Dennis Tuuri

with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his and he made it. In his hands form the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker. For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

Today if you will hear his voice, harden not your heart as in the provocation and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness when your fathers tempted me, proved me and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said it is a people that do err in their heart and they have not known my ways unto whom I swear in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. Let us confess our sins before Almighty God.

Lord God, Almighty and everlasting Father, we acknowledge and confess before your holy majesty that we are poor sinners, born in corruption, inclined to evil, and unable by ourselves to do good. And that every day and in many ways we transgress your holy commandments, thus calling upon ourselves your just judgment, condemnation, and death. But, oh Lord, we are grieved because we have offended you. We condemn ourselves and our sins in solemn repentance.

We turn again to your grace and implore you to succor us in our distress. Have pity upon us, gracious God, Father of mercies, and pardon our sins for the love of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Savior. Grant to us and increase in us continually the graces of your Holy Spirit, so that acknowledging our faults more and more, we may grieve over them and renounce them with all our heart, and may bear the fruits of righteousness and holiness, which may be well pleasing in your sight, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. Now, as many as there be of you, who despair of themselves in their sins, and trust that their debts are completely forgiven to them through the merit of Christ alone, who resolve more and more to desist from sins and to serve the Lord in true holiness and righteousness.

To those as they believe in the Son of the living God, I proclaim at God’s command that they are released in heaven from all their sins as he doth promise in his holy gospel through the perfect satisfaction of the most holy passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. But as many as there be among you, who will take pleasure in their sins and shame or persist in sins against their conscience. To such I declare by the command of God that his wrath and judgment abideth upon them, all their sins being retained in heaven, and they can never be delivered from eternal damnation except they repent unto the Lord.

Serve the Lord with gladness. Serve the Lord. Know ye that the Lord, he is God. We are his people. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving. Lord with praise. Be thankful unto him. For the Lord is good. His truth endureth to all generations.

Revelation chapter 15. And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them is filled up the wrath of God. And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire, and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name stand on the sea of glass having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.

Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou only art holy, for all nations shall come and worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest. And after that I looked, and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened, and the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles.

And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who liveth forever and ever. And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power. And no man was able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.

A series of talks going through the liturgy or the order of service at Reformation Covenant Church. By now you should be well instructed to the fact that every church has liturgy. The question is whether it is good or bad liturgy. The determining factor is how well it conforms itself to Scripture. And so what we’re doing is we’re going through what we do here in attempt to understand the scriptures better and understand what we’re doing, so that we can sing with understanding as Paul tells us and we can pray with understanding what we’re doing here in corporate covenantal worship.

And additionally, as we go through this, of course, we’re going to be looking to ways to reform our worship. The reformed church’s model as a reformed church is to continue reforming. We never reach a place of any kind of perfection obviously, and as a result we must continue to expose ourselves to the corrective Word of God and reform ourselves accordingly.

Now last week we began this series four weeks ago, I guess it was now, with beginning with the call to worship and we talked about Psalm 95 which we’ll be using for the call to worship for this entire series. There are other calls to worship we’ll use at later points in time, but I think it’s a good one to remind ourselves of the basic idea that God does call us to worship on the Lord’s day. This is where you’re supposed to be and is a command word from our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sovereign.

And then we talked about the following week the need to prepare for that. Then if the King’s going to call us out to meet with him Sunday morning, then we have to prepare for that Saturday and Sunday morning as well. We talked about devotions. It’s an important thing to use the illustrations that God gives us in life. We come here cleansed and with nice Sunday clothes on normally is what we do. And it’s a good way to teach our children about the need for confession of sin and exposure to the scriptures to cleanse ourselves. And the idea of Christ’s imputed righteousness, his robes of righteousness is what we come to church wearing.

I think we mentioned before that churches in some ages past actually had robes that people would put on as they came to church, recognizing that we’re robed in Christ’s righteousness and that’s how we get presence into God.

