The Names of Christ

Sermon Transcript

Now, I know a lot of people aren’t here tonight because, you know, they’re out doing all kinds of things. Your kids were out of school, were they not? And so a lot of people traveling. So I thought this, they’re thinking we’re here working hard on the kenosis or unraveling a Greek sentence or talking about some kind of, you know, deep grammar. But I wanted to step out of all of that and do something much more devotional tonight and maybe a little bit more fun than the impeccability of Christ or the kenosis or the hypostatic union or teaching you grammar rules in an ancient dead language.

So we’ll just pretend that we’ve worked super hard intellectually tonight, but what I want to do is fuel your devotional life tonight and do something that was not on the schedule, but I decided to squeeze it in here and spend a little time talking about divine names. Now, I know that the chart on the front and back certainly seems to defy what I’m saying, but trust me, this is easy work tonight. This is the easiest we’ve had.

So before we get started, why don’t we pray to God that He would fuel our hearts devotionally and maybe even wake up a few areas as it relates to just the memory of some things we may have read in the past, but bring them to bear in our minds as we study some of the divine names, particularly the names of Christ. Let’s pray.

God, thank you so much for all that you do for us in providing for us this opportunity, the freedom that we have, thinking of our veterans and the things that we unfortunately must do in a sinful world in defending, protecting, and advancing what is right. We’re thankful for the freedom that it grants us for me to preach, for us to proclaim Christ, for this not to be illegal.

Thank you, God, though our country is in sad shape and there’s a lot that we’re losing ground on, we’re grateful for what you have done in the past. Make us bold, keep us focused on your word, answering every question, biblically, thinking biblically, responding biblically, and not being swayed or driven and tossed by the wind of opinion and all the things that seem to happen in the minds of people on the street, the polls, the ideas that seem to shape people’s sense of truth, and just help us to go back to absolute truth, the unchanging and unwavering truth of God’s word as we think through what is right and wrong.

And God, tonight as we turn our attention to your word and think through your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, may you just enrich our hearts and our minds, particularly as we move into just our everyday practices, our spiritual disciplines of praying to you and trying to learn more about who you are and seeking to love you more perfectly. May this be just a fantastic thing for us tonight, an exercise for us to grow closer to you in our hearts and our devotional lives and in our worship, our personal worship in particular. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.

Names

All right, let’s talk about names. What’s in a name? What’s your name? My name’s Mike, which really is not my name. My name on my birth certificate is Michael. And I just want to think through a few things here: how we pick names.

I don’t think my folks were thinking Hebrew at all, but my name, Mikael, is a Hebrew word. And if you look up the Social Security records on popularity of names, I was born in 1964, and the most popular name in 1964 was the name Michael. And because I was born late in the year, I don’t think we were setting trends. I think we were responding to trends.

And I don’t know, my parents like that they’re here. You can ask them. I don’t know why they chose that name. But I thought it would be interesting to look back to 1960 when my brother was born to see what the most popular name was. And sure enough, my brother David, the most popular name in 1960 was David. So I don’t know how that works. Had he been a girl, he would have been Mary, and I would have been Lisa. So, you know, I mean, if they followed the pattern, I’m not sure how that would have worked.

But we pick names for a lot of different reasons. Even last weekend, we had our child that occasions. And I think it’s fun to pass the mic sometimes when I think it’s safe to do so and ask the question, “Why did you pick that name? You know, what was with that name?” And we get some interesting stories as to why people pick their names. And a lot of times they shrug their shoulder and they go, “I don’t know, you know, I like the name. It sounds good.” And that’s fine.

We can do that because the person certainly stuck with that name, unless they’re rebellious and changed their name for the rest of their life. So it’s a good thing that it sounds good to you. And sometimes there is a meaning behind it.

If you were in, I don’t know, I think it was the 11 o’clock service, what a great explanation for the name Jude. You know, “I called my kid Jude. We were studying this book about defending the faith, and it was all about the book of Jude. We want our son to grow up to defend the faith and the truth of the gospel.” And so that name, you know, has some meaning.

Sometimes they name after relatives or whatever. There’s plenty of reasons we pick the names that we pick. We all go through it as parents. We try to come up with names, make sure the initials don’t spell out something bad. You know, you go through this because you want to give them some kind of appellation, some kind of nomenclature for their lives that makes sense and sounds good and works and perhaps has some deeper meaning.

In the Bible, though, that’s what we’re concerned with: how do people pick names for their kids in the Bible? And unfortunately, if you’ve heard sermons on this, there is a tendency in pulpits to make way too much of what people are doing when they name their kids.

Let’s work toward meaning, but let’s start by recognizing that not a whole lot has changed when it comes to parents naming their kids. Because if you look at the etymology, the definitions, the backgrounds of the names in the Bible, sometimes you come up with names like Deborah, which means bee, bumblebee, right? And I’m thinking, that must have just sounded good, because it doesn’t really, I can’t, it’s hard to find a reason why Deborah in the book of Judges would be called bee.

Or how about Esther? Here’s another gal in the Bible, beautiful Jewish lady, and her name means Myrtle, which now they named people that a hundred years ago. I had an aunt named Myrtle. But I don’t think there was any real meaning behind that. It just to be something that rolled off their tongue and sounded good.

Now sometimes though we come across names like Abram. Abram we meet in the book of Genesis and his name is an irony and you can think about his parents naming him. It means great father and of course they would hope that their son would grow up and be a great father. So they called him Abram. The irony is when we meet him he’s old and this couple is infertile and they have no kids, which, you know, compounds what God’s about to do in their lives, that the great father is not a father at all and has missed out on being a father.

Actually, the first time we see someone naming, humans naming the baby, is Adam and Eve. They name their first baby, and the first baby they name Cain, and they explain why, because in Hebrew, the name means to receive, to gain possession of. And she says, “I’ve gained possession of a man,” a little man, a tiny eight pound man, and she says, “And I’ve received this by the Lord, so I’ll call this little boy Received.” You know, “I’ve received this boy,” Cain. So it has some meaning.

So it can be just that sounds good. It might be “I hope this for my child.” It might be, well, it’s some circumstances surrounding the birth, thinking about what God has done.

A classic that we all know is the name Isaac. Isaac is the word for laughter because repeatedly in the narrative about God sending his messengers to tell Abraham, Abram, and Sarai that they’re going to have a baby in their old age. Everybody laughs at that. And they think about it, everyone’s going to laugh at that. So they name their kid Laughter, which is an interesting thing. And I don’t think they would have done that in their 20s, but in their 90s, that sounded like a good name for them. They didn’t much care, I suppose.

