Dennis Tuuri

Scripture text is found in 1 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14-16. 1 Timothy 3:14-16. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou ought to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness.

God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wondrous day of your coming to be with us, Lord God, and receiving our praise and worship through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. We thank you, Father, for your word. We thank you for instructing us here of primary importance of things that are to happen in the context of your church.

We pray now you would help us to attend, Lord God, to your scriptures as they inform our praises of you. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

What we’ve just read—at least in verse 16, the last portion of verse 16—is widely regarded by commentaries and commentators as a Christian hymn. The last portion of verse 16 consists of six lines that are matched, and if we were to read them in the Greek we would see a meter and a rhythm and a rhyme to them that marks them off clearly as a little section of poetry.

God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory. A poem or a hymn of six lines, and they’re each matched. You notice that Jesus as God is manifest in the flesh and justified in the spirit. He’s seen by angels, proclaimed among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.

So we have this match of the heavenly perspective and the earthly perspective on the work, the incarnation and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These verses obviously focus on a declaration of him. And as I said, the common belief is that this was a sung portion of the liturgy of the early church. There are other evidences of creeds—we might call them—that declare certain facts. Not just declare certain facts, but declare our belief, our confidence, our trust in those facts that are given to us in the New Testament.

This is one: Philippians 2, the famous text about Jesus being in the very form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. But you know the rest of the verses. This is also looked at as a creedal formulation probably sung in the context of the early church, and there are other places in scripture as well.

Creeds are important to the church. They’re a summation—not just of factuality, but rather a series of facts that we place our trust and our confidence in these creedal formulations. We have biblical justification in the text we’ve just read for such creeds and for these creeds actually being placed in the context of the hymnity and the song of the church.

Paul is writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3, saying that if I don’t make it there to be with you as you establish these churches, I want you to know what is of most importance in establishing the household of God, the institutional church. And we can look at the whole epistle as these primary points of instruction about how the church is to govern itself. What are they to do?

So for instance, 1 Timothy is where we see that of first importance Paul says he wants prayers to be made for all men, particularly for those who are rulers. And so prayer is an important part of the liturgy of the church and in a sense, as we said last week, could actually be seen as the summation of what the worship of the church is.

But here, after Paul tells him that he’s going to give him these important instructions about how to conduct himself as a minister in the church of God, he then immediately talks about a creedal formulation—one that in all likelihood was set to music and was sung in the context of the church. We know that the foundation element of the church is our confession of the person and work of Jesus Christ, summarized in these six lines and summarized in some of the great documents of the Christian church written by councils and creeds and men as well.

Creeds and confessions are important in the life of the church.

Now today, really my subject is the piece of music—and not the music so much—the words—the theme that we’re trying to learn as a church and have for four, five months. And my intent today is to try to give you a little bit of understanding of why the elders of Reformation Covenant Church have thought that this is an important part of the hymnity of the church that we should learn at this church and attend to.

It’s not easy. It’s not an easy song to learn. Why are we spending so much time on it? And I want to give you today a presentation of why we’re doing that. And I want you to see that this idea—that the New Testament lays out for us the importance of creedal formulations, and then specifically in the context of a writing of poetry that could be set to music—this is of really not secondary importance to the church. This is one of the primary significant things the church is to do.

As Paul instructs Timothy to develop creedal formulations of Jesus Christ—what we put our trust in—to sing these in the context of the church at times and through the singing of these confessions and creeds, to buoy ourselves up, to support ourselves in the person and work of Jesus Christ in the application of our faith to all of life.

Now we’re going to talk about the importance of the theme, which begins with the praise of God. And I think it’s important just to note very briefly in passing that worship—praising God in the context of hymnity or songs of different types—this really is of great importance in the Christian life. You know, we have an obligation to come into the courts of God to sing forth his praises. The father seeks worshippers. We are those worshippers.

From one perspective, our very purpose for bringing us into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ is for the triune God to receive our praises. It is our obligation to praise God, and it is specifically our obligation to praise God in the context of Lord’s day worship service. It’s not just an obligation. It’s a need. It’s a need to set our minds right at the beginning of every week in terms of the eternal significance of the sovereign God of the universe.

And as we will see in a couple of minutes, the words of the theme—ending in “let me never be confounded”—ends really on a note of exuberant victory over the world. The theme was written in the context of difficulties, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. And in our context of difficulties—whether it’s the breakdown of morality and the rebellion against God that homosexuality is and implies, or it’s the Muslim hordes gathering in opposition, virulent opposition, some of them, to the Christian faith, or if it’s our own difficulties in our home, trying to raise up our children, pay our bills, have good relationships in our communities and neighborhoods.

All of these things can appear troubling to us and very significant, and they are significant. But when we come into the eternal worship of God in the Lord’s day, all of that is set in a perspective of the sovereign God of the universe and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ assuring us of the victory of God—that all these things that happen are a passing shadow.

