THE NAME OF JESUS
E. C. Burr
Song of Songs 1: 3; Isaiah 1: 5, 6; Acts 4: 8–12; 2 Timothy 2: 19
I would like to say a word this evening about the name of Jesus. The first three scriptures read have often been connected together, and they easily connect together. The reference in Isaiah speaks of the state of the nation of Israel, of a nation which had enjoyed extraordinary favour from God, which had been taken up by Himself out of all the nations, made a peculiar people to Himself, and given a place to dwell in that was a mark of God’s peculiar favour, a place the fruit of which the Spirit describes in language that is still attractive to us. If you look at the eighth and eleventh chapters of Deuteronomy you will find how attractive God made the land into which He was going to bring this people. In Isaiah 1 they have fallen away from it and the address is not so much to an individual as to a nation, just as the man in Acts 4 is brought out as a specimen of what God can do in that nation—“People of Israel”, Peter says. But if we think of what is said of that nation in Isaiah 1, the prospect is that they might be smitten more, that they might revolt more and more; from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there was no soundness, and we have there presented to us the state into which a nation falls as it turns away from a God who had marked it with His distinct favour.
The scripture is about Israel—it might just as well be about ourselves. We live, beloved brethren, in a country which has enjoyed peculiar favour from God in a way that has distinguished it almost more than any other country. For one thing, we live in a country in which God has peculiarly sustained a testimony to the name of the Lord Jesus when He has in His ways allowed it to die away in other countries. Think, for instance, of the Continent.
Many countries are now divided into political parties on religious lines, going that way because the substance and truth of the christian testimony has not been made the prime issue in the history of the country. Think of the way in which this country, for instance, was preserved from the consequences of history, such as the French Revolution which turned France into a country which is secular by declaration, and we can see what that character of things has led to in the history of a country. And then think of our own country where it has often been said, and is admitted even by secular historians, that the religious and evangelical revival of the nineteenth century was what largely preserved this country from revolution.
Then look at this country now; look at it and see whether it does not compare with the state of things described in Isaiah 1. I have often thought of what Mr. Darby has expressed in his hymn, ‘The Man of Sorrows’. He expresses it directly, of course, in relation to Pilate and his judgment of the Lord Jesus; but he says in a verse that might well relate to the history of this country.
‘The pride of careless greatness
Could wash its hands of Thee’.
God in His ways did at one time allow this country to become great and in its greatness it became careless of God; in its carelessness it sought to wash its hands of Christ. That often seems to me like a prophetic view of the history of this country and, as you look round, you search for soundness somewhere, and often you cannot find it. You do not have to go far to discern the characteristic unsoundness of much in present-day society and you are not going to have to read, if we are here, tomorrow’s newspapers to discover further the anxiety there is publicly about the corruption of which there is, evidence, or alleged to be evidence, in one circle and another. You can see that we are moving to a state of which it says in Isaiah 1 that “there is no soundness in him”.
Now while this applies to the state of a nation, as it does in Isaiah 1, and while what I have said may be admitted to apply to the present state of things in the country in which we live, this state of things does not arise in nations unless it has first arisen in individuals. The state of a country is the state of the aggregate of the individuals who make it up, for as long as there is a testimony to what is right asserted by a sufficient number of people to be significant, the unsoundness will be stayed. As soon as those who have a testimony to what is right begin to diminish, or to keep quiet, unsoundness will spread. It has often been said that there is only one thing needed for evil to spread, and that is for good men to do nothing. And you could see evil, and good men doing nothing for various reasons. They may be afraid of the circumstances in which they are and the apparent obstacles, or even the immensity of the task, but they do nothing. Or else they lack the courage of their convictions and they do nothing. Beloved brother or sister, if you have any convictions as to what is morally right you owe it in the present day to your fellow men to stand up for what is right. It is too late any more to keep quiet about what in right or wrong. It is a time when every believer in God is called to assert the existence of God, and so to assert the moral responsibility of man in relation to the God whose existence they assert.
