Tag Archives: names

Names mean something (Mark 5:7-9) July 23, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Luke 23-24

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Mark 5:7-9
Jesus: Come out of that man, you wicked spirit!
Unclean Spirit (shouting): What’s this all about, Jesus, Son of the Most High? In the name of God, I beg You—don’t torture me!
Jesus: What is your name?

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

As with several of the parallel incidents in the gospels, the writers give us just a little different account of the happenings around a particular event. It’s not unlike any eye-witness account you might hear in a court of law if you sit as a juror in a trial. If every witness told the same story about an event in exactly the same way with exactly the same words, the opposing attorney would scream that the witnesses had been rehearsed. No one sees an event exactly the same way another person sees it.

Because of our individual backgrounds, we always see events through our lens. We subconsciously pick out the things that are most important to us. Consequently, we each see every event just a little different than the person sitting right next to us who observes the same event. So we should not be surprised that the gospels shed a little different light on each of these encounters.

Back to the story and two things I’d like us to see from Mark’s observation of Jesus’ command to the man possessed by many demons.

Jesus commands the demon to come out of the man. And the demon replies, “…In the name of God, I beg you…” Did you notice that? The demons serve Satan. They devote their lives to the powers of darkness. That give their all to the enemy of God. They do everything they can to thwart the plans God has for His kingdom and our salvation. They want to capture our soul and turn us to wickedness and away from God and His holiness. These demons want to lead us on the world’s path toward eternal destruction and join them in Satan’s hell.

Yet, when Jesus confronts these demons with the command to leave this tortured man, the demons cry out, “In the name of God…” They know where the real power lies. They understand their boss, Satan has no real authority. He has no real power. He cannot defeat the creator of the universe. His strength cannot match that of the Almighty’s. He knows it and he is very afraid when Jesus comes near.

The demon expects great pain, severe punishment because of who he is and what he’s done when Jesus comes near. The demon is now in the presence of God and expects judgment when he encounters His Son in the flesh. He assumes his eternal punishment will begin right then since Jesus has come from heaven and touched His feet to this planet. The demon assumes time has ended for him. “I beg you – don’t torture me.”

The demon’s response when Jesus came near tells me that when Jesus lives in us, we do not need to fear the evil of this world. Evil cowers in the presence of Christ. If we live by the Spirit as Paul describes it, and let God’s spirit consume us, teach us how to live, and guide our steps each day, we do not need to fear what Satan may put in our path. He will flee in the presence of God. He can not stand in the power and presence of God.

The second thing about this encounter is what we learn about the importance of names. The demon called out God’s name when it saw Jesus. The demon understood that even the mention of His name meant power over him. Then Jesus asked the demon its name. That probably seems strange to us. Why would Jesus ask the demon its name? What’s so important about knowing the demon’s name?

Throughout the Old and New Testaments and on through much of history until just a few years ago in our country, names were important. They meant something. People chose a child’s name carefully because subconsciously a child grew into the meaning of their name as they came to understand what it meant. Think of some of those characters of the Old Testament and see how they lived up to their names: Abraham – father of many; Jacob – deceiver; David – beloved; Elijah – my God is YAHWEH; Job – persecuted. Names are important.

I sorrowed when my school teacher daughter told me about the names of the children in her first class as a teacher – Chaos, Clinique, Shithead, Abcde. Names with horrible or no meaning strapped to children whose parents helped them live up to those standards because they held them to no standards as six and seven year old kids. It makes me wonder sometimes what parents are thinking when they label their children or what God thinks when He pens their name in the books that He will open on judgment day. How much do we live up to the name we are given by our parents?

