Praise No.3 Praise Him in Communion

In the last lecture, I talked about the importance of the human mind. I hope you will enjoy this lecture. I hope you will enjoy this lecture.

1 Corinthians chapter 12, starting at the 12th verse. The body's a unit, though it's made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.

For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greek, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body's not made up of one part, but of many. If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.

And if the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you, and the head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment.

But God has combined the members of the body, and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the Church, God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But eagerly desire the greater gifts.

Amen. You might find it helpful if you had your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians in chapter 12. I'll be coming to that particular passage of Scripture in a moment or two.

For friends who don't generally worship with us on a Sunday, good to have you here. It's our practice to follow through either a doctrine of Scripture or a book of Scripture on a Sunday morning. And at present I'm engaged in reintroducing, albeit with somewhat different material, a theme that I touched on 18 months or so ago at our Wednesday evening Bible studies.

Namely the whole concept of praise. I don't intend to prolong this, maybe just another two Sundays, but it's very important that you and I know what it really means to praise the Lord. Not only biblically, though that of course is priority, but also experimentally.

After all it's no good listening to what is said from a pulpit if it's not fleshed out in terms of our experience and practice day by day. Listen to this. A. W. Tozer said, We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God.

Did you hear that? We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God. If I was to opt for the best summary of the word praise or the synonym, the close word worship, then I think I would take that. Or if you want an older writer, true worship.

True worship, he says, is to be personally and hopelessly in love with God. That the idea of a transfer of affection never remotely exists. It's important that I start with these two definitions, and I'll tell you why.

Because you may feel that some of the more modern scripture songs sometimes ooze with sentimentality. And in part I might be prepared to agree, but not on the whole. It's no way unmanly to sing of our Lord Jesus, isn't he wonderful, isn't he beautiful, and so forth.

A modern song. No more than it was in the evangelical revival in this country a couple of hundred years ago, for the Wesley brothers to start to pen their great hymns, which have never been beaten in terms of the expression of emotion and truth. Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.

Or if you want to go even further back, go to the 10th century. I haven't lived during all these decades and centuries, but I have read up on them. The oldest hymn in Christendom, fairest Lord Jesus, beautiful Savior, Son of God, and Son of Man.

You see the history of the church is replete with examples of singing the praise of God, in the most delicate and intimate fashions, to the extent that you might blush to invite others who don't have a faith relationship with the Lord Jesus, to enjoin, to join in the singing of such wonderfully intimate pieces of praise. Well it's good when we come together to praise God from a full heart. That's how we started in this little series.

Praise the Lord oh my soul, and all that is within me, everything that's about me, praising the Lord. Praise him personally. It's good to praise God in the congregation, into his courts with praise, into his gates with thanksgiving.

I took you to the, to the geography of the tabernacle in Old Testament times, and told you last week if you remember, about the various places, the various stages through which you went to be next to the holiest place of all. When the New Testament, when the psalmist says God inhabits the praise of his people, well he did so literally, as well as spiritually. All around the holy of holies, were these gates through which one passed, into the courts of thanksgiving.

And from full hearts the old Hebrews would praise their Lord, in a most enjoyable, in a most spontaneous, in a most lively fashion. Well I also, you recall, told you that worship and praise are not necessarily things that one feels like doing, as you slip into a church. Now this is the problem isn't it, when I take a subject like this, how do I cope with a lady who's just lost her husband, as was the case a couple of weeks ago.

The last thing that one wants to do, is to slip into a mode of praise. Or maybe you've had a particularly rough week, something's gone wrong in the business, or in the family. Or maybe that you know you have let the Lord down.

It's not easy then is it, to praise God from a full heart. And yet scripture enjoins us that when we come together, we are to worship the Lord. And so there must, if you like, be a sort of pre-worship period.

And I illustrated this by referring to our dear brother Leslie, when he played his violin at the front of the church on so many, many occasions. Now he didn't just pick up the violin and start to play, did he? If you happened to be in at ten past six, you'd have heard some very strange noises coming from that violin. What was he doing? Well he was tuning it.

If you played a harp, you would tune your harp. It's only the larger instruments, that the piano and the organ, that they maintain their tune for for some time. But even they, at times, have to be tuned up.

Well similarly, when we come to church, we need to tune our hearts. Again I'm quoting the 17th and 18th century people here. I sometimes feel more at home with those folk.

