Sermon: Names of Jesus: Jesus

We are going to look together at Matthew chapter one this evening, Matthew chapter one, and we're gonna read verses 18 through 25.

We have the privilege of studying tonight, the name of Jesus.

So simple, so profound, so wonderful. So we are gonna begin in Matthew chapter one. Before we read God's word, let's ask that his Holy Spirit would be gracious to us to open our minds and our hearts to hear it.

Father in heaven, we give you thanks that you have chosen to reveal yourself to us and that you have chosen to reveal yourself to us in the person of your son and through his work. And we thank you that you chose in your wisdom to give your only begotten son the name Jesus, that we might know that there is for us a savior, a savior for sinners. And I pray that through the reading of your word and the preaching of your word tonight,

that you would instruct us, that you would save us, that you would forgive us,

and that we would find salvation in life in your son. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

Matthew chapter one, beginning at verse 18, reading through verse 25 and our focus this evening is just one verse, verse 21. But Matthew chapter one beginning in verse 18, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they had come together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit and her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved

to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold the virgin shall conceive and bury son

and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to his son and he called his name Jesus.

Dear friends, and Lord Jesus Christ, how do you go about introducing yourself when someone asks you to introduce yourself to them or to their family or to a group of people? How is it that you introduce yourself? What do you say? When I'm asked to introduce myself, I usually start with my name. Hi, my name is Nate Grima.

I'm a husband to Sarah. I'm a dad to Elin, to Isaiah, to Aubrey. I'm a pastor, I'm a pastor at University Reform Church and I'm a Christian. That sums up in essence my sweet short little introduction to people. And I imagine that your introduction, your personal introduction to other people probably includes similar content. Maybe you notice that my little introduction primarily consisted of my name and titles. So Nate, I'm a husband, I'm a father,

I'm a pastor, I'm a Christian. My name and titles offers somewhat of an entry point for you into my life. They tell you something about me. They tell you some of the most relevant information about me and my life, about what I do, what makes me who I am. And just as my name and titles give you something of an entry point into my life. So the names and titles of Jesus, of which there are many in the Bible, as we will see over the coming weeks,

they give us an entry point into the person and work of Jesus. So as Pastor Jason said, uh, we're beginning a new evening series on the names of Jesus. The reason why is we want to get to know Jesus and his names help us to get to know him, who he is and what he does. Tonight we begin with the name Jesus, the place to begin. And what I want us to look at tonight is that the name of Jesus is a human name. The name of Jesus is a meaningful name

and the name of Jesus is a personal name. Jesus, maybe you know this, Jesus was a common name among Jewish males in the first century. There were others with this name. So in Colossians four we're actually told about one of those other Jewish males with the name Jesus Colossians four 11. Paul tells the church Jesus, who is called justice greets you. It's been pointed out from the, from the evidence gathered in documents

and inscriptions from this time period that uh, scholars estimate that Jesus was the fourth most common name among Jewish men. About one out of 20 Jewish males would've had the name Jesus and that would be behind Simon, Joseph and Judah. Chances are that if you lived at this time in this place, you would've known someone with the name Jesus in your neighborhood or in your school or in your synagogue. So this is one of the reasons why as you read the Bible

and you hear Jesus of Nazareth, that's one of the reasons why you're gonna hear of Nazareth tacked on Jesus. It's a way of distinguishing this Jesus from other jesuses Jesus of Nazareth to distinguish him from others with the same name. Last week, my wife Sarah went on the women's retreat maybe with some of you. And as we were catching up about the retreat, one of the things that she told me was that she was probably one

of six or seven Sarahs on the retreat and there were probably four or five or six Emily's on the retreat. Those are common names here at URC, right? You can find many of them. And so as it is with Sarahs, and Emilys here at URC, Jesus was a common name among Jewish males. Now, there are reasons that this is the case. One of those reasons is that the name Jesus is loaded with historical significance in Judaism. Jesus is the Greek equivalent

to the Hebrew name Joshua. Have you heard the name Joshua? Recently? Yeah. This morning, right. Joshua was the great Israelite leader who took the people of Israel into Canaan and led them in the conquest of Canaan, both in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And also in the Greek New Testament. Joshua is regularly translated as Jesus or in the Greek Jesus. So Joshua's significance in Israel's history

probably contributed to the popularity of the name Jesus in his time period. I think of uh, sports immediately you, you think of someone who is really successful in sports. Uh, someone with a unique name such as Kobe Bryant for example, and then give it 15 years or so after he lives. And there's a whole bunch of Kobes in your school, right? That someone of significance and their name, you often find that people are named

after that person. And I think it's probably likely that Joshua's significance in Israel's history led to the popularity of the name in later centuries.

