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I. ITS ACQUISITION. The name of Jesus was —

1. Chosen by God.

2. Sanctified and approved by Christ's suffering.

3. Glorified by His exaltation.

II. ITS GLORY. None other is —

1. So great.

2. So mighty.

3. So dear.

4. So enduring.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)A name is a call word by which we separate objects and give to each its identity.

I. The names, however, of FAMILIAR OBJECTS are not mere arbitrary signs, but symbols of quality. The words eagle, horse, bring a picture before the imagination. No picture rises at a foreign name, although it discriminates and separates. Homo once had a picture in it, but not now: although man has.

II. We see this more strikingly illustrated in the names of MEN. A village of people have their portraits in their names.

1. Physically. As A. is called, there is a vision of a tall man; as B., of a short man.

2. Socially and economically. One man would be generous and another stingy.

3. Morally. Faith, zeal, genius, are stored up in names.

III. We see that PERSONAL names stand for abstract excellences. Thus lover, father, child, etc., go to signify domestic excellences. When the word mother is spoken, not only does your mother come forth to your imagination in feature, but those qualities which make all mothers differ from other relations.

IV. By the extension of this practice NAMES COME TO SIGNIFY HISTORIC QUALITIES. Plato means thought; Demosthenes, eloquence; Nero, cruelty; Napoleon, military genius; Howard, philanthropy.

V. THE NAME OF JESUS IS ABOVE EVERY NAME; not simply that His name is highest on the list, although that is the fact. We are to give to the term "name" as applied to Him its full proportions and richness of meaning.

1. Christ's name is above that of all historical personages. The sum of their life is small compared to the magnitude of His.

2. If you gather the witnesses and martyrs that have lived in every age, the great men and nobles of whom the world was not worthy, there is not one of them that is not dwarfed by the side of the name of Jesus.

3. If you go from the best specimens of men to philosophers, poets, scholars, whatever admiration is bestowed on them, no one would dream that their name was to be mentioned by the side of His.

4. There are judges' names that signify perfect justice, kings' and princes' that signify authority, splendour, and power. But has the world stored up in any of these names such associations as belong to Jesus? Is there anywhere such justice and imperialness as there are in Him? Already His name stands higher for the very qualities which go to make courts illustrious, that make men glorious in history. Once a culprit under the hand of Rome, but now through a wider world than the Roman, those governments who do not acknowledge Him are feeble and barbarous.

5. But there is a more important matter of comparison — the names of chief power on the heart — heart names. In each quality which makes the dearest names in life Christ so excels that He is infinitely above all others.

(1) All the love and authority which there is in "father" is dark compared with that special element in Jesus. Christ is more in those very qualities which make a father dear to his children than all fathers.

(2) All those indescribable and tender graces which make "mother" the queenly name Christ has in such abundance and perfectness that a mother's heart by the side of His would be like a taper at mid day.

(3) He is more tender in love than any lover ever knew how to be. No love letter was ever written which can compare with what may be gathered from the Bible describing the inflexions of Divine love toward men.

(4) The enduring intimacy of exalted love in true wedlock carries up our conceptions of possible happiness to the very gate of heaven, but when we have carried it to the uttermost there comes the outbursting light of that mystic love of Christ to the Church which rides higher than poetry can follow or than experience ever went.

(5) But this world is but our outhouse of creation. When we have carried these suggestions from the realm of experience up to invisible heaven, we find that the name of Jesus is above all these. There are beings who rise not only higher than men in wisdom, power, goodness, etc., but there is a gradation among them: thrones, dominions, etc., in long succession; and we find Christ towering above them, "chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely."

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

WEB: Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name;