Three years ago we put down our pet dog because, after 17 years of bountiful life, he was suffering greatly from the process of death. This dog had been my shadow for all those years and although I missed him incredibly after he was gone, I wasn’t in any shape to get another dog at that time. During the last two years of his life I had been his caretaker because of his declining health. He weighed over 40 pounds and it was hard work for me, especially since almost 7 years ago my own health started declining rapidly as the result of trauma and disease.
Last spring one of my sons came up to me and showed me a picture on his iPhone. I could hardly believe my eyes! It was our dog!!! Or at least it looked exactly like him. Upon seeing that picture I began to reminisce about my dear lost pet and of course, began longing for a new puppy to be my companion.
My husband works unbelievably long hours during the wintertime and I am alone much of the time during those dark, cold days. These last three years have been even harder because of my health and acquiring yet another devastating disease last winter. I spent most of this last winter, spring, summer, and fall just trying to regain some of my strength. With the fall days fast morphing into treacherous imitators of the cold winter days ahead I began dreading the winter months once again.
So after months of deliberation and prayer, we decided to go ahead with finding a new pup. We found a breeder here in our state and watched the website until the perfect puppy litter had been born. We picked out our little guy through pictures and emailing with the breeder. The breeder puts different colored collars on her pups so she can identify them; our puppy of choice had a lime collar so he had been called “Lime Collar Boy” since he was born.
Once we reserved him we began thinking of names for him. That’s just what everyone does, isn’t it? It’s very important to choose, give, and receive a name. Naming him was serious business to me because absolutely everything I do in life is to bring Glory to God, that is His command for His creation, and that is my heart’s desire. So I wanted a name that would do just that - bring Glory to God, the Creator of all.
I found a Hebrew idiom that would serve me well in my quest—Qara Shem. The idiom simply means “to call a name”. It is found many places in the Bible and used in various ways, but I chose it from Isaiah 43:1. “I have called you by Name; you are Mine!”
The book of Isaiah is divided into two main sections: Chapters 1-39 and 40-66. The first half of the book deals with God’s character and His judgment upon His creation. The second half deals with God’s comfort and redemption for His people. Isaiah 43:1 is a beautiful example of God’s comfort and redemption for His people.
God is speaking to the remnant of Israel, the ones who truly believe and follow Him. They, along with the entire nation of Israel, will go through a great time of tribulation and distress, worse even than the Holocaust of the 40’s. In the last part of the preceding chapter, Isaiah 42, God described the terrible times the remnant will go through as part of the whole nation of Israel. Most of the nation will be destroyed during these days of tribulation, but a few will endure to the end; these few will be the remnant of Israel.
After the horrors announced in the preceding chapter, Chapter 43 opens with God’s voice speaking comfort to the remnant reminding them that He is their Creator and the One Who formed them. He tells them not to fear because on top of owning them as their Creator, He has also redeemed them with the price of His Own Son’s blood, so He doubly owns them and He, as the powerful Creator will not lose any that are His.
This is when He says, “Qara Shem” or “I have called you by name; you are Mine!” He is showing His trifold ownership of them because naming someone or something shows authority over that object. My husband and I named our children because they are ours, God named His universe and mankind because they are His, and God, having named the animals “chay nephesh” told Adam to name each individual animal because Adam was to have dominion over each of them.
The flip side of this truth is that those who have been named bear the responsibility of submission to the one who named them. Our children must obey us, our pets must obey us and God’s universe, including man, must obey Him. When there is disobedience, there is always a consequence. When my children willfully disobey, they are disciplined, when our new little puppy willfully disobeys, he will receive the just and due penalty for his behavior.
When God created man, He called him “Adam” or man, mankind. We all come from the original man, Adam, and he, as our federal-head, made a terrible choice that affects us all. He did not obey His Creator, His Owner, His Name-giver, and there was a tremendous consequence. Consequence is wisely determined by the details of the transgression. Adam’s sin of disobedience was against a Being like no other.
Sit back and relax with a cup of tea and biscuits, coffee and cookies, or pop and chips...
But really, really think about what you read below.
Let the truth of Who He really is sink down like melted butter absorbing into the fiber of your being.
God is Sovereign: God is totally, supremely, and preeminently over all His creation. There is not a person or thing that has ever, or will, or will ever escape His control or plan.
God is Holy: God is a morally excellent, perfect being. He is totally other than man. He is purity of being in every aspect. Being Holy, God demands holiness from His creation—and supplies it.
God is omniscient: God knows everything. He knows all. He possesses all knowledge. He has a perfect knowledge of everything that is past, present, or future. He knows the thoughts and motives of our hearts.
God is omnipotent: God possesses all power—it’s unlimited. He is able to bring about anything that He has decided to do...with or without the use of any source beyond Himself.
God is omnipresent: God is present everywhere, in all the universe, and beyond the universe, at all times, in the totality of His character. He is near to all of His creation.
God is immutable: God is always the same in His nature, His character, and His will. He never changes and He can never be made to change. Because He remains the same, what we know of God can be known with certainty. He is not different from one day to another.
God is incomprehensible or unsearchable: Because God is God, He is beyond the understanding of man. Man cannot even begin to understand God. His ways, character, and acts are higher than man’s. Man only understands as God chooses to reveal Himself, His ways, or His purposes.
Self-existent: God depends upon nothing for His existence beyond Himself. The whole basis of His existence is within Himself. At one time nothing but God Himself existed. He added nothing to Himself by creation.
Self-sufficient: Within Himself, God is able to act, that is, to bring about His will without any assistance. Although He may choose to use assistance, it is His good pleasure, not His need that governs that choice. God is perfect—complete!
