Dennis Tuuri

Give unto the Lord, oh ye mighty. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thundereth. The Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. That voice has called us into corporate worship.

Now, as we come before our creator, redeemer, and our sovereign, let us make confession of our sins acknowledging our own unworthiness apart from the Savior to come into God’s presence and give him worship.

Let’s pray. 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 O 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.

Scripture is found in the book of Galatians, chapter 1, verses 3 through 5. Galatians 1, verses 3-5. Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our father to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

I think I need a bigger stand up here to set out all my stuff I’m going to talk about this morning. I do that at home. I’ve got three desks essentially surrounding me and things just go over the entire thing.

Well, I’m going to dive right into this so we don’t hopefully run too long. This is the 10th and final part of the first half, doing the first half of our order of worship here at Reformation Covenant Church. We’ve gone through the whole order of worship. At this time, I recommend again that you take the orders of service home on occasion. I’ve mentioned before you can do that and then build up a good selection of songs to sing in your family devotions.

But also it would be good as we’re going through this series on worship to remember that though we let the little children leave so that their parents can attend to the adult message wholeheartedly and with all their attention focused, it’s our responsibility to teach those children things of the faith. And it’s our responsibility to teach our children the order of worship. And one easy way to do that is to take the order of worship home with you and to go through the component elements, maybe using the outlines we’ve provided.

I might be praying for me. I’m trying to decide whether two weeks from today to have a concluding summation of the total first half of worship going through all the 10 parts we’ve talked about or whether to go on to the second half of our formal worship. So, if you might be praying about that for me and also advising what you think beneficial or not to have a tape or to have a lesson just summarizing the first half of worship. I know we’ve covered an awful lot over these last 10 weeks.

In any event, after this section is concluded either this morning or two weeks from now, next week, Richard Mayer will be giving a sermon on wisdom from above. And then following that, we’ll move into the second half of worship.

But we’ll spend one week first talking about the agape or the love feast downstairs, the meal we have together, patterned after the meal in the New Testament that leads us into the communion portion of our service.

We’ve kind of gone through the first half of our service pretty linearly. In other words, we’ve gone through what we do first, second, third, fourth through it. Communion, most of what we have incorporated into our communion service have already been covered much of it in this discussion of the first half of the service. In other words, we have benediction, doxology, hymns of praise, etc. in the second half of our service as well. And so when we get to communion, we’ll handle it a little bit more topically.

We’ll essentially be dealing with four or five or six aspects of communion and that service. At this point, I’m thinking about doing separate weeks on communion as covenantal rataking, the implications of communion for community. Communion is a means of grace, which is probably something we all should study through in the scriptures and understand why we call communion a sacrament instead of an ordinance. Talk about communion and why our children are invited and actually required to attend communion services. Then another week talk about communion as the marriage feast of the Lamb or a prototype of the coming marriage feast of the Lamb.

So these are some of the topics we’ll be discussing as we get to the second half of worship. And if you have things you’d like to be particularly instructed in or think we need to as a congregation be instructed in this part of our service as we go through the order of service, let me know.

This morning we get to the concluding part of our service and every week we conclude the service with a benediction and then following the benediction a doxology and so we’ll try to get through most of this outline this morning hopefully. We’ll start by talking about what the doxology is. I had originally planned to do a summation of the first nine lessons and then get into this half in the second half of my talk this morning but it got too big and so we’ll just handle the doxology.

We’ll talk about what it is and we’ll go over that pretty briefly really. And then we’ll try to talk about the relationship of doxology to liturgy. Why we have it at the conclusion of our service. What, where does it fit into liturgy? Then we’ll talk about its relationship to all of life. We said that worship is about all of life. It’s a pattern for all of life. And so the doxology should have that same thing in it and it will. We’ll be talking about that.

We’ll talk about its historical formulations so that you have an idea of why we sing for instance the Gloria in Excelsis in our communion service occasionally and why we sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Now where do these songs come from in other words. And we’ll talk about five different historical formulations of doxologies. That’s not the extent of it, but those are the ones we’ll be talking about.

