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     I have a hero named Judy Forsey.  She's a biblical character, though her name is not specifically mentioned in the Bible.  She got very, very sick just a few years ago and I didn't see her for a long time, but during all that time I was watching her. 

     It's turned-around in a way, because she often comes to the Bible class that my wife, Shelley, and I teach every Sunday.  But I would bet that she has taught me more about the key concepts of the Bible than I've taught her.  She taught me the book of Job, one of the most difficult books of the Bible to teach.  And she's teaching many, many more than just me.

     Even now, she regularly has to go to the hospital for long, arduous treatment.  Now and then she undergoes bad stretches, and when she does we don't see her at Bible class.  Watching for her, I note her absence.

     It gets kind of spooky, because she's on display to the universe.  God is showing her off, to prove that faith is real.  She's proving that some people actually do believe in God: not just that He exists--even demons believe that (1)--but that He can be trusted, no matter what.

     What's the difference?  Mere intellectual assent that God exists, even that Jesus is the Son of God, saves no one (2).  Trusting Him with our lives--listening for His voice and going His Way, even when it's dark and we can't see very far ahead--is the faith that saves.

     (As the book of Job opens, we glimpse God's throne room and a confrontation over Job's life between God and Satan.  Job himself is never made aware of what's behind the scenes of his suffering…)

     Satan:  "Job--and Judy Forsey--follow you because you're their celestial Sugar Daddy.  Stop strewing gifts all over "the narrow road" and you'll see them desert You for "the broad highway" that I'm on.  They don't believe in you.  Change their circumstances, take away the good things you've given them, and we'll see that their so-called faith in you is a sham."

          God agrees to the terms.  Soon, one calamity after another strikes Job.  His wealth, his family, and his health are taken away.  And the universe--angels, principalities, powers, and people--watch. 

     Job's wife tells him to give up faith--to curse God and die (3).

     Job's friends insist that Job's troubles are because of sinfulness in his life.

     Job doesn't know what to think, but he knows that his Redeemer lives--and that he will take his stand one day upon the earth (4).

     It was right around some of the darkest days and months of Judy's illness that I was preparing to teach the book of Job for the first time.  I well remember that first year and the trepidation I experienced when two especially difficult books--Job and Hebrews--loomed ahead.  How would I even begin?  I had a bunch of very sharp students who loved the Bible at least as much as I did and would not look kindly on any half-baked approach to any of its sacred contents.  Over many months, I worked long and painstakingly in preparation for Job.  I'd prepared responsibly, but I had the feeling that I had not gotten hold of the heart of the book.

     Periodically, I asked Dick Forsey how Judy was doing.  Dick has the face of a poker player and the heart of a Saint Bernard.  He always said the same thing:  "She's going to get better."  His faith was showing, too.

    During that time there often were prayer emergencies concerning Judy on the message machine when we'd get home, called in by Betty Lane, who was just ahead of Shelley on the telephone prayer chain. I listened and I watched.  I watched and sometimes I prayed.

     A couple days before I was to teach Job, I took out my lesson and reviewed what I had finished weeks ago.  But since then, I had learned so much about Job from Judy and Dick Forsey that I unhesitatingly deleted the entire lesson and, typing as fast as I could so the heart of the matter wouldn't escape me, I banged out this lesson sketch:

                        God's directing the entire scene and there's times when that's all we're going to know--that He's in charge, that He's putting his whole heart into it, and that we are to trust Him--even though we don't understand everything and are not going to be shown every card in His hand.  Whatever we're dealt, we're to trust that God knows about it and has a purpose for it.  Evil can't go further than the end of the chain God's got Satan tied up with, and God uses even evil to bring about good.

                        There are cosmic purposes that we are not aware of behind many of the things we find inexplicable.  Job's suffering has a purpose that he couldn't understand; he and the friends were not even aware of the cosmic struggle. 

     God didn't test Judy's faith.  He proved it.  He's proven it to created beings beyond our realm, and He's proven it to me.  He allowed circumstances, to demonstrate that her faith is based upon God's character, revealed in His Word; upon God's heart, revealed at His cross. 

    I'm still watching, Judy.  And I'm still learning.  And I'm not the only one.

Scripture references: (1) James 2:19; (2) see Luke 4:34; (3) Job 2:9; (4) Job 19:25

[The last installment of 'Be a Berean' looked at how the name of God, YHWH, came to be written as LORD in our Bibles.   In this installment, the implications of God's name in the process of salvation will be explored.]