But here's what I want you to realize. Jesus was given a common name, a common human name, this name Jesus testifies to Christ's humanity. And it's really important that we acknowledge Jesus's humanity. Not only because historic orthodox Christianity confesses that Jesus is both God and human, but it's also critical, absolutely critical for our salvation, that Jesus is a man. It is necessary for the salvation of sinful men,

that the redeemer of his people be truly man and Jesus is one of us. He's a human with a rational soul, human flesh And a human name. And so the name Jesus testifies to his humanity,

but the name Jesus. And the fact that it's a human name also reminds us that Jesus lived in human history, which is also important. His person and his work are a testable. There are, there is evidence that Jesus is a historical person who lived and died in the first century in Palestine. And of course that's what the gospel writers are so concerned about, right? They start with the birth of Jesus and they are so concerned

to tell us all these important details about Jesus' life from his birth all the way to his death. And here's why that matters, because Christianity is rooted in history and Jesus himself is a historical person. Some so-called Christians will try to say that it does not matter whether or not Jesus or other figures in the Bible were historically real. People say it doesn't matter. What really matters is the teaching about them.

It doesn't really matter if they're mythical people so long as what the story is about has some significance.

But Christianity is not a myth. Christianity is a historical religion, a religion rooted in human history, and it matters. It really matters. That's Paul's point in one Corinthians 15, you can look there later. Paul says that if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain. If Jesus did not actually rise from the dead, it is not historically verifiable and accurate, then our faith is in vain. Because if Christ wasn't raised from the dead,

then there's no ground for us to believe that we will rise from the dead. And if we will not rise from the dead, then we are left in our sins. So the fact that Jesus bears a human name is critical for our salvation. And it's reminds us that Jesus was a historical person. He was born to a woman, the Virgin Mary. He was the ancestor of historical people of which Matthew one, the genealogy reminds us and tells us. And the fact that Jesus bears a human name testifies

of his humanity and establishes that Jesus is a historical person and that our faith is historical too.

Joel Bke writes that though Jesus is a human name, its meaning suggests that in this man, God has come to us. So it's really important that Jesus bears a human name, but there's more significance in his name than the fact that he's just a human. It tells us more than that. And of course, that's exactly what verse 23 says, right? He shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.

But the name even Jesus, the the meaning of Jesus's name tells us that fact as well. So what I wanna observe now with you is that Jesus is a name with meaning. It's a meaningful name. Joseph and Mary, you probably noticed are not the ones that chose the name for their son. Instead, the name is chosen by God, which Joseph and Mary received from the angel. And as I was thinking about that this week, I thought, man, that must have been nice.

I would've spared me a lot of conversations and a lot of time wrestling with Sarah about what name to give to our kids, how nice that must have been. The angel tells Joseph, in a dream, Mary will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. You, you, you hear the little word there for, for it indicates purpose. This son will save his people from their sins. This is a word of promise from God

to his people about what this child will do. He will accomplish a divine mission and it's because he will save his people from his sins that he is to be named Jesus. That's why he's to be named Jesus. His name is not chosen by accident. I shared earlier that Jesus is not only a name with historical significance, it's a name with meaning, with meaning. So the name Jesus comes from the Hebrew name Joshua. Joshua is the combination of two Hebrew words.

Yahweh saves God, saves the Lord is salvation. That's what Joshua means. And Jesus is the Greek equivalent to that name. Joshua. It bears the same meaning Yahweh saves, but unlike the name Joshua, which speaks about Yahweh, the Lord as salvation with this man, the man Jesus, the name does not mean Yahweh saves. We could just say simply His name means savior. Why? Because he is the God who saves. He is the God who saves.

I wonder if you noticed in the angel's promise to Joseph, if you notice that it said that he meaning Jesus will save his people from his sins. Did you notice that he will save his people from his sins? The angel here attributes to Jesus something that the Bible says only of God that he will save

the emphasis throughout the Old Testament. And the new is that God is sovereign and he alone can save. There is no other. So take this as an example from the Old Testament. Isaiah 43, verse 11, I, I am Yahweh and besides me, there is no savior from the New Testament. We could look to Matthew chapter 19, verses 27 and 28. The disciples there are asking, uh, Jesus, after his encounter with the rich young man

who can be saved, the rich young man, it seems like he is the one of anyone that should be saved. And he goes away because he has not trusted in Christ for his salvation. And the disciples perplexed say, well then who can be saved? And Jesus replies with, man, this is impossible. But with God all things are possible. And of course the implication is that God alone can save if, if it's impossible with man by man to be saved,

it must only then be possible with God. So what only God can do, Jesus is said to be able to do and the announcement of his birth, and at the revelation of his name, he will save. And you'll notice these three words are in the future tense. He will save referring of course to the decisive act of salvation. Right? When was that decisive act? It's the cross Jesus' death on the cross. That is the decisive act of salvation.

