The Extra
The Extra is a podcast hosted by Crosspoint Christian Church in Conyers, Georgia. Senior Minister, Curtis Zehner, and his friend, Ken Pierce, talk through each week's sermon unpacking the extra material that didn't make the cut for the weekend message. Curtis' and Ken's conversational and relaxed style lend itself to listeners of all ages and spiritual maturities.
The Extra
Exodus pt. 2 | God's Name
What do names really mean in the grand tapestry of our identity and faith? On this episode of The Extra Podcast, we discuss the the layers of significance that names hold, particularly within Christianity. Together, we share personal stories about our own names, highlighting how these simple words can be powerful markers of identity and legacy.
Check out more at www.CrosspointConyers.com
Today on the Extra Podcast, ken Pierce and I pick up the conversation and talk about God's personal name. Welcome to the Extra, hey, ken.
Speaker 2:Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 1:It's going good man.
Speaker 2:Good.
Speaker 1:It's going good. I really enjoyed preaching this past weekend. It's just a really deep subject about God and who he is. A name means everything it does, doesn't it.
Speaker 2:It gives you something to obviously to remember the person by, but also it gives you almost a brand, yeah, and it gives you a marker, I guess and people that are bad with names are usually not people that are into brand names and things like that oh really, yeah, because they're like I don't care what people call you, I care what you are about, yeah. But in Christianity, religion, a name can mean a lot of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Abrahamic, you know things like that Like you start becoming the name. Yeah, so Absolutely when you start thinking like that. It's like again a name can mean a lot.
Speaker 1:What does your name mean? I?
Speaker 2:don't you know? Honestly, I don't know.
Speaker 1:What's your? Do you want to give out your full name?
Speaker 2:My, my name. I was named after two uncles of mine.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And Kenneth Andrew. So my name means I don't. You know, I really don't even know, I've never even looked at it, which should tell you I'm terrible with names. I am terrible with names, but situations I'm good with. I can remember situations.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, that's probably good as a counselor to remember things that people talk about, the situations that they go through.
Speaker 2:Somebody walks in my office I know the last thing we talked about, Not necessarily their name I will say how's work going? Yeah, Before they sit down and they're like yeah, it sort of puts them like not on their heels but like, oh, that's, we did talk about that. Okay, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1:I like that. It sort of welcomes a man. Pick up where you just left off, like I never left. Yeah, exactly, it's good.
Speaker 2:Like, oh, he's only thinking about me, but you know, a month at a time. Right, because I see people one month, one month apart, that's good they're like has he been? Thinking about this for a month? I have not, but I have a good memory for that thing that's great.
Speaker 1:But names I have become. I've become better at names. Yeah, I, and I give all credit to the work of the Lord. Okay, I was not always good at remembering names. My dad has always been good at it. Yeah, but in my, my line of work, it is important to remember people's names it is.
Speaker 1:I like to remember names, to remember people's names. It is I like to remember names. I like to be able to say somebody's name who I haven't seen in a long time, or, on the way out of church, be able to name every person that walks out the door. I don't succeed in that every time.
Speaker 2:Is that a test you give yourself?
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm testing myself, it's just I don't know. Maybe it is, I guess yeah.
Speaker 2:Because remembering know, maybe it is, I guess. Yeah, yeah, because that's because remembering somebody's name, like I said, is not to me as important as the circumstances I either met them in or what they're doing in their life yeah because of counseling yeah so because in the clinic we work at we do, we do not use names. We use a four digit number and we'll often call people 11, 22 or 11, 18 or whatever, and not their last name. I'll go out to the lobby and say 1118.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Because of all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can yeah.
Speaker 2:As much anonymity as possible in my world.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But the easiest way to bring something to the personal is to say somebody's name.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. Well, I do appreciate the origin of names, um I'll. I'll give you my origin Um. I'm named after my dad, curtis.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, that's also a family name. Um before him, Uh, and so, uh, that's carrying on some family legacy. Bailey, I don't count that one. Yeah, I forget. I shared that in a sermon a few weeks ago that my family name probably should be Bailey.
