There is nothing negative in your life that is not related directly or indirectly to the presence of sin. Dr. Tony Evans says many people who think they have lots of problems really only have one, and the Lord is ready to solve it. Jesus Christ didn't come to fix symptoms.
He came to fix causes. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless Biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. The Bible ascribes several different names to Jesus, each of them telling us something significant about who He is. Today Dr. Evans explores the implications of one of the most familiar and important names we have for Jesus.
Let's listen in. Names matter. When we speak about the name of a person, we're giving their identity away.
If I would ask for Bill, then Ralph would not raise his hand, because if that's not his name, that's not his identity. Because names are more than nomenclature, it has to do with identification. In the Bible, they really mattered, because names were given at the earliest possible time to define the hopes and dreams of a child. So the parents would give the child a name to reflect what that child was destined to become, because names mattered. There are some names that live in infamy. You don't see parents naming their child Hitler, or Judas, or Jezebel, or Benedict Arnold.
We would probably say, what's wrong with them parents? Today I want to start off with Jesus' personal name, Jesus. Now the first thing I want you to observe is that Jesus' name was not given to him by his human mother and father.
It says, Heaven sent a message to Joseph and told Joseph, this is what I want you to name the baby that's not biologically yours, but the one that you will raise, and I want you to call him what his father wants him to be named. I want you to call his name Jesus. This word Jesus is his most known name.
It is the name that references him, even when other names are associated with him. Now, the word Jesus means savior, rescuer, or deliverer. It means a savior, a rescuer, or a deliverer. The Old Testament name for Jesus was Joshua. Joshua in the Old Testament was the one who delivered the people into the promised land and overcame the enemies in that land. So Joshua, which name in the New Testament Greek is Jesus, had to do with the person who led the way into the place of blessing and who delivered the people from the enemies that would seek to incarcerate them or hold them hostage. So when God wanted to name his only begotten son, and there's a whole theology around the phrase only begotten, which means one of a kind, unique, class by himself.
When God wanted to name his only begotten son, he gave him the name of savior or deliverer. Jesus Christ is the most unique person who has ever lived because he was born of a virgin. He was born to a woman who had never been with a man and whose human egg was fertilized by divine sperm, if you will. That her human egg was fertilized by the Holy Spirit, the scripture says, giving birth to a one of a kind person, who would be, as one of the names we will look at in the future, son of God because he is born of a heavenly father, and son of man because he's born of a woman, bringing two natures in one person, unmixed forever.
We call that in theology the hypostatic union, the union of two natures in one person that never get mixed forever. And he would be known in his human life as Jesus. And the reason that he would be known as Jesus in his human life is because his primary role would be rescuing people, delivering people, or being the savior of people.
That would be the thing that would define him and the relationship and the role he would carry out in his 33 years of human life, and as you'll see in a moment, and beyond. So if Jesus' primary identity, reflected in his name as savior, rescuer, or deliverer, is to get people out of something that they should be removed from or given victory over or delivered from, what is his role of rescuing? When I was a water safety instructor training lifeguards how to save people, they were saviors related to a specific task, and that is folks who were drowning. It was not savior for everything, it was savior for drowning folks.
Now if a person was drowning, there may have been other things that needed to happen, but there was a primary thing that overruled everything else, and that was saving their lives from drowning, because that was the nature of that job description. Jesus has a job description, and that is to be a rescuer, but we are told in verse 21 what would be the issue of his rescuing. It says, and he shall save his people from their sins. Jesus' primary and central rescuing mission is to rescue people from sin. Jesus' primary rescue mission is to deliver, save, and rescue people from their sins. Now the reason I am emphasizing that is because people want to use Jesus for everything else. They want Jesus to rescue them from their health, bad health, they want Jesus to rescue them from their debt, they want Jesus to rescue them from their relationship issues, they want Jesus to rescue them from their emotional issues, and Jesus is sufficient for all that and then some.
However, none of those in and of themselves is the centricity of his mission. None of those in themselves are the primary reason for God becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ. The primary reason why God became a man and named his son Jesus is because he wanted to rescue people from their sin. And the reason that that is the primary issue is because one of the reasons he does not rescue us from a bunch of other stuff is because we don't allow him to rescue us from the main thing. What we want is Jesus to rescue us from the peripheral, which is important, which matters, as long as he leaves the central thing alone.