And then finally, we’ll talk about its relationship to society and to the celebration this last week of the French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille and then also to modern day evangelical Christianity. We’ll talk about some early cults or heresies of the first and second, third century, fourth century churches and then getting into the heresy of Arianism which is really the antecedent to modern day Arminianism and we’ll talk about the implications of that relative to the doxology.

So that’s where we’re going.

First, the doxology: what is it? Well, the word doxology means glory. Doxa is the first part of that, referring to a Greek word that meant glory or weight. The second half of that simply means word. And so the doxology is a word ascribing glory.

And if we use the verse we just read from the book of Galatians, those three verses, particularly the fifth verse, we have a doxological formulation. And we’ll be speaking for this next couple of minutes about doxologies primarily as found in the New Testament. There’s many in the Old Testament as well. We’ll confine ourselves to the New Testament for this morning’s purpose for the most part.

And in verse 5 of Galatians 1, we read to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. And so the doxology begins with “to whom.” The doxology ascribes something to a person. There’s a person addressed in the doxology. And in this particular one, the “to whom” has reference back to the will of God and our father. And so it specifically speaks about the Father as the one to whom glory is ascribed in this doxology.

The doxology addresses somebody and on your outline there I’ve listed various New Testament doxologies and how some have categorized them as speaking of Christ in the first portion, Christ with the Father and some other doxologies, the Father through Christ and a couple of doxologies and then finally the Father alone. And so the ascription of glory in the New Testament is exclusively related to members of the Trinity and that’s very important to acknowledge and we’ll be talking about the implications of that at the end of our service.

Secondly, the doxology attributes some attribute to the person addressed. So we read “to whom be glory” and we have the ascription of glory there and I’ve listed other ascriptions or attributes in other New Testament doxologies there for you. Glory is the primary one as you can see there under point number one under B of your outline. It has the most of the New Testament doxological references simply say “glory to God” singly and that encompasses other things though.

And if we look at the other doxological formulations of the New Testament, we’ll see some of the things that are attributed in terms of that glory. And so we read for instance of dominion in 1 Peter 5:11. Really, the song we sung this morning at the beginning of worship, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” we’ll be talking about that later too in terms of Arianism in the last little portion of our service, but it was really a doxological psalm. You probably noticed that and it had many of these elements to it.

Well, in any event, we also read of dominion being ascribed to God in doxological formulation in 1 Peter 5. Honor and glory together in 1 Timothy 1, honor and power in 1 Timothy 6, praise and dominion, glory and dominion, glory, majesty, dominion, and power in Jude 25, blessing, honor, glory, and power in Revelation 5. And then in Revelation 7, we have a sevenfold ascription of attributes to the one who is being blessed, which is God. And that is blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power, and might.

Now, I bring all this up to help you see that really, if we wanted to talk about the doxology of the New Testament, you couldn’t restrict it to a single word. Glory encompasses all these other attributions of praise to God as well. And so you can’t sing “glory to God” and yet assert the almighty power of something else. You can’t sing “glory to God” and assert dominion to something or somebody else ultimately. All those things are wrapped up in the New Testament doxological formulations under the term glory. But all these other attributes are encompassed in that.

And so power, might, glory, honor, dominion, all these things are wrapped up in the doxological formulation. And that’s what we assert when we sing the doxology at the end of the service. Now we sing “Praise God” normally in the first half of our service. We do sing the Gloria in Excelsis—glory to the Father—in the second half of our service frequently but in any event praise is a similar word to saying “blessed be God” and you’ll find that in some of the doxological formulations as well. “Praise God.” And when we say that we’re praising him because he is ultimate in power, might, honor, glory, dominion, all these other aspects are all wrapped together and very important to recognize that.

