Wednesday, April 26, 2023 PM

It's about that time. Hi, hi, good to see you, Daryl. All right, let's get started with a word of prayer. Lord God Almighty, we are thankful for the day that you have made. Thank you for bringing us together.

Thank you for the gentle rain that we've enjoyed today. Lord, I pray that this time would be profitable or that it would be edifying. Help us to learn of you and to rejoice in who you are and all that you've done through your son.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right, when we name somebody like a newborn baby and we wanna give them a special name, we think about what we hope and pray will be true of them and for them.

And then we go looking for a name with an etymology or a context that embodies those desires. Now consider when the omniscient God of truth names somebody, do we think that it means something? Yes, of course it does, right?

Do we think that there are merely hopes and wishes behind those names that he gives? No, of course not. When God names someone, he is speaking directly to the essence of who that person is. So with that in mind, I'd like for us to take some time to think about the various names given to Israel in the Bible.

And when I say names of Israel, I'm expanding the term to include things like nicknames and descriptive titles and designations. And my desire is that by looking at these God-given names and their meanings, we can begin to see more clearly who is Israel.

So I handed out some worksheets, hopefully everybody has one. If you don't, there's some and some pencils here at the front. But on this worksheet, it just kind of has all the scripture passages that we're gonna be going through listed out for you.

And then a box where you can write in the name of Israel that we're gonna extract from these verses. And then we're gonna try to match those names with these meanings that I have written up here on the board.

And then just for your convenience, if you flip it over on the backside, I've written out all of the scripture passages. So you don't have to go flipping through your Bible if you don't want to, because I might be going kind of fast.

You can flip that over. You might want to underline the names or try to pick them out for yourself. Keep me honest that I'm reading it right. So let's start with what I'm calling proper names. And we're gonna look at Isaiah chapter 44, verses one and two.

And we're gonna try to pull out three proper names for the people of God from these verses. And it reads, "'Yet here now, O Jacob, my servant, "'and Israel whom I have chosen. "'Thus says the Lord who made you, "'and formed you from the womb, who will help you.

"'Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, "'and you, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.'". So what three proper names do we see here for the people of God? You can just shout them out. Jacob, Jeshurun, and Israel. Okay, so let's start with the name Israel, because it's the most common name that we'll find in the Bible.

And the context for this name comes from Genesis chapter 32, where you remember that Jacob has fled from his father-in-law Laban, and he has all of his possessions and servants and family, and he's traveling down to the land of Canaan.

And his brother Esau is traveling up from the land of Edom to meet him. And Jacob's heard about this and he's scared, and he's taken his possessions and his family, and he's split them into two camps.

He's put them on the other side of a body of water, and now he's sitting on this side by himself. And so let's pick it up in verse 24 in Genesis 32. I don't have that one on your sheet. Sorry, it's a longer passage.

Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now, when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him.

And he said, let me go, for the day breaks. But he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he said to him, what is your name? He said, Jacob. He said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.

Then Jacob asked, saying, tell me your name, I pray. And he said, why is it that you ask about my name? And he blessed him there. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

So the name Israel literally means one who struggles or contends with God. Now on its face, that sounds like it has a negative connotation for who would dare to contend with the Almighty. But when we look at it in its context in Genesis 32, we see that it actually doesn't have a negative connotation for he is one who contends with God and prevails.

So there's success and there's victory. And it's not the kind of prevailing as if he prevailed over God, as if he overcame him in his own might and wrested victory from God's clutches. But it's actually the type of prevailing that is precisely through holding fast and refusing to let go of God.

Even when God has smitten and afflicted him, he refuses to let go and cries out for a blessing. So Jacob believed like his descendant David believed and said in Psalm 16, you are the Lord. I have no good apart from you.

And so Jacob was holding fast to God and saying, I have no good apart from you. Bless me, if I don't have your smile upon me, I have nothing, I'm undone, right? So Jacob understood the significance of this encounter of the mercy of God and that God had drawn near to him and yet he lived.

