The Significance of God’s Name

When Jesus prayed in His High Priestly Prayer, “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known,” He was referencing something absolutely foundational: that God jealously guards His name and expects those who are His friends to do the same. In his sermon “What’s in a Name?,” Alistair helps us to understand why God places such importance on reverence for His name:

Saying the Lord’s prayer, the first petition takes us exactly there: “Our Father [who] art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” Now, why is this so important? Because God’s name is more than just a title. God’s name declares His character. God’s name proclaims who God is and what God does.

In fact, realistically, the name of God actually stands for God Himself. We live in a culture where the name of God is routinely profaned—profaned by all ages. Listen to children. Profaned in all places! But we ought not to regard this as new, because when you read your Bible, you discover that God’s concern for His name extends all the way from the creation of the world. For example, here’s the Seventy-Fourth Psalm: “Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs, and a foolish people reviles your name.” It’s one of the distinguishing features of what it means to know God, to love God, to serve God.

What’s in a name? The name actually matters. That’s why it’s quite wonderful when we have the privilege of taking the Psalms and making them our own in praise and in prayer. We find ourselves, as those who love God, saying, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” With the psalmist: “Those who love your name … exult in you.” With the psalmist, as read this morning and carved in granite at the entryway to our building: “You have exalted above all things your name and your word.”

Now, those of you who’ve been reading in Exodus with M’Cheyne will have had occasion, again, in Exodus chapter 3, to be struck forcibly by the amazing encounter at the burning bush between Moses and God. Because it is there, by means of His name, 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 were not God if he were not incomprehensible.” We cannot subject faith to our reason. Faith is the ongoing discovery of the wonders of these things. Moses encounters this, and there it is before him: “Who will I say?” “Who will I say?” He says, “Well, you just tell him that I Am has sent you.” “I Am has sent you.” In other words, “Just tell him who I am.”

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