 A.  In your Bible, and in mine, the first commandment begins with

     But this is the first commandment in its literal, more power-packed form:

     What a pity that the name of God is buried in that pivotal Bible verse, because the first commandment has a lot more to do with salvation than it has to do with restriction!  If you'll permit a paraphrase, here's the first commandment:

     "I AM, and there has never, and will never, be a day when I AM not.  If you're lost you can call out for me; if you're falling, reach out for my hand and I'll save you, like I did before, way back there in Egypt. But it's a matter of life and death that you understand this: If you call on any other name, you won't be heard.  If you reach for any other hand, it won't be there."

Q.  What do you mean when you say God's name is buried in the first commandment?  It plainly says, 'I am the LORD.'

A.   'LORD' is not the personal name God gave to Moses when He appeared on Mt. Sinai in a burning bush.  I remember the Beatle, George Harrison, singing about "My Sweet Lord."  I can assure you that Harrison was not singing about the God of the Holy Bible!  'Lord' is a generic word that takes the power, the Person, the heart--the striking individual Who is God--out of the first commandment, thereby rendering it nearly meaningless.

Q.  Meaningless?

A.  The commandment's entire intention is to tell us that only the God revealed in scripture--at the burning bush, at the cross--can deliver us from bondage to sin, from oppression at the hand of our enemy.  Unless we mentally associate the name of God--YWHW--every time we read LORD, then we are using a name that many false religions use to describe their false gods.  Yahweh, the God of the Ten Commandments, the God on the cross, is commanding us to follow only Him, and we out of our tradition bury his singular name with a generic word applied to any number of idols.

Q.  What does God think of all this?

A.  I can't answer for Him, but let's try an experiment.  Go home and call your wife, "Wife."  Tell me what she thinks of that.  I'll ask you tomorrow.

[The very next day…]

A.  So, what did 'Wife' think of her new name? 

Q.  She didn't 'think'!  She just exploded--told me to never call her that again. When I told her the experiment we were conducting, she settled down and was very insightful.  She said that 'wife' sounds like a position, not a person.  It sounds like "shortstop," she said.  She said she is glad that she is my wife, and she's also glad that "Wife" is not my wife! 

A.  Does that answer your question about how God might feel--about being called by a generic-sounding name instead of by His very own unique name?

Q.  Yeah.  He wants us to know Him as a person, and not as a position.

A.  Bingo!  Do you know that the name of the major Old Testament idol--Baal--actually means 'lord'.  God doesn't want his name confused with that!  In the New Testament, the Pharisees attribute Jesus' healing and saving power to Beel-zubul, the Baal (lord) of the flies.  Jesus then tells the Pharisees that if you give credit to a false god for the ability to heal and to save, then you have repudiated the Holy Spirit--the only source of regenerative power--and thus you have renounced the only means of salvation.

Q.  Yeah, I remember Jesus saying that you can say anything you want about Him, but don't blaspheme the Holy Spirit.  Is there any other verse in the Bible which refers to this matter?

A.  Verse?  How about the entire Old and New Testaments!  What are the two major things God condemns in the Bible?

Q.  Pride and…and…

A.  Think about the first commandment…

Q.  What is God's name?

A.  Jesus.

Q.  No, I mean the old guy with the white beard.  In the Old Testament.

A.  There is no old guy with a white beard in the Old Testament who says he's God!

Q.  Well, forget what He looks like.  What is God's name in the Old Testament?

A.  'I AM.'

Q.  Frankly, Franklyn, I'd sooner believe Bugs Bunny is God than that you are!

A.  No, silly.  God's name is 'YHWH' in the Old Testament.  It means 'I AM.'

Q.  I never saw 'YHWH' in my Bible.

A.  Right.  In your Bible and in mine, YHWH is rendered 'LORD,' all in capital letters.

Q.  Why?

A.  Because the Jews thought it was disrespectful to say God's name--and that it might violate the 3rd commandment.  So they took the vowels from 'Adonai'-- which means 'Master' and is rendered 'Lord' in the Bible, using upper- and lower-case letters.  They jammed the vowels from 'Adonai' into 'YHWH,' and came up with 'Jehovah.'

Q.  I've seen that name--'Jehovah'-- in an old Bible.

A.  The American Standard Version of 1901 uses 'Jehovah' instead of LORD.  If you ever see an old copy, grab it!  'Jehovah' is a lot closer to God's name than 'LORD' is.  God would prefer that His name be known, used, spoken.