Last week we talked about confession and absolution and I mentioned that Calvin wanted to keep a formal absolution, but apparently he wrote later that he had yielded too easily in excluding a statement of absolution on the part of the pastor—a formal statement as opposed to just a general prayer of forgiveness.

The reason why he yielded at all was that Calvin understood the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church and what they had done to absolution. And Calvin always thought that it was all right to do away with certain things that might be good and proper in themselves but were being used improperly by the people. Of course, the incident of the brazen serpent in the scriptures tell us that.

And so that was why he got rid of it. But he thought that was a big mistake and that people really need that sense of assurance, and the statement from the pastor who tells them you have entrance into God’s holy place based on the work of Jesus Christ.

And we talked last week about the book of Jeremiah and that scene from where Jeremiah meets the people at the temple as the prophet would do in times. And he told them, “You don’t get in today. There is no absolution of sins.” God said, “Don’t tell these people their sins are forgiven because they have not lived in obedience to the scriptures.”

Now, we recognize that the obedience of Jesus Christ is our means of entrance into God and into his presence. But that if we believe in that and have saving faith and have repentance for our evil deeds, we will try to reform ourselves from those deeds and will be somewhat successful in that in life. And so if a person does not attempt to reform their lives according to God’s word and is not repentant for their sins during the week, it does no good to come to church Sunday morning and make a general statement of confession and expect God to usher you into his holy presence without judgment.

I bring that up because it helps you to understand the particular form of conditional absolution that I used this morning. This became popular in the Palatinate where the Heidelberg Catechism came out of under Frederick III and Ursinus was there who helped him write that, who was one of the two men that wrote that, and Olevianus was the other.

And so the Reformation at the Palatinate built upon the reformers upon Calvin’s work and others, and they used this particular form of absolution that I used this morning which is known as a double binding form. You talk about the fact that God’s word says that those people that repent and believe in Jesus Christ are indeed forgiven of their sins by God in heaven. But additionally, you make the statement that those people who refuse to come to repentance are to be assured that they are not forgiven and that they will spend eternity in hell unless they come to repentance.

And I think that if we keep in mind that model of Jeremiah from last week, you’ll see the advantages of that double binding form. And we won’t use it every week here, but we will use it on occasion. And it has biblical warrant based upon the words from Jeremiah where he told the people, “You don’t get in today.”

And I would go so far as to say that in our churches today in America, the great bulk of them, if a prophet of God were to stand up before them and the pastor, holy man stand up before them on Sunday morning, he would have to tell them, “No entrance into God’s presence for you today because you’ve turned your children over to a state that instructs them apart from the Word of God and instructs them in a false system of statism.

You’ve left the state to take care of your health, education, and welfare, and all requirements that you have in your family. And you’ve declared another god except Jesus Christ. You are back to Caesar worship and you don’t get into my presence today.”

That’s what Jeremiah was instructed to tell the people and I think that if churches today were being biblical about it, they’d do the same thing and the service would be over.

Having said that, we understand and have attempted to reform our lives and bring ourselves to full submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ in every area. And to those people who repent in that wise, they are welcomed by God into Sabbath worship of worship services and are ushered into his presence and the gates of the temple open as it were and we have entered in now to the presence of God and give him worship and praise.

What follows? Well, I think I mentioned that the historic medieval forms followed the confession and absolution with a statement of praise to God. Calvin replaced the reading of the Ten Commandments and the Kyrie Eleison he inserted before those things or in place of them in some cases—a psalm, a singing, a psalm of praise to God.

Calvin himself wrote about what they did on Sunday in this way. He said, “We begin with confession of our sins adding verses from the law and the gospel, i.e., words of absolution. And after we are assured that Jesus Christ is righteousness and life in himself, and that as he lives for the sake of the Father, we are justified in him and live in the new life through the same Jesus Christ, we continue with psalms, hymns of praise, the reading of the gospel, the confession of our faith, etc.”