There’s this movie that came out a year or so ago, The Pianist, and it’s an accurate depiction of the horror of Nazi Germany, not so much an accurate depiction of the horror of Stalinism taking over Poland after Germany. The Germans were worst. But an accurate depiction of the destruction of Warsaw, particularly by the Germans. And one of the things that’s wonderful about the movie is it begins with a man who plays concert piano in Poland. He survives the horrible manifestation of Nazi Germany and the pagan cult that it really represented. And by the end of the movie, he’s playing concert piano again.

And in doing it that way, the film depicts that the horrific nature of things that rise up in our world such as Nazi Germany are really simply passing shadows in the movement of history. Whether it’s homosexual marriage or difficulties in our home or in our community or difficulties at our work or the Muslim problem—now certainly there are significant events going on. But from one perspective, each one of these things that raises its ugly head is a passing shadow in the bright shining forth, the increasing daylight that we now live in because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Singing praises to God reminds us of that. We have a need to be assured at the depth of our being that we can praise God and be assured of victory based on the work of Christ. And that’s what the theme does. It praises God on the basis of our profession of the work of Jesus Christ and moves toward petition—confident petition—that God will not confound us but rather our enemies.

We need creedal formulations. We need to worship God in the Lord’s day. He requires us of it. Our very nature is such that we require it. And it is a joyful duty that we fulfill. Whether we have had horrific things happen in the context of one’s week or whether we have had exuberant things happen in the context of the days leading up to the Lord’s day, we should be greatly desirous of coming into this place and singing praise to God in the midst of our lowest moments and our highest moments.

In our lowest moments, we need the assurance of the victory of Jesus Christ. We need to remember that we can fulfill every Lord’s day the purpose, the very purpose for which we were created—to be a praise to God in the earth. We need it. Now we’re tempted not to do it. We’re tempted when things are down to pull back from community, but we need worship the most then in difficult times.

You know, if I believe—I mean to put it in context, right—if I got news last night that one of my children were killed in a car wreck, I think I should be here the next day to remind myself that I sing with them now the song of the angels, the praise of God. And on the other hand, at our most joyous moments—and we’ve had several in this church this last weekend—the marriage of John S. and Mariah V., a joyous moment that some of us attended, and I did not, was not able to go, but a joyous moment for all those people involved. And then the week before, the wondrous moment of the A. wedding here, Jesse and Janelle. And in our highest moments, you know, it seems like we want to rush back into the worship of God on the Lord’s day and say, “Praise your name, holy God, for the wondrous blessings you’ve given us.”

But I know that as the P. and the A. and the S. gathered together today it is with that joy in their heart and praise to God for the wonderful thing he’s done in the lives of their children.

So we have this worship that is absolutely important in the context of the Christian life, and creeds form an important part of the worship of the church. And we can think of these creeds then as the scaffolding upon which we build our lives. Okay, we sing the Nicene Creed. We recite the Apostles’ Creed. We sing essentially a creedal formulation from the theme. And it’s the scaffolding for understanding and building the rest of our lives as Christians.

This worship of God in Lord’s Day service—not only that, but it reminds us of the foundational elements of what the Christian faith is all about.

Controversies are always in the context of the church. We’re always trying to figure out how to make new application of the word of God. That’s a proper instinct. The last few years it’s been Federal Vision. You know, well, one of the things we always want to remember in the context of discussions of doctrinal movement and maturation—we want to remember we’re building on the scaffolding of the creeds and confessions of the church. That simple six-line hymn from 1 Timothy 3:16, filled with important doctrinal content, factual content about the incarnation, the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ—that is the foundational level of our praise to God. And that’s the foundational level upon which we must build doctrines fleshing out the implications of Christ’s work, but they must build on that scaffolding of the creeds and confessions of the early church.

And so these creeds are important for us to remind us of the basics of the faith even as we try to make rather complicated, in some cases, applications of that faith in doctrinal formulations or in living out our life. We have a tremendous, a tremendously beneficial responsibility to worship God every Lord’s day based on the creedal scaffolding that the Lord God has given to us.

And so when we sing a creedal formulation such as the theme—built very explicitly on the scriptures—this should be a delight to us to enter into.

Now song is important for establishing these things. On your introduction to your outline, I’ve got a point here: the power of sung creeds. Lex orandi, lex credendi. What that means is it’s an old phrase from the fathers: “As we pray, so we believe. As we speak, so we believe. As we worship, so we believe.” We tend to think of it the other way around. We come to an intellectual submission to certain truths and then we worship that way. And there’s a perspective in which, of course, there’s some truth to that.

