Yahweh Mikoddishkem
| Then the LORD said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the LORD, who makes you holy.'" (or "the God who sanctifies you.") (Exodus31:12-13) |
Our divine name for today is Yahweh Mikoddishkem.
In Hebrew, "Kadosh" means "Holy".
This word is the root of the verb "Mikaddesh" which means to "make holy", "consecrate", "purify" or "sanctify" .
The "kem" on the end means "you" (plural) or "y'all".
This name appears twice in the OT: here in Exodus and then in Leviticus 20:7-8.
In both passages there is a clear pattern:
1. God instructs to the Israelites to be holy or to behave in a holy fashion.
2. He assures them that He is the God who makes them holy.
While this seems like a contradiction, it is not.
We are not able to be holy by ourselves.
But God, in grace and mercy, reaches out to us in our unholiness to bring about change deep within us so that we can begin to become like Him. He is asking us to grow into what He has already made us.
But there is a another nuance we must notice here:
When the generations to come observe how their parents and grandparents observed the Sabbath and walked in the pathways of God, they didn't say: "What amazing forebears we had." They knew and realised that it was God who made them holy.
We don't undertake holy behaviour to become holy.
We gravitate toward holy behaviour because God has made us holy within.
When we live like this it brings glory to God.
The really, really, really good news is that our God is Yahweh Mikoddishkem - the God who makes us holy.
The name Jesus - Yeshua - means Saviour.
John the Baptist said of Him: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
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(Incidentally, we looked at Lev 20 in the third devotion in this series. You can find it here: https://emmdev.blogspot.com/2022/08/emmdev-2022-08-04-attributes-and-names.html )
