Malachi 2:1-2
“Therefore, this decree is for you priests: If you don’t listen, and if you don’t take it to heart to honor my name,” says the Lord of Angel Armies, “I will send a curse among you, and I will curse your blessings. In fact, I have already begun to curse them because you are not taking it to heart.
Today the lesson from the prophet Malachi has got me thinking that I want to talk about the Holiness of God's name, not just the symbolic meanings behind the many names given to God, but the immediate presence of The Holy One that is his name.
People get into this business of naming God in their prayers. They'll be sure to end each prayer in Christ Jesus' name, or with every new line of thought they plug in a "Lord" here, or "Father God" there. And that's not necessarily a bad thing if you're wondering. However, the lesson today has to do with taking God's name to heart, giving him the honor he is owed. Not simply tagging a prayerful thought with the mention of his name.
Jesus taught us to pray the name of God. He gave us what has become known as "The Lord's Prayer". And the very first prayer that is offered in that prayer...
Luke 11:2
And he (Jesus) said to them (the disciples), “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name."
...is to elevate the name of God. His supreme emphasis begins, not as a postscript at the end of a prayer, but he begins by saying "hallowed be your name."
Why is this important?
We don't really know who we are unless we first understand who God is. Not only don't we not know who we are, but we also don't know or care to know who God says we are if we don't first understand, and respect from the heart, who God is.
And so, Jesus prays, "hallowed be your name". Jesus opens his prayer addressing God as Abba, "father", and then his prayer begins by giving glory to God, whose name is holy (hallowed).
Hallowed - Merriam Webster says:
HOLY, CONSECRATED, SACRED, REVERED. That word can be traced back to the Old English adjective hālig, meaning "holy."
And more to the point, Jesus isn't simply stating a fact that God's name is holy, he's expressing from his heart that he's looking for the coming of God’s kingdom, inwardly in the heart and outwardly on earth. And so, he prays holy is your name, your kingdom come your will be done. He prays this because it's his honest full desire, first and foremost, that God be given all the glory before he asks anything for himself. He joins his voice, in spoken words of prayer, with the angels in heaven who stand around God's throne singing "Holy Holy Holy".
Holy to the third degree. Most High God, "Jehovah" (Isaiah 40:3),"Yahweh" (Isaiah 26:4), "I AM" (John 8:58), "The Amen" (Revelation 3:14). There are a multitude of ways to say God's name and express his many attributes, but first and foremost we must KNOW that his name is HOLY.
ISAIAH 8:13
"The Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread."
How do we give God's holy name the glory he deserves?
We can begin by NOT doing what the ancient people did that brought about his wrath. By NOT having other gods before him, not disobeying his commands, not using his name for vain purposes, by not giving him a bad name by our bad examples. By living what we pray for.
1 Corinthians 10:31
"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."
1 Peter 3:15-16
"In your hearts honor Christ, the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame."
Honoring our Creator as holy entails us doing the opposite of what those who God has called lawlessness and unrighteousness. It means trusting Him and Him alone when faced with the prospect of death and destruction. And probably most importantly in this matter of the heart is to be completely honest in our prayer. Confessing that He is holy and that we are not.
It's a good start...recognizing that God is holy and confessing that we aren't, all that within your heart and expressed by saying his Holy name. If you want the rest of your prayer to be heard and received, you'd better begin with reverence given to his Holy name.
Hebrews 5:7
"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence."
Philippians 1:10b-11
"Live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God."
Since the fall of man, Adam and every human being that followed, lost the capability to exercise holy reign over the whole of creation. Adam violated the holy command and every generation that followed did likewise. David and the nation of Israel continued this sinful trend. They too were unable to fully manifest God’s kingdom here on earth because of their unrepentant sin. Zerubbabel’s lackluster performance after returning to Jerusalem following the exile into Babylon proved that there always remains a spiritual problem of faithlessness to the law of God, a problem so prevalent that even God's wrath cannot cure it.