But the very important thing the fathers teach us is that in adopting, in growing up in the context of making affirmation with our lips to certain truth—how we worship, how we pray, how we confess our faith—forms then how we live. We worship on the first day of the week. It sets the pattern for what we do in our lives. And this is certainly true of the hymnity of the church. Song is important.

You know, we had that funny little cartoon bouncing around the church a month or so ago, proud to be a tweeny, and you know, it talked about different subsets of our culture here—electric instrument guys, acoustic instrument guys and gals. And these are not really hard and fast groups, of course. It’s always a caricature of what we have, but there’s some truth to it. And it’s wonderful to be in the context of a church that embraces diversity of musical expression, but more than that, I thought as I looked at that cartoon of the importance and strength of music in bonding people together.

One of the things that is attractive about bands or groups of people that play music together is the attraction it builds. The spirit is pleased to work through music and song to bind people in the context of community. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a good thing. It’s evidence of that. Well, in Lord’s Day worship, the songs of the church, the spirit of God is pleased to use music and song to bind us into a community to accomplish work for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Augustine wrote in his Confessions about the great significance of singing creeds in the church, and I want to just very briefly quote here: “What tears did I shed over the hymn and canticles! When the sweet sound of this music of thy church thrilled my soul as the music flowed into my ears and thy truth trickled into my heart. The tide of devotion swelled high within me and the tears ran down, and there was gladness in these tears.”

You see, really, that’s kind of the way it works. Augustine’s experience in worship really is the way it sort of works. The music flows into our ears. The confessional truths found, for instance, in the theme, the psalms we sing, the psalmic hymns we sing, flow into our ears, and truth trickles into our heart on the basis of what we’re hearing and singing. And as that happens, praise to God and thanksgiving and joy wells up in our soul in response to these things. This is the purpose of music in the context of the church of God.

Our praise of him, our service to him in praise becomes the service of God to us. Remember, the divine service is both ways. It becomes the service of God to us as his faithful ministers have formed the songs they use, sing, and learn to the truths of God’s word. God sees fit to serve us by forming our lives through singing, hearing, and then the trickling in of the truths of these songs that are given to us.

The theme is one of these sorts of songs that, for 1500 years—1,500 years—the church of Jesus Christ, Catholic and Reformed, has sung to the glory of God in its worship. It is like the Gloria in Excelsis. Those two songs are probably the two great hymns that have come down to us through church history, part of that essential scaffolding of creeds and confessions, just as much a part of the church. Well, maybe not just as much. It wasn’t adopted by a confessional group, but you can think of it in terms of the importance of the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed—part of the hymnity of the church that God has seen fit to use to form the church of Jesus Christ and to mature it.

I love to sing songs, and we sing a number of them, the lyrics of which go back 1500 years or more. I love for us to see ourselves in the line of continuity with the church of Jesus Christ—an unbroken progression of his church for over a millennia. We are now singing essentially the same words in a different language as saints gathered to sing as they praised God in their Lord’s day services 1500 years ago.

Now, in order to talk a little bit about the theme, we have to talk a little bit about its development. And on your outline, I’ve given you several men here: Arius, Ambrose, Augustine.

Arius was the great heretic, of course. His teachings’ central error—that he made or sin that he entered into—was to declare that Jesus Christ is not eternal with the Father, that he is not God, that the Father is God. Jesus is a created being, although kind of an intermediary creation, certainly higher than any other created being, but still a created being.

Arianism was popular amongst paganism because the pagans—since Jesus wasn’t God—they could put Jesus on the same level as Zeus and the rest of their gods. So Arianism and paganism really were found in linkage together.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 declared Arius’s teachings heretical, banished him to modern-day Yugoslavia. But Arius didn’t learn. He didn’t hear the voice of the church. No. In his rebellion, he sought to promulgate his doctrine. But how do you promulgate doctrine? Arius knew. Arius knew that the way people believed was to sing. Arius knew that what a person sings or prays, that’s what he believes. So Arius promulgated his false view of Christ through simple songs—songs that were sung by dock workers, songs that were sung by children, songs of easy meter and rhyme that anybody could pick up.

Even if you didn’t believe it, it was catching. It was like listening, you know, to Z 100 or popular music. It was the pop music of the day. The pop music was being written by men who were committed to heresy, and as a result, music became the greatest way Arianism infected the church, and then infected the pagans that were being brought into the context of the church through evangelization as well. So Arius was a huge problem.

Ambrose, whose dates I’ve given you here, was the bishop of Milan. Now, originally the bishop in Milan was a man who was an Arian. At this time in church history, many not just the ordinary people but many of the clerics as well were influenced by heresy. The bishop of Milan was an Arian. He died. They had to replace him. He was the delegate to try to figure out who should be the next bishop. And in the providence of God, Ambrose—or excuse me, Ambrose becomes the next bishop of Milan, even though at the time he was not yet baptized. He was a catechumen—the process was preparation of people for long periods of time before their baptism. But Ambrose was baptized, then became bishop, and was a wonderful bishop in that church.

