Now may I invite you to turn
with me in your own Bibles to 1 Peter and chapter 5, 1 Peter
chapter 5. And I shall begin the reading
halfway through verse 5. As we've noted in the last couple
of weeks, this really is the beginning of a new paragraph
of general exhortation to the people of God scattered throughout
those Roman provinces of Asia Minor, beginning verse 5 in the
middle. Yes, all of you, gird yourselves
with humility to serve one another, for God resists the proud, but
gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under
the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time,
casting all your anxiety upon him, because He cares for you. Be sober, be watchful, your adversary
the devil as a roaring lion walks about, seeking whom he may devour,
whom withstand steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same
sufferings are accomplished in your brethren who are in the
world. And the God of all grace who called you unto His eternal
glory in Christ, After that you have suffered a little while,
shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. To Him
is the dominion forever and ever. Amen. By Silvanus, our faithful
brother, as I account him, I have written unto you briefly, exhorting
and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast
therein. She that is in Babylon, elect
together with you, salutes you, and so does Mark my son. Salute one another with a kiss
of love. Peace be unto you all that are
in Christ. Now let us again look to God
that he would by his Spirit do for us What only he can do, as
Paul was conscious all of his apostolic ministry could not
secure ongoing spiritual illumination for the Ephesians. He simply
didn't write a letter and set forth the exceeding greatness
of God's power in Christ, the riches of God's inheritance in
his saints, and the power manifested. He didn't simply write about
them. He said, this is the thing for which I pray that God will
do a work of internal illumination that you may know. And surely
if the Apostle didn't believe, his inspired writings could,
without the illuminating ministry of the Spirit, do any good. What
hope is there for us ordinary preachers? May God help us to
go out of ourselves as we together seek his gracious aid and help. Let us pray. Our Father, we would confess
again that we are so slow to unlearn the ways of creature
competence. And yet your word is clear. We
remember the words of our Lord Jesus. Without me, you can do
nothing. The flesh profits nothing. We are not sufficient of ourselves
to think anything as from ourselves. O Lord, we own our native blindness,
our native dullness, our indisposition to receive the light of truth. O God, help us, we pray. May Your Spirit so come and illuminate
every mind and so empower the one who seeks to open up the
Word that together we may be conscious that You are here ministering
to us in the way that only You can minister. Come, we pray,
O God, as we wait in the expectation of faith and in the posture of
utter dependence. Amen. The men who for several years
sat in my lectures in the Trinity Ministerial Academy will recognize
what I'm going to say at the outset of our study in the scriptures
this morning, and it is this, that one of the most vital principles
of the Christian life as well as of the Christian ministry
is that grace makes no war with nature while engaging in a relentless
warfare against sin. Grace is out to deal with sin,
but not to neuter nature. Grace refines nature, elevates
nature, purifies nature, but does not seek to obliterate nature. And we see this principle very
clearly manifested in the way in which the Apostle Peter brings
this letter to a conclusion. Here he is writing under the
unique influence of the Holy Spirit that was present with
the biblical authors so that what they wrote are the very
words of God, and yet this letter is brought to a conclusion in
the way that any formal letter written by any reasonably educated
person in that part of the world, in that point of history, would
have concluded his letter. And the reason I read the remainder
of the chapter is because it's very evident that the letter
itself concludes with verse 11 in this marvelous condensed doxology,
to him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. And then in most
of your Bibles, you will not only find a paragraph division,
but sometimes an extra line with no print to show that verses
10 through 14 are a spirit-inspired postscript a kind of spirit-directed
addendum following the pattern of this type of letter writing
in the first century of the Greco-Roman world. And in those verses, we
have the apostle making a summary statement concerning the letter
in verse 12, and then he adds standard epistolary greetings
in verse 13 and 14a, and then he concludes with a benediction.
And this is the kind of framework that you would have found. Now
what does that say to us? It says that grace does not war
against nature. The Holy Spirit does not need
to get our attention by causing Peter to write a letter in such
a bizarre manner that it would jar the sensibilities of the
average first century believer who would listen to that letter
read in the assemblies and then would subsequently be able to
read it as copies were made and distributed. So verses 10 and
11 are indeed the conclusion of the body of the letter. They
are the capstone on the entire letter. Verses 12 to 14 are,
as I've indicated, this that we may call a spirit-inspired
postscript to the letter. And in that capstone, we have
seen in verse 10 what I have called a most encouraging promise,
and in verse 11, a most appropriate doxology. And for two Lord's
Day mornings, I sought to unpack verse 10. because almost every
word is critical in appreciating this capstone promise given to
these suffering saints by the Apostle Peter. We noted that
he draws our attention to the author and to the executor of
the promise before he gives the specifics of the promise. He's
saying, in essence, dear saints of God in Asia Minor, The promise
will only be as good as your present appreciation of the character
of the God who gives it. And before I give the promise,
I want to point your eyes to Him. He is the God of all grace,
who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ. This God Himself
shall fulfill the promise. The author and executor, as we
saw, is God Himself. God in his identity is the God
of all grace. God in his activity is the God
who has called us to his glory in Christ. And then we noted
the context in which the promise applies. The context is this
present period of suffering. Most translations would give
the impression that what God is going to do in the promise
comes after the suffering. But as we saw in our study of
this last Lord's Day, no, the promise is fulfilled in the midst
of the suffering. In the period of the suffering,
God is committed to everything He has pledged in this promise. And then we looked at the substance
of the promise itself. God Himself will perfect establish,
strengthen, and settle you. And I read the brief quote from
Hebert as I did at the conclusion of our study last Lord's Day.
