What's in a Name?

encourage you, or ask you, turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 22.

Proverbs 22. Alex, what did

I tell you the name of this was? Oh yeah, What's in a Name. There you go.

That's such a creative title, I forgot what it was. What's in a Name. So tonight,

Proverbs 22, I want to read to you from the text, and it's a Wednesday night. I don't know if this is a sermon, or if it's more of a devotional.

I thought about calling it a sermotional maybe, but I think that sounds like something that would attack a preacher's ego, you know, like, you're so sermotional today, or something.

So I don't know what we'll call it. You can decide when we get done. But Proverbs 22, and I have some things that I think are pertinent to our church, but before we get to that,

I want to talk about what the text means, and I certainly think the Word of God is always relevant, and pertinent, and sufficient for exactly the things that we need in our walk with Him.

So I'm going to read Proverbs 22 and verse 1, and then I'm going to pray, and then

I want to lead you through some thoughts that I have tonight from this text, and just some things

I began thinking about even last Sunday, and then I just I can't really let it go, and I almost was like, well,

I won't even share that, but I was like, you know what, I'm gonna use Wednesday night to do it. So Proverbs 22 and verse 1, let me read it, pray, and then

I will, I'll share from the text. A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.

Let's pray. Father, we pray that You would help us to understand this text tonight. Would You encourage us with it?

Would You help us rightly, by the Spirit, apply it to our lives?

Help us to believe the wisdom it teaches? I pray it would help us individually to put things in proper perspective, help us to put things rightly in priority in our lives, help us to remember that better than the gifts of this world, or better even than the riches of this world, is to be holy, and to have a good character, and a good name.

We pray we would even see how this connects, in at least some way, how it connects to thinking through our church, and our church's name.

We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so a few points tonight. The first is,

I want us to just get the sense of the text. I don't want to run and apply it to something that is inappropriate.

I would never want to apply it to anything that's inappropriate. I do think it has an appropriate application about things that we're thinking through as a church, but before we get to that, let's let's get to the main meat, if you will, of what this proverb is saying.

So Solomon writes here, a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.

This is a one of those parallelisms, if you will. It's two lines, essentially saying the same thing, and if I could give them to you like this,

I would say it this, who you are is more important than what you have.

And I think our teenagers should definitely listen to this, and not that everybody, everybody needs to know this, right?

All of us struggle with it, but I know, you know, I look around, I see the teenagers tonight, and the young people, just remember this, that who you are is infinitely more important than what you have.

The text says that a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches. Now, if you say, you know, maybe the young people look in here, and they're like, well, what, wait a second,

I didn't choose my name, so what if I got stuck with a name like Braden, right? Is that a good name?

Does it work? Well, of course, you understand that the text is not talking about that kind of name.

What's it talking about? It's talking about your reputation, as it were, which, in some ways, you don't have control over, because, for example, in some areas, the

Apostle Paul had a bad reputation, but he was a holy man, right? So, maybe more, some commentators mentioned your character.

You do have control over your character, and so who you are is more important than what you have.

As we've been going through Paul's letter to the Ephesians, he's told us again, time and time and time and time again, who we are, right?

Who are we? We are in Christ. We are a new creation. We have passed from death to life.

We were dead in our sins. We were following the course and power of this world. We were opposed to God, but now we're in Christ.

Who you are is better than what you have. Also, I would mention this about this parallel statement. Grace is more important than goods.

So, who you are is more important than what you have. Grace is more important than goods.

It's interesting to just note this, and I'll just use this one analogy from the Scriptures, but a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.

By the way, great riches. If somebody could offer you all the money in this world and say, would you rather be who you are in Christ, born again, a person of faith, a holy boy or girl or man or woman, or would you rather have the great riches?

Well, the choice ought to be undeniable for the Christian. We rather we rather have

Christ. You can have all this world. Give me Jesus. Then it says, and favor, favor is better than silver or gold.