For we see that in Exodus 33, 20, that no man shall see the face of God and live. And so we see that God's glory was mediated to Jacob in some manner. So that's the background for the name Israel. It's a very rich name.

So if we were going to match that with one of these meanings on the board, which one would it be? Number eight. Yeah, so some of you may not be able to see, there's eight of them here. I hope you can see all the way to the bottom.

Struggles with God and prevails by holding fast to him. That's what Israel means. So let's pick up the second name, Jacob. Okay, Jacob literally means supplanter or heel grabber. And it carries with it the idea of deceitfulness and trickery.

And we see that that was a part of Jacob's character when he was younger. So when God looks at the nation and he refers to them under the name Jacob, is he calling them a supplanting nation? Is he calling them a heel grabbing people?

I don't think so. That might be what we first think of. But when you look at the way that God uses the name Jacob, it often falls in a list or in a passage with other names that don't have a derogatory meaning, like the name Israel and Jeshurun and my servant and my chosen.

So if what God means when he calls the people Jacob, if it doesn't come directly from the etymology of the name Jacob, then where does it come from? So I think it comes from something else that God said about Jacob that's very important.

And he says it in Malachi chapter one. And then the apostle Paul reiterates and summarizes it in Romans chapter nine, where he says that before either of them were born, before they had done anything good or evil, he said, Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.

So we see that bound up with Jacob is this idea of God setting his love upon him apart from anything good or evil in him. And so I think that that's what God is getting at when he calls the nation Jacob.

And I think that we're reinforced in that interpretation and that conclusion when we look at Deuteronomy chapter seven, and God makes a parallel statement about the nation of Israel, where he says that I did not choose you because you were more mighty and you were greater and you were more numerous than all the peoples of the world.

He said, but I loved you because I loved you, right? So he loved the people of Israel in the same way that he loved Jacob, purely from within himself, not based upon anything in them. So if we were gonna pick one of these meanings for the way God uses Jacob for the name Israel, which one would we pick?

Number six, sovereignly loved. He sovereignly set his love upon them, right? Okay, the third name, Jeshurun. Jeshurun, how'd you get it right? Good job. The third name is Jeshurun, and this one's probably one that we're not familiar with, so I'm just gonna give you this one.

It's kind of an obscure name. It's used like a nickname, and it only occurs a handful of times in the Old Testament, and it means upright, and it conveys the idea of being pleasing to God. So number three, I'll give you that one for free.

Number three goes with Jeshurun. Okay, so let's move on to what I've called, or what I'm calling the possessive names, and I'm just gonna hit these four verses, one after the other, and we're gonna pick out the names, and then we're gonna come back and look for the meaning that kind of ties them all together, okay?

So Exodus 3, verse seven says, and the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry. So he calls the nation of Israel, my people.

That's right.

In Isaiah 45, verse four, for Jacob, my servant's sake, and Israel, my elect, I have even called you by your name. I have named you, though you have not known me. So there's several names in this passage, but the one I wanna hone in on is my elect, or my chosen.

And in Deuteronomy 14, two, and we're gonna extract two out of this verse. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

So the first name is holy people. And the second one would be special treasure. And I hope you're kind of seeing a theme with these names. Deuteronomy 32, verses nine and 10. For the Lord's portion is his people.

Jacob is the place of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land and in a wasteland, a howling wilderness. He encircled him, he instructed him. He kept him as the apple of his eye. This is one that we're not super familiar with, but apple of his eye, he calls them.

Okay, so think about all of those for a minute and look at these meanings and what is God conveying when he calls Israel these names? This one's a little tougher, I guess. Number five, you got it, number five.

So personal relationship. We see that when he calls them my people, right? My chosen, it's very personal. We see the uniqueness and the separateness in that they are a holy people. They've been called out to be unique and distinct from all the other peoples of the world.

And we see God's delight in his people, that they're a special treasure. And the apple of his eye means that they're cherished above all others. Okay, so let's move on to what I've called the familial names.

Hosea 11, verse one. When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. Okay, so my son. That's an important one, right? In Exodus four, verse 22 and 23, but I'm just gonna read verse 22.