These four verbs are not to be regarded as redundant rhetoric. There is an orderly development
of thought. The first, that God will perfect,
assured the readers that God would keep on perfecting His
suffering children so that no crippling defect would remain
in them. The remaining three verbs suggest
different aspects of His work. God will supply believers with
the needed support. He will establish you so that
they will not topple and fall. He will impart the needed strength
so that they will not collapse. and he will set them on an immovable
foundation so that they will not be swept away. Now it's clear that Peter's own
heart and mind are filled with present spiritual light and heat
as he writes the words of the promise. Peter is not a clocking
head or a writing machine or robot when he wrote these words.
When he wrote, the God of all grace, who called you to his
eternal glory in Christ, having suffered a little, shall himself
perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. His own mind and
spirit are so warmed from the friction of the truth he's conveying
to others that he breaks out into doxology. To him, the dominion
forever and ever. Amen. You see, the doxology flows
out of a full heart, a mind full of the light of God's truth,
but a mind that is not filled with white light. but light that
imparts heat to his heart and to his religious affections and
passions so that he breaks out in this most appropriate concluding
doxology. And as I attempt to open up verse
11 this morning, we'll do so under two heads. First of all,
the concluding doxology passionately issued, and I will justify my
use of the word passionately, the concluding doxology passionately
issued, and then secondly, the concluding doxology personally
ratified. That little four-letter word
at the end is not a formal way of saying, oh, by the way, the
letter's ended. I fear many of us tack our amen onto our prayers. It's just a condensed verbal
shorthand to say, by the way, if you couldn't get the idea,
I'm done. That's not what the amen is. Never was intended to
be, and that's not what it was to Peter. The amen, as we shall
see, was a concluding doxology personally ratified by the Apostle
Peter. To him, the dominion forever
and ever Amen! So be it. Let it be. I confess,
I identify heart and soul with the whole drift and direction
of that doxology. Now, before we take up the text,
I just have to say a word about how we are to translate it. Some
of you have Bibles which say, to him is the dominion forever
and ever, amen. Some, to him the glory and dominion
forever and ever. Some of you may have a Greek
text that would just cause you to render it, to him the dominion
forever and no, forever and ever. Now, what are we going to do
with all of this? Well, first of all, there is no verb in the
original, and if you have a good translation, whatever verb is
inserted will be in italics. The Greek text leads literally,
to him the dominion. Some put in to him is, to him
be. I prefer to him is, because back
in chapter 4 and verse 11, in a little more expanded doxology,
Peter uses the verb estin, is present tense of the verb to
be note the end of verse 11 that in all things God may be glorified
through Jesus Christ whose is the glory and the dominion forever
and ever and secondly because some of the manuscripts add the
word glory some don't have it and some have the briefer description
of eternity, unto the ages, some unto the ages of the ages, as
is so often true in these matters, no clearly established doctrine
is threatened with any of those translations, nor is any novel
doctrine introduced by any of those translations. So you don't
need to sit there nervously wondering, is my Bible not trustworthy?
In these matters where there are textual variants, no clearly
established doctrine is ever threatened, no novel doctrine
is ever introduced. But it's my judgment shared by
responsible exegetes and commentators and students of the textual issues
that the most comfortable rendering and most likely what Peter wrote
are the words to him that we would understand is the dominion
forever and ever. Amen. All right, with that matter
behind us, come now to our first heading, the concluding doxology
passionately issued. Now we've got to start with the
question, what is a doxology? Pastor Martin, you've used the
word doxology at least a dozen times already. Please, please,
before we go on, what is a doxology? Well, a doxology is defined in
the dictionary as a hymn of praise to God. And if we read the doxologies
recorded in Scripture, those portions of the Word of God in
which the writer ascribes certain qualities to God, we are warranted
to come up with this layman's definition that a doxology is
a hymn or an impassioned expression of praise to God. And it is unique
in this. It is a word ascribing to God
what is uniquely God's. In this passage we read, to Him
is the dominion. We are ascribing dominion as
God's possession forever and forever. In eulogy, we speak
well of God. Bless the Lord, O my soul, in
all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessing in the heaven. That's eulogy.
That's speaking well of God. But in doxology, we speak of
God in terms of attributes and characteristics that he alone
possesses. Unto him that sits upon the throne
be glory and honor and power and majesty, etc. And when you
read through the doxologies, there is not a one of them that
can be read if we have any sense of the significance of words
in their connection and in their context but that we could say
of it, it is an impassioned expression of praise to God. Let's look
at one of the more lengthy doxologies that is a specimen doxology.