Now, that word for favor, you might remember, is from Genesis, or is used also in Genesis chapter 6.

Who do we learn about in Genesis chapter 6? A man by the name of Noah.

And what does the Bible tell us about Noah? Noah found what? Favor.

Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now, when we were going through Genesis a few years ago, we observed from that text that the text is not saying that Noah earned favor, right?

Noah wasn't a righteous man because he pulled his own righteousness from his own self, and then

God rewarded his righteousness with favor. No, no, no. Noah found grace in the eyes of God.

Noah was an instrument of grace in the hands of God. Noah was a recipient of the sovereign grace of God.

And so, think about this for just a moment. Picture Noah on the day that the rains came, and all

Noah has is this ginormous ark. And he looks out, perhaps, and he sees the people of the world.

He sees all that they have, all the treasures that they have, all the, if you will, the silver and gold that you have.

But on the day it begins raining, what do you think Noah says is better?

Do you think that he says, I rather have favor or I rather have silver and gold?

What do you think he says? I rather have favor. I rather the grace of God be upon my life.

I rather the grace of God have changed me, have transformed me, have brought me to Christ than to have all the silver and gold.

Now, that's hard right now, okay, because we're not where Noah's at. We're not on the day, right?

We're not on the day when it's raining. And we have to, we have to deal and contend sometimes in the world with all the silver and gold, and we're tempted by that, aren't we?

I mean, just be honest, at times we're tempted by these things, and we think, what, we begin to think in our minds, what is better?

Is grace better or is silver and gold better? But I just want to remind you of that day, as we read in the children's story, that day that the king comes and sets the city of destruction on fire, what will you say that you wish that you rather have?

Favor or silver and gold? Of course, you'll have rather had grace.

And so rest in that now. Seek that now. Pursue that now. A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.

Now what I want to do is I want to take this text and I want to, I want to expand just a little bit on it.

I want to think a little bit more about it. When it talks about a good name,

I think about that there's not a greater name in the

Bible, perhaps, than the name of Christ. I want you to think of a few passages you can turn to these.

In fact, let's do that. Let's start out in the New Testament. Let's read

Matthew 121. Matthew 121.

Gunnar, would you read that for us? Matthew 121. You will call

His name Jesus. He will save His people from their sins.

As you think about this text, a good name, right, is better than great riches?

Is there a better name to think of than Jesus? Now I know obviously some people would push back on that. Well, that's an English translation and all that.

Yeah, but you understand what I'm saying. That the name Jesus represents the person of Jesus and that the name

Jesus is a derivative meaning of Yahweh, that Yahweh saves.

And the angel tells Joseph that they shall call the name of this child

Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. Another passage to look at. Go to Philippians 1.

Philippians, sorry, Philippians 2. Philippians 2. Philippians 2.

Brayden, would you read Philippians 2 9 through 11? Philippians 2 9 through 11.

Amen. Now I actually think the emphasis here in Philippians 2 9 through 11 is not so much the name

Jesus per se, but actually it's there in verse 11. And every tongue confess that what?

Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Greek Kyrios, okay, but that's often used to translate the

Hebrew term Yahweh. Jesus is Yahweh. He is Lord.

So as we think about a good name, there's not a name that is better to call upon than the name of our

Lord Jesus. In fact, turn to Joel chapter 2. Now I'll give you a second there because the book of Joel's maybe a little bit harder to find than these other

New Testament ones, but in Joel chapter 2, you'll recognize this because this is quoted in Acts 2 as being fulfilled in Acts 2.

Paul also quotes part of this in Romans 10. So Joel chapter 2.

I'll read verse 31. Joel chapter 2 verse 31. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the

Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved.

For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape as the Lord has said and among the survivors shall be those whom the

Lord calls or Yahweh calls. Okay, everyone who calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved.

So again, I want to say this again. A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches and favor is better than silver or gold.

