Last time, I wrote about some resources to help us sing Scripture so we can hide it in our hearts and meditate on it. But of all the Scriptures to sing, the Psalms stand out as the Bible's own songs. And they're also the songs which the church has sung continually from the very beginning. It's our great misfortune that many Pentecostals and Evangelicals don't sing the Psalms very often today. It's also very unbiblical. After all, there's a biblical commandment to sing the Psalms in Ephesians 5:18-19 and Colossians 3:16.

Maybe the idea of singing the Psalms sounds a bit odd. But it can be done (and has been done for millennia!). So today I thought I'd point you to a few contemporary resources for singing the Psalms (in a variety of styles, as well as some more traditional ways).


1. Sons of Korah



The Australian group Sons of Korah have been singing whole Psalms for years. It's thanks to listening to their music (and singing along in the car) for years that I know so many Psalms by heart. These aren't metrical versions (i.e. the words haven't been adapted to fit into the patterns of English poetry), but just the words of Scripture itself.










2. The Corner Room



I mentioned The Corner Room in my last post, due to their Isaiah 53 and 1 Corinthians 13 albums. But they've also recorded two albums of Psalms taken word for word from the ESV.








3. My Soul Among Lions



My Soul Among Lions are working their way through the entire book of Psalms to produce fresh contemporary metrical versions. They've released 3 albums so far, covering the first 30 Psalms. My Presbyterian minister friend back in Leeds pointed me to them for Psalms to sing in church; he particularly recommended Psalm 15, and I particularly recommend Psalm 4 (In You I Trust).






4. Matt Searles



Matt Searles has written a few albums' worth of Psalm songs (and new music for a few Sing Psalms versions). We've used some of his versions in church. Some (e.g. Psalm 110) are explicitly Christological versions of Psalms (just like the way Isaac Watts wrote Christological versions of metrical Psalms). You can find out more about Matt and his first Psalms album here. He's made a few more since. And you can find sheet music for his Psalm versions here.


5. The Psalms Project

The aim of The Psalms Project is to set the entirety of all 150 Psalms to music 'including the essential meaning of every verse, with musical excellence and Scriptural integrity.' The lyrics are available on their site, as well as guitar chords for many of the Psalms.


6. Sing Psalms



While the old Scottish Metrical Psalter is a wonderful book (if you know the traditional version of 'The Lord's My Shepherd', it'll be the Scottish Metrical words), some of the language might be a wee bit difficult to understand in places today. But the Free Church of Scotland has produced a new metrical translation. Like it's accompanying volume (Sing Scripture, which I mentioned in the last post), Sing Psalms suggests tunes, but you can sing these metrical Psalms to any tune of the corresponding meter. That way you can use this resource to sing metrical versions of virtually any Psalm to a tune you already know. This is not a paraphrase of the Psalms, but a metrical translation (i.e. a translation in poetic form) directly from the Hebrew.

Update: My old school friend (now Reformed Presbyterian minister) in response to this post has pointed me to a fantastic website - thepsalmssung.org - where you can find a cappella recordings of the metrical Psalms in the Sing Psalms translation, as well as both the old Scottish Metrical translation from 1650 and another 21st century translation, Psalms for Singing (produced by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland in 2004). Over there you can hear some of the greatest of all metrical Psalm/tune combinations, like the modern translation of Psalm 24:7-10 to St George's Edinburgh, and part of Psalm 51 to St Kilda.


7. Chanting the Psalms straight from the Bible



For myself at home, from day to day I just want to be able to sing the Psalms straight from the Bible, and the easiest way to do that is to chant them. I realise a lot of people from my own tradition (i.e. Pentecostals and Evangelicals) are slightly allergic to the thought of chant, but it's beautiful, it's easy (once you know what you're doing), you don't need any music, you can sing any Psalm, and it's probably how the early church sang the Psalms as well. Coverdale's translation of the Psalms is a treasure, and I love to chant that from A Manual of Plainsong, but it's probably not very familiar to anyone who isn't Anglican. (My friend, helped me learn to chant Coverdale's Psalms when he was the curate here and we used sing Evening Prayer together.)

