Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Ascension Sunday, May 20, 2012
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri

The sermon text is Revelation 5. This will basically be a beginning point for a discussion of the ascension, its relationship to music and then we’ll look at the lyrics of the Te Deum Laudamus, which are on your handouts as well as we move through the sermon. So the idea is ascension, what it means, its relationship to music, and specifically to this great hymn of the church that comes down to us from at least the 4th century if not earlier.

Revelation 5. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. And what we have here is an image of the ascension of Jesus entering into the throne room at the right hand of God the Father on high.

**Revelation 5:**

“And I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back sealed with seven seals. And then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?’ And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look at it.

“So I wept much because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll or to look at it. But one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose the seven seals.’ And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne, and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.

“And then he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. Now when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood.

“Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation and have made us kings and priests to our God. And we shall reign on the earth.’ And then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders. And the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.

“And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying, ‘Blessing and honor, and glory, and power be to him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever.’ Then the four living creatures said, ‘Amen.’ And the 24 elders fell down and worshiped him who lives forever and ever.”

Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for the ascension of our Savior. Help us to comprehend it today. Help us to respond to it with faith, vigor, trust, obedience, and a great joy and optimism. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, did you miss it? You probably did. My guess is you did. I did. Did you miss it this last week, the celebration of the most important day of the year? What am I talking about? Well, you already know because it’s Ascension Sunday. Last Thursday was the day of Ascension, Ascension Day, the celebration of it, 40 days after Easter on the calendar.

And it’s the great culmination of the first cycle of the church year—the life of our Savior, his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and then his ascension. And next week is Pentecost Sunday, which marks the beginning of the period, the second half of the year, which has to do with the church, the acts of Jesus Christ through the church we can say, and so the gift of the Spirit from on high, empowerment for service, tied in the Scriptures to the ascension.

Now, one of the values of having a church calendar, church calendar, even in any way of celebrating some of these feasts, these celebrations, is today Ascension—because the church has forgotten the day. That’s why most of us don’t think about it. That’s why when I was in Vienna with Christine, Joanna, and Ruth Frasier, now Hill, and we were there and we didn’t understand why the bells were ringing the morning we were there. We had gotten in the night before and why all the shops were closed. Can you tell me why the bells are ringing? Leonard Cohen. Nothing’s happened in a million years. The church today thinks nothing really is happening or progressing or developing because it’s forgotten the meaning of the bells, that time across Europe. Now they’ve forgotten it too, but certainly here in the States. Who celebrates Ascension Day? Did anybody here? I can’t see. Did anybody celebrate Ascension? Did you do anything about it special? No, we don’t. Why is it so important, Dennis? What’s the big deal, Pastor? Isn’t the cross and the death and resurrection of Jesus the big deal?

Well, that accomplishes our salvation, right? That makes us saved from our sins. It fits us for heaven. And if that’s where we stop—and that’s where the church today primarily does stop—that’s what we think about. And as I’ve said before, we just dog paddle our way through life, and the church dog paddles its way through history, and you end up with the sort of culture that we have in America today: a nation of liars, sexual perversion, murder of preborn infants. The list goes on. And increasing, creeping socialism. That’s what you end up with because it’s our fault. Judgment begins at the house of God. And the house of God has forgotten the meaning of the ascension of Jesus Christ.

After 40 days of teaching his disciples—graduate school work in the work of the church, right?—he talked to them about the kingdom and prepared them for their task of conquering the world through the proclamation of his gospel. That’s what he did. 40 days of graduate study for his disciples. And then he ascended up. And why did he ascend up? We’re going to talk about that today—the reason of his ascension, the purpose. He rose up. He was ascended up. And he was seated at the right hand of the Father.

From there he rules until all enemies be made his footstool on the earth through the proclamation of the gospel, through the acts of the church, endued with spiritual power from on high by the Holy Spirit. That’s why he ascended. That’s what’s going on right now. That’s where Jesus is. Yes, he’s in our hearts by the Spirit, of course, but his particular place that the Bible talks about post-ascension is seated, empowered.

Psalm 2: you know, “I have enthroned my King on my holy hill, right? Ask of me and I’ll give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Did Jesus ask? Or did he forget to ask when he was seated on high? Of course he asked. And of course, that’s what history is about: is all nations being discipled, being taught what the kingdom is all about and how to honor the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

He’s at the right hand of the Father ruling. Revelation 5 is a picture of the scroll of history, seven seals. And as those seals are opened up through the next several chapters of Revelation, things happen on the earth. It’s a covenantal word, right? It’s a covenantal book. It’s sealed. It’s got writing at both sides so nobody can forge things in the margins or anything. And it’s the key to history. It is history.

