Whom Does God Protect?

In Psalm 91:14, God describes two groups of people who receive his protection.

Psalm 91:14–16 “[14] Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. [15] When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. [16] With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.” (ESV)

Up to this point in the psalm, the writer has been doing the talking (as inspired by God, of course), but in the final three verses God speaks directly. He gives promises in the first person: I will do this and this and this and this…. In eight ways he promises comprehensive protection to the very end of a long life, climaxing in an end he describes not as death but as salvation.

This is so good. If you have not yet memorized verses 14–16, the time has come, because meditating on these verses will change your heart, replacing fears with calm assurance, if you believe. People pay thousands of dollars to psychologists in hope of getting what these verses offer freely: peace and confidence. In fact, believing what God promises here is the only true basis for peace and confidence.

In verse 14, God bases the eight promises on two conditions: (1) Because he holds fast to me in love, and (2) Because he knows my name.

Because he holds fast to me in love

Can you picture yourself wrapping your arms tightly around God and never letting go? That is the attitude he wants you to have. He likes that and created you for that.

He wants you to cling to him in love no matter what tries to break your bearhug. Trials cannot break your hold on God. Disappointments cannot. Pain and suffering and sickness cannot, nor confusion, nor questions. Persecution cannot, nor betrayals. The failures, backslidings, and apostasies of others, even of leaders, even of family members, cannot. Unanswered prayers and dreams going nowhere cannot break your hold on God in love. For he matters more to you than anything or anyone.

God promises to protect people who bearhug him like that.

But wait a minute. Isn’t he supposed to protect us from all those negative things? Yes, he does, unless he chooses in wisdom to let a higher purpose be served, and if so, he is protecting us from a greater evil and gives us grace to endure faithfully, peacefully, and joyfully what we feared we could never bear, if we rely on him.

But God’s default with us is protection. Either way, we need not fear, only hold fast to him in love.

Because he knows my name

Second, God promises to protect those who know his name. (That is the theme of this blog—knowing God and his ways—so you are in the right place.) To know God’s name is another way of saying to know God. “Name” is shorthand for who a person is. As we might say today, God’s name is his brand, only for him it is never mere marketing. God’s name is everything he is, does, and values. God’s name is his unchanging identity.

God protects people who know his name. That can only happen if we are interested in him, curious about him. Interest in God is what leads a person to read the Bible voraciously every day. We want to know his name, and there is always more to know. It is the most noble and rewarding interest in life. I am bewildered by people who lack interest in God.

Reverence for God’s name

Those who know God’s name never take his name in vain, because we know how awesome his name is. Anyone who jokes about God, or uses his name in profanity, does not know his name, that it is holy and awesome.

In my opinion, most people who use the phrase “Oh my God,” or “OMG,” are misusing God’s name, taking it in vain. They are not actually speaking about God, or to God in praise or prayer, but only using the phrase as a filler, a throwaway line, an expression of surprise, disgust, emphasis, or emotion. In other words, in vain.

Those who use God’s name in vain break God’s enduring command: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). If you are doing that, stop. You probably absorbed the habit mindlessly from media and people around you. Bad idea. Stop! Get to know God’s name by revering it, revering him.

If you do that, he will protect you. If you do not, he might punish you, as a Father punishes a child who disrespects his parent. Foundational to receiving protection from God is treating him with proper reverence. See Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy! The story of Israel in the Old Testament is the narrative of a people who did not know God’s name, and they suffered for it repeatedly.

The first thing you need to know about God’s name is to treat his name, his identity, with reverence, yes, with fear. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Proverbs 9:10). (See also 2 Corinthians 5:11 and Revelation 15:4.)

Delivered and protected

Verse 14 says those who hold fast to God in love and know his name will be delivered and protected.

You will be delivered out of bad situations, like Israel delivered out of Egypt, like Daniel delivered out of the lion’s den.

You will be protected from bad situations, like the farmer in Malachi 3:6–12 whose crops and vines are protected from pests and blight.

These are just side benefits of the greatest benefit anyone can find in life: holding fast to the One who is infinitely good and rightly knowing his name. Said Jesus, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

October 29, 2018December 29, 2020

How to Show Others That God’s Name Is Holy

“Hallowed be your name” is more than a prayer. The most important way you show others that God’s name is holy is by believing you can do what he says and following directions.

If you pray the Lord’s Prayer regularly, you are familiar with these words: “Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9). Have you thought about what you are asking God to do in that request? What does it mean to hallow? And, connecting elsewhere in the Bible, what does this have to do with God’s not allowing Moses to enter the Promised Land? Could it also have something to do with what God allows you to do?