And I suppose this is why many Israelites rejected Jesus as the Messiah. His earthly mission was to inaugurate the kingdom and restore ...
Isaiah 5:18-19
"What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them with ropes made of lies, who drag wickedness behind them like a cart! They even mock God and say, 'Hurry up and do something! We want to see what you can do. Let the Holy One of Israel carry out his plan, for we want to know what it is.'”
The soul believes that God is. The hearts believes that Jesus is the truth and full of grace, the heart believes that he's telling us the truth. And the Spirit through the word of God reveals the truth about grace and brings that truth both into recognition and into remembrance, making that truth clearer and more relevant for the believer. Spirit, soul, and body. By the works of these supernatural forces, faith comes to the hearer. Christianity then becomes what that hearer does with that truth and grace.
Today, there's a dichotomy of worldly ideologies surrounding the Christian church. The polarization is split between progressivism and bigotry. Neither is a good thing. Neither is a Christian worldview. The progressives starting ...
Zechariah 14:4-5
In that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley...Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him."
The Mount of Olives is east of the city across the Kidron Valley and is higher than the temple mound. Jerusalem becomes the source of living water when The Lord splits the Mount in two and a valley opens up from East to west. And a vast underground river rises up and pours out over the land towards the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. The Dead Sea is healed and becomes a fishing resort. And Jerusalem will be raised up, elevated above her geographical surroundings.
Zechariah 14:10
"The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem."
And all the heavens will change. All we know about the universe will change. There will no longer be day or night. No darkness. Only the light of The Lord. One day, neither day nor night, as if ...
Matthew 1:16
"and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus who is called the Messiah."
Joseph and Mary were engaged. In the Hebrew culture this was the first of three steps in the marriage process. This engagement is basically an arrangement to be married. This could have taken place very early in their lives, even as small children. Engagement was usually arranged by the parents. Espousal followed this arrangement period and lasted about a year in the case where the couple are of age. This espousal stage was considered to be marriage to a certain degree, but the couple were set apart to prepare themselves for full consummation and so they were kept apart sexually. In fact the father kept tokens of his daughter's virginity in case any questions arose later on. It was at this point that "it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:18b)
Joseph was a righteous man, a Nazarene, a descendent of David. And he didn't want to disgrace Mary and open her ...
Matthew chapter 1
"This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham..."
From Abraham to the Messiah, by his seed (Abraham's), some 42 generations later, the birth of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) came to pass. Jesus' earthly father Joseph, the descendant of king David by the line of David's son Solomon, bore the genealogy of a cursed royal line because of Jeconiah. And yet Luke looks to Jesus as the son of Mary who traces her lineage from Nathan the son of king David, though Nathan is not of the kingly line, but he's also not cursed by the sin of Jeconiah. It seems that Jeconiah birthed quite a bit of trouble, I'm thinking about his grandchild Zerubbabel who was particularly problematic. Looking back to the minor prophets we've recently studied, maybe we'll recall, that Zerubbabel tried to lead a messianic movement for himself. Whether or not he did indeed try to lay claim to Messiah status is a little unclear, but he was indeed involved in the coming of Christ. Both Matthew and Luke list ...
Yesterday I wrote an article/devotion about Nostra aetate and the notion that some hold that there are many paths to God, or that all religious paths lead to the same cross of Jesus. The impetus was the Pope's recent comments about his belief in what I believe is a heretical doctrine.
Today, I want to address what's really going on here for so many in the Catholic Church and in Christian universalism in general. It's really about evangelism, or the lack thereof. Maybe you could say, if you were Methodist, it's about prevenient grace. The desire is to open doors for evangelism. I get that. I also know it only ever really opens the window, but hardly ever the door.
Why?
Why doesn't it work to convert and disciple the worshippers of other "gods" to just meet in ecumenical mingled worship?
Simple answer:
They aren't making disciples, they're making excuses.
And unfortunately this Nostra aetate universalist notion has bled out into all the many Christian communities. And the result is, evangelism and disciple making has been nearly eliminated in most Christian ...
