"THY NAME, O LORD, ENDURETH FOR EVER"

“^[p. 177] THY NAME, O LORD, ENDURETH FOR EVER”

Exodus 2: 23 - 25; Exodus 3: 1 - 15; Psalm 135:13; Psalm 135:19, 20

I thought that the Lord might help us in considering this section in Exodus in connection with the psalm. Exodus presents things as it usually does from the divine side and the Psalms from our side. The Psalms present the result in those who wrote them of what God presented on His side, so that the psalmist says here “Thy name, O Lord, endureth for ever, and thy memorial, O Lord, throughout all generations”. The psalmist says it endures. That is, he has found out its durability as compared with seen things, things that pass away. He had found out the durability of the name of Jehovah, and that His memorial should remain. So the Psalms are our side, the result, so to say, of what we have found God to be; whereas the Pentateuch, the books of Moses, presents things from God’s side.

The section I have read brings to our attention the sympathies of God in connection with the sufferings of His people. In a way nothing could be more touching than the fact that it is said that their cry came up to God by reason of the bondage. That is the power of the cry: “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them”. That was His side. The cry was so real, so genuine that it came up; it ascended to where God was. This is what God intends. God allows affliction, and He intends that it should be felt. It should not be accepted lightly, but it should be felt as sent of Him, and the cry produced ascends up as it says, “Their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage”. The cry was so forceful that it came up unto God.

^[p. 178] That refers to how much they felt things. Then verse 24 says God heard. He heard their groanings and then He remembered His covenant. That is He remembers what He said to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.

I commend to you, dear brethren, the importance of feeling a thing rightly, taking it rightly from God and the result of that is that there is a force to the movement of your heart. As it is said, the Spirit makes intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered. Those are movements in the souls of God’s people that are the outcome of pressure, the sense of the impossibility of the situation unless God comes in. So there are feelings and exercises which cannot be expressed in words. The Holy Spirit in us expresses them with groans, and the groans come up before God. So it says, “He who searches the hearts” God looks into your heart and searches it and it pleases Him to find groans. The groan is through our hearts. The Spirit makes intercession in our hearts. “He who searches the hearts”, it says, “knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for saints according to God”. And then we have that simple statement that although we do not know what to pray for in detail, yet “we do know that all things work together for good to those who love God”. This is common to all christians. “We do know that all things work together for good to those who love God”. And so God, it says here, “heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them”: it mentions His hearing and looking upon them and His respect unto them. They come before Him now in the light of His covenant. They were children of promise. I refer to all this because it brings before us the idea conveyed by the name ‘Jehovah’, His faithfulness. We rest ^[p. 179] in that, so the next chapter brings out the situation as regards the people: they were suffering people. The Lord’s people are ever that in truth; it marks them. The bush suggests that thought; they pass through affliction; they are not consumed. Thus that is the difference between the application of judgment to God’s people and to others. “In the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble”. The bush burns and the bush is not consumed. That is a sign to Moses. That is so to speak his gift, the impression God would produce on His servant: there should be continuous fire but although it burned it should not be consumed. All extraneous matter would be burned up. The bush would represent what is of God, because it says, “When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush”. He does not call out of heaven. “In all their affliction he was afflicted”, Isaiah 63: 9. God is with His people throughout the whole of the desert journey. Although there is discipline, and God never withdraws His hand in that respect, yet He is in the midst of those whom He chastens. The principle is that a father chastens a family. He dwells with them and as dwelling with them they come under His discipline. God is with us.

Although He chastens He is with us. “I will not leave thee, neither will I forsake thee”. He is with us in the thing. Although you take it from His hand He goes through it with you. He spoke to Moses from the midst of the bush. Very touching. “The angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed”. And Moses said, “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt”. That is what struck him. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, He called to him out of the ^[p. 180] bush. And now He outlines the thoughts He had about the people, that He had surely seen their affliction and had heard their cry. How very touching that is. I “have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters”, and so He says, “I am come down”. There is another beautiful thought. Not, I have sent down, but, I am come down. God came down in Christ to effect deliverance. It is a principle of His ways with us that He comes in Himself. He does not send; He comes in Himself. He comes into our circumstances to effect deliverance. But in coming in He does not spare the flesh. The fire keeps burning.

