Judg 13:18, But the angel of the Lord said to him, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?" 
	In this morning’s reading, we are presented with the announcement to Manoah and his wife of fact that they would have a son. This was a seeming impossibility because of the wife’s heretofore barrenness. After the visit by the Angel of the Lord, they knew that they would have a son whom they would name Samson. Samson would eventually become a judge in the land. That, however, is for upcoming considerations. 
	What we want to spend time with is something we each need to have worked in our hearts and in our minds. We can be so apt to just gloss over our relationship with God. We are thankful, thankful beyond measure, that He has chosen us unto Himself. We are so blessed that He has saved us through the death and resurrection of Our Savior and Lord, Jesus, the Only Begotten of the Father. Yet, we sometimes lose the full focus of the entirety of what we have received and from Whom we have received it. 
We know we are saved for all of eternity. We know we are blessed. We know we are being knit together into the true church of God. This is all head knowledge and tremendous to consider and to appreciate. That is not what is at the core of this study right now. It is the fact that we sometimes may not fully grasp even the slightest aspect of Who God is! We are very content in our little Christian bubble of existence, to put it very crudely and succinctly! We do not choose to go beyond our very limited knowledge of God. 
We hem Him in as the Supreme Being, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth. We hold the truth near and dear that He works in the lives of those whom He has called unto Himself. He is our protection from the enemy. He is our source of sustenance. He is our source of health and security. It is all in terms of how He affects us. He has laid down His life for us, and we thank Him with every fiber of our being for that sacrifice. 
But we tend to just like that bubble of safety and security! We do not choose to go further in our knowledge of Him to the point that we lay down our lives for Him. 
There is a reciprocal relationship in which we are invited to partake if we are willing to set aside what we want out of our walk on this earth! There is so much more invested in us for His glory if we would choose to live in the ever increasing magnificence of what He has in His heart in calling us unto Himself. 
What brings this to the forefront is the reality of the revelation of His name unto those whom He so chooses to make it known. This requires a profound contemplation and dedication of our hearts in concert with the divine manifestation of The Lord God Almighty! He does not make His name known unto those for whom His name has no value! 
To know the name of the Lord is to know some of the depth of Who He is and what He has done and will do and continues to do. That is only in place in the hearts and essence of those who are desirous after knowing Him more and more as each day progresses. He makes His Name known to those who seek Him and are willing to set aside everything else in their lives! He reveals His Name to those for whom the truth of the revealed glory and majesty and splendor of God means everything! 
When our focus is on how much we will receive and how we will benefit, the Lord will manifest very little of Himself. This in nowise is to belittle or minimize His so great gift of salvation! But that is where some people just want to keep their basis of divine knowledge. 
How does it affect me in the long term? How safe am I from the fires of hell? How is knowing that God exists going to make my life easier on this earth? How much will I receive in glory? That is the limited extent of some who are truly Christians, but just to the point of their fire-insurance, so to speak.
God will not show the fuller manifestation of Himself to those who have no more need of Him than as their Divine Butler, the One who meets their earthly needs when He is summoned. He will not lower the standard of the glorious revelation of His Divine and Awesome Name to those who have no interest in that wondrous and miraculous and overwhelming and breathtaking disclosure of the greatest mystery of all creation. 
To know Who God is, is not for those with no appreciation and longing after the fullness of the knowledge of the name of God. To seek to know His Awesome Name requires an absolute setting aside of everything else that this world considers to be important and of value! This is in order to gain the greater depth of the knowledge of Christ to bring supreme honor to His Name. It utterly necessitates that absolute surrender unto the Lordship of Jesus which will result in His glory and His praise and His adoration! 
Please hear what the Apostle Paul proclaimed with all force and emphasis in Phil 3:7-11! If we are desirous to know Him in the ever increasing depth of a living relationship with Him, we will beseech Him to be Lord of our lives. We will willingly submit completely to His Sovereignty, setting aside our will for His will to be done. His Lordship brings us to the place where we yearn to know Christ, not only in terms of His saving grace, but also in the fellowship of His sufferings and in the conformity His death, for the glory of His resurrection power to be evidenced in the lives that we live on this earth! 
Phil 3:7-11, But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
This is a knowledge that is not for those who are comfortable in the bubble of their salvation. It is not for the Christians who are looking for what they can gain in terms of the riches of this realm. It is not for those lackadaisically minded people who will not push on, no matter what the cost, no matter what the loss, no matter what the pain or the suffering or the hardships of life that are required! 
To know the eternal power of Christ; to know Who Christ is; to know what Christ has accomplished; to know some sense of what unfathomable agony the Heavenly Father endured at the death and separation of His Only Begotten Son; to know what anguish the Holy Spirit lovingly endures as those whom He indwells continue to willing submit themselves to sin and disobedience; to know the unfolding manifest completeness and Holiness and Fullness and Righteousness of the Triune God! To have some growing sense of all this reality requires the constant death to self, that the glory of God may flourish in these lives that have been freely and fully given up to Him. These are the ones to whom God chooses to reveal His name with all grandeur and splendor and majesty. His name is utterly precious and glorious and awesome and it is majestically wonderful as we are told in this morning’s passage. It is to be cherished and to be held with utter reverence and overwhelming adoration in our hearts and minds as worthy of all praise and worship and glory! 