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. So building upon that idea of sonship, he's not just any son, he's a firstborn son to God, the nation of Israel, he is as my firstborn son.

So which of these go with that idea of sonship? The idea of the firstborn, which I think I heard it. Number two, right? Status, authority, and inheritance. I think of Joseph in his father Jacob's household, and he wasn't the firstborn, right?

But he was treated like the firstborn and given a status and a position of authority over all of his brothers. And then he goes down to Egypt and he rises to the right hand of Pharaoh, where again, he's treated as a firstborn son and given a position of authority over the peoples.

And I think of the parable of the vineyard, where you have the owner of the vineyard and he sends servants to the keepers of the vineyard to reap the fruits of it. But in the end, he ends up sending his son.

And so we see this distinction, the servants have a status and an amount of authority, but it's distinguished against the authority and the status of the son, which is higher. And it's higher because he is the heir of all things, right?

He's the owner of all things. And so when he comes and speaks in the name of the father, he's speaking more directly than a servant. Okay, out of these next three verses, I'm just gonna read Isaiah 54, verses five and six.

And you can look up the Jeremiah and the Hosea passages if you'd like later on your own. So Isaiah 54, five and six. For your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name and your redeemer is the Holy one of Israel.

He is called the God of the whole earth. For the Lord has called you to be his servant and has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a youthful wife when you were refused, says your God.

So God calls himself a husband to Israel and he calls them his wife, right? So his wife is the name we're looking for. So when he applies that name of wife to Israel, what does that bring along with it?

Yes, number seven. All right, so Israel was in covenant with God and God expects as any husband would of his wife, covenant keeping, faithfulness and fidelity. And not just out of duty and obligation, but out of love.

Israel was to love God above all others and was not to go seeking pleasures in strange places. Now these next four passages out of Genesis are very similar, so I'm just gonna read Genesis 15, 13. Then he said to Abram, know certainly that your seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will serve them and they will afflict them 400 years.

So the name here is seed, specifically Abraham's seed. Okay, so we only have a couple left here. I should have been marking them off. Number one and number four are left. So which of those two goes with the idea of seed?

Shout it, yeah, number one, right? Prosperity, promise and hope. Prosperity meaning offspring, descendants, a growing people, a growing nation, a growing kingdom. And the title Abraham's seed immediately harkens back to the promises that God gave to Abraham to give his people a land, to make them a mighty nation and to bless all the other nations through them.

And along with the promises of God always comes hope. They're always forward looking to the fulfillment. Okay, so now let's look at the representative names. So I'm gonna read Isaiah 43 10. And out of this one verse, we can pull both of the names that I'm looking for.

You are my witnesses says the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me, there was no God formed nor shall there be after me. So the first name, my witnesses and the second name is my servant.

So the only one that's left is number four. So you get off easy on that one. So the idea of a servant carries with it delegated authority. So a servant has a master and the servant serves in the name of the master.

The master gives him tasks to do and expects him to execute them faithfully. Witnesses bear testimony. And we see in this Isaiah passage that Israel was to bear testimony to the oneness of God. There is no other God, it's just him.

And they were to herald his goodness, his love, his mercy, his perfections, his salvation. They were to be a light to the nations, right? Okay, so that's all of the names. And that's not all the names.

That's just all the names we're going to look at. That's not an exhaustive list but it is a fair bit of information. And so now the question becomes what do we do with that information? Well, God's word has something to say about it, about the reason that God gave Israel these good names and how we are supposed to understand them.

And what it says, it has to say both indirectly and directly. So let's start with what it says indirectly. Remember the question that we hoped to answer by looking at these names. Who is Israel? Well, by looking at these names we actually didn't answer that question but we answered a related question which is who was Israel called to be?

Excuse me.

Israel was called to be all of these things that we've looked at, but did they live up to that name? No, we know that they didn't live up to that name. And their failure to do so establishes a tension, a tension that runs throughout the whole Old Testament.