Hallowed be your name

To hallow means to honor as holy. In other words, Jesus taught us to pray: “Our Father who is in heaven, may your name be honored as holy.” What a powerful and important prayer that is! Your great desire and first request of God is that he would cause his name to be honored as holy in your life, family, church, city, nation, and world—not just honored, but honored as holy.

This agrees with what we saw last week, that God is jealous for the honor of his name, that he vindicates the honor of his name. So once again, we see the crucial importance of God’s holiness, how important it is to God and how important it should be to you.

And that brings us now to Moses and his failure at the waters of Meribah, which we’ll see in a moment. For a long time this story puzzled me for two reasons. First, the punishment for Moses’s failure seems out of proportion to his wrongdoing, especially because Moses had been faithful to God in most ways and was his right-hand man. And second, I could only vaguely grasp what Moses’s mistake had to do with a failure to honor the holiness of God.

How Moses failed to hallow God’s name

Here’s the story. After Israel’s 40-year journey in the wilderness, which followed their season at Mount Sinai and after their failure to trust God and enter the Promised Land, Israel came to a place where they could not find water, and as usual they complained against Moses. Numbers 20:6–13 says:

“⁶ Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces. And the glory of the LORD appeared to them, ⁷ and the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ⁸ ‘Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.’

“⁹ And Moses took the staff from before the LORD, as he commanded him. ¹⁰ Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, ‘Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’ ¹¹ And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock.

“¹² And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.’ ¹³ These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the LORD, and through them he showed himself holy.” (ESV)

Relevance

This story is relevant to your life because you also face situations where you are tempted not to uphold God as holy in the eyes of others. So, let’s try to understand what that means because God today is no less jealous for his holy name, and you don’t want to grieve him or miss entering your promised land, as Moses did.

Careful obedience matters

Moses actually brought water from two rocks in the wilderness to meet Israel’s need, and this story is the second occasion (for the first, see Exodus 17:1–7). There is a critical difference between the two situations. The first time, God told Moses to strike the rock with his staff in order to bring forth water; in the story above, however, God told Moses merely to speak to the rock (v. 8).

But Moses didn’t follow orders. Like the first time, he decided to strike the rock rather than speak to it. He disobeyed God. That is always serious no matter what the action is, as Adam and Eve discovered when they ate the wrong fruit. And it is especially serious for leaders, who are supposed to know better.

And Moses knew better. Aside from Jesus, he probably understood God’s holiness better than any person who has ever lived, having met directly with God and spoken with him many times.

Why Moses disobeyed

God tells us why Moses disobeyed: “Because you did not believe in me” (v. 12). Another translation says, “because you did not trust in me” (NIV). This apparently means Moses doubted that merely talking to the rock could bring the water. He had success once before using his staff to strike the rock to bring water, and he had used his staff many times before to work miracles before Pharaoh and then to part the Red Sea. The staff was physical; he could see it and feel it.

Apparently he trusted that material staff at that moment more than he trusted God’s immaterial word and his own immaterial word. For he raised that staff and struck the rock and felt the need to strike the rock a second time (v. 11). Moses got physical with the rock. And it worked, with water gushing forth.

But it didn’t work to accomplish God’s higher purpose, which I think was to show God as the holy Rock from whom comes water in the desert. God had brought waters from the Rock some 40 years earlier for their parents (Exodus 17), and now God would do the same for the children, who certainly had heard the story of what happened in Exodus 17. Moses knew God as “the Rock” (Deuteronomy 32:4, 15, 18, 30, 31). Centuries later, the apostle Paul refers to these events: “All drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4).

That is one core meaning of the holiness of God: there is no one else like him. He is the only Rock.

Misplaced trust

Moses not only trusted his material staff more than God’s immaterial word, it appears that he also trusted himself and Aaron more than he trusted God. Before raising the staff to strike the rock, he angrily said to the people, “Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” (v. 10). We—Aaron and I—we will bring you water; not, God will bring you water. At this moment, Moses did not trust God to bring water from a rock; he trusted himself and his stick. Moses failed to uphold God as holy because Moses, in unbelief, took credit for the miracle.

God specifically told Moses to do this miracle in public (v. 7), to speak to the rock with the entire congregation gathered before him and Aaron. God didn’t want him to do the miracle in private, where no one could see them bring forth water. That would have been safer for Moses, because if the miracle didn’t happen, Moses wouldn’t have had a public failure, embarrassment, and lost credibility to recover from. No, God wanted this public because he wanted to show his holiness to the people through the miracle.

How God vindicated his holiness

God punished Moses by determining that he would not enter the Promised Land with the people at the end of the 40 years. This stung Moses; he mentions it later when writing Deuteronomy (in 3:23–26). And it stung God, for he mentions it again as the day came for Moses to die (Deut. 32:49–52; see also Psalm 106:32–33). Failing to uphold the holiness of God is not a passing foible.

