Father in heaven, we ask now for Your help that we might hear Your Word and be ready to receive it. Give me Your grace to speak it truly, humbly, powerfully, and may You accomplish all of Your purposes. We ask in Christ’s name. Amen.
Among other things, the Bible is a hymnal. There are no notes, there’s no musical score. There are some musical notations in the Psalms. But it is in one sense a hymnal. There was singing at creation. The Lord said to Job than when He laid the foundation of the earth, “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shout for joy.” Right there at the beginning they’re singing.
In the middle of the book, you open up the Bible and you’re bound to turn to one of those 150 psalms. That’s the inspired hymnal in the Bible. Nathan does such a great job of trying to teach us psalms and making sure it’s a regular diet of what we sing at the church.
Before those psalms there are songs by Moses, Miriam, Deborah, and Hannah. The angels sang for joy at Jesus’ birth. There are leading up to His birth songs from Mary and Zechariah and Simeon. There are in the New Testament various hymns, or so they seem to us, poems, odes, in John, Romans, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Hebrews, and several times here in Revelation. There are doxologies scattered throughout the Bible.
We are told to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to each other, so the Bible is among other things a hymnal.
The drama of redemptive history is a musical. Some of you have been in musicals. I shared, and I trust you not to repeat it, just a secret between us, that I was in one musical, Once Upon a Mattress, the princess and the pea story. I was the court jester. Don’t think too much about it. I did wear some peach and lime tights. I am assured there are no pictures anywhere. So glad I did that in the 90s before there was the internet. Some of you love musicals. So many movies and cartoons are really musicals.
Well, the redemptive story of the Bible is a kind of musical punctuated often with songs. So the question for you, will you join in the chorus? The main parts have been spoken for. The Church, the Lamb, sadly the dragon. But you have an opportunity to sing in the chorus, to join in the swell of the refrain, not only now but for all eternity, to sing in this great song of Moses and the song of the Lamb.
That’s what this passage is about in Revelation chapter 15. Follow along as I read the whole chapter, though our focus will be on the middle section, verses 2 through 4. Revelation 15, beginning at verse 1.
“Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are Your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy. All nations will come and worship You, for your righteous acts have been revealed.””
“After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from His power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.”
This chapter, chapter 15, is a transition passage. It’s an interlocking text. It connects 12 through 14 with chapter 16 and then the rest of the book. You remember, starting in chapter 6, we had the first cycle of sevens. Now there’s actually lots of sevens – seven churches and seven lampstands, but this cycle of sevens which dominates the middle part of the book, seven seals and then the blowing of seven trumpets which finished in chapter 11.
Then we were introduced to the story of the world and we were given a new set of characters. Three main characters – a woman, a child, and the dragon. So the woman is the Church, the child is Christ, and then the dragon is the devil.
Then we were introduced to his two associates, his devilish companions, the beasts. We saw the judgment of the dragon and the beasts and his followers at the end of chapter 14.
So now in chapter 15 we pick up with another sign. You see that in verse 1 – then I saw another sign, and this sign is called great and amazing. This sign initiates the final sequence. You see there these seven plagues, verse 1, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished.
Remember, Revelation is structured by these cycles, this recapitulation, that it’s not meant to be read just lining the wall with one large timeline, but rather we’re looking at the same events, series of sevens, and we have the end of the world and then we’re going to back up and we’re going to look at it a little different way, or to change the metaphor we have this piece of art and then another piece of art and then another piece of art. They’re telling the same story but they’re not redundant. They’re each advancing the story in some meaningful ways.
So now when we come from the seals to the trumpets, now finally seven angels with seven plagues pouring out their seven bowls which will complete the wrath of God on the earth. With these plagues history will come to an end. The glory and the power of the Lord billow out like smoke. That’s what we see in the final paragraph, verses 5 through 8, pour over the earth in one final series of judgments.
We’ll come to the actual pouring out of those bowls next week, Lord willing, in chapter 16. What I want us to look at this morning are these verses in the middle of the chapter, 2, 3, and 4, really the first half.
We have before us in these verses a sea and a song. It may not seem like much and I confess sometimes I lay out the preaching plan months and months in advance and I do study and I do read and I do get a sense of where I think it’s going but sometimes I come to it and I think, wow, I gave too much to handle in one week and sometimes I think, what was I thinking with this week? It seems like we’ve already had these sort of themes. What am I going to say? But rest assured, none of you fear, that I will not have anything to say.
I remember one, my first church I was serving, our next door neighbor, she was a dear lady in her upper 80s and I think she meant it as a compliment, but sort of also amazement. She said, “You’re so young and you can just, you have so many words and you just can talk and talk and talk.”