Calvin, I think, understood that the scriptures teach, and we’re going to look at it this morning, that as we are ushered into the presence of God and as we have understood our need for forgiveness of sins and recognizing the work of Jesus Christ as our mediator, that then the first thing that comes out of our mouth having been ushered into his presence is praise for who he is. It is an important part of the liturgy of the church.

And so our discussion this morning is about the hymn of praise and as we get to the conclusion of this you’ll see its importance for all our lives as well, hopefully.

Okay, first I wanted to do an overview of song in scripture just as a way of introduction. We’re going to be talking about a particular type of song this morning, the hymn of praise. But because this is the first talk we’re doing on songs, we’ll be doing other ones, I wanted to just briefly give you an overview of song and scripture.

And it’s important to recognize that songs in the scriptures are used for a wide variety of purposes. And I’ve listed on your outline there any number of points. And I won’t go through all those verses now, but it’s important that you recognize that there are these different uses.

There’s a didactic use, and what that means is that songs are used as teaching devices in the scriptures. And the list verses I’ve listed for you there indicate that the songs are a way to memorize certain commandments of God and certain things about God and his mighty deeds. And so songs and the singing of songs throughout the scriptures has this idea of teaching the faith and of us teaching our children the faith. And of course, we’ve all recognized that if you can learn something to a tune, you’ll do much better in terms of memorizing it. They have a didactic use.

Additionally, songs can be used in terms of prophesying or teaching, and I’ve listed some verses there for you as well. Songs have a teaching purpose to them. Secondly, in the Song of Moses itself, which we’ll be talking about a little bit later, we have the idea of the transmission of the faith through the central song of the covenant and also the idea that the song then becomes a witness to them.

In Deuteronomy 31:19, God tells Moses, “Now therefore, write ye this song for you and teach it to the children of Israel. Put it in their mouths that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.”

Now, the Song of Moses, you’ve probably heard that, but we just read it from the book of Revelation. I might as well say now that there are two things that people talk about in relationship to that. In Exodus 15, after God has delivered the people from Egypt and after he has drowned Pharaoh and his troops in the sea, Moses sings this song or writes this song. And then Miriam sings a portion of that song later on in Exodus 15. And so, Exodus 15 is primarily the song of deliverance, for what God has accomplished in terms of delivering him out of Egypt and destroying the wicked army of Pharaoh.

However, then in Deuteronomy 32, this leading up having been led up to with this command by God in Deuteronomy 31 to do this, Deuteronomy 32 is Moses’ song of the covenant. Okay? And it recites what God has done for his people and really is written in the form of the suzerain-vassal treaty which we’ve talked about primarily where you have the idea of God talking about his vassal state, who he’s brought into salvation and who he’s brought into relationship with himself, the laws that are binding upon that relationship, the sanctions against people for breaking or obeying those laws—blessing and cursing—and the idea of continuance.

And that was all found in that song of Moses there in Deuteronomy 32. And so when you talk about the Song of Moses, you can either talk about Exodus 15 or Deuteronomy 32 or some people put them together. And I think that probably putting them together is the right way to think about it. We’ll talk about that a little bit later as we get into Revelation 15 specifically.

But in any event, what I wanted you to see here in Deuteronomy 32 is that the song, the vehicle of the song is used as a transmission belt for the faith. And it is also used as a witness against people later when they depart from the faith and break God’s law.

Third, songs can be used for consecration. 2 Chronicles 15:14, they swear unto the Lord with a loud voice and with shouting, with trumpets and cornets, musical instruments, and there’s singing going on here. And so the idea of consecration is a proper one for the use of songs.

Fourth, David plays his harp and soothes the king and songs can have a pastoral bent to them and they can minister to people in that way.