And what happens is Jesus ascends to the Father 40 days after his resurrection. He’s seated at the right hand. Although pictured in our text today at the right hand, but not seated, but nonetheless, he has power now to open the seals, to change history, to make the world new, right? To put the world to rights. We’re talking about justice. And the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ is the meaning of it—is justice. Justice enacted in history by the Lord Jesus Christ through his church.

Now, when the church forgets about the ascension, it forgets about biblical justice. It forgets about its task and mission in the world. And we are in the midst now of a Christianity that primarily tries to make you feel better about your life, all right? It’s therapeutic more often than not. And so we don’t sing the great hymns such as the Te Deum Laudamus anymore. Those things are confusing to us. They’re chock full of doctrine and important truths about the Christian worldview, about the Christian message of the Bible. And it’s too deep, Pastor. We just feel bad and we need to feel better. We need to just kind of, you know, get into a kind of a sing-songy sort of way and feel better about our lives. I don’t mean to mock the extended church, but that’s what we’re left with.

We are in the midst, or maybe at the tail end, of a deep theological erosion of truth in the church of Jesus Christ. And I think one of the primary reasons for it is ignoring the doctrine of the ascension and its meaning for history. When you forget that—that’s our task—everything becomes about going to heaven and being saved from our sins, and that’s it. And salvation is defined very narrowly: just as being saved from, you know, damnation and hellfire. Praise God for that. But salvation is a comprehensive term in the Bible.

The ascension is about the reign of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, putting the world to rights, bringing justice to victory. And he does it through his church as we had wonderfully sung about this morning in Psalm 110 as well.

So the ascension is a crucial doctrine. What happens when Jesus appears in heaven in Revelation 5? Well, what happened? One, as I said, history is changed. The seals come off. Things actually happen in the world. And they continue to happen as Jesus is the ruler of history now in a special way, enthroned now in a different way than he was prior to the ascension. The ascension changed history.

Secondly, what happened, of course, is the response of heaven and Earth portrayed in the various figures singing. Now it says sang, but at first it says singing, sang. And so when we read later in the chapter “sang,” it’s all song: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, right?” We sing that chant because that’s what the angels chanted and the church chants in response to the empowerment of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father.

When we understand the ascension, it empowers us and it puts at the core of our being great joy in and rejoicing before God, because music is what happens when kings are enthroned. The cover of your order of worship today, right? It’s a picture of the ark being taken up to Jerusalem. And what happened when the ark goes up to Jerusalem? Well, David begins that musical worship there in Jerusalem, the choir, the orchestra. Today is a picture of the tabernacle of David. And that all happens in response to the enthronement, the reenthronement, of the Ark of the Covenant, the chair of God’s reign in Jerusalem, in the city of his people once more.

Enthronement is linked to music and singing. That’s what people do. Even the first king, Saul, right? When he becomes anointed, as it were, by Samuel, what happens? He joins the prophets. Well, what are the prophets doing in the picture? Do you know your Bibles well enough? Well, what the prophets are doing is they’re singing. They’re singing and playing instruments. And so when the first king of Israel gets anointed by Samuel, he gets sent off and he becomes part of these prophets. He becomes a new man, the text tells us. We’ll talk more about that next week when we talk about the Holy Spirit and the changing of Saul into a new man. But Saul enters into the company of the prophets, enters into their singing and their worshiping.

Even the king engages in this musical response to enthronement. So the first king of Israel, musical response to his enthronement. The second King of Israel, enthrones Yahweh back in Jerusalem. But what do we have? The bursting forth of musical development. And what do we have in Revelation 5 in response to the ascension? Praise, joy. If you understand the meaning, how could we do anything other than be thankful and joyful before God? That history now, the gospel, is Yahoo. Jesus wins, and the church is empowered to proclaim that gospel and make that happen.

So let’s talk today about ascension—what its meaning is from the Scriptures briefly. We’ll talk about music in relationship to enthronement. We’ll look about a little bit of the history of the Te Deum and where it comes from. And then we’ll look at the Te Deum itself. We’ll conclude our prayer today. We’ll actually be singing the Te Deum. And that’s on your outlines, handouts, as well. If you don’t have one, you should get one because that’s what we’re going to do for the prayer—is to sing it. Or maybe you’ve already memorized good portions of it.

All right. So, what is the ascension? Well, the ascension, plainly put, is Jesus ascending, or going up. In Luke 24, we read that after the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven. Okay, so the ascension of Jesus Christ is his going up. Very simply put. And the purpose, the destination of the ascension, is what you could refer to as the heavenly session. Well, we read this: that he sat down at the right hand of God.

Now, the word “session”—you’re familiar with it. It’s an old-fashioned kind of word, but President Presbyterian churches or those that engage in our kind of governmental structures are somewhat familiar. You hear that the elders meet in session, right? Or the Supreme Court is in session. And so what does it mean? Well, session, the root of it, means to be seated, okay? So Jesus ascends and the destination of his ascension is the session, his being seated at the right hand of the Father.