And then some are bad, and these you feel bad for, and I’m sure they had nicknames, but I think of the name Ichabod, the baby that was born when the ark had just been captured, and Eli the priest had just fallen back, the fat priest of the day, and died, and the daughter gives birth, and she finds out about the death of her family and her father-in-law, and she calls her kid Ichabod, which in Hebrew means the glory is gone, the glory has departed, the glory has left, and you’re hoping Ichabod changed his name at some point.

So there’s all kinds of reasons, but I think it’s a lot like us. I mean, not very often do we get to that level. We’re having a bad season of life when we name our kid after some bad event, but certainly all the things above that—things that we felt when we’re naming this kid, things that surround the circumstances of the child, the past. Obviously, a lot of them are named after their ancestors. The name sounds good. They like it. It doesn’t matter what it means. They’re a lot like us. The way we pick names is a lot of how they pick names in the Bible.

Now, the interesting thing, though, about the Bible is God is often picking names for people in the Bible. And that’s where we start to see something significant, something more meaningful, something more transcendent, the way God names people in the Bible.

For instance, he takes Abram and calls him Abraham, which is the ultimate irony that the infertile dad named great father is now being named the father of many, right? And he’s supposed to be the great patriarch of an entire nation that has descendants that are more than the sand on the seashore. And that was the promise to Abraham. And so God said, “I’m going to change your name.”

We have the similar thing going on in the New Testament when Simon is then called Peter, Petros in Greek, transliterated in English Peter, which means stone or rock. And, of course, he seemed anything but that, right? He seemed to flow with the moods and his feelings and emotions, and God wanted to do something in his life, so Christ gives him a name that, again, is a bit of a divine pathway for this guy. And that name, then every time he says it, becomes reminiscent of God’s work in his life.

Boren irges, sons of thunder. That’s, I think, how they might say it in Aramaic. But sons of thunder. Remember James and John were the ones that when people were doing things without our knowledge and using Christ’s name, they would say, “Well, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to wipe them out?” And Christ calls them in the Gospel of Mark, it’s recorded, calls them, “I’m going to call you guys the sons of thunder,” naming them after their really volatile attitude.

The worst example of God directing some really bad names is in Hosea’s little prophetic book. First of all, he’s picked a bad wife for him named Gomer, if you remember. I’m thinking that was bad. So we’ve already got a bad trend going in this family. But, you know, lo ruama, which in Hebrew is no mercy, and lo ami, not my people, these little Hebrew phrases become the names of these kids, which remind them of God’s punishment coming on Israel.

So we see God doing this, and always when he does it, he never picks names because they sound good. He never picks names just arbitrarily. He’s got a very specific meaning and purpose in naming people when he names people in the Bible.

Now, God, of course, is the God who names himself. He picks names for himself and uses those names like no other figure in the Bible. Because while we may have Simon, who’s known as Peter, or John, who’s called Mark, and we have a lot of different compound names, you don’t meet anybody like the triune God for giving like scads of names for every person of the Godhead.

I mean, I have several books. I went through my library and just looked for books I had on the divine names. And I had, I don’t know, several, a stack of them. Because I’ve got books on the naming of the Holy Spirit, the naming of the Father, the naming of all the persons of the Godhead, the naming of Christ. I mean, there’s just, the Bible is chocked full of names where God, of course, is the one naming himself.

With some exceptions where the characters name God. But it’s important for us to recognize is if you look at that, the thing that we’re trying to see in looking through the names of God is that God is revealing something about his attributes when he gives us names.

I mean, one of the first names, there are several names by this point, but when he comes to Abram and he says in Genesis 17, “I’m going to be called this. I’m going to be called El Shaddai to you.” And of course, he’s already made the promise back in chapter 12 and again in chapter 15 of Genesis that he’s going to go from infertility to a father of many people. Great nations will come from him. And he wants to remind him, when you talk to me, you call me El Shaddai, the almighty one. El, Elohim, Shaddai, the powerful one, the one who possesses all power.

Sometimes it gets very creative. Jot this one down if you’re a note taker. Exodus 34:14, one of the attributes of God we tend to forget, and it reads this way. He says, “You shall worship no other gods, for Yahweh, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God.” I mean, he says, “My name, you could call me this, the embodiment of who I am is a God who has the attribute or the characteristic of jealousy.”

So we see, and the examples, I should have put this up earlier, but there’s several. But just by way of thinking through, and you know a lot of these names, they are God choosing to reveal Himself in something about His character by the names that He chooses to give people to call Him.

Oftentimes, though, once we see that there’s, you know, hundreds of names for God in the Bible, you start to realize that they are representative of His authority. They stand for His power. You see this phrase all the time in the Bible, “in the name of,” and then we get one of God’s names. Often it’s “in the name of the Lord.”

You are to, for instance, let’s see, I jotted down Deuteronomy 18:5, that the ministers were to minister in the temple, or in the tabernacle in this case, in the name of the Lord. That the prophet was, Deuteronomy, was supposed to go speak in the name of the Lord.

And there are some throwback usages in our language in that. We would see in an old movie when some bank robber was running down the street and the cops were chasing him, they would say, “Stop in the name of the law,” right? In other words, I’m not telling you to stop because I’m, you know, Fred. I’m telling you to stop because the law grants me authority to, you know, retain you, to stop you. So I’m giving you commands not in my own authority, but in the authority of the law.

And that example helps us to realize that so much of the verbiage in the Bible about the multiplicity of names of God usually come down to, when it intersects with human beings, recognizing that God is having us oftentimes do whatever it is that we do in the authority, the sphere of the authority of God.

And where I want to just kind of keep our thoughts tonight, we need to recognize—and I’d like you to turn here to Philippians chapter 2—that names in the Bible are really a catalyst for worship. That’s one of the reasons we have so many names in the Bible. And we’ll see God giving names and His people responding, particularly in the Old Testament, by sacrificing or worshiping or offering up prayers to that God who has revealed Himself and His character with a new name.

So Philippians 2, a familiar passage. We looked at this at length. This is our kenosis passage. But at the end of this whole discussion about the humility of Christ, it says in verse number 9, after it’s all done, he’s been humbled to the place of death, even death on a cross: “Therefore, God has highly exalted him.” Now, notice this: “And bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”

Now, that’s an interesting thing because he doesn’t tell us what that name is. You may say, well, verse 11 says Lord. Well, it does say we’re going to call him Lord. But then you’ve got to recognize there are, depending on how you count them, and some are pretty loose, you have anywhere from 100 to 170 names given in the New Testament for Jesus Christ. That’s a lot of different names.

