The Importance of a Name [Part 2 of 2]

Matthew 1: 24-25

I finished off yesterday by saying there is another important issue we need to deal with before moving on and it also comes from Matthews quote of Isaiah 7: 14.

Behold, the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.

(Isaiah 7: 14)

This is important as it’s a big part of what will follow later in Matthew. You need to know this if you’re interested in understanding who this man being prophesied her in Isaiah called Immanuel is. In the original Old Testament context Isaiah says to a king in the southern Kingdom that what he fears is going to happen, will happen. In that the northern Kingdom is coming down to attack you and God’s going to give you a sign and that a person is coming, who is going to deliver you. So, is this prophecy for then, when it was written, or for now, has it already been fulfilled, as some say, or has it yet to be fulfilled as others say? What can I say it’s that? And the answer is…. It’s a little complicated. 

You need to know something about prophecy in the Bible, in the Old Testament, prophecy very often has a local immediate fulfilment, as well as a foreshadowing of a future complete fulfilment. So, I think you could argue, yes, there is a sense in which an illustration of a young virgin woman and a baby is about the innocent calling the great and the good to accountability at that time in a divided kingdom. Yet there are things going on in Isaiah that indicates that this is way beyond just a local issue relating to the 8th century B.C. For example, for young woman to have a baby was in no way unusual, the way it’s worded it clearly meant to be suggesting something supernatural going on. 

The first word behold, means this is something amazing about to be suggested. Something you will want to know about and maybe even see.

Besides, Matthew actually says that this is a prophecy he is quoting, and he said that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now let me tell you the key to helped me understand this and it’s the use of the word fulfil. Let’s just re-visit the verses we closed off yesterday where it said.

All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet:  “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

(Matthew 1: 22-23)

If you study the Bible, this is really important. When the New Testament, especially Matthew, says it was fulfilled, that often means something that theologians call a double reference.  In other words, there was a fulfilment locally and immediately, but that didn’t completely fill it. When experts study this passage in the original Greek, they know that the words chosen can have a particular double meaning. It means that there is something coming now that will fill it but there will also be something else coming that will completely fulfil it. Or to say it another way it will be filled, and then it will be fulfilled. 

For us today. the words fulfil and fulfilled have almost the same meaning, but not in ancient Hebrew. It’s a bit like the difference between eating a meal and being full and eating a meal and never needed to eat again. Or about being filled today and something being filled perfectly to the maximum forever. That’s what the New Testament means, especially the Gospel of Matthew. When it says that this verse in the Old Testament was fulfilled. In the Old Testament this prophecy was played out against the issue of the day, but it is the coming of Christ, in the New Testament that brings this prophecy to its complete fulfilment. The Old Testament temporal events fit the prophecy but in the New Testament we can say this has been truly fulfilled. That’s the point.  Now we’re going to bump into this a lot as we go through the Gospel of Matthew. So, I thought I’d just pause here and point it out for the first time. Hebrew prophecy was always meant to be interpreted as cyclical. Individual temporal fulfilment, sometimes more than once, but a final complete fulfilment with the coming of the Messiah. But let’s get back to the point of passage, which is. His name? Jesus. 

At this point I am using the KJV version of the Bible because if we use the N.I.V. here, in my estimation we can miss a hugely important insight

Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.

(Matthew 1: 24-25)

A couple observations here. It says he did not know her till which means he never slept with her until after Jesus, her first born was brought forth. The use of the term “first born” which is in the original text, means he she had other children.  There are some Christians who teach that Mary was a perpetual virgin. The word “until” in that verse blows that theory out of the water,  and also refutes the claim that she never had any more children. And later in other Gospel account we shall see directly that Jesus had other brothers and sisters. (half- brothers and sister anyway) But the main point of this passage is that she gave him the name she was told by the angel to give him, Yeshua, Jesus. The point being he will be the one who will save his people from their sins.  Every time ever hear the word Jesus again, I want you to remember that means, salvation. Saving, his people from their sins, but  has that got to do with us today? Well, I need to pause and talk about that. I know I have said it before and you’re going to hear me say it again. But you can’t understand this book without understanding this, so I don’t apologize for repetition.

The word translated save used here be used in three different ways in relation to spiritual salvation. We have been saved from the penalty of my sin, and we are being saved from the power of my sins, and we will be saved from the presence of my sin on day. Jesus saves, and he saves completely from the penalty, the power, and the presence of sin. So, I wanted to come in and talk about these three things, because this is the point of this passage in the first chapter of Matthew. Jesus Emmanuel. God, with us, came as a man, to save us from our sins, but we get the whole complete salvation. 

Let’s first talk about being saved from the penalty of sin. I think one of the best stories I ever heard to illustrate this is the one about the little boy who wrote to Santa Claus and began his letter by saying,” Dear Santa, please define naughty”. The Bible doesn’t use the word naughty, it uses the word sin and it’s much more than just being naughty.Sin is anything contrary to the character of God. The 10 commandments reflect the holiness of God in that sense practically tells us what sin looks like, and at the top of the list we are told we should have no other gods before me. In other words, we must always put God first. Who can say they always do that? Elsewhere the Bible says “That all we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God”. (Romans 3: 23). That’s the  beginning, and it goes downhill from there. 