Under such circumstances, how did God show himself holy through the Israelites (v. 13)? He performed a miracle; in his goodness and faithfulness he met their need for water. That is God’s holiness, for holy means good. And he showed himself holy by giving Moses consequences for disobedience while in mercy forgiving him, keeping him as his servant, and ultimately bringing him to heaven. Holy means good, and good means both just and merciful.

Application

Perhaps you know that you are not showing the holiness of God in some area of your life. You should repent without delay.

Perhaps you’re not sure if you are failing to show his holiness in some area. Pray with persistence that God will make this known to you (see James 1:5).

And daily pray: Father, may your name be honored as holy in me today.

Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name….

What do you think about this story? How would you interpret it? Please comment below.

October 22, 2018December 29, 2020

Why a Good God Is Jealous for His Holy Name

God is jealous for his holy name because being good means guarding what is sacred.

We come now to the aspect of God’s holiness that may be the hardest for us to understand. Therefore, it is vital that we meditate on this, for anything we do not understand about God’s holiness seriously cripples our knowledge of God and hampers our properly revering him.

When we say that God is holy, it means that he is jealous for the honor of his name. He is holy because he guards and vindicates the honor of his name.

He does this because he alone is good, and he alone is God. Because he is good and God, he perfectly understands what is sacred and protects it. God rightly understands that there is nothing more sacred than his own name. Psalm 138:2 says, “You have exalted above all things your name and your word.”

Guarding what is sacred

All people guard whatever they regard as sacred. For example, one of the most sacred things in the possession of the U.S. government is the U.S. Constitution. I have been to the National Archives several times to view it. I found it displayed at the center of attention in a large, majestic hall along with other important historic documents. Thick, protective glass encases it. The room is dark, because light harms the ink and paper of the documents. There are guards throughout the building. (Actually, I think it is only a facsimile of the Constitution on display; they keep the original locked safely away.)

Suppose the administrators of the National Archives did not protect the Constitution with care. Suppose they decided to put the original document on a table, so anyone who wanted could have the experience of touching it. What if the administrators decided that even children should be able to hold and even write on it with crayons as a way of experiencing U.S. history? Would those administrators be good? Would they be doing their duty?

Suppose that terrorists tried to destroy the Constitution by blowing it up with a bomb. The terrorists charge into the building with guns drawn prepared to neutralize the armed guards assigned to protect the building and its documents. What would we say if the guards did nothing to stop the attack but instead ran out the back door in fear? Would we call these guards good? Would they be doing their duty? No, a good guard would shoot any terrorist seeking to harm the most sacred document in the nation.

We need the sacred

In any community, society, or family, when people profane what is sacred, that community begins to disintegrate unless someone vindicates the sacred. For what is sacred is the basis of all morality and values, meaning and significance. Therefore, it is good for humans that God is jealous for what is sacred, and that he vindicates what is sacred when it is profaned. God is good to us when he is jealous for his holy name. It is wrong for anyone to do anything less.

Our problem with God’s jealousy

Our problem with understanding God’s jealousy for his name is that we don’t rightly understand the sacredness of God’s name, reputation, and the idea of God. We don’t understand the sheer horror of violating his name. We hear God’s name violated every day. But to profane the Holy One is unthinkable to a good person. To violate the sacredness of God’s holy name is the horror of horrors, the evil of evils, because God is the ultimate holiness, the most sacred of all that is sacred.

We would react violently to hearing our own name defiled, or the name of a family member we love. But many react far less, if at all, when God’s holy name is profaned. This reveals how calloused and blind a person can be to God’s holiness. Our names do not have one billionth of the sacredness of God’s holy name, yet many are more concerned for the honor of their names than the sacredness of God’s name. They just don’t get it. And so, they don’t understand why God in his perfect goodness is jealous for his name, and why in his goodness he must be so. An absolutely good God could do nothing less than guard the most sacred name, the most sacred reputation, the most sacred idea in the universe from the defilements of evil persons. And that is so even when that name is his own.

An example of God’s jealousy for his holy name

Ezekiel 39:25–28 says:

“²⁵ Thus says the Lord GOD: Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name. ²⁶ They shall forget their shame and all the treachery they have practiced against me, when they dwell securely in their land with none to make them afraid, ²⁷ when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies’ lands, and through them have vindicated my holiness in the sight of many nations. ²⁸ Then they shall know that I am the LORD their God, because I sent them into exile among the nations and then assembled them into their own land.”