And the kicker is, in Revelation chapter 19, it says, “He has a name written on Him that no one knows but Himself.” I mean, it gets mysterious when it comes to the naming of God. And he has a name, and his name, and I would drive this even further, the multiplicity of names ascribed to Christ should lead our hearts to ascribe to him worship.

So “that the name of Jesus,” right? Verse 10, “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

So, I started out trying to pick the top names. You’re gagging on 30. You know, I started with about 70 this morning, and I got down, you know, to 58, and I thought, that’s too many. I need to make it in round number 50, and I thought, man, it’s not even going to fit on the worksheet. Then I got it down to 40, and I thought, that was pretty good. It sounded like, you know, Casey, Casey, top 40 names, and I thought, well, that would be really cute, and then I tried to drive it to 25. I tried really hard, but I stopped at 30 because I was running out of time, and I had to build the PowerPoint.

So, these are my top 30 names, in my humble opinion. That’s what that’s there for. You can pick your own. You got to study them all first. Study them all. You pick your own.

Here’s the list of 30 that I think are interesting for our discussion, and I want to start, first of all, in Matthew chapter 1, verse 1. We’re just filling the chart. Hopefully, you can read that, can you see those, is that text big enough for you?

1–4. Matthew 1:1

Matthew 1:1, now you’re going to say, “Are you going to turn us to 30 passages?” No. There’s a lot of names that are combined. Matter of fact, we’re going to get the first four here in Matthew 1:1. Let’s go there, and then we’re going to move canonically through the New Testament, and I’m just going to tease out the top 30, and then I want you to let this list be a catalyst for your personal worship this week. No deep discussions about Christology, just, I hope, the soaking in of the ways in which we need to perceive Christ.

Matthew chapter 1, verse number 1: “The book of the genealogy of”—first word, here it is—Jesus. That’s the first name he gets here in the New Testament, the very first name in the gospel, Jesus. What does that name mean? You Sunday school grads know. What is that? That’s a Hellenized version, a Greek version of the name Joshua. And Joshua means Yahweh saves. Yahweh saves. Or Yahweh’s salvation. The salvation of Yahweh. Salvation of the Lord. And that’s interesting.

And I know we mentioned this on week number one. But Jesus’ name is Joshua. I mean, that’s really his name. Yahshua. You hear the Jews for Jesus guys talk like that, right? Yahshua, that’s his name. His name is Joshua. And that takes you back to the Old Testament to think about the one who was to lead them into the promised land, right? It was the protege of Moses, Jesus, Joshua, the Lord saves.

Significance of this name, and I want to put all these in the first person and only because, you know, I hope it can be something that can really become an expression of our own praying, but let’s put it this way. He is the means, the instrument, the mechanism of your salvation. He is the one that will be the instrument of the reason you get saved. The Lord’s salvation is bound up in this person. The person we worship, the songs we sing to this person, he is the instrument of salvation. He is the means of salvation. He is the way we get saved. Jesus, Joshua.

Easy enough. Jesus then, the word added to Jesus here, we looked at week number one. Next word we get is, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus, Christ.” Christ means, and you don’t have to be a Sunday school grad for this, just a week one compass night grad. What does this mean? Anointed, right? Do you remember that?

Christos is the word, the Greek word, for the anointed one, one who has been anointed. It is in the Old Testament, transliterated for us, Messiah. Messiah, which, you know, I can only put so much in the square, but you can write small. Christ means Messiah. Christ means anointed one. Anointed means that oil has been poured on your head.

And then there was three persons in the Old Testament, three offices that would have the oil poured on their head to distinguish them from everyone else. They were the, what were they? Prophet, priest, and king. Okay. He is for you. I didn’t want to say PPK. So PKP, because my box is small up here.

He is your prophet, priest, and king. And I could talk for an hour on that, so next week I will. And we’re going to talk about the earthly ministry of Christ and how he fulfilled the roles of prophet, priest, and king and why that’s so significant and should be significant to our thinking. So no comment now. All of that saved for next week. Jesus, Joshua, Christ, the anointed one.

What’s the next title he gets here in Matthew 1:1? What is it? Son of David. Son of David. This is huge. And we’ve already dealt a little bit with this in our study, but this is really in the mind of any Jew reading this, certainly if Matthew wants to drive it home as a good Jew writing to Jews, he is the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. And you need to write in that box 2 Samuel chapter 7.

It was one of the most important chapters in all of the Old Testament because it promised that the ultimate enduring and eternal leader of the nation would come from David’s lineage and he would be known as the son of David. So Christ for us is introduced in the New Testament as Joseph—I’m sorry—Joshua, Jesus, Christ, the anointed one, prophet, priest, and king, the son of David, the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant.

He is the one who is the leading or the enduring leader of the nation. And perspective, we need to realize He is our perfect leader, our perfect King. He is the one that we will look to on earth, in the millennial kingdom, and on the new earth, in the new Jerusalem, as the ultimate leader embodied in human form. I love to think about that. There’ll be banners with His face on it, right? There’ll be plasma screens, big ones, 150-inch screens, right? Where the King will address his subjects and the face of the ultimate son of David will be there speaking to us on plasma.

Christ is the perfect leader. Matthew 1, we got one more. He’s not only the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, 2 Samuel 7, Jesus is now described as the son of Abraham.

I mean, there are several big passages in the Old Testament. If you had to rank them within the top five chapters of the Bible, you would have 2 Samuel 7, that’d certainly make the list, and the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 12. Let’s just start with that one. It’s restated several times. But that’s the first statement in the Bible of the Abrahamic covenant. That from Abraham’s family, Abram, great father, Abraham, the father of many, would have a ultimate offspring from the seed of Abraham.

Someone would come from his line that would be a blessing to the entire world. In the verbiage of the book of Revelation, people from every tongue, tribe, and nation. That’s a big, big sweeping promise that God would bring blessing to people that weren’t even Jewish, and it would come through him.

He is the source of my blessing. And again, I only have a small box to write things here, but what I mean by that is the divine favor of God is coming to people like you and me who don’t even speak Hebrew. And if you do, you don’t speak it that well probably. And we’re not Jewish. We’re not children of Abraham, but we’ve become now recipients of the ultimate promise of God that began in Genesis chapter 12 because Jesus is not only the anointed one, prophet, priest, and king, but he is also the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant and the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. And that’s a really big deal.

5. Luke 1:78

Number five. Let’s turn to Luke chapter 1 verse 78. Luke chapter 1 verse 78. And I know we’re passing over several names of Christ. You can make your top 30 list. This is mine.

Luke 1:78. Great text here on the temple mount. Zechariah’s prophecy: “Because of the tender mercies of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high.” I love that one. Jot it down. Jesus Christ is called the sunrise, or if you want to put the whole name here, the sunrise from on high, the sunrise from heaven. What a great, poetic, picturesque statement of Christ, the sunrise.

