June 18th, 2018

His Name is Jesus

“And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”  Mt. 1:21

In Matthew 1:20-21, Joseph is given a dream in which he is told his betrothed, Mary, has conceived a child by the Holy Spirit, and “she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”  Jesus means “Yahweh is salvation” or “Savior.”  Divinity entered humanity to save it.  And so a child was born, but more significantly, a Son was given. 

This Son Jesus was foretold in the Old Testament in numerous ways.  We want to examine the Old Testament Joshua, or Yeshua in Hebrew.  A servant of Moses, it is interesting to notice Joshua had been called Oshea until Moses changed his name.  Joshua was among the faithful who believed the Promised Land was there for the possessing and he led the Israelites into Canaan.  Joshua was a prophetic type of Jesus, especially in his role of captain of the hosts of God’s chosen people.

The Son Jesus also took on the name of Christ.  In Matthew 16:15-16, Jesus poses the question to His disciples, “But who do you say I am?  Simon Peter answered and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Peter recognized Jesus as more than man, scholar, prophet.  He recognized Jesus as Christ, the Son of God.  Christ is “Christos” in Greek, meaning the Anointed One.  It comes from the word “chrio,” to anoint.  Chrio also means Messiah, as it comes from the Hebrew word “mashach,” meaning to pour on and rub in the oil of anointing.  In the Old Testament the priests were anointed with oil in preparation to minister in the tabernacle and temple.  There is a revelation about the oil used to anoint the priests: in Hebrew the word for oil is “shemen.”  We see the root word “shem” or name; and can begin to apprehend that “mashach shemen” is pouring on and rubbing in the very name, nature and character of God!