Q.  How do you know?

A.  He gave Moses his name on Mount Sinai in Exodus 3:14, from the burning bush.  Moses had asked who he should say gave him the credentials and authority to lead the Jews in Egypt.  God said, "Tell them I AM sent you."  God explicitly intended His name to be spoken, heard, feared, revered, known, and loved.  He didn't mean for it to be transliterated, combined, re-combined, and then retro-fitted so that we really don't know what it sounds like.  It’s like forcing a standard nut onto a metric bolt.  Nothing good ever comes of it.

Q.  O.K., see if I've got this straight: The vowels from 'Adonai,' which is rendered 'Lord' in our Bibles, were taken and inserted into YHWH, which leaves us with 'Jehovah.'  So Jehovah isn't really God's name, either.  Right?

A.  Right.

Q.   Why aren't there any vowels in YHWH?

A.  There were.  God spoke them, but Hebrews don't use vowels in written text, so the actual vowel sounds between the consonants Y-H-W-H are unknown. They were lost because the name was never spoken. The closest guess is that it sounded like 'Yahweh.'  But that's just a guess.

A.  I told you, there is no old guy in the O.T. with a white beard who said he is God.

Q.  So who told Moses that his name is YHWH?

A.  God.

Q.  Man, this is like "Who's On First?"

A.  Why?

Q.  Because.

A.  What?!

Q.  I don't know.

A.  Naturally!

Q.  Wise guy.  Which of the names do you use?  What do you call God?

A.   I call God Jesus, just like I said at the start.  Jesus made it very clear that He is YHWH.

Q.  When?

A.  In John 8:58, Jesus told the Pharisees, "Before Abraham was, I AM."   The Pharisees clearly understood Jesus' statement to be a declaration of His deity.  They took up stones to kill Him, because they considered it blasphemy to even say YHWH, let alone claim to be YHWH.

Q.  So, the old guy with the white beard in the O.T. was Jesus?

A.  Will you cease and desist with the old guy in the white beard!  When God is on earth in the Bible, you can almost always think 'Jesus.'  Old Testament appearances of Jesus are called preincarnate appearances.  That means that he had not yet come in the flesh.  God never appeared in the flesh until the baby from Bethlehem arrived.

Q.  You sure about all of this?

A.  There are some murky, mind-stretching trinitarian issues at play, because God is one in His essence, three in His person.  But when my Savior flat-out tells me that He's YHWH from before Moses and Abraham, I don't take up stones to throw at Him.  I just stand in awe, then go home and try to pound these things into my head.  Can I tell you a secret?  Promise you won't tell a soul?

Q.  I promise. Tell me a secret!

A.  Just like you, I had to struggle to replace 'the old guy with the white beard' with the real YHWH.  I guess we've all seen too much Charlton Heston, Cecil B. DeMille, George Burns, and Michelangelo.  But look under every line of scripture, and 'the old guy with the beard' isn't there.

Q.  So does God the Father ever appear? Let's say it that way.

A.  Yes.

Q.  When?

A.  In the New Testament!  At Jesus' baptism and at Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain, God the Father appeared, but only as a voice from above. 

Q.  What's the Holy Spirit doing?

A.  Hovering.  Re-creating.

Q.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t say much.

A.  He lets His results speak for themselves.

Q.  Where can I learn more about YHWH?

A.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 

['Be a Berean!' will re-visit this topic in the next installment, when the implications of God's name in the process of salvation will be explored.]

     Teaching with types is the primary teaching method of the Holy Spirit.  In the Bible, the movie comes out before the book!  Junior- and senior-high students "watch the movie" instead of reading the book, then write a "book report," because the movie is easier to understand (and takes a lot less time).  The Holy Spirit "shows the movie" first, filling the Old Testament with people, places, objects, and actions which serve to make it easier for us to understand the concepts of the New Testament, especially the concepts concerning the heart and character of God--the heart and character which brought Him to the cross.

     'Types' can be people.  Isaac, the miracle baby promised to Abraham and his wife Sarah (who was long past child-bearing age) typifies Jesus Christ, who was also supernaturally born.

     Isaac was the son of promise.  God promised Abraham that through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed (Genesis 26:4; cf. Genesis 12:3; 18:18; 22:18).  This was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, a descendant of Abraham and Isaac. 

    'Types' can be objects or things.  The wood that Isaac carried to his own sacrifice foreshadows the cross that Jesus would carry to Golgotha.

     'Types' can be actions.  God told Abraham to bring Isaac to be sacrificed.  Abraham obeyed.  Then God stopped him, telling Abraham that God would Himself provide the sacrifice.  Later, God not only provided a sacrifice but was, Himself, the sacrifice. 

