Yahweh

I recently finished spending hours and hours of my life writing a paper about a psalm of lament - Psalm 13 - which essentially declares that Yahweh is a God who cares and is personally invested in His people. The psalmist cried out in pain to Yahweh, appealing to this very fact. In the psalm itself, the psalmist laments of a feeling of separation from God and pleads with Him to look upon him once again. And this plea isn't an empty one; instead, it is one full of expectation and hope and trust that God will do so because it is who he is. Yahweh is not a God who leaves his powers unknown or eternally abandons his people. No - he is the God of the covenant of Abraham; the God that says, forever, "I will be your God, and you will be my people."

The morning of turning in this paper, we discussed in class the significance of the date 587 BC for the Old Testament Hebrew people. This was the year in which Jerusalem was destroyed and the Israelites went into exile in the hands of the Babylonians. 587 BC. This was the turning point of the Old Testament people - which means that for generations and generations and generations before that, Yahweh was worshiped. This was not the beginning, but the climax.

587 BC. Our God was served far earlier than 587 BC.

Immediately after turning in this paper, I attended a chapel service at Fuller, which included communion. The focus of the service was Hebrews 13:8: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."

We serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We serve the God of the covenant of Abraham. We serve the God who was worshiped in 587 BC - and earlier. A song says, "Yesterday, today, and forever - you are the same, you never change." And so this covenant that was made to Abraham (far before 587 BC!), the covenant the psalmist in Psalm 13 drew upon for hope in his pain, still stands for us today. The promise to "never leave you or forsake you" which was given as far back as Deuteronomy, Joshua, and 1 Kings is reiterated in Hebrews - and can be clung to by the followers of Yahweh today.

This promise is not a finished one. It did not end with Abraham. It did not end in 587 BC in Babylon. It did not end with Jesus Christ and his death on a cross. It was resurrected with him and lives on forever. And, just as the psalmist in Psalm 13, we can call upon it in our pain in full hope - resurrection hope - that our God - Yahweh, the covenant God - will never leave us or forsake us.