SPEAKER_02: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: As Webb just prayed, the reason that our world is the way it is, the reason that people are the way they are, is because Philippians chapter 2 and verse 9 has not yet come to full fruition in our world.
SPEAKER_01: Where God has highly exalted the Lord Jesus Christ and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we live in a fallen world that is a mess.
SPEAKER_01: Because Christ has not yet returned to bring to fruition every knee bowing and every tongue confessing.
SPEAKER_01: Many do not acknowledge that God has highly exalted Christ and given him the name that is above every name.
SPEAKER_01: Charles Simeon, a prominent pastor in Cambridge, England in the 1800s, declared, the greatest argument of Scripture is the glory of God's name.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what it means?
SPEAKER_01: And maybe even more importantly, what it means for you that God has bestowed on Jesus the name that is above every name.
SPEAKER_01: I want to use that statement as a starting point this morning to explain what is implied by Philippians chapter two, verse nine.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, God has highly exalted Jesus and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.
SPEAKER_01: The name is a deeply significant term in the Jewish community.
SPEAKER_01: It's a term of reverence, of great intensity and respect that drives their worship of their God.
SPEAKER_01: In Hebrew, it's called Hashem.
SPEAKER_01: Orthodox Jews refer to God using that term.
SPEAKER_01: The God of the Old Testament is known as Hashem, the name.
SPEAKER_01: Knowing that little detail about Judaism makes the Apostle Paul's claim about Jesus Christ incredibly bold.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe even blasphemous.
SPEAKER_01: And if it is true, if God has bestowed on Jesus Christ Hashem that is above every name, then every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It's clear that the Old Testament declares God to be Hashem, the name.
SPEAKER_01: And it's clear from Philippians chapter 2, verse 9, that Jesus is given the name Hashem.
SPEAKER_01: The name that is above every name.
SPEAKER_01: That is the concise yet very complex point of Philippians chapter 2, verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: And what I want to do in the rest of our time this morning could easily get off track because I can get very giddy about this and just keep going and roll all afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to try to keep this confined.
SPEAKER_01: I want to trace God's name, Hashem, from its Old Testament revelation in Exodus through its reverence in the Psalms and prophets to Malachi's reward for those who fear it.
SPEAKER_01: The echoes of the name in the Gospels and its redefinition in Philippians 2.
SPEAKER_01: All of that will lead us to worship Christ as the light of light and God of very God.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's simply not possible for us to be exhaustive this morning.
SPEAKER_01: It may feel to you sometimes like it is exhaustive, but trust me, it's not.
SPEAKER_01: But I want us to gain a biblical theological perspective from all of Scripture so that we feel what is happening in Philippians 2, verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: In many ways, this is the pinnacle of what we've been building towards in all of our study of Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: So please open your Bibles with me, not to Philippians 2, but to Exodus chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus chapter 3, as we consider the revelation of God's name.
SPEAKER_01: The revelation of God's name in Exodus chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: God is known by generic and descriptive terms in the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: So there's simply the word El or Elohim in the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: There are descriptive names of God, such as the Most High God or God Almighty, El Shaddai, or the God who sees.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis presents God as the mighty sovereign of our world.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make an argument for his existence.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis just simply assumes God is.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what he's like.
SPEAKER_01: That changes in Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: God introduces himself, not with descriptive terms, not with generic terms, but with his personal name.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis, you'll remember, ends with Abraham and Isaac's descendants living in Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Jacob dies, and then Joseph dies.
SPEAKER_01: And so Exodus begins with a very somber tone.
SPEAKER_01: In Exodus chapter 1, verse 8, it says, There arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: But chapter 2 of Exodus ends with a hint of hope.
SPEAKER_01: It says, God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.
SPEAKER_01: God sees and God knows.
SPEAKER_01: But in terms of referring to God, nothing changes in Exodus 1 or Exodus 2.
SPEAKER_01: Suddenly, though, in Exodus 3, everything changes because we see for the very first time a proper name.
SPEAKER_01: Moses is keeping his sheep near Horeb, the mountain of God, in chapter 3 of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: And it's here that we see that an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses.
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 3, verse 4, it says that this messenger is God himself.
SPEAKER_01: It says, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, saying, Moses, Moses.
