Jesus was saying that at the last day, people would come to him whom he did not know,

who would pretend that they belonged to him, and would not only name his name,

but they would repeat it as if they were on Inam and Terms with him.

It communicates an intense and profound sense of personal affection.

Jesus, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, described a situation that would come to pass in

the last day when he said, many will come to me and say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not do this

in your name? Did we not do that in your name? And Jesus on that occasion said, I will say to

these people, depart from me, you workers of aniquity, I never knew you. Now, when I looked at that

Sermon, I called attention to an extremely unusual but at the same time significant cultural

form of expression that was contained in Jesus' warning. He didn't say, many will come to me in

that day and say, Lord, did we not do this in your name? But Jesus portrays those who will come

professing to be affectionate toward him, and they will say to him, Lord, Lord,

Lord, repeated. Some of you remember that on that occasion, I called attention to this

unusual but significant, hebraic gesture that we find only about 15 times in all of sacred

scripture. And that is the custom of addressing somebody by the repetition of their name.

We saw it in the Old Testament when Jacob feared to go with his family into the land of

Goshen, and God came and spoke to him saying, Jacob, Jacob, don't be afraid, where you go, I will

go with you even earlier in the Old Testament record, was that poignant moment on Mount Moriah,

when Abraham laid his son Isaac on the altar, and at the last second, God interrupted him and

called to him saying, Abraham, Abraham, lay not your hand upon your son, for now I know

that you trust me. Later on, in the midnight wilderness, when God called Moses to the task

of leading the people of Israel and the Exodus, he spoke to him out of the burning bush,

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