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Revelations 2:17
To the one who conquers … I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.' The Book of Exodus in Hebrew is called ‘Shemot’, meaning ‘names’. It is the Book of ‘Names’. “Names’ is the first principal word that appears in the book’s narrative and Judaism names the Books of the Bible using the book's first main noun or verb. The names of the different people involved in the scenarios of the book appear little by little, but what we discover most in the Book of Shemot is the Names of God. God Himself introduces His Names first to Moses when he asks, If I come to the people of Israel … and they ask me, 'What is his name' (Exodus 3:13) ‘and to Pharaoh when he challenged Moses’ divine message with, "Who is Adonai, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go (Exodus 5:2)?” Hashem answered Moses’ question by showing His great power to conquer in order to save, and Pharaoh's by showing His great power to conquer in order to destroy. In our Western philosophically Greek culture, we look at names as a sound bite by which we call people. Sad to say, this is also the way we look at the Name of God: an identifying sound bite to which He should answer when called upon. In the Semitic world of the Bible, Names refer to what you are, to what you where created to be. Names describe who you are, the reason and circumstance of your birth; your qualities and/or properties. By knowing your name people know something very important about you. In Exodus, the Father and Creator introduces Himself by many names, not as sound bite we are supposed to use to make sure we are addressing the right person, but as a memorial of what He is in what he does. Yeshua said that the Name of the Father should be hallowed, sanctified (Matthew 6:9), which means set aside for specials times and uses. Yeshua said these things quoting parts of an ancient Jewish prayer referring to the practice of only pronouncing the Sacred Name in the precincts of the Temple and during times of devoted prayer; never in common discussion. Yeshua followed that practice, and also taught His disciples to follow His example of simply calling Hashem: "Avinu' or, 'Our Father' (Matthew 6:9), Western believers have twisted that Jewish application or respect toward protecting God’s name into the idea of a rabbinic conspiracy to hide it for themselves. This idea born from anti-Semitism still lingers. Today each of us has a name given to us by our parents. In this world where truth is hidden under the fiction of a physical veil, this name may or may not have anything to do with us. In the World to Come, Yeshua has promised us a new name revealing to the world our properties, our qualities, in a sense who we really are (Revelations 2:17). Come to think of it, it may a scary thought for some of us! At that time, we will be fully known even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). May it be soon Abba, even in our days!
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Philippians 1:27
Only let your manner of life be worthy of the Besorah of Mashiach. The Text of the Hebrew Scriptures in Deuteronomy 12 tells us about the reverencing of the Name of God. When the Children of Israel entered the Land, they were to shun all forms of idolatry. God told them to tear down pagan temples and sites, burn trees used for worship, destroys groves; in a sense, to obliterate the name of pagan gods before establishing Hashem’s Name in the Land (Deuteronomy 12:1-4). They were told specifically that they were not to worship Hashem in the way these nations worshipped their idols (Deuteronomy 12:4). This wasn’t meant to be a worldwide campaign against idolatry; these commands were only incumbent to the Land of Canaan the Children were soon to possess (Deuteronomy 12:1). To establish Hashem’s Name on the Land meant to establish His character, His ways defined in the Torah, His culture, and His authority. To obliterate the names of idols was to consequently obliterate their character, ways, culture, and authority. The nations had not yet been introduced to Hashem, so they were allowed to worship other gods like the sun, the moon, and the stars (Deuteronomy 4:19), it wasn’t necessarily a sin to them since they didn’t know any better; it is the way they did it that was despicable unto Adonai (Deuteronomy 12: 30-32). In order to keep Israel as far away as possible from any of the vile idolatrous practices of the Canaanites, God gave very specific instructions as to how He should be honored and worshipped. This teaches us that religion without the instruction of Torah leads to idolatry. As soon as they were in the Land,, they were to implement them in a very detailed manner, and not live according to their own thinking anymore (Deuteronomy 12: 8-11). Of course, the place where God would write His Name would not be fully revealed until the days of King David who purchased the piece of land where the Temple should later be built (2 Samuel 24), a place established by divine decree long before. There is another place where the Father writes His Name: our hearts (Numbers 6:22-27). Yeshua also declares Hashem’s Name in us by revealing to us His character, His ways, His culture, and His authority (John 17:26). As the Children of Israel were to ensure the sanctity of the Name by cleaning the Land of all forms of idol-worship, we should also make sure that the Name of God is sanctified in our hearts by cleansing ourselves from any selfish and proud ways that don’t testify of His presence in us. To claim holding His name while denying it though our daily walk renders us worse than the pagan who doesn’t even know God. This is what Yeshua had against the Pharisees; not their teachings, but their practices. They didn’t walk their talk (Matthew 23:2-3), which is the essence of hypocrisy. Let us not be the same, and may we learn to sanctify God’s name, not just in verbal praises, but in deed and in truth from our hearts. |
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