgive sins and therefore as a result of that, the second aspect of that healing was the healing of his body.

So there are times that there may be physical disorders that are the result sometimes of a moral or a spiritual cause. We see that happening with individuals here. People don't understand it always, but there are physical disorders as a result of a moral or a spiritual cause.

The last one is the one found in Luke 4. Jesus Christ tells us what He would do. This is Luke 4:18-19, one that perhaps we don't think about as much, but I think it has to do with one of the aspects of the God our Healer. The God who is the YHVH of opeka or ropek, whichever way you want to pronounce the word. This is Luke 4:18, notice what it says:

Luke 4:18 - "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me..." Now, He's quoting Isaiah 61 I believe in this case, and He is telling us something very important. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor."

Secondly, it says, "He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,..." What are we talking about? We're talking about a need for an individual who has to have healing of their mind; who has to have healing of their emotions; who has to have healing outside of just physical healing for their body. There is an internal aspect of that that people need to be healed of, and He said here: "...He sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives..." Of what? Their problems. The bonding and the banding and the tightening of situations that they've gone through all of their lives.

I have a relative in my family who is now dead, and she feared all of her life. She just had this terrible innate fear of anything that was going on. She always feared doing this, doing that. She was always tenuous. The tragedy was she didn't know. She didn't understand that in Christ you can have liberty from those things because he begins to work from the inside out to bring delivery to all of us.

He said, "...the recovery of sight to the blind,..." Obviously, physically Christ did that, spiritually Christ did the same. "...to set at liberty those who are oppressed,..." We've all had oppressions one way or the other. You can name them. I can tell you of dozens of people in this room who have gone through terrible, terrible difficulties, and they have been oppressed as was spoken about in the sermon this morning as well.

Sometimes you learn some very great lessons by going through illness. Sometimes you learn some things that you didn't know about yourself when you go through hurts and pains and sufferings that bring about a recovery spiritually and a realization that things spiritually that you did not remember before.

I'll tell you a little interesting story that happened when we looked at a young lady back in Canada. I had preached about healing. Back in the early days of being a minister I understood it only from the perspective of James 5:14, and I understood some sins being forgiven, but I had an interesting thing that occured.

There was a little girl. I guess she was at that time about twelve or thirteen, and her mother had died. Apparently she had gone down in the basement, and she was cleaning up some things in the basement in the middle of the winter, and she decided to open up a can of gasoline to clean up the spot, and it literally caught her on fire, blew up the can, and she was in flames. And her little daughter came down the stairs, and she saw that, and she was so traumatized by that that she just lost her ability to know what reality was. She didn't know, as if everything went into low gear. She did not learn. She did not grasp. She did not grow in school. She was always very far behind as a result of that terrible trauma.

And so her dad said, "What do you think about anointing her?" You know, when you're young you say, "I don't know. I've never done that before." And of course I didn't say, "Shall we try it?" I just simply said, "Let's anoint her."

And so we did, and she left that area and they moved to Vancouver, no, I'm sorry; Victoria, British Columbia, and I guess it was somewhere around five, six years later she ended up winning two awards. Two beautiful awards for just simply excellence. She had somehow outgrown it. It was fantastic.

It's just such an amazing thing to see that she received honors from the governor general of Canada for excellence, and she received honors from the Queen of England for that and to this day, she now holds a fine job. She was a secretary in a company the last I heard, and it just simply showed that she was going through mental and emotional trauma from seeing her mother die, and the end result was that through the anointing and through whatever God did she came out to be just a fine young lady, and her life changed dramatically.

We see over the years in the ministry the people who had struggles mentally and were healed. We see people who were helped with feeling very bad about themselves; having tremendous what we call low self-worth, and then coming to kingship and coming to a realization that they were worthy to be a part of the family of God, and understanding their place. It was as if their whole mind was cleared, and they moved away from feeling bad about themselves to feeling really good, and you begin to realize that something went on that God did as He opened their minds to realize that they were called to kingship. They were called to be a part of the family of God and somehow the healing of these conditions, these attitudes, these frames of mind were absolutely wonderful. And I think you see that. Sometimes its a matter that God has to use knowledge and an understanding of some things, and I've seen even people healed of emotions and difficulties from years of a pattern of behavior to begin to find solidarity in their lives.

The healing of anger. I've seen that happen; and I think it's amazing to watch some of these things. So, the point is that this is the way God has said He will do these things. Sometimes we don't perceive this. Sometimes we don't discern that, but it's very much a part of His thinking when we look at the God our Healer.

Now that's only one of sixteen names so I hope you'll understand that I don't have the time to go through each one. I've just given you a smattering of that when it comes to some things but they are very encouraging even though sometimes I know that we have illnesses that still beset us. I know we sometimes have our brethren sometimes die. I understand that, but I'm saying just simply to see that on the other side of that coin there are times when we see these things that do happen. We don't understand them completely, but we do understand that God does do that.

But when the YHVH revealed His covenant relationship to Isreal we see as this great Being that He shows that the good and the perfect gift comes down from above. We see that there is no variableness; no shadow of turning with what He did with the children of Israel and as the person of Jesus Christ into the New Testament under the relationship of the new covenant with us.

With physical Israel He showed himself physically strong. With us, when we leave Egypt and walk the wilderness walk there is the internalization of the meaning of His names as promises to work with us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. And I think these are very important things as we leave the Days of Unleavened Bread, to realize what we do have working for us.

Sometimes in this examination period I've had times when I've grown discouraged. I think probably some of you may have as well, but we see what Christ has done in the old. We see what He has brought in the new, and we have promises that we can actually hold on to because this is what He said He would do with them. And this is what He said He would do with us. Remember, when the children of Israel came out of the land of Egypt He revealed Himself just before He brought Him out as the YHVH, and those sixteen names He showed His consistency with them for just literally hundreds of years before they went into captivities or were removed from their land.

I'd like you to close with II Peter 1:2-4. I'd like to read verses 2-4. He said,

II Peter 1:2 - "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord," Now these things are multiplied, how? They're multiplied through this knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ. To understand one of those aspects today I simply wanted to show you was the fact that He revealed Himself as that covenant God, and in the person of Jesus Christ as we partook symbolically in the Passover we took Him into our lives because it does say as Mr. Welty read this morning that it's not by power or by might, or as it says in II Timothy 1:6-7 that God has given us the spirit of love and of power and of a sound mind.

So these are the things that have been promised. This is the knowledge that we've been given. Notice verse 3 -

II Peter 1:3 - "as His divine power has given (to) us all things that pertain to life and godliness, (How?) through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,

Verse 4 - "by which have been given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." What he's saying simply is this knowledge of God, the Greek word is ethicnosis and it means this overview, this broad perception of what this great Being is doing. It's full or complete knowledge of where He is and where He's going and what He's doing.

The knowledge of God equals simply great and precious promises. By those promises that He's made through faith we are partakers of the divine nature, and we have then been able to, according to what we're doing today, escape the corruption that is in the world. To us, that is very encouraging because of what we see by the God whom we serve as the covenant God in the person of Jesus Christ today.