So, God says, “I will be jealous for my holy name.” The word jealous first brings to mind its meaning in romantic relationships: “intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness” (Webster’s Dictionary). But Webster’s gives a second sense for the word jealous: “vigilant in guarding a possession.” The Online Dictionary puts it this way: “fiercely protective or vigilant of one’s rights or possessions.” God’s right and possession is the sacredness of his name and the sacredness of the idea of God. He is jealous for it, fiercely protective of the sacredness of his name, fiercely vigilant for the sacredness of his name. God is holy. He is good. So, he guards what is sacred.

Vindicating his holy name

And when God’s name has been profaned, sooner or later he vindicates it. In verse 27 above, God speaks of a time when he will have “vindicated my holiness.” The Online Dictionary says that the word vindicate has the meaning: to “show or prove to be right, reasonable, or justified.”

Sooner or later God will always vindicate the holiness of his name. He will show and prove that he has always been right, reasonable, and justified.

When we say that God is holy, we are saying he is jealous to vindicate his name.

What profanes God’s holy name

Obviously, God’s name is profaned when he is spoken against and when people say false things about him.

His holy name is also profaned when it is taken in vain. Therefore God protects his name with a command: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7).

His name is profaned when people called by his name (Christians or Israelites) do wrong and unholy things, even if they never speak against him. For example, in Leviticus 20:3 God says of those who sacrifice their children to idols: “I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name.” In this case, God’s holy name is associated with something he hates.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We do not fully understand the sacredness of God’s name, reputation, and the idea of God. We are not as jealous for the honor of God’s holy name as he is.

God’s way: God perfectly understands what is sacred and why he must protect and vindicate it. God’s jealousy for the honor of his holy name is one thing that makes him holy.

Life principle: We should treat the holy name and idea of God as the most sacred of all that is sacred. We should fear profaning his name either in speech or by doing something that associates God’s name with something he hates.

August 27, 2018December 29, 2020

Holy Means Good: How God Defines His Holy Name

On Mount Sinai, God defined his holy name with goodness.

Holy means good. That is one of the most important things you need to understand about God’s holiness (and we’ve been digging into this for several weeks: post one, two). So, let’s look further at how the Bible links God’s holiness and goodness.

God’s signature on Mount Sinai

In the Old Testament, Mount Sinai is probably the most significant revelation of God’s holiness. There God gave his holy Law on tablets of stone. There he revealed how to construct the holy tabernacle and how to set Aaron and his sons and the Levites apart as holy priests to make holy sacrifices so that sinful people could become a holy nation. There he revealed his holy glory in clouds, lightning, thunder, earthquake, and fire. There he spoke so that Israel could hear his holy voice.

And there on top of holy Mount Sinai, Moses asked to see even more of the holy God. What God then revealed to Moses is crucial for all who want to understand God’s holiness. God told Moses he would answer his prayer in part. God said he would make his holy glory pass before Moses, and he would reveal his name to him. That meant he would reveal his identity.

Here is how that scene unfolded:

“Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’

“And he [God] said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name “The LORD”’” (Exodus 33:18–19).

Notice two crucial things.

First, when God agreed to reveal more of his glory to Moses, God said he would reveal “all my goodness.” God’s holy glory is especially his goodness.

God’s holy name

Second, what accompanies this revelation of God’s goodness is his revelation of his name. In the Bible a person’s name is not simply a label to use when you want to address someone. Name meant identity. Name meant self. Name meant who you are. So, when God said he would reveal his name to Moses, he was saying he would enable Moses to know more of his holy character and ways.

Elsewhere God told the prophet Ezekiel, “Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name” (Ezekiel 36:22).

Elsewhere God instructed Moses that the priests must be careful that they “not profane my holy name: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 22:2).

God’s name defined

Now we’re ready to read what happened next, and it’s awesome, as God reveals his goodness and his name:

“The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’” (Exodus 34:5–7)

God defines his holy name—he fills his name with its holy meaning—by describing himself as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (vv. 6–7).

God knows himself and knows what holiness is, and it is goodness: mercy, grace, patience, steadfast love, faithfulness, forgiveness. Holy means good.

When you praise him

When you praise God for his mercy, you are praising his holy name.

When you praise God for his grace, you are praising his holy name.

When you praise God for his patience, you are praising his holy name.

When you praise God for his steadfast love, you are praising his holy name.

When you praise God for his faithfulness, you are praising his holy name.

When you praise God for his forgiveness, you are praising his holy name.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We may be indifferent or complacent about how God defines his name.

God’s way: God loves his name and its meaning. He loves who he is.

As for the end of verse 7, which speaks of God’s justice, stay tuned, for in a few weeks we will look at the relationship between his goodness and justice. Until then, we have much more to see about the relationship between God’s holiness and kindness.