We are to tune our hearts, to sing his praise. Elisha does not blush to say when he's asked to, to direct someone as to what the purposes of God are, bring me a minstrel. Let me listen to someone sing, and that will calm my mind, and help to set the antennae of my spirit, so that I can pick up what the Lord's Word is for me.

Will you take this pastorally? I would just like to ask you, and I'll try and get the message through to the Sunday School boys and girls, on a Sunday morning, just as the service is about to start, to quieten down a little bit. Good to greet one another, but around half past ten, or shall we settle for 27 minutes past ten, would be good just to have a little bit of quieter moments in the tab, so that some of us, who don't find it easy to rush into praise, can tune our hearts with a reverend quietness. I took you to the Jewish pattern of worship.

We had a look at some of the Psalms. I say I took you to it, there's too much to say to have given you anything but just a, just a summation, anything but just a summary. Now as we move into the New Testament, we discover that the New Testament people of God, as we would expect, are also praising the Lord.

They're praising the Lord in communion, and by communion I don't just mean, though I'm going to zoom in on it especially, I don't just mean the Lord's table. We say in the creed, and we repeat the creed unblushingly here at this tab, because we believe it, I believe in the communion of the saints. That means I believe in the fellowship of one heart with another, brother, brother, sister, sister, across the sexes.

We believe in communion. We believe in relating to one another. That is part of worship.

The billiard ball theology that may apply in some places of worship does not apply here. Two balls hit one another and go into separate pockets. I've used the illustration again.

That is not the communion of the saints. Maybe the confrontation, but it's certainly not the communion of the saints, and we are to praise him in communion. Do you rejoice when it's a Sunday? Do you know how the old Hebrews, if I can just go back to them for a moment, do you know how they used to look enthusiastically to the dawning, not just to the Sabbath day, but every day, because they believed that every day could be a day of worship.

They would have their watch out men on the high places, like for example, the summit of Carmel, and they would look for the dawning of a new day, and when they saw the sun just begin to rise in the heavens, they would put, or the person on duty would put the trumpet to their lips, and they would blow out a trumpet blast. That trumpet blast would be taken up by the person on the next highest peak, and it would be relayed all the way to Jerusalem. So at the sound of the trumpet blast, they would know a new day had dawned, and it was good to praise the Lord, and so they got working with their morning sacrifice.

Did you know that? Their call to worship was a very triumphant one. It was a very wonderful one, and in a special sense, this is carried through to the believers in the New Testament, when on the Lord's Day, in particular, but not exclusively, they would praise the Lord. For a moment, I want you to think away 2,000 years.

Just shed them like that. It wouldn't be nice just to be able to shed a few years. Some of those would settle for that, but just shed 2,000 for a moment, alright? We're in Greece.

There's no denominational setup, praise the Lord. There are no hymn books. There are a number of Christians.

Let's settle for the Greek city of Corinth. There are two fairly affluent people who live there, Greeks who've come through from Rome, husband and wife. They've got a fairly large place, like you might find at Charmondeen, or wherever, and there's a typical Greek entrance, through which you pass with its marble pillars, into a courtyard, with some shielding from the light of the sun.

Now, it's probably in a situation like that, that the Christians in Corinth came to worship the Lord. There was no building, as such. It was just the home of one of the folks who become Christian.

They would come at the end of the, of Sunday. It would be a hard day for many of them. The majority, remember, this is not an affluent congregation, three-quarters, probably four-fifths are slaves.

Been a hard day. Just one or two wealthy people, and so they're reclining, Grecian fashion, or they sit down on the floor, because there won't be that many chairs. I don't know how many gather, a couple of dozen, three dozen, maybe, maybe 50.

Before they start to actually have their worship, they, they, they eat food. Remember we're talking about a slave society, where food is not easily available, and they believe that as they shared food with each other, and conversation with each other, so they were enjoying fellowship. Actually the practice became, almost formularized in, in the, in the word agape feast.

Later on, after, after their, their stomachs had been, been fed, and they were satisfied, somebody would pick up a precursor of a violin, or a guitar, and start to play it. Maybe one of the Psalms of David, and gradually everyone would take up the refrain. No hymn books, but they knew the Psalms.

The ancient mind was much more attentive, memory-wise, than ours, incidentally. No, there wasn't a point when someone could open the New Testament, because there just wasn't a New Testament. But, but what there were, moving around, passed on from person to person, round the various churches in Greece, were little scraps of paper, on which were written sayings of Jesus.

