Jesus

Well, I have to tell you, in my entire life, something has never, ever, ever happened to me that happened just a few days ago. This is one of those true Santa Cruz-y things that you hear about, but you don't think is ever really gonna happen to you, but it happened to me. I was hiking up in one of our beautiful redwood forests that we have around. How many of you love hiking? Can I see a show of hands? I mean, we're so blessed to live here.

So I turned a corner, this was actually the very trail I was on, turned a corner and very calmly, sitting in the middle of the trail, no more than eight feet in front of me, was a mountain lion. Now, I did not have the presence of mind to take this photograph. I was freaking out. I was screaming like a child. No, not really, but I did not take this picture. Somebody recently did take this picture up in the same region, and mountain lions have a pretty big range, so there's a very good chance that this is the guy that I saw, and so there it is, eight feet in front of me.

It's funny how your brain doesn't grok it right away. I thought, that is an unusually large bobcat with a long tail. You know, no, it's a mountain lion. So now what do you do? I don't know if you've noticed this, but any time that you go hiking on a trail around here, you see signs that look kind of like this, warning, mountain lion habitat, and it's full of line after line of really excellent advice about what you do if you see a mountain lion. Do you want to know how much of this advice I recalled when I did see a mountain lion? Zero, nothing.

What happened was, there was like a lion or two from this that was mixed up in my head with all this other emergency advice I'd ever heard. And so what I was thinking was, okay, now what do I do? Make sure my seatbelts are fastened, put on your own oxygen mask first, stop, drop, and roll. You make yourself seem bigger, mail Christmas packages early. One of these things is correct. So it was tough, but I didn't have to think of anything because the lion very calmly looks at me and gets up and turns away and starts to walk off the path away from me.

And so I said, whew, you know, okay, I'm not gonna go that direction. I am going to turn around and walk this direction, but I took two steps, then I remembered one line from those signs, which is don't ever, ever turn your back on a mountain lion. Do you know, don't make yourself pounceable. And so I whipped around because I thought I can't turn my back on a mountain lion. But then I thought, now my back's facing that way. What if he circled around? He's a clever mountain lion. So I whipped around again.

Let me just say I should try out for the nutcracker because I pirouetted my way all the way back down the mountain. It was dusk, the sun was setting. And so that was the longest mile I've ever walked in my life. So I grabbed a stick. I actually did take a picture of the stick. And so I was like, now I'm gonna try your worst lion. I have a stick. The truth is, and I got home and I looked this up, chances of survival unarmed against a mountain lion. You know what they are? Zero.

A guy like this decides your supper, guess what? Your supper. There is only one hope, one hope, apparently, when you're attacked by a mountain lion. And that's this, you have to be with other people. I don't know if you saw this, but a little earlier this year, there was a group of four female cyclists who were up in Washington state when they were attacked by a mountain lion. The mountain lion attacked one of the women. So everybody survived. The woman survived just fine, but it was because her friends came to her aid.

There were four of them together. Although I had to laugh when I looked at this picture of her friends coming to her aid. That's her. There were four of them. I'm only counting two of her friends. The other one is taking this picture. And I'm pretty sure which one I would have been. There's a mountain lion attacking our friend. You two, get the lion. I'll be on the AV team, right? But here's my point. There are times in life, more times than we realize, that you just can't rescue yourself. You need a rescuer. You need a savior. Amen.

As we continue our series, Unwrapping the Names of Christmas, let's talk about this. Here's what the series is all about. In the Gospel of Matthew, one of the two Gospels where the Christmas story is told, the infant Christ is given five names or titles. And each week in this series, what we're doing is kind of unwrapping another one of those names. Mark talked about Messiah last weekend. This week, I just want to focus on the name Jesus. Say it with me. Jesus.

What does it mean? You've probably said this name hundreds, thousands of times. Have you ever stopped to think, what does it mean? What does it mean that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow? What is it about that name? You know, in the Bible, names are often very significant, especially when God wants to do something exciting and perhaps unexpected. He changes history by first changing or giving a name.

