THE SACRIFICE OF PRAISE
A.J.E.Welch
Romans 16: 2 5-27; Ephesians 3: 20,21
The spirit of praise which appears in these scriptures and a number of others is most attractive. The thought of God is that we offer the sacrifice of praise to Him continually. Along with that we have the word that the Father seeks worshippers and we are not to allow ourselves the thought that these choice matters of response to God are to be limited to the prime occasion in which He is served. To serve God in praise is the greatest portion for man: there is no greater engagement for man. We have what we speak of as the service of God following the Lord's supper, an occasion of deep and increasing richness, an occasion which God delights in as He loves to intimate to us, an occasion for which we rightly prepare ourselves in the light of the scripture we read this afternoon, a very great occasion but related to a way in which the service of God proceeds in the assembly. it comes under the touch of Christ as Minister of the sanctuary. It is regulated by the Lord Jesus and sustained in the power of the Spirit, but it is assembly service - peculiarly glorious, commanding, I believe, the deepest interest of heaven - that is, persons united together with one thought, moving under the impulse of Christ and in the Spirit, expressing themselves in praise and in song that God might be glorified amongst His people and have His portion in response that is delightful to Himself. That beloved brethren is very great. I trust we value it at the true level at which it is to be valued and understand the point that to serve God in the assembly is our peculiarly privileged portion in these days, increasingly few remaining, in which the assembly is here in testimony yet sustaining the service of praise in the midst of the testimonial conditions that arise. Let us value these things.
But what I am engaged with now is not so much the service of praise in the assembly as the spirit of praise working amongst us all the time, as if what reaches us in such an abundance of blessing from God is quickly turned into praise in the hearts of His saints. So we have these two scriptures which are two of many so called doxologies in Scripture. The spirit of doxology is a very fine thing, the soul breaking out in the joy of receiving from God, the joy of standing in relation to God, breaking out in His praise and addressing something to Himself. I covet that we may know more of it and it is with that intent that these scriptures are read.
That at the end of the epistle to Romans is of very deep significance because that epistle brings man back into right relations with God and it is therefore basic to what we are saying. It brings man before God and into His presence in a way which is entirely right according to Himself. The epistle sets out for us the great basis of the glad tidings. Think of standing in right relations with God for His praise. What a triumph it is! We think of the maladjustment of everything in the world of men, we think how everything is adrift from what God has appointed for man in His presence and secured for Himself and think of that being set right and persons brought - and thank God they are still being brought - into right relations with God Himself. The greatness of that is to affect us increasingly - that there is a basis in the work of Christ and in the gift of the Spirit for man to stand and to stay and be sustained in right relations with God. So the question of sins is resolved, the question of righteousness is touched and is settled, God's righteousness for man is brought in. I say this to encourage the dear younger ones here. The question of righteousness is established on a right basis: "righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ towards all, and upon all those who believe", chap 3: 22. In one way, how simple God has made it for men to be in right relations with Himself. These are the terms of the glad tidings but it is wonderful to reflect how simple God has made it from His side that men, myriads of men, might stand in just and right relations with Himself that He might have the praise that is the due portion of His own heart.
Then we have justification; that is, the whole question of man's guilt is settled and resolved, not only that the man has sinned and has a history in sin and therefore has the guilt of sins upon him, not only that the sins are atoned for; but the guilt is discharged that men may not come before God in the sense of guilt, tending as that would to lack of liberty in God's presence. So Christ "has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification, chap 4: 25. How fine it is to go over these great fundamental points of the gospel because they promote praise in our hearts. We say, How great God is! How marvellous is the way He has come out toward us to bless us! How marvellous is the ground of blessing in the atoning work of Christ, the sacrifice of Himself! How marvellous is this precious gift of the Holy Spirit to link us with Christ where He is and to give us the experience in our hearts of the love of God "shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us", chap 5: 5. How great these things are! Is it not fitting that we be employed in praise? Sometimes how coldly - I say it for myself - we go over these great elements of the truth of the glad tidings when God would have an echo of praise from every heart as they are gone over.
