His Great Name

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: In the beginning was the Word.

Dannah Gresh: Be ready to stand in wonder.

Nancy: Jesus, Yahweh saves, Yahweh’s One and only true Son of God—which is the Son of Man. He is God with us—Emmanuel. He shall be called Wonderful Counselor,  Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Dannah: Today we begin the study of the names of Jesus.

Nancy: I want to suggest that there may be no more precious name given to Jesus than this one—Friend of sinners. Jesus said to her, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” He is the Bread of Life. He is the Light of the world. He is the Good Shepherd. Jesus is the Truth. Jesus our Advocate. Alpha and Omega. A man of sorrows. The Lamb of God. Our Redeemer. Jesus is Amen. He is constant. He is unchanging. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is immutable, unchanging in His wisdom, His grace, His love, His power, His presence with us. He is Faithful. It’s all, all, all about Him.

Dannah: Welcome to the series “The Wonder of His Name: 32 Life-Changing Names of Jesus.”

This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of The Wonder of His Name, for Wednesday, March 2, 2022. I'm Dannah Gresh

Nancy: What’s in a name? Well, actually more than you might think. In fact, I learned recently that there’s a study called “onomastics.” Did anybody major in onamastics here? It’s actually a field of study, and it means “the study of proper names.” What do names mean, and where did they come from?

Our names are really important. For starters, they distinguish us from other people. When you tell me your name, it distinguishes you from the person who’s sitting next to you. Names are an important part of our identity. They tell a lot about ourselves.

In the Jewish culture, during the time in which the Scripture was written, names were often descriptive. They could describe a person’s background. They could tell you who the person’s father was, or they could say something about the parent’s hopes and aspirations for their child’s life. What would the child turn out to be like or to do or to be used of God?

In fact, many Old Testament names, and New Testament for that matter, end with the letters “ah” shortened versions of “Yah.” And many of those names are related to Yahweh. People wanted others to know that they loved God; that they were connected to God; that they had a heart for God. So you’ll see all this and more in many biblical names.

Now, throughout the Scripture, there are approximately 350 names or titles attached to Jesus. That’s a lot. And the wonder of His names is that these names reveal to us who He is. They tell us so much about Jesus.

• They reveal His splendor, His majesty, His exaltation. 
• Some of His names also reveal His humanity and His humiliation. 
• His names tell us why He came. 
• His names tell us about His work and His ministry on our behalf. 

I think there are so many names because there’s not one name or any small number of names that can adequately or fully capture the wonder of who Jesus is and what He came to do.

 

In my quiet time recently, I’ve been reading in the Gospel of John. I’ve just been highlighting different names of Jesus that you find just in that one book of the Bible. He’s called the Word, the Son of God, the Son of Man. He’s called rabbi or teacher. He’s called the Prophet referring to an Old Testament prophecy about a prophet who would come. He’s called the Messiah, Christ, Lord, the Lamb of God, the King of Israel, the Savior of the world, and the Holy One of God.

And that’s not to mention all those “I AM” names. Remember those through the Gospel of John? I am the Light of the world; I am the Bread of Life; I am the Good Shepherd; I am the Vine; I am the Door; I am the Way, the Truth, the Life. And these are just a handful of those many, many precious, wonderful names of Jesus.

And so today, we’re beginning a series that I have really been looking forward to. It’s called “The Wonder of His Name: 32 Life-Changing Names of Jesus.”

We're starting this series on the first day of a forty-day period leading up to Easter, a season that many around the world observe as Lent.

Now, I think there’s a lot of value in observing these kind of special days surrounding our holidays which were once “holy days.” But our holy days have become holidays. By forgetting where they came from and what they’re all about, we’ve stripped so many of these holy days from their significance and their meaning.

I think it helps us to be intentional about turning our thoughts and our hearts to the reality and the meaning of these special days on our Christian calendar—days like Christmas and Easter and Good Friday, days that are significant in our spiritual walk.

I want to encourage you over this season coming up between now and Easter to be intentional in focusing on Christ and preparing your heart to observe, to commemorate the Passion Week of Christ just several weeks from now. As we begin this series, I want to tell you what some of our goals are, what I’m praying and hoping God will accomplish in our lives.

First of all, as we study these wonderful names of Jesus, we want to learn more about Jesus, about who He is. We want to “consider Jesus” as the author of Hebrews tells us to do. We want to look at His splendor, His deity, His humanity, and many, many facets of His character and His work on our behalf.

But we don’t want to just learn more about Jesus. We want to get to know Jesus personally. I don’t want this study to be just textbook or theory for us, not just theology, but theology on fire in our hearts to bring us to a point of a deeper, more intimate relationship with Jesus.

