The Significance of God’s Identify

When Jesus prayed in His Excessive Priestly Prayer, “I made identified to them your title, and I’ll proceed to make it identified,” He was referencing one thing completely foundational: that God jealously guards His title and expects those that are His associates to do the identical. In his sermon “What’s in a Identify?,” Alistair helps us to grasp why God locations such significance on reverence for His title:

Saying the Lord’s prayer, the primary petition takes us precisely there: “Our Father [who] artwork in heaven, Hallowed be thy title.” Now, why is that this so essential? As a result of God’s title is greater than only a title. God’s title declares His character. God’s title proclaims who God is and what God does.

In reality, realistically, the title of God truly stands for God Himself. We stay in a tradition the place the title of God is routinely profaned—profaned by all ages. Take heed to kids. Profaned everywhere! However we ought to not regard this as new, as a result of whenever you learn your Bible, you uncover that God’s concern for His title extends all the best way from the creation of the world. For instance, right here’s the Seventy-Fourth Psalm: “Keep in mind this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs, and a silly folks reviles your title.” It’s one of many distinguishing options of what it means to know God, to like God, to serve God.

What’s in a reputation? The title truly issues. That’s why it’s fairly fantastic when we have now the privilege of taking the Psalms and making them our personal in reward and in prayer. We discover ourselves, as those that love God, saying, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your title in all of the earth!” With the psalmist: “Those that love your title … exult in you.” With the psalmist, as learn this morning and carved in granite on the entryway to our constructing: “You might have exalted above all issues your title and your phrase.”

Now, these of you who’ve been studying in Exodus with M’Cheyne may have had event, once more, in Exodus chapter 3, to be struck forcibly by the wonderful encounter on the burning bush between Moses and God. As a result of it’s there, by way of His title, that God declares Himself to be self-existing, to be self-determining, and to be sovereign—self-existing, self-determining, and sovereign. Wow! Thomas Manton, from an earlier century, remarks, “He weren’t God if he weren’t incomprehensible.” We can’t topic religion to our cause. Religion is the continuing discovery of the wonders of this stuff. Moses encounters this, and there it’s earlier than him: “Who will I say?” “Who will I say?” He says, “Properly, you simply inform him that I Am has despatched you.” “I Am has despatched you.” In different phrases, “Simply inform him who I’m.”