Isaiah 56

An Everlasting Name

I will give them an everlasting name. Isaiah 56:5.

How many names have you, not counting your surname? I daresay some of you have only one, and wish you had more; others have two or three; and a few of you possess four, and get teased at school about your many initials.

Well, let me tell you, that, whether you know it or not, each of you has three names.

1. You have the name your parents gave you. They took you to church, and they promised to bring you up to know and love God, and the clergyman sprinkled water on your face, and you were given a Christian name or names to show that you belonged to Christ. That is why your name is called a Christian name. And every time that anybody says “Jack” or “Mary,” or whatever your name may be, it should remind you that you are one of Christ's children.

In some lands children do not receive a name until they are quite big boys and girls. They are known by a number instead. How would you like that? Perhaps some of you would prefer it to the name you have, for I know lots of boys and girls long to change their name for others which they consider more beautiful. They wish that their parents had let them choose their own name.

I don't know how that would work, for when we were small we should want to choose very grand names, and as we grew older we should prefer plainer ones, and we should constantly want to be changing. So perhaps it is best to stick to the name father and mother gave us, and make it a name worth bearing. And that brings us to name number two.

2. We give ourselves a name; and it is quite a different name from the name our parents gave us. You have often heard people talk of some man as having “made a name for himself” They mean by that that he has become known to the world as a man who is very wise, or very clever, or very far-seeing. Well, in the same way, among our relatives and friends we all make a name for ourselves. We are known as good, or brave, or gentle, or loving, or kind, or sulky, or ill- tempered, or quarrelsome.

In Bible days parents gave their children names with meanings, and the meaning was the important part of the name. Nowadays people don't think so much of the meaning. They think rather of the pretty sound, or of the person who already bears the name. But the name we give ourselves is full of meaning, and moreover it is written plainly so that all the world can read. It is written in our words and in our actions. It is written on our very faces. Looking at one boy yon will say, “I could trust that boy!” looking at another, “That fellow is a sneak!” looking at one girl, “What a dear she must be!” looking at another, “There's a selfish monkey!” No, we can't hide the names we give ourselves. They write themselves and their meanings even on our faces.

3. God gives us a name. We don't know it yet, but we shall know it one day when we see Him face to face. God is noticing all we are saying and doing, and He is quietly weighing and judging everything. He sees what other people see our tempers and our faces; but He also sees what other people do not see the efforts to be good that do not quite succeed, the attempts to keep our temper that do not quite come off, the struggles to do right that sometimes fail, and the hard fight with temptation that occasionally ends in defeat. He sees and knows all these, and He gives us credit for them; and one day He will give us a name that will tell the world what we really were not what it thought we were.

And that name will be the “new name” spoken of in the Book of Revelation. It will also be a name like the name of our text “an everlasting name.” It will be our real name and our true name, for it will describe us as we are in God's sight. And it will be our name for ever and ever. We shall have it for all Eternity. It will live always.

Do you know why some men are so anxious to make a name for themselves? It is because they want people to remember them and speak of them after they are gone. They long to be famous that they may not be forgotten, that their name may go down to history and live while the world lasts.

But it is only the very few, after all, whose names live. It is only the Abrahams and the Elijahs, the Peters and the Pauls, the Shakespeares and the Miltons, the Cromwells and the Wellingtons, the Livingstones and the General Gordons who are not forgotten. You see, you have to be very great or very good to win a lasting name.

Of course some men, such as Nero, are remembered because they were very bad. It is their misdeeds that have made their name last. But none of us want a bad name; we want our everlasting name to be a good name.

Well, God tells us that if we love Him and honestly try to serve Him here below, if we strive to do the right and hate the wrong, He will give us a name that will live longer than the world itself, a name that will be ours in Heaven, a name that will be everlasting.