Fifth, songs can be prayers. In Jeremiah 31:7, “For thus says the Lord, sing with gladness for Jacob and shout among the chief of the nations. Publish ye, praise ye and say, ‘Oh Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel.’” And so here we have a specific command that this particular sort of song is a song of prayer for deliverance and that he might save his people. And so songs can be used as prayers as well. We just participated in that just prior to this sermon after reading of the scripture. We sang a prayer to God.

Sixth, songs were used in battle. 2 Chronicles 20:22 says, “When he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord that they should praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army and to say, ‘Praise the Lord for his mercy endureth forever.’ And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushes against the children of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir which were come against Judah and they were smitten.”

And so songs were used in battles as they went out into battle. And we’ll be talking more about that next week when we consider the Psalms themselves, the Psalter and the use of the Psalter by the Christian church for 2,000 years. And some of those uses were in terms of battle when they went into war. But that’s perfectly proper according to the scriptures.

Seventh, songs were used to accompany the sacrifices that went on in 2 Chronicles 29:27 during the time of Hezekiah. “As the burnt offering specifically began, the song of the Lord began also with the trumpets and with the instruments ordained by David, king of Israel.” And so songs accompany sacrifice. And so we for instance have an offertory song. We remind ourselves that Jesus Christ was our whole burnt offering and that we are therefore required in obedience to him to offer up ourselves as living sacrifices to him.

We read about men who were given over specifically to the task to assist in the development of songs and in their performance. And it says specifically there that the Levites were chosen, all that could skill of instruments of music. So they didn’t just take a democratic random sort of poll and just take one out of every ten and say you’re going to play music. They found out who is skillful in music. And so music should be done skillfully and well before God.

Now I might point out here in case those of you are jumping—some of you may be coming to the conclusion that means you don’t have to sing because you don’t have a good voice. That while there were Levitical choirs under the Old Covenant system for use in the temple specifically, we are now all ushered into temple worship. And so we’re all Levites in that sense now in a greater sense than which it was in the Old Covenant.

And so we all have those obligations to perform those Levitical functions, including the singing. And so in the New Testament, we find all the church singing and not a specific choir. This doesn’t mean that choirs are illegitimate. It does mean, however, that a choir should have the same function in what were indicated by these things we just read in terms of the use of songs. Choir should assist the congregation in singing skillfully. They don’t provide entertainment. Remember we’ve said the whole purpose of worship is not entertainment. We don’t come here as an audience. We come here to participate in holy worship before God.

And so if we ever have a choir here and hopefully we will and we will begin to have some skeletal outlines of that maybe this next month even—the choir will be essentially supportive of the congregation either mixed at the congregation, sitting at the back or whatever, supporting the singing so that we all can do these things the way the scriptures tell us to with clear notes, clear sounds, skillfully doing music to God.

Okay. So, songs used for a wide variety of purposes. There are characteristics to songs of clarity and being performed well that we have to take particular note of. And then there are also different types of songs in the scriptures. And now this is going to be maybe a little bit controversial, but we want to talk a little bit about Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16.

Both those verses from the New Testament indicate the use of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Ephesians 5:19 says, “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

And generally it is recognized that these things do have implications for corporate worship as well as individual use. The teaching and admonishing of one another is part of the use of corporate worship and part of what we’re doing here exhorting and encouraging one another to faithfulness. And so this all applies to that.

The question is what do these words mean? And there is a particular strand of the reformed faith currently the Covenanters who believe in exclusive psalmody and they also believe in the exclusion of instruments in special covenantal worship.

The idea behind the exclusion of instruments is based upon the fact that instruments they say were only used in the temple and the temple services were all brought to completion in Jesus Christ with his entrance into the holy temple of heaven 2,000 years ago and therefore instruments are no longer to be used. The problem is that as we read this morning from Revelation 15, the saints are represented around the throne room of God in John’s revelation contemporaneous to that event and for the church at all I believe as having harps as well as singing songs.

There are several other references in the book of Revelation to the use of harps of God playing music and singing songs before his throne. That’s one problem with that—you have a specific text in the book of Revelation indicates instruments are used in the worship of God in the New Testament church.

