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Can You Really Become a New Person? What the Bible Says · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity just sufficient to flavor to be
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  pleased or gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what we bring to your table
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  today might add some spice to your life,
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  welcome in to another episode of relish i'm alex zerman and you all know don
• 0:22
  patterson oh you all know yeah okay yeah i'm don patterson how are you doing
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  today don So far, so good. Yes. Good, good.
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  Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We are going to do things a little bit
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  differently, if you didn't notice.
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  Obviously, I'm not Rowan Miller. I get to, I'm going to do this for a little
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  while. I really do enjoy it.
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  I've been behind the scenes doing stuff. You do a good job. Yeah.
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  Well, I appreciate that.
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  And it used to be, you know, this whole thing started with us just throwing
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  questions at Don, no preparation and he did really great and i was i you know
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  i started to think you know,
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  what if we go ahead and just you know prepare a little bit i'm going to give
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  you some stuff beforehand.
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  And i'll have some stuff beforehand and we will maybe flush this out a little
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  bit and i feel like what happens is that then there's just a lot more,
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  there's just so much more candy yes yeah so if you can relate to that yeah if
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  you prepare to give an answer for something then you're going to have a lot more to say.
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  Oh, boy, that sounds like 1 Peter 3.15. Yes. Really?
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  Be prepared in advance to give an answer for the help that you have in Christ Jesus.
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  So, saying that, we've got a big episode. I think, I think, we're going to talk about names.
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  It doesn't sound like a really big topic off the top of your head,
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  but actually, it is a pretty rich, pretty deep topic.
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  There's a lot to it. They're really, really. A lot of moving pieces and a lot
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  of time in between. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah, exactly. There's a lot to it. Okay.
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  Um, but to start off, I thought we would do something a little fun.
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  Now, do you have some other ones that names that you thought of in a little
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  bit of time? Well, I have two right off the top of my head. Okay.
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  So I gave Don some homework. He didn't do it, but, um, he had some,
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  but I still think it's going to be fun. And what we're going to do is we're
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  going to just have a draft. And you know what a draft is. We're just going to
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  try to make the best team we can.
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  And what we're going to do it with is the worst Bible names.
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  Now, Don, did you name your kids stuff from the Bible?
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  None of them? No. Well, Jeff.
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  Okay. Okay. Emmanuel. Okay. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Charlie and Bennett. Ben maybe is a little bit, but I wasn't looking
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  into the Bible. Right. Like Benjamin. Yep.
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  But every once in a while, I come across one, I'd be like, you don't see people
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  using that name very much.
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  So I figured we would go, I'm going to let you. And just so you know,
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  we're not making fun of these names. We're not, we're not, or the people or
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  the stories or anything about it.
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  It's just simply, maybe it's like, it just sounds funny. It's something you
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  don't want to yell across the playground at somebody.
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  That's what we're going with. And that's where I went with my thoughts too.
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  So we're drafting the worst Bible names to name your kids.
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  Don, you have the first pick. What do you got? Ichabod. Ichabod.
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  All right. That's a good one. That's a good one.
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  It comes out of 1 Samuel chapter 4. Okay. Yeah. You don't see that one a lot.
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  I'm going to go with Judas.
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  My first pick is Judas. Obviously, some pretty heavy baggage to go along with that name.
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  Yeah. Phineas. Oh, Phineas. That is a good one.
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  Hey, Phineas. Come over here. And the spelling of that one would probably be
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  a nightmare as well. Exactly. How do you spell that? Yeah. With P.
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  With a P and then a Ph probably, right? Yeah.
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  Ph probably. My next one, and I always like this one, is Dorcas.
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  For Max? Dorcas. D-O-R-C-A-S. Maybe I'm misspelling, mispronouncing that.
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  That's Tabitha. Tabitha, right. Yeah. Which. It's two different languages. Exactly. Yeah.
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  But they call her first Dorcas, and they say, which means Tabitha.
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  And Dorcas, it means gazelle.
