By Tara Dew, special to the Baptist Message
NEW ORLEANS (LBM) — This is the first of four excerpts Tara Dew has made available to Baptist Message readers from her newly released book, “Overflowing Peace,” a follow-up work to her best-selling book, “Overflowing Joy.”
David begins Psalm 23 with “The LORD is my Shepherd, I have everything I need.”
What a truth-packed verse! It is the most essential statement in the whole Psalm. If we truly believe this, then everything else will make sense. David’s first five words are: “The LORD is my Shepherd.” It is important that we understand who God is before we look at what He does or how He acts.
Look at the name of God which David uses to start verse 1: “The LORD.” In our English translations of Psalm 23, it is not written “Lord” with lowercase letters. God’s name is written with all uppercase letters, “LORD.” This means that David uses a special name that God gave to Himself. It is four Hebrew consonants, and the English transliteration is YHWH, pronounced “Yahweh.” In our English Bibles, you will find it translated LORD, Yahweh, or Jehovah.
Remember, names have meaning, especially in the Old Testament. We must understand the meaning of this name of God so that we can better interpret and understand who He is as our Shepherd.
Though God has over 1,000 different names in the Bible, Yahweh is the name for God Almighty and stands alone as the most sacred. In Jewish tradition, Yahweh is too sacred to even utter aloud. Jewish priests could pronounce it only one time a year in the Temple, behind the veil of the Holy of Holies. This name for God occurs more than 6,519 times in the Old Testament and is the name most closely linked to God’s redemption of His chosen people. It means the self-existing one who never had a beginning or has an end. The name Yahweh was first revealed to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:13-15:
Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your
ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What should I tell them?” God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the
Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.”
Yahweh, the Great I AM, uses this name for Himself. And it is the name by which He has chosen to be remembered throughout all generations. While God uses “I AM” to communicate Himself as the self-existent, eternal God—the One who was and is and is to come and has no beginning or end—He uses another name to communicate his covenant faithfulness to Israel especially. Though He needs nothing for His existence and is wholly self-sufficient and eternal.
He reveals himself as something even more to his chosen people: Yahweh. The LORD. This name reflects not just his creative power and self-sufficiency in a general way; on top of that, it reflects His faithful character to his own.
Said another way, “I AM” is who God is to the whole world, and Yahweh is a covenant-keeping God with His people. Notice the specific audience God has in mind when revealing this name: “Say this to the Israelites.” He made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and will keep His promises to their offspring for a thousand generations. “A thousand generations” is another way of saying “over and over again, forevermore.” And their offspring? Well, if you’re in Christ, you’re included in that (Gal. 3:29). Friend, because of these truths, you can trust that The LORD will do what He says He will do. He does not change. He is Yahweh to you—your all-powerful, self-sufficient, covenant-keeping God. And He always will be.
Here are a few other Scripture verses that use this name for God, displaying His unchanging, eternal, and almighty character, along with his faithfulness to his own:
Isaiah 42:8 “I am the LORD. That is my name, and I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.”
Psalm 83:18 “May they know that you alone— whose name is the LORD— are the Most High over the whole earth.”
Jeremiah 16:21 “Therefore, I am about to inform them, and this time I will make them know my power and my might; then they will know that my name is the LORD.”
Isaiah 41:4 “Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I am the LORD, the first and with the last—I am he.”
Deuteronomy 7:9 “Know that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps his gracious covenant loyalty for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commands.”
Friend, please do not miss this truth: Yahweh—the Great I AM—is eternal, self-sufficient, and almighty. And the same God, who created the world and redeemed the people from slavery in Egypt thousands of years ago, is the same covenant-keeping God of today. He is faithful, gracious, and loyal for a thousand generations. And this LORD is the one that David declares as the Shepherd: “Yahweh is my Shepherd” (Psalm 23:1, Lexham English Bible).
Tara Dew is a Bible teacher, speaker, author and the wife of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Jamie Dew.