What I'm saying here in this point is, yes, there is an application of this text whereby we ought to care more about our character than the goods and the things that the world has to offer.

Yet at the same time, there's not a better name that you can choose than what? The name of the

Lord. Call upon the name of the Lord. Seek the name of the

Lord. And Paul reminds us that everyone, Joel reminds us, and Paul quotes at Romans 10, everyone who calls upon the name of the

Lord shall be what? Saved. Now next, that's in repentance and faith.

So the sense of the text and the name of Christ is supreme. Thirdly, let me just mention for a moment names in the

Bible. Now this is interesting and I hate to defer to the LSB here, but we're going to have to do that, or maybe you have a new

American Standard, probably the same. So those of you that have an LSB, the word good in your text, is it in italics?

Yeah. Why when you're reading LSB are certain words, when you read a word that's in italics, what does that mean?

It means it's not in the text. It means it's not in the Hebrew. So the

Hebrew word tov for good, it's not there. So it really just reads a name is to be chosen rather than great riches.

That's interesting, isn't it? But the reason the translators put good in there is because that is the sense of the text, you understand?

That is the sense of the text. It's not just talking about a name, but a good name.

And I want to make the argument here in this point for just a moment that names in the

Bible mean something. Okay, so you remember like a long time ago people used to be named based on important things, right?

And now sometimes people are named by just... I've never heard of these names. You just put vowels and consonants together and you just, boom, you know, and you're like what's the name?

Skylark or something? I don't mean to be offensive to anybody who might be named that.

I'm just saying there's a lot of strange names that float around there. But in the Bible we understand that often someone's name was connected with something about them.

For example, Abram. What does that mean? Abram.

He wouldn't be named Abraham. That's very good, Trey. Abram is father, right?

Abraham is father of many, right? So you think about that.

Sarah, right, is princess. So you think about in the

Bible names meant something. Think about, we won't read this, but just think back in your mind to Genesis 2.

What did God tell Adam to do in Genesis 2? This is before Eve is on the scene.

So God has done something for Adam. Well, it's not explicit in the text, but he brings something in front of Adam and Adam has a task.

And so what is it? He names the animals. And whatever he calls the animal, that was its name.

Maybe there's a few names I'd like to ask Adam about, you know, about what, you know, no.

But you understand, even in, when Eve comes along, he calls his wife woman.

She's out of man. And so what I'm saying in this point is names carry quite a bit of weight in the

Scriptures. In fact, in fact, names carry so much weight in the Scripture that there's something very special about God's name in the

Bible. We know that we would, I think Yahweh is the right way to say it. Some would say Jehovah.

What is so unique about God's name is that he actually gives us a commandment in the third commandment, which is what?

Thou shall not take the Lord thy God's name in vain. Now, we tend to think that that just means don't say, and I won't even repeat or even get close to it, we tend to say, well that just means don't use the name of the

Lord like a cuss word, right? Now, does it mean that?

Sure, yeah. Don't do that. That is, that is blasphemous in a sense. But it means more than that.

Okay, what more than that does it mean? It means that we ought to honor the name of God. We don't throw around Jesus's name casually.

I want to caution you about that, right? Because a lot of times when we get done with our prayer, what do we say?

We pray a prayer and at the very end we tack on Jesus's name. Now, we ought to pray in Jesus's name, but what

I'm saying is we shouldn't just throw his name around mindlessly, should we, right? That's the name of our

Lord, right? So what I'm saying is God's name carries weight because God's name identifies who he is, right?

Just the very term Yahweh, the idea of I am who I am carries with it just God's aseity,

God's eternality, the mysteriousness of the Godhead, all these things are just packed, jam -packed into the name of God because God's name communicates who he is.

So, back to the text, a good name is to be chosen rather than riches and favor is better than silver or gold.

And what I want to say as we think about names in the Bible, we think that names in the

Bible are something that ought to be lasting, right? In the sense of the name of the

Lord is everlasting, these names of people that we know in the Scriptures, of course we know them because we read of them so much, are lasting, but the idea that of course you probably already understand that I want to move to tonight is this fourth point and this is certainly not the text.

