John Carter - The Speeches in the Acts - Class 3 - The Importance of the Name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2v36-40)

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1. 0:00

   Dear brethren and sisters, on Monday we were looking at the wonderful historical accuracy that marks the writings of Luke. Yesterday we examine his reporting of a speech by Peter, in which we saw that his method of summarizing of a presenting oppressive of the speech was marked by the same superlative quality that Mark is writing as a historian.

2. 0:32

   We saw, or we endeavour to see, that by quoting part of a passage, and then leaving the rest unfinished, he indicated to us that at that point Peter proceeded to expound the Scripture thus far, and that he reverted to the remainder of the quotation at a later portion in his address. We saw also that by the use of a word which was itself taken from an Old Testament quotation, he was indicating to us that Peter at that point quoted that passage, and quoting it would bring out its bearing upon the theme that he was presenting to them. Now, if we have rightly found the key which enables us to interpret Luke’s method of writing a summary, we shall find that we can use the key throughout all his reporting of addresses.

3. 1:38

   And so as we go forward in our examination of 1 speech after another, we shall be able to check whether we have rightly understood his method. And in the continued use of that key to speech after speech, and finding that it always opens them up, we shall be assured that we’ve come to some better understanding of Luke and of his method, and understanding the man and his method the better. We shall read these addresses, not just to read them through, but to remember the illusions which he makes, remember the contents of the Scriptures to which he alludes, and remember that we have to expand it in our thought to something like maybe 20 times its length or more.

4. 2:33

   The speech of Peter Pentecost and the speech which has been read this afternoon are very closely related, and both were spoken in Jerusalem. They both belong to the Jerusalem ministry, which you’ll see as we go forward in the next two or three days, that Luke interpolates the speeches at given points, appropriate points in the course of his history.

5. 3:02

   Because he is unfolding in this book not only the progress of Christianity as it spread geographically throughout the Roman world, but he is showing how the gospel which was presented again and again. While it may vary in emphasis according to the needs and the circumstances, was yet basically one that it set forth a gospel that was a deliverance of a divine message. That it concerned the divine purpose, That it concerned the divine intervention in human affairs. That God had revealed himself in a unique way in one who was the Son of God, for whom had been wrote out a way of salvation for men, and that they were.

6. 3:53

   The apostles were commissioned to carry that message of salvation with the invitation to be reconciled to God. The Jews, of course, were looking for the Messiah. They knew much of the Old Testament writings. The burden of the argument of the apostles in the earlier part of the Acts of the Apostles was to show that the message of the Old Testament prophets presented the Messiah in A2 fold role.

7. 4:26

   That not only was the Messiah one who would be a glorious king reigning over the restored tribes of Israel, but that the prophets who predicted so almighty A ruler also and in the context of the same prediction, indicated that he would suffer. In other words, and it is perhaps necessary for us to realize this, the Messiahship of Jesus was but a part of His purpose. We very often begin when we are proclaiming the truth by preaching concerning the second coming of Jesus and the establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth. But that is not the finality.

8. 5:10

   It’s only the final instrumentality by which God will bring to the effective issue the purpose that He has in Jesus Christ. And the apostles had to show that Messiah’s reign upon earth was not an end, such as the Daxterl Jew was liable to think it, but that it was only a part of a larger purpose concerning the Messiah.

9. 5:33

   In other words, the Kingdom that is coming must be seen not as a social development among men, but as a part of a divine scheme of redemption rooted in the work of Jesus Christ, but carried forward to its final triumph in the reign of Christ upon earth. And so the Messiahship of Jesus has to be seen in the framework of the larger purpose of God concerning Him as the Saviour of men. And His kingship arises out of his Saviour hood because it is the carrying forward of His redemptive work. Now yesterday there was a reference to the name of Jesus Christ.

10. 6:19

    First, in concluding the quotation from Joel, it was written, it is in Acts 221. It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And when they were pricked in their hearts, and that’s what they should do. Verse 38. Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, everyone of you in or into the name of Jesus Christ, and the name of the Lord, in which there was salvation there that call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. He set forth as historically developed in the name of Jesus Christ.

11. 6:58

    Now this introduces us to the peculiar use of the word name in the Scriptures. We read of the name of God. We read that the apostles were to go into all the world baptizing all nations, baptizing them into the name, the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That command was interpreted as being equal to baptizing them into the name of the Lord Jesus Christ or into the name of Jesus Christ, and Paul even puts it as being baptized into Christ.

