When I say, hello, be thy name, when I talk about the name and what the name means, I'm going to tell you something from my own personal experience.

Growing up in a town, some of you grew up in small towns where everybody knew everybody.

I grew up in a town, it was not very small, but everybody knew me.

And as a teenager, I didn't like that very

much. And especially to grow up in a family that everybody knew your family, and a family that

prizes its name as the most prize possession, more than money or fame or prestige or anything in the world, that name

is the most important thing to your family. So when you realize growing up in that kind of

environment, what kind of a pressure that puts on a person to keep up that name? In fact, many times

in my teen foolishness, I wish that I had a different

name and didn't necessarily want people to know me and know my family name. And for a season,

I did rebel against that name, wishing that truly my name was different. But now as I begin to contemplate and preach

on the name of God, I realize how it is in biblical culture that names are of uttermost importance.

A name is as significant as the person himself, in fact, I can tell you, more significant than the person.

Names are not just sentimentality.

Will you name somebody after your great uncle or aunt?

And you know, just make them feel good and use their names.

They are absolute representation of who you are and

what expectation for you to be, what role you're going to play in life. That's what name is so

important in biblical culture. In biblical culture, names always have meanings. Names often describe the person's character, or at least what the parents

hope that this person's character would be. And you remember many times in the Bible,

God changed people's names in order to make those names and the meaning of those names

conform to what God expecting them to be and what God expecting them to do.

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