Midweek Message from the Archive
The Name of the Lord
As I’m reading through the Psalms I’m camped out in chapter 8; I can’t get away from the beauty, intensity, and revelation of these words. God does that when He wants to drive home a point I’ve missed. I have to linger, meditate, and talk it through with Him.
This Psalm has a repeated phrase at the beginning and at the end:
O LORD, our Lord, How majestic is Your name in all the earth! Psalms 8:1b, 9
Notice the capital letters on the first LORD and small letters on the second Lord. This alerts us to different names of God and His different character traits. LORD, in all capital letters, is the covenant-making, covenant-keeping name of Yahweh; it’s the more intimate and personal side of God. Lord, in small letters, is Adonah, indicating a more authoritative name: like master, ruler, or husband. God’s names in scripture are used with purpose, showing His divine attributes, therefore, we have to search out their meaning. If, as in Ps. 8, His name is full of majesty, as it reads from beginning to end, then we should see what’s in between those bookend phrases. Read it over this week for context but for now I want to discuss the Name of the Lord.
If we just concentrate on the book of Acts we see the phrase ‘name of the Lord‘ (referring to Jesus) used extensively and with definite purpose. We find salvation (2:21), physical healing (3:6), spiritual healing (22:16), deliverance (16:18), fear (19:17), boldness (9:27-28), persecution (5:40), and disgrace (5:41); these all occurred at the mention of this powerful name. Acts is the story of how the Holy Spirit established the Church and this beginning shows us this crucial aspect of the Name Lord. You may ask yourself, “Why was the name of the Lord so important?” The answer is that you don’t stand before God or people in the authority of your own name since it carries no power of its own but we stand in His name which carries all rights and authority.
The Spirit of the Lord indwells you, therefore, you draw your strength from those attributes. When you’re standing in the authority of the Name that is above all others in heaven, under heaven, or in the underworld you can be confident that He’s right there beside you as well. As an ambassador stands in the authority of the sending nation, likewise, we stand with rights, as believers, in the name of Jesus Christ (John 1:12) in our divine mission or assignment. Be encouraged today to live your life in the Spirit with resolve that as a believer you stand in the majestic power and authority of that Name and all its meaning. If the early Church needed it, how much more does the Church around the world of our day?
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