When I lived in Charlotte, there was a famous guy, I don't know his name, but I knew who he was. I knew his voice. The reason being is that this guy was downtown Charlotte. Anytime anything significant was going on, and he would walk the streets of Charlotte and he would repeatedly call out Jesus safes and then he'd keep walking. Jesus saves. And he would just say it repeatedly for hours and hours and hours on end. So simple, so profound.

It's exactly what Jesus' name means. Jesus saves. Just got to talk the other day with, uh, the executive director over at the Lansing City Rescue Mission. And he was talking about how they're hoping at some point to be able to move to a, a bigger facility. And he talked about how recognizable their building is on, on Michigan because they've got the cross hanging from their facility currently. And it just simply says, Jesus saves, right? Jesus saves.

Maybe you've seen that. That's what Jesus' name means, Jesus, that, that he is the savior. And this is right. One minor concern I have, if there's any concern to be made about just those two words, is that it might be misleading to some people or it may not be as fully expressed as it ought to be, as it ought to be. We need to be really sure that we don't miss what Jesus saves us from. We need to be really clear about that.

You see, the angel's declaration does not leave this generic. It does not leave this vague. Instead the angel declares that Jesus saves us from our sins. If you think with me about the story arc of the Bible,

it's only the third chapter, the third chapter of this whole book, where the problem of all problems is presented. Adam and Eve sin against God by breaking his commandment. The commandment to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the command that they break. Sin enters the world just three chapters into the Bible's narrative. And from there, don't we see really quickly how sin affects absolutely everything?

How pervasive and problematic sin is? It sin affects Adam and Eve's relationship with God, right? They're kicked out of the garden. They no longer dwell with God. Sin affects their relationship with one another, right? Adam and Eve are gonna have relational struggles with one another because of sin. Sin affects their children. Their children are born sinners, and the fact that their children are born sinners means that one of their sons is going to kill their other son.

Sin. Their sin affects a creation and the relationship to the creation. When Adam is working the ground, it's going to be filled with pain and hard work because it will now produce thorns and thistles as scripture unfolds. The problem that we see over and over and over again with mankind is sin. Sin is the chief problem of mankind. And it touches everyone. It touches everything. So as we read about the kings, as we read about the prophets, as we read about the priests,

as we read about the judges, all these people that we think, ah, maybe they will be the deliverer, maybe they will be the one to not be flawed. We find out quickly everyone is flawed. There is no no one who is immune to sin, no one who is not affected by sin. Sin is the problem of all problems for mankind. My friends, the reason I bring this up is because the essential point of the gospel is that is not that Jesus saves mankind from

things like social inequalities or from wokeness or from low self-esteem or from crummy jobs. That's not the essential point of the gospel. The essential point of the gospel is that Jesus saves us from our sins. You see other teachers, other experts, could help us with all sorts of things, with our problems and issues that we have. But there is no other solution presented anywhere, nowhere not one solution for sin except Jesus.

And that's what makes the gospel such good news. Because as we read through the Bible and we see there are no solutions, no solutions, no solutions, no solutions. It might make us think there's no solution at all. And yet when the angel tells Joseph and Mary that they will have a son and that his name is to be Jesus, finally the promise of Genesis three is fulfilled. And finally, There is some good news, the best of all news.

What no one could do, what we ourselves could not do, God has done in Jesus. He is the Savior, the one to save us from our sins. Now, how did he do that? How does Jesus save us from our sins? One Peter 2 24 provides a good summary. Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds, you have been healed. Jesus saves us by living the life we did not live by living the life we could not live

and then dying the sin that we deserved. That is what satisfies the Father. That satisfies the wrath of God. That is what takes away his anger towards sin. That is what takes sin away altogether. Jesus satisfied for sin.

And so you see the most simple definition of the gospel, the most simple definition of good news can be found in the meaning of Jesus'. Name. Jesus saves sinners. This one, this Jesus, he is the one to live up to His names, meaning

Jesus is a meaningful name. Finally, Jesus is a personal name. Jesus is a personal name. Names are personal, aren't they? You can tell people all sorts of different things about your life. Personal details are not, but names are a personal detail. And to know one's name suggests that some kind of relationship exists. Of course, this isn't always true. Uh, you could know someone's name by reputation like you know the President's name

or you know the name of the Super Bowl winning quarterback or something like that, right? You may not have a personal relationship, though you may know their name, but just think. Just think. Can you claim to know someone if you don't know their name?

How well do you really know a person if you don't know their name? You can't say you know them very well. And Jesus's name is a personal name. Yes, Jesus' name is famous, maybe the most famous of all names, but make no mistake, his name is a personal name. He has made his name known so that you might know him.

