ELOHIM

Today the focus in church was on ELOHIM. It comes from Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning GOD ... " The "GOD" there in the Hebrew is: ELOHIM ... ALMIGHTY GOD. Here's the real brief recap, if you missed it:

Today in our culture, we focus on OLD a whole lot. Old is relative, of course, but we in the U.S. are over-focused on AGE – and unlike OTHER cultures around the world who honor, respect and embrace ‘old’ … here we tend to disrespect, ignore and even fear old. We do everything we can to avoid it. And sometimes I think – when we talk about GOD – Jehovah-Shammah, Jehovah-Jireh, Jehovah-Shalom, Jehovah-Rapha, Jehovah-Nissi, Adonai … we can start thinking these are really just descriptive of some OLD GOD who doesn’t have very much at all to do with us today.

Remember George Burns’ portrayal of GOD in the 1977 movie, ‘Oh, God!?’ He plays an elderly, cigar-smoking, wise-cracking, far-sighted version of God. Whoever chose to cast George Burns in that part knew exactly what they were doing, playing into one of our most deeply rooted assumptions about God … that He is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY old.

Bryan Jarrett, Director of College Ministries at a church down South says: 'In some respects, it’s hard to imagine God any other way. To US, everything has to have a START and a FINISH. We don’t know what ETERNAL looks like, so we fill in the blanks with the closest thing we have: in other words – GREAT-GRANDPA. And if God was actually here BEFORE great-grandpa, then He must be VERY, VERY old indeed.'

The Bible uses terms for deity such as Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end. God is called ageless and unchanging. In the Old Testament, Daniel refers to Him as the “Ancient of Days.” All beautiful, accurate descriptions, but names nonetheless that evoke a sense of ‘old.’ It’s not hard to figure out where all that LEADS. It leads to a God whom some could describe as past His prime, over the hill, outdated and unconnected to the world we live in.

And then there are our everyday struggles. As long as God is ‘sweet old Elohim,’ our struggles are something He just doesn’t understand. Since He is OLD, God obviously cannot comprehend the complexities of the internet, so He couldn’t possibly get the struggles so many face with internet pornography. His views on sexuality are hopelessly old-fashioned, so it’s impossible for Him to understand the level of addiction some face – or same-sex marriages – don’t even START there – God can’t possibly get THAT. God can’t comprehend the things you see when you look in the mirror and there’s no WAY He’s going to be able to deal with the things you do to your body to make yourself more acceptable – and the things you do late at night when everyone else is asleep, don’t mention those. All of THAT is just a little too much for Old Elohim to deal with.

But here’s who Elohim really is – He is BIGGER than us; He is BEYOND us; He is ABOVE us. Long before anything existed, there was GOD. That means even before there was TIME, there was God. There was never ‘NOT God.’ He is not restricted by time or space – and He is just as involved and interested in YOUR life today as He was in the lives of Moses or David or Job or Mary or Paul or Peter – or your great-great-grandfather. He is ELOHIM, our Creator - Almighty God.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun … it rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.” (Psalm 19:1-6)

And sometimes I think we just forget that. We go through life – and when there’s a storm, we forget how big, how powerful, how mighty, how awesome the God of Creation really is. NOTHING takes Him by surprise – He made it ALL.

But the TRUTH is – ever since the beginning of time, people have been trying to shrink God down to size to make Him smaller than He really is. We try to condense Him to a little statue on our fireplace mantel – or some kind of picture or room or stained glass or symbol. We make Him so MANAGEABLE. Sometimes we try to put God in a little box or in a building … and we say, ‘THAT’S where God LIVES’ – or – ‘THAT’S where God is ACTIVE’ – and we SHRINK HIM DOWN. But we don’t NEED a God who is all neat and confined and boxed up. We have no use for a SMALL God. Not for what WE’VE got. No – we need a great big HUGE God.

And THAT is exactly who we have.

And be blessed.