Naming a baby.

Steve Brown:
Naming a baby. Let’s talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
That was Steve Brown. He’s an author, seminary professor and our teacher on Key Life, a program all about God’s radical grace. We’re committed to bringing you Bible teaching that’s honest, straightforward and street smart. Keep listening to hear truth that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. If you have your Bible open at the Isaiah 9, and we’re going to be looking at that most of this week. If you were listening yesterday, and I know you’re busy, so you maybe didn’t make it. We spent considerable time talking about things that didn’t sound like Christmas, but were very important to Christmas. And I’m going to show you today. We looked at the Biblical concept of names. To us a name is just a name. If it sounds nice, it is nice. And your parents gave it to you too. Do you know, I used to work in a radio station where the guy who was just before me, his real name was Cecil Puckett. And that just is not a good air name. So he changed his air name to Kelly. And, his theme music has anybody here seen Kelly and I used to call him Cecil Puckett and it used to get him angry, when I would say that. What’s in the name? Biblically a lot is in a name, it reflects the reality behind the person who is named. And if you know the name, Biblically, of somebody, their real name, then you have power over them, because there’s power in knowing the name. And then we looked at revelation 2:17, where we are going to have a new name in heaven, and it’s going to reflect everything that’s important about us. Okay. Oh, let me give you one more text. And then we’ve got to move on to some Christmas themes. This is Philippians 2:9-11.

Therefore

Talking about Jesus.

God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus 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.

Jesus said he gave us his name and that we can mention his name with great power, every time we pray. That’s why at the end of most Christian prayers, most Christians say I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. You could add, if you wanted to, I’m not asking this in my name. I’m a nobody. I’m asking this in the strong and powerful and mighty name of Jesus Christ. Alright, I want to talk about that some more, but we’ve got to move on. If you have your Bible turn to the ninth chapter of Isaiah, it’s one of the great prophetic passages that have to do with the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. And I’ll tell you something, Mary and Joseph, when they were thinking about naming Jesus, thought about this text. And then as per the instructions, they called him Jesus, because he would save his people from their sins. But through their mind went the ninth chapter of Isaiah, starting at the second verse.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation; thou hast increased its joy; they rejoice before thee as with joy at the harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

And, let me skip down to the sixth verse.

For to us a child is born to us, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder; and his name

Here it comes.

will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Oh my. What a prophecy about the coming Messiah. Now there’s scholars who will say, that’s not talking about Jesus. They’re twits, don’t listen to them. They’re scholars who will say, that’s talking about a King and, who’s going to help his, no it’s not. That passage is a passage that some hundreds and hundreds of years before the birth of Messiah, nailed it. That’s Jesus. And that’s the name that we will study as we look at Christmas. Isaiah got it right. And we’re going to take some time to look at some of the names. Well, at all four of the names that were given by God, through Isaiah, to us for Jesus. And the first thing you ought to note is that the coming Messiah would be named Wonderful Counselor. Now, if you’re using the King James version of the Old Testament, they put a comma between Wonderful, Counselor instead of having four names, you have five. Wonderful and Counselor being two. I just want you to know there’s no comma there. Wonderful magnifies the Counselor. And so what Isaiah is saying that the coming Messiah will be an incredible and Wonderful Counselor. The term Wonderful in the Old Testament, regularly means supernaturally. And so the Counselor means the thought of supernatural wisdom. That’s the prophetic name given to Jesus. The Supreme and super natural fount of all wisdom. When I was a young pastor. And when you get old, you think of those days a lot. I had received considerable training at a graduate school, a seminary, and I knew a lot. Now I’m a professor on occasion at seminaries. And I wish I knew as much as my students know, but at any rate, I had been trained in pastoral psychology, extensive courses. I’d spent my clinical training at the Harvard Experimental Hospital, where it was hard to tell the psychiatrist from the clients, to be honest with you. I could, all kinds of stories came out of that, but I walked the wards and wrote verbatims or verbal write-ups on the patients. I understood mental illness, I understood depression, I understood guilt, I understood bipolar stuff. And I figured having been trained with all of this, that when I entered the ministry and served my first church with all the training that I had received and a little bit of common sense, there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be many problems I couldn’t fix. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening. I got an email yesterday from a man who was asking me about a couple in his church, he’s a pastor, who were looking at divorce. And then he told me the story of the man and the story of a woman. And I thought, you know, you can’t do it, but if you were a pagan counselor, you would suggest a good lawyer for both of them and tell them to get a divorce, because this just isn’t working. And I told this young pastor, I said, you, the nature of what we do is such that by the time they decide to come to us, it’s often too late. And so the success rate is never very good. Well, I learned that early on. I can’t tell you the times, when I wanted to say with Bob Newhart in that comedy bit, when he was being a psychiatrist on a talk show and they explain their problems and they went to him to give expert advice and he shakes his head and he said, yeah, you, they, this can’t be fixed. There’s nothing you can, I know that feeling, because I’ve been there and I’ve done that. And so over the years, sometimes I would picture Jesus standing behind the people who were needy or depressed or afraid or lonely. And I would say, look, I identify because I’m human too, but let me talk to you about Jesus, who is the Wonderful Counselor. Hey, you think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Of course, that was Steve Brown, teaching us from Isaiah 9, as we enjoy our approach to Christmas this week. By the by, we also touched on Philippians 2:9-11. So what’s in a name? Well, as we are discovering quite a lot. More to discuss tomorrow as we enjoy this amazing Christmas week. Hope you’ll join us. So, if you enjoyed Steve’s teaching today, then there’s a free gift, you are going to love. It’s a CD with six audio devotions from Steve on the real meaning of Christmas, the incarnation of God in Christ, Scripture and devotional questions follow each of those six messages. Get your free copy of the CD right now by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also drop an email to [email protected] and ask for the CD. By mail, send your request to

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