— El Emet —

“God of truth”

(Deut. 32:4; Psa. 31:5; Isa. 65:15)

“Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”

— Deut. 32:3,4

Moses was most imminently known, in the Old Testament, as the name-bearer of God, unto His people Israel. I mean, as was declared of the Lord concerning Paul in the New Testament, “He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15), so likewise was Moses in the Old Covenant. Behold him in the holy mount, as the Lord personally confronts him, alone, and declares His name, thereby constituting his authority to go unto His people in Egypt (Exo. 3:13-17). Then behold him afterwards, in that same place, as the Lord shook the earth, pardoned a generation, remade the covenant, and “PROCLAIMED THE NAME OF THE LORD” (Exo. 33:18-34:8)!

All of this comprised the prerequisite qualifications of Moses to, as he stated in Deut. 32:3, “Publish the name of the Lord.” But the context of this “publishing” of the name of God, was in the introduction of another, and quite different work than what had before been borne witness to: this was the song of Moses as pertaining, not to the nativity of Israel (i.e. Exo. 15), but to the dissolution thereof through Babylon, in the latter days. Thus, as we learned with the name Jehovah, so we see again, that in order for an introduction of a new operation of redemption, the Lord introduces Himself by some new name; whereby, He might enlarge the heart of His people to receive and walk into the work which His hands shall make. And it is this name, “God of truth”, by which Moses (under inspiration) calls the Lord in the opening of this strange work, lest any be offended, as if the Lord had been a deceiver unto Israel, and His work was false and faulty! I remind my reader that it was this song which was to be perpetually in the hearts and mouths of the generations of God’s people (Deut. 31:19-22), that in the latter end they may understand and consider perfectly, that, indeed, HE IS A GOD OF TRUTH.

This name,“LORD God of truth”, is also declared by David in the 31st Psalm. “Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me” (Psa. 31:2,3). This name of the Lord, as a strong tower, was the refuge of David when he found himself surrounded by his enemies: the deceitful, lying, and slanderous tongues (v. 6,13,18). He was able to rely upon the God that redeemed him, and commit his all to God, for his LORD God was a God of truth, who would not hearken to lies, but hear the right! “Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth” (Psa. 31:5).

David surely felt himself bound in the same conflict of faith as all of his fathers before him, who were beset by the same foes, battles, and temptations as they wrestled for the performance of the promises left to them. The first times that “truth” is made mention of in the scriptures, was by the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, and they mention it in immediate conjunction with the mercy of God.

To Abraham in particular, it was the mercy of God to preserve His truth unto him, against the lying vanities, like a mighty rushing torrent which he waded through for 65 years! From the initial giving of the promise of the “seed” (speaking immediately of Isaac), when Abraham was 75 years old (Gen. 12:1-9), unto the late hour (Gen. 24:27), when at 140, Abraham was looking for the performance of this promise — for it was by the marriage and subsequent conception of Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, that the promise was executed, and not without it! Praise the Lord God of truth for his mercy towards Abraham!

Furthermore, it was “all the mercies”, and, “all the truth” (Gen. 32:10), by which Jacob returned from the land of Syria after approximately 20 years of rigor and fear in the house of his father-in-law, Laban. And that the Lord not only provided the bread and raiment he had asked of Him in Genesis 28:20, but so much more, had multiplied him into “two bands” (Gen. 32:10)… all this was mercy! And that the Lord saved him from the corruption, and dishonest ways of Laban, and would purge his own deceitful ways, innate in the law of his flesh… all this was His truth!

Therefore, for David to invoke the name of the Lord thus, was of no small significance, and no small summons! David was calling to court the justice of God demonstrated through the ages, wherein he always abounded towards all the sons of men, and by which he was eternally bound so to be: the eternal God of truth!

Once again, as we peer through the lattice of time, into the end of the age, we are made to hear, echoing through the corridors of eternity, from the ransomed souls of all the redeemed, the voice of blessing unto the God of truth! For after all was said and done, the day of the Lord through and upon Babylon, the fall and rising again of many, it will be seen, and well-known throughout all the earth, that the Lord’s truth did not fail, nor did the vision lie, but that the God of truth was keeping His truth and would not suffer that one jot or tittle of His law would, in any case, fall to the ground! In that day shall men bless themselves in the God of truth, and shall swear by the God of truth, for the former troubles are passed away, and they shall be hidden from the eyes (Isa. 65:16)! Even as it is written in the prophet Habakkuk (2:3), “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”