Holy and Anointed One

When, on a Thursday evening at our house fellowship, we reach our principal time of prayer, we often enter into our worship by singing along with John Barnett's lovely song, Holy and Anointed One. We use the version that is to be found on Change My Heart Oh God; but there are versions on other CDs and tapes from the Vineyard Music Group – The Best Loved Songs From the Vineyard, Psalms Volume 1, Acoustic Worship: Isn’t He, etc. In an interview with John Wimber on the Vineyard Music Group video Winds of Worship (VMV9290), John Barnett tells how he came to write it:

‘Actually, I didn’t write it through some great revelation or out of anything spectacular,’ he says. ‘Other than I was just sitting in my room with a guitar and a Bible and just worshipping God. And I think the concept that it was all built around was that one line about “Your name is like honey on my lips”. I kind of struggled with that because at the time I didn’t know of any worship songs that said anything like that. And so it was just like a little worship time with the Lord; and fortunately I remembered it long enough to write it down and to get it on tape. It was just between me and the Lord.’

There can be no doubt that the Holy Spirit was at work in John’s heart and mind as he put together the words and set them to the music; but what fascinates me is the way the Holy Spirit worked — by bringing to John’s remembrance a verse of Scripture from here, another from there, re-phrasing this one, changing that, combining others, and building it all together into something lovely and fresh and new. Let’s take a closer look at the process ...

Jesus, Jesus

The song begins with the Saviour’s name, sung twice. I say sung but it is almost breathed rather than sung. By a slurring on the ‘Je —’, its two syllables are stretched into three so that the sound of the name is savoured and held for as long as possible. It is the most intimate of beginnings to one of the most intimate worship songs I know. No wonder John Barnett says, ‘It was just between me and the Lord’.

No further commentary is needed; except perhaps to point out that Jesus is, of course, the only true name of the Saviour — ‘... you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins’ (Matthew 1.21). All other so-called names are really titles: Lord, Teacher, Christ, Master, etc.

Holy and Anointed One

The Hebrew word for holy — qadôsh — primarily means ‘sacred’ as distinct from that which is common or profane, and thus can be used to describe

Luke 1.35. NIV "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."

people or things devoted to the God. But God himself is the one ‘whose name is Holy’ (Isaiah 57.15). He is ‘the Holy One of Israel’ (Isaiah 1.4). How awesome then for Mary to hear Gabriel describe the child to whom she was to give birth as ‘the holy one’ (Luke 1.35). Clearly, John Barnett sees ‘Holy ... One’ as a title of divinity and, like Gabriel, has no hesitation in ascribing it to Jesus. The same goes for ‘Anointed One’. The link here seems to be to Acts 4 and ‘holy’ is the word that seems to have triggered it. Peter and John have been called in by the ruling Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, and commanded to stop speaking and teaching in the name of Jesus. They refuse to give any undertaking to comply but are released anyway. And on their release they return to the other believers and tell them what has happened. What follows is recorded in verses 24 to 27.

The quotation consists of the first two verses of Psalm 2 and it is followed by a clear, one-to-one identification of each element in those verses. The

Acts 4.24-27. NIV "When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. ‘Sovereign Lord,’they said, ‘you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our Father David: "’Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.’ Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.

‘nations’ are the Gentile authorities. The ‘people’ are the Israelites. The ‘kings of the earth’ are Herod. The ‘rulers’ are Pontius Pilate. And the ‘Anointed One’ is Jesus. In the Hebrew of Psalm 2.2, ‘Anointed One’ is mashîach, from which comes our word Messiah. The word originally described a person or thing that had been smeared with something, usually oil, as a sign of consecration; but soon the idea of consecration became dominant and the word came to signify a person who had been specially set apart for some office or function — eg, a prophet (1 Kings 19.16), a king (1 Samuel 16.12). In Psalm 2, the Messiah is one who will come from the Davidic line. As the hymn puts it: ‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, great David’s greater Son.’ In Greek, the exact equivalent of mashîah is christos, from which comes our word Christ.