Speaker 2:but we are the.
Speaker 1:Zaners, zaners, way cooler. But, that means that we were adopted into a family. Yeah, you know somewhere down the line, whoever our father, our forefather was.
Speaker 2:That is a great fact.
Speaker 1:Was adopted into the Zaner family.
Speaker 2:I think that's a great fact. It's a very cool fact, yeah.
Speaker 1:Definitely Paul is my middle name and that's named after my great-grandfather on my mom's side. Okay, and he was a preacher. Well, he was a missionary Coolest dude ever, right, right, missionary Coolest dude ever. At like age 70, he sold everything and moved to Puerto Rico to be a missionary because they needed somebody down there, and so he was laying cinder block, building house, and ended up having to come back to the United States because his health got so bad Just like a true man of God. So I'm honored to carry that name on top of it so.
Speaker 1:I've got a. I love my name. I've got a lot of good history behind my name. A name says a lot about a person and that's what we get from God in Exodus, chapter three. To learn his name, which really, by our standards is not much of a name. It's more of a statement of existence. To learn that about God really opens our eyes to who he is and what he represents for all humanity.
Speaker 2:I like how you said God is not God's name. Yeah, in the sermon God is not God's name. It's almost like Kleenex and tissue, yeah, or something like that, like there's God and then there's Yahweh or Elohim.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the difference is important.
Speaker 1:It is. I mean, there are many ways to refer to God. Good grief. There's so many different names of God throughout the scriptures. There's Jehovah, and then there's different variations of Jehovah, jehovah, and then there's different variations of Jehovah. Jehovah Jireh means he exists or he is all. Now, I shouldn't have started down the track here, but there's Jehovah. There's so many different names of God, ways that we can refer to God in the scriptures and all of them are his names. In Exodus 3, this is what God calls himself Like I am. That's just calls himself Like I am. That's just it. I am who I am. What's the word? I just said it before we hit record. God says his name is Now I got to look it up in my notes because I'm going to get it wrong Ehyeh, ehyeh, ehyeh, asher, ehyeh. I am who I am, ehyeh, and like that's not much of a name. It is a statement. Yeah, but that's what God says. Moses, who should I say, sent me to you?
Speaker 2:Right, I am, yeah. Do you know who Robert Barron is? Bishop Robert Barron.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not familiar.
Speaker 2:I may have mentioned him on the podcast before, but he says God is existence itself.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's what that means.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He is the existent one, the one who exists, which is baffling to think that there was existence before we or the universe existed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, existence before there was matter, or something like that. Because when we say existence we're like the table exists, right, but that's because we can see it, feel it, measure it and all that. But there's a different type of existence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's God. We qualify existence within the domain of time. Yeah, but if there's no time, how can we qualify existence? Well, god, right, that's it. Ehye, yahweh, yahweh.
Speaker 2:I've heard. If so, if there's no matter, then where would you put time? And if there's no time, when would you put matter? And he is both of those.
Speaker 1:He is it altogether, and not only it. He's outside of it, he created it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we've referred to time and matter and space as it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But God created those things, so he just is on the most cosmic non-reality way you can think of it. I can remember being a kid and trying to understand or trying to think through. What does it mean that God just always has existed? And just I remember that feeling of just being so devastatingly confused that you feel like your mind is like spinning in a circle or like you're falling through a black hole is how I'm picturing it.
Speaker 1:But God just always has been and he is and he always will be, because one day it's all going to come to an end, but he will not.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's not a paradox of any kind. It's just difficult to explain, right. Try to imagine existence without the rules of existence.
Speaker 1:Something like that. That informs a lot of how powerful he is Right To be powerful enough to create existence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I love the questions of could God create a square circle?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:All those things and it's like, okay, you can go down a rabbit hole real quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But just know that at the end of all that, at the end of tying yourself in a logical knot like that, he does exist and he is existence itself and he created it at the same time. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's really important to just meditate on those things. I don't think we're ever going to find an answer this side of heaven.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But to allow yourself to really just meditate on what does it mean that God just is? That might change a lot of your perspective of what's happening to you in any given moment. Mm-hmm, you know.