Why wasn't this Christ child named, you know, Kyle, Kyle Christ or Ruprecht or something? Why Jesus? There is a specific name. You heard Jacob Jensen and his mom, Kristen, read the whole passage earlier today. And we just want to zero in on the last verse in today's passage. "She will give birth to a son," Matthew tells us in chapter one, verse 21. "And you are to give him the name," say it with me again, "Jesus, because," here's why, "he will save his people from their sins."

So today we want to focus in on that name Jesus. And what I want to look at is three things. What does it mean? What does it not mean? And what does it mean for me? What does it mean? What does it not mean? And what does it mean for me? Because if God is assigning this name, there is a reason. And we're supposed to pay attention to the meaning of it. Yet so often it slips right past us. I have relished doing this study. I've discovered some things that I did not know. And I believe you're going to really enjoy this look at the name of Jesus as well.

First, what does it mean? What does it literally mean? Well, in his language, Hebrew, it would have been pronounced Yeshua or Joshua as it's rendered in our Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures. So the Greeks, Greek was the most widely spoken language in Jesus's day. They didn't have the sh sound in those days in their languages. They couldn't say Yeshua. And so the Greeks pronounced it Jesus in their language. And that got rendered eventually in Latin, Jesus with a J. And then of course, eventually, English-speaking people pronounced that Jesus. But it's all the same exact name, just in different languages. Yeshua, Joshua, Jesus, Jesus, Jesu, all of those names are the same. Kind of like it's Pedro in Spanish, it's Peter in English, right? Carlos in Spanish, Carl in English. It's the same name, just different languages.

Now, what does it actually mean? Well, it's a combination of an abbreviation of Yahweh, which is the holiest name for God in the Hebrew language, and Yahshah, which is the Hebrew word for save or rescue. And so when you put those two words together in one name, the meaning is God saves. Say that with me. God saves. Isn't that beautiful? You are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people. Say it again, God saves. God saves.

Now, check this out. In the Christmas story a few months earlier, Jesus's cousin John was given that name as well. An angel tells Zechariah, you are to name him John, who becomes John the Baptist. John has a meaning too. It means God's gift. And so you put those two together, it's the gospel. God's gift is that God saves. You have a summary of like every epistle the apostle Paul ever wrote. You have a summary of the entire gospel in the two names that the angel assigned to those two babies. Isn't that beautiful?

You know, I was thinking, what are the other names that Jesus could have been named? This shows us the meaning of the gospel. I'm so glad the angel did not say you will give him the name Shofet. He could have, that's a Hebrew name, meaning judge. He could have said thou shalt give him the name Josiah, which means the fire of the Lord, or thou shalt give him the name Mordecai, which means warlike. But he didn't say any of these things, even though that's often how people perceive religion, perceive God, isn't it? Warlike, fire the Lord, judge. God says, no, give him the name that means God saves.

Just like John 3:17 tells us, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to what? Save the world through him. You know what's kind of cool? Watch this. So that name makes its first appearance in the Bible 1400 years before Jesus. Moses in the book of Numbers, chapter 13, is anointing his deputy, his successor, whose name was, anybody remember? Joshua, not a first. At first, his name is Hosea, which simply means saves or salvation. In this moment, Moses changes his name to Joshua. Moses coins a name. No, your name is no longer Hosea, which just means salvation. It's Joshua, which means Yahweh saves, God saves.

And I love the fact that he changed this because this reminds me of the shift that is the genius insight at the heart of 12-step groups, recovery groups. Everybody gets to a point, I think, where they know they need redemption, they need forgiveness, they need salvation, a second chance, but a lot of people get stuck in just salvation. I gotta save myself. I need a shot at redemption. And Moses looks at Joshua and he says, no, what you need to understand is only God can save you. Do you understand that difference, that distinction?

I mean, if Joshua had just been named Hosea and he would have been put before the people as their leader and his name is salvation, the people might have been tempted to look at Joshua and think, oh, Hosea, yeah, he's our salvation. And Moses is going, no, no, no, no, God is our salvation. Now, as you know, Joshua went on to be a mighty warrior and he delivered the Israelites from all the people that were in the Holy Land before them. And 1,400 years later, when Jesus is born, the Jewish people are encountering a different kind of enemy, the Romans, who've come in to colonize their country and they are very oppressive and there are brewing movements which would continue to grow and then finally erupt in a disastrous civil war about a generation after Jesus.

