What Is In A Name?

What is in a name?

- I remember a man named ‘odd’ that met a few years ago.

- what’s in name? - it all depends

- one physiatrist studied the names of 15000 juvenile delinquents and discovered that those with odd or embarrassing names were in trouble 4 times as much as others. So interested.

- You see I had to go through life with two first names - Jacob Benjamin

- Some of you had nicknames growing up. I remember growing where people would call me some embarrassing names - which I am not going repeat it here.

- With certain generation certain names were popular. Couple of generations ago names like Bob, Charles, were popular but now new names are popular.

- During the 60s lot of people rebelled against those names of their parents.

- So they did a survey on people that lived during the hippie era and here are some of the names that they actually gave their kids - Carrot, sunshine, fender, gravey, and here another name - Dubby

- can you imagin name you kid Dubby? “We don’t know why our child is having a drug problem?” ‘what’s his name? “Dubby” and there is his brother “Junkey “ right there

- Do you think naming them with such names had anything to do with it? Yeah maybe it did.

- now the trend today is that you want the coolest name for your child, sort of like designer name, a name that no one else have ever used before.

- People are now googling for names for their child. One parent commented that they don't want to name their child with same name as the serial killer Nebraska.

- So here are the top names for girls - 10. Abigail, followed by Emily, Maddison, clowey, lily, eva, olivia, isabella, ema, and the #1 names for girls Sofia.

- and the popular names for boys are Logan, Lucas, Jack, Maison, Jacob, Mason, Ethan, Jackson, Noah, and #name 1 is Aiden

- Now in biblical times name meant something. Often they were given a name related to the birth of the child or something related to the physical trait of the the child.

- For example we know the Easow means hairy and reason for it was that when he was born as hairy guy. His parents looked at him and said..yes he is hairy - let us name him hairy

- his brother Jacob was hanging on to his heels and they were twin/room mates, so his brother hanging onto his heels was called Jacob which means heel catcher

- There was one lady in the bible that was pregnant and the ark of the covenant had be stolen and she went into labor and when the child born they named him Ichabod - which means ‘glory has departed’

- would you play with a kid name ‘glory has departed’. This is my new friend ‘glory has departed’ - get him out of our house now.

- Josen has told me some of his friends he grew up with - attukanna, etc.

- but now I want to talk about the most important name of all

- the name that was given to our Lord when the angel Gabriel came to Mary and told her that she was going to bring forth a son and his name was to be Jesus and he would save his people from their sins.

- Jesus Christ is the name above all names

- It's a name that we divided human time by

- There is power in the name of Jesus Christ

- If you don’t belive me, say it sometimes

- Say it in a crowded noisy room and see how quickly people quiet down

- Is it interesting that even people who don’t believe in Jesus will use that name usually for profanity with sometimes even giving him name - unbelivable

- If they don’t believe in Jesus why do they use his name? Why don't they just say Buddha, or hara krishna.

- I will tell you what - by saying Jesus Christ they are acknowledging in a way that there is power in that name

- the bible says in front of the name of Jesus Christ every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that he is the Lord for the glory of god the father.

- Isa 9:6 says one of the famous christmas passages - let’s read it

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

in the following passage Isaiah tells us that each of these name that he uses gives us an insight of the character and purpose of God for you and his name is wonderful, counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.