Now, Ambrose is very important for how we sing music today. You know, if you look at a hymnal, you’ll know there’s a meters index. Each song has a particular meter. And some songs are marked there with the meter as CM—common meter. And common meter goes one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, four times through—four sets of twos, four times through common meter. And you probably don’t know this, but that system of hymnity actually comes from Ambrose. There was a whole school of hymnity—Ambrosian hymnity—that Ambrose is the one who created. Because Ambrose also knew the importance of music for teaching the Christian church what to believe and how to live. And so, instead of chants that were kind of monotone and long, he instead made rhyme sets of music that were easy to learn.

And so Ambrose—this is one of his great contributions to the church—was such music.

Ambrose was hated by the Arians, of course, because he was Orthodox, and they would hold long vigils in which Ambrose would be surrounded by various people, including Augustine’s mother, by the way. They would protect his dwelling place throughout the evening, sometimes during the day, because they were afraid that he would be attacked surreptitiously, undercover, by—there were important officials in the government of Milan who hated Ambrose because they believed in the teachings of Arius, and Ambrose was fighting against them.

Well, in these long vigils, they began to sing songs, and so the singing of songs outside of church worship became popularized in the context of Ambrose and the fight against Arianism as well.

Augustine becomes converted through the ministry of the church at Milan, and Augustine is then baptized by Ambrose. And as D. mentioned, I think in Tampa, I didn’t actually hear him talk about this, but I think he mentioned this—that one legend was that it was written extemporaneously as Ambrose is baptizing Augustine. That as he’s baptizing, he says, “We praise thee, oh God, and we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.” And then Augustine says back, so the legend goes, “We praise you. All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.”

And then Ambrose shouts back, “To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein.” And back and forth they go, for the first maybe half of the theme.

Now, we don’t know if that’s true or not. But there must be some degree of truth to it—that some element, some origins of the theme are found in this back and forth between Ambrose and Augustine at Augustine’s baptism.

The other name I’ve got in your outline here is nice—well, I got Nicaea, but then after that we have Nicetas of Serbia. And these days, most people think that the theme actually was written by Nicetas of Serbia in the early fifth century. Once again, he was combating both Arianism and paganism in his particular ministry, and he needed a song—a popularized song—that could be sung to combat those who wanted to put Jesus in the same pantheon as Zeus and would sing their songs of praise to Zeus as well as Arianism.

And so the roots of the theme are found both in Ambrose’s battling Arianism as well as Nicetas’s battling of Arianism. And Nicetas is probably the more likely choice for where we get our modern version—at least the first two-thirds of it. The last third was developed probably several centuries later.

Now, I also have in your outline that, being written, then, probably its roots by Ambrose and then its full development—the first two-thirds of it—by Nicetas, and this is in the context of making war against Arianism. I also have a thing called the Song Riots at Constantinople on your outline, of 398. This is an example of the power of song, and really, it’s kind of a picture to you of the context—the immediate context—for the development of the theme.

After the Arians were declared heretics, they were barred. They were not able to worship in the context of buildings at Constantinople. They had to worship outside of the city or out of doors. But they began on Saturday and Sunday nights to process into the city, staying outside of buildings as they were required to do, but singing these Arian little diddies. So they came in and they’d sing Arian songs trying to affect the city and move the simple-minded toward Arianism.

To combat this, the Orthodox Church ended up—when they would come in, they established set processionals on Saturday, Sunday nights and feast days where Orthodox songs were sung in opposition to Arian songs. And when they did this, riots broke out. So you had in the streets of Constantinople, fighting, people being killed, literally tremendous riots by two groups performing two different kinds of creedal songs.

That’s interesting, is it not? And it’s a kind of a reminder to us of the importance of sung creeds—both in terms of instructing people, but also for battling heresy or for heretics pushing heresy. That’s the immediate context for the birthing of the theme, its writing and its development.

Other songs of the fathers—like “O Begotten”—that we sing is also a song that was explicitly a fighting hymn against Arianism, declaring the historical reality in which we confess our faith—that Jesus is co-eternal with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

So these creeds, establishing—and notice how they focus on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 Timothy 3:16, the little piece of sung creed is explicitly all about Jesus. It’s not really about the Father. It’s not about the Holy Spirit. It focuses on the work of Jesus. Why? Because the Father is seen through the work of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is given to us to bring us to a knowledge of the things of Jesus.

While all three persons of the Trinity are of equal importance, of course, the fact is the church has always focused on the work of Christ, because it’s there that we see the Father in action, and it’s there that the Holy Spirit will take us, teach us of the nature of God and our relationship to God, and how we then should live our lives.