Secondly, another problem with that is that I think that it really—and we’ve talked a lot about this won’t belabor the point—but I think it really does not do it does a disservice to the whole emphasis in the scriptures that all the different forms of worship in the Old Covenant are coming together now in the one Lord’s day worship service that we have. We have temple, we have synagogue. We’ve talked a lot about that. So I don’t think we need to spend much time on the use of musical instruments.

But the use of exclusive psalmody on the other hand the Covenanters hold to and by that they mean that only the psalms are legitimate to used in worship. No songs of human composure apart from divine inspiration. This has more of a tradition in the reformed faith and we need to talk about it a little bit.

I think the first thing we want to say here is that the Psalter became very important to the reformed churches and the Psalter I think is becoming increasingly important to the church that is being reformed in America today as well. And it was a tremendous thing that the reformers took the Word of God itself and the hymn book of the psalms that God had given to us to worship him and brought it up to date and began to use it in corporate worship. That was a big stage in church history. Okay. It was a major movement forward in terms of the worship of the church.

The Psalter had not been used. There were some chants that had been developed and that was another big step forward. The Psalter—the exegesis of the Psalter in the Hebrew text itself had not been done for years and that was now worked upon by Bucer and other people. Calvin really stressed hard the need to use those psalms and produce a metrical psalter that people could sing in corporate worship and he did it. He did it to the tune of all 150 psalms. An amazing feat.

They put a lot of effort into it, employed a lot of people in doing it. Calvin began the work. Beza at a later point in time also got involved in the work and brought it to completion. And so part of the position of exclusive psalmody comes out of the fact that the reformers had rediscovered the Psalter and had begun to use it again in corporate worship in a very important sense. And that is very important to recognize the appropriateness of all that.

Luther himself, while he wrote a lot of hymns, many of his hymns were based upon the Psalter and were adaptations of it. “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” for instance, is actually from Psalm 46, which a lot of people may or may not know.

Additionally, this emphasis upon music and the worship of God and specifically the use of the Psalter by Calvin was a great part of the reason for the success of the reformers that came out of the Calvinistic school. They began to talk about the songs of Calvinism, the songs of Calvinism that would pull people away from the Orthodox Roman Catholic faith. It had that kind of impact and was a tremendous impact and we’ll talk more about that next week when we talk about the Psalms specifically.

But it’s important to recognize this and if you understand that then begin to understand why then it began to be codified that these were the only things we would sing in reformed worship. The Synod of Dort, which most of us are somewhat familiar with, actually took a position on exclusive psalmody. That was the only thing that could be used in corporate worship.

Now, two factors that Nichols in his book “Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition” says was responsible for some of this codification and development of the Psalter exclusively. Two factors that he points out I think they’re quite good and important to recognize.

One was, as I said, they rediscovered the Psalms. They rediscovered a biblical world and life view that saw the Psalter not as some kind of old thing relating to people that have nothing to do with the church age. They weren’t dispensationalists. And because they weren’t dispensationalists, they understood and breathed the biblical world and life view much more than we would today understand, for instance, and so because of that the Psalter became a tremendous source of inspiration for them because they understood things from David’s perspective from a biblical world and life view and so they would sing those psalms and understand them the way that many minds who are more secular oriented may not understand them.

And they would put headings to the psalms to remind the people of how this pointed to the work of Jesus Christ. And they would read a couple of lines about this is a messianic psalm talking about his passion and his crucifixion and then his resurrection, and then they would sing Psalm 22 and they’d understand it all. See, so they had a biblical world view. That’s one important factor.

The other factor is that their success became part of the reason Nichols thinks, and I think he’s right, as to why it became codified as exclusive psalms. In other words, they didn’t just develop some psalms and then slowly have this thing evolve. They developed a complete Psalter at Geneva, 150 psalms, and they now had a full-blown worship manual in terms of singing.

