A New Name
Rev. Res Spears
Time for Something New • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I have not always loved the name Res.
When I was growing up, it was far too easy for people to tease me — and I allowed it to bother me far too much when they did so.
Reese’s pieces. Rees-ey cup. Whatever.
Then there was the time that I thought Walter Cronkite was saying my name as my dad watched the nightly news from another room. “RECently, in Washington....”
Many have wondered through the years about the significance of how my name is spelled and pronounced. There are other Reeses in the world, but probably not many who spell their name the way I do — RES.
I was named after my father, Roy, and my grandfather, Everett. So, my real name is Roy Everett Spears III. But both Roy and Everett were alive when I was born, and Mom didn’t want me to be Little Roy or Little Everett. So she took my initials to make the name I would be called from birth.
I don’t know how she came up with the pronunciation; I’ve always assumed it had to do with the drugs they gave her for pain during childbirth.
But her decision to pronounce my name with a long, rather than short, vowel has been one of the defining complications of my life.
Just a couple of years ago, one of my seminary professors, upon learning that he’d been pronouncing my name wrong prior to meeting me in person, actually asked me, “Why haven’t you changed your name in all these years?”
I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just come to like the fact that even the correct pronunciation of my name tells people they’re going to have to deal with me on my terms. Annette would probably say that I play by my own set of rules.
And it’s all my mother’s fault, because she’s the one who gave me this name.
I was doing a little bit of research into names as I prepared this message, and I learned that non-standard names began to come into vogue in America after WWII.
Prior to that, the U.S. was full of Roberts and Jameses and Marys and Bettys. Now, we have rock star Frank Zappa’s children, Moon Unit and Dweezil. Not to mention the child of Elon Musk, whose name can’t be typed without special characters and apparently can’t even be pronounced by humans.
Perhaps Res isn’t so bad, after all.
My name has significance to me, and not just because its pronunciation tells people they’re going to have to deal with me on my own terms.
It’s significant to me, because it reminds me of my father and my grandfather. Whenever I sign my legal name, I’m confronted with the fact that I come from a certain stock of people, that I carry on their legacy to some extent.
And names in the Bible often had similar significance. For instance, Simon bar Jonah was Simon, son of Jonah.
Sometimes the significance of a name was in the event that created the name. Babel, which means confusion, was the name given to the place where God stopped construction of the great tower by confusing the languages of the people who worked on it.
The name “Moses” comes from the Hebrew word that means “to draw out,” because he was drawn out from the water by the Egyptian princess after His mother placed him in a basket of reeds and floated him in the Nile River.
But nearly as important as the meaning of names in the Bible is the one who GAVE the names.
Abram, whose name meant “high father” was a childless old man when God promised him a son through whom a new nation would be born and then gave him a new name, Abraham, which means “father of a multitude.”
Throughout the Bible, name-giving is a picture of authority.
God gave Adam authority over the newly created earth and then allowed Adam to assert that authority by naming all the animals in it.
But God named mankind, as we see in Gen 5:2
2 He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.
We normally think of Adam and Eve as the names of the first man and woman. But what this verse tells us is that God called them both ish — Adam, which means mankind. WAnd what this suggests to us is that God had created man and woman to be partners.
When Adam awoke from the sleep that God had induced in order to take Adam’s rib to make the first woman, the Bible tells us he called her ishshah, which is simply the feminine version of the word ish.
This suggests to me that Adam considered Eve at this time to be an equal partner with him in the created order of things. She was still ish, just like he was, but she was now the feminine version of ish.
In fact, we don’t the name Eve until after the two had sinned against God in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis, chapter 3 records that event, along with God’s response to it. He pronounces a curse on the serpent who tempted them to disobey. And then He describes to Eve and then to Adam the consequences that would follow their choice to disobey Him.
Look at what God says to Eve in verse 16.
16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”
That line that reads, “your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you,” has been widely misinterpreted throughout the centuries.
