Praise No.4 Praise Him in the Word

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave And now I'd like to read from the scriptures.

You'll find it today in Psalm 119. Psalm 119, verse 105 to 112. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

I have taken an oath and confirmed that I will follow your righteous laws. I have suffered much. Preserve my life, O Lord, according to your word.

Accept, O Lord, the willing praise of my mouth and teach me your laws. Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law. The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from your precepts.

Your statutes are my heritage forever. They are the joy of my heart. My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end.

May God bless this reading from his holy word and to his name be all the praise. Amen. O scribe, be grateful to the Lord your God.

Return his merit and all his praise unto us. Adopted country of our friends the Websters, help us to be grateful to you for this. We pray your blessing, Father, to be upon those of us who are seeking a deeper experience of your grace.

Bring, Lord, back into our knowledge, for those of us who have lost it, the thrill of falling in love with our Lord Jesus Christ. For those who doubt their salvation, may their hearts this day be strangely warmed by the impress of your Spirit upon them. Those, Lord, who perhaps have gone through difficult experiences recently or in the past which are still hanging on in the present, minister to them and set minds at perfect peace with you and with their fellows this day, we ask.

Bless the Church of God, bless our country. We thank you for what you did in the 18th century, for the pouring out of revival, for the sweeping of thousands into the kingdom. O God, in your grace, do it again, we pray.

We thank you, Father, for folk here who love you and love one another. We commit our church family to you. We pray for those who specially need your help.

We bring young Christopher Ford to you today on the occasion yesterday of his birthday. Be with that lad and bless him with his particular need, we ask of you. And other parents who have need for children who have handicaps, grant them grace, we pray.

And those, O Lord, who are in any way distressed or perplexed, or people who are concerned about adult children that have not followed in the pathway that they set for them, Lord, give them peace of mind and grant to them yet household salvation. Now come upon us, Father, and do us good as we come around your word and as once again we ascribe our heart's thirst for you in this lovely paraphrase from the Psalms. O God, in your grace, do it again, we pray.

We thank you, Father, for folk here who love you and love one another. We bring young Christopher Ford to you today on the occasion yesterday of his birthday. And those, O Lord, who are in any way distressed or perplexed, grant them grace, we pray.

Now the men, everyone. Please be seated. Let's just go back for a moment to that 119th Psalm.

It's a beautiful psalm because it speaks about the word of God. It's a repetitive psalm, but as I've told you, repetition is not necessarily unacceptable, provided you allow your mind to go into various areas for which you can thank God. And the psalmist does not blush in the longest psalm in Scripture, the second part of each verse, to thank God in a different way for the benefit of what up to his time of writing was the Bible, of course considerably longer now with the addition of many other books.

But there in the 32nd verse of the 119th Psalm, you get this particular comment made. I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free. We have a lot to praise God for, for his word.

I wonder if you appreciate just how much a miracle it is that we have preserved for us down the centuries and available to us today the human language in several varieties of translation, all in one sense making a contribution to our comprehension of what God wants you and me to know. The B-I-B-L-E, yes, that's the book for me. I stand alone on the word of God, the B-I-B-L-E.

I remember as a child back in Yorkshire being taught that. I wasn't too sure that I understood what it meant, but nonetheless I've come to appreciate the value of scripture. And I say unblushingly, and perhaps I'm amongst the minority within the so-called clergymen in this town, that I do accept the supreme authority and inerrancy of the word of God.

Listen to the psalmist as on many occasions in this particular psalm, he tells us how much he delights in the word of God. Ten times he calls the word his delight. I've not got time to go through all the references.

You can have a lovely spiritual exercise this afternoon checking my arithmetic up. On one occasion he calls the word of God his joy. On another occasion, on 11 occasions, he says how he loves it.

Now listen to this, this is John Wesley. I want to know one thing, says Wesley, the way to heaven. God himself has condescended to teach the way.

He hath written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book. At any price, give me the book of God.

Now it's interesting that we start off on this fourth or fifth study on praise by focusing our attention on the word of God and John Wesley's convictions about the authority of scripture. There's one book that talks about heaven. Well, says John, bring me that book.

At any price, at any cost, I want it. And it was his desire, as I'll be sharing this evening, it was his desire to proclaim the word of God to ignorant people 250 years ago, which God used along with the desire of Charles and George Whitefield in the promotion of a spectacular revival the like of which we haven't seen since. It was centered on the word of God.