SPEAKER_01: This God, we find out in verse 6 of chapter 3, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: He's the God of Genesis, he's the God of creation, of promise, of judgment, and the calling of God's people, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: And this God, the God of Genesis, the God of the patriarchs, has a name.
SPEAKER_01: This needs some explanation if you aren't familiar with the details.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you may, this may be old hat to you.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God.
SPEAKER_01: You can help the rest of us come along with you.
SPEAKER_01: It may feel a bit in the weeds or a bit over your head, but it's vital to understanding the name of God in the New Testament and what's going on in your Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: So it says in verse 4 of Exodus 3 that the Lord saw that Moses turned aside.
SPEAKER_01: That Lord is the God who calls to him.
SPEAKER_01: But you notice that that word Lord is in all capital letters.
SPEAKER_01: That word in Hebrew is made up of four Hebrew consonants.
SPEAKER_01: Y-H-W-H, or some pronounce the say that the W is a V sound instead of a W sound.
SPEAKER_01: Y-H W H.
SPEAKER_01: Vowel sounds aren't represented in Hebrew written text.
SPEAKER_01: So God explains this name in chapter 3, verses 14, 13, 14, and 15.
SPEAKER_01: So we have this introduction.
SPEAKER_01: This God who has this four-letter name calls to Moses, and we're left wondering, who is this guy?
SPEAKER_01: Who is this God?
SPEAKER_01: What is he like?
SPEAKER_01: We're told in Exodus chapter 3, verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name?
SPEAKER_01: What do I say?
SPEAKER_01: God said to Moses, I am who I am.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.
SPEAKER_01: God also said to Moses, Say this to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: This is my name forever.
SPEAKER_01: And thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 15, we have those all capital letter Lord again, which is this YHWH name made up of four Hebrew consonants.
SPEAKER_01: And God defines that name in verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: He says, He is the I am.
SPEAKER_01: Now that word for I am is is similar to the name that God gives himself.
SPEAKER_01: When he says I am, that's a for you English people, English grammar people, that's a verb of being.
SPEAKER_01: It means to be.
SPEAKER_01: It tells us that God is the existing one.
SPEAKER_01: He's the one who is.
SPEAKER_01: He always is.
SPEAKER_01: But remember, the name of God that he announced is all consonants.
SPEAKER_01: Ancient Hebrew didn't use vowels in writing, so we have to make educated guesses as to what the vowel sounds were that went with those consonants.
SPEAKER_01: Today, our best guess is that it was pronounced Yahweh or maybe Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Now, a little bit later, God said to Moses in Exodus chapter 6, verses 2 and 3.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I am Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: I appeared to Abraham, I appeared to Isaac, I appeared to Jacob as God Almighty, as El Shaddai.
SPEAKER_01: But by my name, Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them.
SPEAKER_01: Now pair that back with where we already were in Exodus chapter 3, verse 15, where he said, This is my name forever.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the way I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
SPEAKER_01: God gave his name, his personal name, to Israel, his covenant people.
SPEAKER_01: Those who are close to him by faith have the privilege of knowing his name and calling him by name.
SPEAKER_01: That's how Exodus reveals God's name.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's consider how the Old Testament reveres God's name.
SPEAKER_01: And for most of this, we're going to be in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to turn to the Psalms, you can.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to be going through this pretty rapidly because there's so many passages in Psalms that refer to the name.
SPEAKER_01: The name of God.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to start in Psalm chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: Again, you can go through the book of Psalms and exhaustively mark every time we see the name of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to start in Exodus chapter 8 and verse 1 in our Bibles to see how Israel revered God's name.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus chapter 1, I'm sorry, not Exodus, Psalm 1, 8, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Getting my numbers all mixed up.
SPEAKER_01: Too many verses this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Yahweh, our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: How majestic is your name in all the earth.
SPEAKER_01: You've set your glory above the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: Notice how glory is connected to the name.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a sense in which God's name is now connected to who He is.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a word that is majestic, it's the person that is represented by that name that is majestic.
SPEAKER_01: Over a chapter in chapter 9, verse 2, it says, those who trust in your name, no, not 9, 19.
SPEAKER_01: See, I look at my Bible and it doesn't say the right thing.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the right one either.
SPEAKER_01: Is it 9-2?
SPEAKER_01: 9-2 is that works.
SPEAKER_01: I will be glad and exalt in you.
SPEAKER_01: I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.
SPEAKER_01: See, this is what happens when we skip church.
