We continue our consideration of that to which the Lord has led us, especially on this Father’s Day.
This morning, we began by seeing, firstly, the tremendous importance of this chapter in the history of the people of God; and then the very great need for a new apprehension of its significance.
We mentioned that this chapter contains the third and final cycle of divine activity in relation to this world’s salvation. The first was the incarnation: God manifest in the flesh. The second was the cross of the Lord Jesus on both its sides—His death and His resurrection.
Now, the third is the mighty advent of the Holy Spirit, by which the other two are made effective universally. The Holy Spirit came in the great commitment to carry into effect God’s eternal purpose.
That purpose is the establishment of His heavenly, divine, godly kingdom over this world.
This chapter marks the point at which, to use the words of our Lord Jesus Himself—the first words that He ever uttered in public when He took up His ministry—“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.”
This chapter sees the completion of all that time had contained up to this point, and the breaking in of that which had ever been, through past times, the kingdom of God.
The first words of the Lord Jesus in His ministry related to the kingdom of God being imminent. His last words, before He went back to heaven, to His disciples, were concerning the kingdom of God.
At that point He said, “Tarry in Jerusalem. Not many days hence.” And so it proved. Not many days after this day, when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled, the day of all days up to that time had arrived. Heaven opened, the Spirit came, and the kingdom in its spiritual form was introduced.
And I underline that phrase: in its spiritual form. It has yet to come in its literal form, but it has come in its spiritual form.
Now, we went on and took a lot of time to show what that meant and what that means. We must hasten on, because this is such a mighty chapter, with a fullness far beyond the past to unfold. So we take another small fragment this afternoon.
We closed the earlier part by seeing that this chapter, in the first place, set forth the great fact which was proclaimed on that day in the power of the Holy Spirit: that the King was in His place.
The King, long waited for—the King having come, and having been rejected by at least the nation to which He came—has been given His place. God raised Him and set Him at His own right hand. He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.
“This Jesus, whom ye crucified, God hath made both Lord and Christ.”
It is upon that that we are going to spend just a little more time this afternoon. The essential factor in the advent of the Holy Spirit, and the first out of which everything else rises, is the lordship of Christ. Jesus Christ is Lord. God hath made Him Lord and Christ—King and Saviour.
I wonder if you have noticed, and been sufficiently impressed by, this wonderful thing in this whole book which is introduced with this chapter: that it is the name of Jesus which becomes a great dominant factor throughout.
I should like, of course, to quote every mention of it and trace every instance of its being in evidence. That we will not do. You can do that at another time.
Here, the very first thing that the Holy Spirit did—and mark you, it is the first thing in this new dispensation inaugurated by the advent of the Holy Spirit, as the thing which is to be established, the platform upon which everything is to be enacted, the basis upon which everything is to be built, and the stream from which everything is to be derived—the first thing that the Holy Spirit did in coming was to establish the pre-eminence of the name of Jesus.
The pre-eminent and ineffable name.
There is a sense in which this whole wonderful book of beginnings—the beginnings of the new creation, the spiritual creation—is gathered into that one fact: a name has been given; a name has been established; a name has been laid down.
There is no other name given under heaven among men. It is the alone name, the unique name, the supreme name, the inevitable name: the name of Jesus.
While I am speaking, I would that you would be praying in your heart. Pray this one thing to the Lord: “Lord, do not let this be just a lot more teaching. Strike this right deep into my very being, and make it a living reality.”
What the Holy Spirit did was not just an objective thing to the men concerned. It was not some truth proclaimed to them. We do not have here some unfolding of truth about the name of Jesus. It was not something proclaimed in specific terms. That came afterward.
It was something that was done in them. While the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were also filled with the Holy Spirit.
If you look to see what that meant—how it worked out, what was the effect of it, the consequences, the issue—you find that, in a very powerful and overwhelming way, they became possessed, gripped, by this name.