12. 7:38

    Now they were only baptized into one system of means whereby redemption was possible. And so it is quite clear that the name of the Lord Jesus, or the name of Christ, or into Christ are all in some way equivalent to baptism into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

13. 8:02

    Now a name is that by which a person is known. We know Brother Parkin by his name. You know me by my name, but this is a mere appellative which distinguishes us for convenience of record. There’s nothing particular about the name itself in relation to the individual. I might as well have been called Peter as well as John, and it wouldn’t have made any difference. But biblical names, when divinely appointed, are expressive of a purpose, or the fulfillment of a purpose, as the case may be.

14. 8:39

    The name itself has significance. Now God has given to himself a name, and that name isn’t a matter of letters. It is a purpose by which God has known. But the letters by which God chooses to describe Himself are themselves in the meaning of them, expressive of that purpose. They are an enshrinement, a memorial of the purpose that God will accomplish. Now we read in the section which has already been read to you of this name.

15. 9:14

    Let us pick up the verses. Verse 6. Peter said to this lame man, silver and gold have I none but such as I have give I thee in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk on the 16th verse. And his name through faith in his name has made this man strong, whom ye now see. Yeah, the faith which is by him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. And the 4th chapter continues this theme because it continues the discussion on the preaching of Peter when he was arraigned before the authorities.

16. 9:58

    And Peter asked the question in verse 7, chapter 4, when they had set them in the midst, that is, of Israel rulers, they asked, by what power or by what name have you done this? The 10th verse, Be known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom He crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him does this man stand here before you whole.

17. 10:28

    And then the 12th verse. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Now what is this name given under heaven whereby we might be saved? What is the meaning of this usage of the word name in these addresses that we have here?

18. 10:54

    Well, now we have the answer when we come to analyse the recorded speech of Peter in this third chapter. Now I shall want your close attention. And if you find that the theme develops with some complexity, Please remember that we are being called upon to lift ourselves up to a comprehension of divine things and that Peter stood up and spoke these words and elaborated the theme as we are going to try and do it. And the expected is hearers to follow. So please think you’re put on your metal, got up the loins of your minds, as we said before, and let us try to rise to the higher understanding of the divine things that are revealed so wonderfully in the Word of God. Verse 12 then and onwards, ye men of Israel, why marvel ye this, or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, The God of our fathers, have glorified his Son Jesus, whom ye delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilot, when he was determined to let him go.

19. 12:15

    The God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob. By the use of those terms, Luke is indicating to us that he was quoting from the book of Exodus. We turn to Exodus chapter 3 where we find the phrase verse 6. The Angel as God’s representative is speaking Norover. He said I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. So Peter is referring back to the divine manifestation at the Bush.

20. 12:52

    And when Moses asked, being commissioned to go down into Egypt, what is the name of the one who has sent, who is sending me? Verse 13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come into the children of Israel, and she’ll say unto them, The God of your father’s. You notice in Acts 13, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, there’s your expression, the God of your father’s, that sent me unto you.

21. 13:22

    And they shall say to me, What is his name, or what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I will be who I will be. And he said, Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, he who will be has sent me unto you. And God said, moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob sent me unto you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

22. 13:59

    So here then God gave to himself a name, and it was a name which was defined as meaning I will be who or what I will be. And the verbal noun derived from that statement is he who will be has sent me. Now what will God be? What will God be? There are some deep and philosophic truths bound up with some of the fundamental revelations of God. It was axiomatic with Israel that God was one. As the Shmar declares, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is 1 Lord.

23. 14:45

    But Paul asked the question. The closing verses of the 3rd chapter of the Letter to the Romans, following the Revised Version. Is God the God of the Jews only and not of the Gentiles? In other words, have the Jews one God and the Gentiles another God? Or, says Paul, if as we Jews believe God is 1 and there’s only one God, then God must be the God of the Jews and the God of the Gentiles. But moreover, if God is 1, it must have necessity follow that God is harmonious in himself.

24. 15:27

    There’s no duality, there’s no discord, there’s no disharmony, and therefore God must have one method, one principle of working with men. And so the apostle says it is through faith in his promises that Israel must be saved. And it is through a similar faith in the faith, the system of truth now brought to the Gentiles, that men must be saved. And the apostle draws out from the foundation fact that God is one, that therefore the one God who is the Holy One of Israel must be God of Gentile as well as Jew, and that he must have one method of dealing with mankind. But we must go further than that. If God is one, then it must follow that for God to accomplish and realize His purpose at last, everything must be in harmony with Himself.