However, there are plenty of resources for chanting the Psalms from more familiar translations. Concordia Publishing House publishes the ESV Psalms pointed for a simplified version of Anglican chant, and you can hear their Psalm tones online here, so it's very easy to use. This is what I used to use before I learnt that plainchant/Gregorian chant wasn't actually all that hard. You can get a copy of the NKJV Psalms pointed for plainchant here (with modern musical notation). These days I usually use the The Brotherhood Prayerbook, which uses the Authorised Version (i.e. the King James Version). The great thing about this resource is that the Lutheran Liturgical Prayer Brotherhood have recordings of all 150 Psalms chanted online, so you can learn them from the recordings. In fact, that means all you need is the KJV text of the Psalms and you can sing them straight from the Bible.

As a child, I had a record full of songs about the Ten Commandments (which, amazingly, you can actually listen to nowadays on Youtube! - Oh the wonders of the internet!). Sir Oliver was an owl who insisted that it was good to sing songs about the Commandments because, when you 'sing it, you'll never forget it!'

Now, although owls can't really sing, Sir Oliver did have a point. Last week, my third year students tried to talk me into getting them to sing the Creed in class. 'It's our last module with you, and we won't feel like we've had the full JB experience unless you make us sing,' they claimed. (In actual fact, it was a ploy to tick off the final square and get a full house on the 'Lingo Bingo JB Edition' bingo card they'd made for their intensive lecture week with me - but even the fact that they'd put it on the bingo card demonstrates how much they really expected me to make them sing.) The reason why I'm always getting my students to sing the Nicene Creed or bits of the catechism, is because I know that if they sing it, they're much less likely to forget it.

It was the same growing up in British Pentecostalism. We sang lots of Scripture. To this day, there are certain passages of Scripture which I find very hard to read without bursting into song. But, much more helpfully than that, those Scriptures are so ingrained in me that I can never forget them. When I need to hear those particular truths, I find myself spontaneously singing those old Scripture songs. I can never forget that 'the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.' (Lamentations 3:22-23). I know in every situation to 'trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths' (Proverbs 3:5-6) and that His 'lovingkindness is better than life' (Psalm 63:3). As I sing, I can remind myself that 'my Beloved is mine, and I am His' and that 'He lifted me up into heavenly places' (Song of Solomon 2:16 and Ephesians 2:6). I'm reminded that 'The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes' (Psalm 19:8) and encouraged to hide God's word 'in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee' (Psalm 119:11). And those are just a few that immediately spring to mind!

Pentecostals used to get criticised for the repetitiveness of their chorus singing. But Simon Chan has pointed out that this repetitive singing of short Scripture choruses is actually a way in which Pentecostals meditate on God's Word. These Scriptures that I've been singing all my life aren't just some facts I'm sort of familiar with. They are hidden in my heart and built into who I am. This is a way in which we 'let the Word of Christ dwell in [us] richly' (Colossians 3:16).

Yet, Pentecostal singing has changed. My students laugh at me (and their older peers) these days when we mention choruses. 'You have to imagine, we've grown up only singing the sort of songs they'd sing at Hillsong,' they tell me. So the old, repetitive, Pentecostal four-line chorus, whether it be a Scripture song or a basic gospel truth, is an alien concept. Scriptures that have surrounded me all my life because we sang them so often can be fresh discoveries to people who have grown up all their lives in Pentecostal churches today.