Whatever they had known before, however much they had known Him, something happened that day which transfigured His name, gave to that name a new meaning, a new glory, and a new power. They were just caught up in the mighty grip of the Holy Spirit with this name.
Now, I am not exaggerating, though I am being very calm in my statement. You see, from that moment, when they stood up together before the great multitude—and it was a great multitude, men from every nation under heaven crowding into Jerusalem at that time—the thing which characterized them then and from then onward was a passion for the name of Jesus.
Just a passion for the name of Jesus.
They were—I was going to use the word “obsessed.” I use it as not a good word in this connection; perhaps it is a bad word in most connections. But you know what it means for a person to be obsessed by something. They just cannot stop talking about that thing, or that person, that man.
Whenever you meet them, that is the thing they are talking about. They live with it through the day, and if they sleep at night, they sleep with it in their subconsciousness. In the night they wake with that. On it goes.
That is something which has taken hold of them. That is not usually a good thing in human life, but here it is all right. That is what happened with these men. The name got a grip upon their inward life—the name of Jesus.
You move through the book, and again and again it is the name. It became so evident and so strong that, when persecution arose—as you have it in Acts 4 and Acts 5, very early—the enemies said, “There is to be no more preaching in this name. It is this name that is the trouble with you.”
But they went forth rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer for the name. It is like that through the book. The name became a passion.
What do you think that means? How do you interpret that in your mind? Surely not just as a title—Jesus. Surely not just the title by which a certain person was called, his name so-and-so.
Surely that name, for them, embodied everything: God’s great grace, God’s great mercy, God’s great love, God’s great redeeming activity, God’s great disposition to save, God’s great power, and, in and over all, God’s great purpose concerning this One.
He is God’s appointed King, ruler for this whole world. The name meant all that, and much more, to them. Who can exhaust the meaning of His name?
My point is this: the name became a passion.
Their one thought—oh, Lord, put this into us—their one thought was: “That name must go unsullied before me. That name must stand in this world in all the honour that belongs to it. That name must be shown forth as the most precious name in this universe.”
Everything, everything that can be done, must be done so that name—the name of Jesus—may be glorified.
That is simple in language, I know. There is nothing profound in that as a statement. But, oh, how deep, and almost terrible, is the challenge of that truth.
Dear friends, it works two ways. First of all, that is the meaning of the Holy Spirit getting hold of a life.
The Holy Spirit came in the name of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit came for the name of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit was burningly jealous for the honour of the name of the Lord Jesus.
That is what the Holy Spirit does, and that is the result of His really getting hold of the inner life of any person: a passion for the name.
But it works the other way. It tests us and finds us out absolutely along every line. It heads right up to this: How much, really, truly, are you and I men and women of the Holy Spirit?
What will we do for the sake of the name of Jesus?
Oh, I am not saying that you go out into some distant land to preach and to work. That might be the line along which your service to the name is fulfilled. But, dear friends, it begins with ourselves, in our disposition.
Are we wholly disposed to make any kind of adjustment, any kind of sacrifice, to endure any kind of opposition and persecution, and, in the spirit of grace, to attend to any kind of thing that we can in any way attend to, if by so doing this name shall be saved from reproach and brought into honour?
It would touch our relationships. It would be the cure of many of our ills. This name is a redeeming name when it really gets hold of the inner life.
I must leave you to work that out in all its meaning. But I see it here. Here were twelve men—or, really, one hundred and twenty—gathered in that upper room at Pentecost: men and women, and very human people.
They were very human people. So human that, even in the days when they had the Lord with them, with them day and night, they could quarrel amongst themselves. They could show bad spirits. They could exhibit their rivalries and try to outdo one another. I speak from the Book.
Yes, all that was about them. But on this day they are standing up together. They are like one man.
A lot of that which belongs to our humanity had been lifted onto a higher level of life and relationships and fellowship. What did it? You say, “The Holy Spirit.” Yes, but the Holy Spirit’s work was making every one of them a subject of the name of Jesus.