Speaker 2:I think it says a lot that we are able to comprehend the name, because that makes me think okay, god wants a personal relationship with me. Yes, because he introduced himself to me. Yes, in his name, in you know, general revelation and things like that Uh-huh revelation and things like that, and that should mean a lot to everybody that can understand the basics of Christianity. I can have a personal relationship with the one that created me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and that differentiates Christianity from any other religion. Yeah, I mean, pick one right Hinduism or forms of Hinduism, it's all. Or you just call it Eastern pantheistic, whatever it is, I'm so smart. They're all trying to get to a place of existence. What is it Brahman?
Speaker 2:You're familiar with anything that I'm saying right now. Brahmans are the highest form in the caste system in India.
Speaker 1:Right, and so that's the goal is to get to the highest form. So if I live a good life in this life, let's just say this is my third existence, right? If I'm living good in this one, then I should be the next step up the ladder, the next rung toward Brahman. If I get to Brahman, that means I'm in oneness. I'm in oneness with existence.
Speaker 2:Right, you achieve nirvana.
Speaker 1:But there's no personal relationship in any of that, it's just all kind of. I hope that I lived good enough in this life that I will be better off in the next one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's not based on any one single point. God is the single point to which everything leads, but there is nothing like that in Hinduism.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm not going to pretend like I'm a world religions scholar, but Christianity is that one religion where we get to have a personal relationship with the creator and that, being a differentiating factor, I think, sets us apart from everybody else.
Speaker 2:At the same time, it's challenging.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then it's also it's fun to be unique, of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's also. It's fun to be unique, of course, yeah, but it's also a challenge.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Think about an artist that is singular in their field. They had to overcome a lot of challenges, a lot of looking, laughing, picking on, yeah, all the tribulation basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To get to where they're at and Christianity is no different you have to put up with a Christian would call it persecution and tribulation, but the reward is not here, it's in heaven.
Speaker 1:Jesus says the world doesn't know me. Yeah, he said this to Peter, well, to all of his disciples that were there.
Speaker 1:He said who do people say that I am? And Peter said you are the Christ, You're the son of God. And he said blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for that has been revealed to you by God and not man. The world doesn't know Jesus and they can't know him unless God reveals himself to them. Yeah, and so the very fact that God revealed his name to Moses so that it could be revealed to us is God's mercy, his grace on us, that we can know him. We don't deserve to know God, Right, we're his creation. He can do whatever he wants with us. We could be his eternal slaves for all. You know what I mean. He can do whatever he wants with us. We could be his eternal slaves for all. You know what I mean. Like I'm just. I guess I'm picturing more of like a genie in my head now that just is like all-powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, phenomenal cosmic power.
Speaker 2:But it wouldn't be Right, but it wouldn't be a personal relationship, no, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that's why we were created.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, why else would we exist? God doesn't need us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is a song that says he calls me friend, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a friend of God. He calls me friend, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're not going to get that in another religion, uh-uh, because you're constantly having to scramble up to some unearthly otherworldly thing or concept and there is no relationship. It's just you're not good enough and you know like Scientology is the worst version.
Speaker 1:So God's name is in the sermon. I gave three little points and I kind of went over them super quickly, so I want to come back to them for a moment here. God's name Yahweh is holy, and man this is, I also said sacred, and those are in similar wavelengths. But let's stick with. His name is holy, he tells us in Exodus 20, verse 7,. He says you shall not misuse the name of the Lord, your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. What does it mean to keep God's name holy?
Speaker 2:I would say it means only use it in the context that you know it should be used something like that.
Speaker 1:Like you know, it's a holy name?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is God's name. Do you really want to drag God's name through any earthly issue? Yeah, and bring it down. Do not bring the name down, only exalt it. Yeah, and drag and bring it down. Do not bring the name down, only exalt it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Then what about our culture that uses God's name so profanely? Right, right.