The people are thinking to themselves, our salvation lies in getting rid of the Romans. And so anybody who would have maybe had the chance, if anybody had had the chance to hear the angels say to Joseph, you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people, they would have thought, great, Jesus, Joshua, we need another Joshua, fantastic. He will save his people, awesome, we need salvation from their enemies, absolutely, from their sins. This was not in their imaginations about what their savior, what Jesus, what their warrior Messiah would come to do for them.

They didn't think they needed salvation from their sins. They weren't looking for salvation from their sins. They were looking for salvation from the Romans. In fact, if you would have asked them, do you need salvation from their sins, they probably would have said, we already have a religious system to provide salvation from our sins. The temple system takes care of the guilt of our sins. We just, we don't need forgiveness. We need salvation from the Romans. And if we're honest, we're not too far removed from them.

Because it's so easy for us to minimize the meaning of salvation. The idea of being saved from sins probably doesn't move the emotional needle, frankly, for a lot of people. It's like, oh, that's great, right? But what I need is a job. What I need is peace of mind. What I need is fulfillment or a sense of purpose. Forgiveness, well, you know, nobody's perfect. God forgives my mistakes. That's fine, I guess. And we reduce the meaning of saved from sin to kind of like God gives me a get out of jail free card or something.

But what happens when we think that way is we have reduced what it means to be saved from sin to just forgiveness. But the message of Christmas is much bigger than that. If you've reduced salvation to forgiveness, you've really missed the point of Christmas. And I'm talking to my own younger self here because even though I grew up in church, there are ways I really reduced what being saved meant. And what happened, honestly, is it really drained my joy and it narrowed my theological imagination. And I have a hunch this could be you too. And I have a hunch this is gonna just open your minds to appreciate what it means to be saved from sins in some exciting ways.

So let's unwrap this important idea. How am I saved from sin? Well, first he saves me from the guilt of sin against me, the guilt of sin. Watch this, the Bible says, you were dead because of your sins. There was nothing you could do to save yourselves. Then God made you alive with Christ. You were dead, God made you alive for he forgave all of your sins. How? By canceling the debt, the record of debt that stood against us.

Here's how this is totally different from how a lot of people perceive Christianity or really religion in general. They think of a scale, kind of a cosmic scale, that God measures their good deeds and bad deeds on. You've got the bad stuff I did, my sins, bad karma, however you wanna put it. And then you've got the good stuff you do. And if somehow at the end of your life, the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff, then you get to go to heaven and God blesses you and so on. A lot of people think that that's what religion teaches. The problem with this idea is you always feel unsure, have I earned it? Am I paid up? Am I good enough?

But this says, God canceled that debt. He kicked it into oblivion. He took it away, how? By nailing it to the cross. And here's where the beauty and mystery comes in, the cross. When Jesus went to the cross, he somehow took all the debt of all of that bad stuff and just canceled it completely. Now, the mechanism of how this worked is left mysterious for us in scripture. But just in that one verse, what does it say? It says that on the cross, he forgave, he canceled the debt, he took it away. What word do you see repeated there three times? He, that's the point. Don't miss the point in the midst of the mystery. He did it, not me.

I don't have to prove myself worthy with like my moral behavior resume. Somehow when Jesus went to the cross, he saved me from the guilt of sin against me. It says he will save his people from their sins, not assist his people with their sins or advise his people about their sins. He saves them from the guilt of sin. Now, this part of the whole what does it mean to be saved from sins thing? Frankly, I got growing up in the church as a young person. What I didn't get is the rest of what we're going to talk about today. This gets so rich.

So let's keep on wrapping the layers here because Jesus also saves from the power of sin over me, the mesmerizing hypnotic grip of sin over me. I'll put it this way. In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books and movies, Gollum is a creature who finds the enchanted but evil one ring. And even though the ring corrupts him in every way, he remains addicted to it. He calls it my precious. He's drawn to its beauty. And in fact, this ring has a pull over every single person in the books except for one. There's only one creature who seems to be able to resist its allure. And it's the very simple hobbit Sam, who even bears it, carries it for his friend and boss Frodo.

