Luke 1:30-31 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with GodAnd, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
The naming of a baby is a happy time. My middle girl, Karla, has twins girls who are two months old. I remember before they were born, how her and her husband bought baby books trying to finds names beginning with the letter “K”. In the end, they named them , Kendal and Katelyn. The naming of a child is important for the child will carry that name the rest of their life. Some say it will have an effect upon their life.
I heard a joke about a man whose name was William Stinks. He went to a judge to get his name changed. The judge said to the man, “I don’t blame you wanting to change that name. What do you want to change it to?” The man, replied, “Bill Stinks”. The angel told Joseph in Matthew 1, to name the baby born to Mary, “Jesus”. There are many name and titles given to Him in the Bible, but the most used is the name, Jesus.
I-THE WONDERFUL NAME OF JESUS IS A SIMPLE NAME:
Matthew 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
1-The name of Jesus is just a simple five letter word, and in His day was a very common name.
2-When I think of His name as being a simple or common name, it reminds me of his lowness or humility on earth.
3-He is the king of Glory leaving His throne in heaven and coming into this evil world as a servant among mankind. He was not born in a palace, but in a stable.
4-Suppose the Queen of England would denounce her throne and go the slums of London and become a scrub woman for the poorest family there. You would say, what humility! But that is nothing compared to the downward step that Jesus took that night He was born into this world.
5-In the early 19th century, a war-weary world was anxiously watching the march of Napoleon. All the while babies were being born. In 1809, midway between the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo, William E. Gladstone was born in Liverpool; Alfred Lord Tennyson in Summersby, England; Oliver Wendell Holmes in Boston; Felix Mendelssohn in Hamburg, Germany; and Abraham Lincoln in Hodgenville, Kentucky. People's minds were occupied with battles, not babies. Yet 175 years later, is there the slightest doubt about the greater contribution to history -- those battles or those babies?
So it was with the birth of Jesus. The Bethlehem crowds had no inkling that the infinite Son of God was asleep in their little town. Only a few shepherds came to see Him, and they left glorifying God. 1
II-THE WONDERFUL NAME OF JESUS IS A SAVING NAME:
John 20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
1-A person can call upon their goodness, and there will be no salvation. They can call upon their charitable gifts , and there will be no salvation. They can even call upon their religious rituals, and there will be no salvation. It is only when a person will call upon the name of Jesus will they be saved.
2-In the 1849, at the gold rush in California, a preacher came not for gold, but the salvation of souls. He would stand on a barrel and shout, “I got good news”. Men would come running and say, what is it? He would reply, the good news is Jesus Loves you and wants to save you from your sins. 2
3-A woman in India had learned that she was a sinner and that God is holy and cannot overlook sin. She often said, "I need some great prince to stand between my soul and God. Eventually she heard that the Bible contains the account of a Savior who had died for sinners, so she asked a pundit to read the Bible to her. He began at the first chapter of Matthew, and as he read the list of names in the genealogy of Christ, the woman thought, "What a wonderful prince this Jesus must be to have such a long line of ancestors." And when the pundit read, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21), the woman exclaimed, "This is the prince I want! This is the prince I want! The Prince who is also a Saviour!" 3
III-THE WONDERFUL NAME OF JESUS IS A SATISFYING NAME:
John 14:13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
1-How many people in the last 2,000 years have called upon that name to help them in a time of sorrow, or help them with earthly needs?
2-I think of a preacher friend who told me of how Jesus helped his family in a time of need at Bible College. He said, it was around Christmas , and they had no money for food. He gathered his family around the kitchen table and they begin to pray to Jesus that He would help them with their problem. He said, while they were yet praying, there was a knock at the door. When he opened the door, there was two ladies from the local Baptist Church. They said, the Lord had laid his family on their heart and they had come to help them. They gave them a week’s worth of groceries and $300.00. He then shared with the ladies the prayer they had just prayed. He said, they all joined in with a time of praising the Lord for his blessing.
3-Luke tells us in Acts 20:35 the words of Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
4-At one time at the City Temple in London, there was in the congregation a restaurateur named Emil Mettler, who was a close friend of Albert Schweitzer and a kind of agent for Schweitzer in Britain. Mettler would never allow a Christian worker to pay for a meal in his restaurant but once he did happen to open his cash register in the presence of a Secretary of the London Missionary Society. The Secretary was astonished to see among the bills and coins a six-inch nail. What was it doing there? Mettler explained, "I keep this nail with my money to remind me of the price that Christ paid for my salvation and of what I owe Him in return." 4
IV-THE WONDERFUL NAME OF JESUS IS A STRENGTHENING NAME:
Acts 3:6 Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.