Now there are many ways in which you can praise God when you come to church. You can praise him in song. You can praise him in a heartfelt feeling of indebtedness to him.

You can praise him for the fellowship that you enjoy with brothers and sisters, the communion of the saints. You can praise him as you let your heart be moved by the music that you hear played. But you don't reach a cut-off point in worship when the word of God is expounded.

This book is given as a tool whereby we praise God. And in one sense, what I'm trying to share with you this morning is perhaps the most important aspect of my teaching on praise and worship because the most spectacular gift that our Lord God has given to us besides his son is his word inscripturated, located in one book, which you and I have recourse to. So first of all, I want to speak to you about perusing the word.

Praise him as you peruse, perusing the word. Praise him as you hear the preaching of the word. Praise him as you hear, what I'll define later, the percolating of the word, the presuming, the perusing of the word.

Well, by that, of course, I mean read it. Do you read this book? Has the altar of your Bible reading been repaired if it has been faulty? Some of you will realize my reference backtracks to two or three weeks ago when preaching on Elijah on Carmel. Do you read it regularly? Or is your Scripture study as much in a mess as was that altar of the Hebrews? I don't like things in a mess.

I guess we're all different temperaments, and some people can work quite comfortably with things jumbled up. Well, be that as it may. You must have your preference, and I must have mine.

But as far as your Bible study is concerned, tell me, is it in a mess? Or do you come regularly to the word of God to find things that God will say to you there? Because whatever keeps me from my Bible, says A.W. Tozer, is an enemy no matter how harmless it may seem to me. Perusing the word, do it regularly. And then as you approach Bible reading, you ought to approach it in a contemporary fashion.

Use the Bible as though it is God's work speaking to you today, as indeed it is. Will you turn, those of you who've got fairly nimble fingers, I'm going to give you a few references this morning. Will you turn to Galatians? And there you will discover in the fourth chapter and the 22nd verse a most interesting comment.

You'll wonder why it's interesting, because actually it seems to be somewhat difficult to grasp. But it's not the illustration that I'm referring to. It's the lead-in to an Old Testament quotation.

And the way that he uses this remark that I think is important. Here is Paul, and he's bringing to the attention of the Galatians something that happened years ago in the experience of the founder of the Jewish nation, Abraham. And he puts it like this.

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free, and so forth. If you were to look earlier on in the chapter to the 21st verse, he says this. Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? If you're reading the authorized version of the Bible, then you've got a better translation.

It says here, Do you not hear the law? Have you got the point? Let me express it again. Here is Paul quoting a law that was given to Abraham years and years ago. And yet he speaks as though that law is speaking now.

Do you not hear the law? It's not just what was written, but it is written, the present tense. Because generally speaking, God is always generally speaking. He speaks to us through Scripture.

So when you read Scripture, you don't just read it regularly, but you read, if you please, contemporarily. As though God is using His Word to your specific situation, as indeed He is. Now if you didn't follow my previous example, here's another one.

Go later on today to the book of Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, and you will find special messages to individual churches, seven churches. And at the end of each message, you will discover this comment. Let him that hears, hear what the Scripture says to the churches.

What God wrote to one church, He also expects another church to respond to. What God writes to one group of people, He expects individuals to respond to. What God wrote out last year, or last century, or to be more precise, 2,000 years ago, He has written it as though the ink is still wet on the page, and He's directed the letter to you.

That's what I mean by reading Scripture regularly and reading Scripture contemporarily. But why not also ensure, as a result of that, in your perusing of the Word, indeed this goes without saying, that what you read, you read seriously. Dr. Packer, a great Anglican preacher says this, and theologian, I imply that our eternal well-being may depend on our attending to the Bible.

Now, it seems to me that that's not a remark up for discussion. This is perfectly true. Now, they're bandying the Word of God around in Parliament at the moment.

I wish that all the quotations were sincere. It seems to me that they're concerned, the various political parties, to secure what is known the high moral ground. Now, it's not for me to make political observations or evaluations, but I have a right, when politicians quote the Word of God, to ask them, are you quoting the Word of God seriously? Are you quoting the Word of God as though it is contemporaneous? As though it speaks to our situation? As though it has an authority for Parliament? Because that's what the Word of God claims.

And, incidentally, that's what the founders of our democratic system claimed. Because the system of government that we have in our country has its early moorings in the Word of God. So I have right to make the observations that I just have.

