A NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME

G. W. Brown

Matthew 1: 21; Acts 3: 6; 26: 15; Philippians 2: 9–11; Revelation 22: 16

I think it is very interesting to see how these four apostles from whose writings we have read are used by the Spirit of God to speak about the name of Jesus, to speak about the Person of Jesus, but particularly about His name, because His name is here, it will never die. Every other man’s name will die and be forgotten. One said of old, prophetically, “His name shall endure for ever”, Psalm 72: 17.

We read from Matthew 1 about His birth, and the direction, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins”. That has come true, you know. It is coming true, I suppose, every day in many, many persons who listen to the gospel, and who, because God has given them faith to believe, believe on the blessed Saviour, whose name is Jesus, and find salvation from their sins. You say, perhaps, ‘Well, I thought that meant that they would be saved from the last judgment and from going to hell’. Well, that is sure; there is, no doubt about that for every believer in Jesus. But “… save his people from their sins” means that we get out of them now.

I do not know what sort of tax-gatherer Matthew was. They were notorious cheats, the tax-gatherers for the Romans. If you read history you will find that most of them took more than they legally should have done in the way of taxes, and put Caesar’s in one pocket, and the rest in the other pocket for themselves. He may have been just like the rest of his class, but he was saved from his sins whatever they were—because he had some. Even if he was not a cheating collector, he still had sins. There are no cheating collectors here, but everybody here has some sins. Thank God for the Saviour who saves His people from their sins! No one needs any proof, surely, that they have sins. The youngest knows that. The all-important thing is that the Saviour was promised, and He came to “… save his people from their sins”.

The gospels are full of most affecting records of people who were saved from their sins. Think of that robber, by the side of Jesus, who was about to die. The word says, “It is the portion of men once to die, and after this …”, Hebrews 9: 27. People do not like to think about the “after”. They do not like to think about dying, usually; but I find that many people are getting very hard and callous; life is very hard for them; they are doing hard bondage every day and all day long. They are serving Satan; and he is a hard master. I read in the paper about some persons who had taken hostages; they were indifferent to the possibility of being executed for their crimes. They said that death was only escape. What miserable persons they must have been in their sins to say that. What hopelessness! I suppose they thought that that was the end. But the word of God says, “It is the portion of men once to die, and after this judgment”. It is not the end. Every one of us has to give an account of himself to God. You think of an old man like me, for example, having to give an account of himself to God. What a long time it might take me. Even a young man, even a boy, will have to give an account of himself to God. What will you say?

I was speaking to a man years ago about the Saviour, and we got on to this point of death, and after death the judgment, and I said, ‘What will you say?’, ‘Oh’, he said, ‘I will say that for the first forty years of my life I tried hard to go straight, and did the best I could’, But he will never stand before the Judge and say that. If he has—and I trust he will not—but if he has to appear before the great white throne, he will not have a sentence as long as that. No one who appears before the great white throne, I think, will utter a sentence as long as that. No one will make a plea as long as that. I think they will be clear then, if they are not now. Once a person is dead they are no longer unbelievers, you know, in one sense. They know only too well.

Well, “He shall save his people from their sins”. That poor man on a cross was dying for his sins; he was not fit to live. There were two of them, the Saviour between them, and the one said to Jesus, “Remember me, Lord ….”, Luke 23: 42. He said to his companion in sin, “…

we indeed justly …”. He says, ‘Are you like all those people down there mocking, seeing we are in the same condemnation? They are mocking the One who is dying, they are mocking this One, and we are in the same condemnation as He, we are being executed. We, that is you and I, justly, but this Man has done nothing amiss’. Wonderful testimony! He turned to Jesus and he said, “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”, and Jesus said,

“Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. He was saved from his sins at the last minute by faith in the Saviour, the same blessed Saviour in whom I have put my faith, and I hope you have put yours.

Then we read about Jerusalem, and Peter. Jerusalem seems to have been a troubled place for a long, long time. What we read of in Acts 3 was nearly two thousand years ago. Jerusalem is still a troubled place today. There are still people who are sick there, people who are lame, people who suffer from all kinds of diseases. But Peter and his fellow-apostles were there.

What a good thing it would have been to be there when Peter was there. Better still to have been there when Jesus was there. I wonder how I would have shown up if I had been there when Jesus was there, because He was rejected and crucified. He was cast out of the city. He was the King, come to His capital, but instead of reigning, they crucified Him outside the city. But He had risen! He had been crucified and had borne the judgment of God, the punishment due to me for my sins. That is a wonderful thing! Do you feel like that about yourself? Do you know the Saviour as the One who has borne the judgment of God, the punishment due to you for all your sins? How you must love Him! It is a wonderful thing to think of One who has borne all the judgment for me; I shall never come into judgment. He came to save His people from their sins. In God’s mercy I am one of them. I hope you are.

Pater was there and his fellow-apostles, and they were preaching. Marvellous preaching!