Think of our guys out there at the fall fest setting up and all that they spent the night out there to protect all the stuff we set up and and there’s nothing you’re wanting more after trying to stay up all night than the sunrise, right? I mean, that’s just huge. Even the photons in your eyeballs do something to the chemistry in your blood, right? I mean, it changes everything.

I remember driving through the night—you’ve done that down the, you know, long interstates because you got to get wherever you’re going—and you’re just, and this is terrible to say, but you’re dozing off as you’re driving and it’s three in the morning, it’s four in the morning, it’s five in the morning, and then the sun starts to come up and then just something happens. It’s an amazing thing.

Of course, the meaning of sunrise is obvious. It speaks of the rising of the sun, but the significance of it for us as the sun begins to come up and goes from a glow on the horizon to the bright day, God is for us—Christ is for us rather—our growing hope.

He is the one that even, I mean, from his entrance into the world as a baby to adulthood, or I think broader, from his entrance into the world in his first coming to the inauguration in his second coming, or let’s just put it personally, from the introduction of Christ to you as a person to the place where you will see him face to face, there is nothing but an uphill move here. See, and that’s the great thing about the Christian.

It is a growing hope. Paul put it this way, “Though my outer man is decaying, my inner man,” right, “is being renewed day by day.” The closer we get to Christ, the more, the Bible says, we’ll reflect Christ. And we will move from one level of glory, which often has a tie with the word light or sun or illumination. And we’ll move from one level of glory to another level of glory to another level.

See, the non-Christian world hanging on to their youth because that’s all they’ve got, right? And us, we can say, “For me to live is Christ, but to die is gain.” Everything moves up for the Christian life. While in the world, everything moves down. And Christ is called the sunrise. Have you called him that in your prayer life lately? That’d be a good thing to do. That’s one of his names, the sunrise from on high. Love that one, right? You like that one.

6. John 1:29

Number six, John 1:29. You know this one. This one came from, and again, I’m only giving you one reference for each one, but there are several. Paul called them this. There are other references to this. The song in the book of Revelation calls this, but the first introduction to this name we get is when John the Baptist sees Jesus walking toward him.

It says, “The next day,” verse 29, “he saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, ‘Behold,’”—here’s the name now—“‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’”

That’s just an amazing way to describe this guy who I think most people would want to see as this strong military political leader. And we call him not a stallion, not a bull, not a lion. We call him a lamb. The Lamb of God.

And when you tie the word sin to the word lamb, now I’m thinking of that lamb that’s being dragged to the altar before we take the steel knife, the iron knife across his throat and kill that lamb so that we can all go home trusting in the fact that God will atone for our sin. It is such a mixed metaphor, right? Here he comes, the promised one, and he’s called the Lamb of God. That’s a big deal.

That’s the substitutionary sacrifice. That’s the stand-in for our sin. That’s the Leviticus—if you want to put an Old Testament reference down—1:4 of the worshiper standing and putting his hand on the head of the lamb so that that lamb’s death could symbolize a substitution, an innocent, spotless lamb substituted for my death so that I walk away sensing the favor of God because of the symbolic slaughter of an innocent animal.

So he is for us, if you think of Christ, the Lamb of God, he took my place. He took my place in judgment. He took my place in the wrath of God on the cross. And that is such a simple picture.

And if you’re well taught, I mean, I know you may just want to yawn through that, but it is probably one of the most attacked doctrines in the cool churches. You know, I talk about the cool churches. The cool churches don’t like this. And yet they still like the motif of the Lamb, right? The Lamb of God. But the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, is a bloody substitution for the sin that I’ve committed and the wrath that I deserve.

Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That’s a great appellation for the Lord Jesus Christ.

7. John 1:49

John 1:49, moving canonically. I didn’t start that way. I had you ping-ponged all around, but you’re welcome. We’re moving here.

That one’s easy. Verse 49, Nathanael answers him. I like this one, too, the Jewish flavor of it all. What’s he call him? Rabbi. He’s called Rabbi from time to time in the Bible. The Rabbi.

They had other names for the rabbi in the intertestamental period, but the rabbi, of course, was the teacher. That’s what it meant. But it wasn’t just the teacher. You know, you go to school. I often talk to my kids about the teachers, what kind of teachers, how old are they, what are they like. The rabbis were different.

You’ve been to Israel, some of you, or you’ve seen pictures, of course. I mean, they all are growing beards. I mean, that’s like the stripes on their arm, right? And they get these big, bushy, you know, wild-looking beards that they grow. And part of that is to show I’ve lived life. I have experience. I have wisdom.

And you’d think, well, you’re like a junior grade rabbi if you’ve got a little beard. But you’re like the sage, octogenarian, super wise rabbi if you’ve got that big beard. The picture was, one of the words presbyteros that was used with it was the word for you’ve lived life. You’re old.

And here’s a young man who embodies now. He’s in his 30s. He embodies the wisdom of God. Jesus is for us our source of wisdom. He may not have been this sage guy who was in an ivory tower in some, you know, rabbinic school, but he is called Rabbi. He is the teacher that was looked to, not just by a bunch of teenage fishermen, but he should be for us, the one we pray to as our source of wisdom.

8. John 6:35

John 6:35, a few pages down the road. John chapter 6 verse 35. Now we get into a lot of these great labels in John. I couldn’t break them up. They’re so good.

Jesus said to them, this is his own chosen name for himself here: “I am”—what does he call himself? Bread of life. “I am the bread of life.”

This is not talking about a ceremony and a church service. Those motifs may intersect, but here’s the real point. Whoever could have called himself the water of life, and he does, living water. But the concept here is that he is the sustainer of life, and we’re not just talking about keeping you alive biologically. We’re talking about something here that’s much more meaningful, something more profound.

And I couldn’t fit the word profound here, but he sustains my real needs, my profound needs. And we sometimes just have to stop and slow down enough to spend time with the Lord Jesus Christ so we can experience some of his promised sustenance.

He is the bread of life. Not for your belly, right? Not for your biology. “I’m the bread of life,” real life. That’s a great title. He’s the bread of life. That’s his chosen title.

9. John 8:12

Number nine, John 8. John 8 verse 12. Again, Jesus spoke to them saying, quote, John 8:12, “I am”—what does he call himself here? Light of the world. “I am the light of the world.”

Now again here’s the point: “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” I mean he loves these metaphors.

He reveals—and let me just state this broadly with the broadest sense of the word good—he reveals God’s good. He comes into a world of darkness that doesn’t know good. We don’t, we don’t follow it. We love our deeds. We love darkness because our deeds are evil, but He comes and brings light and illumination.

