Is name important to God?

I've been reading through the Bible, and I've noticed that in His communications with His people, His prophets, the phrase "my name" comes up over and over again. One of my tasks will be to determine approximately ("exactly" being a goal I am afraid to think of claiming) how many times that phrase, or those similar to it, are in the Bible.  NAME is important, as we see in the first chapter of Matthew, where the angel tells Mary, "Thou shalt call his name Yeshua" (the angel wouldn't have said Jesus, for reasons I mentioned before), I knew that name was important to God, at least in this instance.

I began to think about others whose names had been given by God, or even changed by God, and the idea of name and its importance became more clear to me.  Changing a person's name changes a person's identity, the way a person thinks of himself and the way that others view him, especially if the name means something.

Two significant names that were changed were those of Abram and Sarai, as they were originally known, at least in our English translation.


Abram/Abraham

4 “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations.
5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations.
6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.

Genesis 17:4-6 (New King James Version)

 7 “You are the LORD God, who chose Abram, and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and gave him the name Abraham;

Nehemiah 9:7 (New King James Version)

Abram means "exalted father," while Abraham means "father of a multitude" - a change in meaning, however slight it may to appear to us, that was important to God.  The name was a foreshadowing of what was to come. 

Sarai/Sarah

15 Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.
16 And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.”

Genesis 17:15-16 (New King James Version)

I am happy to have brought myself on this journey, for just a little bump in the road has given me new insights. I had always been taught that Sarah meant "mother of a multitude" because of the words of verse 16, and because "mother of a multitude," parallels the meaning of Abraham's new name, "father of a multitude." 

However, and here's the bump in the road, according to Strong's Concordance, Sarai means "princess," and Sarah means "noble woman." Why God changed her name from one meaning to another with almost identical meaning may reveal more of what He knew about identity. Though I suspect there may be more to the meaning than is clear in Strong's, there is this aspect, too, that is important: God knew that Abram and Sarai, when they spoke to each other using their new names, would remember what the names signified. She was the noble wife of a man with a new name meaning, "father of a multitude," and how could that not help but affect her self identity and her hope for children? Each time Abraham called her "Sarah" the new sound would bring to her mind of the future God had in mind for them as the beginning of a long and great line of descendants.

The name Yeshua does the same for me. All my life I have thought of him as Jesus, a person who brought us salvation. Now I know that he not only is the person who brought us salvation, He is Salvation!

His real name

Several times, no -- many times, I have heard sermons telling how the Joshua in the book of Zechariah is a type of Jesus, and that Joshua, or the Hebrew pronunciation, Yeshua, Yahshua, or other very similar-sounding variations, is actually Jesus' real name. So, as I said before, what? That seemed to be the speakers' attitude, as well. The name doesn't matter, does it, as long as we know Who we are talking about? Therefore, does God care about the name? Or does He care about NAME at all?

I thought about the text in 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.

NAME is important as made clear when the Angel told Mary what to call her son, and why. He said to call His name Jesus, according to our English Bibles.

As I thought about it, I saw two reasons why the Angel could not have said, "Jesus." For one, the Angel would have spoken to Mary in her own language, not Greek, and secondly, the name Jesus means nothing. It is an English transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name, Yeshua, Yahoshuah,YAHshuah, or a variation thereof, the name known in English as Joshua - a name that does mean something - "Salvation," or "Lord who is Salvation." That our Savior is named Salvation has such tremendous impact that it makes delicious chills go up my spine!

I am not a scholar and do not pretend to be. Many internet sites discuss the name of Jesus/Yeshua. In fact, I just now looked up: Jesus, Yeshua, name - and found many links of a more scholarly nature than this blog will ever be. It is very interesting reading.

Getting started

It's been a couple of weeks since I opened this blog. For a long time I have been wanting to keep a record of what I am learning in the Bible, and it seems the best way for now is here -- less chance of getting lost amongst my papers, or a computer crash killing all my documents.

None other Name

I started this train of thought and study a year ago, about the time I was reminded that the name we use for our Saviour, Jesus, is not His real name. I have known for a long time that Jesus wasn't His real name, but I had always thought it didn't matter. It's not the Name that is the whole point, is it? It's the Person! Those were my thoughts, and so I had always just let it pass.

Then I thought about the verse in Acts 4:12, a verse I had been taught as a child, that often was required as a memory verse as I was growing up:

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

So that started me thinking. What does the name "Jesus" mean? Is name important to God? Does it make a difference what name we use? I am going to attempt to find answers to these questions, and knowing how all things are connected, I know the answers will lead me to new questions, and possibly new understandings.