So these early creedal formulations, just like the theme, focusing on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, it’s significant for us as a Reformed church to think through what did the Reformation do with this stuff. This was a Catholic hymn, right? They all were, because there was one Catholic church—east and west—but both east and west participated in the development of the theme. But how did the reformers respond to it?

They threw out much of the Catholic liturgy, much of what are called the ordinaries—the set pieces that are sung in the liturgy of the church—but not this one. Not the theme. They retained the theme. So, for instance, in the English wing of the reformation, the theme is found in the earliest book of Common Prayer. So in the set liturgies of the reformers, the reformation of the church, the theme still plays a central part. It was not seen as linked to idolatrous Roman Catholicism, but rather seen as an expression of the scaffolding that the reformers saw themselves building upon. And probably very explicitly maintained and retained for that very purpose—to remind each other that we’re not creating a new thing. We’re not revolutionaries. We’re building on the scaffolding of the early church hymnity, the confessions and creeds of the church.

So the reformers retained the theme. Not only that, but in certain incidents of the Reformation, it was quite important. You know about how Luther got the papal bull excommunicating him and banishing his writings. And Luther burned that in a bonfire. And while the papal bull and other Roman Catholic documents were being burned by Luther, large groups of students there at the bonfire—what do they sing? They burst into the theme as they’re fighting the heresies, the errors of their day and age. Not just papal bulls being burned, though.

On your outline, I’ve got the names of two Lutheran monks, Vos and Ash, who are burned at the stake for being reformers. And as these two men are being burned at the stake by the Catholics, what do they do? They burst into song. What song is it? It’s the Te Deum. It’s the words of the Te Deum sung by the Reformed martyrs of their day.

The version we have of the theme, the particular setting for, was written by Thomas Tallis, explicitly for the divine service in the development of the application of the Book of Common Prayer—probably written a few years after the 1549 version. Probably early 1500s, Tallis writes the particular melody or music rather that we’re learning the theme to. But as we sing that particular music, as we sing it to that music, we’re reminded that we sing words that come from the scaffolding in the early church set in a tune setting that reminds us of the adoption of the Te Deum by the English branch of the Reformation.

Bullinger as well is an example of the theme’s importance. In 1553, his oldest son went away to school, and he wrote him a letter about what things he should do and attend to. And one of the things he told him to do was to sing the theme on a regular basis. So it was seen as important in the life of the church in its liturgies and in the ordinary life as well.

The Reformation, of course, produced the idea of Christian liberty and the development of governments in keeping with the doctrines of the Reformation, including the early American colonial experience. And I put in here a passing reference to George Washington, 1789. After his inauguration, Washington’s the one who insists that as president in his inauguration, he puts his hand on the Bible. He’s the one that started that tradition. And he then immediately after the inauguration went to church specifically to pray and very specifically given to us by Mark Noll in his history of this period, specifically to sing the Te Deum.

So the president—the first president of our country—building on the Reformational work in terms of its application to politics—sees the importance of acknowledging the confessional and creedal document of the theme as he begins to serve now as the head, the president of this new nation.

So we have this great heritage of understanding this particular document, how it relates to the creedal and confessional standards of the church, and its importance. And as I said, the importance of singing.

Before we look specifically at the theme, I want to mention just a couple of points in passing here, and this is primarily review for us, but I wanted to make these quickly as well.

First of all, the theme is an ordinary—so-called. It’s a piece of music that will be used regularly in the liturgy of Reformation Covenant Church. It’s like the Sanctus. It’s like the Nunc Dimittis. These are things that, while not used necessarily every Sunday, form a regular part of the liturgy of the church. That’s different than psalms and hymns.

And I make this differentiation to help you understand why we might spend six months or a year learning a particular song. If it was a hymn, we probably wouldn’t do it. If it was a song we were going to use two or three times a year, we wouldn’t do it. But this is an ordinary. And when you’re looking at some of the set music that the elders of the church decide should inform our worship on a regular basis, more time and attention is called for, and if needed, we spend that time and attention.

Secondly, it’s very important that as we learn part singing in our church, we do not neglect melody. As John and Brad met with D. S. at family camp a couple of weeks ago, they got some pastoral advice on how to continue the maturation of our music, of which the theme and the singing of it is part. And one of the things we are—we want to stress to you over and over again, man, is that if you cannot sing the parts, don’t worry about it. Sing the melody line of these pieces.

And with the theme, while some men and women may begin to sing it in parts, there may be groups that get some instruction in part singing, what we’ve stressed is the melody line. And it’s all right for you not to try to learn parts of these ordinaries or even of the psalms and hymns. If all you can get is the melody line, that’s perfectly acceptable and proper. Melody and parts singing are unity and diversity in the church.