I don't imagine we're suddenly going to turn back the clock to the very different ways of worship of last century's Pentecostalism. But even if we can't, there are still ways we can sing Scripture to help us hide it in our hearts, so that we never forget it. So I just want to point you to some resources which might be of some help:

1. Scripture in Song



If you want an idea of some of what some of the Scripture songs we used to sing in the old days were like (or, if you're over 30 and can remember the old days), then Scripture in Song will give you a good idea. Tons of their songs are on Youtube, you can get many of their old albums on iTunes, and they've even just recently released a new 50th anniversary album with some of their best known songs sung in a 2019 way. Not all their songs are straight from Scripture, but lots are. Listen to their 2019 album - this is what Pentecostal worship used to be like (but without the age of the recording being too alienating). I think this album demonstrates how so many of these songs are timeless classics which are just as good today as they were before I was born. Then go back and find lots more Scriptures in their older stuff.


2. The Verses Project



This a great resource with Scriptures taken straight from the ESV translation. I'll admit, some of these are more singable/listenable than others. (But I realise, that congregational singing is probably not the way many songs are learnt these days!) Each Scripture has a song (which is free to listen to/download on the site), an accompanying devotional, and some visual art to go with it. They come in a huge range of styles, so you might want to explore a bit and see what's there. Some I particularly recommend are:

• James 1:12
• 1 Corinthians 15:51-52
• John 8:31-32
• John 6:35
• Galatians 6:9-10
• 1 Timothy 1:15
• Colossians 3:1-3
• Colossians 3:16-17
• Romans 8:33-34
• Proverbs 1:10
• Philippians 1:6
• Deuteronomy 10:12-13
• Romans 8:1
• Isaiah 40:28-29
• Revelation 21:3
• Revelation 21:4
• Revelation 21:5-6
• 1 John 4:4
• 2 Corinthians 8:9
• John 10:10

3. Every Last Word



Matt Papa and Ross King have set some longer passages of Scripture (like John 1:1-14, Philippians 2:1-11 and Isaiah 53:1-6) to music, taken word for word from the CSB translation. (Matt Papa is the writer of Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery, so that gives you a good idea that his song writing is good quality.) You can listen online, or on Spotify, or buy the songs as singles from iTunes.


4. Fernando Ortega


I love Fernando Ortega's music. I think he's someone who has managed over the years to combine the best of Pentecostal-type worship with the depth of classical Christian worship. And as part of that combination, he's recorded some Scripture songs, such as:

• Let the Words of My Mouth (Psalm 19:14; Phil. 4:8)
• Come, let us worship and bow down (Psalm 95:6-7; 96:9, 13)
• All Flesh is like the Grass (1 Pet. 1:24-25)
• Open my lips (Psalm 51:15, 17)

5. The Corner Room



On their album Love Never Ends, the Corner Room have set 1 Corinthians 13, word for word from the ESV, to music in three movements.

• 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
• 1 Corinthians 13:4-10
• 1 Corinthians 13:11-13

More recently, they've produced a setting of the Servant Song in Isaiah 52 and 53.

• Isaiah 52:13-15
• Isaiah 53:1-3
• Isaiah 53:4-7
• Isaiah 53:8-9
• Isaiah 53:10-12

6. Sing Scripture



If metrical translations of Bible passages which you can sing to hymn tunes you already know are your thing, then the Free Church of Scotland's Sing Scripture is just what you need. The advantage is that (although some tunes are suggested for each Scripture) you can sing them to any tune of the same meter. (The meter is marked beside the Scripture reference, e.g. CM or 8.7.8.7.D, and if you sing hymns, you'll know lots of tunes to most of these meters already.) The disadvantage is that, as they're metrical versions, they won't quite match up with the words in your non-metrical translation of the Bible. The Foreword explains how they went about the metrical translation.


Next time I'll post some resources specifically about singing the Psalms.

Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.