They were preaching about the Jesus whom the rulers had cast out and crucified. The Jews had handed Him over to the Romans to be crucified because they were not allowed to crucify people themselves, and the Romans did it to please them and to keep them quiet. That was well known in Jerusalem. And now there are these men going about through

the city and preaching that that Jesus who was crucified just a little while ago—only a few weeks before—has been raised from the dead and has gone into heaven. What is He going to do? Come with an army to destroy Jerusalem? No, God has put Him there, a Prince and a Saviour. ‘Oh’, somebody might have said, ‘that is a funny story to tell, an extraordinary story to tell’. Well, when Peter sees this poor man he says, “In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaraean rise up and walk”. And he rose up and walked. If you want any proof that Jesus was risen, there it is. His name made that man strong. There is no name like the name of Jesus.

Paul was going about at that very time, I suppose, collecting christians, taking them off to prison; bursting into their houses and dragging them out; that is what the Scripture says. What a sinner he was! But it was he who wrote these words, “Wherefore also God highly exalted him …”. He had been saved from his sins. He listened to the heavenly gospel. There is no indication that he ever heard Jesus preach the gospel when He was on earth. But now he listened to Him from heaven. The Saviour in heaven knew what he was doing, knew his name, knew about his sins, and He spoke to him out of heaven. He has spoken to many people since. If you believe, you see, it is because the Saviour has spoken to you out of heaven. You say, ‘It was Mr. So-and-so who was preaching when I believed’. Well, the Saviour might have used Mr. So-and-so, but the Saviour Himself was speaking to you out of heaven, the Holy Spirit down here working in you, giving you faith to believe the word. Oh, I pray that He will give us faith this afternoon to believe the word about the name of Jesus, the powerful name of Jesus.

I suppose that at the very time when Peter said, “In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaraean rise up and walk”, Saul, as he was called then, was doing his dreadful work, bursting into people’s houses, and dragging them out to prison because they believed on the Saviour.

Nothing like that has happened to you because you believed on the Saviour, or to me. It is happening to some of the Lord’s people in other parts. But the Lord is all-powerful where He is, whatever He may allow for the time being. He allowed those of His own to be dragged to prison and some to death. One thing you learn when you become a believer on Jesus is not to fear death. It is not that you want to die. Young people, or older people either who are in fairly good health, do not want to die, but they do not fear to die. They do not fear the judgment, because the Saviour has settled all their debts. His precious blood shed on the cross has met all God’s claims. It is very important to understand this. It is very important for everyone to understand that the blood of Jesus has settled all God’s claims for those who believe. It has met His glory, His majesty. Sin is an offence to Him, whatever it may be; any self-will on the part of men is an offence to God. But the precious blood of Jesus has met all God’s claims, and He announces forgiveness and blessing through the Saviour in the glory, the Saviour who spoke to Saul quite unexpectedly.

Saul was going into Damascus to do some more of this dreadful work when the Saviour looked at him from the glory, and the look was so bright Paul says it was a light above the brightness of the sun—so bright the face of Jesus is, you know. He says, ‘We all fell to the ground, all my attendants, all of us, fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me, “Saul. Saul, why persecutest thou me? … And I said, Who art thou, Lord?”’ He would have to say ‘Lord’, of course, because this powerful Speaker was far greater, far more powerful, than Saul of Tarsus. “And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest”, the emphasis is on the “I” and “thou”. It is very important to notice that, that the Saviour tells you who He is. That great and glorious Saviour in heaven is ready to speak to a sinner like Saul of Tarsus, to save him from his sins. I do not think he ever burst into anyone else’s house and dragged anyone out, not one. He went to prison himself for the name of Jesus, suffered shipwreck, hunger, thirst, and loneliness, for the name of Jesus. But he had been saved from his sins. What great wealth came into his soul!

So that is a reason for the preaching of the gospel that you might make a start as a believer on the Lord Jesus, and then God can put wealth into your soul. You cannot be too young, you know, to start. One of the most cheering things to us older people is to see a young person coming out definitely in the confession of Jesus as Lord and Saviour, in committal to Him, and readiness to confess Him—and to suffer for confessing Him if need be—and to labour for Him. He had had a good education, and he had evidently finished that, so he must have been getting on; but he had not finished his education in the school of God. You start another line of education in the school of God, and there is a lot to learn. He had learned a good deal when he wrote this epistle about the Lord to the Philippians. How much he had learned!

I feel very sad sometimes to find how little some of my friends know of the truth. Ignorance of the truth is no virtue, not a bit. Ignorance of the Scriptures is a shame and reproach to us.

Men and women have suffered death for the maintenance of the Scriptures and their testimony to the Saviour. Let us value the Scriptures. Let us learn what is in them. If you learn what is in them you will begin to understand the meaning of what is in them, and as you do, wealth will come, into your soul, spiritual wealth that you will never lose for all eternity.