It is not unique. It gathers to itself the flavor
of all the doxologies. Revelation chapter 5, beginning
in verse 11. And I saw and heard a voice of
many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and
the elders. And the number of them was ten thousand times ten
thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying in whispered, placid tones,
Worthy is the Lamb that has been slain, to receive the power,
and the riches, and... Say, Pastor, stop it. That's
ridiculous. Yes, it is. Yes it is, because
the text says that they spoke with a great voice, worthy is
the Lamb that has been slain to receive the power and riches
and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing and every
created thing which is in the heaven and on the earth and under
the earth and on the sea and all things that are in them heard
I saying, Unto Him who sits upon the throne and unto the Lamb
is the blessing and the honor and the glory and the dominion
forever and ever." And the four living creatures said, Amen,
and the elders fell down in worship. Now I ask you, is there anything
laid back and blasé in this beautiful, doxology to our God and to the
Lamb upon the throne. And I challenge you, if you question
that I am importing into doxology my own personality, I challenge
you to read every formal doxology in the Bible. and see if you
can bleed out of it either the fact that it is ascribing something
to God that is uniquely God's and it is being done in an impassioned
way. Therefore, I am giving this working
definition of doxology as the impassioned expression of praise
to God. That praise which focuses upon
things that are unique to God and joyfully and gladly ascribes
them to God and to God alone. There is no laid-back doxology
and there is no reluctant doxology. No laid-back, no reluctant. Now then, let's look at this
concluding doxology in verse 11. We'll ask three questions
of it. Question one. To whom is it addressed? To whom is this doxology addressed? To Him, who is the Him? Well,
obviously it is the God who has just been set before us in verse
10. As Peter contemplates what he
will say as a capstone promise to those suffering saints whose
circumstances he obviously knew very well as we've worked through
this letter, and we've seen all of the areas in which these Christian
pilgrims, these elect sojourners there in those provinces of Asia
Minor are afflicted and oppressed and are suffering. And in the
midst of all of that, Peter is ministering to them, fulfilling
the commission given by his Lord to feed his sheep and to feed
his lambs and to shepherd his sheep, to strengthen his brethren.
as Peter contemplates what this God, whom he's been speaking
about all through the letter, who has made gracious provisions
in Christ and gracious promises to his saints, as he thinks of
this God, who Himself will, in all the realism of their circumstances,
commit Himself to perfect to establish, to strengthen and
settle these believers. He says, what can I do in contemplating
a God like this? This God of all grace, who is
not only called all of His own to share in His eternal glory,
but will keep them, and in the midst of their suffering and
their battering, will perfect and establish and strengthen
and settle them. What can I do but attribute praise
and honor to this God, to Him? To him, it is God, not God in
abstraction, but God particularly in terms of the promise he has
just given. His contemplation of that promise
was something he could not contain as a mere pastoral bit of knowledge
to pass on. It gripped his own soul afresh,
and feeling the heat of the very things he has said about God
and what God will do, He wants to ascribe to this God dominion
or power forever and forever. It could be that prior to writing
verse 10, Peter himself thought back through the entire letter.
Don't you do that when you're bringing letters to a conclusion
that have some significance in them? They're not just a little
chit-chat running commentary on what you did yesterday and
the day before and what you hope to do next week. It's a letter
with purpose. And you're coming to the end
and you say, now, what have I said? I have three letters sitting
on my desk that Anne typed out for me on Friday. And because
they are letters of some importance, I didn't trust her to just send
them out. I said, give me a draft of them. I want to read them
Monday morning. Soberly reflect, is that the way I want to close
the letter? Looking back upon the content
of the letter. Remember, the Spirit of God did
not bring the biblical writers into a mindless, semi-comatose
state. No doubt Peter thought about
what he had written and all that he had said about this God from
chapter 1 verse 3 onward, who had begotten them again unto
a living hope by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, unto
an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fades not
away. All of the marvelous things. I hope you reread this once in
a while and bring back the things we've studied together. And now
he says the God who's done all of this, And the God who expects
His children as faithful pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts
that war against the soul, to be holy as He is holy, the God
who expects His people to be alert and steadfast and resist
the devil, this God is committed to keep His own till He brings
them to glory, to Him, to this God. not in theological abstraction,
but in all the concreteness of His grace and mercy and power
toward His people. And what gripped me in my preparation
was, you know this letter? It breaks out in doxology, chapter
1 and verse 3, I'm sorry, in eulogy. No sooner does Peter
give an ordinary, common, first century framework of greeting. It doesn't sign at the end like
we do. Signs on the front end. So the
minute you open your letter, you know who it's from. You don't
need to speed read down through and see who sent it to you. Right
at the outset, ordinary greetings, but what are his first words?
Verse 3 of chapter 1. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus. The letter begins in eulogy,
speaking well of God. And it closes with doxology,
so that the letter is bounded, we may say, by God and the vision
of God, the greatness of God. And that's what he wants suffering
saints to know about, not get on the phone and commiserate
with one another about who had it the roughest with their unconverted
husband last week, or who had the most difficult time with
a very irascible, unkind, unreasonable master among the house slaves. But he wants their minds taken
up with God, with what God has given them in Christ, what God
has laid up for them in Christ. And He wants to leave them not
looking at their navels, but absorbed in their God. To Him
be the dominion forever and forever. To whom is this doxology addressed? It is addressed to God. And God
in the concreteness of all that He has displayed God to be to
His people in this letter. Second question, what is the
specific focus of this doxology? Well, look at the text. To him
be or is the dominion. I believe the textual evidence
for just the one word, not glory. It's there, no textual question
in chapter 4 and verse 11. So we expounded that some months
ago. But here he is ascribing to this
great and glorious God the dominion. It is God's dominion, His power
or might, the Kratos of God that is the specific focus of this
doxology. This is a word that is rendered
in some settings as power or strength of His might, Ephesians
6.10. In Luke 1.51 it is the strength
or the power of His arm. One has defined it this way,
and this has been very helpful to me. It is the effectual might
of God manifested in the actual work of redemption. It is the
effective might of God manifested in the actual work of redemption. It's used six times in conjunction
with doxology. Six of its dozen usage in the
New Testament are found in the area of doxology. This passage,
1 Timothy 6.16, 1 Peter 4.11, Jude 25, Revelation 1.6 and 5.13. Six of its twelve uses, that
is, of the word kratos, might or power, God's effective might
manifested in the work of redemption are nestled in doxologies so
that there is something about this characteristic of God in
its redemptive action that has filled the vision of Peter as
he thinks of pouring out his own soul and drawing the souls
of his readers upward to focus all upon this great and glorious
God, to Him is the dominion, the might, the power forever
and ever. So we've asked the question,
what is in focus? Who is the subject of the, or
the object of the doxology? Now third question, what is the
duration of this doxology? For how long will this perspective
obtain? that we should behold God as
the one in whom is the might that accomplishes redemption.