The more we know Jesus will lead us to greater worship and adoration, admiration, and gratitude for who He is and what He means to us.

As we get to know Him better, it will also bring us to a place of greater humility, right? Because how can you look at Jesus who is so wonderful, so awesome, so amazing and still think that we are amazing. I mean, it puts us in our rightful place to see who He is compared to who we are.

 

But also, I love the fact that He lifts us up. He came to lift us out of our sin, to rescue us from ourselves. So it gives us a sense of confidence as we find ourselves to be in Christ.

As we behold the Savior, something amazing happens. Do you know what it is? We become more like Him. We take on His likeness as we behold His glory 2 Corinthians 3:18 says. We are transformed, transfigured into the same image from glory to glory. So we want to steadfastly gaze upon Christ and that gaze over these next weeks will be transformational.

So I want to encourage you not to just spectate or be hearers of this series. But I want to encourage you to participate. We're glad to send a resource related to this series, and it's called The Wonder of His Name. It's a beautiful, little book that has a section on each of the names we'll be looking at over these next weeks. There's a devotional reading, some meaningful quotes and Scriptures. If you don't have a copy of it yet so you can follow along with us, it's not too late. We're glad to send that resource to you as our way of saying "thank you" when you make a donation to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts for any amount. Just give us a call or visit us online at  . Let us know that you want to make a gift to help support this ministry, and as our way to thank you we'll send a copy of that book.

Use the Scripture as we go through this series to meditate on these names of Jesus. Perhaps journal, write down what you learn about Jesus, what blesses you about Him, study His names, worship Him. As you do over these weeks, ask the Lord to deepen your love for Him. Again, this is to prepare your hearts to celebrate that Passion Week of Christ, leading up to Resurrection Sunday.

Now, we have on our staff a woman who helps me at times with research and background study on some of these series. So when I started into this series, I asked Dawn if she would do some work. She’s a digger. She goes and studies things, and she pulls a lot of resources out for me. She sent me a file on each of these names of Jesus.

As she worked on this study, God did a really sweet work in her heart. I asked her if she would write it down because she was sharing this with me, and it was so fresh and full. Let me read to you what Dawn wrote as her response to this study.

When Nancy asked me to help her research the names of Jesus for an upcoming series, I thought, to be honest, This will be interesting but sort of ho-hum. After all, I’d heard most of those names since I was a small child. What more was there to know?

So as I began my research, I thought about the words of Paul, "that I may know Him." I had no idea what God’s Spirit had in store for me as I studied. With each name, my understanding of Jesus’ character and roles grew, but even more of His work in my life.

I was struck by the comparisons. He is at the same time my Friend and my Advocate but also the Judge. He is the humble Lamb of God and yet my great High Priest and the mighty Captain of the Lord’s host.

I learned more about Jesus from His Jewish roots as the Branch and the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And I wondered at His willingness to become my Redeemer and graft me into the family of God.

I was sure I knew everything there was to know about the good Shepherd, the great Shepherd, the chief Shepherd. So imagine my surprise to learn that Jesus is also my eternal Shepherd, Revelation 7:17. That makes me smile. I will always be His little lamb.

But it was the study on the Man of Sorrows that gripped my heart and changed how I will see Jesus forever. I was overwhelmed when I looked deeper into the pain in the Man of Sorrow’s heart. I saw Jesus over His lifetime and so many things that grieved His dear heart.

I saw the public scorn and sorrow when His family didn’t understand Him. I observed disappointments, deep sadness, and desolate loneliness. I heard the ugly crowds. I realized His pain over Israel’s rejection. I saw the disciples’ fear and desertion and the cowardly hypocrite’s kiss from Judas.

I wept over His struggle at Gethsemane. And then the actual suffering and awful separation from the Father that came at Calvary. I knew then that I have treated Jesus’ very personal, intimate, private anguish so lightly. My heart broke over my insensitivity.

And then I read the words "for the joy set before Him," Hebrews 12:2. Jesus endured it all, embraced it all for joy. He saw deep into the future when the saints of all ages will gather around the throne of God and all heaven will rejoice.

Jesus will look at those He has redeemed. And though He may remember all the pain, we will make Him glad. With grateful hearts we will praise Him for all eternity.

The Father elevated the risen, ascended Jesus to the highest place of honor and gave Him the name above all names. And some day, we will perhaps learn of yet another name that no man knows except Jesus Himself. [We read that in Revelation 19:12.]