And so it became essentially the development not of a group of psalms but of a whole system of worship. And so when lay people later began to say no we don’t just have to have psalms or we can change the psalms a bit and indicate their Christian emphasis in the words themselves that became resistant because we had a system now being attached as opposed to just individual psalms.

Okay. Now it’s important to note then that much of the reformed church at that time held to exclusive psalmody. However, it is also true that Beza himself changed, uh, developed hymns, introduced some hymns in his worship service with the authorization of the Synod of Montpellier in 1598. Not important you remember that name but it is important you remember that the French reformers took a more lax position on whether or not you could use hymns or not apart from the psalms than did the Synod of Dort and some of the other countries.

And Beza himself, who was one of the developers of the Psalter, said it’s okay to use things other than psalms we can use a few hymns. Although the great preponderance was psalms. Calvin himself took the position that if we’re going to sing praises to God, we ought to sing praises the best way we can. The best way we can is by using God’s words himself. And so, we’re going to use the Psalter.

Calvin, as far as I can read, never said it is unbiblical or sinful to use something other than the psalms. But he said that it is the best way we can sing. That’s the way we ought to sing.

Now, what does all this mean in terms of the verses that I began this little section with? Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16. Well, these are very important verses for this entire question because these verses tell us specifically groups of songs that are legitimate to sing in terms of worshiping God.

The Covenanters believe that these three terms, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, relate to the Psalter itself exclusively. And it is true that in the introductory notes to the 150 psalms, you find these same words being used in those in the Greek translation of the Psalter. In other words, these three specific terms here used for songs are all used in reference to the Psalter in the Greek translation of it. Okay? So, they said all Paul’s doing here is saying use these three groups of songs used in the Psalter all coming out the Psalter.

Most modern commentators, however, take a different position. In other words, Calvin on the Colossians passage says that spiritual songs covers all kinds of song except that spiritual excludes frivolities and trifles. And so Calvin himself seem to from those comments from his commentary on the Colossians passage seem to believe that the Colossians passage did leave an opening for the use of non-Psalter songs and non-inspired songs in corporate worship.

Alexander, commenting in Mark, when he’s commenting specifically here on the singing of the hymn as they went up to the Mount of Olives after the first Lord’s Supper writes the following:

“There is of course no allusion to the modern distinction between psalms and hymns nor to the modern use of metered hymns and artificial melody and harmony and all which appear to have been wholly unknown to the ancient church and have still less authority from scripture than the use of human compositions as an aid in worship, when they are agreeable to God’s word in their sentiment and spirit. The original church music was most probably the simplest kind of chanting in which all could join without laborious instruction in the cumbersome machinery of choirs, music masters, singing schools or instruments.

These, these appliances are not unlawful or at variance with the character of spiritual worship.”

So what Alexander here is saying, and I know it’s kind of a complicated quote but he’s saying that he’s commenting here on the use of what sort of hymns were sung as they went out to the Mount of Olives. And he’s saying that the idea of metered psalms, taking a psalm, putting it to meter, changing the words of the scriptures to make it fit a particular metrical flow, which is what we do when we sing psalms today. They’re obviously rearranged, cut up, they’re versified, they’re metered so they can be sung to a particular tune. And then, of course, they’re rhymed as well.

And so there’s a lot of alteration to the psalm that occurs. And Alexander is suggesting that alteration that is necessary for the exclusive psalmody position in terms of using something other than just chanting using metered psalms is itself probably more objectionable, may well in his mind be more objectionable than songs of human composure themselves as long as they meet what the Bible is teaching. Okay. And so the idea of exclusive psalmody has some built-in problems among which as I said are this alteration to the Word of God itself that must occur in order for the psalms to be sung.

And so there’s lots of problems at the exclusive psalmody position and as I said the reformers were not of one mind in excluding them. Different portions of the reformed church did but other portions of the reformed church as it continued to grow began to use hymns more often.

