Featured Articles
Great Texts on Worship (part 6)
Previous articles in the Great Text series by Hughes Oliphant Old:
Acts 2:42
Acts 4:23-31 A very early, specifically Christian service of worship that we read about in the Acts of the Apostles is the service of morning prayer to which Peter and John came on being released from prison (Acts 4:23-31). The two Apostles had been put in prison because, in the name of Jesus, they had healed a beggar at the Temple gate. This the religious authorities interpreted as a challenge to their spiritual leadership. Peter and John were kept in prison until the next morning when they were released.
The interesting thing is that the two Apostles knew where to find their friends that morning. They were at prayer, no doubt in the home of one of their number. From a few bits of information provided by the story we get the impression that it was a typical service of morning prayer like those maintained every morning in a Jewish synagogue or a devout Jewish home.
These services of morning prayer typically began with the singing of a number of psalms. Our text tells us, "...they raised their voices together in prayer to God. ‘Sovereign Lord,' they said, ‘you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.'" (Acts 4:24, NIV). As it happens this is a line from Psalm 146, which for centuries was one of the psalms most frequently sung by devout Jews during morning prayer. In fact, the usual practice was to sing Psalm 145 to Psalm 150. These six psalms combine into a magnificent hymn of praise of the whole universe to its creator. When we read that those who were gathered together for prayer "raised their voices together in prayer," we should not imagine that all started shouting aloud their own private prayers. The function of singing in public worship was that it made it possible for people to join their voices together and pray as a group. This is one of the characteristics of biblical prayer, as we find it especially in the psalms. We pray together as one body, one heart and soul, and pray in harmony one with another.
The Protestant Reformation made a big point of praying the psalms. Martin Luther's psalm settings were popular in those days, even as they are today. The Reformation in the city of Strasbourg produced a whole collection of one hundred fifty psalms translated into German so the common people could sing them. The same thing was done by French Protestants. The Reformed Church of Geneva produced the famous
Huguenot Psalter a few years later.
As we find it in this passage of the Acts of the Apostles, it is quite easy to understand why the singing of psalms was so important to the worship of the Protestant Reformation. The Psalms, we read, are the songs of the Holy Spirit. They were divinely inspired prayers spoken by "...the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David" (Acts 4:25, NIV).
From very early times the psalms had been understood as not only the songs of God's people, but the songs of the Lord. We read in Psalm 42:8 (NIV), "By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me-a prayer to the God of my life." As the psalmist poured out his lamentations during the night he recited the psalms he knew by heart. He did this because they were the Lord's song and even in the psalmist's sorrow they spoke to him a word of hope. That is why we pray the psalms today. They give us a word of hope.
We find the same thing in Psalm 137, "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs...; they said ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?" (Psalm 137:1-4, NIV). We wonder just exactly what was meant by calling them the songs of the Lord. Were they thought of as being divinely inspired, the songs of the Holy Spirit, graciously given to be a word of support in time of suffering and need?
As we read further in Acts 4, we find that the congregation continued their prayer with Psalm 2:1-2, "‘Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One." ( Acts 4:25-26, NIV). In the Greek, of course, it is even clearer, "Against the Lord and against his Christ." Those who were praying these psalms realized that these psalms were being fulfilled among them. The rulers of Israel as well as the rulers of the Gentiles were beginning to oppress the Messiah and those who believed in him.
The value of psalm prayer is that not only does it provide us with a vehicle for expressing our own deepest prayers, but it also provides us with the consolation, support, and direction of the Holy Spirit. Because the psalms are God's Word they speak to us.
An important element of the daily prayer services of the synagogue was the reciting of the Prayer of the Eighteen Benedictions. The prayer was a long and comprehensive prayer of supplication and intercession for the people of God. It was much like the pastoral prayer of traditional Protestant worship. That is just what we find happening in this early Christian morning prayer service.
Having been inspired by the Word of God in the psalms they sang, they poured out their prayers and supplications that the Church be faithful in its ministry of teaching and preaching, that God in his providence would confirm the testimony and witness of the Apostles with signs and wonders. Finally the prayer was concluded in the name of Jesus. This is what it is to pray in the name of Jesus. It is to continue the prayer ministry of Jesus, to intercede with the Father for the salvation of the world.
One of the things which has always impressed me about the music of contemporary Christian worship is how much of it takes up the psalms, adapts them, and paraphrases them. To me this has always been a mark of the authenticity of contemporary Christian worship.
Hughes Oliphant Old, formerly pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church in West Lafayette, Indiana, teaches worship at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey
This is an excerpt from Worship Leader magazine. To read more articles like this - click here to subscribe.