I cannot hear anything now that deals with Jesus’ names without weeping. As I sat in church hearing the choir sing “Your Great Name,” I broke down crying and had to leave. As I drove home another day listening to “Jesus Paid It All; All to Him I Owe” on the radio, I had to pull over. My eyes were so clouded with tears.

I’m so thankful for this study and am certain it will touch hearts and help us know Jesus as never before.

Well, there is nothing ho-hum about the name of Jesus, right? The many, many names of Jesus. And the name of Jesus calls for wholehearted earnest celebration and response on our parts. That’s what I’m hoping and praying we will do during these days ahead.

You see this kind of visceral response, this joyful, this wholehearted inner response expressed outwardly to the name of the Lord throughout Scripture. Psalm 113:1–3 says,

Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its setting, [it’s all day long] the name of the Lord is to be praised.

And then the psalmist who said, “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 124:8). It’s a powerful name we’re about to study.

And then Proverbs 18:10 says: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous man runs into it and is safe.” Do you need a safe place for your heart in this season of your life? We all do. Sometimes we just realize it more than at other times. “The name of the Lord is a strong tower.” It’s a place where we can run and find safety. 

Isaiah tells us that we are to trust in the name of the Lord; that we are to fear the name of the Lord; that we are to love the name of the Lord; and that we are to give glory to the name of the Lord. Zephaniah tells us that we are to seek refuge in the name of the Lord. And Micah talks about the majesty of the name of the Lord. 

Remember on that Palm Sunday. In Matthew 21 where the crowd said, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (v. 9). Jesus Christ. 

And then the Scripture tells us once in the Old Testament (Joel 2:32) and twice in the New Testament (Acts 2:21; Rom. 10:13), “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there’d be people all across this country and around the world following by Internet who would call on the name of the Lord and be saved during this series on “The Wonder of His Name”? Oh Lord, may it be so! 

And if you have never called on the name of the Lord, you can do that today, before we even start this series. Say, “Lord, I need You. I call on You to save me from my sin, from myself.” Call on the name of the Lord, and you will be saved.

Acts 9:28 tells us that the newly converted Saul, who became Paul, preached boldly in the name of the Lord. And then in Acts 19:5, we read about the believers in Ephesus who were baptized in the name of the Lord. And as a result, the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled in the city of Ephesus. 

You see, if those who claim to be Christians, Christ-ones, would actually love and worship and follow the name of Jesus, I wonder if His name wouldn’t be hallowed and extolled and worshiped in our culture around us. 

In Acts 21:13 Paul says that “he is willing to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.” It’s a powerful name. It’s a worthy name. In 1 Corinthians 5:4, Paul talks about those who were assembled in the name of Jesus. That’s what we do when we go to church. We assemble in the name of Jesus. It’s a powerful name. And oh, how tritely we treat it sometimes. I want us to get a new sense of wonder at the name of Jesus. 

First Corinthians 6 tells us that we have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s no other name by which we must be saved by which we can be justified, made right in the sight of God other than by the name of Jesus. And Paul told the Colossian believers to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus (see 3:17). Everything. Do it in the name of Jesus. And then in James 5, James says that they were to anoint the sick with oil in the name of the Lord (see v. 14). 

Well, can you see that Jesus’ name is a wonderful name? And that’s what we’re going to be looking at, “The Wonder of His Name: 32 Life-Changing Names of Jesus.” There are 350, I’m told. I haven’t counted them. We’re going to pick just thirty-two of those, some of my favorite ones. And I hope they’ll be some of your favorite ones as we go through this series. 

Now, yesterday in my quiet time I was finishing another journey through the New Testament, and I was reading in the final chapters of Revelation. Something struck me that I had not thought of before, and it relates to the name of Jesus. It’s this thought that as a husband gives his name to his bride, so Jesus promises to give His name to His Bride, the Church, those who belong to Him will receive His name. 

You see this referred to in the beginning and in the end of the book of Revelation. In chapter 3 it says, “The one who conquers [that is one who is a follower of Christ who perseveres by grace to the end, that one who conquers] I will write on him the name of my God [Jesus says] and my own new name” (v. 12). Now, I don’t know what all of that means, but I know He’s going to give us His name. 

And then you come to Revelation 22, the last chapter of the Bible, where it’s talking about the New Jerusalem. And it says, “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads” (vv. 3–4). 

Is that awesome to think that Jesus would give to us His own name? It’s a brand. It’s a permanent mark of ownership. We belong to Him, He says. He declares us to belong to Him. It’s a mark of relationship. He calls us His own. He is privileged to be our Groom and to call us His Bride. He has taken us as His own forever and ever and ever. 