And what it means is Jesus the King, the supreme governor of the world, is now in session. The court’s in session and it stays in session until all the world becomes his footstool, all of his enemies are converted and brought into the kingdom of Christ. So the session just means the ruling, the present rule and authority of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father. The Father has given him all rule and authority. So that’s what session means. And the fact that you have elders who meet in session is a picture: that this session of Jesus Christ is then mediated through various other governing authorities in the context of the world. Because the purpose of the ascension is this session, intercession, but it’s also victory.

Let me read a couple of texts. 1 Corinthians 15:25: “He must reign, sit in session at the right hand of the Father until he has put all enemies under his feet.”

Philippians 3:21: “He’ll transform our lowly body that it be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself.” That’s what’s going on. That’s the meaning of the ascension. Jesus is subduing all things to himself.

Philippians 2:9-11: “Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. Now, this is an action in history. God has highly exalted him. He gave him a particular name above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those in heaven and on the earth or those under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

So the session continues, Christ’s royal session, until all enemies are made his footstool and all people are conquered. And as I said, Psalm 2 is a reminder of that. All Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. He is given rule and power. Every nation, every part of the world is his in a special sense now as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And so the result of that in Psalm 2 is you better be careful, kings of the earth, because he’s ruling.

By the way, what does he do? He rules with a rod of iron by which he destroys certain kingdoms, right? He breaks certain peoples. And what are we to do? We’re to have that same rod of iron in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. That’s a description of the church as well.

Psalm 110, which was wonderful—we had a, we commissioned Joseph to write a setting for Psalm 110. And it’s wonderful that he was able to get it done and the choir could practice it for Ascension Sunday. Perfect. Perfect. Psalm 110 says: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand for what purpose? Till I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies.”

And then, how does this happen? “Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning.”

So Psalm 110 pictures the church militant on earth prosecuting and being the mechanism by the session of Jesus Christ as he subdues all enemies through the preaching of his gospel.

The ascension is the hinge, of course literally, between the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. And what this reminds us of is that the ascension is first and foremost the empowerment of Christ at the right hand of the Father. But that ascension, then in the Book of Acts, results in the gift of the Holy Spirit so that his people, then having their heavenly citizenship in him, can now rule through the proclamation of the gospel as well.

Colossians 3 says: “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.” Christ’s ascension is our ascension. We’re unified to Jesus Christ in his death, his burial, his resurrection, but also in his ascension. And so when the New Testament writers want to talk about where our citizenship is, where’s our identity? Right? Where’s our identity? Our identity is found in Christ. And Christ is at the right hand of the Father ministering justice, bringing justice to victory.

That’s who we are, Christian. That’s who you are. You’re a minister, that is part of God’s mechanism for bringing justice to victory, because you are seated with the Son of God at the right hand of the Father in union with him. And we’re to set our mind on things above. Then we’re to take that heavenly pattern and live them out in the context of our lives.

You know, there’s an old phrase: you know, some people are too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. Well, the only way to be earthly good is to be heavenly minded properly. So, now if it’s a heaven-escapist sort of idea, yeah, then you’re no earthly use. But to be heavenly minded, to understand that’s where identity is, and that the will of God in heaven is what we’re to see manifested in the earth, makes us of earthly good.

Ephesians 2:6 says that God raised us up together, made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So the ascension of Jesus Christ, his session at the right hand of the Father, is also the empowerment of the church as well. That’s who we are now: we are those who have participated in the ascension of Jesus and are empowered by him.

Now I said that the next thing—so we talk about the ascension, what its essential meaning is, and the relationship of the ascension to music. And as we see in Revelation 5, Jesus is going to bring justice to victory. He’s going to open that scroll, the history of the world, and things will happen as he controls the events of history. And the response, then, to his enthronement, to his ascension, to his being seated at the right hand of the Father is the bursting forth in music of the heavenly choirs, as it were.

And this is the response, as I said before, of David. You know, in 1 Chronicles 15:16, is when David brings up the Ark of the Covenant. And we read this: “David spoke to the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers accompanied by instruments of music, stringed instruments, harps, and cymbals, by raising the voice with resounding joy.”

So what we’re supposed to do in response to the ascension of Jesus Christ—and of course, we don’t celebrate the ascension one day out of 52 every year, one Sunday. The ascension is the culmination of the whole message of the gospel. We’re to celebrate the ascension and the rule of Jesus at the right hand of the Father every Lord’s day, particularly on Ascension Sunday, but that informs the rest of what we do. And the response to that message of ascension, the rule of Christ, that is the preaching of his word, is to be musical instruments and singing, and a particular kind of singing: raising the voice with resounding joy.

You don’t sing like this in my pew. “We praise thee, oh God.” No, you’re supposed to sing by raising your voice and having resounding joy. “We praise thee, oh God!” Right? That’s what we’re supposed to do.