Speaker 2:I would even count that among like, maybe even thanking God for something trivial, something like that. I would even say that, yeah, but it's important to thank God, but something trivial, thanking God for something trivial I don't know where that fits. Honestly.
Speaker 1:I tell you what I'm thinking of is the negative argument of all of this, which is I'm sure that you've heard this phrase before. I'm not even going to say it. I cannot stand this phrase Like it just makes me cringe. But oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Right, I can't even say it, we're sitting here. It's only a podcast, but to say oh, my God Gosh, you saw my body. My body just cringed physically. He did one big convulsion.
Speaker 1:I almost threw up To say that phrase man, we're taking God's name in vain. Yeah, we just are, and I know I preach that God. The term God is not a name. But let's not confuse Like if you're referring to God in some way, you're misusing it, you're breaking this commandment.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Like to exclaim because you stubbed your toe, oh my.
Speaker 2:God yeah, oh my.
Speaker 1:God, or I've even heard people getting really upset over that famous rhyme when somebody turns 40. Lordy lordy.
Speaker 1:So-and-so's 40. That's even getting closer to the personal name of God and just using it like ho, ho, ho, this is a joke, you're getting old and that's not very holy and it's certainly not very sacred. The. The third point in my sermon on this name thing was that god's name is sacred. Man, we live in a culture where hardly anything is sacred. There is, there are, there's nothing sacred in our american culture anymore, especially in the realm of religion and christianity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just oh well, you know, it's just a word, you know yeah, it's a post-modern thing where everything's fair game exactly like it's all relative, like no, my, my favorite sports team is just as valid and important as your favorite, god you know. Uh, no, it's not. Yeah, not at all yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You'd get really mad if somebody started bashing your sports team openly in front of you, right? You'd feel the need to defend your atlanta falcons how dare you my, uh, my auburn tigers yeah, right, but.
Speaker 2:But if somebody says I don't, I don't go to church, I don't believe in all that, the same person might actually say, hey, that's you, yeah, that's just you. You know, different strokes, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But do not talk about the chiefs.
Speaker 1:Right or something like that, right. So what does that mean for us, ken? This is one thing I've just been really thinking about, like how do there has to be a value system, and there has.
Speaker 2:There have to be things that are put above other things yeah I honestly used to think all things were evil, and it's a really. It's a depressing way to look at life, because you have to. You have to assert that there are some things more important than other things. There just are. So what's the most important thing? Eventually, you get to God and the relationship you have with him, that's the most important thing ultimately, and when you're in that relationship with God, he defines the value system for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just have to know him in order to know his values.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but when everything is flat, well, all the frequencies are flat and there's nothing spiking your interest or your emotional drive, that's called depression. That is depression because you're not in fight or flight. You're in flight, freeze. There is no fight, fight is forward, freeze is obviously stop Hopefully they don't see me like in Jurassic Park and then flight is run away, withdrawal. So if you're withdrawn or frozen, that's depression, and if everything's flat, you don't go after something.
Speaker 1:I would encourage everyone everyone who's listening to this, at least as far as my reach can go I would encourage everyone to start considering more things of God, to be holy and sacred in your life, to actually pay attention to the value system that God has set up, beginning with something very simple like honoring God's name as holy. And if you're listen, language is language. You know, if you're a frequent user of the OMG phrase, maybe it starts there to startining your mind that my God, yahweh, is the creator of the universe and he says himself that he is holy. If I want to be in relationship with him, I need not misuse his name.
Speaker 1:I think of that on a parental level. If I just walked in as like a eight, nine, 10 year old and instead of saying, hey, dad, if I just walked in, I was like, hey, kurt, you got to cut that grass today. You know like I don't know like what, what a stupid example. But you know like it would be weird if my daughter came in, if I I woke her up this morning. It was so cute. Last night, she night before I put her to bed, she said Dad, can you wake me up? In the morning I was like, of course.
Speaker 2:I can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will. But if I had gone in there this morning and she was like oh good morning, curtis, I'm your dad, you know Like come on, it's always funny when kids act like adults.