Peter says, to him is the dominion forever and forever. If you find yourself getting
mentally sluggish and you want something to force the wheels
of your brain to move and to think, try to think in a focused
way. for just three minutes on the
concept of eternity. No beginning, no middle, no end,
and endless now. You see, in very words I've shown,
I can't think, I've said, past, present, future. I remember as
a little boy lying on my bed at night, and the words and the
smoke of their torment shall go up day and night, forever
and forever, and lying on my bed, thinking of eternity. My
little boy's brain would feel the weight of those words, the
smoke of their torment, forever and forever. And I would think
a thousand years, ten thousand years, twenty thousand years.
And I remember saying, oh God, forever? Forever can't be. Forever? The thousands must eventually
accumulate and there must be a permanence. To my troubled
spirit the words would come back forever and forever and forever. Might be the best thing for some
of you to spend three minutes lying quietly. Get that stupid
Walkman out of your ear kids. Pull yourself away from the Yankees.
Sit alone in your room and think you have been stamped for eternity. The moment you were conceived
in your mother's womb, you were stamped for eternity, ever and
ever. So the Greeks had a way of trying
to express that. They took the word age or ages,
and then as in here, they would speak of unto the ages of the
ages, as though each age swallowed up the former, and enlarged itself
to swallow up the next, and in so swallowing enlarged itself
and swallowed up the next forever and forever and forever. It's
the closest thing we have in Scripture to our word eternity. And Peter says, as his heart
is warmed with the thought of this great and glorious God,
To Him is the dominion, not just manifested in your present experience
of redemptive grace, and in His commitment to do what He said
He will do for you, perfect you, establish you, strengthen and
settle you. But that effective power that
has brought you into the orbit of redemptive grace, that surrounds
you with this marvelous promise and provisions for the rest of
your pilgrimage, that power will continue to be the focus of your
admiration forever and forever. Peter's overwhelmed with it.
May God help us to be overwhelmed. To him, the dominion, not an
abstract concept in a series of lectures on the attributes
of God. But this gracious God who's laid
hold of us and is committed to bring us to glory that we might
share in His eternal glory. That's what He's called us to.
And it is that to which He will bring us by gracious kratos,
by power suffused with redemptive grace. Well, that's all I can
say about the doxology. That's the concluding doxology
passionately issued. But now consider with me, secondly,
the concluding doxology personally ratified. Personally ratified. I've already indicated that the
word kratos rendered dominion and might is found in five other
doxologies. And it's very interesting. If
you were to study, and I hope some of you will, there are at
least 13 formal doxologies, passages concerning which there's no debate
that they are proper formal doxologies, not mere eulogies speaking well
of God, but attributing something to God that is only peculiar
to God. There are at least 13 of them,
and every one without exception ends with an amen. There's no
doxology that does not end with that doxology being personally
ratified with an amen. Even when there are little mini-doxologies
that break out in the middle of the apostolic writing, and
this is what struck me, I may have known it before, but I had
forgotten it, that there are only three doxologies that are
put at the end of epistles. All the rest of the doxologies
break out in the middle of them. And that's why I say the biblical
writers were not machines. Brothers, it'd be the God and
Father and Peter's just some kind of an automaton. No, the
truth is going through him, leaving deposits of its own light and
warmth upon his own soul. And that happens with the Apostle
Paul. He's in the middle of proving that the Gentiles, living like
scoundrels, are all under the wrath of God, and in the midst
of all that muck and garbage, he breaks out into eulogy. Turn
to Romans chapter 1. It's a beautiful example of it.
What's he dealing with here? Why men need his gospel of grace. A gospel in which God holds out
a righteousness from faith to faith. And why do they need it?
Verse 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against
all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth
in unrighteousness. So, he's going to demonstrate
God's wrath is upon men who are truth haters and truth suppressors.
And in indicting them for being such, he says in verse 21, because
that knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave
thanks, but they became vain in their reasonings, and their
senseless heart was darkened. Verse 25, for that they exchanged
the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature
rather than the creator. And as he thinks of this in the
midst of all this muck and says, Creator, he breaks out into doxology. Who is blessed forever? Amen.
Oh, I've got to come back to my subject. For this cause God
gave them up to vile passions. Do you see the blessed incongruity
of a doxology in the midst of all that muck? Because the apostle
was not simply a writing machine. He was a man to whom God was
a vital living reality. And when he thinks of the glory
of God as Creator against the backdrop of what's happened to
men who put down what they know about this God when looking at
His creation, and he sees the contrast of what man should be
and would have been had he not believed the lie and worshipped
and served the creature rather than the Creator, as his mind
is taken up with the glory of God as Creator, breaks out in
doxology, who is blessed forever. So be it, let it be. I affirm
it with all of my being in the midst of all this muck. God is
now what he has always been and ever shall be forever. Amen. You see, that's the theologian
who is the passionate worshiper. That's the theologian to whom
God is not a concoction of abstract notions. He is this glorious
being who captures the heart's affection and is praised even
in that setting. So the Amen coming at the end
of all these doxologies is very interesting. When the scholars
sat down to translate the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures into
Greek, most frequently when they came to the Hebrew word, Amin,
and all the uses of Amen or Amein or Amin are just transliterations
of the Hebrew word. But what they did is they used
Genota, let it be, let it be, let it be. They understood that
the sense of the Amen was the affirmation of the one who speaks
it or writes it. And it was not done, and here
this brief quote, that I found in Lenski from a C.K. and I didn't
look up to see who C.K. was so I'll just tell you C.K.
said this. The Hebrew Amen compels us to
examine the reason in each instance of its use for it is far from
being merely liturgical. It is not simply something stuck
in for filler or to indicate a transition. Sometimes in my
sermons I say now, and I'll say however, and I'm using those
words to make transition into another field of thought or another
category of thought. The Amen is not just stuck in
as a liturgical reference point that something else is coming.