Now, listen. You know, this is the word of God. And when we sing that today, I’m here in a few minutes, enter fully into it. You’ll have a little bit more understanding of what it’s about. You’ll see that it really is a proper hymn to be sung in response to the ascension. And just as David commanded the Levites to raise their voices in joy, so I believe, by the power of Christ in his name, I tell you, and I tell myself, brothers and sisters, we should raise our voices, lift them up, shake the earth with our sounds, as is said in other portions of Scripture, with resounding joy.

Now, you say, “Well, those were men. The men were the singers.” It’s interesting. You can’t get into this in any kind of depth, but in Ezra 2:65 and Nehemiah 7:67, we read of the appointment of men and women singers in this kind of temple worship that was to go on. And the singing, the singing involved both men. It’s interesting to me because up to that point, the history of redemption starts with kind of silent tabernacle worship, and then you get tabernacle of David worship that’s incorporated into temple worship, and now you’ve got loud boisterous singing and the playing of musical instruments. But men, and then as you get closer to the coming of Jesus in Ezra and Nehemiah, now we have choirs consisting of both men and women. So there’s this development. So that when we get to the true ascension of the King, all of which was prefigured in the Old Testament, now singing breaks out in loud power and authority by both men and women.

So the closer we get to the ascension of Jesus, our response becomes fuller and fuller: going from silence to song to musical instruments and to men and women both being involved. And as I said, when Saul is announced to be the king of Israel, the first king, the response is music.

So music, music is a response to God’s deliverance. And that’s ultimately, of course, what the ascension of Jesus is.

2 Samuel 22 says this: “David spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day when the Lord had delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.”

Then there’s one of the Psalms. So singing is a response to deliverance from enemies, and the ascension of Jesus to the right hand of the Father means that we are to be delivered from all of our enemies. It’s already happened in principle, and the history of the earth will be the manifestation of that deliverance.

Again, in 1 Samuel 18, it happened as they were coming home, when David was returning from the slaughter of the Philistines, that the women had come out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tambourines, with joy, and with musical instruments.

Again, deliverance. The king comes, and they sing. And verse 7 says the women sang as they danced and said, “Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.”

Well, the greater Saul, the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ, has come who is going to conquer all enemies, all the earth will be made his footstool. And how can we not, then, join with those women in singing forth loud songs of victory and praise to God if we believe it? If we believe it. If we don’t believe it, we might as well go home. But that’s what the word of God says. Jesus is conquering all of his enemies, and our victory is to be expressed in song.

You know, we could go on and on, right? The Song of Deborah—what happens? God’s enemies are defeated and the people of God are led into song. The Song of Moses, right? “The horse and the rider is thrown into the sea.” The greater Moses has come, and the greater singing of the church should be at the ascension of Jesus, is enthronement at the right hand of the Father. He rules over all of his enemies and gives us victory. He delivers us. And that deliverance, victory, ascension, and enthronement—the proper response to that is the singing forth of wonderful songs.

And so we sing about justice, right? We sing justice into activity. Actually, we praise God. And the praising of God that we engage in response to his enthronement and his ascension and his deliverance is empowerment for us to go forward and to be the part of his body, the church, that brings justice to victory.

And indeed, in the Old Testament, even while they’re worshiping God, at various times God was destroying his enemies. So, this relationship between the worship of the church and the defeat of the enemies of Jesus Christ.

So, that’s the meaning of the ascension, the proper musical response to that ascension. And what we want to talk about today for the rest of the sermon is the Te Deum Laudamus.

Now, this is a song that goes back at least to the early fifth or fourth century, maybe even another century prior to that. At least in its parts, it goes back, of course, to the Old Testament. The last third of the song is mostly citations from the Psalms. And other portions of the song are filled with biblical citations and allusions as well. But the song itself is composed and completed probably by the fifth century or maybe fourth.

It’s been used by the church throughout history. Of course, if you’ve ever seen that great movie Henry V, the Kenneth Branagh version of the Shakespeare play dealing with the historic King, the real Henry V, whose dates are 1386 to 1422. The movie, of course, shows his victory in France over the enemies of him and his people. And so he has this tremendous victory at Agincourt, which is still studied by military historians to this day.

My wife, her family had a relative there that took the Duke of Orleans captive, so it’s interesting to our family historically. But it’s been immortalized in the plays of Shakespeare and now these movie versions. And in the play of Shakespeare, after the miraculous victory that Henry V experienced, he gives God the credit for the victory. And at the end of it, he says that as they’re concluding and while they’re burying the dead, they should sing the glory of God. And the Te Deum—I’m sorry, not the Gloria Patri, the Non Nobis.