Time is going on. I noticed yesterday in the memoirs of Mr. Khrushchev, that, when getting to the end of his life, he said, ‘I am no longer going to the fair; I am on my way home now’. And that, beloved, is a comment on the lives of a lot of people. They are no longer going to the time of enjoyment; they are on their way back. Things for them are now in decline. Every one who believes in God and, as believing in God, understands that there is an issue of moral responsibility on the part of men, has an obligation to assert this as a testimony at the present time. It is no longer a time for keeping these things under a bushel. The Lord says the light has not come that it might be put under a bushel, but that it might give light to all that are in the house (Matthew 5: 15), and a prime light that needs to be given in this day is a testimony to the reality of God.
You cannot, of course, argue people into believing in the existence of God. Many different ways have been sought to prove the existence of God and there are indeed many arguments from which one might infer that God exists, but finally your testimony that there is a God is that you regulate your life in relation to Him. It is no good setting out a lot of argumentative proofs, for instance, that from the regularity of the solar system there must be a God, if you conduct yourself as if you are morally responsible to nobody. You destroy your own argument with your actions. But the final testimony that there is a God is that men and women conduct themselves on the basis that they have to do with God—the God “with whom we have to do”, Hebrews 4: 13. That is Scripture. One does not need here to assert the reality and the reliability of Scripture, but the God “with whom we have to do” is Scripture, and the present circumstances call, as in one sense they have never called before (if only because the hour is later), for the declaration in men and women that their lives are morally regulated in relation to One with whom they have to do. This, I believe, is one of the crying needs of the moment. Let me tell you that the assertion of a life that is lived in relation to God is far more influential than many people think. If you live your life, say at the office or at school, on the basis that there is a God, you will notice that it makes a difference in the room you work in, to start with. I know this; I have had some experience. A young girl said to me once,
‘Suppose these things happen in my office; am I not to say what is right?’. Of course you are to say what is right, and the saying of what is right has an influence in an area far greater than, the person who declares it thinks possible. The time is one for asserting that there is moral soundness somewhere. It comes out in the declaration of our own lives and, as I have said, it is no good asserting doctrinally that there is moral soundness, if, practically there is moral unsoundness and decrepitude.
Thank God that even in a world in which the unsoundness is beginning increasingly to be unsavoury—one takes the word unsoundness from the first of Isaiah—there is a Name which “is an ointment poured forth”. God has not withdrawn it. God in His testimony is, in one sense, indifferent of the results of that testimony. Think of God’s attitude towards the world—think of it represented in the sun. He makes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. Now it is a long time since God created the sun, but since He created the sun men have complained about it. They have cursed it. They say, ‘It dries up all our land and we are in drought—if only we had some relief from the sun!’ Then they complain when it is not there. At times different countries have made idols of the sun. Has any of this made any difference to God? Has He said, ‘You complain about the sun; I will withdraw it’? No. God has gone on, and His sun still shines on the just and the unjust, and He continues with His testimony whatever may be the response to it. That is a marvellous aspect of the disposition of God towards the world. It is not for nothing that His name in the Old Testament is the Same. He continues the Same through all. He has not withdrawn a name which is “an ointment poured forth”, and for any one around who is absorbed into the present moral unsoundness of the world, the fragrance of this ointment is available.
One purpose of the preaching is that some sense of the fragrance of this name might waft over people who, as Martha says, ‘stink already’. Think of the corruption that there is—you can really apply no other word to it. Beloved, even still there is a name that “is an ointment poured forth”. And even to a people who get as degraded as they may be, the fragrance of that ointment is still available; nothing is withholding it. The preaching of the gospel goes on; personal testimony goes on; the distribution of tracts goes on; the giving away of Bibles goes on. There is still a Name whose fragrance is as ointment poured forth. And, believe me, there are thousands of souls who would be only too glad if they could get within reach of ointment like this, and there would be many more who would be eternally thankful if they had the moral courage to accept it when it is offered to them. There are many starving and hungry and weary souls in this world who have just lacked the moral courage in the face of their companions to say, ‘I am now giving all that up; I have found something above it all, something that is sweet’. ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds’! And it says in the first chapter of the Song, “Thy name is an ointment poured forth”.