Infinite: God has no limits or bounds whatsoever in His person or dominion, either in time, space, power, or knowledge.
Transcendent: God is “above” His creation. I.e. the concern for a little child lost on a mountain transcends the majesty of that mountain. He would (and did and does) exist if there were no creation. His existence is totally apart from His creatures or creation.
Invisible: God has no body, no physical or measurable form. He became visible in human form in the person of Jesus Christ, but His essence is invisible.
Faithful: God is always true to His promises. He can never draw back from His promises of blessing or of judgment. Since He cannot lie, He is totally steadfast to what He has spoken.
Merciful: God is an actively compassionate being. He responds compassionately toward those who have opposed His will in the pursuit of their own way.
Good: In His goodness God gives to others, not according to what they deserve, but according to His good will and kindness toward them.
Righteous: God is always good. It is essential to His character. He always does the right thing. Ultimately, since He is God, whatever He does is right...He is the absolute. His actions are always consistent with His character...which is also love.
Glorious: God’s essence is manifested and clearly seen. He is celebrated, famous, magnificent, a being of dignity, honor, preeminence, and excellence.
Great: God is huge in magnitude, intensity and importance. His Glory is great!
Compassionate: God is tender and affectionate. He loves deeply, is kind, and concerned for one in difficulty.
Loving: God’s love moves Him to give Himself for another, even to the laying down of His Own life. God desires His creatures’ highest good.
Immortal: God is incorruptible. He is imperishable.
Spirit: God’s essence is not material or flesh.
Jealous: God is unwilling to share what is rightfully and morally His with any other creature.
Long-suffering: God’s righteous anger is slow to be kindled against those who fail to listen to His warnings or to obey His instructions—He is patient! His eternal longing for the highest good of His creatures holds back His holy justice.
Wrathful: There is within God a hatred for all that is unrighteous and an unquenchable desire to punish all unrighteousness. Whatever is inconsistent with His holy standard must ultimately be consumed.
Eternal: God has no beginning, and He has no end. He is not confined to the finiteness of time or to man’s reckoning of time. He is, in fact, the cause and Creator of time.
Truthful: All that God says is reality. Whether believed by man or not, whether seen as reality or not, what God has spoken is reality. Whatever He speaks is truth.
Gracious: God gives what has not been merited by the recipient.
Just: God is equitable in all of His actions. Whether He deals with man, angels, or demons, He acts in total equity by rewarding righteousness and punishing sin. Since He knows all, every decree is absolutely just.
Wise: God’s actions are based on His character. His wisdom causes Him to choose righteous ends and to make the most fitting plans to achieve those ends.
Because of Who God Is (listen closely to this),
the punishment of disobeying Him has to fit the crime,
in this case great, enormous, and colossal
—the crime of disobeying HIM—THE GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH!!!
—and it does.
The punishment for Adam’s sin is spiritual death, or eternal separation from God,
and includes an eternity of torment after physical death.
However, also because of Who God is, He made a way for men to be saved from the eternal punishment. He promised Adam, and Eve, his wife, that He would send a SEED, One Who would bring life to men. This Promised One, or Messiah, was Jesus of Nazareth, the literal Son of God, born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. He lived a perfect life, He never disobeyed His Father. In fact, He did always and only what His Father told Him to do and He was obedient to death—even death on a cross. That made Him the perfect substitute to pay for men’s sins. God actually punished His Son, instead of all the sinners century after century.
That punishment was death because the wages of sin is death—it is what you are paid for sin. Sin costs your life—you must pay your life to be let out from under the judgment for your sin. Jesus gave His life so you wouldn’t have to pay with your own.
So, here’s the deal. When I take my cute little puppy around town, most likely people will ask me what his name is; it’s what people do. It’s what I am praying they will do. And when they do, I will give them a little bit of information at a time. First I will answer them with “His name is Qara Shem”. I assume they will then ask, “What does that mean?” If so, I can answer, “It’s a Hebrew idiom that means, ‘I have called you by name; you are Mine!’”
I then presume there will be various responses. Some will have a quizzical look on their face, some might say they think that is “sweet” or “neat”, others (maybe most) might ignore me completely and go back to talking with the dog!
I will wait and watch for any response that shows some interest in God. When the Lord opens a door, no one can shut it, and the doors that He opens I will walk through and share with them all the truth I can about my God and His Christ.
I will start with the simple fact that just like naming this puppy showed my ownership and rights over him, so too, when God created us and named us He showed His ownership and rights over every man and woman.
It is actually one of the ways we bring Him glory; by our obedience we show He is greater than us. If we do not obey God we are saying He is not really Who He is! As owner, one of my rights is to expect obedience from my puppy. If he does not obey me, there will be a consequence. And as owner of His universe, one of God’s rights is to expect obedience from His creation, including every single human being that ever has or ever will live. Man has never obeyed, and men and women do not obey, and there is a horrible, but just, consequence.
Perhaps they will listen and I can tell them more and more until I can offer them the good news of Jesus, the One sent by God to bring life...perhaps they will believe and become Sons and Daughters of the Most High God...or perhaps they will reject His gracious offer and spurn Him…
I pray that God will open their eyes and ears and minds to see, hear, and understand this Holy and Great God Who is their Creator, Who owns them, and demands their obedience. I pray they will turn from their own ways and run to Him for refuge. I pray they will believe and trust in the refuge of the Messiah, Jesus, for their salvation from the wrath that is to come.
God says, “I have called you by name; you are Mine!”
What have you done in response?
Copyright © 2010-2011 Sharon Jensen
