I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me (vv. 6–8).
We saw in our last study that God separated us unto himself, and that having done that, he gave us to his Son, who came and worked out redemption for us, to fit us in a full sense to become God’s people. The next step, therefore, that we must be concerned about is this: if I am a Christian at all, it is because God has looked upon me and set his mark upon me before I was ever born, before the world was created, but I still want to know how that becomes actual and how it literally becomes operative in me, in my life and in my experience. And that question is answered in these three verses that we are looking at now. To put it another way, what proof have we that this has taken place in us? How do we know that we are Christians? What exactly has happened to us to take us from the world into which we were born? We are all born the children of wrath and enemies of God. We are all born belonging to the world and subject to the prince of the power of the air, ‘the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’. We were all there once, says Paul, and it is true of all of us. So, then, we ask, what has brought us here? And the answer is in the teaching of these three verses. In these verses we are told what it is that makes one a Christian, we are told exactly how it is that one becomes a Christian. There is a most extraordinary definition of the Christian here; everything that is vital will be found in these verses and therefore we must look at them carefully together.
You notice first that the key to understanding the whole passage is that it all depends upon the Lord Jesus Christ himself, he is absolutely central and vital to this matter. Verses 6–8 are all about him and he says the same thing again towards the end of the prayer, in these words: ‘O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.’ So once more we see that he is at the centre. He himself constantly repeats this, and, too, it is something that is emphasized everywhere in the Scriptures.
Let me put it another way: there is no real knowledge of God except that which comes through the Lord Jesus Christ; as he said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me’ (Jn 14:6). No man can really know God without having life eternal. But what is life eternal? He has already told us: ‘This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ We should observe how our Lord goes on repeating this. He puts himself, as it were, in the centre, and says that he is essential; he emphasizes it, and the reason for this is that mankind always thinks that it can arrive at a knowledge of God apart from him. Let me repeat once more that never was this emphasis more essential than it is at this present moment. Constantly and increasingly we find people teaching and saying that God can be known and that certain blessings can be obtained from him, but they never even refer to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They hold that you can get some important blessing, like healing, but Christ is not even mentioned. It comes, they claim, from God immediately and directly. But according to the teaching of the Bible there is no true and real knowledge of God except in and through Christ. That is the essential principle of Christianity, it is the meaning of the very term.
How, therefore, does our Lord bring us this knowledge? How does he let us know that we are God’s people and that these various and glorious blessings which God is offering his people will become our portion and lot in this world? He answers this question immediately at the beginning of verse 6:‘I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.’ Now this is very important. Why does he put it in that way, instead of simply saying, ‘I have manifested thee’, or, ‘I have manifested certain truths to them’? Why does he put it in terms of manifesting the name of God?
The answer is that this is the form in which the Bible habitually puts this particular teaching. In Scripture the name always stands for the character; it stands for the perfection of the person, and for his attributes; it represents what a person really is. The name is that which truly reveals the person and it is the connotation of everything that the person is in essence. Of course we are familiar with that usage of the term. We say about a doctor, for example, that he has ‘a very good name’. We mean by this that he has the reputation of being a very good doctor, but we do not put it like that. We say that he has a very good name, and that expression stands for all the propensities and powers, all the skill and all the understanding, that this man happens to have.
Let me remind you of some of the ways in which this word is thus used in the Scriptures. Take, for instance, the story in Genesis 32:22–32 of Jacob at Penuel. It was a momentous night for him. He knew he had to meet his brother Esau the next day and he wondered what was going to happen. It was the most critical moment that Jacob had ever passed through. Having sent forward his goods and possessions and, last of all, his wives and children, Jacob was left alone, and it was then that a man came and began to struggle with him. Jacob realized that this was no ordinary encounter but that it was something divine and supernatural, so as he went on struggling with the man, he summed up all the knowledge that he had and said to him, ‘What is thy name?’ – I want to possess you, as it were. He knew that the name would tell him everything.