Now we get the bearing, of that in the third and fourth chapters of the Acts. There was a man there, laid at the beautiful gate of the temple every day. He was born lame. He was a testimony to the characteristic state of man. In the Bible there are two states of man that mark him from his birth—one is blindness and the other is lameness. The man in John 9 was blind from his birth, the man in Acts 3 was lame
from his birth. They are characteristic demonstrations of the state of man as born into this world, unable to see and unable to lift himself, to do anything to save himself. People that are born lame from their mother’s womb, unless they accept the fragrance of this ointment that is poured forth, may eventually reach the pool of Bethesda (John 5) waiting for years and years for somebody to push them in, when the gospel has been preached to them every day and all that they needed was, as Peter says in Acts 3: 16, “Faith in his name has made this man strong”. Peter says, ‘He is here perfectly sound in the presence of you all’, and he is addressing the nation of Israel. If you take account of the state of things in Isaiah 1 you have a whole nation described as wounded from top to toe, wounds and wheals not bound up “nor mollified with ointment” (A.V.). In Acts 3 and 4 you have an Israelite, a man at the gate of the temple, and Peter addresses Israelites and says, ‘Men of Israel, it is in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaraean that this man stands here in perfect soundness (or sound in body) in the presence of you all’. There were wounds and bruises that had not been healed or bound up or mollified with ointment, but there is a man who, you might almost say, has been overwhelmed by the ointment, so overwhelmed that he is walking and leaping and praising God.
He is a specimen typically and prophetically of what God will yet do with the nation of Israel. Through the power of the name of Jesus, known to them as their Messiah, He will make the whole nation to stand upon its feet, as it says in Ezekiel 37: 10, “an exceeding great army”—a nation which has in one sense been lame from its mother’s womb. Why? Because the ointment will be poured forth for them in the day when they will acknowledge again the One whom they once rejected and crucified. When they say, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon ‘him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53: 6), in that day they will find that the ointment is still as powerful as it was on that day when He ascended into heaven. The nation will find that and, beloved, our nation could find that. They will not find it by turning to God as a nation. They will find it as individuals discover that their state morally corresponds to what God says so graphically in the first chapter of Isaiah and in the third of Acts, and that there is a Name which “is an ointment poured forth” for every state of sin.
God is waiting, looking for people to find out the state that they are in, not exactly to be able to diagnose it in every detail. God is not demanding of you that you are able to rehearse every one of the symptoms of your sin, but to acknowledge that characteristically you are a sinner.
And when that is acknowledged, God says, ‘I have ointment for that state and it is the Name, the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaraean, the name of My beloved Son’. And why is His name effective? Because He has Himself borne our diseases. That is what Israel is going to say. How do they get better? Because He has borne their diseases. How do you get better? Because He has borne your diseases. Brethren will remember that Mr. Darby uses the expression in his letters, ‘the disease of sin’. He says, ‘The disease of sin is separating’. It makes people separate from each other, not in the sense of 2 Timothy 2, to which we will come, but it separates man from man. The disease of sin creates envy and malice and jealousies, enmities, and all that kind of thing. The disease of sin is separating, but there is a cure for that disease—“Himself … bore our diseases”, Matthew 8: 17. He was made the very thing which we were. One scripture that I do not expect ever to be able fully to explain is this, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us”, 2 Corinthians 5: 21. That is one of those profound verses of Scripture that is written in words of one syllable and you cannot penetrate into what those syllables mean, save that you know what was done. It is because He who knew not sin was made sin for us that His name “is an ointment poured forth”.