And that tension generates a whole litany of important questions. So if it's not the Jews who bring about the fulfillment of these names, then who is the faithful servant in whom the Lord delights who comes to do all the Father's will, testifying to the truth and proclaiming the kingdom of God as a light to the nations?

Who is God's true son, the firstborn who holds a position of preeminent authority because he is the heir of all things? Shiloh, the one to whom it all belongs. Who is the utterly unique and beloved one who is the source of all hope and blessing and makes every promise of God tangible?

And who is the one that holds fast to God no matter what, even when he is smitten and afflicted by God and by holding fast prevails even over sin and death? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that Israel was called to be, Jesus was and is and is to come.

He is the true Israel. He is the substance to their shadow. So the failures of Israel to live up to their name indirectly pointed Israel and points us today to look beyond Israel to Jesus so that when he arrived on the scene in ancient Palestine through the incarnation, and when he arrives in our lives through the testimony of the scriptures, they Jews and we Gentiles are to see him for who he is and receive him with joy and praise because of the testimony that has been given about him.

Okay, now it's important to talk about the way the Bible directly talks about how we are to understand these names of Israel as they pertain to Jesus because I have been accused in the past, and maybe you have too, but by both a Christian and a Muslim, the Christian's the surprising one, Muslim not so surprising, but been accused of forcibly reading Jesus backwards into the Old Testament.

And what they mean by that is that he's not really there. You are arbitrarily and wrongfully contorting the Old Testament in order to fit him in, to fit your pre-existing agenda. That's an important accusation to deal with because we don't wanna do that.

We don't ever wanna do that. We don't wanna take the scriptures and twist and contort them and smash them into our own little personal theological boxes. It should always be the other way around. The scriptures need to inform our theology.

So we need to answer this accusation by letting scripture interpret scripture. And the apostles speak directly to several of these passages we've read, and I'm sure these have probably already come to your mind.

But let's quickly look at their interpretation so that we can take up their lens and not rely on our own wisdom and understanding. So the first name that is addressed is the name my son. So we remember that passage in Hosea 11 where God is very clearly talking about the Exodus and bringing his people up out of the land of Egypt.

And then look at what Matthew does with that passage. It's gonna teach us how we should look backwards. Matthew chapter two, verses 14 through 15. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt and was there until the death of Herod that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets saying, out of Egypt I have called my son.

So we see that what happened to Egypt in the Exodus is being replayed in Jesus's life. And Matthew's saying, this is the fulfillment of that, which is another way of saying, this is the true Israel. The apostle Paul, he speaks to the name Abraham's seed in Galatians 3 .16, and he takes that name and he sets it squarely and unmistakably upon the shoulders of Christ.

So Galatians 3 .16, now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. It's talking about those promises back in Genesis. He does not say and to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, who is Christ.

So all of those promises given to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and passed down to Israel, they belong to Christ. Okay, and that's how Paul can say in 2 Corinthians 1 verse 20, for all the promises of God find their yes in him.

They belong to him and he fulfills them. And then last one, the name my servant, which we saw back in the book of Isaiah. Again, Matthew takes up one of the servant songs in Isaiah and he applies it to Jesus in Matthew 12, verses 17 through 21, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying, behold, my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased.

I will put my spirit upon him and he will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break and smoking flax he will not quench till he sends forth justice to victory.

And in his name, Gentiles will trust.

Amen.

We are Gentiles sitting here trusting in the name of Christ. The apostles are teaching us plainly that Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel, the true Israel. And we could look at many other passages about Christ being the heir of all things and having authority over all things and how he pleased the father and how he is loved by the father and how he is faithful to the father in all things.

God has been speaking to us about his son for thousands of years through Israel, through the law, through the covenants, through the patriarchs, through the prophets. And in these last days, he's spoken to us through his son.

And all of this is so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing we might have life in his name. And that'll wrap it up. Why don't I close this with a word of prayer and then we'll take some prayer requests.

Lord God almighty, Lord, you are merciful and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty.

Lord God, in all ways, you are worthy of our praise. Lord, help us to worship you and honor you as you ought to be worshiped and honored. And I pray your blessing upon the rest of our time tonight. And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.