And what Jesus wants you to understand is if he can't deal with the central thing, then you can't be called on him for all this other stuff. Because all this other stuff that you and I wrestle with in our day-to-day life is in some way related to sin. There is nothing negative in your life that is not related directly or indirectly to the presence of sin. It either is your sin, something you've done that you shouldn't have done, where you're now having a consequence for doing it. That's one. Or it's related to somebody else's sin, what they did that negatively affects you.
Or it can be related to a contaminated sinful environment in which you live or work or play that's not necessarily caused by you or directly by somebody else, but just because evil has invaded the atmosphere. Dr. Evans will continue to explore that thought when he returns in just a moment. Don't go away. As we anticipate the new year, we want to not only end this year strong, but go into the new year able to take advantage of all the opportunities that God has brought our way for the transformation of individual lives, for the building of strong biblically based families, for strengthening churches, and that's what we're committed to do. Your generous financial support will help us to be strong because we're not going to back down, we're not going to back away, and we're not going to compromise the truth of this book to placate the secularism of the society.
Stand with us, will you? Stand strong by us with your generosity and your prayers, because you know we hold tightly to this word, a word that the world desperately needs today. Visit tonyevans.org to give. That's tonyevans.org. Thank you for your generosity.
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I'll repeat that contact information for you after the second part of today's lesson. Here's Dr. Evans. The flu virus has made its way around and brought a lot of health issues to a lot of people. So one reason you may have flu is that your own immune system may be weak and therefore susceptible. Another reason you can get flu if somebody sneezes in your face, you breathe it in and their sneeze has caused your problem. But another reason you can have flu is that the atmosphere has become so toxic that simply by breathing bad air like secondhand smoke, you just pick it up and it infiltrates you.
But no matter where the flu comes from, it's rooted in the same virus. No matter what you're dealing with in your life, it can be traced back directly, indirectly, or environmentally to the presence of sin. Therefore, if Jesus Christ, whose name means Savior, and whose job description is salvific in nature to save from sin, is not free to deal with sin, then he's also not free to fix the thing you're calling him about.
But therein is the problem. We want Jesus to fix it as long as he doesn't fix that. We have a world today that calls on Jesus to fix the racial problem, to fix the social problem, to fix the economy, to fix the division in the nation, to fix my family. We call on Jesus for everything to which God wants you to know if he can't deal with the main thing, then he may not be able to help you with all the other stuff you're calling on him for, since the root of all the other stuff you're calling on him for is directly, indirectly, or environmentally tied to sin. So whenever you call the name Jesus, you are asking him not only to deal with the fruit of your problem, but the root of its origin. And if he cannot deal with the root of its origin, then you're saying even if it goes away for a while, it's going to come back with a vengeance because that which caused it was never allowed to be uprooted. And so people spend an inordinate amount of time and energy and the money fixing symptoms because they don't want to face sin. And Jesus's name, Jesus, is specifically related to that word.
Now, in order to appreciate Jesus's name and the role that that name brings, one has to have an understanding about the nature of God. All sin has the same consequence. All sin has the same consequence. If you went into an operating room in a hospital, you took a handful of dirt and put it in the room in a hospital of a person who had been opened up, they would become contaminated by a handful of dirt. The same contamination that came from a lot of dirt that comes from a little invisible virus would have the same effect because of the nature of the room. So in an operating room, everything has got to be sterilized.
Doctors, nurses have to wash their hands all the time because they understand a little virus can produce a messy situation. God is sterilized. Everything about him is perfect and he cannot dumb down his standard to make us feel better because then he wouldn't be who he is. Therefore, the issue of sin is the big issue that God must address, whether it's little or whether it's great, in order to address all the symptoms that we usually call on him for. Therefore, when you call on God to fix your circumstance, you must equally ask him, is there a sin that needs to be addressed? Because if you call on him about your money circumstance, health circumstance, relational circumstance, emotional circumstance, whatever that legitimate circumstance is, but he is not free to unveil for him to address the sin, then you know you've not invited him to do his job.