Now again, I could put this in a negative sense, which I could have earlier in the book of John, because it talks about exposing sin, but He’s speaking here positively, not just that. We’re assuming we’re past that. We’ve already recognized our sin. We’ve embraced the Lamb of God, the solution to our sin, and now what we realize is that we can walk, and we can follow, and we can be filled with the light of life, because He’s the light of the world.

Significance here is He’s the template for my life. I look to Him to give me because of His life and His teaching, I look to Him to give me guidance. I look to Him to make sure I keep walking on the right path.

I talk about the beginning of this, we talk about Veterans Day, if you don’t have the light of God’s Word, if I don’t know how Christ is going to come back and do what He does, I don’t know what to think. I am led by my emotions or my feelings, but to have He is the light of the world. He’s the light of my life. He’s the template for our lives. He helps us to think, to value, and believe what is good and right.

10. John 8:58

John 8:58. We did look at this one, but it’s such a good one, and I followed the whole template here of John, just about the whole one.

John 8:58, he said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was,” and this is a very cryptic and interesting way to put it, “I am,” right? He calls himself the I am.

That’s a weird one, but that took us back to the book of Exodus, when the angel of the Lord spoke from the burning bush and revealed the name of God as I am and it is a related word to the—I mean that verb in Hebrew—to the word Yahweh.

And so here is this connection that he is the if you just took it at face value, the always existing one and I guess that would be weird enough but because God’s divine name in the Old Testament revealed over 7,000 times is Yahweh which is etymologically tied to the verb I am in Hebrew, this is a big, big, big, big, big, big statement. It’s more than just, “Hey, I’ve always been around.” I mean, this is a statement of divinity. I mean, one of the strongest ones in the Bible.

And that’s why it is not wrong. It is right to rightly call Jesus God. And there are many examples, several examples, handful of examples, at least, of people calling him, like Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” We rightly call him God because he is, he’s Yahweh. He is the ever-existing, always existing one.

11. John 10:9

John chapter 10, Jesus says here, first four words, “I am what?” The door.

Now note carefully what he says next. He’s describing what he is here. John 10:9, “If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” Okay, that’s the first thing. We’ll deal with that later. “And will go in and out and find pasture,” okay?

I mean, this concept here is that he has access not only to salvation, but all the good that goes with it, you’ll find pasture through Him. He is the access to good.

So He is, and again the box limits me in how I say this, but He is the cause of my ultimate and profound and eternal and meaningful good. Even though my outer man may decay and I may get sick and I can get an axe and friends around me can die, the ultimate, He is in my relationship with Him, he is the threshold, the portal, the access to the ultimate good that God grants to his creation, to his creatures.

He’s the access to good, the door. Not only saved through him, more on that in a minute, but “I go in and out and find pasture.”

12. John 10:11

John 10, verse 11, two verses away, he says, “Here I am the good shepherd.” How many of you ladies went to ladies retreat? Wasn’t that good? And the whole time, you know, this motif of Psalm 23, I mean, not the whole time, but a lot of the time your mind is on Yahweh, our heavenly Father, and then to start recognizing that Jesus comes on the scene.

And I know that tie was made for you in the preaching at Women’s Retreat, but how good it is to see that tie that it gets back to the place where Jesus Christ himself says, “I am the good shepherd.” I’m the one who shepherds you. And I am not only the shepherd, I’m also the Lamb of God who lays down my life for the sheep. The paradox here and the richness of this metaphor is amazing.

But He is, and you think of the shepherd, think of all the things in Psalm 23 that it says. Not only is He the sacrificial one that makes all the things possible in Psalm 23, but He is the guide. He’s the corrector, the director, the guide, the one who takes us where we need to go, who provides us what we need, who gives us security through the valley of the shadow of death. He is all of those things.

He’s the good shepherd, the perfect guide. And if you follow Him, and that’s all about us, right? It’s all about us responding to His leadership. He perfectly leads me.

I mean, the times when things do not go spiritually or profoundly right in my life, it’s not because Christ led me down a dark alley to a spiritual dead end. It’s because I’ve departed from the path of His good and perfect leadership.

He’s the good shepherd. Follow Him, and He’ll always take you where you should be.

13. John 11:25

13, John 11:25. John 11:25. Cross the page there. Look, He said to Mary and Martha, He says, “I am the resurrection and the life. I’m the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”

I mean, that’s a big statement. The wages of sin is death. Started with Adam, restated throughout the Bible. He is stating here that he will reverse sin’s penalty. That whatever sin does to mess us up and cause us to experience death, he’s going to reverse that for us. That’s a huge statement.

Significance is that he is my hope in death. We can say it and it’s easy to say, you know, “To live as Christ to die is gain.” But you really start thinking about this. I had one of those moments this week.

You know, you can imagine here on staff, maybe you’re on our prayer list, our prayer team, and you get the emails. But for a lot of those people on that list, they’re probably, you know, faceless people in your minds. But for those of us that interact with the church family all week long, you know, every day, those are people, most of us on the staff, we know them.

And sometimes it’s overwhelming to see people that are suffering and have cancer, and they’ve got these bleak diagnoses. And I remember sitting there one night, my wife and I prayed for several of these people this week, and they just came in. Some weeks, the news about medical issues is just overwhelming.

And I started thinking, you know, you have those moments where your thought of your own demise is so real. You know what I mean? Where you think, I mean, obviously I haven’t died and I’m not at the threshold of it, I don’t think. But you can get yourself to think, wow, I can empathize with the feeling of being on the threshold of my own death.

And that’s a good practice. I mean, I wouldn’t want to think that way all day long, but it’s a good thing for us to do and then to bring our theology to bear on all that.

You know, the only reason I can face that with courage and hope, right, is because, and the only hope I have to offer folks who trust in Christ as they face their own demise, is because Christ promised that He was the resurrection and the life. He’s going to reverse the effects of death. He is, reverse the effects of sin. He is our hope in death.

14. John 14:6

14 is John 14:6. John 14:6. Back in our minds to the first half of the door statement, here’s another way to put it. And this one is specifically about the issues of heaven and hell, life and death.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. Exclusive. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

We talked about him being the door as access to good, he’s also access to God, and he is the exclusive access to God. It’s not, you know, a bunch of stern, austere preachers that came up with that idea. It is Christ who said, “I’m the door, I’m the way, and through me is the truth, and on the other side is the life, and this is it. There’s no other way.”

He is, for us, our only option. And when I face the ultimate profound issues of life, like I know I’m guilty, my conscience bears witness to that, I have to face eternity, I know I’m going to meet my maker, how will I survive that? The only option I have, the only safe spot there is, is my trust in Christ. He’s the way, the truth, and the life. That’s a great title for Jesus Christ.