In some of the older Protestant Reformed churches, do you know what they used to do? It was really to try to put down, in one sense, the emphasis on the altar in the Church of Rome. And instead of the altar, they had a pulpit. They usually built the pulpit as high as you could.

Occasionally, I've been in churches where I have got so giddy, because I have a terrible problem with heights, I've had to go out of the pulpit in the middle of preaching and go down below because I was going to feel that I was losing my balance. But the reason why they put the pulpit high was because they were trying to emphasize the authority of Scripture over against the authority of the Church. And in some of the Protestant Reformation churches, at one point, five minutes before the service commenced, some somber-looking deacon would walk down the main aisle with an open Bible and place it in that condition at the front of the church.

And it was symbolic to all the people who were gathered at least five minutes before the service started that this church took its authority from, recognized the inerrancy of, Holy Scripture. You must read the Bible seriously. You must read it regularly.

You must read it as though it's God's contemporary word for you. It says, Thomas Watson, a Puritan, think that every time you read, God is speaking to you. And another preacher from his vintage, as in paradise, so in Scripture.

God walks searching for man. Do really read the book as though God is searching for you. I have a highlighter pen that I generally have with me when I'm reading Scripture for myself.

And I've got a Bible here that's almost tatters, as you see. But I did once read that if your Bible is falling apart, it probably indicates that you're not. I'm not too sure whether I could piously apply that conclusion to myself, but at least this Bible here is almost getting to the state where I can't use it anymore.

But I don't mind using this old, beloved Bible of mine with a highlighter pen when I'm reading it. If I feel that it's specially applicable to me, I just underline it and I sort of chew on it. And that's a verb that's used in the Book of Common Prayer, incidentally, at least in the homilies of the Church of England, chewing on the Word of God.

It's God for the Bible. Perusing the Word. Do you praise Him for that? And what about the preaching of the Word? That's part of worship, isn't it? If you go to Nehemiah in chapter 8 and verse 8, I'll not turn to it, but it's easy to remember, 2.8, there you will find that the function of the priests is they rediscovered the Old Testament Scriptures which had been lost somewhere, put on one side, can you believe it, in the temple.

They hadn't had the Book of Law, the Book of Deuteronomy for a long, long time, and suddenly somebody found it. And all the priests were given the task of not only reading Scripture, but putting the context of Scripture so that people could understand it. Now don't you appreciate that tucked away in the Old Testament is the raison d'etre, is the reason for the existence of a preaching ministry.

You don't start worship at ten minutes past eleven or quarter past seven, or whenever it is, and the singing is done, someone starts to preach. In one sense, that takes you into a new, perhaps intense, aspect of worship. Some would even say it takes you to the pinnacle of worship.

Now preaching these days is not popular. It never has been, actually. Listen to Trollope.

Do you remember some of you from your GCE days twenty years ago having to read Anthony Trollope? Well, he had some very unkind things to say about preachers. Listen to him in one of his novels. There is no great hardship at present inflicted on mankind in our civilization as the necessity of listening to sermons.

No one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman. He is the bore of the age, the nightmare that disturbs our Sabbath's rest and makes God's service distasteful. We are not forced into church, no.

But we desire more than that. We desire not to be forced to stay away. Well, that was rather rough, wasn't it, as far as preachers are concerned? But the attitude to sermons has never been particularly popular.

But on the other hand, in churches where the Bible is proclaimed and where people have fallen in love with the author of the Bible, that reaction does not really exist. I mean, the only reason why you come and listen to a half-hour's address on a Sunday morning, and sometimes even longer if I'm feeling generous, is because you have a commitment to believe that through the proclamation of the word, God draws closer to you and your understanding is enlarged. And you praise him for that, do you not? Two things.

What might a congregation expect of a preacher? Well, they might well expect this, as I was saying at Ted Davies' induction service, and I do hope you're praying for Ted in these first couple of Sundays in his new assignment. I was saying at his induction service that a congregation has the right to expect a preacher never to climb into the pulpit. Now hear me metaphorically.

He always comes down into the pulpit. In one sense, geographically, that is true in the tab. It's not true in every church because every church doesn't have this architecture, or the problems this architecture actually brings.

But there is a truth in this. There is a truism that the man who stands before people on behalf of God, is an imposter if he hasn't stood before God on behalf of the people. So at least the congregation can expect this when they're listening to the proclamation of the word.

And they can perhaps hope that the preacher might do a John the Baptist. You remember how John pointed the way for Jesus, then cleared the way, and then got out of the way. So as far as John's ministry was concerned, he left them with Jesus.