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  And fun fact, she was the only woman explicitly given the feminine version of
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  disciple, I think. I pulled that off at ChatGBT, so I could be wrong.
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  Yes, you're right. Okay. Because in that context, yeah, you're right. In that town, she was.
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  Great woman. So if you're out there looking for baby girl names, Dorcas is there.
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  I've also heard Dorcas used for a guy. Oh, really? Oh, man. Wait,
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  so you've actually heard people have that name? Oh, yeah. Okay.
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  All right. Do you have another one maybe? Well, Saul. Saul.
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  Yeah. Name your kid Saul. Yeah. Which one is it you're thinking about, you know?
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  Yeah, exactly. And then I pulled a good Saul, the bad Saul. Right.
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  And then I pulled a pretty good one out of Isaiah. I think it was,
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  I wrote it down because, uh, Mahar Shalal Hashbaz. It's time for dinner.
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  Yeah. And they always know. They don't. Shalal Hashbaz. I thought that would
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  be, that would be pretty rough.
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  Um, that wasn't a good name either. another few,
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  good uh you know honorary mentions i had unless you've got another one i have
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  one more okay let's hear it yahoo yahoo come here you yahoo yeah that sounds
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  like a more derogatory term than anything isn't it yeah it's not really meant to be but no yeah,
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  now the old you drive like yahoo oh yeah speaking of that like nimrod,
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  there's an honorary mention right there nimrod like yeah in the west,
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  not great to be called that but like initially in the bible i remember being
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  like oh he's a mighty hunter that's
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  kind of cool and then you kind of read more about him you're like oh,
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  not a great king power babble right yeah kind of a bummer not impressed right
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  so my next one and i couldn't decide between these two but gog,
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  gog gog just gog and then not magog and then magog you know almost almost worse
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  for some reason almost worse yeah so yeah.
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  Hmm. That's it. That's good. You guys vote. See, tell us who has the worst.
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  The very worst. Worst names. Yeah.
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  How about, what's the name that you wish would come back and be more prominent?
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  How about that? Because I got one that I was just thinking about.
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  Ezra. Ezra. You like that one? Yeah. I was kind of thinking Barnabas.
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  Barnabas. A lot of encouragement. That's right. Yes. One of the few names in
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  the Bible that we actually have the reason for the name. Yes.
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  Right there in scripture. I think that's cool.
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  Acts chapter four. I think John Piper named his kid Barnabas.
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  Really? Yeah, I remember hearing some of that in his sermons.
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  And so when he went to school, when he went to middle school,
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  what did he get called? Hey, Barney, come here.
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  Barn, Abbas, Abbas. Barn, Abbas, yeah.
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  I could hear Art Barney because, you know, Fife was around for a long time.
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  Yes. But Barn, Abbas, Abbas.
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  So, all right. There was a band, Abba.
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  Abba, that's right. We have, yeah. So I remember them. Yeah. Right.
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  Well, we laugh at some of those names because we hear them as,
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  you know, strange words, but in the Bible names weren't always just,
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  you know, like these labels. They could tell you something about a person's
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  identity, circumstances, family, or what God was doing in them.
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  So, you know. And sometimes it was not so much what God was doing in the person
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  who was born, but it could have been what mom was going through at the time.
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  Exactly. So you've got red kid, a red kid comes out and all of a sudden, you know, you're Esau.
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  Yeah. You know, cause you're just red all over. I mean, who do you think you are?
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  Yeah. Uh, Jacob, uh, liar.
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  I mean, Jacob, he's just born and they call him Jacob and he's a liar. Deceiver, deceiver.
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  Yeah. And part of that is because, you know, he stuck his hand out and they,
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  You know, the first guy stuck his hand out and then the other guy came.
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  And so who's actually first? Who's on first?
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  And so deceiver, Jacob, the one that the Ichabod thing came to my mind because the poor kid.
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  Can you imagine living your entire life with a name like Ichabod and knowing
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  that your name means the glory has left? Yeah.