     Some 'types' are 'types in contrast':  Ishmael was Abraham's son born to the slave-girl Hagar. In contrast to Isaac, Ishmael is "the son of the flesh." Together, these two sons depict the New Testament concept that naturally, on our own, we are slaves to sin.   But supernaturally, by faith in God's Son of Promise, we are set free from sin and death (see Romans 9).  Jesus Christ emphasized this concept, telling the religious Pharisee Nicodemus that "You must be born again.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh.  That which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

          Types, then, foreshadow the character and work of Jesus Christ.  A trick question which serves to help the Bible student understand the concept of types is--

The Bible student reflexively thinks in terms of "B.C.," thousands of years before Christ, in the time of Moses and the Exodus.  But an understanding of the typology of Scripture gives us the correct answer:  the passover in Exodus is only the copy and shadow of things to come (Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 8:5).  Our real Passover was at the cross of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 5:7) in approximately 33 A.D.  The blood on the posts and lintels of the doors in Egypt were the faint whisper, for a relatively few Hebrews, of the blood on the post and crosspiece where hung the Lamb without blemish--the Door to eternal life for all nations, for all time (John 10:9).

     These types echo and re-echo throughout the Bible, pointing to Jesus.  Every story whispers His name.  The types, which are actually the Bible's most sophisticated and meaningful prophecies--deep calling to deep--become more emphatic, more pronounced, until the echo is overtaken by the original--the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world--in a dizzying timelessness.

     For the last five years of my life, very nearly every available moment has been consumed with teaching (or preparing to teach) the Bible.  I can't give any meaningful accounting of the rate of success and/or failure, for the Bible teaches the folly and danger of measuring a work of the Spirit, which I believe every Christian ministry to be.

     But one night in late June, I had my most gratifying moment.  A small crew of hardcore Bible students, some of them on their second or third trip with me through the 66 books of the Bible, had gathered on a Thursday night--a night so mild, so lush and gorgeous that any "sane" person would have opted out of Bible study in order to enjoy the weather.  But this crew, insane in the Spirit, were there when I started to trot through another of the types.  This one happened to be the motif of the rock: starting with the rock that was smitten, from which life-giving water flowed (Exodus); to the stone the builders rejected which became the capstone of the arch (Psalms); to the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands, which crushed the prideful institutions of man (Daniel); to the stone of stumbling and a rock of offense for unbelievers (Isaiah/Romans/1 Peter); which same stone is the foundation of the church, upon which the wise man builds his house (1 Corinthians/Matthew). 

“Lifted Up” moved to Thursday nights…

Lifted Up promotes life-long, habitual reading and study of the entire Word of God.  In one year the student will know Jesus Christ more personally and His Word more thoroughly than ever before.

The evening Lifted Up class is called “Lifted Up—Reference Edition.”  The instructors, Franklyn and Shelley Pfeil, hope the longer class time will enable the fast-paced class to slow down enough to actually linger over the precious Word for a moment, to field questions and encourage response.

We also hope that the evening edition of Lifted Up will enable those who attend other churches to take this unique whole-Bible course.  If you are thinking of committing to the life-changing spiritual discipline that Lifted Up will instill, think about that friend of yours (from LAC or from another denomination) and bring him/her along.  Think of that neighbor who doesn’t want to get near “church” but might have an interest in learning more about this Jesus that everybody’s always talking about.  The class is presented in spirit and in truth—just ask anyone who’s been there!--and in a way that will teach and inspire the young, old, male, female, believer, disciple, Jesus freak, seeker, or skeptic; the lukewarm, on fire, wondering, wandering, sophisticated, jaded, lost, hurt, burdened, backslid, born again, bummed out, been there, done that, “just looking,” just about to lose it…Just about everybody!

Q.  Can you really teach me what the Bible is all about?

A.  The Bible is all about Jesus--on every page, Old Testament and New Testament. Give Him 15 minutes every day (to read) and 90 minutes every Thursday (to study with     others) and He can teach you to hear His voice, and follow Him.  (John 10:27)

Q.      Can Jesus really help me with my life?  

A.  Yes.  First, you will be in love like never before—or maybe for the first time in your life.  Love quickens your step and gets your focus off yourself.  Add to that the fact that the One you’ve flipped over is the Creator of the universe--and fills your heart with His Spirit, your every day with resurrection power--and, yeah, help’s on the way.

Q.  Promise?

A.  Guaranteed…

      My Word which goes forth from My mouth

     Will not return to Me empty,      

      Without accomplishing what I desire,           

     And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.  (Isaiah 55:11)