Message Two

The Revelation of the Lord Jehovah, the Eternal God

Scripture Reading: Isa. 1:2, 4; 25:8; 40:28;
45:15; 29:16; 54:5; 12:2-3; 66:2

1. Elohim is the name of God in relation to creation, whereas Jehovah is the name of God in relation to man—Gen. 1:1; 2:4; Isa. 1:2, 4:
   1. Jehovah means “I am who I am,” indicating that Jehovah is the self-existing and ever-existing eternal One, the One who was in the past, who is in the present, and who will be in the future forever—Exo. 3:14; Rev. 1:4:
      1. Jehovah is the only One who is and who depends on nothing apart from Himself, and we must believe that He is—Heb. 11:6.
      2. As the I Am, He is the all-inclusive One, the reality of every positive thing and of whatever His people need—John 6:35; 8:12; 10:14; 11:25; 14:6.
   2. Jehovah in the Old Testament is the Jesus in the New Testament—Matt. 1:21:
      1. Jesus means “Jehovah the Savior,” or “the salvation of Jehovah”; hence, Jesus is not only a man but Jehovah, and not only Jehovah but Jehovah becoming our salvation—v. 21.
      2. As the great I Am, the Lord Jesus is the eternal, ever-existing God who has a relationship with man; anyone who does not believe that Jesus is I Am will die in his sins—John 8:24, 28, 58.
   3. The Lord Jehovah is the Lord Jesus Christ; the Lord Jehovah is the Old Testament Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the New Testament Lord Jehovah—Isa. 25:8; Eph. 1:2.
2. The Lord Jehovah is the eternal God—Isa. 40:28:
   1. In Hebrew the eternal God is Elohey Olam (cf. El Olam, Gen. 21:33):
      1. El, meaning “the Mighty One,” is one of the names of God; Olam, meaning “eternal” or “eternity,” comes from a Hebrew root meaning “to conceal, to hide.”
      2. The full meaning of this title indicates that the Lord Jehovah is the mysterious Mighty One in eternity.
   2. The divine title El Olam implies eternal life (John 1:4; 3:15); by calling on the name of Jehovah, the Eternal Mighty One, Abraham experienced God as the ever-living, secret, mysterious One, who is the eternal life—Gen. 21:33; John 20:31.
3. The Lord Jehovah is the only God—Isa. 40:18; 44:6, 8, 24:
   1. Jehovah is the unique Creator—the majestic, exalted One, who inhabits eternity—Gen. 1:1; Rev. 4:11; Isa. 42:5; 45:18; 57:15; 2:10-21; 10:34.
   2. As the holy and righteous One, Jehovah deals with people according to what He is—51:8; 17:7; 29:23; 24:16:
      1. Righteousness is the base for holiness, and on this base holiness is exhibited; with His righteousness as the base, God shows Himself as the holy God, in righteousness exhibiting His holiness—5:16.
      2. God’s chastening and disciplining is to uplift us from righteousness to holiness—Heb. 12:5-11:
         1. In His salvation He first justifies us to make us righteous in Christ, and then He sanctifies us to make us holy—Rom. 3:24; 6:19, 22.
         2. To be righteous is to match God’s way of doing things outwardly, but to be holy is to match God’s nature inwardly; hence, holiness is higher than righteousness—Phil. 3:9; Heb. 12:10, 14; Rev. 19:8; 21:2; 22:11.
         3. While the Lord is chastening us, we should wait for Him in the path of His judging in order to learn the lesson that He would give us; God’s judgments always teach us lessons in righteousness—Isa. 26:8-9.
4. The Lord Jehovah is triune—6:8; 11:2; 42:1; 61:1; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14:
   1. The Lord Jehovah—the threefold yet one unique God—is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; this implies that He is the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—Exo. 3:6, 14-15; Matt. 28:19.
   2. The words I and Us in Isaiah 6:8 indicate that the One speaking here is triune, that He is not merely Christ but Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God—Col. 2:9; John 1:1, 14; 12:41.
   3. According to the entire divine revelation in the Scriptures, the Triune God is for God’s dispensing: the Father as the origin is the fountain, the Son as the expression is the spring, and the Spirit as the transmission is the flow—John 4:14; 7:37-39; Rev. 22:1-2; Isa. 12:2-3.
5. The Lord Jehovah is a God who hides Himself—45:15:
   1. Although our God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and full of forgiveness, He is also the hiding God, as the book of Esther indicates; He created the universe and then hid Himself within it, until we do not know where to find Him—Job 23:3-9.
   2. We need to realize that the omnipotent God whom we are serving is still hiding Himself, especially when He is helping us—John 14:26; Rom. 8:26:
      1. We cannot see Him, and apparently He is not doing anything; actually, in a hidden way He is doing many things for us—vv. 28, 34; Esth. 4:14.
      2. Silently, secretly, and ceaselessly, the God who hides Himself is working within us—Phil. 2:13.
6. The Lord Jehovah reveals Himself by speaking—Isa. 40:5, 8:
   1. Without His speaking, God is mysterious, but He has revealed Himself in His speaking, and now He is the revealed God—Heb. 1:1; Isa. 40:5, 8.
   2. Jesus was sent by God for the purpose of speaking the word of God for God’s expression—John 3:34a; 7:16; 14:24:
