When Jesus prayed in His Excessive Priestly Prayer, “I made recognized to them your identify, and I’ll proceed to make it recognized,” He was referencing one thing completely foundational: that God jealously guards His identify and expects those that are His pals to do the identical. In his sermon “What’s in a Title?,” Alistair helps us to know why God locations such significance on reverence for His identify:
Saying the Lord’s prayer, the primary petition takes us precisely there: “Our Father [who] artwork in heaven, Hallowed be thy identify.” Now, why is that this so necessary? As a result of God’s identify is greater than only a title. God’s identify declares His character. God’s identify proclaims who God is and what God does.
Actually, realistically, the identify of God truly stands for God Himself. We dwell in a tradition the place the identify of God is routinely profaned—profaned by all ages. Hearken to youngsters. Profaned all over the place! However we ought to not regard this as new, as a result of if you learn your Bible, you uncover that God’s concern for His identify 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 identify.” 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 identify truly issues. That’s why it’s fairly fantastic when we’ve got 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 identify in all of the earth!” With the psalmist: “Those that love your identify … exult in you.” With the psalmist, as learn this morning and carved in granite on the entryway to our constructing: “You will have exalted above all issues your identify and your phrase.”
Now, these of you who’ve been studying in Exodus with M’Cheyne could have had event, once more, in Exodus chapter 3, to be struck forcibly by the superb encounter on the burning bush between Moses and God. As a result of it’s there, via His identify, 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 these items. 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.”
