The Divine Speaker

Sermon transcript segment on The Name of the Lord:

When eventually the children of Israel would reach the Promised Land, in Deuteronomy, God says, “When you get there, and when eventually you have rest from all of your enemies, I want you to build a place where you can gather to worship. And that place that the LORD your God shall choose for you is the place where I will make my name dwell. And you’ll worship me there.” So fast forward to the time of King Solomon. King David has been along. King David has defeated the enemies. There’s peace in the land. Solomon says, “I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God.” Build a house for the name. And that place will be called, ‘The house for my Name’, as God said. Solomon builds the temple. And the one who does not dwell in the heavens or the heaven of heavens dwells on the earth. And that temple becomes the place where he says, ‘That is where my name is.’ So the name of the LORD is a created thing. It’s a created mental entity. It’s a created category in order to communicate something of the being of God. The being of God can be thought like this: there is God, and there is his name. “If one cannot see the Lord and live, and yet people are seeing the Lord and not dying, who is this visible image of the Lord that is being seen?”