Only one thing now concerned them: how could that name be served by any means, in any way? How could they best serve the name of Jesus?
Yes, it was a passion born of the Holy Spirit. John had been right—John the Baptist—when he said, “He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.” This passion was like a fire in their being.
If you think that I am making more of it than I should, I bid you read the Book again. Read it with the name in view, and you will be newly impressed.
So, in the first place, the Holy Spirit made the name of the Lord Jesus supreme as a passion in their life. I say no more; that is enough to get on with for us. Do not let anything further add to that, smother that, bury that, or take from that.
But then, having become so mastered by the Spirit and by the name of Jesus, they went forth. They went forth, it says, “for the sake of the Name.”
Because that was the thing so real to them, so wonderful to them, and had so powerfully mastered them, through them that name mastered practically every situation that they encountered.
Immediately afterward, in Acts 3, Peter and John went up to the temple at the hour of prayer and found this lame man who had been there for a long time. Everybody who went to the temple saw him, looked at him, and perhaps many threw him a coin and said, “Poor fellow.”
Peter and John came along and looked at him. Whether they said, “Poor fellow,” or not, they did say, “Silver and gold have I none; but what I have, that give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”
In the name. What money could not do, no human pity could do, and nothing that man could do in any way could achieve, the name did.
And, dear friends, if you want a real estimate of the power of that thing, you always have to look in another direction to find it. Whether men recognize and expect it or not, hell is fully alive to the efficacy of the name of Jesus.
That was the signal for the first outburst of persecution against the church. What stirred the evil forces? This outbreak against the church was because of the name—the name.
Oh, you can use the name every time you say a prayer. You can close it, “In the name of Jesus,” or something like that, and nothing happens. But I am talking about Acts 2, in the power of the Holy Spirit. That name is omnipotent.
Have we lost something in this matter? Have we lost the native virtue of the name? Is that name really powerful amongst us?
Are we not still allowed to stand over a situation and say, “In the name of Jesus”? Surely we are. Surely we are. Why are we not doing it?
That is a question we have to answer amongst ourselves. But it ought to be like that.
While we would agree that, in laying the foundations for the dispensation, the Lord did some unusual things and associated certain evidences with those matters, it may not be His mind always to do it in exactly the same way.
Oh, the name has not changed. The Holy Spirit has not changed. The virtue remains. The power is still in that name.
And mark you, it is a name to be used. I want to guard that; be careful. Many people want to use the name for purposes and objects which will bring them glory. But it is something to be used in the Holy Spirit.
There is power in the name of the Lord Jesus—in power in the name.
As I have already hinted, while this was the passion and while this was the power following the advent of the Holy Spirit, this was and has remained the battleground of the centuries—the battleground of the church.
The whole controversy rages over and around His name. Dear friends, I wish that you had the comprehension to recognize how much is involved in a statement like that.
The whole controversy and conflict in which the church has been centres in, and focuses upon, the name of the Lord Jesus—openly and hiddenly, obviously and subtly.
The ways along which that controversy arises are countless, but the issue is one. The issue is one: from the side of the forces of evil, to discredit the name of Jesus in this world, in this universe—to discredit the name of the Lord Jesus.
Make that name a shame and a reproach rather than an honour and a glory.
The battle centres there. Bring all the battle to that point, and you have got the key—the only key—if only there is an adequate agreement to use it.
The tragedy is that the enemy has brought such disintegration, such division, such scattering, that it is difficult to get an adequate company who are one and focused upon this: the honour and glory of the name of the Lord Jesus demands concerted action.
Given that, then we are keeping very close to the Book. Given a group who are there, striking out concerning that name and its honour in this world, and you see what happens.
The battle of the name: His very name stirs the wrath of evil powers. This very name is the signal for trouble—for trouble.