So the doxology attributes to a person and Christian doxologies attribute to the triune God of Scripture certain attributes that are self-evident to it. It’s not as if we’re praying that these things be accomplished for the Godhead. It is an acknowledgement on our part that these things properly belong in the ultimate sense to be ascribed to the Godhead, to the triune God of Scripture and revealed to us in the Scripture.

And then there is a duration to all the New Testament doxologies and the word “forever and ever” is the primary one. Although in other doxological formulations we read simply “forever.” “Forever and ever” in a couple of them, “throughout all ages,” “world without end” in one of them, “everlasting” in one, and “both now and forever” in another one. But they all mean pretty much the same thing, don’t they? Eternally. Eternally.

So when we ascribe glory to God in the doxology, we’re saying that not just in a momentary sense or for a period of time or not until a period of time. We’re saying from beginning to end and there is no end to God. All these things are to be ascribed to him by his creation. And so the duration of the doxology is forever and ever. “To whom be glory forever and ever.”

And then the doxology concludes with the statement of assertion of reality of the fact, the Amen, the covenant word of affirmation that this is true. And God has put his Amen, his witness to it. And so all the doxologies except for Revelation 5:13 conclude with the Amen. Now in the book of Revelation though, and in chapter 5, we won’t look at it now, but in verse 14, the doxology is chanted as it were by all the created order. And in verse 14, the beasts that surround the throne of God answer with Amen. So even there an Amen is put on the doxology, an affirmation that this is reality.

This is truth. Nothing outside of this is true. Everything outside of this formulation is a lie. All power, glory, dominion, and honor belong to God now and forever. Amen. The concluding statement of assertion of the reality of the matter. God’s glory then is bound up in the doxological formulas with other attributes and they are being attributed to all members of the Trinity and certainly the Son Jesus Christ of course being emphasized throughout the many doxological formulations of the New Testament.

That’s what a doxology is. It has these parts to it: it has the person addressed, the attributes talked about, the duration, and then the solemn covenantal Amen at the end of it. The doxology then means to ascribe glory or praise to the triune God of Scripture. Implied in that is an adoration of those that ascribe glory and praise to the creator. We adore him because of these things.

Now, essentially, glory itself, as I said, the root of doxology is glory to God, a word of glory to God. Glory is a manifestation of the divine nature of God. He reveals himself to us. We acknowledge that he’s brought us back to life. He’s taken the scales off of our eyes and he’s given us eyes to see that he is almighty and he is all powerful and he has dominion and he’s totally perfect and righteous. And so, we attribute to him what he has manifested of his divine nature to us. We’ve seen it. We acknowledge it. We witness to it and we become subject to it.

Now in the Old Testament, the glory of God was demonstrated in a physical phenomena. The glory cloud for instance that filled the tabernacle or temple. Various physical phenomena and all those things pointed to the fact that the glory is a manifestation of who God is. And he’s come finally to reveal himself in the Son. And that’s why the Son takes such a major point of emphasis or stress in New Testament doxological formulations. God reveals himself through the Son to us.

Glory in the scriptures is also linked to beauty, light, splendor, and very frequently to power. And so, for instance, in the Lord’s Prayer, the concluding statement is “that thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.” And so, theologians over the generations and centuries have talked about the glory and the power as being attributed to God in terms of his kingdom.

I’m going to use some quotes here from a book called “The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church” by R.J. Rushdoony. He quotes a man named Whitam in this book in terms of defining what this glory is and it’s an excellent quote. A.R. Whitam wrote the following: “The glory of God must mean his essential and unchanging Godhead as revealed to man. And the familiar ascription, ‘glory to God,’ would imply not only the right human praise, but the assigning to God of what he truly is. For nothing higher can be given him. Similarly, the true glory of man or creature must in ideal conditions be that final perfection which exists as a real fact in the divine mind.”