Then, again, the wise man, Solomon, says in one of his proverbs, ‘The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe’ (Prov 18:10). In this world with its problems and difficulties and perplexities, there is only one place of safety says this man; it is the name of the Lord. It is like a strong tower and when I am besieged and attacked I run into that tower, and I am surrounded by the name of the Lord, which means everything that God really is, everything that is represented by the name.
Again, we find it in a still more specific form when God appeared to Moses and gave him his great commission and promise. He said to him, ‘I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them’ (Exod 6:3). In effect, God came to Moses and said, ‘I am going to start something new. I am going to do something fresh. There is going to be a great turn-about in the history of my people. From this moment I am going to give you a great assurance, and before anything happens at all, I am going to give you a new name and I want you to realize what is meant by this name.’
We also have a definition of it in Exodus 34: ‘The Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord’ (v. 5) and then in verses 6–7 he began to tell Moses certain extraordinary and remarkable things about himself.
So when our Lord here turns to the Father and says, ‘I have manifested thy name...’ what he is saying, in effect, is this: ‘You sent me into the world in order to manifest and declare your name, and I have done it.’ He has done that which was prophesied of him in Psalm 22:22: ‘I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.’
Now I want to put this in a very practical form. I wonder whether we have come to realize that the greatest need of everyone in this world is to know the name of God, because, when we know his name, we really know God himself, and are coming into an intimate knowledge of him. The final trouble with all of us is our ignorance of God. We talk about God, we say we pray to him, but the question asked everywhere in the Bible is: do you know him? Has he revealed his name to you? Do you know him in the sense that his name is to you a strong tower, and that whatever happens in this world you are absolutely safe because you run into that tower? Have you found the name of the Lord a shield, a protection, a hiding place when everything else has failed, when the world and its wisdom and science and knowledge can do nothing for you, and when your nearest and dearest are standing by looking helplessly on? Do you view things differently because the name of the Lord is there, and because inside the strong tower you are calm and quiet and serene, and full of joy and happiness? Does the name of the Lord protect you against everything? It is meant to do that.
As you read the lives of the saints in the Old Testament, you will find that this was always their lot and their experience. They were always safe and happy: ‘When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up’ (Ps 27:10). He never fails, but alas, the tragedy with us is that we do not know the Lord in this way. We often feel that he is against us or that he is unjust or unfair to us. People often suggest that he is cruel and unkind. The simple trouble with all such people is that they do not know him, for if they had known him – known his name – they would never harbour such thoughts concerning him. Such people are, of course, entirely without excuse, because God has revealed himself and his name to us. Indeed, even before his Son ever came into this world, God had revealed and manifested his name to the Children of Israel, so that we are altogether without excuse.
Let me, then, remind you of some of the names that God has given and has revealed about himself, and concerning himself even as we find them in the Old Testament. The first term for God that we find appears in a family of names: ‘El, ‘Elohim, ‘El Shaddai, ‘El Elyon – the strong and the mighty One. And this is the first thing we always need to know about God. We need to realize his might and strength and power. We talk so glibly about him, we argue and discuss these matters about God and we say what we think he ought to do. But we should remember that we are speaking about the Almighty, the Strong One. There is no limit to his power, he is the Creator, the Originator, of everything, the one who sustains everything – without him nothing can continue to exist at all. The first name of God is a name of strength, of absolute power, of almightiness.
But of course the name to which we must give particular attention is the special name which he revealed to Moses. This name was known before, but now it was given as a name representing certain things – the great name Jehovah. When God gave the promise of deliverance to Moses, he said, I am giving you my special name, Jehovah – that is, the self-existent one, the self-subsistant one, he that is – ‘I am that I am’ (Ex 3:14). God tells us that about himself, that he always was – there is no beginning to God. But it is agreed by all that in that self-same name, Jehovah, there is a further suggestion. It is a name that at one and the same time tells us that God is the self-existent one from eternity to eternity and yet at the same time he also becomes something – he becomes known.