Matthew Henry, the Puritan pastor (whose Bible commentary is still so famous and frequently used all these centuries later), wanted people to remember that the Lord’s Supper is much more than a proclamation of Christ’s death. ‘Here are not only gospel truths represented to us, and confessed by us; but gospel benefits are offered to us, and accepted by us’ (Matthew Henry, The Communicant’s Companion, 54). This is what John Wesley was getting at as well when he wrote about the ‘so great’ benefits of constant Communion. For, in the Breaking of Bread, Matthew Henry reminds us, ‘God … not only assures us of the truth of the promise, but, according to our present case and capacity, conveys to us, by His Spirit, the good things promised.’ And so, in the Supper, we ‘receive Christ Jesus the Lord, Christ and pardon, Christ and peace, Christ and grace, Christ and heaven.’ (Ibid. 55).

Here are the Lord’s Table we feed upon Christ and all His benefits. For this bread is a participation in Christ’s body, and this cup is a participation in His blood (1 Cor. 10:16). And where Christ’s body and blood are, there He is. For Jesus hasn’t given up His body and blood. The Incarnation hasn’t come to an end. So, if at His Table we have communion in the body and blood of Christ, then at His Table we encounter the crucified and risen Lord.

Christ doesn’t just suggest the possibility of His presence at His Table; He promises His presence there. His presence in the Supper isn’t conditional upon the size of the congregation, or the fervency of our prayers, or the skill of our musicians, but only upon His own Word and blessing.

That’s why the early Pentecostals at their Breaking of Bread services could sing prayers like this with such confidence:

Here at Your Table Lord,
Through Your Feast we draw near,
Pour out Your Spirit now,
To know Your presence dear;
From this dark world, our eyes lift up,
As we drink from Redemption’s cup.
…
Fullness of Heaven’s peace I find,
Here, as with You I meet,
Riches of earth, with such a feast
Never can they compete!
…
Sweet communion with my Saviour,
Fellowship with Christ, ‘tis bliss!
Here You feed me with Your body,
Wonder of the Cross is this!
…
Here in Your blood, I’ve communion –
This blest cup, my heart’s delight;
Clinging to Your feet here in love,
Your grace keeps me day and night.

Here at the Lord’s Table we meet with Christ. This is the place where He promises to meet with us more closely than anywhere else, for in the Supper He is not only with us, but even feeds us with Himself. And so, we come to His Supper gladly, saying to the Lord (in Luther’s words), ‘I now come to Your Supper, desiring to eat with You!’

The Lord who is our joy and treasure, our heart’s delight, is present at His Table, and so we should run to the Breaking of Bread rejoicing to meet with our Saviour and enjoy such close communion with Him. As Luther put it in another prayer:

Click here for Part 1.

The gospel isn’t just for evangelism. Christians need the gospel too. And we need it each and every day. For the gospel isn’t just the way into the Christian life; it’s the foundation for every step of the Christian walk. Jerry Bridges has written of how Christians need to preach the gospel to themselves, which, he explains, ‘means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life’ (Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace, 58). And one of the ways we can do that is by coming to the Lord’s Table, where we examine ourselves, confess our sins, and rejoice with thanksgiving in the One who has saved us by His righteous life and shed blood in our place.

Every time we come to the Breaking of Bread, we come ‘in remembrance’ of Christ (1 Cor. 11:24-25). Every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we ‘proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes’ (1 Cor. 11:26). So, at the sacrament, our attention is turned to Jesus and His saving work for us. At the Lord’s Table we remember ‘Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ who is Himself ‘the gospel’ – the good news (Mark 1:1)! In the Supper we proclaim Christ’s death, through which He has brought us ‘redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins’ (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14).

We can’t truly have a Breaking of Bread without hearing the gospel: without hearing who Jesus is and what He has done for us and for our salvation. And so, every time we come to the Lord’s Table, we receive a gospel call to come to Jesus and taste afresh the joy and peace of full salvation in Him.

As we proclaim the Lord’s death at His Table, we acknowledge our dependence upon Him and what He’s done for us, and our confidence in the Lamb who was slain for us and now lives. And so the Lord’s Table truly is a Eucharist – a Thanksgiving – because as we look to Christ and His Cross, how can we help but be filled with thankfulness for our Saviour and His atoning work!