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  And so the whole, all your life, you would go with this name that your mother
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  gave you because of what she was going through at the time. She had just lost,
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  the Ark of the Covenant had just been taken and taken captive.
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  And Eli had just died, her father-in-law, and her husband had died. Right.
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  And so to her, all the glory had left. And then she has this baby the very same,
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  day and that all these three things happened. The glory's gone. Right.
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  Yeah. Think about it. We talk about what's in a name and how all these names
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  in the Bible, you see names based on identity, circumstances,
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  relationships, you know, based on someone's character, like Barnabas,
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  like that, you know, or maybe what God's purpose is for that person. Exactly. Yeah.
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  And it was born in, I mean, they, sometimes they lived up to their name. Yeah.
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  And the other, and so you wonder what's prophetic in that. Yeah.
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  And, uh, so it's, it, it was very, I mean, we, we think about that lady who
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  named her kid Ichabod and think, well, she was out of her distress.
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  She was naming her kid, you know, uh.
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  Could be. But it's interesting how many times in the Old Testament,
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  especially, that those names really was telling the tale of the individual ahead of time.
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  It's almost prophetic of what that person's role was. And then you, so what was it?
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  Prescriptive or subscriptive? Yeah. Yeah.
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  So that it actually, they had this name, Ichabod, and they actually lived into the name Ichabod.
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  All the glory left, and he makes sure he takes it with him. That kind of thing.
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  So, the names really were taken seriously in the Old Testament.
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  And that's why once in a while, the names would change.
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  Let me ask you about that. Why did God, Jesus, why did they give people new names?
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  And a lot of times it was because of the change of the identity. Yeah.
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  And so, like you have Abraham, Abram originally, and it means father. Yeah.
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  And so, but, you know, it's sort of an ironic name that his dad named him father. And then...
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  He ended up with no kids for a long, long, long, long time.
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  In fact, it wasn't until he was named the father of many. Right. Which is Abraham.
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  Which is Abraham that he actually had Isaac. Right.
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  And so, okay.
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  Did he know that ahead of time? Well, maybe not, but it's, it's part of what
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  God does. I got to get back here to Genesis. I think, yeah.
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  Father of many. And then Sarai was princess.
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  And uh oh that's a nice pretty name for a beautiful woman that's what they say
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  i mean if you go through these stories she must have been a knockout right because
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  uh these kings all wanted her yeah and so uh,
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  having this many people want her she had to be sort of gorgeous right right
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  yeah at least i found that to be the case and then uh when she when they the covenant happens,
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  then in that period of time, she actually becomes the matriarch of nation, Sarah.
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  And yeah, so God would change their names because he was living out a covenant through them.
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  So they would be remembered by that covenant. We also have in the New Testament,
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  then we have Saul, he turned into Paul. Right.
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  And if you remember, Simon was a disciple of Jesus.
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  Yeah. And Jesus says, no, that's not your name anymore.
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  Peter is your name. Right. And upon this rock, I will build my church.
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  Let me just pause on that a little bit because Peter is one of the most,
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  like when it came to names,
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  this is one of the best things i luke 22 jesus he says and this is right after
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  he kind of pulls up you know pulls attention to judas right,
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  and he says that you know simon simon satan wants to sift you like wheat,
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  you know he goes on to say but then you know i have prayed for you after he
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  says you know like once you come once you're done doing your thing come back
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  or something like that right yep and,
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  and then and then goes on and you've turned back strength in your brother exactly
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  and then peter says what he's he's like oh you know i'm not doing any of that
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  i'm here for you i'll fight to the death all this kind of stuff and peter and
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  then jesus says to him you know,
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  when the rooster you're gonna deny me three times yeah right and then you.
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  So he knows jesus knows exactly what peter's gonna do yet he still speaks this
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  different identity into him this different name into him.
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  And then you go and you look at John 21. Right.
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  Peter encounters the risen Christ, and he asks him those three times, right?
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  Correct. Do you love me?