What wealth Saul got into his soul! He got a new name. He would be better pleased with his new name than his old one. I expect every believer gets a new name in heaven when he becomes a believer. God knows each by a different name as a person who is saved from his sins.

So in writing this letter to the Philippians Paul is speaking about Jesus, how He humbled Himself, how He was in the form of God. I do not suppose anybody could explain to you what that is, being “in the form of God”. It is not like Satan who said, “I will ascend into the heavens, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit upon the mount of assembly ... I will be like the Most High”, Isaiah 14: 13, 14. Jesus is the Most High, though He became Man, and as Man He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. God said, ‘That Man I will have as My Son’. God declared at His baptism that He had taken Him on as His Son. He was His Son from His very conception; He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. God is making Him manifest now, that that Man is the Son of God. And the wonderful thing is that He is making believers sons, too, and He is giving them a Spirit of sonship so that they have the affections and the feelings of sons for their Father.

They are said to be “born of God”—a wonderful thing, that!

You see how much there is to learn. Why do we not get on with the learning? How wonderful these things are! Better than sins, you see.

People around us are going on with their sins. We may go on with the learning, learning the truth. How much Paul had learned. He says, “Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and granted him a name, that which is above every name”. What name? “… that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of heavenly and earthly and infernal beings”—those in hell.

Bowing the knee though actual as well in the present time, is figurative, I suppose. Perhaps people will not have knees like we have now when they bow to Jesus in that coming day; that is figurative. It means that they manifestly submit, that they bow themselves, that they own His supremacy, that they own that Jesus Christ is Lord, and it is for God the Father’s glory.

It is very wonderful; it opens up another world. It opens up God the Father’s world where all are like Jesus. How long shall we wait for it? It is not a question only of waiting for it.

Persons are beginning to be like Jesus even now. Are you beginning to be like Jesus? The better you know Him, the more you know His love, the more you love Him in return, the more like Him you will be.

So, finally, we come to the apostle John. How the Spirit of God has used him! How the Lord Jesus Himself has used him! The very last words in our Bible, He says through His servant, the apostle John—not that he calls himself apostle; he calls himself a bondman. “His bondman John”, that is how he begins this book. He says through His bondman John, “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify these things to you in the assemblies”. Now, we are not unfamiliar with this word, “the assemblies”. I hope we value it, and understand something about it, because there is a message from Jesus. There is a witness or a testimony to the assemblies from Jesus, the One whom God has highly exalted, and given a name that is above every name.

The names in this world disappear. If you spoke of Churchill today most people would remember him, though they might not be too interested; but they would remember the name.

If you spoke of Napoleon, ‘Oh, yes’, someone would say, ‘I have read about him’. If you spoke of Alexander the Great, ‘Oh, yes, I think I read about him at school’. These names are getting more and more forgotten. They are going. What is there in the name? Just a memory, maybe of something that you are thankful for, and of a lot that you are not thankful for about most of these people. But the name of Jesus, is power, divine power.

Then, outside of this immediate order of things in which we are, I have no doubt that there are other names; in fact, the Scripture tells us that there are. There is the name of Gabriel. Do you know anything about Gabriel? And then there is one called Michael. Do you know anything about Michael? These are very great personages. We do not know much about them; we know something about them. They have been serving God for a long, long time, much longer than we can think. But the name of Jesus is above every name. All these honoured archangels, and the evil ones too, they have all got their names, but the name of Jesus is greater than all, and it ever will be. There will never be a name so great as the name of Jesus. There will never be a man so great, so blessed, so precious, as Jesus.

Well, how active He is! It says, “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify these things to you in the assemblies”. A good place to be! There is no place so good to be in as in the assemblies. “I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star”. Well, things are dark enough in this world. Of course, the sunshine is God’s. We do not thank Him enough, perhaps, for a day like this. We are all cheered up by it immensely. Things are very much brighter on a day like this than when the sun is not so bright. But apart from that, what this world is socially is oppressively dark, a world where young men can speak of death as an escape. What a state of mind and soul they must be in!

But they might have hope, every person who is living might have hope. “I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star”. The day is coming, you know, when all this pressure of darkness will pass. Oh, to be in that day, to be with Jesus in that day! How good, how blessed, how gracious that God should be offering it to men in every preaching of the gospel today, that if they will, they may be before Him with Jesus in that glorious day.

May we be the more thankful to Him if this is our portion; I trust it is the portion of each one here. May we show ourselves as “of the day”, that is what the Scripture says, (see 1

Thessalonians 5: 8). Let us behave as “of the day”. We are not children of the night, we are of the day. Let us behave as of the day. People who are doing bad things steal forth in the night, generally speaking. We are not of the night, we are of the day. It could be seen today if we are of the day by the way we behave. And it can be seen tomorrow when we go back to school, or work, or housekeeping, whatever it may be, it can be made clear in us that we belong to the day. May it be so, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Croydon
21 July 1974