But as we proclaim the Lords’ death and remember Him, we also encounter the crucified and risen Saviour in His gracious and loving power. As Matthew Henry puts it:

We do this in remembrance of Christ effectually, when we experience the death of Christ killing sin in us, mortifying the flesh, weaning us from this present life, weakening vicious habits and dispositions in us … when, in ‘touching the hem of His garment,’ we find, like that good woman, virtue comes out of Him to heal our souls. (Matthew Henry, The Communicant’s Companion, 52)

The proclamation of Christ’s death is not powerless. We’re not remembering a dead historical figure, but a risen and living Lord. And that living Lord is the one who unites us to Himself in His death and resurrection, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. As John Wesley put it, ‘the grace of God given herein confirms to us the pardon of our sins by enabling us to leave them.’ (Wesley, The Duty of Constant Communion).

The Lord’s Table calls us to confess our sins and receive Christ’s forgiveness. But Christ’s forgiving power is also transforming power. Jesus doesn’t hand out a bit of forgiveness here and a dash of transformation over there. No. He gives us Himself. And in Him we find true forgiveness which transforms. For Jesus Himself is our both our righteousness and our holiness – our justification and our sanctification.

The Breaking of Bread as the holy of holies of Christian worship shows us over and over again that, ultimately, Christianity isn’t about us and what we’re doing for God, but about Jesus and what He has done for us. The more often we come to His Table, the more often we see that we come to our God only with empty hands, stretched out to receive His grace and mercy in Jesus, through His death in our place on the Cross.

As we often sing, we are ‘prone to wander … prone to leave the God [we] love.’ Our attention is grasped by so many things which distract us from the beauty of Christ and the glory of His sacrifice for us. So each and every day we need the gospel, calling us back to Jesus, fixing our eyes on our Saviour, causing us to look away from our own works to His work. And so coming to this Gospel feast set out for us at the Lord’s Supper as often as we can, whether that’s every day (like in the college chapel) or every Lord’s Day (like in most Pentecostal churches), continually preaches this good news to us .

...
Subsequent Posts in the series:
Part 3: Why Wouldn't You Want to Encounter Jesus Every Day?

For the last term in college, we’ve been doing something which some people love and others probably think is a strange eccentricity. Augustine of Hippo, Smith Wigglesworth, Symeon the New Theologian, Martin Luther’s Large Catechism, John Cosin, Cyprian of Carthage, Joseph Prince, and Basil the Great wouldn’t normally all make it into a list together, and yet they all advocate what these 21st Century Pentecostals are up to in a theological college in rural England. What might that be? Well, just in case you haven’t guessed from the title of the post, that would be celebrating the Lord’s Supper daily.

Just in that random sample we have representatives of the Greek and Latin Fathers, medieval Byzantium, the Reformation, the Church of England, early British Pentecostalism, 21st century Asian mega-church Pentecostalism, and the present-day UK. John Wesley took Communion daily in the seasons of the year (Christmastide and Eastertide) when it was available in his days, and urged Christians to communicate as often as it’s offered, for, Wesley argued, ‘it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as he can’ (John Wesley, Sermon 101: The Duty of Constant Communion). And there are two great reasons for this duty of constant Communion, Wesley tells us: first, because ‘it is a plain command of Christ’, and second, ‘because the benefits of doing it are so great to all that do it in obedience to him.’

So, throughout the history of the church – from the ancient church to the Reformation to the Evangelical Revival to the Pentecostal Revival to the present day – there has been a hunger in various places among God’s people to feast with Christ at His Table each day.

Yet, daily Communion might seem a bit odd to many Christians today. So, in the next few blogposts, let me explain why it’s such a good thing. But today, let’s just start by seeing that it is in fact something good and biblical.

