“The Lord said to Abram”
Genesis 12:1, CSB
This is a strange start to a meditation, and it’s a simplistic verse. You’re all asking me, why would you put THAT as the verse for today. Well, it is a very important verse, something that we need to look at in depth. This isn’t even a post about faith really, it’s much more than that. It’s a look at ourselves and how little we know about God and who He is.
I want you to look at this verse, there is no context before this besides simply showing Abram’s lineage after Babbel. So there is no context, this just starts like it says above. How strange of a verse, right?
God didn’t announce himself in this verse, nor did he introduce himself. He just started talking. Personally, I think God was trying a different way to reach His creation using this message since walking with them, flooding the earth and scrambling the languages didn’t work. Maybe He was trying a more diplomatic approach.
Abram went along with what He said, and personally I would have to if I heard a disembodied voice promising to protect me if I followed His lead. Anyways, I’m off topic here, and I’m most likely going to do a series on this later down the line.
The most astonishing thing here is, simply, God never introduced himself. He never gave his name.
Well, he gave it later on. His name is Yahweh.
Nope.
That’s what WE call him, His creation. That’s not actually His name. See, it’s an attribute of him. Knowing how important names are, biblically and in modern times, one would think we would actually know His name.
Yahweh comes from a shortened version of Exodus 3:14 “I am that I am”. He was basically telling Moses “I was, I am, and I will be. I am the constant.” This was later shortened down to Yahweh.
The Biblical scholars will now say “His name is EL.” No, that’s not right either. El was taken from a Canaanite god (who ironically was depicted as a golden calf [catching on yet?]) and replaced in Hebrew to name God ‘God’ and also to use generally as the word god.
The Israelites also took names from other gods around to attribute to their God. The living God, but that’s not the point.
The point of all this is simple, we are much too small and ignorant by nature to know God. If we have any presumption of who God is while we’re praying, if we happen to even imagine he’s something that He’s not, then are we really praying to the living God?
We don’t even know His name, we just understand some attributes about Him. The closest we are ever going to get to know God is through His son Christ Jesus.
This is why it’s so important to have a relationship with Jesus, to know our creator through His son. Solomon, one of the wisest men to have ever lived, wrote in Proverbs 9:10:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.
That word fear could be translated as ‘awe’.Even the wisest man to ever live couldn’t even begin to contemplate who God is. We are to begin our journey of knowing God through awe. Once you take apart all the preconceived notions of who you think God ought to be, and start actually worshipping the living God who sent His son as redemption for sin, you will begin to understand him.
Take time during prayer today to seek Him first. To see who this God actually is, because I guarantee that idea you have of him is finite. We all know our God is infinite. Once you remove that you will really begin to see our father for who He is. Maybe we don’t know His name, but His actions are much more profound.