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What Elohim is used for Yahweh as a name and title for the God, the plural of majesty is calling attention to the superiority to the transcendent greatness of the Most High God. Anything else by comparison is really a pretense. All other claims to deity pale in the insignificance in comparison with Elohim, in whom all of the characteristics and all of the attributes, all of the facets, all of the fullness of deity dwells.

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Our God is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. He is high and lifted up as the prophet Isaiah experienced in Isaiah chapter six. You're listening to Renewing youg Mind on this Thursday. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. The God we are to believe in is not to be the God of our imagination, the God we might prefer, but must be the God who has revealed himself in the pages of sacred Scripture. And this is one of the reasons why I believe this series, Names of God, is so helpful. Because as RC Sproul surveys these names, it helps us to see who God is. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today is the final day that you can request access to this 15 message series along with three books from Dr. Sproul. So if you haven't already, please make a year end gift in support of renewing your mind and and ligonier ministries@renewingyourmind.org and to thank you, we'll unlock this series for you in the Ligonier app and send you this book bundle from R.C. sproul. Well, here's Dr. Sproul on the name Elohim.

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As we continue our study now of the names and the titles of God. We're concerned at this point with names and titles for God the Father. And what I would like to do now is ask you if you are in a position, if you're not driving a car somewhere, but if you're in a place where you can reach into your pocket and pull out a coin, any coin, a quarter, a nickel, a dime, whatever, I want you to look at that coin for just a second and see if you can find a Latin phrase on that coin. I think you know what Latin phrase we're looking for. If we don't know anything about that ancient language, and though it may be archaic and even intimidating to us, we leave Latin to the doctors and to the lawyers and to the philosophers and so on. But the one Latin phrase it seems like everyone in America is familiar with is the one that's on our coins because it's the motto for our nation E pluribus unum. What does that phrase mean, E pluribus unum? I think most of us know the answer to that question. It's from many one. Well, that question, e pluribus unum from the many one, is a question not only of culture, but it's one of the most profound questions of all time. Some of you are familiar with the program that ran on television for a long time, hosted by the noted astronomer, physicist, and author Carl Sagan. And the name of his program was called Cosmos. And Professor Sagan wrote a book by the same title. And at the very beginning of that book, which is called Cosmos, he makes the statement that the universe in which we live is indeed a cosmos and not a chaos. Now, what was Professor Sagan getting at? What does he mean when he says we live in a cosmos and not in a chaos? What's the difference between the two? Well, we know what chaos is. Chaos is where everything is running around wild, unbridled, unshaped, unformed, where there can be all kinds of things going on. But the problem with chaos is what? Nothing fits together. Everything is in a state of confusion. It is disharmony rather than harmony. And so the assertion that Carl Sagan was trying to make at the beginning of his book was, even though our life is an experience of a vast variety of different things, we have stars and we have moons, we have plants, we have animals, we have houses, we have towns, we have cities, we have woods and forests and all these different things. And we live in a world filled with all kinds of different people. Tall people, short people, fat people, thin people, old people, young people, black people, white people, all different sorts of people. How does it all fit together? How does it all make sense? And at an emotional level, sometimes we feel our lives are overwhelmed by all of the different pulls and tugs that are going on in our own experience. And we long for some point of unity, something that will make sense out of everything that's going on in us and everything that's going on around us. So that very practical, emotional, everyday question is a question that Carl Sagan is concerned about from a scientific viewpoint. And we might say that it was one of the most pressing questions of ancient thinkers. The late Francis Schaeffer once made the comment that the overarching concern of ancient philosophers was the concern about the relationship between unity and diversity, between the pluribus and the union between the one and the many. Now, what in the world does that have to do with theology? What does that have to do with our understanding of God and Particularly, what does it have to do with the names of God? Well, let's go to the Old Testament, where we meet a most unusual reference to God. In fact, if you have your Bible in front of you, I would suggest that you open it to page one, where