A Biblical Precedent

Just after the Day of Pentecost, in the earliest days of the Christian church, the believers continued ‘daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house’ (Acts 2:46). Later in the book of Acts, as the church spread far and wide, we see that believers in faraway places continued to meet each first day of the week for the express purpose of Breaking Bread (Acts 20:7). Yet, in the earliest days, and in the height of the revival brought about by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, while the Christians were concentrated together in close geographical proximity, this Breaking of Bread took place daily. So, what we see in Acts isn’t simply weekly Communion, but very frequent Communion – at the very least weekly, but in some places daily.

Granted, we don’t all live in very close proximity to the rest of our church, so daily Communion isn’t possible for most believers. But, where God has blessed us with such a privilege (like in my situation, in a theological college), then to make the most of it by celebrating the Lord’s Supper each day is a good and biblical thing to do.

Our Daily Prayer for Daily Bread

But, not only is there a biblical precedent in the book of Acts, but it’s also something which, biblically, we’re taught to pray for every day! Have you ever noticed how in the Lord’s Prayer, when we pray ‘give us this day our daily bread’, we seem to be asking for the same thing twice: ‘daily’ and ‘this day’? What’s all that about?

The word we translate as daily is found only here in the whole New Testament. The word ‘daily’, of course, does occur in other places in the New Testament, but it’s always a different Greek word. The ancient church fathers (most of whom spoke Greek as their native language) understood this strange word in the Lord’s Prayer as a reference to the Lord’s Supper. Why? Because the closest English equivalent we have to the Greek word in the prayer is either (depending on whether you follow the ancient fathers or current New Testament scholars) either ‘supernatural’ or ‘for the future’. And there is a bread which is both supernatural and eschatological: Jesus, the living Bread of Heaven.

So, in the Lord’s Prayer, we’re not just praying for material provision for our daily needs, but we’re also praying to receive Jesus ‘this day’, the true supernatural Bread for the future. And in the Lord’s Supper, we receive ‘this day’ a ‘participation’ (1 Cor. 10:16) in this ‘true food’ (Jn 6:55).

Granted, we can also receive Christ each day in His Word. But why wouldn’t we want to receive Him as He meets with us in bread and wine at His Table each day as well if we can?

So, there’s a biblical precedent for daily Communion, and a biblical prayer – the Lord’s Prayer in fact – which points us to the goodness of meeting with Christ each day in the bread of the Lord’s Table. These aren’t commands; we’re not obliged to break bread daily. But they do show us that a daily Communion isn’t an eccentric oddity, but a good and biblical feast.

And now that we’ve established that, let’s go on next time and think about some of what Wesley called, ‘the benefits [which] are so great’ of this daily encounter with Christ at His Table, which encourage us all the more frequently to come and feast with Him, our living Lord.

....
Subsequent posts in the series:

Part 2: A Daily Gospel Call
Part 3: Why Wouldn't You Want to Encounter Jesus Every Day?

Today is the fourth day of Christmas, which means it’s the day on which we traditionally remember the bit of the Christmas story everyone wants to forget. For the 4th day of Christmas is Holy Innocents day, a day when the church remembers Herod’s slaughter of the baby boys of Bethlehem in his bloodthirsty attempt to get rid of the One who was born King of the Jews, and secure Jesus’ throne for himself (Matthew 2:16-18).

When the wise men came to Herod asking about the One born King of the Jews, Herod knew exactly what they meant, for ‘he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him’ (Mt 2:3). We can see that he knew God’s Word about the coming King, because he knew to ask the chief priests and scribes ‘where the Christ was to be born’ (Mt 2:4). Herod’s sin lay in His reaction to this Word of the Lord. How? Well, what is sin? Sin is the opposite of faith: it’s not trusting in Christ and His Word. And all of Herod’s actions in the rest of the passage are driven by His opposition to the Word of the Lord!