In the context of the first three chapters of Genesis, what we SHOULD see is that the fellowship God had created in the Garden — this place of perfect shalom, of perfect peace and contentment and order — had been broken.
Sin had already caused Adam and Eve to turn in on themselves. They now had shame over their naked bodies, where before there had been none. And each had blamed another when God asked them about their disobedience.
And what God was saying here in verse 16 was that sin meant the intended partnership model of husband/wife relationships was now broken.
Henceforth, what had been created as a partnership of peace would all too often devolve into strife and jealousy. The woman would want to dominate her husband, and the husband would want to be a tyrant over the wife.
Of course, not all relationships are this way, but I think that if you look at the arguments between husbands and wives, you’ll find that many of them are grounded in this reality: Both parties are struggling for power, to be the figure of authority, when in reality we were created as man and woman to be partners supporting one another and lifting one another up and considering the other to be more worthy than ourselves.
We see just a couple of verses later that Adam began calling the woman Eve. And in so doing, he was asserting that he had authority over her — just what God said would happen.
So, we have two people whose names were changed in the Book of Genesis — Abram and Ishshah. What’s the difference?
Well, one was a blessing and one was kind of a curse. Abram became Abraham and received God’s blessing. Ishshah became Eve, and husbands and wives have been fighting for control of the remote ever since.
What I want you to see is that when God gives names things, He does so with authority, and the names are fitting and proper for His purposes.
“God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.” He called childless Abram Abraham, and that man became the father of multitudes.
So, as we continue this series that I’ve called “Time for Something New,” I want to point you to the next new thing promised to followers of Christ — a new name.
Remember that we’ve talked about the new heart and the new Spirit we receive when, by God’s grace, we place our faith in Jesus as the only one who can reconcile we lost sinners to God.
And we’ve talked about then being made by the Holy Spirit into new creatures whose new life in Christ should give us new ambitions, new desires.
And in the Book of Revelation, we see that Jesus promises his followers they will receive a new name in heaven. We see this in chapter 2, in the letter Jesus dictates to the Apostle John to the church at Pergamum. We’ll pick up in verse 12.
12 “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: The One who has the sharp two-edged sword says this:
13 ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days of Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.
14 ‘But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality.
15 ‘So you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.
16 ‘Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.
17 ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.’
Now, we talked about this letter a couple of years ago, when we looked at Jesus’ seven letters to the seven churches of Asia. So, we’re not going to spend too much time on it now.
I’ll remind you that Pergamum was the center for many religious cults, including worship of the Roman emperor as a god. False gods were so prevalent there that Jesus described the city as the place where Satan dwells.
And it seems that some of this pagan worship had wormed its way into the church there. So, Jesus calls on that church to repent.
And in verse 17, He promises the overcomers two things: hidden manna and a white stone with a new name written on it.
Now, I believe the overcomers are those who are truly believers. Jesus told His disciples on the night before His crucifixion not to be afraid of the persecution they would soon face. Even as He knew He would soon be arrested and crucified, He said, “In this world you will have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”
What I’m suggesting is that we who have followed Jesus in faith — we whom the Bible describes as being IN Christ — are already overcomers. Just as we share in his death and resurrection, we share in His being an overcomer.
So, this verse in Revelation refers to believers. And for them, there awaits some of the hidden manna and a white stone with a new name written on it.
Now, the hidden manna is an obvious reference to the manna that came down from heaven each morning to give sustenance to the Hebrew people as they wandered the wilderness for 40 years, waiting for God to allow them into the Promised Land. A portion of that manna was placed in the Ark of the Covenant and was therefore “hidden” from them.
But Jesus had described Himself as the Bread of Life. And His reference to the hidden manna that overcomers will receive is His way of saying that all who put their faith in Him and Him alone will receive eternal life. HE will sustain us in eternity.
So what of the white stone and the new name?
That’s a little harder to work out, and there are several theories.