It is not an expression of intellectual conviction, but of an exalted,
God-praising conviction of faith. placed at the end of doxologies,
meaning truth, verity, this Amen is solemn, confessional, and
in the nature of a seal. Not the seal, that animal you
see at the Bronx Zoo, but a seal, that by which someone would attest
the ownership of a thing. A statement is made about God,
made by someone inspired by the Spirit to make the statement,
And yet to make it evident that this is not just a statement
about God that is true in itself, but it is true for them, they
add the Amen. So be it! Let it be! All of my soul and my affections
and heart line up with the declaration about God. You get the sense
of it now? And I challenge you, read through
the doxologies and see again and again and again. They conclude
with the personal ratification of the one who writes or makes
the doxology. Well, I've attempted to open
up these few words under these headings, the concluding doxology
passionately issued and the concluding doxology personally ratified.
And now I want you to come back to the text with me as we have
time to make three, possibly four, as time permits, what to
me are vital observations and applications of this doxology. And I would urge every one of
you now to seek to gird up the loins of your mind. I'm going
to make a statement and I'm going to try to illustrate it, prove
it from the scriptures. Here's the observation that I
want to make that's so critical. Your reflexive response to passionate
doxology is an incisive indication of the true state of your soul.
Now just stop for a minute, I'll repeat the words, then we'll
go back and work through them. Your reflexive response, what
is a reflexive response? It's one you don't think about,
it just happens. If in my peripheral vision I should see a wad of
paper coming at me from this direction from someone who thinks
I'm all wet and ought to get out of the pulpit, I wouldn't
stop and think, wad of papers coming in from the right at so
many hours, you must turn your head, you must duck, you must
blink. No, there'd be a reflex response. Reflex, reflex. You
don't think about it, you don't plan it, you don't plot it, you
don't calculate it. You don't hypocratize reflexive responses.
They're just the natural response, all right? Now what I'm saying
is your reflective response, your reflexive response to passionate
doxology, that is when you draw near to Peter writing, to him
is the dominion forever and ever. When you draw near to that extended
doxology we read from Revelation 5, all of the angels, all of
the creatures, thousands upon ten thousands, and elders falling
down, and all absorbed in God, and saying to Him, glory, dominion,
and power. Your reflexive response to passionate
doxology is an incisive indication of the true state of your heart. You want to know where your heart
is? Whether you are a true worshipper of God in Jesus Christ or whether
you still are an Adamic idolater, ask yourself what is your reflexive
response to passionate doxology when you read it in the Bible.
Does your heart instinctively run out and say, oh God, if I
don't love you that way and admire you that way and adore you that
way, oh God, I want to. Draw me into the orbit of that
passionate doxology. Or do you back off and say, what
in the world are they all so excited about? Or it may be you get irritated.
Let me illustrate. Anyone who knows anything about
the Northeast and knows anything about sports in general, you
know that for decades, Red Sox and Yankee fans ain't the closest
of kissing buddies. For you who don't know it, Red
Sox and Yankee fans are notoriously butting heads. Sometimes, it's
a real butting heads. I can remember as a little boy,
and that's a long, long time ago, Getting on the train and
going in from Stanford, Connecticut to Yankee Stadium with my dad
and sitting in the right field bleachers, I saw Ted Williams.
Yeah, yeah, you never saw him, I did. Yes. Yeah, and a bunch
of other names I could name. But oh, when the Red Sox came
to Yankee Stadium, you were very conscious. If you had any sympathy
for the Red Sox, my dad was reared up in New England. He was sympathetic.
He kept his enthusiasm very restrained. The safest thing to do was maybe
tap his foot if Ted Williams hit one out, but not to stand
up and cheer too much until he checked who was around him. Now,
picture two guys that are working in New York City. They take the
train in, commute together. One is a rabid Yankee fan, the
other is a rabid Red Sox fan. But they never happened to have
talked about baseball. For some reason, their rabidity
went into remission when they got on the train. But one day,
one day, something is triggered. And the rabid Yankee fan begins
to talk up and down about David Cones and Clemens. And all of
a sudden, what happens? All of that residual anti-Yankee
feeling that's been in the heart of his traveling buddy is stirred
up and brought to the surface. And before you know it, they're
almost at each other's throats by the time they get to the PATH
station. Why? Because the true state of
the heart of that Yankee fan and that Red Sox fan was revealed
when someone got enthusiastic about the other team. As long
as the other team wasn't the focus subject of discussion,
they got on fine. But once enthusiasm was manifested
for one, the reflexive response of the emotions was one of positive
irritation, if not outright anger. Now that's the principle. You
see, you may sit here. But let somebody, face to face
with you, someone of your age, come up with a light and glow
of genuine, not insincere faith, but genuine admiration of God. And let them start to talk to
you about, isn't God great? Isn't it wonderful? What happens
to you? I'll tell you what happens to
you. You're not only uncomfortable, you're irritated. You don't like
it when people are absorbed with God. Why? Because you're an idolater
and any absorption in the true God challenges the worship of
your idols. Your idols. Yes, you're an idolater. Everyone sitting here is a worshiper.
