What's in a name?

 

What's in a Name? 
by Donna Diorio

March 3, 2024: As I read through my morning emails, I was quite riveted by the comment made by a Messianic rabbi in Ukraine who wrote the following: 

"HOW DOES GOD UNITE THE TRIBE OF KINGS AND THE TRIBE OF SLAVES? How was the very first Temple built?  At the head of the building of the Mishkan (the Tabernacle) were Betzalel (in the shadow of God) and Oholiav (My Father's tent). Betzalel was from the Messianic tribe of Yehudah, the tribe from which our Savior shone, and Oholiav was from the tribe of Dan, the tribe of slaves. God brings them together! 

     "In the One New Man, all are essential to building the Kingdom on earth: Jew and non-Jew, man and woman, rich and poor, noble and common! "... "BUT EACH MAN SHALL SEE HOW HE BUILDS." 
-end-

Names are very important in the Scriptures. There is meaning and significance to the names. This is not like astrological signs or numerology where numbers supposedly write your future, those are demonic imitations of the Divine process and intention. 

"What's in a name?" Much if the name appears in Scripture, because even the names given are messages from God. There is also a Divine principle involved in the name of persons and places in Scripture that does spill over into our lives today.  We see that when God takes a particular hold on someone in scripture, there is often a name change. Examples are how God took Jacob in Genesis 32:22-23 and changed his name to Israel. Then in Matthew 16:17-18 Yeshua gave Simon bar Jonah, the fisherman, a name change too.  

     What was the thing that prompted the name change to Peter? The fact that Yeshua saw His Father had given Simon a spiritual revelation, which is just to say that God had spoken understanding into Simon's mind which he had no capacity to understand otherwise. No human being could have made Simon Peter understand what God had revealed to him in a thought directly from His Throne in Heaven: that Yeshua, Simon Peter's own teacher, was Israel's Messiah in the flesh, sent from God.

     As for Jacob, who wrestled with "a man" all night in Genesis 32:24-32, and had his name changed in that night of wrestling with the pre-incarnate Yeshua, we see that name-changing is a major intention to Jesus. As Jacob wrestled with "the man" he told the man that he would not let Him go until he got His blessing.  When we 'wrestle' with God in our lives, we should not let of Him until we get His blessing either. 

     After Jacob spoke that to the man he had been wrestling through the long, dark night, the man told him that from that point on Jacob would be called Israel. Then Jacob, now Israel, asked the man His name, and the man answered, "“Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed Jacob there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, saying, “Indeed, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” 

      Peniel means "face of God." Yeshua, in the form of a man, had asked Jacob a rhetorical question when he asked Him his name, because like Simon Peter thousands of years later, Jacob had already been given a revelation of who it was He wrestled with. That is why Israel knew to name the place Peniel, meaning the face of God. Israel knew he had looked into the face of God in the flesh of the man he had wrestled throughout the night.

     These things are shouting so many spiritual things to us: one that we can hear God for ourselves but it will take wrestling in the long dark night to receive that blessing of God. When it does happen, our own names are changed. Whatever name the enemy of our souls tried to make our names mean - Loser, Liar, Addicted, Afflicted, Sin-Laden, Murderer, Thief whatever you have had to wrestle with God for to get His blessing and name-change - the release is what we get when we contend, wrestling with God for that breakthrough. It will always be Yeshua/Jesus who gives us His blessing and He will re-name us Overcomer, a Champion over the sins that tried to destroy our lives. This is the blessing of the LORD.

     That is individuals, but there is so much more here, because it is also a peek into the Divine mystery of how Jacob is STILL going through a long, dark night of wrestling with JESUS, but they will receive Divine understanding that this, Yeshua IS the Face of God in a man, Israel's Messiah made flesh. 

     One of my favorite prophetic verses that always causes me to smile is Psalm 24:6 "Such is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face, O God of Jacob." I have understood that "all Israel" are now known in this verse as "Jacob" but they will come to know Yeshua and it will be IN A GENERATION (or a season of a generation of Israelis) who seek the face of God as Jacob did. That season has already begun.

     Psalm 24: 3-6 speaks of this generation: "3 Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in His holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear deceitfully. 5 He will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from the God of his salvation. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face, O God of Jacob."

     These are the conditions to the generation of Jacob who gets the revelation from Heaven that Yeshua is Israel's Messiah. It is the same thing we go through as individuals, but it is also what STILL lies ahead for Israel. We come closer to it every day because that season of the generation has already begun. In 1948 Israel had only 23 known Jewish believers in Yeshua; today estimates range from 20 to 30 thousand and increasing more rapidly.

     In the beginning of writing, the rabbi from Ukraine, Vlad Nagirner wrote how God was able to take from the tribes of Israel, greatly diverse into one: "Betzalel was from the Messianic tribe of Yehudah (Judah), the tribe from which our Savior shone, and Oholiav was from the tribe of Dan, the tribe of slaves." (Exodus 31:1-11 

     He relates how it shows that God can make "One New Man" from Gentile Christians and Messianic Jews. 

     There things that the Messianic Jews are going to bring into this building of the Spiritual Temple, that is not made with hands. It will take humility by Christians because we have been in the majority so long that too many of think we are far advanced compared to the smaller Messianic Jewish part of the body of the LORD. We Christians tend to think we already have it all spiritually, and the Messianic Jews are just trying to catch up to our spiritual stature. That is misreading the reality.

The Messianic Jews have many important things from God, as Christians also do but neither of us have ANYthing that God didn't give us. It is also like the marriage of a man and a woman - each bring distinctively different things into the union that makes the marriage work. It is a mystery, Paul said, and is humbling when we take it to heart. But when we do take it to heart we no longer feel competitive when our elder brother in the the faith, the Messianic Jews how up to bring there gifts into the "one new man" marriage. The final great harvest of souls will only begin when both Christians and Messianic Jews receive each other in taking our places in God's building of the Heavenly Temple as described above in Exodus 31.

     We both must make room for each other's gifts to build God's spiritual temple.  "He showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God" (Revelation 21:9-10).