25. 16:27

    Now He made man and gave Him freedom to choose. He set up his own will in defiance of the will of God and introduced disharmony. It was a challenge to the supremacy of God. It was introducing into God’s world a duality in which there was the will of God and the will of man, and God could only maintain His supremacy by exercising His right and passing sentence of death upon the rebel. But if He had just stayed there, His purpose in placing man upon the earth would have been thwarted. And therefore God must prove Himself to be a God who, in the exercise of His supremacy, despite the frustrating effects of man’s rebellion, must show himself to be a Saviour. And so God must, to realize his purpose at last eliminate from his universe that which is discordant. He must at last bring all things that survive into harmony with himself.

26. 17:39

    And at last, in the very significant phrase of Paul, God will be All in all. That is to say, all that God is will be realized in all men, and everything will be in perfect harmony with God. But when God is all and in all, then God will have become all that he intended should be.

27. 18:07

    And since all that lives will of its own voluntary choice, have sought to come into harmony with God, it will have become God in manifestation in those who were redeemed. Now a name, as we said, is expressive of a divine purpose, and the name that God chose to give himself, I will be or I will become, means that God would become all that He was himself in those who at last attained to the divine redemption. Now these are necessary corollaries from the fact that God exists, that He is one, that He has made man, and that He has a purpose with men.

28. 18:54

    And we might spend a week of afternoon tracing through the Scriptures the enunciation of these truths that we have tried to summarise in these few words. But if we want the crispest and shortest expression of them, they’re in the name that God gave to himself. I will become, and in course of time a baby was born who was the Son of God, and it was necessary that that child should be the Son of God for the working out of this salvation. For man cannot save himself.

29. 19:32

    God must save. And the challenge of the prophets was that part of the folly of idolatry was that men will worship a God that could not save. But in contrast to it God says, Look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.

30. 19:53

    And so God is a Saviour, and in order that He might be a Saviour, He must raise up one of the rays who might so uphold the divine principles which had been challenged when man transgressed God’s law that there would be provided. Such a recognition of God’s righteousness that God could say, my righteousness has been declared, and because of the holiness and righteousness of this man, he must be raised from the dead as the Conqueror of death.

31. 20:31

    But it was God who provided the man. It was God who said, I will uphold him in the hollow of mine hand. It was God who, in the words of Jesus prophetically expressed, was near, that justified. Jesus justified him in His own right and of His own title because of the sinlessness of his character.

32. 20:55

    He must be born in the channel of human life, with its weakness and frustration with its mortality, in order that he might, as part of that, by the voluntary surrender of his life, show that God was right in the upholding of His supremacy in passing the sentence of death upon the race and the moral principles of God, but thus manifested in Jesus and upheld.

33. 21:23

    But it could be said when Jesus was born, that the Word was made flesh and Welt among us, and the glory that was manifested in Jesus was the glory of the Father, for in Him was the fullness of the embodiment of the divine character. He was full of grace and truth, and those words there, grace and truth themselves, go back to the enunciation of the name of God in the book of Exodus. Show me thy glory, said Moses.

34. 21:55

    And God answered, I will cause all thy glory to flash before thee, and will declare my name. When God declared his name, he pronounced those principles upon which he was operating in dealing with men long-suffering and gracious abundance. In mercy and truth, not sparing the guilty, but forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, there are elaborated the very principles of God in his relation to men.

35. 22:30

    But they were seen revealed in Jesus for Paul. For John goes back to Exodus when he said he was full of grace and truth. But when Jesus was born, it could be said the Word was made flesh and God was manifest in flesh. And to that extent at that point he who had said I will be to now say I have become when the Word made flesh was raised from the dead and made after the power of an endless life. And there was revealed to men the Word of life, as John describes it in the opening verses of his first epistle, the word of life which they’d seen and handled and their eyes had looked upon.

36. 23:17

    Then God could say that not only had he become flesh for a saving name, that not only had God been manifest in flesh, but now God was manifest in one, justified in spirit and made after the power of an endless life. And in Christ exalted we have the extension of the moral harmony that had extended between that had existed between Jesus and God throughout his life, extended to its logical conclusion, to its inevitable end, in the complete and perfect harmony between Jesus and God in character and in nature. And Jesus enunciates the fact that his purpose was to be one with the Father, in the context of which he says, I have declared thy name.