How is Sam able to resist its allure? Watch this, Tolkien explained, in that hour of trial, it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm. He knew his master Frodo loved him and he loved his master, his boss. And somehow that love was greater than the ring. And that's how it works for you and me too. Let me show you one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. And if you get this, it'll just change your life. 2 Corinthians 3:17, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. If you feel burdened or shackled, that's not the spirit of the Lord. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

How? And we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image, the character of Christ with ever increasing glory. When we contemplate Jesus, we're drawn to his beauty and we become more like Jesus. How's that work? Let me put it this way. I heard somebody say, if you want to stop sinning, stop trying to stop sinning. Does that make sense? You know, if you look at vineyards around here in the late winter, you'll see them covered with mustard flowers. It is so beautiful. I often wanna just go romp in these fields of yellow, except from now on, I'll always think, could be a mountain lion lurking in there somewhere. I'm gonna be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, but why do farmers plant mustard everywhere?

It's not just because it looks pretty, it's because mustard crowds out the weeds. I heard one farmer say the key to defeating weeds is to grow healthy plants that take their space. When the ground is covered by mustard plants, which are aggressive, you know, colonizing plants, then the weeds can't grow because the mustard's there instead, and the mustard's beautiful and makes great mustard, and it smells great, and it looks fantastic, right? This is a spiritual principle. The weeds can't grow when healthy plants take up that space in your head. And so when we contemplate the beauty of Jesus, the evil ring begins to lose its allure. Do you get that?

Now here's the problem. If this verse accurately described what most of us are contemplating with much of our time these days, it would read something like this. And we all who with faces glued to our news feeds contemplate the stupidness of other people are being transformed into their image with ever increasing anger, right? So much of what we're being pushed these days is we are looking at people that we think are aggravating and mean, and if you're conservative, you might look at progressives and think, oh, you know, woke snowflakes. If you're progressive, you might look at conservatives and think, oh, you know, reactionaries.

And maybe it's not political. Maybe you love Led Zeppelin and can't stand Taylor Swift or whatever, you know, you're always othering people looking at them, and what happens is you begin to think, I am so much better than them. And when you're in that position of moral superiority, that is the worst possible vantage point. If you wanna create unity, if you wanna create love, moral superiority is toxic to your own spiritual growth. Yet so many of us are in that place right now, and what happens as we contemplate these people that we hate is we begin to be transformed into their image too. We also become hateful, spiteful, narrow-minded, whatever vices we assign to them, only on the other side.

The answer to that is to contemplate the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we think of his sacrifice for sin, what he did for us, the price he paid on the cross, the things he taught us, how he lived, how he told us to live, it's kinda like that worship song, light of the world, you step down into darkness, you open my eyes and you let me see the beauty that made my heart adore you, and the hope of a life spent with you. You are all together lovely, you're all together worthy, you're all together wonderful to me. When you contemplate the glory of Jesus and his love for you, what happens is you are transformed into his image. You become gracious and loving just like him.

And I can prove it about you. Years ago, the now retired CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank, Willie Elliot McCray, on this Sunday of the year when we presented to Second Harvest the result of our food drive, afterwards, he was chatting with me and he said, "René, you know what I see when I look at this congregation?" I said, "No, I thought he was gonna say, really generous people." Here's what he said. He said, "I see people who know they are loved. And because they know they're loved by God, love overflows from them to others." When we contemplate the love of Jesus, it transforms us and it begins to free us from the shackles of the power of the mesmerizing, hypnotic allure of sin over us.

But there's more, let's keep on wrapping because it can also free me from the shame of sin over me. What do I mean by the shame of sin? So this week I'm on a Reddit board for pastors and I read somebody who's asking pastors for advice. And this person writes, "I was raised in the church and baptized. In my teenage years, I veered away. Over the past several years, I've done so many things, committed so many sins that I'm ashamed to even bring myself to pray. I feel I'm not worthy and I'm not, what do I do?" Truth is, probably you can relate to this. I can at times in my own life.

