God the Creator // The Amazing Names of God, Part 2

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

It’s easy to get things out of perspective. We stub our toe – and all we can think of is our sore toe – everything else goes out the window. And perspective comes when we look at the big picture – creation … the God who created it all.

There’s a place on the internet called "Second Life" I don’t know if you’ve been there, but it has this massive cult following around the world. It is in effect a virtual world. You can live there. You can buy real estate, have a job, join a church, have an affair, all with other people who live in "Second Life". It really, truly is an amazing place.

Pastors have planted virtual churches there. People actually buy and sell virtual real estate and build houses in "Second Life". People literally can and do have virtual affairs with others in that place. I am not saying that’s a good thing, it’s just what it is.

I kind of imagine sometimes if somehow I could become part of the "Second Life" cosmos actually, live my life inside this virtual world as the place where I actually live, well eventually, eventually it would dawn on me that someone would have had to create this virtual world. I mean, there must have been some visionaries who conceived it in the first place and then designers and developers and sociologists who implement it, maintain and build the new features.

If I were immersed in this virtual world and living out all of its benefits, at some point I want to start knowing something about the people who created it. Who are they? What makes them tick? Why did they build this place called "Second Life" in the first place? What motivated them to give them this opportunity? At some point I would want to know the creator. I mean, it’s only natural.

The Bible uses many different names for God. There’s a reason for that. In the Hebrew culture names were important because names had meaning. And so it was so it was really important to understand the meaning of the person’s name to understand the purpose that God had for them. "Moses", that word means "to draw someone out". He drew Israel out of captivity in Egypt. And so it is true with the names of God.

There are quite a few of them used in the Bible and you have to ask yourself, well why would God allow His Word, the Book that reveals Him to us? Why would He allow all those different names to be used of Him? I’m really quite happy with just the one name for myself, thank you very much, but God allows different names to be used. Why?

Well the answer’s this. He wants to tell us who He is, what He’s like and these different names reveal God to us. That’s important. I want God to be real in my life. I want to know Him in my ups and in my downs. I want to have an intimate relationship with Him and if He’s chosen to reveal Himself to me in part through these different names in the Bible then I want to discover what He’s trying to tell me.

Today I would like you to join me on a bit of a journey to uncover just one of those names and it’s the name, the very first name used of God in the Bible, it’s the name "Elohim". It names God as the powerful creator of the universe. This name, "Elohim" literally means "God the creator". Just listen to the beginning to the first book of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1:

In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth. The Earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep while the wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.

And then comes the incredible story of God’s creation. So many people get hung up on how God created the cosmos and how long it took and how did He do it. Can I be honest with you? I don’t know exactly how He did it, and I don’t know exactly how long He took. What I do know is that God did create the earth and the heavens and the universe. God is the creator of everything. The trillion, trillion or so stars that we know about, spread over such vast distances.

The astrophysicists tells us that the size of the visible universe is about 15 billion light years. That means the light which travels at an amazing speed of 186,000 miles per second, the light from the farthest star at one end of the universe takes 15 billion years to travel from that one end to the other end of the visible universe. And what lies beyond the visible edge of the universe? Only God knows. Elohim – God the creator of this massive, incomprehensible universe.

But not only did God create this massive cosmos, He created you and me, atoms and molecules and beetles and bugs and mice and cockroaches and the most incredible sea creatures and viruses and bacteria. The list goes on and on. Let me ask you something. If you were Elohim, the creator, would you have created beetles and had you conceived these things, beetles, how many different species would you have created. Five, ten, fifty, one hundred. Maybe you were feeling really creative that day and you made five thousand, well ... God created 360,000 different species of beetle.

In fact the more we look at this creation around us, the more we start to realise something. It tells us a whole bunch about the God who created it. And if you’re stuck in the traffic or the train or bus on the way to work, have you ever just kind of detached yourself from the mundaneness of it all and looked around and thought to yourself, man look at this, the trees, the car, the people, the birds, the sky, the rain, the night, the day, the birth, the death … the whole thing. Just look at it. Isn’t it amazing? So massive yet so intricate; so fascinating and yet on so many levels so incomprehensible.

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and realised how amazing you are? Have you ever marvelled at your memory or your reasoning capacity? I often wonder how is it I can remember so much. Where do I store it? Where does it come up from in an instant? And when I can’t remember something from the past, all of a sudden, about an hour-and-a-half later, how is it that it pops into my head?

My friend, as you stand back and look at creation, let me ask you this. What does it tell you about this God, this God who created it all? Aren’t you inquisitive? Don’t you want to know? The creation speaks to us about the Creator. That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 1, verses 19 & 20. He said:

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them ever since the creation of the world His eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things that He has made.

And what a mighty God He is. What an incredibly creative and totally unexpected and unpredictable God He is. As I look at His creation, that creation seems to speak these things back to me over and over again about Elohim. Firstly:

1. He is so amazingly creative and inventive. 2. He’s incredibly powerful.

And those are the things that I need to know about my God when I’m stuck in a hole. Those are the things I need to know about my God when I’m confronted with problems.

This God who created 360,000 species of beetle, do I think He’s not creative enough to come up with a solution to my problems? This God who created a universe 15 billion light years across, at least, quite possible more, do I think He doesn’t have the power to solve my problems? When the devil attacks my faith and my flesh, do I somehow imagine God can’t cope. God the creator – Elohim. This is the God that God wants to be to you and to me.