In other words, the name Jehovah suggests a continuous and increasing revelation of God; or perhaps a better definition is that Jehovah is the self-existent one who reveals himself; he does not change in himself, but reveals himself increasingly to his people in their needs. He does not change, he is self-existent – I am that I am – but there is an extra dimension in the sense that he is manifesting and revealing himself. What a wonderful and precious promise that was when it first came to Moses. Can you imagine its effect upon him? But we must remember that we are not only thinking of Moses but also of ourselves. What God has said about himself to Moses he says to us – he is the self-existent one who is ready to reveal himself to us. We can see that if this were not true of God, if God did not reveal himself, we would know nothing about him, and we could not worship him. But he is the self-existent one who reveals himself.
But the most astounding thing about this name of God is the fact that it includes all the promises. We can put it like this. This is definitely the name of God in his relationship to man and it is particularly the name of God in the matter of redemption, which is why it is so germane to what we are discussing at the present time. There is God in his heaven in eternity and in the glory of all his qualities and perfection. And here is man on the ground. There is not only an awful difference in might and power, but there is a further terrible difference. God is holy and God is light; man is in shame and unworthiness. How can the two ever come together? The answer is that God is Jehovah – it is the name that comes to man in his sin and shame.
This is perfectly illustrated in the call of Moses. God’s people, the Children of Israel, are in the captivity of Egypt. They are under cruel bondage, and are absolutely helpless. They are small in number, and they are in the hands of the mighty king, Pharaoh. How can they get out and be saved? And this is the astounding thing. We are told that God goes to a man who has been living as a shepherd for forty years, knowing himself to be a stranger in a strange land. Then God appears to him in the burning bush and he says, I am Jehovah, I am going to do something about those people, I am going to rescue them and redeem them.
It is God in the name of Redeemer, a name which includes everything connected with our redemption. He is the self-existent one who does not turn his back upon us, but looks upon us, and comes to us. He does something about us for he is Jehovah, the redeeming God. Keep your eye on that as you read the Old Testament Scriptures. This name always stands for God in his relationship to man in redemption. In other words, it is always when God is making a covenant with man that he uses it. He says to Moses, I am going to make a covenant with them, and this is the name in which I make it.
Yes, but more than that, he has condescended to break up even that name and in a sense to break it up by adding to it – if we have nothing else but this left in our minds as a result of this study we shall be the wealthiest people in the world. If only we realized what God has told us about himself in his relationship to us! Do you feel that I am being academic? If so, I am failing lamentably. What I am trying to say is that what God has revealed about himself, he has revealed to us – this is his relationship to us, if we but knew it. In all the names he has told us certain things about himself. Here is one great name – Jehovah-jireh. You will find it in the story of Abraham going up into that mountain to sacrifice his only son Isaac. He was on the point of striking his son when suddenly God stopped him and said, ‘Do not strike him, I have another offering.’ And Abraham found a ram in the thicket. The Lord had provided the offering and the sacrifice, so he gave that name, ‘The Lord Will Provide’. And so, whenever you go into the presence of God, whatever your need may be, however disturbed you may be, whatever form the need may be taking, remind yourself that you are praying to Jehovah-jireh, the Lord who has promised to provide. He will be with you for he says, ‘I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee’ (Josh 1:5).
And then he gave another name at a time when a certain disease had broken out among the Children of Israel as they were marching from Egypt to Canaan. The whole situation seemed hopeless, but God healed them in a miraculous manner and, having done so, he gave them a name concerning himself: ‘The Lord that healeth thee’ (Ex 15:26). As the psalmist said, ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul ... who healeth all thy diseases’ (Ps 103:2–3), and by this he means that it is always in the power of God to do this. That is not to say he will always do it, but that he can and does do so when he chooses. When Paul had the thorn in the flesh, he turned to God and asked him to remove it. But it was not removed because it was not God’s will in that particular case. God can heal and, in an ultimate sense, of course, he does heal all our diseases, because the ultimate disease is sin itself. It is a great promise of ultimate redemption and it does hold in embryo this further promise that is given, that the Lord Jesus Christ shall even take these bodies of ours and change them: ‘Shall change our vile body’ – the body of our humiliation – ‘that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body’ (Phil 3:21) according to his mighty power.