37. 24:12

    And he says concerning those who believe, I pray that they may be 1 even as we are one. And that teaching of Jesus in the 17th chapter of John in that sublime prayer is but a carrying out in rotational form the very underlying principles of the fact that God is 1 because God is 1 at last, all must be one with him that survived, and all that is contrary to him must ultimately be swept away. And Peter says, By what name have I done this? He says the name of God has been revealed in human life in Jesus of Nazareth.

38. 24:55

    The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, hath glorified his Son Jesus, whom he delivered up. And Peter must have taken hold of this doctrine of the name by the double allusion to it, and pointed out that God had enunciated His purpose to become, and He had become in human life that Jesus was God revealed. He had declared him, as John declares in his Gospel. He was, says Peter, the servant, the servant of whom Javer had spoken.

39. 25:29

    For the word Son has glorified his Son Jesus. The word Son there is the translation of a word which means boy and was used in the sense that the servant, the servant of whom Javer had spoken for the word Son, have glorified his son Jesus. The word Son there is the translation of a word which means boy, and was used in the sense in which the Negro was spoken of as a boy and it meant a servant. The idiom, the Greek idiom, was just that which corresponded to the American description of a slave boy as being. We’ll call the boy, and it may be a man of 40 or 50, but he’s still the boy is the servant.

40. 26:24

    And so here the word son is servant. It is His Son used in that sense, and it goes back to those servant prophecies. Behold, my servant, that begins in the 42nd chapter onwards to the 53rd chapter, where we have the servant of the Lord despised and rejected of men, but at last seeing the travail of His soul exalted and glorified, and the earnest of it was that Jesus had been raised from the dead and glorified the God of our fathers of glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate.

41. 27:06

    Who had they denied? Peter says just look at him whom you denied. He denied the Holy One and the just that unto you, and killed the Prince of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are strangers. The Holy One and the Just One were acknowledged Messianic titles, But while they were Messianic titles, they also indicated the essential quality and character of Him who would be the Messiah. And these go back to the prophecies concerning the Messiah.

42. 27:45

    I will raise up unto David a righteous branch, A man who had the quality of righteousness is essentially himself. And so he was the righteous one, the just one, the just one who shall live by faith of the 3rd chapter, the 2nd chapter. Habakkuk, who stands in contrast to the head of the nations that comes against the Holy Land in the last days, and who is challenged by the just One, the righteous One, who was living eternally by his faith. And you get the clash portrayed by Habakkuk between the divine head whom God has appointed to be ruler, and the heading up of human pride and human scheme in the northern invader that comes against the land.

43. 28:36

    But the divinely appointed ruler lives and is there, living eternally as the just one who lives by faith. These phrases in the Old Testament, both in the Major Prophets and in the Minor Prophets, were used and expanded as the meaning of them was wrote out in the Apostolic testimony. They had killed the Prince of Life or the leader of Life or the Author of Life, whichever you care to to adopt.

44. 29:10

    But because he’s the leader of life, he is the one who has led the way. For the leader must be part a, part of those who may lead one with them, a member of the group, the head of the group, but still one with them and going through all that they go through and coming out of it.

45. 29:32

    And therefore he was one with us essentially. And yet he’s led the way and opened the way out of death to life and will lead others to it. In other words, paraphrasing these two verses, Peter says the one to whom belongs these descriptions, the Holy One and the just one who Jews recognize to have reference to the Messiah, is the one in whom is realized all that the words mean of holiness and of righteousness. And these are the qualities that belong to the Messiah, because in Him God has manifested One who will be the leader to life, who born amidst the evil common to all of us, as yet never yielded to its temptation, and who therefore is Himself, the life of God, revealed.

46. 30:30

    And thus God has manifested Himself, and His name is set before you in this testimony concerning Jesus. For the name, in the fullness of its definition, is the name of the Father, the one who would become who by the operation of His power would bigot a Son. And so it is the name which has been evolved historically as the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, because divine power revealed in the Holy Spirit was the operative agency and causing Jesus to come into being. And the fullness of it is brought together in that expression, and there is revealed the name of salvation. And it is the name of salvation because it is the divine purpose in which He will bring men to harmony with Himself, where He will be revealed in them, and so they will be saved. And so says Peter in verse 16.