Let us trace this aspect in the very Word of God to see how the name of the Lord serves to begin to reveal the reality of Who God is! We will also witness the struggle required in order to be be given those glimpses into the greater depths of that wondrous and majestic reality. Please turn to Gen 32:24-30 and the account of Jacob wrestling with the Lord. This resulted in the complete changing of Jacob’s name, representing the outcome of this struggle.
Gen 32:24-30, Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. And when he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." And he said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him and said, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And he blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved." 
	There was a reality in place in this account. Jacob grappled with the Lord in a most physical manner, which is representative of our struggled with the things of the Lord in our current day. We may not be physically grappling with the Lord and refusing to let Him go! However we need to do so both spiritually and mentally!
We are in a constant state of the necessity to hold onto the Lord with all the might of our dedication and our consecration unto Him, as represented in this account. We need to not let anything remove that grasp on the Lord as our source of support and strength and wisdom day after day after day, no matter what! It is a struggle in the every sense, because there are so many things which can distract us and cause us to let go of our grasp on the Lord! This results in utter futility of thought and plan and purpose without the power and the knowledge and the blessing of the Lord upon us.
	Next consider what happened when the Lord revealed His Awesome Name to Moses as recorded in Ex 3:13-15. Please open to that passage as the I Am made this miraculous revelation to such a one of His creation.
	Ex 3:13-15, Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?" And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" And God, furthermore, said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations. 
    	There was a need for the people to know something as to what was taking place in this promised release from slavery to Egypt. Moses could not just walk into their midst and state that they were going to be freed from their misery because God told him to do so. They needed some basis upon which to hang their hopes and their trust. 
Therefore the Lord spoke with respect to the name that would stir up the sense of hope in their impending release and freedom. When Moses said that “I AM” had sent him, it meant that all their moans and groans and complaints had been heard by the One Who had changed the name of their father, Jacob, to Israel. 
The struggles and the tremendous difficulties of their existence were on the precipice of being relieved because “I AM” had heard their cries! He had sent someone to bring them freedom and peace and rest from their earthly enslavement. The name, “I Am”, was their beacon of hope and the reality of the fulfillment of His promise to the sons of Israel. It meant everything to them!  
	This revelation of the name of the Lord also meant a change in the heart of Moses. He was made privy to a greater manifestation of the Lord than his fathers had known. We find this recorded later for us in Ex 6:2-4.
	Ex 6:2-4, God spoke further to Moses and said to him, "I am the Lord; and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, Lord, I did not make Myself known to them. And I also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they sojourned. 
    	Consider how this opening of the heart of God worked to bring forth in Moses the establishment of that relationship which would characterize the rest of his days as the friend of God. From this point forward God and Moses would walk together and talk together and fellowship together as never before in the history of humanity. Yes, Adam had partaken of a similar relationship for a while in the Garden, but he gave up that place before God due to his sin and fall from grace. 
On the other hand, here was a sinful man, in fact a murder, who was brought into an even greater relationship with God! This was through the working power of the Sovereignty and the grace of the Most Holy and Righteous Lord God Almighty, the I Am of all eternity!
	This friendship of Moses with Jehovah is highlighted in even greater depth in Ex 34:4-8. This was after Moses had been so vehemently disgusted by the idolatrous behavior of the people toward his friend, Yahweh. They had been so quick to turn from God and had set up an idol after their defiled heart of sin and depravity. Moses had cast down the two tablets of the Word of the Lord. He had the Levites cleanse the people by the killing of so many who had so grievously and treacherously turned away from God to seek after their own defamed sort of religiosity. 
	After that necessary cleansing process, Moses returned to the mountain to ask the Lord to forgive the people and to give, once again, the Law by which the nation could live and be protected from the ills of this realm. That is where this account in Ex 34 picks up for us.
	Ex 34:4-8, So he cut out two stone tablets like the former ones, and Moses rose up early in the morning and went up to Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and he took two stone tablets in his hand. And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." And Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship. 
    	Notice how the Lord opened up even more of His grace and His mercy and His essence unto Moses. He made known the greater measure of His name to His friend, Moses, which caused such a worship and adoration to flow from Moses to the Lord. It is the depth of the reality of Who God is that so abounded forth to man and was returned in worship and praise and honor and glory unto God. 
The entire course of the walk of Moses was so affected by how much it meant to be the friend of God. He did everything within his human power to honor and to obey and to reverence the course of his walk on this earth! Because He knew the Name of God, his obedient life was a living worship unto the Holiness and the Majesty and the Glory and the Awesomeness of God.
	Moses was especially careful to so encourage the nation whom the Lord had called unto Himself. Moses wanted to teach them the full measure of how important it is to honor and to obey the Lord because of the awesome splendor of Who God is and all that His name involves. Consider what we are told in Deut 28:58+59. This is but one example of why the name of the Lord is to be absolutely and gloriously reverenced.
	Deut 28:58+59, "If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses. 
	To disregard the name of the Lord, to set aside the full measure of what His name entails within the course and the functioning of all that God has created will only serve to bring down destruction and terror and misery. The name of God is not to be befouled by any of the earthly touches of this vile and decrepit realm! 
God will not allow His testimony of Holiness and Purity and Truth and Lovingkindness to be besmirched as just another fleeting and dissipating fantasy of humanity whom He created! His name stands forever! It will eternally bring forth the glory and the splendor and the sovereignty and the majesty unto Him, the Only Living and Holy Lord God, Jehovah, the “I Am”! So be it!
But the angel of the Lord said to him, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?" 

This morning’s benediction is Prov 13:14. The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, To turn aside from the snares of death. Amen.