      1. The word of God is actually Christ, the embodiment of God—Isa. 40:8; Col. 2:9.
      2. In the word—the speaking—of Jesus, God is unveiled and presented to men so that they may see God—John 14:7-10.
      3. The Son, as the Word of God and the speaking of God, has declared God with a full expression, explanation, and definition of Him—1:1, 14, 18.
7. The Lord Jehovah is the Potter—Isa. 29:16; 64:8; Jer. 18:6; Rom. 9:20-21:
   1. Jehovah is the Potter, and we are the clay in His hand—Jer. 18:1-6.
   2. As the Potter, God is sovereign and has absolute authority over us; He has the right to do whatever He desires—Rom. 9:20-21:
      1. If He wills, He can make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor; this does not depend on our choice—it depends on God’s sovereignty—v. 21.
      2. It is of God’s sovereignty that He, the Potter, makes the riches of His glory known by creating vessels of mercy to contain Himself—v. 23.
8. The Lord Jehovah is our Husband—Isa. 54:5:
   1. The entire Bible is a divine romance, a record of how God courts His chosen people and eventually marries them—Gen. 2:21-24; Rev. 19:7; 21:2, 9-10.
   2. Both the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets speak of God as the Husband and of God’s chosen people as the wife—Isa. 62:5; Hosea 2:16, 19.
   3. The crucial emphasis of the revelation released by all the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi is that God wants to have an organic union with His chosen people—Isa. 62:5; Jer. 2:2; 3:14; 31:32; Ezek. 16:8; 23:5; Hosea 2:7, 19:
      1. In this union God is His people’s life, and they are His expression.
      2. In this way God and His chosen people become a universal couple; this is God’s intention in His eternal economy—John 3:29; 2 Cor. 11:2; Rev. 22:17.
9. The Lord Jehovah is our salvation—Isa. 12:2-3; 17:10; 1:18:
   1. Isaiah 12:2 clearly reveals that salvation is God Himself; in the New Testament Jah Jehovah, who is salvation, is Jesus, the incarnated God—Luke 2:30.
   2. As the eternal Rock, Christ is the God of our salvation—Isa. 17:10.
   3. In God’s full salvation He not only forgives our sins, exempting us from the penalty of our sins and removing the record of our sins from before Him; He also washes away the traces of sins in us, making us as white as snow and white like wool—1:18:
      1. The washing that makes us as white as snow is a positional washing from without through the blood of Jesus Christ—1 John 1:7; Heb. 1:3b; Rev. 1:5.
      2. The washing that makes us white like wool is a washing of our nature metabolically from within by God’s Spirit and by His life—1 Cor. 6:11; Titus 3:5.
10. The Lord Jehovah has become the divine water—Isa. 12:3; 55:1:
    1. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament show that God’s practical salvation is the processed Triune God Himself as the living water—12:2-3; 55:1; Rev. 7:10, 14, 17; 21:6; 22:1, 17.
    2. In the book of Isaiah God considers that He is our salvation as living water—12:2-3; 55:1:
       1. To be our salvation, the Triune God was processed to become the life-giving Spirit as the living water, the water of life—1 Cor. 15:45b; John 7:37-39.
       2. The waters in Isaiah 55:1 and Revelation 22:17 are the redeeming God, the very God who accomplished redemption for us through His incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection.
       3. In totality, what Christ is and has accomplished is just the divine water, which is the consummated Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God for us to drink and enjoy—Isa. 55:1; John 7:37-39; 1 Cor. 12:13.
11. The Lord Jehovah will deal with His enemies—Isa. 14:12-15; 24:21; 27:1:
    1. Isaiah identifies Lucifer with Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, thus regarding him as a figure of Satan, as one who was one with Satan; this unveils Satan’s kingdom of darkness behind the nations and his oneness with the rulers of the nations—14:4, 12-15; Ezek. 28:12; Dan. 10:13, 20; Eph. 6:12b.
    2. In Isaiah 24:21 the host on high refers to Satan and his angels in the air (cf. Eph. 2:2; 6:12); Jehovah’s reaction to the nations’ excessive action on Israel deals both with Satan’s army in the air and with the kings on the earth—Rev. 12:7-10; 11:15.
12. The Lord Jehovah desires to have as His dwelling place a group of people into whom He can enter—Isa. 57:15; 66:2:
    1. God intends to have a dwelling place in the universe that is the mingling of God and man, in which God is built into man and man is built into God, so that God and man, man and God, can be a mutual abode to each other—John 14:2, 20, 23; 15:4; 1 John 4:13.
    2. In the New Testament this dwelling place, this house, is the church, which is God’s habitation in the believers’ spirit—Eph. 2:22; 1 Tim. 3:15.
    3. The ultimate manifestation of this universal building, this universal house, is the New Jerusalem; in this city God is in man, taking man as His dwelling place, and man is in God, taking God as his habitation—Rev. 21:3, 22; Gen. 28:12, 17; 2 Sam. 7:12-14.