The text is not talking to us about the name of our church, okay? But the fourth point

I want to mention is considering the name of our church and here's why. If we put all of this biblical data that we've talked about this evening together,

I think it lays for us. Now, I'm gonna tell you something, don't wait for a reveal.

Like if you're like, oh, he's come up with a name and he's about to launch it on us and yet that's not what

I'm doing. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to lay groundwork to help us think through the name of our church, right?

To pray about it, to think about it, and to consider the biblical data when it comes to choosing a name.

So if we want to have a name that's better than great riches and if we want to have a name that's better than silver or gold, then we need to think about these three things.

The first is, what is our church's character? Okay, what is our church's character?

Who are we, right? Remember what I said, character is better than everything that you can have individually, right?

Your individual character matters more than the goods that can be provided from the world, right?

And if that's true of an individual, then it's also true of a church. Our character is more important than anything else.

What is our character? Our character is to be the holy people of God, right?

Our character is to be a regenerate church. What does that mean? People who are born again, people who have been saved by grace, people who have understood their need for Christ and have repented of their sins and put their faith in the finished work of Christ.

What is our church's character? Our church's character is holiness, living out the things that God has worked in.

Now, we can't live the gospel, by the way, can we? No, we don't live the gospel. Jesus lived the gospel, right?

But believers live out what the gospel has accomplished, right?

What is the character of our church? The character of our church is holiness. Secondly, considering the name of our church, we ought to consider what are our church's convictions.

So, character connotes holiness, right?

Convictions connote what we believe as a church.

Now, it's very easy for us to simply just say, and in some senses, I want to just say, we're a church that we just believe the

Bible, right? We believe the Bible. We believe what the Bible teaches. We just want to come to the

Bible, we want to open it up, and we want to say, whatever the King says in the book, that's what we're going to do, right?

However, you also know, because I've told you before, that I think that it's quite helpful to have our convictions about the

Bible written out, right? That is because if you go to the Jehovah's Witnesses gathering, and you say, what do y 'all believe?

They say, oh, you know what we believe here? We believe the Bible, right? If you went to a Mormon temple or something like that, what do you believe here?

I said, oh yeah, we believe the Bible. So, because of our culture's fallenness, and because of the confusion and chaos in the world today, it's not enough for us simply to say to a lost and dying world that we believe the

Bible. Rather, we need to have convictions. What are our church's convictions? Well, I'm not going to rehash all of them tonight, but I'll mention a few of them.

We confess the second London Baptist confession, the 1689. We confess that not because we believe it's equal to the

Scriptures by a long shot. We simply believe that our Baptist forefathers, hundreds of years ago, did a pretty good job when they wrote out what they believed about the

Scriptures, and what the Scriptures taught. And so, our church's name should reflect our character.

It should also reflect our convictions. What else do we believe? Well, we're heirs of the Reformation, as it were.

We believe in the five solas, right? We believe that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

And the reason that we know all of that is why? The Scriptures alone. So, these five solas, sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, sola

Christus, sola Christus, and soli Deo Gloria. This is part of our identity.

This is who we are. We are Reformed in that sense. We're not Reformed in the sense that we baptize babies or whatever, but we are in the sense that we are heirs of the

Reformation. We confess the 1689. We hold to the five solas.

We have also written out, those are historical things, and then we ourselves have written out some things that we just want to be clear, what we call our ten distinctives.

Things, for example, like evangelism. Like, if you come to this church and you don't care about evangelism, well, we may politely or maybe have to be firm and just say, maybe this isn't the church for you.

If you don't want to come and think about how this church can reach the lost and proclaim the name of Christ in our community, then perhaps there are other places that you should go.

We're a church that cares about the home and believes in the leadership of a husband in the home and the importance and necessity of godly women in the home and in the church and godly men as leadership in the church.