So these two ancient songs of the church, Non Nobis and Te Deum Laudamus, are what Shakespeare records Henry V had his troops sing after that battle was given to them miraculously in victory. And in the film version you can hear the version of Non Nobis that is pretty familiar to a lot of people here that have listened to contemporary settings of it. “Non Nobis, not unto us but only to thy name be all victory and glory and praise.”

And this is a citation from the Psalms. And then, after that, according to Shakespeare, they would sing the Te Deum Laudamus.

Well, this is a great truth: that at particularly significant times in the history of the church, the Te Deum Laudamus has been sung. For instance, after Martin Luther burned the papal bull, he went back to church and they specifically sang the Te Deum. At the time of the Reformation, Te Deum Laudamus was of course part of the Catholic liturgy, but it was a part of the Catholic liturgy that wasn’t chock full of errors. It was retained by the reformers and owned as an orthodox statement of what the Bible teaches about history, about God, and about who we are.

On your handouts, I’ve got a couple of other men’s names here: Esches. These were martyrs of the Reformation, and these were men who, as they were being burnt at the stake, sang forth the Te Deum Laudamus.

Bullinger, another great reformer, wrote to his son who was away at school to sing the Te Deum regularly.

George Washington, you know, began the practice of—of course he was the first president—but he insisted on taking the oath of office with the Bible in hand on the Bible, and then retired to church to sing the Te Deum Laudamus.

So from Luther—actually before Luther, Henry V—through Luther, the Protestant Reformation, up into the history of America itself, this hymn, this song, the Te Deum Laudamus, was an essential part of what Orthodox Christians sang at particularly important times, because they recognized that it is this song that portrays the full cycle of the life of Jesus Christ, including his ascension. And therefore it was to be sung in times of great victory, great trials as well, and warfare, to remind ourselves, to have the confidence of the Orthodox faith, because Jesus has once for all ascended to the right hand of the Father.

Now, legend has it that the Te Deum was written as a response back and forth when Augustine was baptized by Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. Probably not true, but who knows? There must be something to it—that at least portions of it might have been chanted back and forth between the two of them at their baptism. It’s sort of hard to understand this, but you know, we have iPods now, and they sort of had not an iPod but a wee-pod thing going on in early church history.

You know, Arius was this man who denied the orthodox formulations of Jesus. Jesus was this emanation from the monadic God, and nobody can understand what Arius meant, but they knew he was a heretic. And so at the Council of Nicaea in 325, they declared him to be a heretic. Of course, the other thing that many of you know is that’s where supposedly St. Nicholas slaps Arius on the face, is imprisoned, and miracles happen.

But in any event, so you know, it’s important for various reasons. But Arius is declared a heretic, and he’s banished then to what is modern-day Yugoslavia. Well, Arius continues to promulgate his heresies against the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. And Arius isn’t a stooge. He’s an intellectual, but he knows how to make things happen with the masses. And what he does is he writes a series of little pop tunes, and he writes these little tunes, these songs that can be sung by the average person. And he begins to promulgate these songs throughout the area where he is. And people pick it up. It’s like a wee-pod. Everybody’s there doing their stuff in the docks, and they’re singing Arius’s songs because they’re cool little ditties, right?

But what Arius is doing with the songs is he’s promulgating a false view of God, saying that Jesus isn’t the second person of the Trinity. So it’s a great danger to Orthodox Christianity. These songs that Arius is composing.

After Arius—well, let’s see. So now, in response to that, the Orthodox Church, well, they’re in the game too. And so they write songs that are used to reinforce orthodoxy on the part of people. And so you actually have records during this period of time of the two groups kind of meeting in battle in the evening, right? And they would come together and they’d be singing songs back and forth, and then they’d get into it with maybe some fighting that would actually happen as well.

So, it’s—I think this goes on in soccer matches today sometimes where the two soccer fan sets of fans are chanting and then they start fighting and beating each other up and stuff. Well, that’s kind of what happens here. The Orthodox view of the faith is promulgated by these tunes such as the Te Deum Laudamus, that describe the Orthodox faith. And this is a way to promulgate what is the truth of orthodoxy as opposed to the heresy of Arius.

After Arius’s death, then Ambrose lives, and the—but Arius’s followers are still, you know, combating the Orthodox people, and they want to get at Arius—or Ambrose rather, who’s the bishop of Milan. And so what they would do was, for a while, the Orthodox believers would form a big cordon around where he was to protect him from the crowds that would come and try to do damage to him, beat him up or kill him or whatever it was.

Augustine’s mother was actually one of the people that was in this crowd that would surround Ambrose, the wonderful beloved bishop of Milan, to protect him from those that were attacking him. And the attackers would sing these Arian little ditties, right?

So that’s the kind of the setting for Augustine then coming into the faith and hearing and wonderfully loving these great tunes of the Christian faith and then being baptized by Ambrose in Milan.

