We are now returning to the point from
which we began on Saturday afternoon when we
said that all that we were going to
consider would be gathered into the cross and
the name of the Lord.
We then did very briefly and lightly indicate
that these two things are found together right
through the word of God.
We instance several of the occasions where they
are found together.
It only needs to be said again here
that that is so and that is open
to truth if you will look at it.
In the Old Testament of course the cross
is represented by the altar and there it
is a matter of the union of the
altar and the name of the Lord.
The name of the Lord connected with the
altar.
In the New Testament as we expect to
find it the altar is changed for the
cross but the name is still kept with
it.
I just return your thought to a couple
of passages which indicate this very definitely and
clearly one we have already considered fairly fully.
We are going to greatly abbreviate or shorten
it for our purpose at this time.
The letter to the Philippians chapter 2.
At the end of verse 8 we just
have the word the cross and then verse
9 goes on.
Wherefore the name which is about every name.
The cross wherefore the name.
All the rest that is there is gathered
into that.
Turn back to the letter to the Ephesians
you have the same thing indicated chapter 1.
Verse 20.
He raised him from the dead and made
him to sit above every name that is
named.
He raised him above every name that is
named.
Of course you will take account of the
context of both of those passages and you
will find that it is all about what
God has done through the cross of the
Lord Jesus as the basis for glorifying his
own name of bringing his own glory into
full manifestation.
With that then is our basic position.
The union between the cross and the name.
The name of the cross.
Let us go on.
The book of the Acts which is a
very large and full book as you know
stands entirely on the ground of the cross.
That book is just the issue of the
cross.
The spontaneous issue of the cross.
It would never have been written and all
that was there would never have happened but
for the cross.
It rests upon the cross and in that
book of the Acts the term or phrase
the name is mentioned no fewer than 33
times which carries its own significance.
The name which is pre-eminent and pre
-dominant throughout that whole wonderful book called the
book of the Acts rests upon the cross
and in the new testament as a whole
everything is in the name.
The name of the Lord Jesus.
People are exhorted to believe into the name.
In answer to their inquiry as to what
they should do they are bidden to be
baptized in the name.
They're gathering together as the Lord's people was
gathering in the name.
All their prayer was in the name.
They were praying in the name.
They were preaching and teaching in the name
and the work that they were doing hearing
the faith and so on was all in
the name.
It was that that caused the trouble.
The rulers came upon them and forbade them
to speak or teach any more in this
name.
All that and it is a most inspiring
and helpful and instructive study just to look
at that in the new testament.
All that rests upon the cross and is
inseparably connected therewith.
The name of the Lord Jesus came before
Christianity.
Christianity took its character in the first place
from the name.
It was the name that gave to Christianity
its nature.
I fear that it may have been reversed
since.
Seems though perhaps not deliberately and intentionally or
consciously but it does seem that Christianity has
come before the name and gets in the
way of the name and very largely is
a contradiction of the name.
So that what we have to understand and
what has to be recovered if there is
going to be anything like the power and
effectiveness and truthfulness that there was at the
beginning is what the name signifies and implies.
Because it is not just a title, a
designation, some phrase, some tag put on in
the name of Jesus.
It becomes so commonplace to do that.
So matter of practice and course to use
the phrase in the name of Jesus but
nothing seems to happen with all that.
So little results.
So little is present even when that kind
of speaking and terminology is used as the
commonplace thing.
No it is not just a title.
It is not just a designation.
Just not the name of someone.
Although that someone may be the Lord Jesus
himself.
It is something very much more than that.
It is impossible to consider this matter of
the Lord's name in the Old Testament without
recognizing that it is not just a different
title from other gods and other lords.
It is an entirely different kind of being
and there is more in it than that.
What is true in the Old Testament is
true yes infinitely and transcendently more in the
New Testament.
May I repeat what we have to understand
and what has to be recovered is the
significance and implications of the name as the
apostles understood it and the Holy Spirit caused
it to mean and therefore which resulted in
such tremendous things.
When they said in the name of Jesus
something happened.
When they prayed in the name of Jesus
Christ something happened.
When they preached in the name something happened.
Is that, that something which is there that
we have to know and to recover.
The name and its glory has got to
come back into its right place.