Then we are established in peace, peace towards God - nothing to disturb the peace of those relations, settled relations with God Himself so that you know Him and speak to Him and have some consciousness that He is speaking to you. What did we do that peace might be established? We have to come to it that God has effected it all from His side and in His own love. Does this not call forth praise from the hearts of His saints? Does this not stimulate us with 'hallelujahs', not in any mere sentimental religious sense but the reality of what lies behind that simple expression of praise often repeated in the Psalms - Hallelujah! It is simple and spontaneous, yet yielding something for God Himself. We might well use it a bit more, not, as I said, in a sentimental way but in that the heart is affected by what God has effected, and of Christ as before us in the wondrous efficacy of all that He has effected for God and for us.
Then there is the power in which we enter into deliverance; deliverance from the law, deliverance from the practical workings of flesh in the power of the Spirit. What provision God has made for you dear young people and for all of us that we might be entirely free of the power and workings of sin and from all that would hold us in bondage. God has moved out toward us in grace to set us entirely free. Is that not an occasion of praise? Indeed it is! So we have the fulness of chapter eight of this epistle where the gift of the Spirit is the great point and where we are brought through the gift of the Spirit ·to cry "Abba, Father" (v 15); that is, our relation with God now is one supremely of love. We are brought into the place where we are loved with the Father's love and given power to answer to that love. It is the Spirit who cries in Galatians: it is the person who cries in Romans 8; and that is what God is bringing us to - entrance into the full relationships into which God has brought us by way of adoption into sonship. Do we know the Spirit of sonship, the enjoyment of sonship, the liberty of sonship? What an occasion of praise! What an occasion of outflow Godward from every heart true to Him and true to Christ when the liberty of sonship is experienced! And it is to be experienced, to be before God conscious that He loves us and that we stand in a settled relationship to Him in which He loves to receive the responses of our affections towards Himself. That, dear brethren, is most blessed - God bringing us near to Himself to know what He is in His blessed nature. What is the answer in us? Is there an answer in us? It enters into what I am seeking to speak of - the spirit of praise in our hearts that something goes back to God by way of response. The cry "Abba, Father" is itself a very deep and expressive one. It springs from the depths of the heart as it rightly is uttered: "Abba, Father". Our relation with God known as Father is real. Christianity, beloved brethren, older and younger brethren, is a matter of real settled relationships of love, not a passing matter, not a shallow matter, but a deep matter of settled relationships with God in love.
Then we get, in chapters 9, 10 and 11, the wonderful wisdom in which God has related His activities among the gentiles to His activities in Israel. Then we have the presenting of the body a living sacrifice in chapter 12, God securing us even as to our bodies for His own satisfaction. Then we get touches as to the ruling powers in chapter 13, that God has established us in right relations with rulers, with authorities, with kings, with governments.
All these things come into the course of this epistle and now at the end of it the apostle refers to God as "him that is able to establish you". God is able to establish us, to settle us, to bring us into a fullygrounded situation in relation to Himself without elements of uncertainty or doubt but we are free with God as established before Him on the ground of all that has been effected by Christ and secured for His pleasure. The securing of our hearts, the securing of ourselves for the pleasure of God, is not just a question of what we are as we find our part in the Supper and the service that follows it; it is a matter which extends over our whole course, that we stand secured for God's pleasure. That is what He has in mind, that is what is to govern us. Now comes this choice utterance, this choice doxology: "to him that is able to establish you". Paul goes on, he has more to say about God, as if in the very course of his utterances of praise he would remind us how great God is. How God delights in that - that we have some increasing sense of His glory, His greatness, His power, - His majesty, His wisdom, His love. What a God He is!
Then we have "according to the revelation of the mystery"; that is to say that God has a certain great line of truth, if I may call it that, which is peculiarly intimate in relation to Himself, presenting the excellence of thoughts which are peculiarly His in regard of Christ and the assembly. God has disclosed the elements of the mystery. The scripture reminds us that silence was kept as to them in the times of the ages - they were not disclosed. The time has come for God to disclose, so to speak, His best. And in the truth of the mystery His best is disclosed to the hearts of those who love Him. The great place that the assembly is to have with Christ, even in universal dominion, is embraced in the mystery, the mystery of God in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge - a marvellous region of· the truth which God has disclosed to His saints, peculiarly related to His own affections, the affections of Christ, the great realm of glory in which Christ has His place of pre-eminence and in which the assembly has her place with Him, great truth as to the mystery that God has caused to be disclosed. He disclosed it by revelation to Paul who has embraced it in his ministry to the saints and has committed it to us in a certain sense under the touch of the Spirit and the Spirit is able to sustain us in these relationships with Christ which properly belong to the mystery.