It's like having cancer and asking the doctor to give you some Tylenol. What you're asking for won't fix what's really wrong. And a lot of people ask Jesus to fix something that's not really wrong. They're asking Jesus to reverse a symptom, not repair the root of a problem. And so, his name is Jesus and his job description is to address the issue of the contamination created by sin.
Now, why does this matter? One of the things that got Jesus in trouble was his claim to be God in the flesh, and one of those claims was made by his ability to forgive sins. In Mark chapter 3, there's a paralyzed man and he's brought to Jesus for healing. And Jesus heals him but then says, and your sins are forgiven. What Jesus was saying is, your paralysis is connected to your sin. I'm gonna fix your paralysis because I'm gonna address your sin. And my forgiveness is the cure. So you're gonna be a better person now.
You're gonna be able to take up your bed and walk because I dealt with the spiritual that now frees me up to do something about the physical. When Jesus did that, the leaders got mad at him because they said only God can forgive sins. Basically, Jesus says, I heard that.
You're absolutely correct. Jesus is God's representative to deal with sin and, as a result, address, based on his will, circumstances in life. Now, while this is not a popular message, while this is not a message that will garrison a lot of excitement, it is a curing message because it is getting to the root of what causes many of the circumstances that we find ourselves in that we wish to be delivered from. Sin has one overarching goal. Romans 6 23 says the wages of sin is death. Sin's goal is death.
That's always its goal. But death doesn't mean you stop existing. Death means an illegitimate division or separation has occurred. Death in the Bible means separation, not cessation, not the ending of something. When a person dies, they haven't stopped living. It's just that the spirit and the soul has left the body so the body is no longer able to function because there's a separation. There's no stopping of life. There's just a relocation of life, not the end of it. So the goal of sin is to bring separation, always, to separate us from God, us to one another.
You know, whether it's the racial crisis or social crisis, that's all separation. And it's due to sin that winds up being discussed as skin. See, and as long as you can talk about skin and not talk about sin, then we can have 250 years of skin seminars and never address the root problem of God's statement about sin when it comes to how we view people different than us. So as long as the conversation can be changed from the spiritual and make it social, secular, economic, political, and all of that, then you keep talking forever because the root will always reappear and make itself known.
So you can save a lot of time dealing with issues in your life, your family, dealing with issues in our society if we just start with the sin issue. And then we can apply it to the skin issue or to the money issue or to the whatever the issue happens to be. Because Jesus Christ didn't come to fix symptoms. He came to fix causes, which results in the repair of symptoms.
But unless you're willing to deal with that and face that, you will forever be doing the patchwork of fixing a symptom that gets better for a while, then it reappears. If you're ready to move beyond patchwork of your problems to a permanent fix, Dr. Evans is here with a prayer to get you started. If you have yet to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, we can resolve that right now. I'm going to say a little prayer. I want you to pray it after me, but you've got to mean it for yourself. Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner, and I know I need a Savior because I can't save myself. So right now, I trust You alone because You died for me and arose for me to be my sin-bearer. You are now my substitute, and I'm believing You to forgive my sin and to give me eternal life. Thank You for the free gift of salvation that You have given to me.
Help me to live a life to please You. In Jesus' name, amen. Welcome to the family, and we'll keep ministering to you for your spiritual growth through our broadcast. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer just now, let me encourage you to visit TonyEvans.org and follow the link that says Jesus. There, you can download some free follow-up resources that will help you get your brand-new life started right. And that same website, TonyEvans.org, is where you can request your personal full-length copy of today's message on CD or downloadable MP3.
It's part of this year's special compilation, The Top 24 of 2024. As I mentioned earlier, this giant collection is available for a limited time as our gift to you when you help support the ministry with a generous year-end contribution. In addition to the 24 audio messages, if you contact us right away, we'll also include a copy of gospel recording artist Anthony Evans' new Christmas album, The Greatest Gift. Just visit TonyEvans.org today to get the details and make the arrangements. Or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222, where team members are ready to help you day and night. And don't forget to ask about how to upgrade your offer to include the Tony Evans Study Bible. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. Well, tomorrow Dr. Evans is back to dig deeper into the meaning of the word savior, including a look at why the phrase, in Jesus' name, is more than just a way to wrap up a prayer. I hope you'll be with us.