Indeed, even in the early church itself, Tertullian in his “Apology” writes the following. He’s talking of the worship services now, and this is written around 200 AD. “After many ablutions and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing as he can a hymn to God. Either one from the holy scriptures or one of his own composing.” And it seems to be indicating again that it is all right to compose songs and that is what any references there to Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 passage.

Additionally, in his writing called “To His Wife,” speaking of the relationship of husband and wife he says, “Between the two echoes psalms and hymns” and again he gives a reference there to Ephesians and Colossians indicating again that there were songs other than psalms specifically that could be sung in worship. “Anyway, between the two echo songs, Psalms and hymns and they mutually challenge each other which shall better chant to their Lord.”

And I’m sure that you’re all going to do that this afternoon—husbands and wives, you’re going to go home and see which can chant better to the Lord. She go back and forth. But at any event, I quote those to show you that Tertullian himself believed it indicated that in the second century of the church there were the use of things other than psalms in worship.

Additionally, Pliny in his comments about the worship service that he wrote back to the emperor also indicated in the first, second century of the church that hymns were being used outside of the Jewish Psalter.

Okay. All of that to point out that I do believe it is legitimate to imply from Ephesians and Colossians that there are essentially three groups of songs. You don’t want to draw those distinctions too close. But on the other hand, we do have two specific writings from Paul that indicate those three types of songs: those are psalms, then those are hymns of praise, and then there are spiritual songs of encouragement and edification.

Now this morning what we want to talk about specifically is hymns of praise and we read from Revelation 15 because that is the ultimate hymn of praise. I suppose it is in a way the end result of all the covenantal work of God in history and all the development of all the hymns of praise that are given throughout the scriptures.

I should mention that there are other hymns and songs in scripture besides the Psalter—Mary’s Magnificat of course, Zacharias’s song, Simeon’s song from the book of Luke as well and there are other songs as well in scripture. But at any event, all these find their culmination in the throne room, the throne room worship song that we read in Revelation 15.

We read there of the song of Moses and of the Lamb. And the song of Moses relates back to Exodus 15, the idea of deliverance, the idea of covenant witness and everything that God accomplished in the establishment of the covenant between him and his people, pointing forward to the work of the Lamb.

David Chilton in his book on Revelation comments that in Deuteronomy 32 specifically, we have this in conjunction with Joshua. And of course, Joshua is a type of Jesus. His name indicates that. And so, you have Moses and the Lamb, or Jesus pictured there in Deuteronomy 31 and 32. But what they saw in shadows has now been brought to full completion in the work of our Savior.

And so, Revelation 15 is the ultimate hymn of praise as it were to God for what he has accomplished.

And in your outline there. What I’ve done is I’ve categorized the hymn of praise according to three specific things we’re praising God for. And then fourthly, the extent of the praise as it goes forth to God.

First, in the hymn of praise we praise God for God’s works. The hymn actually says, and I’ll read it again from Revelation 15, verses 3 and following: “Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, oh Lord? and glorify thy name, for thou only art holy, for all nations shall come and worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest.”

And those first two phrases are very balanced. “Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are thy ways, King of saints.” Okay. And that gives us the first two characteristics of the praise that’s to be found around the throne room of God and is commanded of us as well.

First characteristic: we praise God for his great and marvelous works. What God does in history, what he does in terms of delivering his people. And I’ve listed a whole bunch of scriptures there and a whole bunch of pictures of deliverance from primarily the Old Testament there. First, we praise God for God’s works as they are works of deliverance to us.

And we’ve talked a little bit about Exodus 15. I won’t go through all these different verses, but throughout these verses, you see the singing of praise to God because he has delivered his people from enemies. He has taken his people out of the pit as it were. He has set them on a high place. He has delivered them. And so they sing forth praise to God.

And every one of those citations listed there are instances where people or God has redeemed his servant and as a result of his redemptive delivering work, they end up praising him. And so we praise God for his deliverance.