47. 31:43

    And his name. His name, Can’t you see, brothers and sisters, what a significance there is in these language, English language and His name. And it sums up all these thoughts. For the name of God is that by which God is known, and is known by the purpose which He executed. And so His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong. And there was a dramatic revelation in the miracle. The miracles of the Gospels and of the Acts were object lessons. They were illustrations of divine power in Jesus. They were attestations that God was with him, but they were also of that character that showed that Jesus was the one foretold in the Old Testament.

48. 32:40

    It was written that in the days of the Messiah, the deaf would hear, the blind would see, the lame man would leap as a heart. In fact, the very word used to describe that in Isaiah, in the Septuagint version, is used in the New Testament of the miracle of healing the lame man, linking the two together.

49. 33:01

    And so since these things were characteristics of the Messiah’s age, by the performance of them Jesus was making a tacit claim to be the Messiah. John said, Art thou he that should come? I’ll look before another. In that same hour, says the record, Jesus gave sight to blind hearing to the deaf. He raised the dead.

50. 33:26

    And he said, go tell John what things ye see. And there’s the answer to the question higher, the Messiah that is coming. He was doing the Messiah’s works that will be done in all its fullness in the age to come. And by doing them then, he was making claim to be the Messiah, just as he did when he assumed the role that had been foretold by the prophet Zechariah, that thy king should come unto thee riding upon an ass. And the people were quick to see the significance of his claim when, on that Palm Sunday, he entered into the city in the role designated by the prophet as being that in which the Messiah would come.

51. 34:08

    And the people quickly responding to what he’d done and recognizing what was implicit in his action, strewed palms in the way and shouted in the words that the prophets that said they would use when Messiah came. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. And now, says Peter, you’ve seen this man made sound, and this is by his name.

52. 34:34

    And this is an illustration of the saving power of the name of Jesus. It is an illustration of that perfection of health to which men will come when at last, through the forgiveness of sins, they attained to the great salvation. That is the divine purpose. And so, says Peter, you feel dismayed that you’ve killed such an one. I know that through ignorance he did it. It did also your rulers.

53. 35:07

    But you have fulfilled the divine purpose. It was according to what God had written through the prophets, The things which God had both before showed before, that His Christ, His Christ should suffer. He has so fulfilled, and the assertion, as we said yesterday, wouldn’t be sufficient. He would recapitulate some of those testimonies which spoke of the sufferings of Christ, which were associated also with the glory of the Christ.

54. 35:37

    Prophecies of which Peter himself later in his epistle, says, that the prophets search what a what manner of time that spirit of Christ which was in them, did signify, when he testified beforehand the sufferings of the Christ, and the glory that could follow. But how can they become constituents of the name themselves?

55. 35:57

    The appeal is made. Repentive, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. That so times of refreshing, and times of refreshing was part of their common speech, as descriptive of the Messiah’s day says, Repent therefore, and be converted. Prepare yourself for the coming of that day when Messiah shall come, bringing the times of enlargement for the nation and the times of blessing, when these will come from God, where Jesus is, when he will send Jesus Christ, whom the heavens must receive until the times of restoration of all things.

56. 36:38

    And so he is weaving together the evidence that the Jesus whom he was speaking about, in whom God had manifested himself, who’d been the revelation in human life of God, who descended to God’s right hand, was he who would bring those expected times of blessing for which they were looking and at which God had spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. But Peter says when this time comes, it will inaugurate a new covenant for Israel, not the old covenant. And he reminds them that Moses was the mediator of the old Covenant.

57. 37:17

    A prophet. Shall the Lord your God raise up unto be so? He says there has to be inaugurated a new order, a new covenant, one like unto Moses, fulfilling as Moses did, a mediatorship, acting as the one who would introduce and make sure a new covenant for Israel. But what covenant is it? What covenant is it?

58. 37:41

    Now I want you to notice the application of the rule which I think you will now see is pretty well established, by which Luke, in this very intriguing and interesting and skilful way of his, brings out in this press, as we call it, what Peter did elaborately. It shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. And you read it and perhaps think that that expression shall be destroyed from among the people belongs to the quotation in Deuteronomy chapter 18.

