by Rev. Dr. Nathan Stone
The first question in some of our catechisms is, "What is the chief end of man?" and the answer is, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." But we will experience God in such fashion and we will glorify Him and enjoy Him — only in proportion as we know Him. The knowledge of God is more essential for the Christian, and indeed for all the world, than the knowledge of anything else — yes, of all things together. The prayer of the Lord Jesus for His disciples in John 17:3 was: "And this is life eternal that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ" (ASV). And speaking of this Christ, our Jehovah-Jesus, Paul sums up in Philippians 3:10 the great goal of his life: "That I may know Him."
"I suppose if sin had not entered the world," says one writer, "acquiring the knowledge of God would have been the high occupation of man forever and ever." It is for a lack of knowledge of God that the prophet Hosea informs his people they are destroyed. And it is from the lack of knowledge of God that many are without spiritual power or life. There is little real knowledge in these days of the one, true God.
There are many ways, of course, in which we may study God. The God who of old time spoke "unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken to us in his Son," the epistle to the Hebrews tells us. And this Son, Jesus Christ, while on earth said in the great discourse and prayer with God: "I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world..." (John 17:6). "And I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:26).
True, it is in the face of Jesus Christ we best see the glory of God; yet while we are in the flesh we can only know in part at most. And it behooves us to know all we can learn of God. All the Scriptures are profitable to us for instruction and edification, but perhaps not very many people know much about the person of God as revealed in His names. Surely a study of these names should be a most profitable way of increasing that knowledge.
When Moses received a commission from God to go to His oppressed people in Egypt and deliver them from bondage, he said: "When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, 'What is His name?', what shall I say unto them?" (Exodus 3:13).
Now the word "God" or even "Lord", as we see it in our English Bibles, conveys little more to us than the designation of the Supreme Being and Sovereign of the universe. It tells little about His character and ways. Indeed we cannot say all that the mysterious word "God" means to us until we know more about Him. And we can know little of what the word "God" means until we go to the language from which the word God is translated, the language which is the first written record of the revelation of Himself, the language in which He spoke to Moses and the prophets.
Now a name in the Old Testament was often an indication of a person's character or of some peculiar quality. But what one name could be adequate to God's greatness? After all, as one writer declares, a name imposes some limitation. It means that an object or person is this and not that, is here and not there. And if the Heaven of heavens cannot contain God, how can a name describe Him? What a request of Moses, then, that was — that the infinite God should reveal Himself to finite man by any one name!
Even so, the Old Testament contains a number of names and compound names for God which reveal Him in some aspect of His character and dealings with mankind.
by Moody Bible Institute of Chicago