You're passionately attached to some God, either the true
and the living God or your own God. Romans 1.25, exchange the
truth of God for a lie. Not as an intellectual concept,
but as a way of life. That's what the whole passage
is about. Worship and serve the creature
more than the Creator. You will doxologize and eulogize
people and things. You're not uncomfortable in these
banal, God dishonoring award shows. And I watched two or three
minutes of them just to keep in touch with this generation.
And people going goo-goo and ga-ga over women dressed like
harlots and waving and shaking their hands. Oh, marvelous! And everyone praises them. But
someone stand up and say there's a great and glorious and awesome
God. Nothing's awesome but God. Nothing
is marvelous but God. Kids, don't use that word, awesome,
of people and things. No person or thing is worthy
of religious awe. Only God is. You're very comfortable when
your favorite rock star in your group is praised. Very comfortable. Why? You're an idolater, my friend. And that's what irritates you. But
mom and dad in this determination that in their house there's going
to be worship and prayer and the reading of the Bible. My
dear friend, that irritation one day will be over. And God takes them to the place
appointed for them. Cast you into hell, there'll
be no irritation with mom and dad. With Sunday school teachers
and preachers who try to point you away from your sin and unto
Christ. You'll have the misery of your own willful rejection
of God and light and Christ to be your miserable companions
forever and forever. Proverbs 28, 4 states something
so critical in this regard. They that forsake the law praise
the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with them. You see, there's no neutral ground.
You either praise the wicked or you contend with them. And
the same is true of God. You're either contending with
him or you're doxologizing him. You either admire him and you
love him or you hate him. Jesus said, no man can serve
two masters. He either loves the one and hates
the other or holds to the one and despises the other. You cannot
serve God and Mammon, the God of money and things. A doxology is a great evangelistic
tool to help us to face honestly where we're at. I wonder if we
could do this in some way that was absolutely honest and natural.
If we were to say right now in the multipurpose room in the
next five minutes, so and so and so and so and so, and I'd
name the top five rock stars and popular singers that are
your world and say you're going to have half an hour to be with
them, shake their hand, get their autograph, ask them any questions
you want. Would that excite you? If I said downstairs in the toddler
nursery, Andy Pettit and Scott Brocious and you name it, your mind already
go to them. You can have half hour with them.
Bring your own bat and they'll sign it. They'll give you one
of their bats and sign it. You split. And if I said all
others who want to remain, we're going to seek to give ourselves
to a half an hour of eulogy and of doxology. We're going to give
ourselves to praising the great God of heaven and earth. What would you choose? Well,
the other stuff was kid stuff. Suppose I said to you, young
ladies, I'm going to have a half a dozen godly, eligible men who
are looking for wives. You can interact with them. Get
acquainted. For a half an hour, eulogizing and doxologizing God. You think of the thing that is
your idol. Ask yourself, my friend. Our
reflexive response to passionate doxology is an incisive indication
of the true state of our hearts. Not only whether we're in or
out of a state of grace, but listen to old Bishop Layton.
What a marvelous insight he has. It can reveal a backslidden heart.
commenting on the parallel doxology in 411 of this letter. This is
what Bishop Layton said, Now the holy ardor of the apostles'
affections, taken with the mention of the glory of God, carries
him to a doxology, as we term it, a rendering of glory, right
in the middle of his discourse. We often find the Apostle Paul
doing likewise. Poor and short-lived is the glory
and grandeur of men. Like themselves, it is a shadow
and nothing. But this is solid and lasting.
It is supreme and abides forever and ever. And the Apostles, full
of divine affections, and admiring nothing but God, do delight in
this, and cannot refrain from this at any time in their discourse.
It is always sweet and seasonable, and they find it so. Now listen
to his insight. And thus our spiritual minds,
a word of this nature falls on them as a spark on some matter
that readily takes fire. They are straightway inflamed
with it. But alas, to us how much it is
otherwise. The mention of the praises and
glory of our God is to our hearts as a spark falling either into
a puddle of water and foul water too or at least upon green lumber
that much fire will not kindle. There is so much moisture of
our remaining sin and corruptions that all dies out within us and
we remain cold and dead. What is your response when some
of us who lead you in worship seek graciously and with the
Bible to stir you up to be occupied and enthused about God? Is it
they're saying, enough of this already. I've heard this before. Or is it that spark on dry tinder
that says, yes, Lord. That's what I've yearned for.
That's what I've come for. Oh God, give me at least internally
clapping hands at the thought that you are sovereign. What
was your response to that psalm this morning? Dear friends, don't
play games. Our danger in this place is not
liberalism. It is an orthodoxy that's lost
the passion of doxology. And once you cease to be inflamed
with God, then what God says is not quite that important about
this, that, or the other. You say, where'd you get that
notion? Read Revelation chapter 2. Orthodoxy,
zeal, works, discipline was all there in the Ephesus church,
but they'd lost the ardor of their first love. Second observation. I've already
hinted at it and it'll be much briefer. The relationship between
theology and doxology is vividly illustrated in this passage.
Look back at the passage. What gave birth to Peter's doxology? It was the rich, dense theology
of verse 10. When you say, the God of all
grace, That's rich theology. Who hath called us? Rich theology. Unto his eternal glory? Rich
theology. Having suffered a little while?
That's the whole theology of the overlapping of the ages.