Legion bowed at the name of Jesus. We will too. If Jesus lives in you, we should live up to His name. It meant something then and it means just as much in the evil times in which we live. 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

What’s in a name? (Matthew 10:24-25) March 1, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Judges 17-21

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 10:24-25
Jesus: A student is no greater than his teacher, and a servant is never greater than his master. It is sufficient if the student is like his teacher and the servant like his master. If people call the head of a house “Beelzebul,” which means “devil,” just imagine what they’re calling the members of his household.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

The two verses that make up this paragraph in Jesus’ lesson to His disciples has been used in many ways through the years. I’ll admit I’ve taken the first verse by itself to talk about training to the peak of understanding. Learning to become as near the Master as possible. But I’ll also admit, I’ve never really put these two verses together until I discovered them as a paragraph in The Voice. It’s an interesting way to look at Jesus’ teaching.

The head of the house holds a special place. If you think historically about the place that person holds, you begin to understand more about what Jesus talks about here. In our mobile society, we don’t get the full impact of His message as His listeners would.

Today, kids leave home and go to school, find a job, buy a house and seldom live with their parents anymore. They create their own households. But not then. Until the last century, societies were not very mobile. Children grew up in the home in which their parents lived. Families lived in the same house for generations. The head of the house most often was the eldest male member of the family, but sometimes the responsibility was passed to a son when the father became to old or feeble to carry out the responsibilities.

The head of the house held significant responsibility. The family succeeded or failed by the wisdom of the head of the house. He made the financial decisions for the house. He gave the blessing for marriages of the sons and daughters within the household. He decided what the occupation of each member of the household would be.

The family learned from the head of the house. The head of the house decided who would go to school and who would not. He decided what level of education each member of the household needed and made provision for it. He was the spiritual leader of the house. He determined the religion the family would follow. If he said the family was going to the synagogue, they all went to the synagogue. If he decided idols would be allowed in the home they would be there and everyone would worship them.

He was the master of all that happened within the boundaries of the families property. The family lived and died by the edicts of the head of the house. Part of being in a particular household meant carrying that family name. You were identified by your household, your genealogy, your heritage. That’s part of the reason genealogies were so important to the Hebrews and records exist today from hundreds of generations in the past. It’s part of the reason our scriptures are full of genealogies. Names meant something.

Names still have significant impact, not as much as they used to, but they carry a lot of weight. Think about a few names that bring some visceral response. Mother Theresa. Billy Graham. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Jeffrey Dahmer. Adolf Hitler. We could go on and list dozens and dozens of names that cause us to think good thoughts or bad thoughts about those names.

Imagine the whispers if you lived in Milwaukee and your name was Dahmer. I expect a few folks changed their name after the notorious story of Jeffrey’s killings and cannibalism. And the family name Hitler has all but disappeared. Names bring reactions when we hear them. They do now and they did in Jesus day.

Now think about Jesus’ words. If the head of the house is called, the devil, and he is the best of the bunch, what will people call the rest of the household members? Get the point? So whose house do you want to be a part of?

So, do you want to be in the household of Beelzebub or the household of Jesus? Both bring people into their families. Both teach their doctrine. Both require allegiance to them. One brings death, the other life. One deals in hate and destruction, the other shares love and hope. One wants selfish gain, the other deserves our worship. One tempts with temporary pleasure, the other guarantees eternal life. One pretends godlike qualities, the other is God. Which house do you want to belong to? Which name do you want to carry in this world and the next?

The surprising thing is you get to make a choice. You can choose which name you want to carry. You can decide which house you belong to. You can determine who will be the head of your house. But you only have those two choices, Beelzebub or Jesus, the devil or God. It should be an easy decision. Make the right one if you haven’t already.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

I AM – Now! (Exodus 3:1-18), Jan 22, 2015

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Today’s Podcast


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Today’s Devotional

Today’s background scripture comes from Exodus 3

Time has no bounds with me. I surprised Moses by announcing My name to him. Those living today are not so surprised because language changed immediately upon My announcement. But in the Hebrew language they had no word for now, the immediate present. It really doesn’t exist. As soon as you think about the present it becomes the past. And if you think about what comes ahead and will become the present soon, you speak of the future. So there really is no present…. Except for Me.