Secondly, we praise God for water. Another picture of deliverance. This is deliverance from thirst. In Numbers 21:17, “Then Israel sang this song, ‘Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it.’” And so there was singing and rejoicing for the wells that God had provided. And that’s a picture, of course, of the water that is Jesus Christ, who is the water that comes out of the rock.

There is praise for the new covenant itself. Isaiah 25:9 and 26:1 says, “And it shall be said in that day, ‘Behold, this is our God, for which we have waited, that he may save us.’” And it says that in that day, speaking of the new covenant times, shall he sing a song. This song shall be sung in the land of Judah. “We have a strong city. Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.” These are all singing praises to God for his mighty works.

In 1 Chronicles 13:8, “David and all Israel played before God with all their might and was singing with harps as they bring the ark into the presence of the people.” So the ark is brought forward and of course the ark is a picture of God with his people again—Jesus Christ with his people come to be with them.

Sacrifices—we mentioned from 2 Chronicles 23:18 earlier that as the sacrifices are performed, the whole burnt offering, songs of praise are sung. And so we praise God for the fact that Jesus Christ becomes that burnt offering for us. That’s the great work of deliverance that he’s accomplished. And this is a great and marvelous work of Lord God Almighty to deliver us. And that’s the basis, one of the three bases given in this hymn of praise from Revelation 15 for our praise for him.

The coronation of the king in 2 Chronicles 23:13: “The king stands at the pillar.” Remember we’ve talked before about how the pillar there were two pillars in front of the temple, Jachin and Boaz. In him is strength and he will establish. And one of those pillars is where the king apparently stood when he was inaugurated, when he was anointed rather and when his coronation occurred.

And in this particular case, we have the boy king and then Athaliah, the wicked successor to the throne who wanted the kingdom for herself. She hears the people singing and rejoicing before God as the king is standing at the pillar and trumpets are sounding, the singers are singing with instruments of music such as are taught to sing praise—sing forth the praises, the king anointed. Athaliah hears that and then she rends her clothes and says “Treason and treason” because she knows at the singing what is going on.

And so this is a great work of deliverance for his people when he brings the true king to the throne. And of course that’s a picture of Jesus Christ as well. And Jesus Christ becoming King of Kings and Lord of Lords having suffered on the cross, been resurrected and raised up to the right hand of the Father and being sat in the throne room there at the right hand of the Father as a sign of that coronation. And that’s a great and mighty work of God that we are to praise him for—the coronation of the true King.

The coming of the Lord itself—God’s presence with the people in the verses that I’ve listed for you there. First Kings 1:40: “All the people came up after him and the people piped with pipes and rejoiced with great joy so that the earth rent with the sound of them.” This is talking specifically about Solomon coming to be with the people. And again, it’s the coronation of a king. But here’s specifically the coming of Solomon as a type of Christ. And we have praises sung to them.

Zechariah 2:10: “Sing and rejoice, oh daughter of Zion, for lo I come and I will dwell in the midst of thee, sayeth the Lord.” God’s dwelling in the midst is a great work of his. Great and marvelous is his works. And as a result, we praise him for it.

Job 29:13 says, “The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.” Job did a great work for the widow and her heart sang with joy. And of course, that again is a picture of us. Jesus came to the widows. Remember he says that there are many widows. Elisha came to one widow and I’m coming to you. He comes to us and he redeems us and he causes our heart then to sing with joy because of this work of hesed or covenant of loving kindness that he shows to us.

Great and marvelous are his works. The resurrection of course is a cause for praise to him. Isaiah 26:19: “Thy dead men shall live together with thy dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing ye that dwell in the dust for thy dew is as the dew of herbs and the earth shall cast out the dead.”

So the resurrection is pictured here as a great and mighty work of God. Of course the resurrection of our Savior and our resurrection in him. And these are great and marvelous works that we come forward into his throne room and we praise him for as soon as we have entrance.