15. Acts 4:11

How about this one? Let’s move on to the book of Acts. Acts chapter 4. Acts chapter 4. There’s actually two titles here. I’ll leave the first one for your top 30, but I like the second one because it builds on the first one here.

It’s actually a name that he gave Peter. That’s the first name, but he builds on it and distinguishes himself from Peter in verse 11, or at least here in this description of him. This is ubiquitous. Several passages speak to this.

Verse 11: “This Jesus is the stone.” That could be the first one you could do, but that’s not the one I’m interested in right now. “That was rejected by you,” the apostle said, “the builders, which has become”—here’s the one I want to focus in on—“the cornerstone.”

Christ is called the cornerstone. Here, Ephesians 2:20, it’s all over the New Testament. He is the cornerstone.

Peter may have been the stone, right? But Jesus is the cornerstone. He’s the indispensable person. You can’t do it without him. There is nothing without him. Had he not become incarnate and lived among us to do what he did, then this life is a dead end, and it is futile, and it doesn’t lead anywhere.

He is the indispensable person. I must not, I dare not try to live my life without him. I can’t think of eternity without him. I can’t imagine surviving anything as it relates to the profound issues of guilt and sin and forgiveness without Christ.

He’s the cornerstone. He’s the indispensable person in the universe. That’s a big, big deal.

16–17. 1 Corinthians 1:24

1 Corinthians 1:24. I love these two. 1 Corinthians 1:24, verse 20 says, “Where’s the one who’s wise? Where’s the scribe? Where’s the debater of the age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

“For Jews demand a sign, Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is”—first one—“the power of God.”

I mean, that’s a great line. The power of God. In this person, Christ, there is the power of God. And how’s his power doing? How’s the power level on God? Right? It’s full tilt.

If Christ is the power of God, right, then Christ is the omnipotent person. He is the embodiment of all power. And as it relates to where he’s going with this, anything else that you want to do or think through or live for, any cause or any purpose or any value, it’s nothing compared to the one who is our purpose and value and priority, who is the power of God, the omnipotent one.

And, of course, the context here about salvation is about salvation. He is more than able. I couldn’t fit the word there, more than, but he is more than able to save.

I think when we think about that, you think not only about the cause we live for, but the power to save us. Don’t get into this nonsense that Paul speaks to when he says, listen, I was the worst of sinners. I was killing Christians. And if his power was effectual to me, if he was able to do that, then certainly he can save you.

I mean, the power of God, he’s able to save. He’s more than able to save.

The next one, same verse, 1 Corinthians 1:24. He’s not only the power of God, he’s also what? The wisdom of God. We call that God’s really smart. How’s his smart level? It’s really high. He’s the omniscient one. He can’t learn anything. He knows all that there is to know. He is the wisdom of God.

There was probably one of the highlights of our trip to Turkey. We took a bunch of Compass people there doing the trip, the Apostle Paul’s track, and we came to Istanbul and went into the Hagia Sophia. And I said there to folks, I was trying to share some truths. I actually recorded it that day for our church website, and I said, you know, a lot of people miss this, but this church, the Hagia Sophia—Hagia means holy, Sophia is the word for wisdom—is the church named after Christ. And it comes from 1 Corinthians 1:24, that he is the wisdom of God. He is the embodiment of all the wisdom of God, the Hagia Sophia.

And it’s just great that that church is probably the most foreboding, just amazing, majestic building that we saw, perhaps we saw on our trip. A couple more maybe that rivaled that, but certainly from antiquity an amazing thing. And I just love the fact that it’s called holy wisdom, which is an appellation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And certainly he’s got all the wisdom. Man, he can figure out my life, can he not? He can. He can direct us.

Sometimes you wonder if the shepherd knows where he’s going, right? Well, this one knows exactly where he’s going and what he’s doing, and his views on homosexuality or whatever it may be—he knows what he’s doing. We’ve got to follow him. He’s able to direct my life, my values, my thoughts.

1 Corinthians 10:4. You’ll like this one. Some of you will like this one. All of you will like this one. Discussion here about the wandering Israelites, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, and even in their sin, right—their immorality, all their, you know, sitting down to eat, standing up to play, all that kind of stuff—talk about how they weren’t a great group. But look at verse number 4: they all drank as they were led through the wilderness from the same spiritual… they all drank the same spiritual drink. Well, that’s a weird thing to say. And they all drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the capital-R Rock was Christ.

Like that name, the Rock. The Rock was Christ. The Rock that followed them. You remember the picture, don’t you? They were kind of hemmed in by these spiritual… you know, they were physical, but they were visuals of God’s protection on these people. Even in their sinful behavior, as he’s systematically killing them off in the desert, right, he’s still protecting his people. Whole generation of people under God’s judgment, but he’s still taking care of them. And he’s doing it in such a strong way.

And now Christ—it’s anachronistic almost, but we think, well, Christ came thousands of years later, 1,400 years later—but the one that was hemming them in and protecting them, the Rock that followed them, right? Think about the most important following at the beginning of the journey in the desert was all Pharaoh’s army chasing after them, right? And the Rock that followed them, that protected and defended them, where all this well-trained, well-equipped army died—it was Christ. Christ was the Rock.

He’s the sustainer and defender. He drank from the same spiritual drink, and Christ was the one hemming them in. He took care of his people, and he defended his people. And man, when it comes to my life, I can trust him to care for me. I trust him to care for me. He’ll take care of me.

The economy may bust. The world may go crazy. You may be digging a bunker under your house, but I’m told not to worry about tomorrow, right? And that was given to a generation of people knowing that the Roman army was going to sweep in and do amazingly terrible things to these folks. And he said, don’t worry about it. Look at the birds—they’re fed. Look at the lilies of the field—they look pretty good. They don’t worry about what they’re going to wear. He’s the Rock, the sustainer and defender. I can trust him to care for me.

1 Corinthians 15:45. Paul’s talking about the resurrection here. That’s a big deal. We need someone to reverse the effects of sin. The wages of sin is death—yeah, that’s true. But there’s something more profound that everyone understood about sin, and it wasn’t just my sin racked up on some account. I know that’s true. People are storing up wrath for themselves for the day of God’s wrath, and my sin needs to be paid for. But there was something that transcended that. It was a problem that started with Adam.

And so the discussion of Adam takes place here, and in verse number 45 it says, “Thus it is written, the first man Adam became a living being,” and then got us in a lot of trouble. “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Yeah, Adam was born and we went downhill from there because of sin. The last Adam came, and when the last Adam came, he fixed the problem.