I am not bound by the limits of space and time and exist in the past, present, and future. Time has no meaning with me and so I gave Moses My name as “I AM”. The present. The impossible moment. The one who exists that cannot exist. The one who creates from nothing. The one who knows all. The one who spans time from beginning to end and beyond either end of time itself.

When you meditate on it, you realize there is no now, except for Me. Everything else is past or future. You can do nothing about the past because it is gone. You cannot change the past. It happened and you can only plan and act for the future to make it better. Your hopes and dreams always cue to future events, never past events. They have disappeared and cannot come back for you. You can learn from your past, but you cannot change your past.

You can look toward your future, but you have no promise of tomorrow. No one knows the day or the hour death will knock on his door and call life to an end. You can hope for the future, but there are never promises for tomorrow. So what about the now that really doesn’t exist? What can you do with that? You can only give it to Me because I am the only One and the only thing that truly exists in the present. You can trust Me to hold you in my hands as you slip from future hopes to past events in your journey of life. One day you will face eternity and time will become meaningless for you, too. Until then, trust Me with your present. I AM will always be there when nothing else can.

Today’s Scripture

Today’s Bible reading plans include:

Ready – Exodus 3:1-18
Set – Exodus 3; Luke 22
Go! – Exodus 3-5; Luke 22

Exodus 3:1-18
1Now one day when Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, he guided the flock far away from its usual pastures to the other side of the desert and came to a place known as Horeb, where the mountain of God stood. 2 There, the Special Messenger of the Eternal appeared to Moses in a fiery blaze from within the bush. Moses looked again at the bush as it blazed; but to his amazement, the bush did not burn up in flames.

Moses (to himself): 3 Why is this bush not burning up? I need to move a little closer to get a better look at this amazing sight.

4 When the Eternal One saw Moses approach the burning bush to observe it more closely, He called out to him from within the bush.

Eternal One: Moses! Moses!

Moses: I’m right here.

Eternal One: 5 Don’t come any closer. Take off your sandals and stand barefoot on the ground in My presence, for this ground is holy ground. 6 I am the True God, the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

A feeling of dread and awe rushed over Moses; he hid his face because he was afraid he might catch a glimpse of the True God.

Eternal One: 7 I have seen how My people in Egypt are being mistreated. I have heard their groaning when the slave drivers torment and harass them; for I know well their suffering. 8 I have come to rescue them from the oppression of the Egyptians, to lead them from that land where they are slaves and to give them a good land—a wide, open space flowing with milk and honey. The land is currently inhabited by Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 9 The plea of Israel’s children has come before Me, and I have observed the cruel treatment they have suffered by Egyptian hands. 10 So go. I’m sending you back to Egypt as My messenger to the Pharaoh. I want you to gather My people—the children of Israel—and bring them out of Egypt.

Moses (to God): 11 Who am I to confront Pharaoh and lead Israel’s children out of Egypt?

Eternal One: 12 Do not fear, Moses. I will be with you every step of the way, and this will be the sign to you that I am the One who has sent you: after you have led them out of Egypt, you will return to this mountain and worship God.

Moses: 13 Let’s say I go to the people of Israel and tell them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to rescue you,” and then they reply, “What is His name?” What should I tell them then?

Eternal One: 14 I AM WHO I AM. This is what you should tell the people of Israel: “I AM has sent me to rescue you.”

15 This is what you are to tell Israel’s people: “The Eternal, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob is the One who has sent me to you.” This is My name forevermore, and this is the name by which all future generations shall remember Me.

16 Round up all the elders in Israel and tell them, “The Eternal, the God of your fathers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has revealed Himself to me and said, ‘I have been watching over you, and I am deeply troubled by what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 So I will rescue you from the oppression you have suffered in Egypt, and lead you to the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—a rich and productive land flowing with milk and honey.’” 18 They will listen to all that you tell them; you and the elders will then go to visit Egypt’s king and tell the king, “The Eternal, the Hebrews’ God, has appeared to us. We ask that you allow us to travel three days’ distance into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Eternal.”

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.

In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.