So, in a new and lovely title for Jesus which is found nowhere in Scripture in the particular form it now appears, his divine majesty is joyfully acknowledged and proclaimed.

Risen and Exalted One

Here again the Holy Spirit has created another lovely title for Jesus, and again, like the last, it is one that is nowhere to be found in Scripture in the form it

Acts 2.32-33. NIV "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear."

appears in John Barnett’s song. If we would find its source, we must once more go to the book of Acts, but this time to chapter two. The occasion is the Day of Pentecost and the place is Jerusalem. Peter is preaching to the crowds. First he explains that, contrary to what people are thinking, he and his fellow-believers are not drunk. What the crowds are witnessing are the effects of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus in accordance with the prophecy of Joel. And who is this Jesus? Without further ado, Peter begins to proclaim the Saviour’s death and resurrection; and it is in this context that we find the reference to one who is both risen and exalted. Later, in the hymn of Philippians 2.6-11, Paul would describe how Jesus humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, and how ‘therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ...’

Your name is like honey on my lips

On the lips of the Psalmist it was the word (collective singular in the Hebrew — not ‘words’as in the NIV etc) of God which he found sweeter than honey,

Psalm 119.102-104. NIV I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.

but on the lips of a Christian it is the name of Jesus. How could it be otherwise? After all, he, Jesus, is the Word that became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1.14). He is the one whose very ‘name is the Word of God’ (Revelation 19.13). Of course, when the Psalmist talks of the ‘word of God’ he is speaking of the law. Indeed, in Psalm 119.9-10, it is ‘the ordinances of the Lord’ that he claims ‘are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb;’ and we cannot identify with that. The law has no sweetness to the Christian. It, ‘with its regulations, ... was against us and ... stood opposed to us,’ so Jesus ‘took it away, nailing it to the cross’ (Colossians 2.14). The law had only one function and that was, by making us conscious of sin (Romans 3.20) and death (Romans 6.23), to bring us to Christ (Galations 3.24). Having succeeded, it became redundant. Now, it is the name of Jesus only that is like honey on our lips.

Your Spirit like water to my soul

The Holy Land is a land of high temperatures and low rainfall. It is hardly surprising then that God, when speaking to his people, should often use

John 7.37-38. NIV On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit , whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

water as a metaphor for blessing and renewal and life itself. The man who delights in the Lord is ‘like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither’ (Psalm 1.3). But in his song, John Barnett specifically likens water to the Holy Spirit rather than to God’s blessings in general, and it is in the teaching of Jesus that such an identification most clearly takes place in the Scriptures — as the passage from John’s gospel shows. Jesus had, of course, spoken earlier of ‘the living water’ when he had talked to the woman at the well, the woman of Samaria. ‘Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst,’ he said. ‘Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (John 4.14). The woman’s response was, ‘Sir, give me this water ...’ It is ours too. And when we drink of the Spirit we find that he is One who does indeed quench our thirst for the things of eternity and cause our lives to become fruitful and productive of good works.

Your word is a lamp unto my feet

Here, John Barnett’s thought returns to Psalm 119 and picks up where he left off when he talked of Jesus’ name being ‘like honey on my lips’. Maybe it has

Psalm 119.105. NIV Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

been the thought of the Spirit that draws him back to the Word, for the two always belong together. Jesus himself said: ‘The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’ (John 6.63). It is this word — the word of the living Lord, not the dead letter of the law, that guides us through life and illuminates the path before us. We walk in the light of Christ. Jesus is the Word.

Jesus I love you, I love you

I found it incredibly moving when this story of Jesus and Peter by the

John 7.37-38. NIV When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’ Again Jesus said, ‘Simon son of John, do you truly love me?’ He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’ The third time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep.

seashore first made me realise that Jesus actually wants to hear us tell him that we love him. He knows that we do, of course, but he delights in our actually saying or singing the words. And it does our hearts good too. To tell Jesus we love him reinforces that love and causes it to grow. And what better way than singing ‘Holy and Anointed One’! If you ever read this, thank you, John, for passing on to God’s people what has to be one of the most inspired and uplifting praise songs I know.