This Happy Name

Pulpit, St John the Baptist, Tideswell, Derbyshire, May 2019

‘This name has all things in it, it brings all good things with it, it speaks more in five letters than we can do in five thousand words, speaks more in it than we can speak today, and yet we intend today to speak of nothing else; nothing but Jesus, nothing but Jesus.
 
The angel tells us that he was the Son of the Highest, and so intimates that his was a name of the highest majesty and glory. And what can we say upon it, less than burst out with the psalmist into a holy exclamation, “O Lord our governor, O Lord our Jesus, how excellent is thy name in all the world”. It is all “clothed with majesty and honour”, it comes riding to us “upon the wings of the wind”, when the Holy Spirit breathes it upon us, covering heaven and earth with the majesty of its glory.
 
…[T]his happy name. We have been saved by it, been saved in it, and one day shall be saved through it; Jesus runs through all with us. So then remember we to begin and end all in Jesus. The New Testament begins so, “the generation of Jesus”; and “Come Lord Jesus”, so it ends. May we all end so too, and when we are going hence, commend our spirits into his hands; and when he comes, may he receive them to sing praises and alleluias to his blessed name, amidst the saints and angels, in his glorious kingdom for ever. Amen’.
 
Mark Frank, 1613-1664