The now and the not yet. Rich theology. And it's as Peter's
mind is feeling the friction of that theology that it takes
hold of him and gives birth to doxology. Beautiful illustration
of the relationship. The theology has not done its
work till it merges into doxology. And a doxology that has its roots
in anything other than theology ain't worth nothing. It's just
mere mindless enthusiasm. That's all. So when people come
into meetings and they say, well, let's get stirred up to praise
the Lord, and then the repetitive choruses start. And then the
music that appeals to the carnal passions plays and people begin
to sway. What's happening? They're being
manipulated emotionally and psychologically. Nothing is being strained in
their brains. Thinking large thoughts of God,
of His truth, of His calling, of His eternal glory, of the
overlapping of the ages. Peter's been dealing in the stuff
of rich theology, and it's that theology that caught fire and
birthed his doxology. And dear people of God, that's
why we must never, never talk as though keen, perceptive, Spirit-birthed
grasp upon a rich theology is a matter of indifference. It
must be a passion with us. For just as surely as theology
has never come to its own right until it births, doxology, I
don't want a child, doxology, unless his mama is theology. Theology and doxology wedded
here in the mind and heart in the experience of the apostle.
And I pray God in our minds and hearts. I've told people who
say, well, Did you find you lost any of your fire and your passion
when you became reformed in your theology? I love it when people
ask me that question. You've got a little bitty God,
sometimes does what he wants, other times can't do what he
wants because he's got to wait for man's permission or somebody
else's permission. You can worship him a little
bit, but the God who sits in thrones, who rules in the heavens
and the earth and he's even got the devil at the end of his chain.
I tell you that's a God that'll make you worship. That'll make
you worship. But oh, it's so easy to cling
to the framework and the structure and to forget that all the theology
is to birth doxology. The relationship between theology
and doxology vividly illustrated and finally The true significance
of the use of Amen is clearly illustrated in this text. And
you say, uh-oh, here goes Pastor Martin, one of his hobbies. Well,
when God gives it to me right in the Bible, what can I do?
The text ends with the word Amen. And as Lenski has quoted whoever
C.K. was, It is never liturgical. We say we believe in plenary,
verbal inspiration, that the Spirit of God is superintending
the very words. Why is it that every doxology
recorded in the Bible concludes with an amen? Is God saying something
to us? I think he is. He's telling us
the word Amen has great significance. It is a personal, particular,
passionate affirmation that what is declared is indeed the state
and condition and the desire and the perspective of my own
heart and mind and soul. We've often referred to that
passage in 1 Corinthians 14, 15, and 16, where Paul's sorting
out this charismatic free-for-all and reasoning with the Corinthians
why certain gifts should be exercised and not, with what conditions,
and one of his great concerns is that the corporate Amen at
the giving of thanks would be restrained if people couldn't
understand. 1 Corinthians 14 and verse 16,
If you bless with the Spirit, how shall he that fills the place
of the unlearned say the Amen at the giving of your thanks,
seeing he doesn't know what you're saying? What's assumed in the
text is that there was a corporate Amen at the giving of thanks.
Secondly, that people didn't do it mindlessly. Some fellow's
sitting there trying to follow the prayer and this guy's speaking
in a language he doesn't know and no one translates it. He
keeps his mouth shut. He said, I don't know what I
want. I want to say amen to everything. I want to know what he's saying.
He said, how's he going to say his amen? The assumption is he
will say it if he does understand. He won't say it if it doesn't
express his heart. Jerome, one of the church fathers,
could say at the conclusion of the public prayer, the united
amen of the people sounded like a waterfall or a clap of thunder. Ours at times sounds like the
squeak of a dying man. Dear people, we believe in corporate
worship and corporate involvement. You're involved now as I preach.
As I look over here, I can feel the eyes of people over here
on me. I'm conscious they're there. And when I turn here,
I see someone wiggling there. You're active. You're receiving.
You're giving something. You give something to the preacher.
When you listen, when your heart's being lifted up to God, that's
engagement in corporate worship. Not everybody get up and say
it's two cents and all go home with a head full of nonsense.
When you sing your psalms and your hymns, you're ministering
one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And
when those of us lead you in prayer, Only once in the last
ten years, I think, did you ever hear me say, I, in a prayer.
And that was a few weeks ago when I broke down and knew that
I need to get hold of God to give me some composure. I'm insulted
when in public prayer people say, I, I, I. I feel like saying,
go home and have your devotions. I'll have mine. We pray, we. Why? We seek to be your mouthpiece,
to express nothing that would not be the expression of your
heart. That's why some of us take time
to compose our prayers. We write out an outline. We think
them through Saturday night, early Sunday morning. Why? We
want to be able to pray out the desires and the yearnings of
God's people. And when we have sought to be
your mouthpiece at the throne of grace, do we want your praises? No. But we sure would love to
know that we've expressed the confessions and the yearnings
and the petitions of your heart. You see where I'm going? The
Amen is God's divinely appointed means for you to say, yes, Lord,
so be it! Let it be! And I want to release
the conscience of some of you dear women who've spoken to me,
saying, the men around me don't vocalize an Amen, and I don't
want to be a pushy-bossy woman. I say, there's no indication
in the Scriptures that the matter of the Amen is to be sexually
regulated. Public teaching is, but not the
Amen. And if God has to use you to shame your brethren like He
used some women in Israel to shame the men and raise up the
debtors, then you say your Amen as loud as is fitting until your
husband takes you by the arm and says, sweetheart, you're
being a little bit too ostentatious. Tone it down a little bit. All
right? There's nothing in the Bible that says you cannot. But
now the flip side of that is this. What's appropriate for
personal prayer with your wife? When my wife and I pray together,
all the way through the prayers, she will, hmm, hmm, yes Lord,
and I will do the same, that we're in this together. But in
corporate prayer, that directs attention to yourself. If there's
a lot of personal, audible, hmm, hmm, yes Lord, amen. You see,
you now have become an individual and others are conscious of you
as an individual. But when your heart is being poured out and
you just feel, I just got to say amen. And you let it build
up. And at the end, when the brother who's leading in prayer,
and may I say to my brethren, let your amen be like you really
want it to be so. Don't let your amen peter out
as though you're half apologetic for your prayer. We ask these
mercies through our Lord Jesus Christ. What do I say to my own
prayer? So be it, Lord. Amen. I'm not going to say it
that loud, but that's what ought to be in our hearts. Oh, you
say that's your personality. My friend, please don't shove
this off on my personality. Grace does not war with nature.