So yes, we have as we often find more than meets the eye. Though these are familiar words, familiar descriptions, in one way what we see here is nothing different than what we see several times in the book of Revelation and yet there are some important unique lessons here in these few verses.
I want you to notice three points. We learn in these verses three lessons.
Number one – we learn something about our salvation.
Number two – something about singing.
And number three – something about our Savior.
So number one, we learn in these verses, in particular 2, 3, and 4, something about our salvation.
There’s lots of pictures of salvation in this book and here’s another one. Remember what’s come before. The Church has been hunted, a prey to the predator, that is the dragon and the beast. We’ve had multiple chapters with pictures of war and devastation. The trampling of the two witnesses, which is emblematic of the Church under persecution and opposition. And after all of these chapters of attack and opposition and chasing down, now don’t miss this picture. It’s a vision of the tranquility of heaven.
You have to have a hurried, harried, oppressed life to benefit from the tranquility of heaven. I remember growing up and my parents having us try to honor the Sabbath so we’d have a rest time in our rooms, which now I realize was a rest time for them, it’s all coming together now. Of course, kids, when you have to have a rest time on Sunday it feels difficult because you’re ready to go. But you have to understand for probably your parents and for most adults, they’ve been going, going, going, going, going, so an opportunity to rest, to have quiet, to have calm, is a blessing.
So heaven is not going to be boring, but the picture here is of a people who have been under constant attack and assault and so now we have a picture of the tranquility of heaven. “And I saw,” verse 2, “what appeared to be a sea of glass,” or some translations a sea of crystal.
The saints in heaven here are referred to those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name. Remember, one of the big themes in this book is that Greek work nikao, nike, victory, conquerors, to him who overcome. These are ones who have overcome the temptation to give up, to give in.
So the picture is them standing beside, that’s how it’s translated, standing beside, verse 3, the sea of glass. Although Greek prepositions often have a range of meaning and some people think it should be translated “on” the sea of glass, that it really is a kind of glass on which you can stand. Whether they’re standing on it or they’re standing beside it, it’s a picture of the tranquility of heaven and a picture literally of the saints having run their race, won their reward, now being up exalted in heaven above all of the pain and the suffering and the persecution of earth. It’s what we will one day experience. It’s what those of you who have loved ones, some of you even in these past months, go on to glory, what they are experiencing.
It’s a fascinating image here, a sea of glass, clear as crystal. There’s an allusion here to how God created the world. Genesis 1:7 – and God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. It’s hard for us to picture and hard for us to know exactly how the image works and how much should be physically literally taken, but the picture in Genesis is of this watery expanse and God takes some of it and throws it up into the sky and metaphorically we understand that’s when it rains, and then He throws some of it down into the earth and that’s the seas and the lakes and the rivers. Remember, in the flood, because the flood was a kind of de-creation as God separated those, in the flood it wasn’t just rain coming down but also waters coming up. It was a de-creation.
So creation is depicted with a water thrown below and a water thrown up into the sky. Ezekiel 1:22 says that over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of an expanse shining like awe-inspiring crystal spread out above their heads. So here’s what you have to get in mind. The description here from Ezekiel and here in Revelation 15 pictures earth’s ceiling as heaven’s floor. Earth’s ceiling as heaven’s floor. That the expanse, the watery expanse that has been thrown up into the sky now the saints in heaven, they literally have risen above all of that and they look down upon this sea of tranquility, crystal clear.
It’s mingled with fire, you notice, verse 2, mingled with fire because there is salvation and judgment. Fire, judgment, this crystal clear sea is the tranquility for God’s saints and then the fire is the judgment that is taking place on the earth. But the picture we have of our salvation is of the saints in glory who enjoy this perfect peace and rest.
Now I know we have the beach and some people are going to the beach for spring break and lots of us go to the beach at some time during the year and the beach, the big beach, the ocean beach, it’s wonderful. It’s got the waves and the tide comes in and out, but if you go to an inland lake, it doesn’t have the same big waves. You get up early in the morning, maybe there’s a little mist coming off the lake, and it’s been a clear night and the sun is rising and you can look out and it is, as it were, clear as crystal and maybe you can see even the reflection of the sky bouncing off the stillness of the water. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to have that for your vacation and to get up and maybe you go out on the dock and you read your Bible and you look, and it is, it is peaceful. It’s quiet. It’s tranquil. There’s something about this great big sea and yet it’s at rest and it’s calm.
So is the picture for the saints in heaven. After all the warfare down here on earth, they’re up in heaven and it’s peaceful and it’s calm. It’s victorious. There’s a perspective. See, we’re meant to have a perspective on earth of what our perspective will be in heaven. We can’t see everything here on earth, but we know that one day we will have that vantage point, we will have that viewpoint, and things that don’t make sense here on earth will somehow make some sense and what seems to be a great storm here on earth we’ll come above it. Just like when you’re flying across the country and when you get above the cloud line it’s always a sunny day up there, isn’t it? You don’t even realize sometimes when you come back down to earth what gray and dismal weather it is.