What about the other commandments, how about “Honour your father and mother”, Have you always respected your parents? Don’t commit murder. Never did that, so maybe you can think you can pass that one. Not so fast. Jesus said when you are angry with someone, you commit murder in your heart. Don’t steal, don’t lie. Well maybe you can make it past those two, how about don’t, covet. That one is especially tricky because it doesn’t convict us of what we have done or have not done, it convicts us of what we think, who we really are as human beings. So, we all fall short on that one. Now the Bible says the penalty of sin is death. So what do you have to do to be forgiven of your sins? What do you have to do to avoid the penalty of sin? One word, salvation. Trust Jesus Christ who paid the penalty, and thereby save us from the penalty of sin. That’s what the story is all about. Jesus came to die for saying that’s what this person says. So, that’s what you need to do. That’s the whole reason you came to save people from their sins. The problem is some people only see Jesus as the baby on the cross, but by his name which means saviour we know he came to save sins So, Jesus means saviour, and he came to save us from the penalty of sin, and the keyword is trust.

But he also came to save us from the power of sin. So, how do you get saved from the power? Well, let me ask you a question, is there something in your life you struggle with? I’ll start down the list, do you struggle with anger, do you struggle with being patience. Do you struggle with jealousy. How do you overcome the power of sin? In Romans, chapter seven Paul talks about how the very things he wants to do, those are the very things he end up not doing and the things he doesn’t  want to do, those are the very things he ends up doing. He describes himself as being a slave of sin. That’s the power of sin, it has the power to enslave us and it even affected a great man like the apostle Paul. 

What’s the solution? The solution, my friend, is the man named Jesus. Because he can save us from not only the penalty of sin ,but he can save us from the power of sin also. Now what is it I have to do? Well. If I had to, if I were shut up to one word, I would say, embrace the salvation offered in Christ Jesus. The Christian life is a life of faith. Galatians 2:20 Paul said. I’ve been crucified with Christ Nevertheless I lived in, that I have Christ living in me, and the life I now live, I live by faith. How do you live by faith? Well, number one, you believe what God has said. I submit to you that for many the problem is they do not believe what God said. So, we need to soak up and saturate ourselves with the word of God, because faith comes by hearing the word of God. In my experience, the people who have the most difficulty believing in God are the people that spend the least amount of time In God’s word. So, I know this sounds simplistic but why would we want to make things complicated, the word of God deals with sin, the scripture is very clear about this. The solution is the salvation of God by trusting Jesus Christ, whose name means saviour. So, the first step is that you believe what God said and the second is that you trust God for those promises and the grace and the power to do what he said. Now, admittedly, that’s a struggle at first, but as you persist, it becomes easier and easier to do that. Now that doesn’t mean that sometimes the problems might get more difficult, but the bigger the problems the more power available to us, and the bigger the salvation. 

The Bible tells us we are delivered from temptation and part of the reason we don’t have victory is when we pray we often don’t pray in the right way. We don’t pray before the temptation, we are usually confronted with temptation, or we have even fallen down, and then we think we’re going to pray about this get an instant answer, after the fact. Maybe if we pray before we were confronted with the situation, if we turned to the Lord in prayer before then maybe we’d have more power when the situation presented itself. So, how do you have victory over the power of sin and the answer is you trust God to give you the power to obey. 

So, we are safe from the penalty of sin

We are saved from the power of sin.

And one day going to be safe from the presence of sin. 

When the Lord comes back or we die, we’re going to go to be present with the Lord and we’re going to be free from the mess of this world and what a mess it is. Humanity has done some amazing things in my lifetime , we put a man on the moon. Just think of the technology. Who would ever imagine that we could facetime someone over a phone (Expand -Star Trek) So, we’ve gone from a physical phone with a wire, to a fax machine to a computer and streaming high quality live video content and what, may I ask, do we use all that great technology for? What’s the most popular and profitable thing on the Internet? 

No 1. Porn, 

No 2. Gambling.

It’s absurd. Let me tell you, the world is in a mess, and the use of technology is just one illustration. As you know, I could go on all day, ut one day Jesus is going to come back, or we are going to die and we are going to be saved from this nonsense. We’re going to be saved from the presence of sin. So, the point of all of this is we are to call his name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. What’s the importance of a name will in this case really important because it means that this man, the son of God can save people from their sins. The name of Jesus. I have my sin problem. He paid the penalty for my sin, he saved me from the power of sin, sin no longer has the ability to damage me or my relationship with father God, so he saved me from the power of sin and death. He was raised from the dead and lives within me and therefore gives me the power to overcome sin and one day will come back and take out of this mess. In the meantime, my responsibility is to trust and obey, for there’s no other way to have victory over sin, but to trust and obey. 

And I submit to you, as we trust and obey, we get saved, by the one who’s name means salvation.