So he’s saying that when the Bible speaks of the glory of man, the glory of created things, it means what we are as brought to maturation in God’s mind. What he has designed for us. That’s what we’re being perfected into. And so, the scriptures speak about man going from glory to glory because the manifestation of God’s glory is who he is. When God speaks of the glory of the created order, it’s when we are brought to maturation in terms of God’s plan and development of us for his purposes.

And that’s what Whitam is saying here. The glory of God is what he is essentially. The glory of created things is what they are meant by God to be, though not yet perfectly attained. And so worship ascribes to God what is his rightful attribute and that is glory. And all this is wrapped up in the doxology.

Acts 7:2 says that God is the God of glory. And so when we sing the doxology, we don’t hope to bring something to pass. We’re simply acknowledging who he is.

Okay? So that’s what the doxology is. An ascription of all these attributes, not just some sort of thing glory that we don’t quite get a handle on but all the divine attributes and certainly power, majesty, authority, dominion, reign, etc. to God.

Now, we use the doxology at the end of our liturgical cycle in the first half of the service. I’d like to explain why we do that biblically. We’ve talked about rightly ordering our service of worship according to the scriptures. Now, in terms of the writings of the New Testament epistles, the doxology sometimes is found in the beginning, the middle, the end. It can be in a variety of places wherever appropriate.

But it is interesting to note that in relationship to benediction in the great preponderance of New Testament texts, the benediction precedes the doxology. Some people would ask why don’t we do the doxology earlier in the service and have the benediction as the concluding words of the service. And yet you find in the New Testament epistles that frequently the benediction precedes the doxology.

For instance, Romans 16:24, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Now to him that is of power to establish you according to the gospel the preaching of Jesus Christ…” and he goes on to say in verse 27, “to him to God only wise be glory through Jesus Christ forever and ever. Amen.” So he says first the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. And then he says a couple of verses later to God the only wise be glory through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Again in Galatians 1, the passage we looked at here we read we started reading at verse three and that’s the benediction. Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins. And then in verse 5, to whom be glory forever and ever, there’s a doxology. Remember we said that Paul’s typical language there, “grace and peace” goes back to the Aaronic benediction that we spoke about last week.

When God says that the threefold blessing of the benediction is that God would show us grace in the second one and then peace. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

So the threefold order there is that God keeps us, God is gracious to us, and God gives us peace. And so when Paul says “grace and peace to you in Jesus Christ,” he’s simply reasserting the last two portions of that triple Aaronic blessing or benediction. And so that benediction is then followed by the words of doxology in the passage from Galatians that we read.

Ephesians 1, same thing. In verse 2, we read, “Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” Aaronic benediction from God our father from the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” the doxology. And I’ve listed several scriptures there in your outline where this is the case. And I’ve also listed a couple from the Old Testament as well.

In Psalm 41, for instance, we read in verse 12 “as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity and setest me before thy face forever.” Again, that’s an implicit reference back to the Aaronic benediction that God would put us in before his face. He caused his face to shine upon us. And then in verse 13 of Psalm 41, we read, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and amen.”

And so, liturgically in the scriptures, normally the doxology follows the benediction. God puts his blessing upon us. He assures us. He has given us—Jesus has prayed the prayer that we might have life in the Father and have it abundantly. And because of the prayer of the high priest Jesus Christ and his atoning work on the cross, the benediction is a reality. It’s not a prayer. It is a statement of God’s blessing upon his people.

You’re not supposed to be praying that it happened. It’s an assertion that this blessing comes from the representative that God has appointed here to represent him and his blessing to you. As a result of that, then we—our proper response is to sing forth God’s praises and to ascribe glory to him in the doxology.

Remember we said that the order of worship is essentially a dialogue, an alternation back and forth. God calls us, we respond. We respond by confessing our sin. He absolves us. We respond by service. And the rest of the service then talks about God’s word to us. We respond by offering ourselves in obedience to the word. And at the conclusion of the service, the dialogue is continued. Still God says to us, “My blessing is upon you.” And we respond by singing forth his praises and saying that his praises, his glory, dominion, and power are everlasting.