Like, this is what we believe. So a church's name should reflect our character.

A church's name should reflect our convictions.

And so this leads to the third point, which is really just restating here, and that is, what is our church to be called?

I will say that we don't need to take lightly the legacy of the name

Second Baptist Church. There have been many godly saints that have come through this church that have given their lives and even their resources and their time and their money for the furtherance of the gospel.

This church, over 20, what is it now, 27 years, has seen salvations, has seen people born again.

But as we think about that name, Second Baptist, ultimately

I come to the conclusion that it does not very well capture our character, nor does it very well capture our convictions.

And furthermore, it sends out some negative connotations, if you will, about maybe our origins or maybe just the idea of, like,

I mean, honestly, we've talked about this before, who wants to be second, right? And so as we think through these things, and as we think through the biblical, what

I would call the biblical data for thinking through carefully about a name, then

I think that we should allow these things to shape our process as we work through this. Now let me just encourage you with some pastoral applications here.

First of all, don't think that this is, like, I know I've heard some comments, my kids have been some of these, comments like, we're ready for new shirts, right?

It's been a few years since we got new shirts, right? Well, we're obviously not gonna get new shirts right now before we figure out a name.

But let me just tell you guys something, we're not in a rush for new shirts. We can wait, right? We can pray, we could be in unity, we can think through this together.

And by the way, I think that there is very much unity in all this, and I'm very encouraged by that.

But another thing to consider is you want to get this right. This is not something that you want to revisit in three years.

We don't want to be like, yeah, well that we were kind of, that was kind of lame. Let's do something else.

By the way, that's why I don't think contemporary names are that good. Now I'm not gonna say any because I don't want to be unduly offensive to any other church organization.

But if you try to pick out something that's very, very contemporary in the 21st century, what happens when your church turns 50 years old, right?

It's like some of these names I think of young people, and I think, can I imagine a grandmother being called by that name, right?

Or a grandfather being called by that name. It'd be strange, wouldn't it? And so we want to think through this carefully.

We don't want to be changing this every five years, every two years. But we want to come up with a name that is a good name, better than riches, better than silver or gold, that connects to the character of who we are, the convictions that we hold.

And when people call us by that name, we say, yes, this is who we are.

So that's my exhortation to you tonight. That's what I want us to think through as we're thinking through this carefully.

It should never be a divisive issue. It should be one that we give over to prayer and discussion. And Pastor Jacob, myself, we're more than happy to discuss these things and ideas that you may have.

And I submitted some of those things on the, I submitted those things on the messenger today just for you to be thinking through.

And maybe you look at those names and you're like, honestly, these are all lame. They're all terrible.

And if you feel that way, I would hope that you just communicate it and talk to us so we can think through it rightly. But above all, we want to honor

Christ, right? Jesus is King. And we want a name that reflects that, that reflects the reality that of who we are as a church and the convictions that we hold.

So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go ahead and pray and we'll stop the live stream and then I'll give you opportunity, because you may not want to ask questions on live stream.

So I'll give you opportunity to ask questions or make comments about all that. Let me pray. Father, help us to be a people who choose a good name in our individual lives.

Help us to choose a good name in the lives of our family. We pray we'd choose a good name in our church, not just on the sign, but in the way that we live, in the way that we conduct ourselves in the community, and the things that we say are important, in the priorities that we make, in the efforts that we make towards evangelism and healthy ecclesiology and all these things.

Help us to have a good name in the church, but also help us to actually pick a good name.

Give us wisdom in this. And you know, even my own heart, I've heard what I think are several good names.

I've gone back and forth on what, this is good, that's good, well I don't know about this. And I pray for wisdom for our church and I pray for humility and unity and most of all

I pray that our goal is not any sort of exaltation of the church.

Above all, Father, we want to exalt Christ. And so we pray that you would help us in this endeavor and that it'd be pleasing to you for your glory.