Because the imputation of sin into the human race, to where even babies die before they make decisions about right and wrong—the sin that was transmitted from Adam to his people—well, Christ turns that around and now transmits his righteousness to give life to even a criminal hanging on the cross, putting his trust in the Messiah at the last hour of his life. He is a life-giving spirit. He’s the last Adam. He reverses Adam’s effect, the effect of imputed sin.

And when it comes to my sin, if I were to die the second after I put my trust in Christ, I know that everything about my life and all about the imputed penalty of Adam to my life is all canceled out. He cancels out all of my sin. He’s the last Adam. Adam got us in a big mess. Christ got us out of it.

Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4, verse 5—no, verse 15, I’m sorry. This is said several times in the book of Ephesians, but here’s a great name for Christ. You still with me on all this? Good.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is… what? The head. Okay? He’s the head. I should add verse 16: “from whom the whole body is joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

But you know, the body’s not much without the head. That’s why decapitation’s such a big problem, right? I mean, you need the head. So Christ is the head.

Context is the church, right? The head is in charge of the body. The head makes the decisions for the body. The head doesn’t have any hands attached to the head, right? The head has to send commands to the hands to pick up the pasta and eat it, and to take my feet and to head to the recliner tonight, right? The head makes those decisions. The body follows, right?

Context here is the church, and I love this. I mean, this is the whole point of sola scriptura churches. He is the head of the church. That’s the authority. It’s not a bunch of guys with funny hats. It’s not tradition. It’s not the magisterium. It’s not a bunch of decrees handed down through some big cathedrals. Christ is the head of the church. We’re his body. We have no authority to say anything if Christ doesn’t say it. He’s the head. That’s a great picture—biological picture.

21, Hebrews 3. Hebrews 3. Here’s one you may not have seen. You may have missed this one at some point in your study of the Bible. Therefore, holy brothers—Hebrews 3:1—therefore, holy brothers who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, next two words, the apostle and high priest of our confession. More on the priesthood of Christ next week.

But look at this. He’s called the apostle. Oh, I thought John was an apostle and Paul was an apostle. Yeah, that’s true. All those guys are apostles. James is an apostle. Christ is the apostle, right? I mean, there’s really three tiers. I happen to talk about two tiers.

I mean, there’s apostle with a small a when we are sent by a church to go do something. We send Bent out to do something, or we send, you know, the Zons out to China. They can be our apostles, small a. Then there’s the apostles who speak for Christ. That’s the, you know, those twelve guys who get names on the corners of the New Jerusalem walls.

But then there’s the apostle—the apostle that comes from God. Apostle means sent one. One who is sent. And he’s the one that God sent for us to do all the things that he does: the high priest, right, to represent us before God; the prophet to speak to us from God; and the king to lead us for God—the theocratic kingdom of God. More on that next week.

He’s the great apostle. You can pray to Jesus Christ the apostle. That’s probably one you haven’t used in prayer lately.

How about this one? Hebrews 12:2. The box is too small for the whole title, but I’ll give you the gist of it here. You know this one. You don’t even need to turn to it. Looking to Jesus, who is, at least how the ESV puts it, he is the founder and the perfecter of our faith. The founder and perfecter of our faith.

That’s a big, big phrase coming off of chapter 11, which was all about praising people for this great faith. And then chapter 12 says, oh, by the way, Jesus is the founder, right, and the perfecter of our faith. He is the one who starts it, he initiates it, and he improves it, right? Justification: I need faith to be justified. Sanctification: I need faith to grow. He is the initiator of my faith that justifies me. He is the sustainer and cultivator of my faith that sanctifies me.

So I look to him for faith, which is the key ingredient in the Christian life. I need to trust him more. Remember that great line, “I believe, but help my unbelief.” You’re going to the right person there, right? Jesus can do that. He is the author and perfecter, or the founder and perfecter, of our faith. That’s a great one.

1 Peter 2—here’s another one you might have missed. 1 Peter 2, verse 25. 1 Peter 2:25. “For you were straying like sheep, but now you’ve returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.”

Now, you’re saying we’ve already gotten shepherd. I get that, but we’ve had the good shepherd. That was a really agrarian picture. Peter is going to use these words in the more technical sense later in canonical history, obviously, and this is a bit of a play on words because, as he says later in chapter 5, these are the titles that we use in church.

Shepherd here—it means pastor, right? This is a picture of the leader in the congregation. And the great news here is when it comes to pastor, he’s your pastor, your perfect pastor. You’ve got an imperfect one. He’s the perfect one.

That’s why in some church circles you’ll hear people talk about under-shepherds. You ever heard that phrase? You ever used that phrase? Right? That’s not to take away from the shepherding task of people who are called and gifted to shepherd churches, but they’re really, if you want to be technical, they’re under-shepherds because the chief shepherd, as he’s called, right? He’s the real shepherd. He’s your pastor. He’s the perfect pastor. Now he’s going to get some flunky imperfect ones to come and do the teaching on the weekends, but he’s the ultimate leader of your spiritual life.

In the same passage, he’s not only the shepherd, but he’s also the overseer. The words here, shepherd—which means pastor—and then the word overseer—you get the word episcopal from that. That’s the word that’s translated in the old translations, bishop, which is used in Latin—not Latin. It is used later in Latin. It moves from that word to the word we translate senator. It’s used in Roman politics, that the overseer was the one who managed. He took care of things, whether it was in a political arena or in the church.

So I love the combination of pastor and overseer, or bishop. These are very ecclesiastical words, certainly at this point in Scripture. But the point is, he manages your life. He’s looking after you. He oversees. He takes an interest in your life. He’s your pastor and your overseer. Good one.

25, 1 John 2. 1 John 2. 1 John 2, verse 1. You know this one by heart, I assume. “My little children, I’m writing these things to you that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

Advocate. What is that? That means, to translate into the modern day, an attorney, a lawyer. That’s the picture here. The picture is the tribunal of the Father’s throne, the ultimate authority. The problem is we are sinners. We stand as guilty before God legally, but we have an attorney, and the attorney stands there in our stead, and he is our advocate. He’s my legal defense. Love that.

Got some lawyers here, right? Okay. We need you when we’re in trouble. Nothing feels better than to have a lawyer who knows what he’s doing step in when there’s a problem and someone’s accusing you of something. I need a lawyer. And when you’re guilty, you need a lawyer even more, right? And we’re guilty before the Father, and Christ is our attorney. You attorneys take a lot—you’re the brunt of a lot of jokes—but maybe that can change as Christians start to address Christ with this title: the advocate, the attorney.