Now, I’ve listed one other reference there, Philippians 4:20-23, where the doxology actually precedes the benediction. And so, we’re not saying this is the only way to worship. But it seems like normatively in the New Testament, the benediction precedes the doxology. And the final word of worship then is the singing forth of the praises of the creatures that have been brought forth to worship God. And so, that’s why we do it that way at Reformation Covenant Church.

One other example I should point out—because this is actually in the context of the worship service in 1 Kings 8, verses 14 and 15. It says: “The king turned his face about and blessed all the congregation of Israel and all the congregation of Israel stood and he said, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel which spake with his mouth unto David my father.’”

And so there we have the king blessing the people, the people standing and saying along with their representative “blessed be the Lord God.” The doxology there in a formal worship service follows the benediction. Okay.

So that’s the relationship of the doxology to liturgy. As we said, the doxology should—like all parts of liturgy—point to our life. These things are not abstracted. Worship is a picture of life. And so the doxology has a relationship to the believer’s life as well.

Now we know that 1 Corinthians 10:31 says that whatever we do, whether eating, drinking, whatever we do, we’re to do all to the glory of God. The doxology is the way we live, giving glory to God in whatever we do. 1 Peter 4:11 says that “God may be—says that we are to live our lives so that God may be glorified in all things.”

And so, the way we live our lives is really a picture of the doxology. The doxology, we said last week, the benediction is a link to life and to warfare and victory on God’s part. He blesses us as we go into out from the collective place of worship into doing battle and pressing the great act of worship which is bringing dominion upon the earth bringing men to salvation in Jesus Christ.

And the other side of that is the doxology is also a link into life telling us the way we do all this is by doing all things for the glory of God. And so both concluding elements of our liturgy point us into a life lived in relationship to those two concluding elements. We are to glorify God in all that we do.

Thomas Watson in his excellent “Body of Divinity” talked about some of the implications of this and forgive me if I go through these rather rapidly but I think you’ll be happy by the end of the day that I did. We’ve got a lot of things to say here.

Thomas Watson talked about the implication of the doxology in terms of men glorifying God and spoke of some of the practical ways in which this has worked out in our lives. What does it mean to glorify God in our life? Does it mean we just sing praises all day? What does it mean?

Watson said a variety of things. He said that first of all he said that when we prefer God’s glory above all other things we glorify God. So there’s supposed to be a proper sense of purpose for our life. When we recognize that our lives are to be lived totally to the end product that we glorify God and when we then place in terms of relative priorities all things in order in terms of glorifying God as being the highest priority of our lives then we’re glorifying God.

So it means we have to self-consciously think through the things we do and make sure that we understand how they glorify God. So when we ascribe that as the end purpose of our life—glorifying God—we do indeed glorify him.

Secondly, he said we aim at God’s glory when we are content with God’s will. God tells us that all things come to pass from his sovereign hand. We’ve just sung at the end of our service as we go out into life—we’ve sung that “to God be all glory, power, honor, and dominion.” It’s not hoping that it will happen. It’s a realization that it’s true. And if that’s true, that God has dominion over all things, that means whatever happens to us this week comes forth from his hand.

And to glorify God means not complaining about that, but rather seeing God in all these things. We aim at God’s glory, Watson said, when we are content to be outshined by others in gifts and esteem so that his glory may be increased. And of course, that sounds real easy, you know, don’t get upset that other people may have better gifts than you in a particular area and so glorify God more. But we all really have problems with that, don’t we?

I mean, we all are born thinking we’re God and we want to be God and we want to be the best. And so it’s always tough to subjugate ourselves to God’s order. On the way into church this morning, my youngest son was saying that Mount Hood was the biggest mountain in the earth. And we were trying to tell him no, Mount Everest is. And he didn’t want to hear that. Why didn’t he want to hear that? Because we like to think that we’re most important.