Well we have said and we repeat that
the name rests upon and issues from the
cross.
Therefore all the meaning of the cross is
embodied in the name.
That's simple enough but it's very important.
All the meaning of the cross is embodied
in the name and to separate these two
is to put asunder what God has put
together and when you do that you destroy
the real value.
The name can never be effective without the
meaning of the cross behind it or present
with it.
For the name to manifest all its divine
power and fullness it must be kept vitally
bound up with the cross.
It must rest all the time upon that
which has given it those values and to
death wherefore the name cannot divide those two.
Wherefore the name and they remain together.
So that it becomes necessary for us dear
friends to reconsider some of the great meanings
of the cross which are gathered into the
name of the Lord Jesus and give that
name its real meaning and value.
I'm going to assume that we here today
or this morning are the Lord's children so
that it becomes unnecessary for me to spend
time in speaking about those values of the
cross which have made us the Lord's people.
To speak about the atonement and justification by
faith and the initial union with Christ by
new birth.
These are values of the cross, meanings of
the cross which are gathered into the name.
Of course nothing more can be until that
is true but I am assuming that you
here do know and understand that the name
of the Lord Jesus means for you your
sins forgiven, your union with Christ, your justification
before God.
So that I can dismiss that in this
company and proceed beyond that to these further
values and meanings of the cross which are
gathered into the name.
Firstly then the cross was the place, the
scene and the occasion of the overthrow of
a kingdom and its prince.
We've got to be very sure about that
of course we all believe in the common
phrase the victory of Calvary and well we
know we think we know a lot about
that.
We've got to be very sure about this
because it doesn't always seem to be working
out.
It was definitely and positively if the new
testament means anything at all the occasion of
the overthrow of a kingdom and its prince.
That kingdom is a nature and a system
in this world ruled by Satan.
A nature and because a nature a system.
Every nature produces its own system.
Every system is the product of a particular
nature.
When I use the word system I'm only
using another word for kingdom.
In every different kingdom a certain nature predominates.
That need not be followed up it's obvious.
In the kingdom of this world there is
a nature and that kingdom takes its strength
and its form from that nature and it
is in that nature through that system that
Satan rules and the principle of that rule
of Satan is the alienation of man from
God.
That sums up everything.
All the works and ways of Satan have
one object just one object his ways and
his works are perhaps countless so various that
they are often difficult to track down.
But howsoever many they be and however great
their variety they are all gathered into one
single object and that is to alienate men
from God.
That may be done by making a great
deal of man.
Making him his own God his own Lord.
The very deification of humanity.
The enthronement of man on the throne of
his own glory.
Or it may be on the other hand
to the other extreme by depression and misery
and suffering and degradation.
And everything between those two extremes is just
to make man on the one hand independent
of God and on the other hand bitter
against God.
The object is one alienation from God.
Making man to part with God.
To be independent of God.
To take a course of self-will.
To blind man.
Make him ignorant.
Everything to get in between man and the
law.
That is the nature that is in the
kingdom of this world.
Isn't it?
For the most part you can divide the
whole world into those two sections.
On the one hand man made to feel
that he doesn't need God.
That he can get on quite well without
God.
Be independent of God and give God no
thought.
And then very lastly along the line of
many preoccupations and what he calls pleasures.
Filling of his life so full that there's
no place for God.
Or on the other hand that more positive
attitude toward God of bitterness and rebellion and
hatred.
In greater or lesser degrees the whole world
is summed up for those two things.
And it is in every natural heart.
Every natural heart.
That is the kingdom of Satan.
That is the kingdom of this world of
which he is prince.
We keep on the focal point.
That which comes in between God and man
and man and God.
As Satan's supreme objective and activity.
The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ meant
the destruction of that.
It was the occasion when the prince of
this world was carved out.
When that kingdom received its fatal blow.
When that work of Satan was met, mastered
and overcome.
The Lord Jesus through his cross holds that
victory in his hand.
It has not yet become a good truth
in the world actually.
But we are coming to this in a
moment.
The fact is there that the Lord Jesus
has done that.
And believers into the name of the Lord
Jesus know it.
And are in the good of that.
So that the name, the name embodies this.
That that kingdom and that ruler has been
cast out.