Herod wants to destroy the Incarnate Word (Mt 2.12-13). Not only does he refuse to acknowledge Christ the newborn King, but he wants to make sure no one else can either. And so he sets out to kill the child! He raises his rebellious hand against the Word of the Lord with its good news of the coming of the Saviour from sin. He would rather extinguish the Light, and keep the world plunged in darkness, than humble himself to bow before the Incarnate God.

But the Lord sends His angel to warn Joseph and protect the family from Herod’s pride. And so Herod slaughters the babies, because He fears the truth of God’s Word.

Herod’s slaughter of the children of Bethlehem is the Dragon lashing out against Jesus (Rev. 12:1-5). This was a devastating strike of the Dragon’s tail. This was the work of Herod in his determination to undo God’s promise of salvation by killing the Saviour so He could keep the throne for himself. And this is the work of the Dragon, Satan, who, when He can’t destroy Christ, lashes out at those near to Christ.

But where was God as the Dragon struck? Where was God as the innocent children of Bethlehem were killed and families devastated? He was there. He was there in the flesh, fleeing as a refugee to Egypt. And ultimately, He was there in the flesh heading for the Cross, where, like those boys of Bethlehem, He would be murdered. For He has entered fully into our pain and sorrow.

The Father knows just what it’s like to see His Son unjustly killed. And the Cross truly would be a slaughter of the innocent. For on the Cross, the Innocent would die for the guilty.

God doesn’t justify or explain our suffering. Instead, He enters into it fully and embraces it fully to save us – through the suffering and death of Jesus, the Incarnate God, upon the Cross. So that sheltering in Jesus our Saviour we can pass safely through the sufferings of this life and be brought safely to that day where there will be no more pain and suffering and where we shall see that truly ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.’ (Rom. 8:18)

Holy Innocents’ Day, on the 4th Day of Christmas, reminds us that Christ has come, not for the non-existent people of the TV ads with their perfect, stress-free Christmases. No, Jesus has come down to us in the midst of the true pain and suffering of this life. Jesus has come down for those whose lives are falling apart. And He didn’t come to offer an explanation or a coping mechanism. Much better, Jesus entered into the fullness of our humanity with all its sufferings and sorrows for all those who suffer and sorrow, so that through His suffering and sorrows for us, He can ultimately wipe away every tear from our eyes.

You are the God of the weak and the vulnerable.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

You judge the tyrant and the cruel.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

You wipe away the tears of the broken-hearted.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The last few weeks have been filled with farewells. Three assemblies have now sung ‘God be with you till we meet again.’ Overnight I went from being the Minister of Word and Sacrament of a specific local church to a pastor without the pastoral responsibility of a particular assembly. Now that my former assembly responsibilities are gone, that’s made me think about what my responsibility is now. You see, I come from a tradition where being a pastor (or an ordained teacher as well in my case) isn’t just a temporary function or job. When you’re ordained as a pastor, you then ‘are’ a pastor. So, I need to think about what my responsibilities are as a pastor without the responsibility of an assembly.

But how? Well, my solution was to get out my Ministers’ Manual (which is basically our liturgy book) and re-read and reflect on my ordination vows. A vow is a promise, and so it should be remembered and kept. We’d be amazed if anyone forgot their wedding vows! And an ordination vow is just as solemn a promise before God. So, if I’m to be a faithful pastor and teacher while I don’t have the responsibility of a local assembly, I need to remember and keep my ordination vows.

At the centre of the ordination vow taken by ministers in the Apostolic Church stands a promise always to trust in the Holy Scriptures as ‘our sufficient and final authority in all matters of doctrine and practice’ and so always to ‘develop your ministry in accordance’ with this sufficiency and supreme authority of Scripture. Before promising my fidelity to ‘the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith as contained in the Tenets of this Church’ or that I would maintain its ‘worship, discipline and government,’ I (and all other Apostolic ministers) promised that my ministry would always rely upon the sufficiency and authority of Scripture.