Maybe the Beatitudes, or a part of his teaching from the Sermon on the Plain, or maybe one of the miracles that he'd done, that was written round. These documents, it's well known historically, they circulated before the New Testament was formed. Maybe one of those precious documents was in the pocket of one of the, of the Corinthian Christians.

So he, she gets up and, and reads it. And then, because they're a praising community, they don't just deal with the songs in the Old Testament. They, they start to, to make up their own.

For example, those of you who've got the NIV version of the Bible, or the AV for that matter, but it's a little more plain in the AV, turn to Ephesians 4, will you? Or rather Ephesians 5. And in the 14th verse, you will discover, in inverted commas, wake up O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Ephesians 5, 14. Why is that in inverted commas? Well you see it's a quotation, probably a quotation from one of the first scripture songs, spiritual songs, of the emerging Church.

It's not deeply theological. In fact, in one sense, it's quite blunt, isn't it? Wake up O sleeper. Maybe they'd had Paul going on for a little while, so they wanted to wake one another up.

I'm sure that wasn't the case. Wake up O sleeper, those who sleep spiritually in death, and Christ will shine on you. Not terribly long, maybe they're sung it several times, maybe it's around, I don't know.

But that's one of their early songs. Turn on, if you're interested, to Philippians and chapter 2. Sometimes the songs would be more theological. And again, you find the same indentation in your passage, if you're following the NIV, from the 6th verse through to the 11th.

Philippians chapter 2, an early Christian song, or a hymn, that they would sing out in the praise of the Lord. Many examples I could give you. I'll just satisfy myself with one more.

Go to 1 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16. And there you've got a great statement of belief about the Lord Jesus. Again set up in terms of a song.

He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit. This is the last verse of 1 Timothy 3. Was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up into glory. Now that would be the sort of thing that would happen in this service.

That they wouldn't all be sitting behind one another, looking at one another's necks. But they would be in a Greek fashion of sitting in semicircle. And they'd address one another in song, as they would address one another in speech.

They weren't afraid, because they weren't British, of staring one another in the eye, in a gentle fashion. I do mean that quite, quite sincerely. For example, if you go to Ephesians and chapter 5, no need to check this one, just listen to me.

Description of early worship in Ephesus. Be filled with the Spirit, speak to one another. Did you notice that? To one another, with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord. That's what would happen. There's Paul writing in 1 Corinthians 12.

What is it brethren, when you come together, each one of you has a psalm, each one of you has a tongue, each one of you has a doctrine. You see the idea. In no way am I extrapolating from Scripture, and putting verses together, and making a picture that's not true.

I can demonstrate it from quite a lot of the epistles of Paul. That this is how early church worship proceeded. In the middle of, or at the beginning, or at the end, at some point, somebody may feel that they got a special message from God, for that assembly.

It wasn't preaching as such, it was a personal word from the Lord, known as prophecy. Not necessarily inspired in the same way as the Bible is inspired, because it had to be judged. But the heart of it was from the heart of God, relayed to the people through someone who felt particularly sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit.

And they would get up and they would share it. And Paul applauded this, you remember, in 1 Corinthians and chapter 12. Those of you who are familiar with the context of what, of what was being said.

And then at one point, at one point, how long the proceedings have been going on, I don't know. I shouldn't imagine they were short meetings, but they probably just had one meeting on the Sunday, you see. At one point, somebody, the person who was in charge, one of the elders, would lean over and take some of the bread that still remained from the Agape feast.

And he'd remind them, brothers and sisters, that this bread stands for the reason why we're here, the broken body of Jesus Christ. And together they would pass the bread, and maybe bless one another as they did so. And then they would take later on, perhaps after a period of time had elapsed of further worship, they take a goblet of wine.

And they would be reminded of the blood of our Lord Jesus, which was shed for the many, for the remission of sins. And they would drink together, as they passed it from person to person. And maybe before that, or after that, one of the teacher elders would bring to them some, some word from Scripture, from Old Testament, maybe the development of some theme from a letter that they'd received from, from the Apostle Paul.

And then perhaps a couple of the Hallel Psalms, Psalms of worship. And then they'd go, with a hug, with a kiss, with an embrace. They'd leave one another.