If we live by that mountain, it’s got to be the biggest one in the whole earth. Right? You can see it real easy in your kids. But if we admit it to ourselves, it’s also true of ourselves and it’s easy to get envious or covetous about what other people have in terms of gifts or abilities but remember that God has gifted those people not for their glory in the end of all but rather for his glory and when we submit to that then we glorify God in our lives.

We glorify God, Watson said, by confession of sin and you know he quotes then from Joshua 7:49 “my son give I pray thee glory to God and make confession unto him” and this is a common expression in the scriptures. If somebody wasn’t willing to, you know, tell the truth of what they’d done and lie, the exhortation would be “give glory to God.” Confess your sins.

When we confess our sins, it is giving glory to God and acknowledging his rightness and his order and his law word and our need to subject ourselves to it and him being the only standard. We can’t impose our standard of right and wrong upon him. We submit ourselves to his standard. And so, confession of sin is a means of glorifying God. And if you’re not comfortable with it, it probably means you haven’t done it nearly as much as you should have because we sin much and we should be confessing much and understanding that brings glory to God.

Watson also said that we glorify God by fruitfulness. John 15:8 “hereby is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit,” Jesus said. So Jesus tells us how to glorify God. One way to glorify God is by bringing much fruit. That talks about confession but more than that of course it talks about the fruit of the spirit that God puts in us and to self-consciously mold ourselves into those character qualities and to do battle as it were against the sin in our heart and bear forth much fruit in our lives by being submissive to his will and his word.

Additionally, it means that we bear much fruit in terms of evangelization and then conforming ourselves to the image of God in all of our lives by rearing up our children correctly. That’s the fruit of our bodies, right? To recognize that there’s fruit and to be raised for him. That brings glory to God. Jesus tells us that very clearly to glorify God bring forth much fruit.

Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” We glorify our Father in heaven by good works by conforming ourselves again to his ethical commands upon us.

We also give glory to God by being content in that state in which providence has placed us. We talked about this a little bit already. Contentment to the will of our Father in heaven. And so glorifying God, we glorify God by praising him, of course, and that’s what we’re talking about this morning.

Reading again from Watson’s work: “Doxology or praise is a God-exalting work. Psalm 50:23 says, ‘Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me.’” And so we glorify God and we ascribe praise to God. The Hebrew word for “to create” is bar. And the Hebrew word for praise is barak. Very little different, he says, because the end of creation is to praise God. Bar becomes barak. The creation of God, its end is to praise God. David was called the sweet singer of Israel and his praising God was called glorifying God.

In the Psalter, Watson points out in the book of Revelation, we read of the saints having harps in their hands and harps, he says, are emblems of praise to God. Many have tears in their eyes and complaints in their mouth, but few who have harps in their hand blessing and glorifying God. So very practically speaking again, we should think of ourselves—we get up in the morning as we walk through our lives—as having a harp in our hand and of conforming all of what we do to praising and glorifying God. And of course, we’re going to sin in that. And that means we make confession for sin, but that brings glory to God as well.

And then finally, he says we glorify God and we have an eye to God in our natural and in our civil actions. And he doesn’t make this specific application but the point of reason I read that is that glorifying God doesn’t just happen within the context of our homes. It happens in all that we do. If we ascribe all power, honor and glory to God and dominion to God, that means that we’re glorify God in the voting booth.

And of course, this is one of the big reasons why Christian Reconstruction has fallen upon some diet tribes from people because we believe that we should glorify God in all that we do including civil polity in terms of the polity of the civil state that also was given as a creation of God, an order of God to be used for the purposes of glorifying him. And so all of these things are ways in which we can practically glorify God in our life.

And all of these things in Watson’s book are under his commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Question one tells us what the chief end of man is: “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” And in a way that’s kind of the doxology, the benediction there, isn’t it? Says that if we glorify God and enjoy him forever, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing here. The conclusion of our first half of our formal worship service—we acknowledge we enjoy God because he gives us grace. He gives us pardon. He gives us peace. He keeps us and the great productivity he gives to us in terms of about in terms of the benediction. We enjoy God and we sing praises to him. We glorify him forever.

