Hamilton Elim Church

5 January 2025 - You Asked For It: The Lord Saves

What’s in a Name? dives into the power, history, and meaning behind the name above all names—Jesus. From Yeshua to Iēsous to Jesus, this episode unpacks how His name transcends cultures, communicates His mission, and declares the life-changing truth that The Lord saves. Featuring compelling insights, biblical truths, and a powerful testimony, this episode challenges listeners to reflect on the question: Will you let Him save you? Tune in for inspiration, revelation, and the name that changes everything.

Duration:: 29m
Broadcast on:: 05 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

Well, we're starting 2025 with our series, You Ask For It. You Ask For It. And this series is all about the questions people submitted back in December. They submitted all these kinds of questions, and so it's about what's the one thing you always wanted to hear on a Sunday? So today, I ain't gonna be responding to someone's question, someone's question. We're gonna get into it later on pretty soon, actually. So let me ask you this question. Has anyone ever had a pet with a ridiculous name? Have you ever had a pet with a ridiculous name? Like, what kind of name is that? You heard a name and you think, is that right? So ridiculous. Let me tell you, I'm gonna tell you a name that my sister gave her cat. She was a teenage girl. Let me just give you that picture. Straight away, you understand the name. And so she named her cat. She named her cat God, God. My dad hated the name. He says, "No way I'm calling that cat God." In fact, when my sister moved to boarding school, she changed the name to Blackie. Blackie, anyway. Anyway, this name was the cat called the cat God. And I said to my sister, you know, what'd you call the cat God? 'Cause hey, you know, 'cause when the cat's perched up there looking down at us. I said, "Hey, God's looking down at us." That was her logic. And I said, "Okay." But be careful what you name things. 'Cause names matter. Names really matter because what you name something has the potential to become. Has the potential to become sports team to understand this. I mean, you'll never hear of a sports team call itself the snails. Let's go snails. We've got this. We can take them down the snails. Let's go slugs. Let's go, you know. No sprinter nicknames themselves the turtle. Okay, no one does, okay. You have names like the warriors, the titans, the lions, and one of the greatest names on the planet, the all blacks. You have names like this. Names matter. They matter and they make statements. So be careful what you call your kids. Right? You know, when my kids were little, I'll say, come here, beautiful. Come here, princess. In fact, me and my wife, we were given the privilege of naming our granddaughter. To put a name on our granddaughter. And so I thought long and hard for the name of our granddaughter. The name that we gave our granddaughter is the name Marnia. Marnia is her name. Well, Marnia means in English, it's Cook Island name. It means beautiful. So when I ever call her name, I'm calling her beautiful. I'm declaring that over her life. You know, be careful what you call your kids 'cause their heads of potential to become. 'Cause sometimes when I was coaching rugby, I can hear, I can hear the way that some people call their kids. It's like, hey, names like waste of space, lazy, clumsy. Be careful what you call someone 'cause here's the potential to become. Be careful what you call your spouse, husbands. Do you want a spouse, do you want a queen for your wife or do you want an old bag? Do you want an old bag? Be careful what you call because they have the potential to become ladies. What kind of husband do you want? Do you want a lazy couch potato for a husband or do you want the object of your desire, right? Names had the power to become, to become. And what about yourselves? How many of us has spent years calling ourselves failures, unworthy, not enough? What we name things, what we name ourselves matters. It really does matter. Now imagine the power behind the name that God gave his son. It wasn't just any name, it was the name. The name that God will give his son. The name that changed everything. Jesus. Jesus, the literal translation of Jesus is Yahweh saves. Yahweh saves all the Lord saves. Yahweh saves the Lord saves. I see my grandkids arriving. I see beautiful turning up right now. They're right now, like always on time. Jesus means Yahweh saves, the Lord saves. See, our identity is tied into what we call, what we call. So this was his question, the question that was submitted, the question that I'm responding to, I thought it was a great way to begin 2025 with. And the question is this. Why and how did the name Yeshua change to Jesus? And what does it mean for us when we call on his name? Why and how did the name Yeshua change to Jesus? And what does it mean when we call on his name? What a great way to begin 2025, is we're gonna talk about Jesus, Jesus. Now when the New Testament was written, when the New Testament was penned, when every book, every letter was written, it wasn't written in English, sorry to say. So sorry to disappoint those who thought that disciples were walking around with scrolls of the King James Version. Okay, King James Version didn't exist. Okay, didn't exist. It was in Greek. And when it came down to pinning the stories of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, the name that was written was in Greek. It was the Greek name, Yesus. Yesus was the name. So when you began to read about Jesus in Greek, Yesus was what we read, Yesus. And when the name of Jesus was spread amongst throughout the normal world, it was Yesus, the Greek version of his name. And this name didn't just come out of nowhere. It's got a Hebrew beginnings, a Hebrew origins. And so around 200 BC, 200 years before Christ was born, Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scripture, what we call the Old Testament. Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. Into Greek, what a version that we call the Septulagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, 200 years before Jesus. And in this Greek translation, the name Yesus, the name Yesus, the name that was written for Jesus, the name Yesus appears 272 times in the Septulagint, in the Old Testament. And 270 times for the Hebrew names, Yerhoshua, where we get Joshua from, where we read our English translation, we see the book of Joshua, it's Yerhoshua. And in Greek, it's Yesus. And then later on, later on as you begin to read through the Old Testament, you get to the second, what we call the second temple period, you know, the book of Nehemiah, book of Israel, all of a sudden, Yerhoshua gets shortened to Yeshua. Yeshua, Yeshua. And both these names mean exactly the same. Yahweh saves, Yerhoshua and Yeshua means exactly the same. Yahweh saves. Now in the Greek, both names were just given Yesus. Yerhoshua saves. Think of Joshua and Josh. Joshua and Josh, well, my name is Anthony. That's my official name, Anthony and my passport is Anthony. But my shorter name is Ants, is Ants, both mean the same, Anthony, Ants. So one is formal, one is old school, Yerhoshua. The other is short and familiar, Yeshua. Yeshua, now by the time when Jesus is walking around, and the most common way to say the name is Yeshua with a shortened version. So his family, his disciples would have said Yeshua, would have said that to Jesus. Now here's what's really interesting. This is what, well, I think it's interesting, what's really interesting is that many Jews in that era had two names. They had two names, they had one for Hebrew context, and they had another for Greek Roman context. It's kind of like me, my name, my name, Anthony, it's my English name. My Cook Island name is Teppadi, Teppadi. So when I was growing up, when I was in Cook Island context, it was Teppadi, it was Papa, 'cause that's the name of my grandfather. So they called me Papa, as a little boy. Come here, Papa, they just called me 'cause that's my grandfather's name. So carry his name, Teppadi. And so just like they're back in the Jews in that era had two names, a Hebrew and a Greek Roman name, like the apostle Paul. The apostle Paul had his Hebrew name, Sha'ul, which we know is Saul. But he also had a Greek Roman name that he went by when he traveled. It was Paulos, Paulos we know as Paul, Paulos. And the reason for that was because he resonated more for his audience. When he began, when the apostle Paul began to preach, he would preach Yesus, who began to speak in the language he resonated with the people, Yesus. Now in the same way, Jesus, whose Hebrew name is Yeshua, would have been called Yesus and Greek speaking settings. Now this replacement is not a rejection of his Hebrew identity. It's simply a way to communicate his identity across different cultures. Now I know what you're thinking, okay, so how do we get to Jesus? When the gospel began to spread, it was spreading Greek. Yesus, wherever they spoke his name, it was adopted into Latin. Yesu and Latin is the way you pronounce it, Yesu. And it's spout with the letters I-E-S-U-S. Yesu, Yesu. Now as the languages began to progress and this language called English started to appear, I got switched out with Jay and that's where we get Jesus. Can I just say something, it's got nothing to do with this internet myth that it has to do with about the Greek God, Zeus, got nothing to do with that whatsoever. All to do with how languages evolves and that's how it is, Jesus. So it doesn't matter if you say Yeshua, your Hoshua. Hey, Zeus, Yesu, Yihu Karate, or Jesus. It does not mean the main transcends languages and cultures communicating the same life-changing truth. And what's that life-changing truth? The Lord saves, Yahweh saves. That's what his name means. That's what Jesus means, means Yahweh saves. And that's the truth. Now, I don't know about you, but the next question that I wanna know is this, save us from what? Save us the Yahweh saves, the Lord saves, saves us from what? Well, Matthew 121 says this, the angel appears to Joseph in a dream and says, you are to give him the name, Yesus, Yeshua. You are to give him the name, Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Okay, so that's what he saves us from, from our sins. Now, the next question I wanna know is this, what's sin? What is sin? What is this, now, sin, simply put is this, sin is separation from God. Anything you do, anything you say, anything you think that will separate you from God, anything that will separate you from his purposes, from his presence, from his promises in your life, that's sin. The things that separate you from his presence is sin, separation for God. So let's rewind, go back when sin came into humanity. The garden of Eden, the Adam and Eve walked with God, had fellowship with God. God's desire is for humanity to dwell with him and he with us. That is God's desire and it still is God's desire today for you to dwell with him and he with you. That is God's desire and that was the desire right from the beginning in the garden Eden, for humanity to be part of God's family, for humanity to dwell with him, to live within his goodness is God's desire. Until the thing that God gave us was lost when humanity chose separation, when humanity chose separation from God. Instead of trusting in God's perfect will for humanity, humanity sees the opportunity to define good and evil for themselves. Isn't that what we do? Isn't that what you do? Isn't that what I do from time to time? Don't you tell me what to do? Who are you to tell me what to do? I will live my life the way I want to. No one's gonna tell me what to