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  Three times. It's obvious that this is the call to the three times he denied
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  him. So he's drawing attention to the same thing, and Peter's still not answering right.
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  Correct. But, so he's still doing the same thing.
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  But then Jesus goes, feed my sheep. Right. He gives him this job to do.
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  He's not letting Peter dwell in this place where he has failed,
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  where he has, like, because I can only imagine Peter in the garden after denying
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  Jesus this three times, just being like, that's it.
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  Well, I'm doomed. I'm screwed, dude. Right? Yeah. Especially with two words he used. Yeah.
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  So Jesus says, do you agape me? Yeah.
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  And Peter says, I phileo you. I phileo you. Like, I'm brotherly love.
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  I brotherly love you. Yeah. And then Jesus says, do you agape me?
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  Do you sacrificially love me like I love you?
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  And Peter again says, no, I phileo you. And the third time, then Jesus,
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  can you imagine the shift in the room when Jesus says, okay,
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  now really, do you phileo me like a brother? Yeah.
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  And he says, you know all things. Yeah. You know, I phileo you.
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  And I think that's Peter's way of saying, I'm not going to commit myself to
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  anything I'm not going to follow through on. Right.
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  Knowing that I messed up.
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  I messed up Royal. And so I'm not going to say, yes, Lord, I agape you.
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  Just like I did that night. I denied you three times.
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  He's going to say, I, I commit to Phile, I, I Phile, oh, you Lord.
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  Yeah. That's what I can commit to.
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  Yes. Because I know that I can commit to that. Okay.
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  And then, then Jesus says, and, and it,
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  feed my sheep. I tell you the truth, when you're younger, you dressed yourself,
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  and went where you wanted.
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  But when you're old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress
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  you and lead you where you don't want to go.
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  Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death that Peter would glorify God.
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  It's almost prophetic that Peter would end up on a cross because of that scripture.
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  If I can speak into anyone listening, if you're going to draw anything away
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  from this whole episode and this is we've got plenty of more to get to,
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  but this this picture we're painting here was specifically with peter is that,
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  he could have put his name his identity his who i am in how he failed,
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  jesus knew he was going to fail and yet named him peter which meant the rock right Right.
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  Jesus knew he was going to fail, but still was telling him to go and live out
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  his identity in Christ, serving him, being obedient to him, not in the shame of his failures.
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  Yeah. And that's why Jesus says, feed my sheep. Yeah. Almost like a command,
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  because his identity could have been in what he failed to do. Right.
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  Instead of what he was going to do. And Jesus knew he was going to do it.
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  He knew that he was going to be so intent on this mission that he just gave him, feed my sheep,
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  that he would end up giving his life for this identity as a Christian,
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  as a believer of Jesus Christ, as an apostle, one who had seen it.
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  And so, yeah, that identity thing then.
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  So when we talk about these Old Testament names, we look at these characters
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  and how they lived out those identities.
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  Well, then how do we do that in New Testament?
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  Because we have Jesus giving Peter, Simon, a new name, Peter.
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  It's not isolated to that either. And so then by chapter 9, you have Saul,
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  who was violently against Jesus and the cross, being confronted by Jesus himself.
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  He turns his life around.
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  I mean, within 72 hours, he was a violent Pharisee against the Christians to
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  all of a sudden, I love Jesus.
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  To the point that Ananias, who comes, another name, Ananias comes in and says,
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  I'm not sure I want to go to this guy.
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  And God says, yep, this guy I've chosen for a mission, and he's going to be a light to the Gentiles.
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  So he goes, Ananias is faithful, and he goes and he prays for Saul,
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  and he receives his sight back again.
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  And over the course of time then, by chapter 13 of Acts, all of a sudden,
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  this Saul is called Paul. Right.
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  It's not as stark of a change as with Peter. Right.
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  It's not this conversion, but it is a change of identity. For sure.
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  And so, then we start looking at what does the, this is actually a practice
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  that started in the first century of the church.