There is another name which God is given: Jehovah-nissi, the Lord our Banner (Ex 17:15). That is the name he revealed to the Children of Israel after a great victory, a victory won not by their own strength, nor by their own military prowess, but because God enabled them to obtain the victory – the Lord our Banner. And you and I have enemies to meet in this world – sin and temptation. The world is full of these subtle enemies and behind them all is the devil himself with all his power. Do you know what it is to be attacked by him? Do you know, for example, what it is to have blasphemous thoughts insinuated into your minds? The saints of God have had to experience that. The devil hurls the fiery dart, says Paul, and who are we to meet such a foe? We are small and weak and helpless, but, thank God, we know one whose name is Jehovah-nissi, the Lord our Banner, who can help us smite every foe and rout and conquer every enemy.
But then let me give you another: Jehovah-shalom – The Lord is Peace. This was the name that God gave to Gideon who was fearful and unhappy but God told him that he was Jehovah-shalom (Judg 6:24), and this is one of the most precious promises. It does not matter what kind of turmoil you are in, or how heart-sore you may be. If you are beside yourself and cannot understand why things are happening to you, go to him. He has promised to give you peace. Remember, too, that noble statement in Hebrews 13:20, that marvellous blessing and benediction, ‘...the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus’ – Jehovah-shalom, The Lord is Peace, he makes peace with his people.
And then, thank God, there is that precious word which you find in the twenty-third psalm, ‘the Lord is my shepherd’ – Jehovah-ro’eh and, because of that, ‘I shall not want’. Can you say that? Do you know God like that? He has revealed himself in that way, he is your shepherd and you need never want in an ultimate sense. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’
Then there is The Lord Our Righteousness, the name given to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 23:6: Jehovah-tsidkenu, The Lord Our Righteousness. And lastly, Jehovah-shammah, The Lord is There (Ezek 48:35). He is always present. You cannot in a sense be out of his presence because he is always there and especially in times of trouble.
I have, thus, just held these names before you, and my object in so doing is that we may remind ourselves that such is the God whom we worship and whom we adore, eternal, absolute and self-existent, but who nevertheless deigns to reveal himself to man, and those are some of the ways in which he has done so. You would have thought that this would have been enough and more than enough; you would have thought that mankind, hearing these names and having such a revelation of God through them, would have clutched at them and held on to them and that all would have been well. But such was not the case. Mankind, in spite of all this, still did not really know God and then – and this is the message of the ages, the particular message of the church – then, when man had not grasped it, this God who ‘... spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son ...’ who is ‘... the express image of his person’ (Heb 1:1–3). Yes, our Lord puts it all here in these words, ‘I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world’ (v. 6), and ‘he that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (Jn 14:9).
We must leave it at that now. The Lord Jesus Christ has manifested his Father, and has manifested these names in a way that transcends everything that I have been saying. Go back to the Old Testament, look at those names, study them, read them – we are meant to do so, for they are absolutely true today. What Christ has done, in a sense, is to let the floodlight in, to open them out, and to enable us to grasp them, because he has done it in his person. Study them, and remember that what God has said is this: he is ‘The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin and that will by no means clear the guilty’ (Ex 34:6–7). Remember that his name is ultimately Love, that he has loved us with an everlasting love and knowing him thus, we can appropriate unto ourselves all the gracious promises. He will provide, he will heal, he will lead, he will enable us to conquer, but above all, and thank his great and holy name for this, he will never leave us nor forsake us, he will always be with us.