So, for the last few days I haven’t been the pastor of an assembly. Yet I have spoken to a number of people about the Christian faith, and sat with people answering many questions about the Bible and the Christian life. I haven’t done it as ‘their’ pastor, but a have done it as ‘a’ pastor and teacher (for that is what I am). And so, again and again, in response to all sorts of questions about ethics, prayer, doctrine, the Christian life, and church practice, I’ve taken people back to the Bible to see what it says – pointing people again and again to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. I don’t do that merely out of duty because I’m a pastor; I do it because I trust in Scripture’s sufficiency and authority as the Word of God. But if I weren’t to do that, I wouldn’t be keeping the promise of my ordination vow.

So, how can I, as a pastor without an assembly be a faithful pastor? By keeping my promise, and so bringing people to the green pastures of God’s Word: pointing them not to me and my words or actions, but to the sufficient Word which God has spoken.

A.W. Tozer’s name is well-known by Evangelicals around the world today. Yet, Tozer wasn’t a celebrity pastor, constantly making the rounds of the conference circuit. First and foremost, Tozer was a man who loved to spend time with God in prayer and meditation. And he was a man who believed strongly in the importance of unceasing prayer.

Tozer explained what it means to pray without ceasing by drawing on definition from Dr Max Reich: ‘Praying without ceasing [is] a continual, humble communion with God, day and night, under all circumstances, the pouring out of my heart to God in continual unbroken fellowship.’ (from Tozer’s article ‘The Church is on a Stormy Sea’, in Faith Beyond Reason).

But, if we’re to know this continual communion with God in prayer, then we need to be aware of, and deal with, the problem of distraction:

Whatever excites the curiosity, scatters the thoughts, disquiets the heart, absorbs the interests or shifts our life focus from the kingdom of God within us to the world around us—that is a distraction; and the world is full of them. … Distractions must be conquered or they will conquer us. So let us cultivate simplicity; let us want fewer things; let us walk in the Spirit; let us fill our minds with the word of God and our hearts with praise. In that way we can live in peace even in such a distraught world as this. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” (The Set of the Sail, 117-119)

It is only with such peace from Christ that we know what Tozer calls ‘the power of silence’:

There aren't all that many contemporary worship songs about the Trinity, the Eternal Purpose, or the Covenant of Redemption. To be honest, there aren't many older choruses either, and most people would be surprised to discover they were incredibly important themes in the early Pentecostal worship of the Welsh-speaking Apostolics. So, here are two Trinitarian hymns that take in these themes which I've translated from the Welsh of D.P. Williams. I've made rough recordings and attached PDFs of the lyrics and chords as well, so that if anyone wants to they can get an idea of the tune. (For one I've used the tune suggested in Molwch Dduw, our Welsh hymnbook, but I couldn't find the suggested tune for the other one, or one that seemed appropriate or usable today in the right metre, so I came up with one myself.)

Luther said that none of us could say we don't have time to pray without ceasing. Here's how he explained it:

There is no Christian who does not have time to pray without ceasing. But I mean the spiritual praying, that is: no one is so heavily burdened with his labor, but that if he will he can, while working, speak with God in his heart, lay before Him his need and that of other men, ask for help, make petition, and in all this exercise and strengthen his faith.

This is what the Lord means, Luke xviii, when He says, "Men ought always to pray, and never cease," although in Matthew vi. He forbids the use of much speaking and long prayers, because of which He rebukes the hypocrites; not because the lengthy prayer of the lips is evil, but because it is not that true prayer which can be made at all times, and without the inner prayer of faith is nothing. For we must also practise the outward prayer in its proper time, especially in the [Lord's Supper], as this Commandment requires, and wherever it is helpful to the inner prayer and faith, whether in the house or in the field, in this work or in that; of which we have no time now to speak more. For this belongs to the Lord's Prayer, in which all petitions and spoken prayer are summed up in brief words.