They'd go into the darkness of the night, not just literally so, but the darkness, the cesspool, that Corinth was. These people, different, because of what Jesus had done. These people were this common denominator, who trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who were prepared to hazard their own lives, for the sake of the gospel.

Sunday by Sunday, they came together, and they found strength in communion. They found strength in the actual, as I use the word specifically now, communion table, around which everything else was centered. We can thank the Brethren movement, at the beginning of the century, for putting the communion table back where it should be, in Protestant worship, at the heart of, alongside with, the proclamation of the Word of God.

So what I want briefly, my, my final moments to do, is I bring you to, to 1 Corinthians 12, is just to set out for you, as I understand it, from this chapter, and from the rest of Scripture, the basic facets of what it means to worship God, in the communion, around the Lord's table. Now it seems to me, that the first thing these people were engaged in doing, was what I will call, the act of recollection. They were looking back.

Look at chapter 11 will you, of that epistle, 1 Corinthians, and let's turn to the 23rd, and to the 24th verses, 1 Corinthians chapter 11. For I received from the Lord, what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, you see they're looking backwards aren't they? To the time, for them, only a year or so, maybe, well more than a year or so maybe ten years or so ago, when the whole event occurred, the act of setting up the communion table, before our Lord Jesus left the upper room, went into Gethsemane's garden, and was ultimately arrested, and hideously died.

Died in a hideous fashion. They recalled it, but you see their recollection was twofold. It wasn't just the recall of what Christ had done for them at the cross, it was also a recall of the fulfillment of the Old Testament.

How did the Old Testament Jews look upon God? Well he was the God of their salvation. What salvation? Well the deliverance from Egypt, you recall? He opened the Red Sea. Aye, but what happened before the Red Sea was opened? Back in Egypt, there was the Passover meal, a lamb was slain, blood was daubed on the doorposts of the houses, the angel of death passed over the Hebrews, and that was the focal point of Old Testament worship, praising God for the emancipation from Egypt.

But here is a great emancipation, says Paul writing to the Corinthians in the fifth chapter, Christ our Passover slain for us. How marvellous to be able to recall this, and that's what they did. Each Lord's Day evening, an act of recollection, part of praising Him in communion.

But then it seems to me that the second aspect of, and I'm just picking out these various nuances, these various aspects of teaching to help you, is that of introspection. Again look at the eleventh chapter will you, and stay on from the passage that we just read, dropping your eyes down to the twenty-seventh verse. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

You see, you can't praise God unless you first examine yourself, can you? I mean if you come into church and you've got something against people, or maybe you've slipped into some particular sin which you haven't confessed, then it is improper, I repeat it is improper for you to participate of the Lord's table. You can't do that. Let a man examine himself.

I take a calculated risk as pastor of the church, every time I open the communion table. Some of my brothers in the strict Baptist churches would say that we ought to check the spiritual well-being of people before we offer them bread and wine. I understand their argument in principle, but I don't concede it in practice.

Because it seems to me that the investigation, the introspection ought to be engaged in by the person themselves. I can't tell you how you are before the Lord. I may have an idea, but you know.

And if there's no unconfessed sin, as you've examined your heart, or if there was sin as you've confessed it, then you are prepared to take the bread and the wine and to praise God in so partaking. But it wasn't just a question of introspection was it? Nor just a question of recollection. There is a sense in which there is proclamation.

Look out. We're talking of the way that this feast testified to the outside world, the allegiance of the participant in the cause of Christ. Look at verse 26.

Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. It's the sacrament. Sacrament is a Latin term.

Sacramentum. It really has to do with the army. Talked about the British Air Force.

Well here's the Roman army. What did the Roman soldiers do from time to time? Hand over heart, fist clenched, indicating loyalty, allegiance to Caesar. Now when you take bread and wine, you are proclaiming to the world, that as for you and maybe your loved ones, you have chosen Jesus Christ as the captain of your salvation.

There is one King. The King is not Caesar. The King is Jesus Christ.

Aye, it's so easy for me to say that with raised voice in worthing tab. But my friend, we're back 2,000 years. When to say that could have cost your life.

Your lifestyle could have been on the table so to speak, simply because of your confession. But such were our brave, illustrious forebears in the Christian faith. They were prepared to do this and take the risk.

As someone has put it, the communion table. For them was not battle rations, was battle rations for Christian soldiers, not cream cake for Christian layabouts. The sacrament, the oath, upwards to the Lord, outwards to others.

