“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS.”
(Luke 1:31, NKJV)
We are still discussing a subdivision concerned with the mystery of godliness: God manifesting Himself as an earthly Being. In the Scripture quoted above the angel gives Mary direct counsel concerning the name of her son – He should be named Jesus. Later his “adopted” father, Joseph, would give him this particular name (Matt 1:25).
The last number of years has been marked by enormous controversy concerning the name of the Son of God. Two widely read and distributed publications, C Korsten’s Get out of her, my people and Todd Bennett’s Names: The Father, the Son and the Importance of Names in the Scriptures, are both based on the premise that the name Jesus is Hellenized (Hellenism relating to the Greek-speaking Jews) and thus loaded with various pagan associations. They elaborate on this premise stating that we should not use the name Jesus at all, as we are invoking a number of other gods as well. They are also opposed to the use of any other related names of God and Jesus (like God, Lord, Christ, etc). The name Jesus Christ should therefore be replaced with Yahusha HaMashiach. Obviously this is the correct Hebrew version of the Messiah’s name, used in the Old Testament, and can therefore not be faulted, but in my understanding the use of this name is no pre-condition to addressing the Son of God.
Both the aforementioned publications not only develop a theology that absolutizes the Name of God in a manner analogous to the Law of the Old Covenant, but which is also guilty of being illogical and linguistically inconsequential.
Scripture makes it clear that we should never exalt anything of a spiritual nature to the plane of norm of law, as the use thereof ironically then becomes an idol. Zealous to do the right thing we are deceived into making an idol of that very thing. A good example of this is the bronze serpent featured in Num 21. Israel sinned and God thus sent a plague of venomous snakes to bite the tribe. After Moses’ intercession for Israel’s heinous crime God gave Moses this assignment: “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.’” So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.” (Num 21:8-9).
As years passed this bronze snake – once given by God as active object of salvation to the camp of Israel – became an idol. In 2 Kings 18:4 we read the following – “[King Hezekiah] removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.” Nehuhtan means a thing of copper. Power does not lie in the thing of copper, but in that to which it prophetically points the way – Christ Jesus. Therefore this example is used by Jesus himself in John 3:14-15, which leads in the great John 3:16 – “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
- Sela: Which spiritual objects/elements in your life have become idols?
- Read: 2 Chr 13; Job 11; Rev 15
- Memorise: Job 11:13 & 15 (very important in understanding this teaching)