SPEAKER_01: I redo my slides, and then they're not what it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go on to chapter 29, verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due his name.
SPEAKER_01: Ascribe means to give it to him, to mark it down, as if put it in stone.
SPEAKER_01: Give to Yahweh the glory due his name.
SPEAKER_01: Worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Again and again we see Yahweh and the name, his name, my name, over and over again, coupled with different other terms like glory or worship, honor, splendor of holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 54 is another one.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 54, verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: The psalmist speaks of worship and says, with a free will offering I will sacrifice to you.
SPEAKER_01: I will give thanks to your name, O Yahweh, for it is good.
SPEAKER_01: How often do we come and give our offering to our God because his name is good?
SPEAKER_01: How often do we do we sacrifice to our God because we recognize his name represents goodness?
SPEAKER_01: Because he is the epitome of goodness.
SPEAKER_01: This goes beyond the nation of Israel in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: In Psalm 86, verse 9, we are told that all of the nations that God has made will come and worship before him, says, before you, O Yahweh, and shall glorify your name.
SPEAKER_01: How many nations will come and glorify his name?
SPEAKER_01: All of them.
SPEAKER_01: All nations will come and will glorify your name.
SPEAKER_01: What name?
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh, his name, the name.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 116.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 116, verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: We have echoes there of Romans chapter 10, where those who call on the name of God, who verbalize it, confess his name, will be saved.
SPEAKER_01: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a brief summary of how the psalmists revere God's name.
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't just stay with the psalmist, it goes all the way through the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: So for example, in Isaiah chapter 25, it tells us, Oh Yahweh, you are my God, and I will exalt you.
SPEAKER_01: I will praise your name.
SPEAKER_01: For you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
SPEAKER_01: God's name, Yahweh, is linked to faithfulness and surety.
SPEAKER_01: We all, as human beings, get known, right?
SPEAKER_01: We are known by something.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us are known as scatterbrained, some of us are known as always late, some whatever the case may be.
SPEAKER_01: We're all different, unique people.
SPEAKER_01: God is known by his faithfulness and his surety.
SPEAKER_01: These things are tied to his name.
SPEAKER_01: And so those elements of who he is generate praise for his name.
SPEAKER_01: Another prophet, Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 10 and verse 6, there is none like you, O Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: You are great, and your name is great in might.
SPEAKER_01: Implying there are no other names that are great in might.
SPEAKER_01: One more.
SPEAKER_01: Micah, Prophet Micah in chapter four, verse five.
SPEAKER_01: All the peoples walk in the name of its God.
SPEAKER_01: But we will walk in the name of Yahweh, our God, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Whether we recognize or honor that verbally or not, but we, but we will walk in the name Hashem of our God.
SPEAKER_01: That's just a survey of the deep reverence given to the name of Yahweh in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: But even that small survey shows that ancient Israel regarded Hashem, the name, the actual personal covenant name of God with special respect and honor.
SPEAKER_01: Israel praised and glorified Yahweh's name.
SPEAKER_01: So declaring love, giving service to and trusting in the name of Yahweh was a declaration of faith.
SPEAKER_01: It said, Yahweh is the living I am, not Dagon, the fish god of the Philistines, not Baal, the storm god of the Middle East, not Anu of the Canaanites, not Telepinos of the Hittites, not Amon Ra of the Egyptians, Yahweh is the great Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: I am Moses.
SPEAKER_01: Go and tell them I am who sent you.
SPEAKER_00: And this is Hashem.
SPEAKER_00: This is my name.
SPEAKER_00: Forever.
SPEAKER_01: God performed an act of divine self-revelation by revealing his name to Moses.
SPEAKER_01: And Israel declared that Yahweh is God every time they repeated that.
SPEAKER_01: And that all the other gods in the cultures surrounding them were worthless idols.
SPEAKER_01: Now you might have noticed that every time I said the name Yahweh, your Bible has Lord in all capital letters.
SPEAKER_01: If the revealed name of God was so significant, and that was how he was to be known forever, why is it, and how did it come to be that our Bibles now substitute the word Lord for YHWH?
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
SPEAKER_01: The short answer is that people were afraid of breaking one of the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_01: If I give you five seconds, you'll be able to come up with it, right?
SPEAKER_01: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
SPEAKER_01: They were afraid of that.
SPEAKER_01: Now that that came with some strictness.