And as we come together in Lord’s day worship, we affirm both unity and diversity. So please feel encouraged to just sing the melody line of material, both ordinaries and songs that you do not know the parts to.

Third is musical training. Yes, it’s hard for us to learn pieces like this. It’s hard for us to learn any new songs, most of us, because we never had musical instruction. But think about Augustine’s words: if the truth trickles in large part in the context of worship through the hymnity, through the singing of the church, flowing into our ears, then doesn’t that tell us that this is a very important thing for us to do?

We sang Psalm 98 earlier. Psalm 98 is the center of the fourth book of the Psalms. And the very center of Psalm 98, that pictures the coming of the King, the Lord Jesus Christ, to his people—it talks about his incarnation and for what purpose—that the earth might spring forth in song, using musical instruments in his presence. The tabernacle of David took silent tabernacle worship and looked ahead to the New Testament. Acts says, “I’ll rebuild the tabernacle of David.” And what sort of worship was it? It was sung worship in the presence of the King, in the presence of the ark of the covenant.

Both these pieces of scripture—the tabernacle of David information in the Chronicles and Acts, Psalm 98, many other places in scripture—tell also the tremendous importance of the worship of God being sung in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Singing is important. Music is important.

What we do primarily, then, is to worship and praise God, and secondarily, then we come to believe and apply certain elements of his truth. But we are first and foremost worshiping people.

Because of that, musical education—the ability to sing well, to be able to look at notes and understand what it means, to have congregational members know how to play various instruments—this should be a high priority, and it is in the life of Reformation Covenant Church. It was in the life of the Reformation—the importance of musical education.

So, you know, the older ones of us are going to have to be patient and long-suffering as we mature as a church in what we sing and how we sing it. And the young people—it is our obligation to provide for them opportunities to learn music, to learn how to sing notes, to know when they’re on key and off key.

If you’re off doctrinally, the elders are going to come alongside of you and give you information to help you get on track doctrinally. You’re going to see the importance of that. If you tomorrow decide, well, maybe I should have two wives instead of one, we’re going to come alongside of you and explain a few things to you. Okay?

Well, I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but if you’re singing here and you know you can’t sing very well, don’t just say, “I can’t sing very well.” Say, “Hey, the Lord God gave me a set of pipes that he wants me to play to his praise and worship.” Try to improve yourself. Play music at home. Try to sing along with it. Ask your wife if you’re singing on key or not. Work at it a little bit. You work at the doctrinal side. You work at the application side. Work at your ability to praise the Lord God. That’s why we’re here.

And at the end of it, all that’s what we want at the end of the week is to praise God for what he’s accomplished in our lives. Worship is the praise of God. From one perspective, it is what we do here every Lord’s day, and it’s what informs the rest of our lives.

Yes, but it begins here. For the low points of our lives, for the high points—for our—get rid of our fear, give us strength and courage for the future. Attend to your singing. Don’t see it as auxiliary to what you are as a Christian. See it as central to what you are.

And involved with this is the fourth point: masculinity and singing.

1 Chronicles 20:19—the Levites who are then to provide the example, the model for the congregation, the Levitical singers—the men were to sing loud, and they were to sing high. Now, the implication—I’m not sure what “high” meant. High-pitched, maybe. It’s not wrong for a guy with a high voice to sing, you know, a part that’s higher than the bass part. Not wrong for young boys to sing high parts.

Somehow, both with the highness of part singing, certain parts, as well as just the idea of singing in general, our culture has come to think of singing as a feminine deal. And women sing louder than men. That’s crazy. We’re to lead the women, men. We’re to have boldness. We’re not to be afraid of making mistakes. We’re to want to develop into the praise of God and to enter into that singing with loud voices and necessary high sounds as men. To sing in this way is to sing in a masculine way. It’s not masculine to try to force yourself to sing low, and it’s not masculine to not sing out loudly. Just the reverse. That’s taken the alternate form of what we’re supposed to do.

Choirs and congregations. We have a choir. We hope maybe to have more choirs—boys and girls choirs and choir members. I want you explicitly to understand that you’ve been given a gift. We’re given gifts and stewardship for the purpose of ministering to others. The choir should attempt to sing out very loud, wherever you sit, so that you can enforce the singing of the congregation. And congregation, listen for those voices around you and follow their lead as you try to sing these songs.

Choirs and congregational singing is important.

And now let’s talk specifically about this. In just a couple of minutes we have left, and really, it’s quite simple. I know that because we’ve been trying to learn this for a number of months, probably most of us haven’t really thought that much about the words except how we’re messing them up in our singing of them.

But I think it’s important to look at this tremendous hymn with great Christian history behind it. And what I’ve done in your outline is I’ve shown you that basically it’s just three simple parts.