1-How could Paul and Silas sing praises at midnight in jail after being beaten with rods? They could because they had being strengthen by Jesus.
2-A man told me that he had been in the hospital with a sickness that the doctors had given upon. They told him to go home and get things in order for he would die. He said, when he got home, he called upon Jesus in prayer and Jesus heard him, and healed his body. Where the Doctors had failed, Jesus healed his body.
3-Through that precious name, many have found His strength to overcome temptations.
4-The converted drunkard just about to fall to temptation, with the pint of beer sitting on the bar in front of him. He then looked through a door at the back of the bar into the living accommodation, and saw a picture with the name 'Jesus' on it. At that moment, he gained the victory, and turned and walked out of the pub, never to return, leaving the beer untouched, sitting on the bar!! 5
V-THE WONDERFUL NAME OF JESUS IS A SHAMED NAME:
John 19:19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put [it] on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.
1-They didn’t mean it for truth, but when they put the sign up, they did it in mockery. The same as the soldiers did, when they put the robe on Him. They were trying to same Him.
2-His name is still a shamed named today in our world. Men and women will take his name with their lips and drag it through the sewers of this world.
3-Even here at Christmas time, instead of people getting closer to Jesus, they go further away. There will be more alcohol consumed at Christmas time than at any other time of the year.
4-We should be not shaming his name, but sharing his name with the lost around us.
5-In a tenement district in New York City, a boy in ragged clothes was seen with a small piece of broken mirror in his hand. Holding it high in the air he moved it slowly back and forth, watching the narrow slit of a window above him as he did so. "What are you doing?" a man suddenly demanded as he shook the youngster roughly by the shoulder. "Like most boys in this neighborhood, you're probably up to some mischief, aren't you?" The boy looked up into the stern face of his accuser and said, "See that window up there? Well, I have a little brother who has a room on that floor. He's a cripple. The only sunlight he ever sees is what I shine up to him with my mirror!" Do we reflect the light of the Son so that someone in darkness may see? 6
VI-THE WONDERFUL NAME OF JESUS IS A SUPREME NAME:
Philippians 2:9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
1-Man shamed that name, but as Jesus committed Himself to the will of the Father, the cross, God took that name and exalted it above every name.
2-Daniel Webster once said: "If I might comprehend Jesus Christ, I could not believe on Him. He would be no greater than myself. Such is my consciousness of sin and my own inability, that I must have a superhuman Savior."
3-Napoleon summed up the admiration of the ages for Jesus Christ: "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I myself have founded great empires .... But Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day, millions would die for Him. Jesus Christ was more than a man." 7
VII-THE WONDERFUL NAME OF JESUS IS A SWEET NAME:
John 9:11 He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.
1-It was a sweet name to the blind man he healed in John 9.
2-I have been saved for 30 years and He still is a sweet name to me.
3-I feel as the songwriter when he wrote, “Jesus is the sweetest name I know, and He’s just the same as His lovely name, and that the reason why I love Him so.”
4-A blind man once stood on a corner at a busy intersection reading aloud Acts 4 from a portion of a Braille Bible. A gentleman on his way home stopped at the edge of the crowd that had gathered to listen. At that very moment, the sightless man lost his place. While trying to find it, he kept repeating the last three words he had just read: "No other name... No other name... No other name..." Many smiled, but the inquisitive bystander went away impressed. He had been searching for inner peace and therefore was ready to be influenced by a few words spoken "in season." He had heard the verse before, but that one phrase haunted him. Before morning he surrendered to the Holy Spirit's wooing and accepted the Savior. "I see it all now," he cried. "I've been trying to be saved by my own works and prayers. But Jesus alone can help me. He is my mediator. There is no other name whereby I must be saved." Thus a blind man's witness, given in a stumbling manner, was used to lead a seeking soul to Christ. 8
Conclusion-A Child with a mother were looking at a manger scene in the store. The child
said, I see the wise men, the shepherds, Mary and Joseph, but mother they forgot to put
Jesus in the cradle. Beloved, don’t forget to put Jesus in the cradle, in your life.
1-Bible Illustrator
2-Jerry Vines
3-Billy Graham
4-Leonard Griffith
5-Bible Illustrator
6-Bible Illustrator
7-Max Anders
8-Bible Illustrator