And nature is such that if we speak in soft, subdued tones,
it generally indicates a lack of enthusiasm concerning what
we say. When an opportunity is there,
someone comes to you and says, is your wife a virtuous woman?
Yes. What did you say? Sir, my wife is a virtuous woman. Take her to the bank. Right?
You're glad to affirm something that you feel with your soul.
Brethren, do we believe we're laying hold of God? And that
when two of us agree on earth is touching wax, what we ask
it shall be done of our Father? Now, if someone has waffled all
over the place and prayed a bunch of nonsense, let your silence
be your rebuke of his nonsense. But if indeed your heart is run
out, affirm it, not as some kind of a cheering contest for the
one who leads, but as an expression, as Peter did, to him the dominion
forever and ever. So be it. I believe my own words. I hope your heart coalesces with
me. Is that just straining at mass?
I don't think so, folks. You have every reason, I mean,
every right, if you can, from the Scriptures, come and say,
Pastor Martin, I believe you overstrained the case. You'll be my friend.
There's no one here who can say that whenever they came with
their Bible, to help me know God's way better, that you found
me anything other than pliable before this book. You come. But if the principles that we've
been seeking to articulate have validity, then I don't care what
we're used to. I'm all the time learning to
do things, living with my wife according to knowledge that I
ain't never done before. Just this week, wrestling through
some things together. Got insights about elements in
our communication. I gotta do some things I ain't
been doing, and I gotta stop doing some things I have been
doing. At this age, yes. God's grace doesn't leave you
when you hit 66. All right? Oh, my temperament.
Temperament, shmemperment. How shall he that is unlearned
say the Amen, that thy giving of thanks, seeing he knows not
what you say? Do you know what has been said? Then say your
Amen. Reserve temperament or not. Don't get your nose stuck
on yourself. We're a body when we worship.
We're a body when we praise. We're a body when we pray. And
we should be a body. that if Jerome came back from
the dead, he said their amen sounded like a waterfall or like
a clap of thunder. What does that do to the unconverted
who come in? Everything so staid and subdued
around here, no banners and no balloons and no trumpets and
no stands with mics on them and group singers and praise bands
and bongo drums and who knows what, and everything looks so
staid and sterile. And then someone stands up and
says, we shall sing. And then they hear a people who
pour out their hearts in praise to God. And when they come to
the amen at the end of the song, I'm really going to get personal.
Do you know why I never walk to the front while you're singing
the amen? I stay here till the amen is done. That's not an accident. That's a conviction. I'm still
engaged in the worship of God, not transitioning to the next
thing when I come to the pulpit. You say, you are persnickety.
Yes, I am. This is God's worship. This is
God's worship. Do I believe what I sang? God
moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. Plants his
footstep in the sea and rides upon the storm. You fearful saints,
fresh courage take. The clouds you so much dread
are big with mercy and shall break in blessing on your head.
Do I believe that? Help us, dear people. Do we believe
it? Amen! Let's sing it like we believed
it. That's not playing on your emotions. That's appealing to your judgment.
And that we won't be at the mercy of all patterns and temperament
and all the rest, but the Word of God will encompass us. Well,
I say this passage gives us a wonderful example of the true significance
and use of the Amen. I better be done. God help us
that we will be a people whose love of Christ and of our great
and glorious God will be such that when we contemplate as Peter
did who he is and what he's done, our grasp upon this amazing promise
will lead into fitting doxology. And for you who have no doxology,
because you have no God who is the true God. I beg you, this
day, go to that God through Christ. Seek his mercy for being a wretched
idolater. True conversion is God's mighty
work, turning idolaters into worshippers. That's what true
conversion is. If you get soundly converted,
God will change you from an idolater into a worshipper who will love
doxology, and who will long that heart and mind can flow out with
the words of Peter. To him, to this great God, is
the dominion, the power, forever and forever. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, we're so thankful
that you've given us the scriptures this blessed book that is a lamp
to our feet and a light to our pathway. And we pray that you
will bless the word that we've considered this morning. Any
treatment of it, application of it, that has had the mixture
of the clay of our own thoughts or foolishness, bring to naught.
Whatever has been an accurate exposition and a valid application,
bring it home to our hearts. Lord, if there are controversies
with you, may they be resolved in our hearts, in your presence,
by the power of your Spirit. We pray that you will make us
more and more a doxologizing people, a people who are enthused
about the privilege of praising and magnifying you. We ask that
when we read your word like Peter, we will find ourselves beginning
with eulogy and ending with doxology, and finding in between all that
is necessary for all of our needs. Seal then your word to our hearts.
Forgive our sins of the sanctuary, our heartless praise, our mindless
praise. O God, have dealings with us,
we pray. Thank you for your word, for
your presence. Dismiss us with your blessing
resting upon us, we plead.