Now, I’m not dogmatic in my interpretation. But perhaps the best theory, given the context of Pergamum, where idol worship was widespread and had even infected the church, is that Jesus is making light of what was known as the tesseron.
“A tesseron was “… given to those who were invited to partake, within the precincts of the temple [at Pergamum], of the sacred feast, which naturally consisted only of meats offered to the idol. That stone bore the secret name of the deity represented by the idol and the name was known only to the recipient.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Re 2:17.]
So, the idea here would be that Jesus is saying something like this: “So, you want to go into these temples to false gods and get your little white stones with the secret names of those false gods and fall down at their impotent feet? Let me tell you that those who put their faith in ME will receive LIFE, and the stones they receive will have MY name written on them, the name that is above all names, the name that those who have not followed Me have denied.”
Now, this is a bit different interpretation of this passage than I had even a month ago — and again, I’m not dogmatic about this interpretation, because I can’t be certain about it.
But after studying it more, I DO believe this is a better interpretation than the one in which WE receive a new name in heaven. Perhaps we WILL receive a new name, but the name that will be most important to us there will be “JESUS.”
And here’s the thing: If you have followed Jesus in faith, you have ALREADY received a new name.
It’s the name that Luke records in Acts, chapter 11, where he writes that Barnabas and the Apostle Paul preached the gospel together for a year in Antioch, “and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”
We who follow Jesus are called after HIS name — CHRISTians. Therefore, we are called to be like Him and to be about HIS work and to turn from the things of this world.
But that’s not what was happening in Pergamum. There was a significant portion of that church that CALLED itself Christian, but still allied itself with the pagan culture that surrounded it.
The church had been infected by the unrighteous world and its unrighteous behavior. Some of those “Christians” committed immorality, and they worshiped false gods.
They were Christians in name only. And Jesus warned them that their judgment would be swift and harsh if they did not repent and turn to Him and Him alone in faith.
It’s interesting to note that the word Pergamum comes from the Greek word, gamos, which means marriage.
The picture we have of Pergamum is of a church that is married to the world, rather than married to Christ. They took His name, but many of them were never His to begin with.
And this is frightening to me, because that’s what I see in so much of the modern church, especially in the West.
Some time ago, George Barna took a survey of Americans, and he talked about this problem in stark terms. David Wells, in his book, “The Courage To Be Protestant,” writes about the results of this survey and Barna’s conclusions. Listen to what Wells writes.
“When asked to describe what holiness is, only 7 percent of Americans rooted this in the character of God. Although 72 percent said they had made a commitment to Christ, and 71 percent said their faith was “very important” to them, and 60 percent said they were “deeply spiritual,” only 16 percent said their faith was the highest priority in their lives. Barna’s conclusion was that most Americans like the security of being able to think of themselves as ‘Christian,’ but most also resist the biblical responsibilities that go along with that claim. For the great majority, he says, being identified as a Christian is more about IMAGE than about SUBSTANCE. It is a cultural thing. It is all about creating a pleasing self-image.” [David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (United States: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 131-132].
Now, Barna’s survey was about holiness among American Christians. And he’s right that we’ve failed, much the same way that the church at Pergamum failed, to keep ourselves holy — set apart for God’s service.
The church has all too often allied itself with the world, rather than keeping itself pure for Jesus. We’ve accepted and even celebrated what God has said is sin.
Even in recent weeks, we have seen headlines of once-great denominations splitting because of views, for instance, on homosexuality within the pastorate.
And THAT’S a big problem for the church.
But the problem that worries me more is the problem of cultural Christianity, the problem of so many who call themselves Christians simply because they grew up in the church, or because their parents were Christians, or because they know some stories from the Bible, or because they took some class in church when they were young, or because they were sprinkled with water when they were babies.
And the reason this worries me more is that NONE of those things is what the Bible tells us brings eternal life.
16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
I believe the Western church has allowed many people to go to hell believing they were saved because we haven’t defined for them what it means to believe.
