Day: July 25, 2021

The History of God in His Union With Man, Ch. 1, Sec. 3 of 9

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THE NAME OF GOD

The first thing we have to let people know in a biography is the name of the person about whom the biography is written. This is why we need to know the name of God.

Jehovah, Meaning “I Am Who I Am”— 
Self-existing and Ever-existing

There are many divine titles of God, but in this chapter I want to refer to only two of them. God’s name is first Jehovah. Jehovah means “I am who I am,” the self-existing and ever-existing One. Exodus 3:13-14 says, “Then Moses said to God, If I come to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, What is His name? what shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM. And He said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.” God called Moses and charged him to say to Israel that His name is I Am. Jehovah means “I am who I am.”

We can also say that Jehovah means “I was, I am, and I will be.” Revelation 1:4 refers to God as the One “who is and who was and who is coming.” He is the One who was in the past, who is in the present, and who will be in the future. In other words, He is self-existing and ever-existing, implying that He has no beginning and no ending.

In John 8 the Lord referred to Himself as the “I Am” three times. In verse 24 He said, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” He said in verse 28, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am.” Finally, the Jews challenged Him by asking, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” (v. 57). Then the Lord Jesus responded, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Before Abraham came into being, I am” (v. 58). Strictly speaking, it is wrong grammar to say that before Abraham came into being, “I am.” Grammatically, He should have said that before Abraham, “I was,” or “I have been.” But this would be wrong theologically. He is the great I Am without beginning and without ending, from eternity to eternity.

His being the I Am means “I am whatever you need” and “I am everything.” We have a signed check with the space for the amount left blank, and we may fill in whatever we need. After the name “I Am” we can fill in the amount. The heavenly bank will cash this check. The Lord is whatever we need. If we need salvation, light, life, power, wisdom, holiness, or righteousness, Jesus Christ Himself is all these things to us. He is Jehovah God, the great I Am.

The History of God in His Union With Man, Ch. 1, Sec. 2 of 9

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In this series of messages, I will be speaking concerning the Christian life from another angle, from the angle of God’s history. The living, purposeful, active, and acting God surely needs a history, a biography. Recently, we published a biography of Brother Watchman Nee, Watchman Nee—a Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age. Should there not also be a book concerning the biography of God? We need to realize that there is such a book. This book took approximately fifteen hundred years to complete through more than forty writers. The first writer was Moses, and the last writer was John. This book is the Bible. The Bible is the biography of God, the history of God. Actually, we may say the Bible is the autobiography of God, because it is a book about God written by God Himself through a number of writers moved by the Holy Spirit. Through His servants, God wrote His autobiography. The entire Bible is a history of the Triune God.

We have to know God’s history because His history has everything to do with us. This is why this series of messages is entitled The History of God in His Union with Man. This means that God’s history has become our history because He is in union with us. We can illustrate this with the union between a husband and wife. In my book about Brother Nee, there is a photograph of him with his wife. A history of Brother Nee could not be written without speaking about his wife. In like manner, the Bible is God’s history in union with us. He is our Husband, and we as His chosen and redeemed people are His wife.

The Christian life is a life in union with God. The New Testament says that Christ as the embodiment of God is the Husband and that the church is the wife (Eph. 5:25-32; 2 Cor. 11:2). The New Testament also says that Christ will have a wedding. Revelation 19 speaks of the marriage of Christ and His marriage dinner (vv. 7-9). Revelation 21 and 22 show us the marriage life in eternity between God embodied in Christ and His chosen, redeemed people. The New Testament is a book concerning the Triune God with His wife. Thus, when we touch God’s history, we touch our Christian life. The Christian life is a marriage life. We are the wife, and Christ is our Husband. The Christian life is the life of a wife who is married to the Triune God.

Our God has a history, and the most wonderful part of His history is His history in His union with man. Even in the Old Testament, God referred to Himself as the Husband and to His people as His wife (Isa. 54:5; 62:5; Jer. 2:2; 3:1, 14; 31:32; Ezek. 16:8; 23:5; Hosea 2:7, 19). The marriage life God desired with His people in the Old Testament is realized in the New Testament. In this series of messages, we want to teach and interpret the Bible with the view of the history of God in His union with man.

To teach the Bible is to teach people about God’s history. The Bible is not merely a book of stories but a living history of a living God. The Bible is written in a particular sequence from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 to show us the biography of this wonderful living person. We need to know the Bible according to the view of God’s history.

The History of God in His Union With Man, Ch. 1, Sec. 1 of 9

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CHAPTER ONE

GOD’S HISTORY IN ETERNITY PAST 
OUTLINE

I. The name of God:

A. Jehovah, meaning “I am who I am”—self-existing and ever-existing—Exo. 3:14.
B. Elohim (“God”), implying the faithful strong One—Gen. 1:1; 2:4.

II. God is eternal:

A. From eternity to eternity—Psa. 90:2b.
B. Uncreated (as the creating One)—Gen. 1:1.
C. Without beginning and without ending—self-existing and ever-existing—Heb. 7:3.
D. Eternal in His Trinity:

1. The Father is eternal—Isa. 9:6.
2. The Son is eternal—Heb. 1:12b; 7:3.
3. The Spirit is eternal—9:14.

III. God is triune:

A. Elohim (“God”—Gen. 1:1) is plural, indicating that God is triune—three-one, as confirmed by the pronouns Us, Our, and He in Genesis 1:26-27; 3:22a; and 11:7.
B. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—one name implies three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, indicating the Divine Trinity—Matt. 28:19:

1. The Father as the source of the Triune God.
2. The Son as the expression of the Triune God—John 1:18.
3. The Spirit as the reaching, the application, of the Triune God—2 Cor. 13:14.
4. The three coexist and coinhere at the same time from eternity to eternity—John 1:1-2; 14:10-11; 8:29; 15:26; Rev. 1:4-5a:

a. The Son came from with the Father and in the Father’s name—John 6:46; 1:14; 5:43a; cf. 1 John 2:23b.
b. The Spirit was sent from with the Father in the Son’s name—John 15:26; 14:26.

5. Among the three of the Divine Trinity, there is distinction, but there is no separation.

IV. God made an eternal economy—Eph. 3:9-10; 1:10:

A. The economy of the mystery hidden in God throughout the ages.
B. To produce the church for the showing of God’s multifarious wisdom.
C. To head up all things in Christ.

V. God in His Divine Trinity held a council in eternity—Acts 2:23 and footnote 1:

A. To make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ.
B. For the carrying out of God’s eternal economy.

VI. The second of the Divine Trinity was preparing to carry out His “goings forth” from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man—Micah 5:2.

VII. God blessed the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world—Eph. 1:3-6:

A. Choosing them to be holy, to be sanctified unto Himself with His holy nature—v. 4.
B. Predestinating them, marking them out, unto sonship, making them sons to Himself with His divine life—v. 5a.
C. According to the good pleasure of His will—v. 5b.
D. To the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in Christ, His Beloved—v. 6.