Ambrose, by the way, another thing that Ambrose did was he invented or came up with what we know as common meter. Some of our songs you’ll see CM after them—some of the songs we sing—and that stands for common meter. And Ambrose, to make the Orthodox songs more powerful and vital, he had this one-two, one-two kind of marching rhythm to them, and then a set of four lines in eight stanzas would be the longest a song could be. So he actually, you know, worked on his iPad deal, or his iPod deal, his wee-pod deal, trying to make these Orthodox songs singable in a way that made the militant vibrant and vital for the Christians to do.

So they weren’t just kind of, you know, being some otherworldly singing thing attached from this world. They were actually, you know, doing this to engage the enemies of Christ victoriously.

And so the Te Deum has its roots going back that far in history—at least portions of it. And some people say it was chanted back and forth by Ambrose and Augustine. Not sure about that, but it was one of these fighting hymns against Arianism. Okay. It wasn’t just, you know, to get together in church and sort of think about things eternal and whatnot. It was a fighting hymn. It was a hymn intended to be sung publicly, to be believed on, to give people power and strength for living.

And so when we sing it, we want to sing it with that kind of power and strength, right? Rapid clip, back and forth. We’re marching ahead. And that was the way it was intended to be sung.

Another one of my favorite Christmas hymns, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” this also is a fighting hymn against Arianism written in the same period of time by Fortunatus. And it’s the same thing. We think of these things and just as nice songs, but there’s purpose to them.

Music has always been important in the development of people’s views and worldviews. And so this song we’re going to sing today was one of those sorts of hymns, and it has that significance to it.

All right, let’s talk now specifically about the Te Deum. And if you on the second—I think it’s the second page of your handouts—you’ll see the listing of the Te Deum. And I don’t know, maybe you’ve already noticed this, but if not, you know, the way I’ve lined it out for you on that second page, you see it’s in three sections, right? So it actually moves. It begins with praise, and then it goes to profession of faith, right? Kind of what we believe. And then it moves to prayer at the end.

So there’s a movement of it from praise, rather, to profession, assertion of certain things about God, and then it moves to prayer. And so it has this movement to it. It has this great culmination that we’ll come to in a couple of minutes, even within the praise section, right?

The praise section begins with “We praise thee, O God.” As the cantor begins the song, even here there’s interesting things to be seen in the actual words of it. So 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. Okay.

So heaven and earth are joined together in this praise. So the praise spans heaven and earth, first of all. Okay. So the idea is that all the earth doth worship thee. By the way, that’s an interesting sentence, isn’t it? It begins with an optimistic assertion that Jesus Christ right now is controlling all things on the earth.

He—you know, what does it say? He’ll even make the wrath of man to praise thee. All the earth doth worship thee. We get to these places in history where we’re at now, and it’s difficult. We’re in this place where we’ve had great theological erosion of the church. And as a result, almost an anti-Christian worldview has developed. And we get to these very difficult spots, and we come together, and we suffer corporately, you know, in terms of our communities.

We suffer as a result of this. We suffer in our own lives personally, because, you know, we’re not isolated. Our families, our kids, our parents, our marriages are in the context of this tremendous erosion of Christian truth. And so they’re all going to be affected by it. And so we suffer, right? And as we sing the Te Deum and we begin with the assertion that all the earth doth worship thee, it reminds us that the problems our country and nation are going through, the problems we’re going through in our individual lives or our lives as a church or a set of churches in Oregon City, whatever, it is—the problems are a passing shadow in the history of the world because Jesus Christ is opening that book, Revelation 5.

He’s controlling the events of history. And while we see people, presidents and rulers who are in opposition to Christ, what is asserted, what’s asserted at the beginning of the great song, is that all the earth doth worship thee. You go outside today, and birds are chirping, the sun’s shining, grass is growing, and trees are going up to the sky. All the earth doth worship God. The whole thing is a great hymn of praise, as it were, a song of praise to Almighty God.

That’s the big context. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle here in these passing shadows of people turning their backs on Jesus. But understand: all the earth doth worship thee.

When I was with—Boohoo years ago, he talked about some Eastern Orthodox—or no, some singer he heard. And then this song says, “You ask why I’m a postmillennialist. I’m a postmillennialist because the grass grows up towards heaven. All the earth doth worship thee.” It’s all under the control of Jesus at the right hand of the Father.

So we begin with praise, and praise that contains assertions of truth. But the section is primarily given to praise. It’s a praise that spans heaven and earth. And it’s a praise that also spans time. As we go down a couple of lines: “To thee cherubim and seraphim continually cry, ‘Holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.’”

That’s Isaiah 6 verse 3, I think. Isaiah 6: “Though heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.” Well, those references come from Isaiah 6, but also from Revelation 4. “Holy, holy.” And so it spans time, right? As we praise God, we praise God for the manifestation of who he is in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, spanning heaven and earth, spanning time as well in our praise for him.