If you are not in the good of the name, in the way the Spirit is related to the name, you can have a fairly easy time. You do not have very much trouble. Come onto this ground.
While this book, the Book of Acts, is a long and full story of the triumphs of the name, it is a story of a great deal to be triumphed over—many, many assaults to withstand.
You see, this is the kingdom. This is the kingdom that came in on that day. It is the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.
It is the kingdom in which He is King, and it is His name that gives meaning and character to this kingdom.
“The time is fulfilled.” Let us examine the time that was fulfilled on this day.
Well, we said this morning that it is time from the beginning of time up till now. What was the central character and content of that long period of time, from creation to Pentecost?
That, of course, means taking the Bible as heaven’s interpretation of history—not secular history as such, not the way in which man reads the history of this world, but heaven’s view and interpretation of history through that time.
What is central to that? A great object lesson—a wonderful object lesson that God created and planted right at the centre of the nations to be His witness, His object lesson, concerning Himself. I speak of Israel.
Israel, in that time which ended on the day of Pentecost and was fulfilled in its content, was God’s great object lesson in the first place on this very thing.
Israel was constituted a nation on the basis and principle of the theocracy: the government of God, the alone government of God, the unique government of the Lord.
The name of the Lord was basic, central, and supreme as the constituent of that nation.
When they were in Egypt, to be redeemed out of that world of evil, tyranny, and bondage, do you remember Moses saying to God, on receiving the commission, “What name shall I say? What shall I say when Pharaoh says, ‘Who sent you? What is the name?’”
The name means authority. It was by the very name of the Lord that they were redeemed and delivered—always spoken of again and again as being brought out of the house of bondage. It was by the name of the Lord that they were redeemed to become His people at all.
Of course, it had begun long before that with Abraham. But I cannot take the whole Bible; you are familiar with it. Here is this people, the seed of Abraham after the flesh, constituted by the name and planted right in the centre of the nations to be God’s object lesson as to the supremacy of His name.
“My name, My holy name”—that is what the Lord is always saying to Israel. My name. That is the great theme and lament of the prophets: the name of the Lord.
No doubt about it: it spreads over everything, runs through everything, affects everything, and explains everything—the name of the Lord.
When that name was being honoured, there was no people on this earth that could gain the mastery over that nation. The romance of their ascendancy is one of the wonders of history.
When you make comparisons between them and the other nations, you say, “What accounts for this?” You just cannot suppress these people. You just cannot hold them down. Some force at work here transcends all human force against them.
When the name was in honour, it was like that. When the name was dishonoured, they went to pieces and lost that place God had given.
Everything lay in the balances of the name. I say this was God’s great object lesson.
Now, that is the figure, the type, the illustration. That time is fulfilled. That time is completed.
For the rest of the time, God’s sake for His Son. Time, figures, object lessons, illustrations, and kindergarten are over. The real, full thing has now come in the fullness of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
That name which had been given to Christ—the name which is above every name, at which every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord—that name was introduced by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
And history is repeated. While that name remained in honour—while that pristine passion for the name continued—nothing could stand before that church.
We heard here last night something from this very Book of what happened when there was an uprising against the Lord Jesus. When Herod, a king, lifted up his hand—put forth his hand—against the church, Herod put forth his hand. So much the worse for Herod; and it proved so.
It is so for anybody else who puts forth their hand against the church, if the church is in the good of the name. You can touch, injure, and bring much trouble to the church if it is not in the power of the Holy Spirit; but if it is, the church is terrible as an army with banners.
Woe betide any who will destroy the temple of God. God will destroy.
Well, there you are. There is a mighty conflict circling round this name. But it is the name—the name which is above every name.
That is the beginning. We said that is the basis, the spring of everything. Out of that, the church received its mandate.
It received its mandate, and the mandate of the church for the dispensation was in the form of a depositing of the name in it, as though it were said, “Take this name into all the nations. Take this name and proclaim it in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
That is your mandate. That is your world mission. That is your commission. Go into all, make disciples of every nation, baptizing in the name—in the name.