in the very first chapter of Genesis, when we're reading the creation account in verse 26, we read these words, and then God said, let us make man in our image according to. To our likeness. Did you hear something strange in that text? God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Do you notice that there is a plural reference here to God? God doesn't say, let me make man in my image, but it's, let us make man in our image. Well, what we find here in the earlier chapters of the Bible is a name for God that has provoked all kinds of debate and consternation and arguments because the name for God that is found here is the name Elohim. Now, we've already seen in the course of our study that one of the common words for God in the ancient Semitic world was the simple word el, E, L. And here we have that name El, but with the Hebrew plural ending Elohim. And so it would seem that the simplest translation of this name for God would not be God, but God's plural, because it is the plural form for God. Well, what are we to make out of all of this? In the 19th century, critics of biblical religion jumped all over this name and tried to use their research to prove that the Bible and biblical religion follows a pattern that just like other religions in past time. And the idea was that religion starts in the world and in various cultures with primitive forms of animism. Have you ever heard the word animism? If we look at primitive religions that still exist in the world today, go into the jungles of Africa or South America, we can find people who are practicing what. What's called animistic religion. Now, what does the word animism mean? You've heard the word animal, and you've heard the word animated. If you get up and jump around right now, get out of your chair and start running out of the room, somebody might say, look at her. Look at him. They're very animated. Well, all animated means is that you're alive, that you have a spirit that is manifesting itself, an animus, if you will, that is being demonstrated by your activity or your excitement or your being stirred up. Well, animism is a primitive, simple form of religion where inanimate objects. What do we mean by an inanimate object. We mean an object that doesn't manifest life, like a stone, something like that. We don't think of stones as being alive or the sun. We don't think of the sun as being alive. Animism believes that these objects in nature are inhabited by spirits, like evil spirits. There's a little God that lives in the rock, or there's a God in the tree. I know of one tribe that the center of their worship was a tree that was covered by all the time with hordes of bees. It was called the bee tree, and it was in the middle of the village. And this was the main God for these people. They came and they offered sacrifices and they said their prayers in front of the bee tree because they believed the bee tree was inhabited by a spirit. And so this religion was animistic. Well, the theory in the 19th century was that all religions start with this kind of primitive view of. And then it gets a little bit more sophisticated as it develops and as it grows. And soon it becomes polytheism, where there are specific gods for specific purposes. We remember the Greeks and the Romans, for example. They had a God of wisdom and a God of love and a God of war and a God for the garden and a God for the home, and all different kinds of gods and goddesses. And we say they are polytheistic. That is, they believed in many gods. And then they say the next stage in the development of religion is from polytheism to what's called henotheism. H e N O T H E I S M Henotheism. You may not be familiar with that word. Well, that's a specific type of polytheism, where the idea is there's lots of gods round and about, but only one per nation. Like the Jews have Yahweh, the Canaanites have baal, and the Philistines have Dagon. Each nation has its own particular God, and that God resides in the nation and reigns over the nation. And sometimes that God will go to war against the gods from other nations. But it's sort of a transition stage from simple polytheism to a more advanced theology. And finally, as this evolution takes place, the acme of development is reached when people begin to believe in one God. E pluribus unum. Out of the many, one God emerges, and that God is seen as the great God over all things. He is the creator, he is the ruler, he is the chief and only God. And that we call, of course, monotheism. Now, in this theory, in the 19th century, the guns were leveled against the Old Testament religion. And the idea was that even Jewish religion did not come to monotheism until very late in Jewish history. Until the 7th or 8th century, prophets developed this concept of monotheism. They denied, for example, that Moses was a monotheist or that Abraham was a monotheist. And they say, if we look in the early stages of the Bible, we see Abraham, for example, talking to these men by the oaks of mamma, and these men are supposedly angels. Well, what the text is really saying, the critics observed, was that Abraham was speaking to the God in the tree. Or we have the episode where Balaam's ass speaks, say, what is that but animism? A talking mule giving human powers and qualities to a dumb animal. And even earlier than that, you have