And then finally, the praise is highly trinitarian, right? “The glorious company of the apostles praise thee. The glorious—the goodly fellowship of the prophets. The noble army of martyrs. The holy church throughout all the world.” Notice the progression there, by the way. You’ve got a few apostles, you had more prophets, you had even more martyrs. And then the holy church throughout all the world. There’s a building up of the numbers represented here that are praising God.

The whole movement of the Te Deum is optimistic eschatologically. And then who are we praising? “The Father of an infinite majesty. Thy honorable, true and only Son. The Holy Ghost, also being the Comforter.”

So we have this praise spanning heaven and earth, spanning time, trinitarian, that builds in the context of the way the song is developed. And that’s the first part. When we sing it, remember these things. Remember what’s going on: that you’re engaging in a praise of God through time and space, heaven and earth being joined together.

Secondly, there’s a profession—is the next section then. And so we have it marked out in our particular version produced by Thomas Tallis. This setting: “Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ.” Now this is an assertion. This is saying: this is what I believe. What do you believe, Christian? I believe that Jesus Christ is the King of Glory. You know, in the Psalms, right? “Let the King of Glory come in. Who is this King of Glory?” So this is a reference to the Psalter, and it identifies the King of Glory as Jesus Christ.

So this is the beginning of the profession. “Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.” And then we have this recitation, this kind of creedal recitation of the life of Jesus Christ.

“When thou took’st upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the virgin’s womb,” so the Incarnation.

“When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death,” his death. “Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers,” allusion to the Resurrection.

“And then thou sitest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.”

You see, they don’t forget the ascension. This is an important part of the pop songs they sang that gave them victory, hope, and optimism—was not just the death and resurrection of Jesus saving us from our sins. It was the ascension, the enthronement of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, the guarantee that all of history now is controlled by Jesus and by his church as we preach his gospel, his word.

So the ascension is the vital aspect that’s included here, and so often is just seen in contemporary churches as kind of a way to get Jesus off the stage, right? We’ve got this great picture of salvation, personal salvation, death and resurrection. Well, we can’t leave him walking around. So, we got to, you know, where is he? So, he ascends. So, we just get him off the scene somehow. That isn’t really all that important. What was important was that cross and that resurrection. That’s what saved me personally.

But in the Bible, all that is prelude to the ascension and the reign of Jesus Christ over all things until all of his enemies are made his footstool, you see? So, the Orthodox faith always affirms, confirmed, the ascension as the culmination of the ministry of Jesus Christ: “Thou sitest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.”

“And we believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.”

And so we have this profession of faith: the everlasting Son of the Father, the Incarnate Savior, and then finally the returning Judge. All of these things—the center of the three parts focuses on the person and work, the historical realities of Jesus Christ. And this song calls the church. It is called the church for, you know, well over a thousand years, over 1500 years.

It’s called the church. At the center of our praise and worship to God, at the center of our prayers, is an affirmation that we believe in the Orthodox doctrine, the teaching of Jesus Christ contained in the Scriptures and then summarized in these historic documents of the church.

Then the third section is prayer. And this section is heavily marked with quotations, rather, from the Psalms. So this is the line: “We therefore pray thee, help thy servants.”

Okay. So we begin with praise. We then say we make a profession of who we are as Christians, who Jesus is, what he did historically. And we therefore, on the basis of that profession of faith, we therefore enter into prayer to God. In this final and concluding section: “We therefore, pray thee, help thy servants.”

You see the basis for the prayer? Are you going to enter into the prayer when you sing it today? Don’t do it if you’re not going to say you’re a servant of Jesus. And if you pray today with us—singing this today—recognize that you’re saying you’re a servant of Jesus. At the core of who you are, that’s who you are.

“Now, we therefore pray thee, help thy servants.” And, to the extent that we don’t serve Jesus, we have no business asking for his help. The basis for a request for help, the basis for our prayer to him, is to help his servants.

“We therefore pray thee, help thy servants, which is an inclusive term, by the way. It’s the prayer doesn’t start with us and our individual needs. It starts corporately. Whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood, make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting.”

There’s a prayer for the perseverance of God’s people here at the beginning of this: a divine assistance and guidance. I’ve got the Psalms—I think—references listed on your sheet. I won’t read them, but they’re there.

“O Lord, save thy people and bless thy heritage.”

The heritage of God is his people in the world. And so we pray that God would save his people and bless his heritage.

“Govern them and lift them up forever.”

The ascension means the rule of Jesus Christ by the Book of the Covenant, his Scriptures, the word of God given. That’s the basis by which he governs us, and the church, having rejected the governance of history by Jesus Christ, has jettisoned the governing of history by Jesus Christ. And it’s jettisoned the idea that Jesus is ruling until all his enemies be made his footstool. We pray that Christ might govern his people, his heritage, and lift us up forever.