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  That as you became a Christian then, often you were given a new name because
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  your old name would carry the old stuff with it.
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  And so then after your time of catechism, which would be learning about this
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  new Christian faith, you would be taken. Oh, you didn't get to bathe much in
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  that period of time either.
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  And so they would take you to the river. They would bathe you.
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  They would destroy your old clothes. Praise the Lord.
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  And then when you came out of the water, you not only got new clothes,
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  but you also got a new name to reflect your new identity, which was in Jesus
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  Christ, is in Jesus Christ.
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  And wouldn't that be fun to do at baptisms today? Yeah. Well,
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  maybe not all that. Maybe not all those things, but yeah, I get that. Yeah.
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  We bathe more often. We don't need quite the same thing going on.
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  So a new identity, but that's exactly what Paul talks about. Paul talks about.
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  When he gets to Ephesians 4, verse 25, to take off the old self and put on the
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  new, he goes into 2 Corinthians 5, 17 through 19, and he talks about the same thing.
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  You're no longer who used to be, but you're taking on this new identity in Christ,
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  and you're an ambassador.
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  You're an ambassador of this Jesus now, representing God to the world around you.
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  So this new identity.
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  I mean doesn't it almost seem like If we have a new identity in Christ That,
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  contrasts our identity from before Doesn't it seem logical then to have a new name?
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  Uh, Barnabas. Yeah. That was a new name. That was a new name.
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  Because his. Encouragement. That's right. His, uh, his first name was.
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  I don't even remember. Joseph.
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  Uh, like everybody had a Joseph in those days. But Joseph, a Levi from Cyprus,
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  whom the disciples called Barnabas. Mm-hmm. And from that moment on,
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  he's called Barnabas. Yep.
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  In the, in the Acts of the Apostles. Right.
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  And, uh, he shows up all sorts of places. Right.
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  So wouldn't that be sort of fun? Yeah. To have a new name? I mean,
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  Donald. I think it would.
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  I didn't name any of my children Donald. Yep. Probably not a biblical name, is it? No. No.
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  Don't see it at all. But it means leader. Okay. So, I mean, for some reason,
• 21:14
  mom and dad thought I was going to be and put that moniker on me. There you go.
• 21:20
  That can help. And I like Don. If you call me Donald, I may not answer. What about Donnie?
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  I see who called me Donnie. It was your grandma.
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  Yeah. Grandma called me Donnie and my aunts would call me Donald. Okay. Yeah.
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  There's some things you can't change and I can't change that. Yeah.
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  I do want to hit a few more name changes here to really kind of tie in this whole perspective of,
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  Times when God's changing people's names. Specifically, I want to hit Jacob.
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  I do want to hit that Old Testament one because I think that's one that's really
• 21:58
  fascinating and it's really rich. Oh, yeah.
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  And the transition. Yes. That's made. Yeah. And Jacob was not a positive name. No? No.
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  It was a deceiver. That meant deceiver?
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  Holy moly. Jacob, yeah. I know a lot of Jacobs. Sorry. Sorry, Jacobs.
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  But but uh you know his name then comes out of the fact that that he had wrestled
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  with god wrestled with god like actually yeah and so israel is his name,
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  let's see here,
• 22:43
  Okay, I'm not quite carnal.
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  Nope, that's right. Nope, we're in the right spot. I know he wrestles him all
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  night long, right? Yeah.
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  So he named him Israel. Yeah, here we go.
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  So Jacob returned to Adam Aram, and God appeared to him again and blessed him.
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  And God said to him, your name is Jacob.
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  And I'm pretty sure that means grasps the heel. Oh, grasp the heel.
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  Which means figuratively he deceives. Oh, okay.
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  But you will no longer be called Jacob. Your name will be Israel.
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  Okay. And means he struggles with God. He wrestles with God.
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  Okay. Because that's what he did, right? Yeah.
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  So that marks this transformation, right? Yeah, and a much better name. Yeah.
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  And then he becomes this perfect person, right? Mm-hmm. No, no,
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  no. Wait. So he gives you at least better person.