He must increase, but I must decrease. The preacher worth his salt wants to hide behind the word so that what lives on in the mind of the person is not the vehicle, but the actual message that's proclaimed. And that sense, that intuitive sense that God has spoken and drawn near, that's an amazing thing that God does that through men and women who proclaim his word in sincerity and truth.

And when that happens, you should be praising God. You really should, because it's part of God's gift to you. What can the congregation expect of the preacher? But let's invert the question.

What might a preacher expect from the congregation? Have you ever thought that? Anyone been pertinent, rude enough, even to suggest that the preacher can expect something from the congregation? You see, good congregations make for good preaching. It's not a backhanded compliment to say that I never have problems filling this pulpit with people who want to come, because they do know that here they will get a listening. And I acknowledge and honor you for that.

You see, it's not every congregation that could cope with 30 minutes or 40 minutes of gospel proclamation, of the exposition of scripture. We're in a society which is difficult, much more difficult than the days of John and Charles Wesley, where in any case, the clergymen were sort of, well, I once read the BBC and the listener describe it. I thought they were a little callous too.

They were the pop stars of that generation. But today, the pop stars are those who steal across the media and have a generous amount of time. It's not easy for people who are visually orientated to become word orientated, is it? 98% of our homes have a television set.

The average home has the television set on for 36 hours in a week. The average viewing time is 16 hours plus. Put that through on your computer and the average person spends eight years in front of his television.

Check that one out this afternoon if you don't believe my statistics. I didn't work them out actually but I can quote you my source. Now because of this, you see, which we never had to cope with in days gone by, it's not so easy for people to listen to the proclamation of words.

And sometimes the church has supplemented the preaching by visual aids, by dramatic illustration, and so on and so forth. I've got nothing to say about that, nothing against it. I don't mind supplementing the preaching.

What I object to is supplanting. The two run together, you see. Jesus says, Luke 8, 18, to his congregation, consider carefully how you listen.

And in Mark 4, 24, consider carefully what you hear, which I suppose amounts to the same thing. You see, in our Lord's day, a congregation was not simply passive. I love preaching in Latin America.

I've only twice had the opportunity of preaching in different countries in Latin America but it's a choice experience. I'd love to preach in the southern states, in the negro churches there, in the black churches. Because what happens there, as my informants tell me, similar to Latin America, is that you don't just preach, there's a sort of interaction between the preacher and the congregation.

Preach it brother, that's right brother. And along you wonder, you know, who is really behind all this? Is it them or is it you? And someone as conservative as John Start applauds that as being dialogical preaching in which there is the combination of the mind and the emotional response of the congregation without the preacher. At least you know they're listening.

To view a congregation as being merely passive recipients of a spoken word is to put a sermon in the same category as a lecture or an after dinner speech. There are disappointing preachers. There are also disappointing congregations.

And Jesus knew one that melted into the background after he preached a superb revelation of the Father's purposes through him. And he spun round to his disciples and he said, will you also go away? You can praise God in the perusing of the word, in the preaching of the word. Let me bring my remarks to some form of conclusion as I take you to my third pivot.

The percolating of the word. You know what percolating is? You're going to have coffee after your beef and whatever you have in your home for Sunday lunch, are you? You have a coffee sort of making rude noises as you entertain your guests. Percolates.

And there along the aroma is round your house. Can't you smell it now? And you wish you'd hurry up so that you could get to your coffee. Colossians 3.16 says of God's word, let the word of God dwell in you richly as though you put an additional extra large helping of coffee into the percolator so the word of God should be in you richly.

But then if I can just run riot with metaphor from coffee to the alabaster box of perfume. Here is the lady in the presence of Jesus, you remember? And she comes along and she breaks it open so that the aroma fills the whole of the house where she and Jesus and the disciples are. Now it seems to me that that is what is meant by the percolating of the word.

I'm not speaking of the proclamation of the word in terms of those who are gifted with a specific public ministry. But I am saying that the percolating of the word is something that all of us can engage in and praise God for. Let me illustrate it by turning you to Luke 2.19. Here is Mary.

As you're finding that chapter, I'll put the context in, though it's easy for you to suppose. Here is Mary. She has been given intelligence as to what is going to happen to her.

It's a choice probably no more than teenage maiden who has been elected to be the vehicle through which the Son of God will be born into this world. Verse 19, Luke 2. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. She treasures them up.

