Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2229
“To make Himself an everlasting name…To make Yourself a glorious name.” Isaiah 63:12,14.
MAN’S chief end is to glorify and enjoy God. God’s greatest and highest objective is to make to Himself a glorious and an everlasting name. Since God is God, it must be so, for He is full of love and kindness to His creatures, and He cannot more fully bless His creatures than by making Himself known to them. Everything that is good, true, holy, excellent and loving, is in God. He is not only the Giver of “every good and every perfect gift,” but He is, Himself, the sum and substance of all blessing! And it is for the highest good of all the creatures He has made, that they should know their God. “Man, know yourself,” is a frequent exhortation of the philosophers of earth—and self-knowledge is said to be the highest form of knowledge, but it is not. “Man, know your God,” is a far wiser precept, for knowledge of God as far excels all other knowledge as the heavens are higher than the earth! It is life eternal to know Him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Know your God, then, for here your hope, your comfort, your holiness, your Heaven will be found!
God may well desire to make to Himself a name—that is to say, to make Himself known—because He is worthy to be known. There is no name so well worthy of publication. There is no Character like His. There is none that can be compared to Him. Even among the gods of the heathen, if they were gods, there is none like our God and, indeed, there is none other. He can truly say, “I am Jehovah, and there is none beside Me.” He ought to be known and it is a worthy motive of His actions that He should make unto Himself a great name.
This knowledge of God is the Heaven of the perfect! I believe they have no higher joy in the Land of Light than to know God. The blaze of their glory is the Presence of Deity. The height of their Heaven is that God is near them and that they are near to Him. Heaven would be no Heaven if God were not there. It would be a circle without a center, a sky without a sun! The holy song of the seraphim would be hushed—they would cease to veil their faces with their wings and the Hosannas of the redeemed would languish if they could no longer raise the hymn—“The Lord God Omnipotent reigns.” Without the Presence of the Eternal, Heaven would be shorn of the bliss for which we long—and emptied of the Glory we have been led to anticipate! To know God perfectly and to behold Him in righteousness will be all that any heart can need—
“How wonderful, how beautiful, The sight of You must be! Your glorious wisdom, boundless power, And awful purity.”
While the knowledge of God is the Heaven of the perfect, it is the help of the growing. Men can only get holier and better as they know more of God. Here is the copy—look well at it, that you may write after it. Here is that Character which you are to imitate, according to the exhortation, “Be you, therefore, followers of God, as dear children.” Know God as He makes Himself known by His works and ways, that you may grow to be like He. Continue to know Him until you shall be able to say that He is the gladness of your joy and may join with the Psalmist and say, “I will go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy.”
The knowledge of God is also the great hope of sinners. O child of earth, if you knew Him better, you would fly to Him! If you understood how gracious He is, you would seek Him! If you could have any idea of His holiness, you would loathe your self-righteousness! If you knew anything of His power, you would not venture to contend with Him. If you knew anything of His Grace, you would not hesitate to yield yourself to Him. The more God reveals Himself to you and the more you know of God, the more are you in the way of hope and mercy! “They that know Your name will put their trust in You.”
Therefore I do not attempt to defend my God, nor stand here to apologize for Him when I assert that the one great end of all that He does is to make to Himself a name—since it is by the making of that name that men are blessed in the very highest degree—and helped to holiness and happiness! I would rather ask you to praise Him who sits upon the Throne, as He thus manifests Himself—for our good can only be achieved by the glory of God’s name—
“Who is a pardoning Godlike Thee, Or who has Grace so rich and free?” In seeking to open up this subject, I shall say, first of all, that God’s design in making to Himself a great name has been accomplished. Secondly, this design is still being accomplished. And, thirdly, the design is, in itself, exceedingly delightful.
I. First, GOD’S DESIGN HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED. From everlasting He was God most glorious! He existed, but He had as yet no name. For a name is that by which someone is revealed—and until His power called into being the hosts of Heaven, God was God, and there were none to whom He could be known! Then the angels lifted high His praise in their songs and bowed low before His Throne. In creation His name was manifested and magnified—when the foundations of the earth were laid, “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Man was made in the image of God for His own Glory and all things existed for His praise. “He is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” But our subject is how God has made His name glorious among men. Let us consider it.