This week I was talking with somebody out in the community who once attended here, hasn't been here for years, told me, "You know, I watch every single week on the livestream and yet I can't bring myself to come to church. Why not, I'm so ashamed of what I've done?" And if that's you, listen to this, being saved from sin doesn't just mean, yeah, God gets you, you know, you're forgiven, you know, you get a pass. It means this, Hebrews 8:12 says, God says, "I will forgive their witness and will remember their sins no more." Jesus doesn't just forgive your sins, he forgets your sin.

And if you're watching right now, you're welcome. Because if Jesus forgets your sin, then we ought to follow in those footsteps and forget your sin too. And you're welcome, and you're welcome. Because he forgives me and saves me from the shame of sin with me. So this is just the tip of the iceberg about what it means, you know, the whole line that you hear in the Bible, you hear people say, Jesus saves, Jesus saves, what does it mean? It means all this rich stuff.

Now what does it not mean? Let me take it from a different angle and circle back to the idea that it's not just forgiveness. I mean, forgiveness is awesome. Who doesn't need forgiveness? But look at how rich this is. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus gets our sin and we get his righteousness. Like Ephesians 1:4 says, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.

You know, you might feel sometimes like I messed up, like God's looking at me saying, you lucky loser. I forgave your sin, but you're still so disgusting. No, you're holy and without fault in his eyes. It's not just forgiveness, it's a whole new identity. This is just so amazing. I heard somebody say it's kind of like this. You have an old dirty like piece of paper that serves as a bookmark. But if you put it inside a beautiful new book, what do you see? You don't see any of that. You can't even tell it's inside the pages. You just see the beauty of that book and that's what it means to be holy and without fault in the eyes of God.

It's not just forgiveness and also it's not just advice. It's not just advice. Jesus didn't show up just to advise us. In fact, Jesus himself portrayed his mission this way in Luke 4:18. He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. The gospel is good news. Not just good advice. I mean, there's good advice in it, of course, about how to live. But good news is different than good advice. News is something that has happened to you.

Here's some good news. Advice is something you gotta do. How do you feel when people come up to you and say, hey, you know what, buddy, I got some good advice for you? That just makes you feel like, oh no, here it comes. But hey, I got some good news. Oh, that makes you excited. The gospel's good news. I'll explain the difference this way. I was at Torrey Pines State Beach down at San Diego and it was the one time in my life I had to be saved from drowning. I was a youth pastor in my mid-20s, pretty good shape, taking the youth group down there to the beach for a day.

I went out swimming and I got caught on a riptide that was dramatic and I was remembering the advice on the signs this time, trying to swim against it. I just couldn't find the strength and suddenly a lifeguard pops up next to me and I'll tell you what that lifeguard did not do. He did not say, have you tried the backstroke? He did not say, try harder. It's so disappointing. Didn't you read the signs? He didn't come to scold, he didn't come to advise. He saved me and brought me all the way to shore. It's not just try harder type advice, it's good news.

And it's not just content. It's so easy to think of the gospel as just content. Like here's the four spiritual laws that you must believe in order to be saved or here's the salvation prayer that you gotta pray. Now of course it's God content, but it means much more than that to be saved. You remember when Jesus saved the woman caught in adultery in the gospel of John? She was surrounded by self-righteous men who were trying to condemn her and in fact stone her to death. Jesus not only silences her accusers and sends them packing, but then he turns to her and says, neither do I condemn you. And he empowers her to go and live a transformed life.

When it says Jesus came to save you from sin, it doesn't just mean here's some content, here's some doctrine. It means here's Jesus and he's with you. And when you sin, when you're in despair, when you feel ashamed, he's got his hand on your shoulder. And he turns to the accusing voices and I don't know about you, but often these are the voices in my own head. And he says, silence. And he sends them packing and he looks at you and says, neither do I condemn you. Now let's go and live a transformed life. It's just so rich.

So that's what it means, that's what it doesn't mean. Now what does it mean for me? Well, I'll close with this story. You know, you may have seen these neon signs downtown, some sketchy area of some old city on the sides of rescue mission buildings. Jesus saves. You ever seen one of these signs? And maybe you love these signs, but maybe if you're honest, they make you kind of giggle a little bit or feel a little awkward or a little like, oh, that's kind of an oversimplification, isn't it? What are they saying?