The cross means its destruction.
And the name is the name of the
one who specifically did that.
Did that.
How did he do it?
Firstly there was none of that kingdom, that
nature in him.
Oh how Satan worked along every line, by
every means to get in between the son
and the father.
Between Christ and God.
I say by every means.
We haven't the record of all the secret
battles.
But we've enough to know that there was
a battle going on throughout his life.
To in some way get in between him
and the father.
If thou be the son, if thou be
the son, if thou be the son.
Trying to insinuate a question, a doubt.
Open the way for a breach.
So I'm not saying to take you through
his life.
Showing how here and there, in this way
and in that.
The enemy was at work by pressure and
oppression, by subtlety, by foes, by friends.
Working all the time to find this gap.
Where he could just thrust in his wedge.
And then he would drive it home.
And do with the last Adam, what he
did with the first.
But the prince of this world cometh and
hath nothing in me.
The prince of this world.
No the phrase.
Not the devil comes.
Not the great adversary.
The prince of this world.
And hath nothing in me.
He could not get in between him and
the father.
He could not bring about this alienation.
This division and separation.
He just could not do it.
But for our Lord it was a matter
of constant vigilance and constant conflict.
It was not automatic.
The mystery, the mystery of his humanity, the
humanity of God, God incarnate, is just that.
That he had to fight our battle.
It's a theological problem I know.
How a perfect being can be tempted, see
that the fact is writ large in the
word.
That it was real.
He was not just preaching.
It was real.
It was battle unto blood to maintain this
to the last.
You know it's no small thing, no small
thing then written.
Just immediately after he'd been raised from the
dead he said I ascend unto my God
and your God, my father and your father.
That's a tremendous victory over the dividing work
and power of the enemy.
He is still in union in salvation.
Ah but what that meant, what that meant
in the moment of his being forsaken by
the father.
Yes that's not the last word.
No that cry of forsakenness was not the
last cry.
The last cry was father into thy hands.
Relationship through all is unbroken.
He has triumphed in himself.
Yes that's how he did it.
All hell raged, raged on that ground alone.
Everything, everything is focused in this man.
Satan's kingdom is at stake in this one
man.
All his hopes, all his age-long hopes
and ambitions are in the balances of this
one man.
And the pivot of all is this relationship
with God.
And so hell raged from its depth against
him on this ground alone, this one ground
of fellowship with God.
It cost him everything.
Here in this world it cost him everything.
Satan saw to it that he didn't have
anything here in this world.
All right, all right if you're not coming
into my kingdom and yielding to my law
and falling down and worshiping me, putting me
in the place of God your father, you
shall have nothing.
I'll see to that.
And he had nothing.
Not so much as a plate to lay
his head.
It did much more than that.
Right through to the end.
And then from Satan's side and the instrument
of Satan he was murdered for.
Thank God we know another side to that.
But from that side he was literally murdered
by Satan and Satan's agent.
He was killed for that reason only.
Because of the battle that he had come
to fight out to a victorious issue and
conclusion.
The battle of this relationship with God.
That he triumphed.
And he triumphed through death.
There's God's miracle.
Thing that was intended and calculated by that
evil kingdom to be his destruction was its
own destruction.
The one who planned all that, thinking that
it would be his supreme triumph, found it
to be his supreme triumph in a way
that was not meant.
The undoing of that kingdom and its prince.
That dear friend is the cross.
Now you see the book of the Acts
which brings in the church.
The book of the Acts and all that
is there and the church stood on that
ground.
It stood on that ground.
It took up the values, that value of
the cross.
By the Holy Spirit it was caused to
stand upon that tremendous victory which Christ had
wrought.
By the very Holy Spirit the church at
the beginning was brought into a marvelous union
and fellowship with God.
Oh how strong it was.
Now let hell rage against the church as
it raged against him.
And Harriet to death.
To martyrdom.
She can't get in between them and their
Lord.
They've come into the good of his tremendous
victory over that kingdom and its prince.
The church stood on that ground and seeing
that that was the content of the name.
We can understand now the potency of the
name in and through the church and on
the church in those days.
That standing on that ground when they employed
the name.
They employed the mighty victory that was gathered
into that name.
What Christ had done in his cross and
things happened.