He's made his name known that you might know him. And I ask you tonight, how well do you know this? Jesus, how well do you know this? Jesus, I might ask you this to help you think about how well you know him Or how basically you know him. How well do you know yourself?

Do you know yourself to be a sinner in need of salvation? Do you know that about yourself? If you don't know that about yourself, you're not gonna know very much about Jesus. You're not really going to know him. Because to know Jesus is to know him as savior.

To truly know him is to know him as savior and not just to know him as savior. Not just to know his name, but to trust him, to trust his person and his work. Is he your savior?

If you've not acknowledged that you are a sinner and that you are in need of save saving,

I urge you to heed the warning. That is Jesus's name.

Jesus's name tells us that he came to save sinners. Sinners. Are you confident that your record will stand before a holy God?

You will be lost without Jesus. If mankind didn't need saving, Jesus wouldn't have come. He wouldn't have had to come to earth. If you have not acknowledged yourself to be a sinner in need of saving, you don't know Jesus very well. And I encourage you, get to know Jesus. He is all that you need.

But I suspect that many of you here have made a profession of faith in Jesus. And so I ask you, is Jesus your savior? Is he your savior? I wanna be clear, I'm not asking this question tonight to rattle you. I'm not asking this question to make you question whether or not your profession is real or true. Unless, unless you need to be rattled. Unless you are looking for salvation in something else and maybe you don't know it

or maybe you're not really believing it or thinking it, it would be devastating, absolutely devastating if you were sitting in the pew tonight thinking that you are building up some sort of credit with God. And maybe that credit is based on a Christian pedigree that I'm, I'm a Christian. I I grew up in a Christian home. I have Christian parents, I have Christian grandparents. I show up to church week in and week out. I come to evening service even on Super Bowl Sunday.

I have Christian education, I have, I give to Christian work and to Christian mission.

Are you trusting in those things for your salvation? If if you were really to be pressed, Would you have to admit I'm giving some stock, I'm putting some stock in that I'm just hedging my bets by trying to live in a moral upstanding way so that when Jesus returns, I have something to fall back on just in case. Are you putting even just a little ounce in something beside Jesus?

You see, it's not your parents' faith that's gonna save you. It's not your grandparents' faith that's gonna save you.

You must know Jesus personally, yourself. We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And we must stand before him with a faith that is our own. And so I urge you, If, If you're wondering a little bit, go to Christ, go to Christ, find in him all that you need. He is a perfect savior.

I wanna say one more thing to, to some of you. Perhaps some of you are maybe not trusting your self, but you are wondering, you're looking at yourself and you're all you're seeing is sin. And you're wondering, man, I I professed faith in Christ. I, I believe I'm clinging to him, but sin seems to just keep popping up all over the place. Will I ever be rescued from this body of death? And I just want you to look back at

those words in verse 21. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

It will happen. And the decisive act was on the cross, right?

But it's really fascinating. The writers of the New Testament often talk about our salvation as past because they are after the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. So Jesus saved us on the cross past tense. The New Testament also talks about us being saved. It's a present reality. We are being saved. But the New Testament also has a category of future salvation. And the these, these are just aspects of the one salvation.

It's not three different salvations. It's one act of salvation, but different aspects. And there is a future aspect to our salvation. Jesus will save. That's not what this verse is necessarily talking about here, but I think it's helpful for us to remember that Jesus is coming back and when he comes back, what he will do is He will save us once and for all, once and for all fully. And finally, and what will he do? He will take us to dwell with him forever.

There will be no sin. The sins that you are wrestling with now that seem like they're having their way in your life, all of those will be uprooted. They will be gone and dashed away and burned up. You will be saved. And I hope for some of you that's a good reminder In your life.

I just want to end with what the Heidelberg Catechism says in question and answer 30. Heidelberg catechism reminds us that any who looked for salvation in themselves or anywhere else, do not really believe in the only Savior Jesus Christ. And the reason why is this, Jesus is a perfect savior. He is a perfect Savior. There's nothing we need to add to it, to it or to Him. And those who in true faith, accept their savior,

have everything they need for their salvation in Him, absolutely everything. The name of Jesus is a personal name. He has revealed his name to you that you might take it upon your lips so that you might know who he is and what he has done. Can you say, Jesus is my Savior, my Savior, my Lord, my God. As Acts four tells us, there is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved except for this name, the name Jesus.

Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we give you thanks for your son, your only begotten son who who came to earth as the God man in order that he might save us from our sins. And we thank you that his rescue mission was successful. We thank you that in him we have a perfect savior. All we need for salvation is in Him. I pray, oh Lord, that you would teach us,

help us to call upon the name of Jesus, whether we need saving now from our sins for the first time, or whether we need saving from sins again and again and again. We have all we need in Him. And we thank you for this great gift. We prayed in Jesus' name. Amen.