59. 38:22

    But it doesn’t. God there says I will require of it, require it of him. But the expression shall be destroyed from among the people comes from God’s terms in the Abrahamic covenant. Go back to Genesis 17 and verse 14. Verse 9. God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant, therefore thou and thy seed after thee in their generations every child shall be circumcised.

60. 38:53

    And the 14th verse and the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people. So it is a failure to comply with the Abrahamic covenant to which Peter refers. And he says, Any man who isn’t incorporated in this new covenant, that the one like unto the prophet Moses will introduce, shall be cut off from among the people.

61. 39:24

    In other words, Peter takes them to the Abrahamic covenant, which will be fulfilled in the restoration of all things, and in the coming of this time of refreshing to which he has spoken. And he said, this is the theme of all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after. And now we can test again our interpretation if that 23rd verse has indeed taken their thought to the Abrahamic covenant with it new mediatorship in Jesus Christ.

62. 39:58

    If we’re right there, then we can see the sequence of thought in the last two verses of this third chapter. Ye are the children of the prophets, that midiomatic sons idiomatic of as meaning of the same race. Ye are of the race of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, Don’t you see how? How Peter’s thought has moved on at times of refreshing, but it’s under a new covenant and it’s under the Abrahamic covenant and the Ave. mediatorship.

63. 40:33

    And he says you’re in the line to which it belongs. You’re the in the race of this, this covenant blessing which God made with our Father, saying unto Abram in thy speech, shall all the children of the earth be blessed? And now I want to suggest an enlargement of an interpretation common among us as a community. I I think it is general that when a lecture is given concerning the age to come, we speak of the promises made to Abraham, and we say all nations are going to be blessed under Christ.

64. 41:10

    And if we say, what are the blessings, we begin by saying they’ll have houses stick to live in. There’ll be a freedom from want and a freedom from anxiety. And we should describe all the economic advantages that we think we’ll obtain in the age to come. And we’re dealing only with a superstructure.

65. 41:32

    Then we’re not dealing with the foundation fact. Observe Peter’s interpretation. In thy feet shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed unto you. First, God, having raised up his servant, Jesus sent him to bless you. Bless you. What is the blessing He sent him to bless you. What is the blessing in turning away everyone of you from your iniquities? What is the blessing of all nations? Paul says in the 4th chapter the letter to the Romans. Let us take Abraham as the classical illustration and determine from him and what is written concerning him, the basis of a man standing before God. Was it upon the basis of the flesh? If it was, says Paul, then Abraham had wear off the glory. But what does the Scripture say?

66. 42:33

    Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness, even as David describes the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputeth, into to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without work, saying, Blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. What is blessedness? The forgiveness of sin, the being accounted righteous before God.

67. 43:04

    And the fundamental thing of the Abrahamic covenant is that it is a declaration of a divine means whereby men and women can be esteemed by God as righteous through the forgiveness of their sins. But the other side of the shield, if sins are forgiven and forgiven by God in this arrangement, it is impossible for men and women with things forgiven to continue in sin. It would be a denial of all that they’d accepted in this blessedness.

68. 43:39

    And so while Paul puts the one side of the shield and emphasizes that the blessedness is the forgiveness of sins, Peter puts the other side that is blessing you in turning you away, everyone of you, from his iniquities. And why has God doing that? He’s doing it in order that men may be brought into harmony with Himself and incorporated in His name now in the blessedness of fellowship with Him.

69. 44:10

    But at last in the fullness of the revelation, when God is revealed in the nature that He now has becoming the nature, in the nature that God has becoming the nature of those who are His redeemed. That just as Isaiah says, God is one who is never weary and who never faints, so they that wait upon the Lord will be themselves so assimilated to the divine in its energy and its power, that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint, because the energy that belongs to the divine will have been given unto them. There’s no other name given unto heaven. There’s no other system of salvation than this. And I think we will agree that as we strive to rise up to the heights of the wonder of the grace of God is revealed here, that we are highly privileged to know it. And what a wonderful testimony the apostles made. Don’t let us be afraid of putting forward in our testimony something of the fullness of the grace of God and the wonder of this purpose.

70. 45:26

    We can do it with sustained logical power, just as Peter did in this in the speeches of his that we’ve considered. For God, who is 1 is in perfect harmony in every way with himself, and therefore there’s nothing illogical or inconsistent or incongruous about him, and the presentation of His truth should similarly have those characteristics.

71. 45:51

    Thank you.