People say the Jews reverence the name of God so much they don't use it; they purposefully put some kind of misspelling in its place.
God's name is used for Him. It's a reference to His very presence; to who He is.
Isaiah 30:27: [27] Behold, the name of the LORD cometh from far, burning with his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire:
Who's coming from afar? The Lord is. But the verse doesn't say that; it says 'the name of the Lord.' You see, he personifies the word 'name' for the presence of the Lord. He's going to put His name in that angel. He has a manifestation.
When He put Hs name there He put the place where He's going to live. That's what the idea of His name is.
Verse 11: [11] Then there shall be a place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you; your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the LORD:
The place is the tabernacle. Who is it that dwells there? The Lord. He puts His glory there, His presence; He says that's His name.
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Jesus Christ, praying the night before He dies, says in John 17:5-6, [5] And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
[6] I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
Verses 11-12: [11] And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
[12] While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.
When He talks about declaring His name, He isn't saying, 'I just taught them your name is Jehovah.' He's saying, 'I've taught them who you WERE. I've been showing them who you ARE and what you're like.'
John 1:14 says, [14] And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
The idea of the name is not just a formula. It's understanding who God is, what He's like. Acts 2:21 says, [21] And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Paul quotes that in Romans 10 and it's a quote out of Joel 2.
When Paul says 'whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord,' that's not just saying, 'Oh, Jesus, save me!' That's understanding who He is and what He's done.
God knew that when He created heaven and earth, that in order to accomplish His purpose in creation He was going to have to give His creatures the freedom that He had to make choices. But because we're creatures, we're not going to be perfect in that sense.
God understsood that He was going to have to trust Himself to accomplish His purpose in creation so He was going to have to become part of creation. He couldn't just be the 'invisible holy other'; He was going to have to literally manifest Himself in His creation so He creates two realms. He wouldn't be able to remain separate but He's going to have to join together with creation and become part of creation. He's going to have to put His life into His creatures.
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Redemption of the reconciliation program is going to come through man, so Jesus Christ is going to have to become a man. But the earth isn't the only thing. There's that spirit realm. So He's going to have to create a second class of Adam, a new species of humanity, which is what the Body of Christ is, in order to reconstitute the heavenly places.
When I think about it I think about music. You play the piano, you sing the songs. If I went to the song book and tore the song book up, it would not destroy the music because the sheet music is just the physical record and manifestation of the invisible intellectual property of the music.
But if I want to propagate the music and share it with other people, I need that and there's an innate understanding God had in His creation that when He created heaven and earth He was creating the visible and invisible.
He's the invisible God that manifests Himself visibly in His creation, because to connect the two you had to have that bridge and that bridge is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the physical manifestation of the presence and the person of who God is.
When you look at Him, and you study His Word and find out what His thinking is, you're listening to God. You're listening to the Word of God appear to you when you have that Book. When you go through that Book, it's as though God appeared to Abraham and spoke to Him. He appears to you and speaks to you through the pages of His Word.
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