the creation account and the account of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden where this serpent comes in and starts to speak. And the critics say, see here you have animism. And then later on, polytheism. And where do you suppose they find the concept of polytheism? You guessed it in the name Elohim. Critics looked at this and they said, well, see, even the Jews were polytheists. Because in the first page of the Old Testament, we hear about the gods working in creation. Elohim is a plural name. And so Jewish religion goes through the same transformation that other religions do. Well, I'm happy to say that in the main, although not altogether, a lot of these theories that were so popular in the 19th century after being subjected to the philosophy of the second glance, have been discredited. And we notice that in the literature of the Old Testament, that the Old Testament does not follow the pattern of ancient mythology, and that there are stark and clear differences between the religion that is expressed in Israel and those in surrounding nations. And if there's anything that is repugnant to Old Testament religion, it is the idea, idea of animism or of polytheism. From the very beginning, from the very first verse of the Old Testament, there is a clear declaration of one God who is not simply the God of Israel, but he is the God who makes heaven and earth and everything that is in them. But we're still left with the question, why does the Old Testament use this strange plural name for God? Well, if we go back to the Old Testament and we find this name Elohim, which is the plural form of the name for God, we find some very strange and interesting aspects to it. One of them is that frequently when the name Elohim is used in the Bible, though The name itself has the plural form. It will take a singular verb so that you have a plural noun, plural subject, with a singular verb. Because the Jews understood that even though grammatically they used a plural form for the name of God, they used a singular verb with it. Because the Jews were totally committed to monotheism. And they said there is only one God. But the idea was that in this God who is one, the God who is one, and the God who alone has created all things, is not himself one dimensional. That there is a richness within the very nature of God. Some look at this plural form, and they say, ah, well, the first page of Genesis. We're getting an announcement of the Trinity. Because the Christian Church has believed for centuries that God is one and many, that God does have unity and diversity within himself. Because our creed says that we believe God is one in essence, but he is three in person. That's the idea of the Trinity, where you have unity and diversity. There is a distinction within God himself. And the distinction we make is the distinction among the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Now, those distinctions, we say, are real distinctions, but they're not essential distinctions. That is, there's only one being. They're not three gods. Elohim doesn't suggest a plurality of gods. There's only one God. But in that one God, there are three subsistences, three distinct personalities. Now, the idea of the Trinity communicates that even within the very nature of God, the foundation and the ground of all unity and all diversity comes to rest. Now, I am not one who believes that the author of Genesis intended by the name Elohim to give us a kind of hint or cryptic revelation of the Trinity. Maybe it was his intent. I don't know that. Certainly the idea of Trinity is not spelled out in the book of Genesis. However, what I'm simply saying is that the name Elohim is consistent with the idea of the Trinity. And as we look somewhat technically at the literature of the Jews and at their manner of speaking and the way they use this term Elohim, we know that the Jewish people had a concept that is called the plural of intensity and another concept called the plural of majesty. And I think today most biblical scholars agree that what the name Elohim is pointing at is that the name Elohim is used in a lower sense simply for the simple plural gods. Pagan deities can be referred to as Elohim, that is gods. But when it's used for Yahweh as a name and title for the God, the plural of majesty is calling attention to the superiority to the transcendent greatness of the Most High God, where all of what is comprised in the concept of deity reaches its climax in yhwh. Anything else by comparison is really a pretense. All other claims to deity pale into insignificance in comparison with Elohim, in whom all of the characteristics and all of the attributes, all of the facets, all of the fullness of deity dwells. And so he is called the Most High God, not because he's simply higher than other gods, the other gods actually are not gods at all, but because he is higher than the angels, higher than demons, higher than spirits, higher than human beings, because reality and being itself reaches its highest point in the fullness of God. The plural of majesty, before whom we are called to bow in reverence and in adoration and in obedience is used. And so Elohim is the Creator who out of the fullness of his being moves to make you and me. He says, let us make man in our image, for there is nothing to compare with him.