July 3, 2013
Proverbs 18:10 — The name of the LORD is a strong tower: The righteous runneth into it, and is safe.
Caution! As Tom says, “I might tread on your toes today” …
Do you like the song? “The name of The Lord is, a strong tow-ow-er. The righteous run into it, they-ey are saved!” Catchy. I have to say that I love to sing it. As I thought about it today, it seemed a little too catchy, not grand enough for our great God.
What the Hebrew says might better be translated, “The name of Jehovah is a tower of strength, the righteous run into it, and is set on high.” “Jehovah”. You know, that’s the special name that God used to show Himself to the Hebrews. As time went by the Jews came to hold that name so sacred that it was never spoken except by the high priest on the one day – the great Day of Atonement — when he entered into the Holy of Holies. How do we hold the name of The Lord today? Are you, like me, sickened by “OMG!”?
I remembered reading something A.W. Tozer said about this, and I went to look it up. In “The Knowledge of the Holy” he said:
Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him. … Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. … It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.
It can only seem that from those middle years of the twentieth century to these early years of the twenty-first century, the decline of the reputation of God has continued.
If we are going to claim the promises in the proverb, that the name of God will protect us and sustain us, we must, of course, be righteous – in the sense that we know ourselves to be sinners made righteous by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But we must also hold the name of The Lord as a precious jewel, beyond price. That sense of value should pervade our conversation, our life, our worship. May we be protected from ever trivializing and undermining our Strong Tower.