It’s not just assenting to the historical fact that Jesus lived and died and rose again. Even Satan himself believes in that fashion.
No, belief in the biblical sense suggests a change. A new heart. A new spirit. You’re made into a new creature with new ambitions. You’re given new life.
As a former pastor of mine was fond of saying, “If nothing has changed, perhaps nothing changed.”
Paul told the Philippians, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Among the things this verse means is this: Make sure you are who you say you are, because your eternity hangs in the balance.
If you have followed Jesus in faith, then His Holy Spirit within you will be changing you into a new creature. You will exhibit at least SOME of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And these fruits will be growing within you.
If you can’t find evidence of these fruits in your life, then you should be asking yourself whether you’ve ever made it beyond cultural Christianity.
If you have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within you, then you should have a growing aversion to sin in your own life. It should cause you pain and grief when you know you have committed sin.
If you sin with impunity from the conviction of the Holy Spirit, then you should be asking yourself whether you’re wed to the Christ who is the embodiment of righteousness or still wed to the unrighteous world.
Have you been entrusting your eternity to the IMAGE of Christianity? Have you put your faith in some cultural concept or some powerless ritual, hoping it will be enough to give you eternal life?
Have you acknowledged the facts about Jesus without turning to Him in faith that in Him alone is life? Have you taken His name but remained wed to the world?
It doesn’t matter how long you have called yourself a Christian. What matters is whether that name fits what you really are. What matters is whether you truly belong to Him.
It doesn’t matter what you call yourself. What will matter in eternity is what JESUS calls you. Will He call you “friend”? Will He call you “good and faithful servant”? Or will He say, “Depart from Me; I never knew you”?
Are you who you say you are? There will never be a more important question than that. I want to encourage you today to work out your answer to it right here and right now. And if you’re ready to talk about it, come and see me.
Today is Lord’s Supper Sunday.
It has been nearly 2,000 years since Jesus died on that cross, rose again, and ascended back into heaven. He sits there now, at the right hand of God, waiting for the signal from His Father to return to earth in the clouds to bring home with Him all who have followed Him in faith.
The dead in Christ will rise first, to be reunited with their spirits, and we who are alive and remain will join them in the clouds with Jesus.
This will be the second advent of Jesus, His second appearance. We call it the Second Coming. We know this will take place, because God has promised us it will, but we don’t know when. It could be today, or it could be 100 years from now.
And so, we wait in hope — in confident assurance — for the Messiah, the Christ whose name we have been given as His followers.
And for nearly 2,000 years, the church’s observance of the Lord’s Supper has served as a reminder of what Jesus did to purchase our salvation. But it has also served to renew our hope, to strengthen us for perseverance.
We followers of Jesus partake in this ritual as a proclamation of the gospel message that in the person of His Son, God Himself stepped into the mess we’ve made and made a way for us to be reconciled to Him.
It’s a proclamation that God loves us so much that He allowed His only Son to take upon Himself the punishment that we all deserve for our sins so that we who put our faith in Him can be saved.
And in the reminder that we receive during the Lord’s Supper of Jesus’ great love for us, we have our hope renewed, and we can stand stronger against the afflictions and troubles of this world.
This observance is for those who have committed themselves to Jesus and have demonstrated that commitment in believers’ baptism. If you have taken those steps, then I invite you to join us in this observance today.
Now, the conditions during the Last Supper were different than the conditions we have here today, but the significance of their observance was the same as it is today.
Jesus told His disciples that the bread represented His body, which would be broken for our transgressions.
Let us pray.
26 While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
As Jesus suffered and died on that cross, his blood poured out with His life. This was always God’s plan to reconcile mankind to Himself.
“In [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”
Let us pray.
27 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you;
28 for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.
Take and drink.
“Now, as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
Maranatha! Lord, come!
Here at Liberty Spring, we have a tradition following our observance of the Lord’s Supper.
Please gather around in a circle, and let us sing together “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.”