It begins with praise. For the first third of it: “We praise thee, oh God. We acknowledge you to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship thee. The Father everlasting.” So it begins with the primacy of praise and worship. Just like I’ve said earlier, our whole lives begin this way.

Then it moves in the middle part to profession. There are what we might call a Christian creedal formulation—that it’s a profession of who Jesus Christ is and all the details of his incarnation, resurrection, ascension, glorification. So it starts with praising. It moves to profession.

And then, on the basis of those truths of Jesus Christ, it moves then to petition, or prayer, and it concludes with prayer. Most of that third section are direct quotations from the Psalter, and the first two sections are heavily informed by the scriptures themselves.

Praise. “We praise thee, oh God.” And this praise is seen as spanning heaven and earth.

In Hebrews 12, we’re told that when we come into the formal worship of God, we join with this host of angels. We join with the church of the firstborn. We join with the church triumphant in heaven. And we join with the church on earth.

Hebrews 12 tells us: “We are come unto Mount Zion, tabernacle of David, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect”—the church triumphant in heaven—”and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant”—the church militant on earth.

The church militant on earth, the church triumphant in heaven, the angelic host. Hebrews says that’s where we are when we come into the worship of God. And that same idea is reflected in the words of the theme.

“We praise thee, God. We acknowledge you to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship the Father everlasting.”

And then there’s a section involving heaven: “To thee all angels cry aloud. The heavens and all the powers therein. To thee cherubim and seraphim continually cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.’”

Heavenly praise going on. And then the earth responds: “The glorious company of the apostles praise thee. The good fellowship of the prophets praise thee. The noble army of the martyrs praise thee. The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee.”

There’s a movement to that. Apostles—small group. Prophets—larger group. The martyrs—larger. And then the church is included in that, the church on earth.

And so we have praise, praise, praise, and then “all the earth doth acknowledge thee, the Father everlasting, the holy church throughout all the world.” There’s a progression and a climax to the earthly worship that mirrors the heavenly worship.

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Heaven is a place where the “Holy, holy, holy” rings forth from the angelic host, and that is matched with the earth coming into that worship, particularly in Lord’s day worship, taking up that praise theme. And so the theme begins where all of scripture tells us to begin—the praise and worship of God. It spans the heavens and the earth. It spans time in this reference to the “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabayoth.” That’s a direct citation to the book of Isaiah and to the book of Revelation. Old Testament times, New Testament times—the worship of God by reference to the Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts, Sabayoth—armies is declared there in this opening praise section.

So we have earth, trinitarian—then is the third element of this praise: “The Father of an instant majesty, thine honorable, true and holy Son, and the Holy Ghost the Comforter.”

Now, that ends the first section. So we have the praise of heaven, the praise of earth, spanning the testaments, focusing then on a trinitarian praise. We’re praising the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That then transitions us to the profession part of this hymn.

“Thou art the King of glory, oh Christ,” rather. And in the way we sing it, that is sung not by decks and cans or men and women, but that is sung by everybody, to mark off this next section.

“Thou art the King of glory, oh Christ.”

And then we have a set of verses dealing with a profession of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. He is the King of glory. Psalm 24 says, “The King of glory shall come in.” This is a direct reference to Christ as fulfilling Psalm 24:7-10. He is the King of glory who has entered into heaven for us. He is the King of glory who enters into our praise assembly as well.

And then there is this recitation: “the everlasting Son of the Father. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.”

The divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ is proclaimed: “The everlasting—the eternal Son of the Father, begotten, not made, not a created being.” They’re fighting Arianism here. They’re saying that Jesus Christ is co-eternal with the Father, his full divinity. The profession of faith is the everlasting Son of the Father.

And then it is the incarnate Savior: “Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookst upon thee to deliver man”—maybe could be translated, “When thou tookst upon you man to deliver humanity.” Thou didst not abhore the virgin’s womb.

Either way it goes, it now refers to the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. “When thou didst overcome the sharpness of death, thou hast opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Thou sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.”

We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge. Jesus Christ is praised as the incarnate Savior, the eternally second person of the Trinity, and the incarnate Savior who took upon himself to deliver humanity through his incarnation. And in that incarnation, overcame the sharpness of death by dying for sinners. And by doing this, he opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers, and he has ascended up to the right hand of the Father on high in the glory of the Father.

So we have the praise of the eternal Son, the praise of the incarnate Savior, and then the praise of the coming Judge: “We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge.”

The second coming of Christ is one of those scaffolding elements of the early Christian creeds and confessions, accurately reflecting the truth of scripture. Hyper-preterism is a cult and should never be entered into by orthodox Christians—the belief that Jesus will not come a second time. This creed reminds us that indeed he shall come to be our judge.

And on the basis of that, we now have the transition to the third part of this great hymn. Because he is coming to be our judge, we enter into the third phase of the theme, which moves from—I’m excuse me—from praise to profession, and now to prayer, or petition.