So, as we said, the benediction and doxology are links into all of life because that isn’t the chief end just of worship. That’s the chief end of all of our lives as well. We’re to live then a life marked by the words of the doxology. It is to send us into life with that as being our primary purpose in life to sing praises and glory to God.

Okay. So that’s the doxology in terms of its implications for life.

The doxology and its historic formulations. We’re going to go through five of these real quickly. There are described in the church writings the greater doxology and the lesser doxology. The greater doxology is the Gloria in Excelsis. “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” Found of course in the message of the angels to the shepherds in Luke 2, Luke chapter 2 rather verse 14 and that is the beginning then of the Gloria in Excelsis.

Now the church added to this—if I can find my book I’ll quote the longer form of the Gloria in Excelsis used in the churches and I just want you to be familiar with this because it is used in many churches in terms of doxological formulations. The Gloria in Excelsis that have been sung by churches for 1,900 to 2,000 years now reads as follows:

Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.

We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory. O Lord God, heavenly king, God the Father almighty. O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sitest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy on us.

For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord. Thou only, O Christ with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

That’s the longer doxological formulation known as the greater doxology built upon Luke 2:14, the message of the angels and the doxology given there and then expanded by the church around the 3rd or 4th century and so fleshed out into the greater doxology. And as I said, this is used in many churches and it has good biblical roots in terms of biblical doxologies.

Now, we’re not really familiar with that one. We’re more familiar with what’s known as the lesser doxology, which is “Glory, which means ‘Glory be to the Father.’” And as I said in our communion service and several of the forms we used down there, we sing “Glory be to the Father.” And so we’re more familiar with that one.

Now, the early church in the first couple of centuries ended each prayer and the sermon with the doxology. And later they would end each song with the doxology. The doxology they ended with was the simple statement “to thee” or “to whom be glory forever.” Essentially the statement from Galatians 1:5 that we read: “to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” They would tack that short doxological formulation on the back of every prayer and every sermon and then later every song as well.

Now from the second century into the beginning of the fourth they began to stretch it out a little bit longer, make it more explicit and we had in that particular period of time the beginning of the phrase “to thee be glory in the holy ghost through Jesus Christ.” This became then “glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost” or in different translations “glory to the Father in the Son and the Holy Spirit” or “glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost.”

You may wonder why I’m telling you about three different little variations in translation of this phrase but it’ll be important for our considerations later. So they began with the short doxology out of Galatians or very similar to Galatians 1:5. Then they stretched it out to make it explicitly trinitarian in its statement. And then finally they added the concluding phrase “as it was in the beginning is now and never shall be, world without end. Amen.” Probably the Roman church is the ones who added this. It’s not found in the eastern rites but rather in the western church in history and by a particular synod in 529. It was essentially universal in many parts of the western church.

And so fairly early, sixth century probably, this last portion of what we now know as the Gloria in Excelsis was added on. And there’s a reason for that and we’ll get to that. So we now have the full Gloria Patri developed by at least the year 530 and universal by that time. And so for 1,400 years, churches have been singing the same doxological formulation that we sing on occasion during our communion service—the “Gloria be to the Father.”

And as I said, they would actually end every psalm as well with this doxological formulation even as it got stretched out. It is interesting that the doxology—the Gloria Patri, the lesser doxology—was sometimes omitted during periods of Lent or mourning. And if you think about it, you can see why that would be. The doxologies are great vibrant statements of glory and power to God and an exultation in that and of praising God for that. So during times of mourning, they would omit that from their worship services.

Okay. But one other thing that’s important to notice here is that this last phrase “as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be”—when we sing that it does not refer to the state of the world. It refers back to the Trinity, the triune God that has been sung to. So it’s “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. So you sing the Trinity then you say “as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.” That refers back to the Trinity as the Trinity was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. And that has significance too for what we’re going to be saying here in a couple of minutes why those changes were made. But that’s so you’ll sing it a little more in a little more informed sense when we sing it the next time during communion service.