Let me just tell you something. My dad died when I was little, as you know. My mom remarried and when I was a teenager, my stepdad, Jet Turner, was a pastor. And here's a picture of our family in those days. There's my little sister, Heidi. There's Jet. There's my mom. And there's me, ready to hit the floor of the disco. Apparently it was the disco era, right? Look at that afro, good grief. But I said Jet was a pastor. Where Jet was a pastor was the San Jose rescue mission. His congregation was the Skid Row alcoholics and addicts who lived on the streets and at Skid Row hotels, right?

So when I would go to visit dad at work, be hanging out with members of his congregation. And one of the guys there was a guy named Andy. And Andy had been a professional artist. In fact, he'd been on staff at Walter Foster, the company that puts out books like How to Roberts. He worked on this book, for example. And as a budding teenage artist, I found this really interesting and we developed a bond. And sometimes Andy would even save up his money and buy me drawing tools and he'd teach me how to draw. He was talented.

So what got him to the streets? Well, he told me that he'd never touched a drop of alcohol in his life until he kind of got into the cocktail crowd and discovered on the first sip of the first drink that he was not born with a shut off valve for alcohol. And so he instantly became an addict. And that had control over him, right? Like the ring in Lord of the Rings. He became enslaved to it. And he wound up at the San Jose Rescue Mission.

So one day I was down visiting my father and it was a church service. It was his church, my stepdad. And he was preaching a message. And as he often did down in that context, he invited the men to come forward and accept Jesus if they wanted to accept Jesus as their savior. And a bunch of guys went forward and they're weeping at the altar crying, talking about how much they need Jesus Christ in their lives. And I gotta be honest, I felt really uncomfortable with that situation. I was a 16-year-old boy and I thought I was all kind of corny and weird and off putting and I distrusted the emotion of these addicts.

And so I sat in the back pew with my arms folded next to another alcoholic who was sitting back there too, kind of like scorning the whole thing. We were looking at each other like shaking our heads like, this is just stupid, right? So after the service, Andy says, René, I could tell you, you distrusted that scene. And you're right to maybe have healthy boundaries about where you place your trust. But you might wanna reconsider what you saw in that moment. He says, you know part of my story. I tried everything to stop.

He says, I ended up here on the streets in despair, suicidal. And then Andy said, here's the part of my story you maybe don't know. I was actually raised in the church. And he told me, I thought the message of Christianity boiled down to two words. Try harder. He said, the 10 commandments hung in our Sunday school room and I figured the idea was try harder to do those. And he said, and I tried but I ended up breaking almost all 10 commandments eventually. And so he said, I thought God hated me. I certainly hated myself. And so I spiraled down.

He said, I had nowhere else to go. I knew I was powerless over the mesmerizing, addictive quality of alcohol in my life and my own lack of self-esteem, everything. And he says, then I wound up here at the rescue mission. And God gave me a sign and I realized I had gotten it all wrong. The message is two words but the two words are not try harder. It's the two words hanging on the sign outside, René. Jesus saves. He said, René, you have to understand that is my only hope. That is my engine. He said, that is my motivator.

And in that moment I began to understand and eventually that became my only hope too. And dare I say, that's your hope. Jesus saves richly and beautifully and completely. So let me suggest that you apply this idea this week in these simple three ways. Remind yourself, I don't have to despair over my sin or my guilt or my shame or what God thinks of me because Jesus saves. And I don't have to fear about my future or have anxiety about the world's future because Jesus saves.

And remind yourself, I know my testimony and it's not, look how great I am. And it's not, well I tried harder, you should try harder too. It boils down to Andy's two favorite words, Jesus saves. Because God so loved the world that he gave us a son and he said, name him Jesus because God saves. And that's what you discover when you unwrap the name Jesus. Let's pray together, would you bow your head with me?

Lord I pray that you would just help us lose ourselves in wonder at the beauty of what it means that Jesus came to save us from our sins. And if there's anyone here who like the men at that rescue mission service, just feel that need to throw themselves on your mercy now. I pray that they would do that in this moment. As we take communion together in the beautiful name of Jesus we pray, amen.