“We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge. We therefore, on the basis of this belief that Jesus will come to be our judge, pray thee, help thy servants whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.”

You see the tie to the incarnating, salvific work of the Savior is the beginning of their petition. And the petition begins by praying for all the servants who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ.

“Make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting. Oh Lord, save thy people. Bless thine heritage, govern them, lift them up forever.”

These are direct citations to the Psalms, as I’ve provided in your outlines. So there’s a prayer here for divine assistance and guidance, based explicitly on Psalm 28:9: “Save thy people and bless thine heritage. Feed them also and lift them up forever.” That’s Psalm 28:9, directly quoted in this theme.

And then for deliverance from sin: “Every day I’ll bless thee, and I will praise thy name forever and ever.”

And then, on the basis of that deliverance from sin, the prayer goes on to say: “Vouch safe, O Lord, to keep us this day without”—I’m sorry, I skipped a verse.

After it says, “Govern them and lift them up forever,” then it makes a profession that indeed we are faithful: “Day by day we magnify thee. We worship thy name ever world without end.”

And returns to the petition: “Thou safest, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin. Oh Lord, have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us, oh Lord. Let thy mercy lighten upon us. As our trust is in thee, oh Lord, in thee have I trusted. Let me never be confounded.”

The way there was a ramp up in the church—from apostles to prophets to martyrs to all of the church. Now we have kind of a ramp down in this prayer. He prays first. We pray first for the servants. We pray for them. Then we acknowledge our faithfulness and pray for us. And then finally, in the very last line, we pray each of us individually for ourselves.

“Lord, in thee. In thee, not the subject of some unknown truth, but the incarnate Jesus Christ—the facts of the incarnation laid out in this profession of faith. This is the Lord we pray to. In thee. This is the Lord whom we have trusted with all of our lives. In thee have I trusted. Let me never be confounded.”

Ends on the personal note of application of this great hymn of praise, profession, and prayer. Ends with the prayer for ourselves that we would never be confounded.

Now, when we pray this, we know the answer to that prayer. We know that the scriptures tell us indeed that those who are in Jesus Christ will never be confounded. And I’ve given you many citations on the outline. You can look them up this afternoon or this week. But God promises to confound the ungodly. He promises that the followers of Arius will be confounded. He promises that the followers of Zeus will be confounded. He promises that the homosexuals will be confounded. He promises that the followers of Islam will be confounded. The Psalms are full of it.

So when we pray, “Let me never be confounded,” it isn’t simply a prayer for ourselves. It is a triumphal profession that indeed, as we trust in Christ, we shall never be confounded. And not only that, but all enemies to Jesus Christ shall indeed be confounded.

And the miraculous thing, the remarkable thing that this last verse points us to, is the reference to First Corinthians that I’ve given you on your outline. Because in First Corinthians, we read about people—the ungodly—being confounded, just as they were promised to be confounded in the Psalms.

1 Corinthians 1:27: “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

The Te Deum is a hymn of victory. It was a hymn written in very troubled times: song riots, Arianism, paganism, and even many prominent bishops were convinced of the heresy of Arius. It went on for centuries. Difficult, very difficult times.

And yet the church would gather and would remind itself that in the providence of God and the great overarching victory of the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, sin and death have been dealt with definitively on the cross. And we need not worry about being confounded. We can rest assured that just as Hitler was a passing shadow over the land, so Arianism, paganism, homosexual activism, Islam—these are passing shadows over the face of this earth.

The earth belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. And he is using his church and the simple songs of the creedal formulations focusing on the person and work of Christ. He is using those very songs to build us up so that we, with a simple reliance on the person and work of Christ, might go into all the world and be those that confound the enemies of God.

The Te Deum is a great hymn, filled with great scriptures, many citations to the Psalms, great doctrinal formulation that really could be seen as a development of 1 Timothy 3:16. A great song that reminds us that praise is what we should do in bad times, in good times, and ordinary times. The Te Deum is a great hymn for all those reasons.

But the Te Deum today is so useful in our day and age to remind ourselves afresh that in the midst of doctrinal heresies, difficulties, schisms, problems with and problems without, we are no different than the church of the fourth and fifth century. And like them, we’ll gather together in worship, sing triumphantly of the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and be assured that we shall never be confounded as we put our trust in him.

The Lord God has spoken definitively and finally through the victorious King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for the great joy and delight to come into your presence and offer you praise and thanksgiving for your manifold blessings to us. We thank you, Lord God, that our lives have such a firm foundation—the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, his relationship to you, and our relationship to him in the Spirit. Help us, Lord God, to focus on the person and work of Christ, and by that to be strengthened and encouraged to walk joyfully, confidently, and serenely into our lives. In his name we ask it. Amen.