That ointment, beloved, is here this evening. Nobody ever knows the state of the whole meeting that they are preaching to. Everybody puts on a good face at the preaching. Brethren enjoy the gospel and it is very good to see them coming to the preaching. It makes you think of the day when the nations will flow together to the goodness of Jehovah. You see them coming, and they sit down and sing, and sing well, and respond to prayer, but you do not know what is underneath. Just as no one could tell the precise physical condition of everybody at the preaching, no preacher could say what is the precise moral condition. There may be a state of anxiety, of distress, of weariness, of worry, but whatever your state, there is a name that “is an ointment poured forth”. Do you feel diseased with sin? There is a name that “is an ointment poured forth”. Do you feel raw with some anxiety at the present moment? There is a name that “is an ointment poured forth”. Do you feel stressed or depressed or anxious, worried about tomorrow, worried about work, worried about the family, worried about home? There is a name that “is an ointment poured forth”. Every one that has had any experience of ointment knows what that verse means, that there is something cooling and refreshing and healing, that is applied gently, and the result is healing and recuperation. Beloved brother or sister, does your soul need ointment this evening? You know—I do not know. I could guess in some cases. But does your soul need ointment? There is still a name that is an ointment poured forth and it makes people perfectly sound.
What Peter says in effect in Acts 4 is that not only is there an ointment like this, but there is no other ointment. “Neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”. There is no other name. As the hymn says, ‘You cannot do without Him, there is no other name’. If you want healing for your soul you must come to Jesus, and come now. While it is scriptural to suggest to people words that they might use (as it says in the prophet, “Take with you words, and turn to Jehovah; say unto him, Forgive …”, Hosea 14: 2), I am not this evening going to tell you exactly what to say, but I will tell you what you will get if you come. You will come to God through Christ and say to God, or say to the Lord Jesus Himself, ‘I have come to it—that I can have no healing for my sins, or for this particular sin, for this besetting sin, or for this state; or that there is no healing for my mind or my body or my soul or my conscience or my circumstances, but in that Name’.
Immediately you will find that that ointment flows forth; “Thine ointments savour sweetly”. O beloved, they do! They overwhelm every aspect of unsoundness that there may be. The great thing about this ointment is that it is free, it is absolutely free. There are millions of unsolicited testimonials to it, but it is free. You do not have to send away for it, you can get it just where you are. It is that ointment that souls need to bring in that coolness and that calm that come from the ministrations of One who has borne all their diseases and their sorrows. I recommend this ointment to you, beloved; and there are many others here who would commend to you the value of this Name, than which there is no other name; “Neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”. It is the name of One who was God Himself, come into man’s condition in order Himself to bear our diseases and our sorrows, and in order to do it He died and His blood was shed, and He was buried and He was raised the third day, and He is ascended and lives for ever. It is the fragrance of His name pouring out from the place of glory where He is now, and ministered directly to your soul. Beloved, there are many, many people who would do well to take this ointment. People will say to you, ‘Try this’, ‘Try that’. The doctor will say, ‘Well, take a rest; Take a couple of weeks off’. Someone else will say to you, ‘Go and see your banker’; ‘Go and see your solicitor’; ‘Go and see such and such a brother’ Beloved, you might as well come straight to the Name than which there is no other. The access is free. Other people may be able to help you, but finally if you want help it is to Him that you will have to come. And you will find that the fragrance of this Name mollifies every condition into which it comes.
We, beloved, if we are believers in Him, bear His name in the world. It therefore puts an obligation on us that there should be some kind of fragrance about us as we go out into the world. I have often thought of that scene in John’s gospel chapter 12 where the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Everybody knows what perfume like that is. It clings to your clothes. When one who had been there went back out into the street, people would say, ‘There is something about him, about her; I do not know what it is’. And if you could explain it you would say, ‘It is the fragrance that filled the house’. And as you go out in the power of this Name, it should still spread its fragrance all around you.
I would just like to say something about 2 Timothy, and it is this. This scripture has been before us often, a scripture that in one sense has been used with the effect of creating a lot of sorrow. I am not sure that the scripture was intended to be used for that purpose. The Name that is named in 2 Timothy 2: 19 is the Name which is “an ointment poured forth”. The circumstances may be different, but it is the same Name. Do you think it would be possible to take up this well known verse, “Let every one who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity”, in the light of the fact that this Name is an ointment poured forth? Could you separate from somebody and at the same time bring in some healing to their soul? If you put the two scriptures together, you would have to.