He goes on to the thought of His name. His name is bound up with all this. God would have us to know Him in all this discipline. He has got His name before Him. He would have us to know that it is a question of His name. And so when Moses questions He says, Go to the people and say to them, “I AM hath sent me unto you”. Then “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you; this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations”. God has His name. He gives us each a name but evidently the first thing is His name and discipline, so as to bring about in us a clear knowledge of God. A knowledge of God involves His name, and discipline clears the vision; so it says that without holiness no man shall see the Lord. We come to see the Lord in all that but it is only as we have holiness. One might say that, perhaps, that which is least known among the Lord’s people is holiness. Righteousness is generally apprehended and love is apprehended, but holiness is perhaps that which is least understood among the people of God. So that the necessity for it is in view of the discipline in order that we might be partakers in His holiness, and so as partakers of it we see Him. Now seeing the Lord does not refer to ^[p. 181] God, it refers to Christ. It is the holiest. God is apprehended in the soul as one draws near, as one draws near in holiness. You cannot be at ease in the holiest without holiness, and discipline involves that one is qualified to enter the holiest and to look there to see what God is in Christ. Nothing can be more wonderful. I believe it is that which stamps the christian; he has seen the Lord. As David says, “I have seen thee in the sanctuary”, Psalm 63: 2. God is seen in His attributes and nature as shining in Christ. I refer to that because of the great value of holiness in the believer as fitting us to see the Lord. That leads me to the psalm which as I said presents just that side. The Psalms may be said to be the product for God of the light vouchsafed in the Old Testament. One ought to read them in that way and ask oneself, What is there in me that corresponds to that? I believe we should be psalmists. “I speak of the things which I have made touching the king”, Psalm 45: 1. There was something which he could speak of that he had made, had composed himself. It was that which he had composed touching the king. The Psalms suggest that the people of God should have a psalm; each has a psalm. It is an experience, dear brethren, with God, and when we come together each of us has a psalm. Now you bring forward a psalm. The thing is to have one. There is a yield for God. And so in this psalm the psalmist says, “Thy name, O Lord, endureth for ever”. You will remember the passage in Exodus 3, “This shall be the sign to thee ... ye shall serve God” (verse 12). That would be sign. That is, the result in them of the deliverance would be that they should serve Jehovah upon that mountain. There would be a return to Him from those who were delivered. He looked for a return from Jacob, and there was a drink-offering. Where He discloses His name, where He reveals Himself, He looks for response. The sign would be “Ye shall serve God upon this mountain”, that is Horeb, the place of the covenant. It is one thing to speak out of Sinai, and it is quite another to speak out of the burning bush, that is God Himself in the midst of His people enduring things with them. He looked for a return for that, that they should serve Him “upon this mountain”. How much went between we cannot go into. Just one point when they were going out of Egypt Pharaoh said, “They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in”. Satan judges of us as if we were men. He cannot take account of us as born again or weigh the instincts of the divine nature in us, for he judges according to the flesh and he says virtually, ‘That young man cannot go into the wilderness, he cannot live without the things of the world’. The christian can live without the things of Egypt; he has got other instincts. The desert does not shut him in at all. The desert is the place for him now because God is in it. He has got the meetings, the brethren, and above all he has got God. The wilderness had not shut them in. Instead of the wilderness shutting them in we find God in it. The psalmist here is looking back on the results that flowed from Exodus 3. God had said, “I AM”. He is the unchanging One. The covenant held good, “Thy name, O Lord, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, O Lord, throughout all generations”. He is not giving up. Christianity remains. The Holy Spirit is here. The apostle says, “Our word to you is not yea and nay ... but yea”. The name of God is bound up with His everlasting faithfulness; for the Son of God that was preached by Paul, Silvanus and Timotheus “was not yea and nay, but in him was yea”. Every promise of God is secured infallibly in Christ. So the psalmist is a spiritual man. Now the memorial should appeal to us as christians because it is bound up with the Lord’s supper. It is not only what Christ is to me but what God is to me in Christ. Therefore we have the ^[p. 183] Supper weekly. We look upon it every week as the evidence of the unchangeableness of God in Christ. His love is in our heart and it does not grow old; it remains for ever. We regard the Supper in that light. It is a memorial to us of what God is to us in Christ. The Supper is a memorial to us of Christ, and then in the cup we have the love of God in Him. Every time we drink out of the cup we realise its freshness.

All of us can verify this. We may say with the psalmist, Thy name is for ever and ever and Thy memorial unto all generations.

This psalm, which is a praise psalm, comes in after the purpose of God is established in Zion, through the Songs of degrees. Psalm 134 is the service of God carried on in night: “Bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord”. It is, I suppose, suggestive of our position during Israel’s night. Psalm 135 continues it in verses 1 - 3, where the service of God is carried on in the sanctuary. “For the Lord is good sing praises unto his name”. See how the name is before the speaker. And when idolatry has been disposed of, in the end of the psalm, he says, “Bless the Lord, O house of Israel; bless the Lord, O house of Aaron; bless the Lord, O house of Levi; ye that fear the Lord, bless the Lord”. That is, he calls upon us as viewed in different aspects in which the christian is to be viewed down here, as the houses of Israel, Aaron and Levi. The house of Israel is what we are viewed as as having the Spirit. The saints of God are dignified in the possession of the Spirit (”A prince ... with God” ) and in that capacity we are called upon to praise Jehovah. The house of Aaron refers to us as all being priests, and as such we are to praise. The house of Levi views us as servants, for every christian is a servant in some sense. Every christian is a levite. He is held from infancy by the ^[p. 184] Lord so that He can put His hand upon him when needed. He has a result from us as viewed in these three characters, as princes, priests, and levites, serving the saints. And then it says, “Ye that fear the Lord”. What is that? It is your ordinary employment, however menial or dignified. You are regarded as one that should fear the Lord. It is the beginning and end of wisdom. It applies to us all. In the presence of evil we are to fear God, not in the sanctuary, mind you, because there you have boldness, but outside. We have to fear God in view of the flesh, but in that fear to be something for God. We are called upon as those that fear the Lord to worship Him and to praise Him, and then it says, “Blessed be the Lord out of Zion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem”. He comes back to the great thought of God’s purpose. I suppose that should ever be in our hearts. I ever revert to the thought of God’s purpose in whatever circumstances and nothing can change it. God dwells among His people in connection with mount Zion. “Here will I dwell; for I have desired it”, Psalm 132: 14. Why does He desire it? Surely there must be something there that pleases Him, and in applying it to ourselves there is something that pleases Him, what we are as subjects of sovereign mercy (John 3). He has a company founded on sovereignty.

Well I thought, dear brethren, it would help and encourage us to see how God is with us in the sufferings and in discipline for through them we acquire a knowledge of Himself. His name is revered in our hearts. It becomes a memorial and it endures. We look at it from the experimental side, and we see what it is. A memorial should be in our hearts, a memorial of what God is in Christ. May God bless the word.