The name, you see, governs the church’s world mission.
Now, I do just want to touch a point. I trust you are sufficiently alive and able to grasp it.
We must always realize the essential association of the gospel with the name of the Lord Jesus.
You may not grasp what I mean. It is possible to preach the gospel as a kind of system of truth—a wonderful system comprising all those elements of Christian doctrine: justification by faith, redemption by the blood, and all these features, a wonderful system of gospel truth.
We can both hold that and preach that as something in itself, and somehow or other it seems to fall short. It is the truth; it is gospel truth. There is not a flaw in the truth or in the presentation of the truth. Yet somehow it seems to fail, to fall short.
There is a gap between that and the mighty effect that we find in this book in the preaching.
Do you notice the preaching in the Book of Acts? It is always kept in the very closest relationship to the Person who bears the name. It is never something in itself.
It is the gospel, but it is the gospel of the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is the gospel of what God has done with Him, where He has put Him, Who He is, and what He is in the heart and will of God.
Oh, we must keep this association very close: not to preach wonderful gospel truth as something in itself, but that the issue may be that those who hear and those who receive do not hear and receive salvation for its own sake, but hear of and receive the mighty Lord of salvation.
He is made a Prince and a Saviour. That is the order. That is the order.
If you and I want to know salvation really, fully, wonderfully, it will not be that we accept salvation for its own sake. It is that we accept Him as the Prince—the Prince that God has made Him—the Lord, the Master in everything.
It is only here in all the universe that a word such as “despot” is permissible—fully permissible—because it is one of the original titles used of the Lord Jesus. You are afraid of despots, rightly so, in this world. But Jesus has the right to that: absolute dominion.
That is what the Holy Spirit does.
You see, the church’s mandate is not only to go and preach the truths of the gospel. The church’s mandate is to proclaim the lordship of Jesus Christ.
It is a very costly thing to do that in many parts of this world, and it is becoming more and more costly. You see, that is, after all, the issue in China. It is.
You pierce that whole situation to its very heart, and you find that it is the old issue which arose in the days of the apostles: another King, another King.
“We do not mind your ideologies, your theories, your systems; but you bring in this idea of Somebody to rule—Somebody to rule human life—then that is the issue.”
That is spreading over this world more and more. You see, it is Christ or Antichrist. It is: Who is going to be Lord?
Dear friends, this comes right down to our lives, surely. When you preach what you call the gospel, remember what Paul calls it: “The gospel of God concerning His Son”—not concerning your salvation, though that is there, but concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
That is the gospel.
Now, His Father’s mandate—coming back to the object lesson of the time fulfilled—Israel’s mandate in the nations and to the nations was not to try and teach the nations monotheism, or some kind of theology or doctrine about their gods. Their mandate in the nations was the name of the Lord. That is all: just that name.
They were there as the repository of the name—one name.
May I take just a minute or two longer on one thing that I want to clear up this afternoon before we get over to something else this evening, the Lord willing?
That is the constitution of the kingdom according to the heavenly pattern. They are called children of the kingdom—children of the kingdom.
These children, subjects of this heavenly kingdom that has come in, are to be constituted according to the kingdom to which they belong.
Now that brings us to this very title of the Holy Spirit. This morning we were speaking about Him as the Eternal Spirit, in relation to God’s eternal purpose. Here is this most familiar and most common title: the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of God, Who is holy.
He came. The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost and took those twelve—indeed, the hundred and twenty—and came to dwell as the Holy Spirit.
That, dear friends, is far-reaching. What I mean is this: God designed this kingdom for Himself before times eternal and projected it into this world with the creation.
As it came from His hand, it was a holy thing, a pure thing, untainted. We cannot understand or appreciate what that must mean. We have such very, very little experience of it. But there it was.