But Satan has not given up.
There is still the need for the church
to stand on its rightful ground of the
cross and the name.
The name of the cross and to be
as vigilant as was its Lord.
And to be all the time girded because
the world, the world as a spirit, the
world as a nature, the world as a
spiritual system is all the time seeking some
point at which it can insinuate itself to
get between the church and the Lord.
To make it necessary for the Lord to
stand back unable to go on with his
people because, because that other thing has got
some place in some way.
This is the work that is going on.
Yes, how subtle it all is.
You go back with this thought over your
Old Testament again and you see not always
was it by open assault that the enemy
brought in the peoples of the world against
the people of God to overpower them and
to subject them to their deities.
Not always along the line of open suffering
and affliction but oh how often in the
Old Testament it was a very subtle quiet
insinuation of something just working like that almost
secretly.
People were hardly alive to what was happening
but then they woke up one day to
find that the Lord was no longer with
them.
Woke up to find that they were in
defeat.
They lost their Lord and lost their power
and lost their position and then the prophets
who were the seers, the men who saw,
the men who knew the reasons seeing what
the people did not see.
The prophets came to interpret their condition and
their situation.
They put their finger all ways and ever
upon some secret thing that was of that
other kingdom which had got in.
This is a tremendous business dear friends for
the people of God.
It is like that.
Why the loss of power?
Why the loss of the Lord's presence?
Why the loss of a situation such as
obtained at the beginning in the days of
the book of the Acts?
Why are things so different?
Why all the weakness and the defeat and
the poverty and the hunger amongst the Lord's
people?
Why?
Because though that with which the Lord will
not, cannot, ally himself, it got in between
him and his people.
You may call it the world if you
like.
Why?
Because though that with which the Lord will
not, cannot, ally himself, it got in between
him and his people.
You may call it the world if you
like.
We speak about the world in the church
and worldliness of Christians.
Well, well, what do you mean by that?
What do you mean by that?
It is not always the gross thing.
Sadly enough amongst many Christians, multitudes of Christians,
there are the blatant worldliness.
And in Christian assemblies and companies what are
called churches, it is gross worldliness.
But that is not all.
So many methods employed, ways of going about
things, so much of the energy and heat
brought in is just of that other kingdom.
It is not the Holy Ghost.
Where does it come from?
I sometimes think, and I am going to
say a rather serious thing, I sometimes think
that Satan can energize to do what looks
like the work of God.
Satan is always parseeing.
And he can get a false movement in
the name of the Lord, a false movement
which is ostensibly a Christian movement, but which
is false and is drawing upon other resources
than the Holy Spirit of God.
He sees quite clearly that a time will
come when it will be far more difficult
to touch things in that direction than it
was before.
The thing will have become harder.
So hard as to be almost impregnable.
You may speak about the Lord there.
Oh no, we have had some.
We have seen how that works out.
That does not last.
We are not going to have any more
of that.
That is a state at last worse than
the first.
Well, if you do not understand me and
agree with that, leave it.
But there it is, there is a subtle
working to get his kingdom in the place
of the kingdom of God.
And he will do it by any means.
The cross, the cross does represent the undoing
of that kingdom.
And therefore the church must be a cross
governed church.
The cross must be its foundation and its
basis, not in doctrine only, not in theory
alone.
It may have all the doctrine, it may
be most accurate and sound as to the
atonement and as to the cross, the life,
death, resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
All that and it may count for nothing
spiritually.
In effect we can be outright fundamentalists and
spiritual, real spiritual life and power may be
utterly absent.
It is not that, it is not that.
It is that the cross is there as
an actuality, a reality undercutting all the kingdom
and nature of Satan's kingdom.
It must be there.
Church will know nothing of that first power
unless it is so, or shall I say
will only know power in so far as
it is so.
That is the meaning of the name.
We use the name, we ought to be
in our own hearts meaning the bringing in
of all the potency of the cross of
the Lord Jesus over a basement kingdom of
Satan in its nature and in its objectivity.
You know quite well that without understanding all
this, without having had it explained and interpreted
to you, when you really have come, as
we put it, to the cross, that is
when you have received by faith the values
of Christ's death and resurrection, you know that
the very first thing that springs up in
your consciousness is somehow, I can't explain it,
but I feel nearer to God and God
feels nearer to me.