Revelation 3:14. Here’s stand out. If you’ve been in church for a while, you’ve probably seen this title of Christ. Revelation chapter 3, and by the way, in chapter 3, all the seven letters to the seven churches, almost all of them have titles for Christ. I had to weed a lot of those out because I only have so much time here on Thursday nights, but that would be good for your own study. When you take the 178 titles of Christ and you pare it down, you’ll find a lot of them in Revelation 2 and 3.

But here’s one that’s interesting enough to make my top 30 list. It says, “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: the words of the Amen.” What? Yeah, that’s what he calls himself. The Amen. “The faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.” Or the archē. The ruler of God’s creation. The head of God’s creation.

But let’s just deal with that first one because it’s interesting and rare enough. He’s the Amen. What does amen mean? It means the prayer’s over, right? What does amen mean? So be it. Let it be done.

Now the box is small here for significance, and I wish I had room for the word sovereignty, but Christ is the embodiment of the sovereign plan of God. He carries out God’s plan. Because of Christ, God gets his plan done. He can get it done, but he chooses to get it done in Christ. Christ is the sovereign outworking of God’s great plan. Because of Christ, it’s as good as done. I love that, particularly in the book of Revelation, right? We need that.

The words of the Amen. Call him that in your prayer. Confuse the people that you’re praying with. But you’re catching on to that one? Thanks. That’s good. You’re still awake.

Revelation 5. Look at this one. Like this one. This one made its way into a sermon recently, I think. C.S. Lewis helped us with this one. To one of the elders, he said—heavenly vision here, the heavenly scene in chapters 4 and 5—he says, one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

He’s the Lion, Aslan. That word’s not in the Bible, just so you know. Came from our Oxford lit professor, C.S. Lewis. But the Lion—and it’s great. Why? Because just like the Mr. Beaver discussion with Susan, you remember that whole thing? He’s a foreboding power. He’s an undomesticated authority. Is he safe? Remember that whole line I’ve quoted several times? No, of course he’s not safe. He’s a lion, right? He’s not safe, but he’s good.

Consuming fire, the Father is called, and the Son is called the Lion from the tribe of Judah—foreboding power. And all I could say on that one is I’m glad I’m on his side, right? It’s good when Aslan is your friend. You want him on your team. You don’t want to be on the opposing side of the Lion from the tribe of Judah.

28, almost there, Rev 19. Revelation chapter 19. I love this one. Can’t help but take my mind as a kid. I used to draw little pictures. There’s two things I loved to draw pictures of when I was a kid. One was Formula One cars. I don’t know why. I guess because I grew up in Long Beach, right? And the races, Grand Prix came to Long Beach. The other one was motocross, right? I would draw pictures and it was always, you know, the coolest thing. Of course, I never had the outfit, but all the lettering on the leathers, on the thigh of the motocross rider. I’ve never gotten that picture out of my mind every time I read this text.

It says, “On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.” We’ll look at King next week, but let’s at least put Lord of lords here. Lord of lords.

King is one thing—they’re way out there. Lord is a lot closer to you. And I like that because I want to put it this way: you know, obviously, if he’s the Lord of lords, he’s the ultimate authority, right? He’s the Lord of all the lords. But I like the fact that, you know, we’ll look at King next week, but this week, the Lord concept—the one that touches you—whatever the leadership, the authority, the boss that touches you, it’s good to know, as I think through the quirks and injustices of the world: he’s the boss of my bosses, right?

Whoever it is that takes a position of authority in my life, he’s the boss of the bosses. And I love that thought because I can rest that that boss will always be held accountable to the Boss. He’s the boss of my bosses. He’s the authority of my authorities. He’s the Lord of lords. And it’s on his thigh, which is really cool.

29, Rev 22. We started in Matthew 1 and we’re already to Revelation 22. What a night we’re having. Verse 13—your Greek alphabet—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Meaning, right, obviously, Alpha and Omega, first and last. The A and the Z—that’s the way we would say it. He’s the A and the Z, the Alpha and the Omega, first and the last.

And I love this: after all that is said in the book of Revelation, it’s all about what God is going to do. We wonder sometimes, like in 2 Peter 3, is he going to do it? A lot of time’s gone by. Well, he is faithful because he’s eternal. Or maybe another way to put it, but it didn’t fit in the box—he’s faithful because he’s timeless, right? He’s beyond time. He’s supra-chronological. He’s above it all. Because of that, I know he’s going to do what he says. He’s faithful because he’s eternal.

And the last one in the book of Revelation—and you’ll like this one—Rev 22:16. There’s been a lot of imitators, but there’s only one that takes this title as the ultimate. Look at verse 16. “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David.” We started there in Matthew 1:1. But look at this: “the bright morning star.” The bright morning star.

I mean, there’s something about that that speaks to the end of an era and the beginning of an era. It’s the transition, right? It is that Christ is the one who ushers in a new era, a new day, a new world—which we’ve just gotten done explaining what it’s going to be like. He’s the bright morning star.

I like to put it this way: his arrival changes everything, and that’ll be good. When you see him—and you will, face to face—trust you’re on the right side of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, it’ll be a great change for you. But even if you’re not, it’ll be a significant, profound change for you. His arrival changes everything.

Book of the week. There’s a lot of these kinds of books, but I like the way this is done because he does it from a lot of different perspectives. But Lockyer—Herbert Lockyer—he did a whole series of “all’s” of the Bible, but this is a good one, and they sell it by itself: All the Divine Names and Titles in the Bible. It’ll go through Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But, you know, Lockyer was before computers, and he was doing it. He was doing the hard work, teasing all of these things out of the Scriptures.

So if you don’t have that book in your library, it’d be a good one to pick up. It’s probably available electronically on Kindle or whatever. It’d be a fun read for you to have.

All right, let’s pray together.

God, I do pray—it’s been my heart’s desire that as I’ve worked on this presentation, that it would fuel our devotional life. These are 30 of several others, but my top 30 at least, names that communicate something of your character, your attributes. They represent your authority and who you are. We come to you in many ways in the authority of these names, even now.

But God, as we saw there, as we started in Philippians 2, they should be a catalyst for worship. That you have bestowed on Christ a name that is above every name, and a whole series of names that are superlative—and they’re the best.

There’s a lot of people wanting to be the morning star. A lot of people wanting to be Lord. A lot of people wanting to be king. A lot of people wanting to be a lot of things, but you are the ultimate of all of those things. And we want to begin to work some of these titles into our prayer life. We want to just be enriched in our thoughts about you because we’ve understood something of the diversity, the spectrum of the names that are used in the Bible for your Son, Jesus Christ.

So make it an enriching experience for us to review this big chart that we worked through tonight. Let it help us to love you even more than we do right now. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.