One great sorrow of what is conveniently spoken of as ‘the 1960’s’ is that 2 Timothy 2 has been used and the fragrance left out. And, beloved, everything that you or I do in the name of the Lord Jesus should have the fragrance of that Name about it. Nothing that we do as believers in that Name should detract from the glory of that Name; it should spread the fragrance of the ointment over the circumstances in which we use that Name. Would this help you to take up this scripture? It is just an impression I have this evening that the scripture has been used without the fragrance, and I think the Lord would have us have the fragrance back into the situation. If you read the way in which Mr. Darby took up scriptures like this, you can see in his actions that as he applied the Scriptures (he was perfectly clear on their meaning as he applied them), maybe as he even applied them through his own tears, the fragrance of the ointment was never left out. Mr. Darby wrote, as the brethren know, the paper on ‘Separation from Evil—God’s Principle of Unity’. Then I think he had the impression that the brethren were taking the scripture up and leaving the ointment out, so he wrote ‘Grace—The Power of Unity and of Gathering’. And, beloved, you can never use the name of the Lord Jesus without everything that belongs to that Name. You cannot leave the grace out. You cannot leave the fragrance out.
Let us test it, carry it away. Do not just accept it from me, but carry it away and reflect on it, whether the fragrance of the ointment can safely be left out of 2 Timothy 2. Maybe if you say it can, I will then say that no prophesy of Scripture is of private interpretation (2 Peter 1: 20 A.V.), that is, no text in the Bible is to be looked at purely on its own. I suggest, beloved, that as we maintain what is rightly due, and will readily be given to this Name by everyone who believes in it, that we never leave out that His “name is an ointment poured forth”. You can go back and think of the difference it would have made here or there, or to so-and-so, if in the light of this scripture, as iniquity was withdrawn from, the fragrance of the Name had been over the whole situation. You say, ‘How could that be?’. But how could the Name to which fragrance attaches be brought in and the fragrance left out? “Thy name is an ointment poured forth”. It seems to me that you cannot use it without apprehending the fragrance that attaches to it. It goes back to what I was seeking to say earlier that if you carry this Name, everything that you do and say in this Name must have the fragrance of the Name with it.
Beloved, we look back with sorrow at some of our brethren who carry on the bearing of this scripture and, so far from admitting any fragrance into it, go on and on and reduce it to the literality of the letter. And is the result soundness? Is it? You probably know enough to say whether it is soundness or not—but His name “is an ointment poured forth”. You can see how the bearing of that entered, for instance, into Mr. Darby’s paper ‘On Discipline’; how the fragrance of the Name was there, even in the sorrow. As Mr. Darby says, ‘Sinners judging sin’. You can see that the fragrance of the Name was even over an expression like that. I just commend this to the brethren for reflection as to whether even as we take up 2 Timothy 2 (and I do not seek to dilute its application, because we live in an iniquitous world), the believer on the Lord Jesus can choose to name the Name and leave the ointment out. He cannot. Do you not realise that in every instance in which you claim to withdraw from iniquity you ought to be making an impression on the consciences of the persons involved in the iniquity from which you withdraw? You will not do so if you leave out the fragrance of the Name—it becomes military or militant, operational—a lot of other words taken from modern management techniques could be brought in. How destructive business is of assembly life! All its phrases brought in and used, apparently convincingly, but reducing the operations of the house of God to the operations of what the Lord speaks of as “A den of robbers”, Matthew 21: 13. That cannot be done in the assembly. You cannot, I believe, take up separation from iniquity as naming the Lord’s name rightly if you are going to do it without the fragrance of the ointment, which it has never ceased to bear.
Therefore, beloved, I commend to the brethren that we cling to the savour of a Name which has never lost its savour. God has not diminished the savour on account of the neglect of man. Nobody will ever say of this ointment that it has grown stale. It is perpetually fresh, and it has just as much power tonight as it had nineteen hundred years ago. What it did for a man outside the beautiful gate of the temple it could do for anybody in Richmond this evening, in London, in England. How one longs for moral revival in the country. But it will only begin as souls are determined to stand for what is right before God. Meanwhile the gospel is preached so that individuals may find in this Name the basis of their salvation, and that it is fragrant, and that that fragrance is to be spread into all that they do, for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Richmond
12 May 1974