God has disclosed His very best! Does this not stimulate praise? Have our hearts been affected by the deep things of God? There is so much in this letter relating to our own personal histories and the way that God has come in to set us free, the way in which He has moved to establish us for His pleasure, the way in which He has moved now to disclose the finest elements of the truth to us that we may enter into them and enjoy them and be responsive in them. How great God is! That is the impression that is left and is intended to be left - how great God is! What can we do but praise Him? What can we do but respond to Him? What can our hearts do but respond to the love so rich, so full, so outflowing from that heart of His save to be found in praise?
So the last word is, "through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever. Amen". It is a doxology, it is an expression of praise; it conveys much about God Himself, that to which the heart responds, to which the heart springs up in response - a great matter, the spontaneous springing up in response as we get some realisation of how glorious God is in His greatness, His wisdom, His love, His power, all the attributes that are His; and there is a response from our hearts and we say "through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever. Amen". This is not, as I said at the beginning, just an expression of assembly response; it is something which the heart of the believer is brought into as he traverses the course that the truth has set out and as he enters into it in experience and proves in his own soul how great God is: not a question of receiving an assurance or of being told something in some word by someone but something that the heart has come into in the reality of soul experience producing an answer in directness and simplicity and spontaneity of praise to God.
Now when we come to Ephesians we have much more what is collective and I suppose these verses do find a special answer as God is served in the assembly in what we speak of as the service of praise to God. But I am concerned just to touch briefly the wealth of this utterance: "to him that is able to do far exceedingly above all which we ask or think, according to the power which works in us, to him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages. Amen". The first thing to notice is that there is a vessel in which such praise fitly has its place and that that vessel is the assembly - the assembly in Christ Jesus. The assembly is presented to us as the vessel of praise. How do we come into the assembly? Are we conscious of our part in it? Does the word 'assembly' mean anything to us in a vital sense? Does God assure us that it means a great deal to Him in what is pleasing to His heart? Have we really grasped God's thoughts concerning the assembly, the way in which He has set us together in relation with Christ and with one another, the way in which He has given us the Spirit, binding us in the gift of the Spirit into one great bundle of life and securing from us in that relation what answers to His own heart? How God loves to see us together; how God loves to affect us together; how He loves to see among us the kind of bonds of mutual affection and respect which rightly exist in the assembly - to see those bonds working so that the sensitiveness of what is due to Himself affects us one and all. How great the assembly is, the rich depository of every divine thought in purpose of grace to be entered into by us as we prove what it is to be known there, what is to be opened out there in the sense that the great things of God are opened out by the Spirit.
There is something due to God in respect of all this and it comes into expression in this scripture, "to him that is able". It is a question of what He is able to do; and what He is able to do is not limited by what we may conceive ourselves to be able to do, but "far exceedingly above all which we ask or think". God is before us in His own sufficiency to sustain the response that His heart delights in. What a glorious view of God this gives us, beloved brethren! How it stimulates us in the service of love which is to go on before Him that He is able to sustain us "far exceedingly above all which we ask or think, according to the power which works in us"; that is to say, as together we prove the Spirit in a singular sense "which works in us", the company is in mind, the way the Spirit affects the company, the way that the Spirit becomes resource to the company; a power works in us that there may be the excellence of what is due to God Himself in the company of His own, stimulated by the glory opened out to our hearts in Christ and in the Father's affections bringing about a response to God that is infinite blessedness and love and power.
Well, dear brethren, we, through grace, prove what it is to enter into this; we prove "the power that works in us" and it is of God that we should. He has secured us and called us into His great thoughts with this great end in mind. I long to develop a greater measure of responsiveness with us all the time to the greatness of divine things. Sometimes we seem very cold persons in relation to the warmth of the heart of God as His own thoughts are disclosed to us and He would warm our hearts and stimulate our response to Himself in reference not only to what He has effected in us (which is Romans) but in relation to the extent and glory and blessedness of His own thoughts in love. So the word is "to him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages". It goes on to eternity - wonderful thing that what is stimulated now and springing up in the hearts of those who love God is going to carry through into the eternal echoing response that shall fill the eternal scenes for His glory.
May we be helped of God to a greater measure of responsiveness to Himself. May it be characteristic of us not only at specific times - a responsiveness to God, the extent of His thoughts welling up in our hearts towards Him, for His Name's sake.
VANCOUVER
3 April 1976