Okay. So that’s the lesser and greater doxologies.

The third doxology I want you to just be briefly familiar with is the Te Deum. This again has been a historic doxology of the church. I will quote that in full. The Te Deum reads in English translation as follows:

We praise thee, O God. We acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship thee the Father everlasting. To thee all angels cry aloud. The heavens and all the powers therein. To thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabbath. Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.

The glorious company of the apostles praise thee. The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee. The noble army of martyrs praise thee. The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee. The Father of an infinite majesty. Thine adorable true and only Son and the Holy Ghost the Comforter.

Thou art the King of glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookst upon thee to deliver man, thou didst humble thyself to be born of a virgin. When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Thou sitest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father. We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge. We therefore pray thee, help thy servants whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. Make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting.

O Lord, save thy people and bless thine heritage. Govern them and lift them up forever. Day by day we magnify thee and we worship thy name ever, world without end. Vouch safe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin. O Lord, Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. O Lord, let thy mercy be upon us as our trust in thee is in thee. O Lord, in thee have I trusted. Let me never be confounded.

Now remember as you hear these doxological formulations and creedal statements—that’s what they really are. The context, the context was a Roman Empire that was essentially persecuting Christians at some severe degree when many of these doxological formulations were first sung and asserted by the church. And so to pray, “don’t let me be confounded” was a profession was a confident assertion that God would deliver them from the persecutions that came upon them.

Rushdoony speaks of this doxology says and he says that it really echoed the faith of Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” People who believe that the opposition, however entrenched and numerically and politically strong, is merely a temporary cloud in God’s universe will not be readily discouraged or deflected in their steady movement toward power and dominion.

See, the assertion that God is and that to him belongs our power, rule, dominion, and authority now and forever means that is an optimism to the faith that carries people through times of persecution and continues them marching forward in that act of worship, marching toward the till the whole world shouts forth the praises of God through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Again, and Rushdoony says the Te Deum however is a song of faith of a confident and triumphant faith in the triune God who governs all history. The church which produced and supported the fathers was a battle tested church which sang of certain victory in and through Christ the King. Today in the Te Deum.

That is one of the great historical formulations of the doxologies of the historic church and it has this optimism to it.

Now we sing the conclusion of our liturgy in the first half. We normally sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” This is the last stanza of three separate hymns written by an Anglican bishop Thomas Ken whose dates are 1637-1711. He wrote three hymns, a morning, evening, and midnight hymn. And in many, you’ll find the morning and evening hymn because worship is still held at those hours. Worship is no longer performed by too many churches at midnight. But in each one of these three hymns—hours, as it were, of worship in the church—he put this last phrase: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

And while it is not as explicit a doctrinal formulation as these other ones we have talked about, it nevertheless asserts the triune God as the source of all praise and blessing. And so it is an appropriate benediction or a doxology rather. And it is probably almost certainly the most frequently sung verse or set of verses in all of Christendom for the last 4 or 500 years. It is sung regularly in all kinds of churches all across the world as a doxological formulation and so it’s appropriate to use.

And again, as we said, there’s a trinitarian emphasis to it.

And then finally, I’ve mentioned the Psalter there. And I’ve mentioned that because when we have doxology at the second half of our service, while we sometimes sing the Gloria in Excelsis in the middle of the service, we usually end with—we almost always end with Psalm 117. And you might wonder, is that really a biblical doxological formulation. Well, indeed it is.

Psalm 117 comes from the Hallel Psalms, Psalms 113-118. And they really are an extended doxology of singing praise and blessing and glory and honor to God. And so it’s perfectly proper to sing Psalm 117. And these were the songs, the Hallel songs that were sung during the Paschal meal and after the meal as well. And almost certainly were sung by our Savior at the conclusion of the Lord’s Supper.