“Day by day we magnify thee. And we worship thy Name ever, world without end.”

We’re those who pray to you and praise you. And there, as a result of that praise: “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.”

How often have you asked that? How often have you asked that? I don’t ask it: keep us without sin. Well, what kind of prayer is that? Isn’t that strange? Well, it’s not strange. It’s strange for us because everything we do is sinful. We can’t do anything right. Well, the Bible says you can be righteous. You have kept the word of God, kept the law of God. It says that in the Gospels. Various people are said to be perfect. That doesn’t mean they never sinned, but it means their lives are not marked day by day without very much sin, or with no sin in particular days, okay.

“Keep us this day without sin.”

May the Lord God grant us that prayer tomorrow morning as we wake up and praise the ascended Jesus Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father. May we ask: keep us this day without sin. And may we do that because we’re consecrating ourselves as servants of Jesus to avoid sin tomorrow. You see, these great old songs of the church—they’re wonderful truths.

Without them, we erode theologically. We just end up, you know, almost blithering idiots sometimes, not understanding what the message of the Scriptures is and what our call as Christians is to be in the world. You know, an idiot is somebody who doesn’t take, who wouldn’t go into the public square. That was the technical Greek definition for the word idiot. And when Christians won’t take—when we won’t take our Christianity into the public square, into our businesses, into our politics, into our neighborhoods—we declare ourselves to be technically idiots using the old Greek definition of the term.

We pray thee, Lord God, help us not to sin today. That’s part of the prayer of the church. “O Lord, have mercy upon us,” because we know we will sin. “Have mercy on us. We don’t deserve anything. The prayer is mercy. O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us.”

Three-fold repetition again. We could go into this trinitarian from beginning to end. This psalm.

“As our trust is in thee.”

And then finally, at the end: “O Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded.”

You see, the prayer moves first by talking about the great church of Jesus Christ. And we pray for them. And then we pray for us, the group that we’re identified with, our particular church, our family, our friends. And then finally, at the culmination of the prayer, one line left—that I something about myself. And what is it? That I’d never be confounded.

Odd way to end a song, don’t you think? When we first sang this, I thought that’s an odd way to end a song. But it’s perfect.

If you look up the citations I’ve given you on your outline at some point in time, you know what you’ve got throughout the Scriptures is: some people are confounded, and some aren’t. And the Psalmist repeats over and over again: “Help me not to be confounded.” What does confounded mean? Well, it means sort of swamped, ashamed, you know, you don’t know what’s going on. You’ve sort of lost your moorings, and you’ve lost. Basically, the enemy is routed, like things disordered. And that’s to be confounded.

And so the great prayer at the end of this is not to be defeated but to rather be a victor in the field of battle, and that our enemies might be confounded—that the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ would be confounded, discouraged, broken up. They don’t know what’s happening.

We see it over and over in the great stories of the Old Testament, right? We don’t know what happens. Somebody’s shooting at us. The Lord is doing things. He’s threatening us with judgments. They get all freaked out, paranoid, and goofed up, and they start running around in circles, right? That’s what happens to the enemies of God when he moves. That’s confounding the enemies.

And over and over again in the Scriptures, we see this dichotomy. May we not be confounded. May we be victorious. May we be stable. May we have a worldview that interprets everything in relationship to the rule of the reigning King at the right hand of the Father.

And then we’re not astonished. We’re not confounded. We’re not ashamed. We know he’s ruling everything. We know this is the great triumphant Christian hymn of victory. And we have no reason to be confounded in the world. And in fact, we’re assured then that the enemies of Jesus Christ are being confounded even as we speak. It is an odd way to end a song. But it’s a wonderful way to end it because it’s a way to end that song with an assertion of the victory of God’s people, the defeat of his enemies, because Jesus Christ is sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and he is controlling history.

Now that’s the meaning of the ascension. It’s the great truth that generates the kind of songs as the Te Deum Laudamus—which just Latin for “we praise thee, O God”—but this is what it is. This is what one of the great hymns. You know, when churches don’t sing the Te Deum Laudamus, do you see how much they lose? A biblical teaching put together, codified, summarized in a simple song that if you sing it as an ordinary of the church, one of the set pieces of the church, you end up memorizing it.

Myself and several of my kids, my daughters, we can sing this back and forth, a number of lines of it, and we don’t even sing it every Sunday here. And so what it does is it empowers us.

May the Lord God use the Te Deum and its singing to empower us with a knowledge of what the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ is all about and an application in our lives that produces strong victorious people for him.

And now let me get out my copy, and if Joseph could go up, turn to it please. On your handouts, if you don’t have one, share with the person next to you. We’ll sing this, and we’ll try to do it at a good marching clip, the way Ambrose liked things to be sung. And we’ll once more—this will be our prayer to God to conclude this sermon.