She ponders them in her heart. Drop your eyes down to the bottom of the chapter and you will discover there verse 51. His mother, Jesus' mother, treasured all these things in her heart.

The Jerusalem version of the Bible, often used in Catholic circles, has this offering. She stored them up. What she had been told, she stored up.

You remember the Old Testament psalmist in the authorized version? Thy word have I hid in my heart. Here is Mary. She's not called to proclaim the gospel, but she is called to allow the percolating of the word of God.

She's there at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. The first sign, Cana of Galilee, Mary is present. She's there at the crucifixion.

She's there in the upper room. You don't read of her preaching, but you have every presumption, every reason to make the presumption that she would talk about what she had pondered over. You see the point? To what degree do you do that? Do you allow the word of God to dwell in you richly? Do you allow the word of God sometimes to spill out of your lips so that you're telling others about his word? Hear me, don't worry about the little baby.

It's nice to hear life in this congregation. Do you at times appreciate and want to emulate the practice of the early church when they came together? They didn't come into church like dummies. In the prayer meetings in the Acts of the Apostles, the fourth chapter, you get the whole congregation standing to their feet as was usual Jewish custom.

What did they do? They prayed. How did they pray? They prayed by using the word of God. When you move from Acts 4 and you go to Acts 7, you discover Stephen giving testimony to his faith in Jesus.

How does he do it? He quotes the word of God. When you move on to Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, you find the eunuch reading scripture he doesn't understand. Philip draws alongside the chariot and explains the word of God.

You go to Cornelius' household and there's Peter prompted into being an evangelist to the Gentiles, somewhat reluctantly, summarizing what he's done as he returns to Jerusalem and he says, the word of God has grown. What do you mean it's grown? Does the Bible grow? Peter, no. What he means is this.

Those who have responded to the word have increased in number. As the word is percolated, as the word is proclaimed, so the word takes lodging in the hearts of men and women. Go to 1 Corinthians 12.

Imagine that you're there in Corinth, a very humble or maybe a fairly sumptuous residence if it was the place where the two Greek traders were offering their home for the housing of the church. You remember in the Acts of the Apostles reference made to this by implication. How did the people conduct their service? What is it, says Paul? When you come along, each one of you has a tongue, each one of you has a psalm, each one of you has a doctrine.

A psalm, a doctrine. From scripture, the preachers alone know each one of you has. They were using the Old Testament as an enhancement of their worship in the New Testament era.

Paul writing to the Ephesians. What is it, brothers? When you come together, he doesn't use that formula, but it will do for the lead in, how do you conduct yourself? Well, there is the fact of you being filled with the Spirit, singing to yourselves, singing to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Again, the top of the list in terms of worship ingredients is the use of scripture, not by the professional preachers.

They didn't have professional preachers, actually. But by the ordinary member of the congregation. Now, there's my point, game, set, and match.

You can't really argue against it, can you? Percolating the Word of God, everybody involved. Mary treasures it up, ponders over it, and eventually she'll allow it out in ordinary general discussion, as she did when she was talking to Elizabeth, you remember, in their encounter in the nativity scene. So I conclude.

Brothers and sisters, we're to praise God in song, in music. Praise God in the communion. We're to praise God in the relationships that we increasingly, and thank God, in a deeper fashion, enjoy here in our church.

But also we are to, and perhaps we're at the summit, we are to praise God in the Word. So I leave you with those thoughts. Perusing the Word regularly, the sense of it being contemporaneous, peruse it seriously.

Preaching the Word, what might you expect of the preacher? What might the preacher expect of you? Percolating the Word, so that you can share in the ministry of letting others know your understanding of the grace of God. Jesus says in John 8, 31, If you make my Word your home, you will indeed be my disciple. Have you made God's Word your home? Have you made a home for it? May that be the case.

In his grace. Amen. Now you might think it rather extraordinary that we go to after that address, hymn 192.

And yet it's not, not bearing in mind the nature of today and its celebration. And also the fact that the first Sunday, the first day of the week was always the time when the early disciples remembered not only the death of our Lord Jesus, but the resurrection of our Savior. So let's sing with full-throated enthusiasm Charles Wesley's great hymn, Christ the Lord is Risen Today.

Hallelujah. 192. Christ the Lord is Risen Today.

Hallelujah. Christ the Lord is Risen Today. Sounds of heaven and angels sing.

Shepherds quake with joy. Alleluia. Sing in exultation.

Hark the herald angels sing. Christ the Lord is Risen Today.