Excerpt from sermon by Kong Hee: YHWH – Jehovah Jireh, Rapha
Transcription
God also say to Moses, say to the Israelites, the Lord, Y-H-W-H. You see that? All capital letters, L-O-R-D. The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. Forever, Y-H-W-H. The name you shall call me from generation to generation Okay, what is this name? Y-H-W-H. How do you pronounce it? How do you pronounce Y-H-W-H when there is no vowels to say it correctly? You don't use your tongue and you can't close your lips. Remember, Jesus says, God is spirit. So God is like breath. He's everywhere, invisible, just like breath. So his name imitates the natural act of breathing. As you inhale and exhale. So this is how Y-H-W-H sounds like. It is the sound of breathing. Can you imagine? The first word you have ever spoken when you came out of your mother's womb was the personal name of God. You were calling out for your friend, your savior, calling out for your heavenly father. And the last word you'll ever speak in this life, the last breath you will take on your deathbed will be the name of God. You will leave this earth when his name no longer fills your lungs, Imagine, when you are sad and you sigh heavily, ah, ah, you are calling out his name. When you are anxious and you're afraid and you breathe slowly to help yourself come down, you are calling out his name. When you're about to do something challenging and hard and you take a deep breath to fill up your courage, you're calling out his name. When your heart is broken and you don't know what else to say and all you can do is to sob in tears and gasp for breaths, you're calling out his name. When I think about it, when I was a little boy and whenever I have my asthmatic attacks, and I have them almost regularly every other day, as I was wheezing and gasping for air, ah, ah, ah, I was calling out his name. Perhaps this is what it means, that even in the most challenging moments of life, like how you have sung it earlier when Chevelle led us in the song, Psalms 150 is true, that let everything that has breath praise the Lord because wherever you're breathing, you are calling out his name, hallelujah. Come on, go ahead and give the Lord a big hand. If you want to clap, let's give the Lord a big clap, hallelujah.