The proclamation as to what they believe. And then, it seems to me that involved in this act of praising God in the communion, is what I would call identification. Look at the 10th chapter, will you, and the 17th verse.

And here the Apostle spells out what was made even more plain in the reading from 1 Corinthians 12, as Bruce brought it to us earlier. And that is that Christian people are not saved in isolation. Go back to that loaf.

There are bits and pieces broken off the loaf. In our sense, in our custom, actually prepared beforehand. In their custom, in the early church, one loaf passed around.

And as they bread from that loaf, what they were, what was it representing? Well, their fellowship with each other. We are all part of the same loaf. Part of the same body for whom Jesus died.

So you see, you cannot have, if you please, the privatization of Christian faith. It does not agree, it does not belong to Scripture. Did you hear what I said? I know it was a language of 10 Downing Street, but nonetheless, it needs to be said very clearly.

You cannot privatize your faith, not in biblical Christianity. You are saved in community. We are not a bunch of hermits who come together on a Sunday, from the caves of High Salvington, or Shanktonbury Ring, or Sisbury Ring, are we? We are brothers and sisters who have been made part of the one body of Christ.

And you can't have it any other way. If you want it another way, then go and write your own gospel. Because it's not the gospel of the New Testament.

Some of us find it more easy to say good morning to our neighbors, than what we do to express the benediction to one another as brothers and sisters in the Lord. I find that a very strange phenomenon, don't you? We are bound together through the communion table, which bespeaks the death of our Lord Jesus. He shed blood, his broken body.

We identify and we, and we look around. This is part of the koinonia. It's point, part of indicating, as Ephesians 4 tells us, that we're one body.

We belong to one faith. We are bound together by one baptism. And we're going to share heaven together for eternity.

So start getting to know one another now. It will save a little bit of time, earlier, later on. Proclamation, identification.

And then, and I've almost touched on it, and here I'm just about the end of my summation of the teaching of 1 Corinthians 11 and 12. Anticipation, looking forward. Look will you at the 26th verse of that 11th chapter.

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he come. Here's our Savior. In the upper room with the disciples, he's inaugurating this feast, this, this communion table.

And, and, and he tells them in the, in the most wonderful words, in the 22nd chapter of Luke's Gospel, and the 15th through to the 17th. I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God, after taking the cup he gave thanks, and so forth.

You see it anticipates. Are you aware of this? This same Jesus is coming back again. This should be at the forefront of your life, in terms of the stimulus for the way that you're living.

You see there is that in praise which anticipates, as also that which recollects. There is that in praise which identifies ourselves with one another. All these are facets, they're all ingredients of praising.

Do you appreciate this? We praise him in communion. Not just the taking of the loaf and the wine ourselves, but as we do it amongst our brothers and sisters. We praise him as a family.

And unless there's a family atmosphere, aspect to praise, then we fall short of what the New Testament teaches. So why is it so important that we look back to the early days? Because you see whatever our principles may be now, and however complex things may have got, if we've got to the situation where we've, where we have jettisoned all these principles, then we need to think it over again, and revise some of our Protestant liturgy. This type of gathering facilitated maximum contribution.

It presented, as I've said, the privatization of religion. And it hinged the social to the spiritual. They had a meal together, because they were slaves, largely so.

Before they partook of the bread and wine, and they found no, no contradiction whatsoever in doing this. Now my brother and sister, my final moment. Have you not only heard me, are you prepared to make concessions yourself? Praise him with your whole heart.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise him from the depths of your being. Praise him in the sanctuary, with his people, the same if not greater enthusiasm than the Old Testament Hebrews had.

Praise him, praise him in communion, around the communion table, and in koinonia, in fellowship with one another. All this, I tell you, on the authority of the Word of God, is bound up in that one word, praise. Fail to understand the gist, and you'll miss the emphases of both Old Testament and new.

But understand, and enter into it, and then you'll find the exquisite experience, as I quoted from Tozer, that the greatest preoccupation that you're called to in life, is a preoccupation with God. And that's the greatest of all pursuits and experiences. Let's sing once more about our loving Lord Jesus, and all that he's achieved for his church, as we praise him in the singing of John Kent, an 18th century man.

His hymn, "'Tis the church triumphant singing, worthy of a lamb." One, three, two.