Speaker 2:It's always funny when kids act like adults. It's always funny when kids act like adults. It's always sad when adults act like kids, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Vivian says she calls me Ken sometimes, but when she remembers that that's my name, she doesn't say hey, ken, she doesn't do that. She goes Ken and like, hey, right, that's your name, isn't it? And then she goes back to being a normal three-year-old. So when she does that, I know me and Faith have talked about like no, you can't, that's dad, I'm mom, I'm not Faith, he's not Ken, but it's similar to God and Yahweh it's. Dad is the office I hold. Dad is the position in your life. I am your God. That is what God is saying. And you call me Yahweh in a holy context. Please call me, please when you get old enough to call me Ken, which I don't know what age that's going to be.
Speaker 1:Call me Ken when you're 35, you know, but I don't that's what I think I'm thinking through is that I don't think there is an age I really don't either when kids start to make that transition, and call us by our first names, and I think it also applies to our relationship with God.
Speaker 1:Jesus actually gives us a new way to refer to God. If you have your Bible, I wonder if my Bible app's going to work. I don't know if I'm on the internet right now, but I'm going to try. Matthew, where do you think I'm going, Ken? Take a guess. I don't know. I don't know. You should know by now.
Speaker 1:Almost every episode, I end up bringing it back to the same three chapters in the Bible. Is there an 11? No, Matthew, chapter 5, 6, and 7. Nevermind, it's the Sermon on the Mount. Oh yeah, and I am convinced that this sermon was Jesus's prevailing sermon throughout his entire ministry. This was just what he preached everywhere he went, as he was healing people and doing miracles. This is his explanation of the new kingdom of heaven, and in chapter six he starts off by saying this is how you should pray. He says our father in heaven. Hallowed be your name. He says our father, who can actually refer to God as their father, Like we're created by God, but Jesus claims to be the son of God and he calls him father. Yeah, but nowhere else have we been instructed to say father. God Jesus tells us you want to learn how to pray. Pray like me.
Speaker 1:He's our Because and then you read in Ephesians Ephesians that we are adopted into the family. Those of us who are in Christ, we have been brought into the family. So, because of Jesus, we get to be sons and daughters of God, and that's why Jesus told us when you talk to God, talk to him like he's your dad. That Hebrew word is Abba. It's more like translated daddy, but that feels weird. So father is a great translation. Father God, he is your heavenly father and Jesus instructs us to call him that. So now we're in a better position than Moses was in. Consider that, man. It's like all hitting me right now. Right, I'm having the revelation live on air Lightning struck.
Speaker 2:Curtis's brain.
Speaker 1:We are better off than Moses. Moses knew God as Yahweh, as the existent one that he was partners with, but we get to know God as dad. We get to know him as father. I mean, which one is more intimate?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And that's what Jesus affords for us man, that's what he has paid for on the cross for us that we get to be adopted as sons and daughters into the family of Yahweh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is a father-child relationship too, because there's accountability, there's discipline, there's instruction, there's guidance, all those things that you know an earthly dad is supposed to supply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we get it from a heavenly Uh-huh, absolutely man. I told you there's a lot of ways to refer to God. I'm going to stick with the way that Jesus tells us.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, ultimately, everything is pointing toward Jesus and Jesus is instructing us. This is who God is and this is how you can relate to him as your father. There's a whole lot more meditating to do on that, don't you think A lot? Yeah, that's a lifetime of meditating.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm sure there's scholarly academic fields based on just this last 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are not those people. No, we're just two guys who are trying to follow Jesus. Right? I'm not anything more than that, I promise you Right. All right, thanks for tuning in today. I really appreciate you listening to the podcast. I know that there are some new listeners out there. I've talked to some of you at church. What Thanks for listening and share this with somebody if you think it's beneficial for them. That's what we're trying to do at Crosspoint Just chase after Jesus. We are reaching for Jesus and bringing along other people for that journey. I hope that this podcast helps you do that in some way. Thanks for being here today. We'll see you next time. All right, see you.
Speaker 2:Sunday.