SPEAKER_01: Because later on in the law, in Leviticus chapter 24, God issued the death penalty for anyone who blasphemed Hashem.
SPEAKER_01: That makes you take it a little bit more seriously, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: If you blaspheme Hashem, you die.
SPEAKER_01: As Judaism developed in the few hundred years before Christ, the Jewish rabbis developed a pattern that they called making a hedge of the law.
SPEAKER_01: They instituted new rules, not new biblical commands, but new Judaism laws to help keep people safe from blaspheming the name of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: So they said, to keep you from going this far, we're going to put up a fence that says, don't go any further.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So they stopped pronouncing the name of God out of fearful respect and fear of sinning.
SPEAKER_01: They just stopped.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, every time they came to the name in their reading, they substituted the Hebrew word Adonai, which means Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This still goes on today.
SPEAKER_01: In Jewish cultures and Jewish synagogues, whenever they're reading the Old Testament and they come to the what's called technically the Tetra Grammaton, the four writings, the four letters, they say Adonai.
SPEAKER_01: Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so some scribes invented a way to add vowel markers to Hebrew letters.
SPEAKER_01: Those vowel markers are small dots and lines above or below Hebrew letters that represent sounds, vowel sounds as we know them.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't want people to forget how to read and say the Hebrew words.
SPEAKER_01: But in doing this, in adding those vowel sounds to the Hebrew letters, they essentially made it impossible to pronounce God's name.
SPEAKER_01: Those scribes added the vowels for Otonai to the letters of YHWH.
SPEAKER_01: So you have consonants of one word and vowels from another word being brought together, which makes it essentially unpronounceable in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_01: And that was to remind readers that when you see that word, you say Adonai.
SPEAKER_01: Because we don't pronounce Hashem.
SPEAKER_01: We don't pronounce Hashem because we don't want to take the name in vain.
SPEAKER_01: In 1278 A.D., a Spanish monk named Raimundo Martini wrote a book in Latin called The Pugio Fade, the dagger of faith.
SPEAKER_01: And in that book, he wrote out both the consonants and the vowels that were in the Hebrew now, and he wrote those out in Latin, coming up with Yahuwah, or in some other later versions, Yahuwah.
SPEAKER_01: Then in 1519, a Roman Catholic scholar and priest, Petrus Galatinus, spelled it Yehua.
SPEAKER_01: That spelling, especially in Roman script, looked like Jehovah.
SPEAKER_01: The word used by William Tyndale for the divine name in the first English translation of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: In English translations from William Tyndale to the 1901 American Standard Version used Tyndale's version, Jehovah.
SPEAKER_01: But now you know, for better or worse, that Jehovah is a made-up word.
SPEAKER_01: It comes from the consonants of the divine name revealed in Exodus chapter 3 and the vowels of Adonai put together and then kind of transferred by transliteration, just what are the equating letters in another language from Latin and into English.
SPEAKER_01: Now modern translations after the 1901 American Standard Version use Lord with those all capital letters to mark the divine name.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you'll even see God with all capital letters, and that's the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: That's the same pattern that's being followed.
SPEAKER_01: So now you know why I will often say the name Yahweh when reading Old Testament texts.
SPEAKER_01: So, Stephen, how will you read Psalm 80 differently now?
SPEAKER_01: But do you see the problem that we have now?
SPEAKER_01: If we know what's behind this and we see Lord in all capital letters, what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: Now you know why.
SPEAKER_01: I say the word name Yahweh when reading Old Testament text, because it's the closest thing that we have to what God told Moses.
SPEAKER_01: And it's his name forever.
SPEAKER_01: It is not sin to say his name when reading it in his word.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it helps us feel a sense of closeness when we use a person's name.
SPEAKER_01: God told Isaiah, I am Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: That is my name.
SPEAKER_01: My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
SPEAKER_01: Now I want to shift to the last book of the Old Testament, to Malachi, to see the reward of God's name.
SPEAKER_01: The reward of God's name.
SPEAKER_01: Malachi is directed toward returned Jewish exiles who spent 70 years in Babylon.
SPEAKER_01: Some of them returned to the promised land to resettle it, to rebuild the temple, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, to repopulate the land that God gave them.
SPEAKER_01: But they struggled to establish themselves.
SPEAKER_01: They struggled to rebuild the temple.
SPEAKER_01: They struggled to live faithfully by God's law.