So, not only do we look and marvel at the wonder of His name, but we say, “Oh, what a wonder, Lord Jesus, that You would give us Your name.” 

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth in the first program in a series called “The Wonder of His Name: 32 Life-Changing Names of Jesus.” She’ll be right back. 

I hope you’ll join us throughout this entire series and dig into all these names of Jesus with Nancy. I think you will be truly amazed as you get to know Him over this Lenten season.

We believe there’s nothing more important than getting to know Jesus. And this series will help you do that. Nancy mentioned another great resource to help you know Him deeper. It’s The Wonder of His Name devotional. This is a beautiful book including artwork we commissioned from calligrapher Timothy Botts. Along with all the artwork creatively expressing the names of Jesus, you’ll also read a devotional from Nancy—one devotional from every name in this series. We’re offering it to you during this Lenten season, and I think this is a book you’ll refer back to many times, one you may want to read leading up to Easter in the years to come. When you contact us with your donation, you’ll need to specify if you want the paperback version for a donation of any amount, or the hardback coffee table edition for a donation of $50 or more. With either one, we’ll include a bookmark with thirty-two names of Christ on it, the names Nancy will cover in this series.

We're able to bring you teaching like this thanks to the gifts of listeners who appreciate the ministry of Revive Our Hearts and want to continue hearing it. When you contact us with your donation, ask for the book, The Wonder of His Name. The website is ReviveOurHearts.com, and the number is 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow, Nancy launches into the first name of Jesus. Now, again, here's Nancy.

Nancy: These wonderful names of Jesus we’re going to be looking at over these next weeks are, well, they’re wonderful. But they’re not just for us to savor and enjoy. But there’s more that we’re called to because those of us who know and love the name of Jesus are then called to proclaim that wonderful name to the world around us. So many in this world, millions and millions and millions, billions of people perhaps, have no knowledge of the name of Jesus. And apart from that, there is no way they can be saved from their sin. 

And then some who do know the name of Jesus trample on that name, treat it casually or carelessly or use it in a profane way. My prayer is that as we savor and enjoy and wonder at the name of Jesus, that then we will begin to proclaim that name to others who desperately need to know Him.

Pastor Shai Linne uses a genre that you may not be familiar with. It’s called “spoken word.” And in just a moment you’ll know what that is. He uses it in a powerful way to communicate the wonder of the name of Jesus, to communicate the gospel.

Now, this is a little different style perhaps than what you might hear in your church on Sunday, or maybe you do. But as I heard this piece, I thought this would be a great ending to this introductory session on “The Wonder of His Name” as we seek to spread the fame of the name of Jesus. So listen to Shai Linne on “Spread His Fame.” 

All praise to the name of the Savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame,
He’s raised from the grave, so His fame we proclaim.
Salvation by grace through faith in His name. 

All praise to the name of the Savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame,
He’s raised from the grave, so His fame we proclaim.
Salvation by grace through faith in His name.

Jesus, the beautiful and blessed Son.

Immutable, majestic one
Who was resurrected from the grave
for the depraved.
He paved the path for some.
Place faith in His passion, son;
Be saved from the wrath to come. 

He’s fabulous, His status is immaculate.
I’m lacking the vernacular to adequately capture His glory.
Incomparable, unconquerable, all-powerful, unstoppable,
Absolutely phenomenal. 

No obstacle He can’t navigate.
He’s God, and so He fascinates.
With Him it’s impossible to exaggerate. 

Lord of all continents,
Source of all consciousness,
His compliments are the consequence of His accomplishments.
Every sphere of life, He’s the Lord of it,
And every other power is either fraudulent or subordinate. 

At first we snubbed Him,
Now His vessels of mercy love Him.
Your highest thought is infinitely unworthy of Him.
Beyond vocabulary His actions vary.
His wrath is scary,
All His adversaries are imaginary.

He has no competitors.
Ask Nebuchadnezzar, bro.
He’ll mess you up, have you eating grass,
You can bet He’s amazing. 

He takes in blatant, flagrant vagrants,
Breaks them, remakes them, and shapes them
To hate sin. 

Jesus!
There’s no better name!
That’ll never change,
And He’ll forever reign while we spread His fame. 

So all praise to the name of the Savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame.
He’s raised from the grave, so His fame we proclaim,
Salvation by grace through faith in His name! 

All praise to the name of the Savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame.
He’s raised from the grave so His fame we proclaim
Salvation by grace through faith in His name!

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, calling you to savor our Savior and find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Him. 

All Scripture was taken from the English Standard Version.
Dawn Wilson, Lindsay Swartz, and Darla Wilkinson provided helpful research assistance for this series.

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