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  Can we appreciate how weird that is though? That God gives Jacob a new name,
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  but Jacob doesn't like suddenly become a perfect person. Doesn't become a perfect
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  person, but he at least, uh, encounters his brother with some penitence. That's right.
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  And, and, uh, you know, he expects bad things. And, and so he lives into that,
• 24:08
  expectation that, oh, well, I want to butter up Esau. So I don't get whooped.
• 24:14
  So a change in perspective, perhaps a change in this new identity,
• 24:18
  but not perfection. Not perfection.
• 24:20
  The perfection is not going to happen. No. Not in our human state. Right.
• 24:26
  But it can change.
• 24:30
  What's nice about a name is because it carries our identity.
• 24:34
  It's nice when our identity changes, if we're going to change our name. Yeah.
• 24:38
  Because we have a lot of potential to carry along the past into the present.
• 24:45
  Unless we somehow have something that says, a new moniker of some point that
• 24:49
  says, I'm different than I used to be.
• 24:51
  And I aim to be different than I used to be. And I'm not going to carry the
• 24:55
  old stuff along into the present.
• 24:57
  Yeah. And, uh, those kinds of transformations. Yeah. Right. I like to see honored
• 25:02
  with a new name. That's just cool.
• 25:04
  I've actually had some friends who went through, uh, they accepted Christ as
• 25:09
  their savior and intentionally either.
• 25:14
  If they were going by just part of their name before they would go by their full name.
• 25:18
  Okay. I had one, one friend that instead of going by his first name,
• 25:22
  because it had such a reputation attached to it, went with his middle name.
• 25:28
  Okay. Because the reputation was following. Yeah. And so he went with his middle
• 25:32
  name. It really wasn't deceptive, but he was just emphasizing a change in his life. Hmm.
• 25:37
  And so when I called him by, by the name I knew him for. Right.
• 25:42
  Uh, I don't go by that anymore. I don't know who I am anymore. Yeah.
• 25:46
  Well, that's kind of cool. I like that. I, Yeah. He carried the identity and
• 25:50
  he didn't want his old identity carried into our current conversation.
• 25:54
  He wanted to carry his new identity into the current conversation, which was very rich.
• 25:59
  Right. It was very good to meet him again.
• 26:02
  So, I mean, what could happen if all of a sudden we'd adopted,
• 26:07
  if you're changing your identity.
• 26:11
  And identify with christ right not change the name and then the question is
• 26:17
  what should the name reflect,
• 26:20
  right so there would be a lot of things that we could go into on that are you
• 26:23
  watching time yes i am okay and we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna slice it right there because
• 26:28
  so what do you what i want you guys to kind of there's a lot of good biblical
• 26:32
  knowledge that john shared with us about you know this name so and we got a
• 26:34
  lot of good scriptural references here Um,
• 26:37
  I think what we want to really want to hammer down on is that this new name
• 26:41
  does not equal perfection.
• 26:44
  This new identity does not equal perfection. True.
• 26:48
  Right. So our identity, our future, that newness, those things that,
• 26:54
  that new future are now defined by your relationship with God.
• 26:58
  Oh, and we could go a long way. You will. Okay.
• 27:02
  Next week, we're going to hit on the, okay, so this future is now defined by
• 27:08
  this relationship with God. So who is God and what does he reveal to us through
• 27:13
  the names that we can read about him in the Bible?
• 27:15
  Sound good? Oh, yeah. Sounds like fun. All right. All right.
• 27:19
  Thanks all. We'll see you. Don't forget to vote for whoever had the best. Yes.
• 27:24
  No, that's ridiculous. Don't forget to vote. I appreciate you guys for listening,
• 27:29
  and we'll see you guys next week. Lord willing. Bye.
• 27:33
  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
• 27:37
  ministry by sharing it with others.
• 27:39
  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
• 27:42
  and is calling to us in our daily lives.
• 27:45
  Thank you again for joining us, and may God bless your day.