do and certainly not God. I'm seizing the opportunity to define good and evil for myself. I am living my truth. My truth is king. Forget about God's truth. That is separation from God. That is the garden Eden. Outlived in our life today. Living our own truth. You know, I don't want to live my truth. I want to live God's truth. Then live your truth, live God's truth. Separation from God. Isn't that the story of humanity, right? We've taken our God-given creativity to build beautiful things. But at the same time, we've taken this ability to create, to craft weapons of destruction. The same hands that create art are the same hands that destroy lives. Why? Because sin isn't a mistake. It's a rebellion. That's what sin is. It's not mistakes. It's a rebellion. It's us rebelling against God. It's us rebelling against His goodness. It's rejecting God's authority and choosing our own way. That's what sin is. Rebellion. Choosing our own way. And sin leads to evil. Least evil. Evil that destroys relationships. Think about all the relationships in your lives that have ended. It was over for many of us, for some of us was because of betrayal, because of a lie, or because something was done to us, or something you felt was unfair. It led to break down a relationship. This is what sin does. Sin leads to evil, evil that destroys relationships, nations and souls. And here's the truth. God in His justice must condemn evil. God in His justice must condemn evil. And be glad that He does. Be glad He does. 'Cause you just have to open up the news. You just have to watch open up social media and see the heinous crime that humanity do to other human beings. What they do to other children. What they do to people who will lose their life just for being a different race. And be glad that God holds them to account. That evil must be condemned. Be glad it does. Be glad it does. Romans 623 says this. For the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. God condemns evil. And here's the thing, we're all caught up in it. That's the problem. We're all caught up in it. Regardless of how small we think our sin is, it puts us on a path of death and destruction. But here's the good news. God doesn't leave us there. Why? How do I know that? Because Yahweh saves. 'Cause the Lord saves. This is why the name of Jesus is so powerful. Because it's not just a name, it's a declaration of God's mission. Yahweh saves. It's God's mission for you. God's desire and it still lives with desire is for you to dwell with Him and He with you. That is God's desire. You are God's desire. Yahweh saves, the Lord saves. See on the cross, Jesus did what we couldn't. He took the punishment for our sins. He stepped into the place of destruction that was meant for us. In fact, Isaiah 53 verse five sees it like this. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on Him. By His wounds, we are healed. By His wounds, we are healed. Now, the question that I would ask, that I ask after reading all this is this. Why did God have to become a man? You ever thought about that? Why did God have to become a man? Because saving us from our sins requires something eternal. Saving humanity from their sins requires something eternal. And here's the thing, eternal beings can't die. Eternal beings can't die. It's in their nature, their eternal. One cannot have the resurrection that defeats sin and death unless there is first a death. I'm going to say that again because it was quite a lot in that one statement. One cannot have a resurrection that defeats sin and death unless there is first a death. So God, the creator of the universe, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last steps into His creation. Steps down from eternity into time. And He wraps Himself up and flesh and died for our sins. Not because He had to, but because He chose to. Why? 'Cause you are always God's desire. God's desire and still lives His desire is for you to dwell with Him in He with you. The cross was the payment and the empty tomb was the receipt. The cross is the payment, the empty tomb is the receipt. See, when Jesus walked out of the grave, He didn't just say, "I'm alive." He walked out and He said, "Paid and full." Paid and full. Your sin, my sin, every sin done over, finished, paid and full. The Lord saves. The Lord saves. That's what Jesus would say in Matthew chapter 20 verse 28. That's what he would say. "The Son of Man came to give His life as a ransom for many." He paid the ransom. He paid the rent. Sin and death had your number. Sin and death had your number, but He paid the price. A ransom, His life for you. The Son of Man came to give His life as a ransom for many. His name is the receipt that declares our freedom, that declares our freedom. That's why God became a man, to do what you couldn't. To die so we could live. And in the resurrection, He didn't just defeat death, but He opened the door to life ever lasting. That's what He did when He rose again. He opened the door and He says, "Come on in." God's desire and the still lives of the desire is for you to dwell with Him and He with you. The Lord saves. And here's the good news. This isn't just a story. This is an invitation. God is offering the gift of grace. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3 16, it's an invitation. He invites you into His grace, into His gift. The Lord saved not just from death, but from despair, not just from sin, but into freedom. And He did it because He loves you. It wasn't just the cross. It wasn't just the nails that held Him to the cross, but His love for you. His love for you. See, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you say Yeshua, YAHoshua, Yaisus, Yisah, Yaisu, Iukareite, or Jesus. The name transcends languages and cultures, communicating the same life-changing truth. The Lord saves. Yahweh saves. So when you call on the name of Jesus, you're not just speaking a name, you are declaring a reality. That's what you do when you call on the name of Jesus. You're speaking a reality. His name is the receipt. The resurrection is a receipt for your freedom. Why? Because the Lord saves. The Lord saves. Now the only question is this. The only question is this. Will you let Him save you? That's the only question. Will you let Him save you? Because calling on the name of Jesus isn't just about words, it's a surrender. It's a surrender. It's about recognizing that you can't save yourself. It's about laying down the weight of sin, not just trying to carrying it, or carrying it through, not trying to heal all your own brokenness. It's about laying it down. When you say the name of Jesus, you're not just speaking, you're inviting the one who holds all the power and authority into your situation. You're inviting Him into your life to save you. Not someday, not just in eternity, but right now. Right now. See, when you call on His name, Jesus doesn't just hear you, He comes to you. He comes to you, He steps into your storm. He steps into your mess. He steps into your deepest need, because that's what His name means. The Lord says in the best part, He's already done the work. See, the cross was the payment, and the resurrection was the proof. It was the proof, the proof of payment. He rose again. The resurrection defeated sin and death is the proof that it has been defeated. And all that's left is for you to call on Him and receive what He's already offered. So will you call on His name? Will you let Him heal you and make you new? Or will you just keep trying to carry what you're never meant to carry? The Lord saves. The only question is, will you let Him save you? I'm gonna end with this story. Have you heard of evil, can evil? Evil, can evil. This was one of the most craziest human beings on the planet. Evil, can evil, the guy who just motorcycles over crazy stuff. Man, this guy lived a reckless and wild life. In fact, he was in the Guinness Book of Records. This is what he was in it for, for the most broken bones. Does anyone want to beat that record? What's the record? He wants to be in the Guinness Book of Record. Try breaking that one. Well, he broke it many times. His real name was Robert. Robert didn't have the same, Robert, can evil. Didn't have the same ring, right? But his reputation was larger than life. Not in a good way. He was a gambler, a womanizer and a drunk. He lived for the thrill, but deep down, he knew he was lost. He knew he was lost in one day standing on a beach in Florida. God speaks to him. God speaks. He shows up, not on the way like in the movies or some lightning and thunder, but he spoke to the very core of him. He says, look, it wasn't audible, but I could hear him speak on the inside. And the voice of God said, this is it, Robert. Robert, I've saved you more times than you will ever know. Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. And it freaked them out. He didn't even know what to do with it. The only Christian he knows, he reached out to, the only Christian he knew in some sports broadcast named Frank Gifford. And he said, Frank, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? I've heard this experience. I don't even know where to begin. Long story short, evil, can evil, gave his life to Jesus, and he became a completely new man. Now, on the day of his baptism, the church was full of people that knew him. People who were colleagues, people who were fans, the place was full, packed with people. Coming to what's evil, can evil do? Something no one ever expected. It wasn't jumping over the Grand Canyon. It was being baptized in the name of Jesus. Place was packed full of people. In disbelief, coming to see with their own eyes. And before he's baptized, he gives his testimony. Gives his testimony. And the power of his story moved the whole room. He simply said this, he said this, do you know Jesus? (soft music) Have you met him? He will change your life. And in the church, there's never done an altar call. The pastor was there, he just rips up his sermon. And he goes, I don't need to say anything. If you want to receive Christ, come forward. If you want to be baptized, come forward, and they did. 700 people came forward and gave their life to Jesus Christ. And they not only gave their life, they wanted to be baptized. In fact, they ran out of water because so many people wanted to be baptized. They ran out of water. When evil can evil died and Anna's funeral, Reverend Robert Schuller, Reverend Robert Schuller said, he was there when he said his last words. And he said the last words of evil can evil, and it wasn't a wish I jumped over more cars. The very last words of evil can evil was this. Believe in Jesus Christ. Believe in Jesus Christ. In fact, on his head stone. It's not like all the fame and all the records that he'd done in his life. It is simply believe in Jesus Christ. Believe in Jesus Christ. That's the power of calling on the name of Jesus. It doesn't matter where you've been. It doesn't matter what you've done. When you call on his name, when you declare that the Lord saves, he meets you right where you are, and he will change your life. He loves you as you are. Come as you are, but he loves you too much for you to stay in your sinful state. And he says, come follow me. The more you follow, the more you find freedom. He changes everything, everything. The Lord says, and the only question is, will you let him save you? Will you let Jesus take your brokenness and make you whole? The same Jesus who saves is the same Jesus that changes everything. The only reason why I hear is 'cause he changed everything in my life. And here I am today. And many people in this room have the same testimony. We are on the path of destruction, and we're called on the name of Jesus.