SPEAKER_01: And so in Malachi chapter 3, God promises to send a refiner to purify his people.
SPEAKER_01: He says in Malachi chapter 3, verse 5, I will draw near to you in judgment.
SPEAKER_01: I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and against those who thrust aside the sojourner and do not fear me, says Yahweh of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: This is significant because it says that those who don't live faithfully by God's ways do not fear him.
SPEAKER_01: Fearing Yahweh is equated with following him, with believing him, with trusting him, with thinking and acting like him, because those who fear him do what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Now notice what it says in Malachi 3, 16.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Then those who feared Yahweh spoke with one another.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Before those who don't fear are going to be getting judgment because they don't trust Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have faith in him and so live faithfully.
SPEAKER_01: But now we're talking about those who do fear him, who do have faith in his name.
SPEAKER_01: Those who feared Yahweh spoke with one another.
SPEAKER_01: And Yahweh paid attention and he heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared Yahweh and esteemed Hashem, his name.
SPEAKER_01: They, they shall be mine, says Yahweh of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: In the day when I make up my treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the reward for fearing the name.
SPEAKER_01: We become his treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: You all have a treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: It may be a rabbit's foot.
SPEAKER_01: It may be a pet dog.
SPEAKER_01: It may be an heirloom that's been passed down.
SPEAKER_01: It's something that you have emotion for.
SPEAKER_01: It's something that you protect and you value.
SPEAKER_01: God says in Malachi 3, those who fear my name are going to become my treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: Those who fear God are those who trust in him, who believe in his name, and their reward is to be his treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: Those who belong to Yahweh believe in him and fear him.
SPEAKER_01: It is faith in Yahweh alone that saves.
SPEAKER_01: This is why the prophet Joel would say in Joel chapter 2, verse 32, that everyone who calls on Hashem of Yahweh will be saved.
SPEAKER_01: You are familiar with that, I'm sure, because that is quoted by the Apostle Peter in Acts on the day of Pentecost.
SPEAKER_01: When he says to everyone, everybody who calls on Hashem will be saved.
SPEAKER_01: But that's getting ahead of ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: First, we need to move to the reporting of God's name in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_01: The reporting of God's name in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_01: If you just turn over a couple of pages, or maybe just one page in your Bible, to Matthew chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew reports something incredibly significant.
SPEAKER_01: I wana kids, I want to know if you remember this because we talked about this Wednesday night.
SPEAKER_01: And I said you'll get more information if you come to church on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to know does this sound like what we talked about on Wednesday?
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 1, verses 21 and 23.
SPEAKER_01: Mary is told, you shall call his name.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh is salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the Greek word for Joshua.
SPEAKER_01: And in Hebrew, Joshua means Yahweh is salvation.
SPEAKER_01: You shall call his name Yahweh is salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_01: And they shall call Hashem Immanuel.
SPEAKER_01: They shall call his name God with us.
SPEAKER_01: Called God with us because in the Old Testament, the only one who is Savior is God, over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: So it's critical that Matthew identify Jesus with the saving God and Hashem.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter five.
SPEAKER_01: A demon says, What have you to do with me?
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh is salvation, son of the most high God.
SPEAKER_01: We've seen already in our survey of Psalms that Yahweh is called the Most High.
SPEAKER_01: So we see links and connections that are saying there's something unique and special about this Jesus and Hashem of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 2 in the Christmas story in Luke, unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Meshiach Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Because by the time of the New Testament, Yahweh is no longer pronounced.
SPEAKER_01: It was switched out for Adonai, which in Greek becomes Kyros.
SPEAKER_01: Lord.
SPEAKER_01: In case that's not significant enough for you.
SPEAKER_01: We get to John chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: Where Jesus says, before Abraham was, I am.
SPEAKER_01: He uses tenses to identify and mark his deity.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham was past tense.
SPEAKER_01: He no longer is.
SPEAKER_01: But even before Abraham was, Exodus chapter 3, verse 13, 14, and 15, I am.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see what Jesus is doing?
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, Hashem is here.
SPEAKER_01: That's why it's so fascinating at the end of the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_01: Doubting Thomas sees the risen Christ and he says, My Lord and my God.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh, my God.
SPEAKER_01: The Gospel accounts reveal that Yahweh has taken on the form of a human being.