That's the most elementary way of putting it,
isn't it?
Just the language of a little child, I
feel that God is nearer to me and
I'm nearer to God than ever before.
Somehow or other, God and I have been
brought together.
There is fellowship with God, no longer enmity.
There is a consciousness of union, no longer
separation.
Ah, but more, there's a consciousness of love
and no longer bitterness or hatred or independence
when it comes to this.
This is my life and if ever I
lose this, I lose everything.
God has become in Christ everything.
That's the first consciousness, isn't it?
Well here you are, that's the work of
the cross, that's the proof, the simple elementary
proof that the Lord Jesus in his cross
went right for the heart of this whole
thing.
This separation between God and man, he went
right there and thought that out.
And so in him risen, we are brought
to and joined with God.
If that sounds too simple, too elementary for
you wonderful advanced Christians, don't brush it aside.
It's the most beautiful thing, but the most
costly thing, oh what it costs, what it
costs our Lord just to fight out that
battle, to overthrow that tremendous force of power,
to get in between God and man.
He fought out our battle.
Do you see?
That's the meaning of the name.
That's the outworking of the name.
If that is true, if we're in the
value of that, oh how wonderful the name,
how powerful the name is.
It's a great victory.
And do you not see that the object
of the enemy all the way, still his
object, still his object is to recover that
ground and keep us this in trying, not
now to keep us away from God, but
to again get in between us from the
Lord by any means whatsoever.
It's a terrible thing for one who has
really known that fellowship with God to lose
the consciousness of it.
It's the terror of the cross again, isn't
it?
The terror of that moment of forsakenness, casting
its shadow over.
It is almost as though it were being
said, he did not, he did not win
that victory.
It's as though all that Christ did is
being nullified.
Oh what a thing it is, this fellowship
with God.
And therefore our whole New Testament is constructed
for believers upon this one thing, the way,
the way of maintained and deepened union with
God.
Only another way of putting away of life
in the spirit.
It's a battle, it calls for vigilance.
Remember dear friends, that till the prince of
this world in his own kingdom, to which
thanks God we do not belong because we
have been translated out of the authority of
darkness into the kingdom of the son of
his love, he still assails us, he still
assails us from without.
Try to get in between us and the
Lord.
If that happens, you know where it comes
from.
You know where it comes from.
That doesn't come from the Lord.
Beware what interpretation you put upon the shadows
between you and the Lord.
You know where they come from.
You know the remedy.
It's Christ and what he has done in
his cross.
But do you see the issue of this?
Ah the dishonour of his name.
We come back to that every time, the
motive, the motive.
What is the motive for our vigilance?
For our warring?
What is the motive for our watchfulness?
What is the motive, the only adequate motive
for dealing with everything that comes between us
and the Lord?
The motive must be the honour of his
name.
In the fighting out of that battle, in
life and death, it was the name of
the Father.
The name of the Father.
Oh how much we have got to realise
of what we know.
That marvellous prayer which is called his site,
recently prayer, that he was just going so
to speak to the altar.
He was going to the cross.
It's the name, the name, the name.
And it's the name involved in these, this
company.
He's praying, pouring himself out in his concern
for the name which he had given them.
I have given them thy name.
Oh keep them in thy name.
The honour of the Father's name is the
passion of his soul.
He fought the battle of that honour right
through the cross.
And you and I must be baptized into
that same concern for the honour of his
name.
In his people, not something objective and abstract,
but true in his people, the honour of
his name.
We go on later, perhaps this afternoon, we
shall see that in some very practical way.
I feel that that's enough to challenge us
and occupy us this morning.
It's only more than that.
Oh that we should see one thing when
we, say in the name of the Lord
Jesus.
We're not just repeating some formal attitude, some
habitual way of speaking as Christians.
We really ought to be meaning by the
cross of the Lord Jesus and all of
these.
You can put it that way if you
like.
This and that and the other by the
cross of the Lord Jesus.
The ground upon which God encamps, but that
cross in all its values is embodied in
the name.
And the name just means that.
It means nothing without it.
Lord give us to see and understand the
meaning of the name and to be set
upon the recovery of its meaning.