Then there was an unholy invasion. This creation that God had made was invaded by an unholy creature.
The effect of that invasion was that the whole creation—man and things—became shot through with something unholy, something evil, like an evil virus, spreading and gaining mastery.
Not very far into the Genesis story, you read of God looking down and seeing that the imagination of the heart of every man was evil. Oh, this thing went right through.
We know the story so well: the presence of evil, the contamination of it, the assault of it. It is a mighty thought.
Now, when God took Israel to be His object lesson, He took them right out of their association with the world and planted them alone.
In the symbols and typical sacrifices, He fenced them about. He sanctified them, or made them a holy people, and called them a holy nation.
That is, they were to be, in virtue of all His wonderful provisions in sacrificial blood and fire, a people separated from the evil of their natural life and associations.
Separated: God called their great forefather out of Ur of the Chaldees, separated him, and built up from him this holy nation. It was all type, figure, and imperfect, we know, in reality; but nevertheless, God had His great object lesson.
He says that the Holy Spirit was operative in all that. Centuries later He said, “My Spirit, which brought you out of Egypt, abideth among you.”
The Spirit is the Holy Spirit, working this separation to make a people different. This is what I want to get at: a different kind of people from other people.
We call them a peculiar people. That word has its own meaning, of course, and in our day it does not really convey what it should. A peculiar people means something different, something unique, something strange amongst the people of this world—something that is not like the others.
It is a holy people. The Holy Spirit, indwelling and working, has made for a different people.
Take the object lesson again. Was Israel a nation different from others? Well, we know that is true.
Of course, different races and nations have their own peculiar characteristics. We know one from India when we meet one, or one from China; and usually we know someone from the West. We know by the characteristic features of that particular nationality, especially when it is pure and true and not mixed by intermarriage.
There are the features. Now, Israel was like that. I do not dwell upon it, but God took these people and forbade intermarriage.
One of the heinous sins of Israel later on was that they intermarried with people of other races, because God was creating an object lesson, setting forth a great spiritual truth in the natural world.
Here was a people who had their own characteristic features. You could tell them by that. They had their own language—a language common to them. They had their own customs, diet, and manners.
In the light of this new kingdom that has come in, this people are not doing things that other people do. They are doing things that other people do not do. It is not legalism; it is simply spontaneous. The Holy Spirit has taught them what is pleasing to God and what is not pleasing to God.
The features of Christians are beautiful to see—the features of these people, and the language. The language: it is a spiritual language.
Have you met a Christian in some part of the world where you do not meet many Christians? It is a rare thing to meet a Christian, and you meet one whom you have never met before. You begin to talk, and you say, “Oh, you speak my language. I can understand you.”
We speak the same language, but it is a spiritual language, is it not? Something of the heart. It is that of the Spirit of Christ. The day of Pentecost brought in a language, did it not?
But, oh, amen. Oh, that we might be touched on this.
Holy Spirit manners.
You know, dear friends, we may not naturally be born, brought up, and trained in high manners, good taste, and what is fitting. But somehow, when a man or a woman without any of that inheritance, training, or upbringing gets into the hands of the Holy Spirit, you have God’s gentleman and God’s gentlewoman.
There is a courtesy—a courtesy. I want to say that anything that is discourteous is not of the Holy Spirit. There is a courtesy about this kingdom.
It is a searching thought: a sensitiveness to what is fitting, what is due, what ought to be, and what ought not to be. Our manners and our mannerisms ought to come under the Holy Spirit if we are children of the kingdom.
Again, that very favourite little phrase: “And being let go, they went to their own company.” Here is a heavenly clannishness, if you like.
It does not mean that they keep themselves apart from the world in the wrong sense, but there is something that draws them together. They are a people that belong to one another. That is the kingdom of heaven, illustrated in the Old Testament and made real in the New.
Forgive me for keeping you so long this afternoon, but I could keep you just as long. Let me pray.