SPEAKER_01: And we discover that God the Son, God of very God, left the glories of heaven to dwell in a human body so that God could be with mankind once again.
SPEAKER_01: And so we come to Philippians chapter 2, and we find a redefinition of God's name.
SPEAKER_01: Not a changing, not a switching out, but a clarification, if you will.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians 2 brings all of this together and redefines the name of God in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: God the Son is eternally one with God the Father and God the Spirit, fully God of fully God.
SPEAKER_01: But in his humanity, he did not appear as the glorious eternal Yahweh because he emptied himself by taking the form of a human being.
SPEAKER_01: He became obedient to the point of death to fulfill God's covenant promise to redeem his treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: Those who fear in him, who believe in the name of Yahweh and put their trust in him, who will be saved by his power.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh, God with us, was born as Jesus, the humble Savior.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh himself, the name above all names, took it upon himself to conquer death and free us from sin.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, God, the Father, has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name.
SPEAKER_01: So that the incarnate Son, the human Jesus, will have, possess forever the name that is above all names.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, the God man, provides the path for mankind to be restored to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh, in a way no one expected, became man.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's essential to show that Jesus, the man, is the incarnated name to whom everyone will give reverence.
SPEAKER_01: The God of creation, the God who covenants with people to be their God and make them his possession.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh has come as Savior, as Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And this leads us very well into our own reverence for the name.
SPEAKER_01: Malachi chapter 3 becomes the hinge upon which the name of God in Scripture swings.
SPEAKER_01: Those who fear in and believe in Yahweh are remembered by him and written down in his book and become his treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: So Peter can declare that it stands in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
SPEAKER_01: So the honor is for those who of you who believe.
SPEAKER_01: For for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
SPEAKER_01: But you but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness, out of worshiping something else, into his marvelous light.
SPEAKER_01: Because once you were not a people, but now you are a people, for you have received mercy from him.
SPEAKER_01: Because the name Yahweh is now found in the name Jesus, who is the Christ, the cornerstone.
SPEAKER_01: Those who fear his name become his own possession, treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh is the personal name of the sovereign covenanting God who saves his people.
SPEAKER_01: That was the name given to Moses.
SPEAKER_01: That was the name revered by the poets and the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: But as he promised in Psalm 86, 9, all nations will come and worship him through his saving name.
SPEAKER_01: For it is at the name of Jesus that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Hashem.
SPEAKER_00: He is Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Don't wait.
SPEAKER_01: Don't wait.
SPEAKER_01: Confess him.
SPEAKER_01: As Lord Yahweh now.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not a believer, trust in his name for your salvation, so that your name becomes recorded in his book and you become his treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: If you are a believer, revere his name by trusting in him at every moment, rejecting sin and living obediently, faithfully, by worshiping him in the beauty of holiness, by recognizing that Hashem came and took on flesh and dwelt among us, becoming obedient to the point of death, so that he might have you as his treasured possession.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, God will complete his good and perfect work when the one who is called the Word of God in Revelation chapter 19 returns.
SPEAKER_01: He will come, that text says, riding on a white horse.
SPEAKER_01: And we are told that he has a robe, and on his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written.
SPEAKER_01: King of kings and Yahweh of gods.
SPEAKER_01: Because God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus you and I might bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Yahweh to the glory of God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord God, may you reveal yourself in ways that makes the world see that Jesus Christ is the name.
SPEAKER_01: So that many would be moved to cast aside the trinkets that they trust in.
SPEAKER_01: The hopes that they have that will fade away, the things that will just be gone.
SPEAKER_01: And put our trust in the God of gods, the Yahweh of all gods, who came to show us that Yahweh is salvation by dying for our sins and opening the way for everyone who trusts in Him to be saved.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we lift up your name this morning.
SPEAKER_01: We give you honor and praise by confessing our sin.
SPEAKER_01: For in confessing our sin and our failures before you, we lift you high and show that there is a great distance between us.
SPEAKER_01: So our names are written in your book.
SPEAKER_01: And we can be called sons and daughters of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: What a great and awesome God we serve.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive us for taking your name in vain.
SPEAKER_01: Not by speaking it, but by abusing you, the one behind it.
SPEAKER_01: Give us grace and mercy and wisdom to lift you up before all of the world that watches.
SPEAKER_01: So they too may be drawn to love the one we love.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_02: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.