Likewise, when you’re taking off and it’s gray and cloudy or stormy, if you make it through the storm and you get up above the clouds, to see the everlasting sunshine. That’s the picture of salvation that our loved ones are experiencing and that we look forward to when the world as it is now will make more sense than it does. Everything will become clearer when we can look down rather than when we have to look out.
I like what Joel Beeke says in his commentary. He quotes from the Puritan John Flavel, “Sometimes providences like Hebrew letters must be read backwards.” Hebrew, for English speakers, is read backwards and so he’s saying you can’t always understand God’s providences until you read them backwards.
What we will experience in a number of minutes here at the table is supposed to be a foretaste of that heavenly tranquility, this meal. What is home? Home is where the heart is. Well, a house is a home when your family is there and you have a meal and you have friends and you have laughter and you have warmth. This is supposed to be a foretaste here on earth of that great everlasting feast that is to come.
You remember in Psalm 23 the two images there, the Lord is my shepherd, we remember that, but the second half of the psalm, the Lord is our shepherd and the Lord also is our host. He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. He spreads a feast. He anoints our head with oil. He makes the preparations. Surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives. This table is a foretaste of that feast, that home.
I remember one time, I’ve shared this before, years ago we had a relative, a great aunt or uncle, someone who had passed away and our neighbor, who was not a Christian, said to us with a little bit of snark in her voice, “Oh, I guess he’s gone home, hasn’t he?” And I said, “Yes, he has.” That is what we believe. We believe it is a home going. It is more of a home there in heaven even than we have here on earth. It’s a rescue. It’s a deliverance. It’s a redemption.
That’s why this is called the song of Moses and the Lamb. We’ve already sung some of the song of Moses from Exodus 15 – I will sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously, the horse and rider he has thrown into the sea, the Lord is my strength and my song and He has become my salvation.
This means that our story is also an Exodus story. Theirs was a story from literal bondage and slavery. Ours is a story from a different kind of slavery. Bondage to the world, the flesh, and the devil. And just like the Israelites, one of the things we need to ask ourselves, do you want to leave Egypt? If you’ve left Egypt, are you longing to get back? Because it’s only a deliverance when you want to leave. You only can enjoy the exodus when you realize that the Promised Land ahead is so much better than the Egypt that you’ve left.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before His presence of glory with great joy, that’s what Jude tells us, great joy. This is a picture of the joyful exuberance of the saints. Above it all, looking down on the sea of glass, clear as crystal. We learn something about our salvation.
Second, we learn something about singing. About singing. There’s a lot of songs in Revelation. Now I know that this song here is not meant explicitly to be a full exposition of corporate worship, yet if this is a picture of heavenly realities, of heavenly singing, and what we do here at least in part on Sunday is to anticipate and to reflect that heavenly worship that is taking place and the heavenly worship we will one day enjoy and even together with them we now participle in, then surely this tells us something about our own corporate worship and our own singing.
Let me give you a few thoughts. One, notice this is singing to God. The singing is to God. Now it’s true, we are told to admonish one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. So it’s appropriate in corporate worship that some of our songs are speaking to each other. That’s what we’re doing across this room is we’re encouraging one another, lift up your drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees. So there certainly is a horizontal dimension to our singing.
But even that horizontal dimension must always have a vertical thrust. What we do in worship is first of all for the One who is worthy of worship. So the first question about our worship is not what do unbelievers think about this – if you’re a nonbeliever, we’re very glad you’re here and we want what we do here to be understandable, we want to teach and explain well, even if you’re completely new to it. Some of it won’t make sense at first, but we do want to be aware, so we’re not ignorant of that.
But that’s not the first question, what do unbelievers think about it. It’s not even, saints, the first question, well, what do we think about it? Yes, it must be edifying to the saints, but the first and ultimate question, what does God think about this? There should be only one person we want to impress with our music. It’s not you, it’s not some music teacher, some choir director, some standard we set for ourselves. The one person we come in here and we want to impress is God. We want God to be honored. That’s the first and last question. What does God think about our singing?
Let me give you a second thought. You’re wondering how many extra points am I sneaking in in this second point. Well, just three. Here’s my second one. So this singing here is to God and notice the singing is about God. Now why is that important?
Our church singing is not mainly about expressing our emotions or giving voice to our emotional state. You say there you go again, Presbyterians against emotions. No, like emotions. I’ll go one step further. Sometimes people fault newer songs. Oh, all these new praise songs, all the I, me, my. Well, relax. About a hundred of the psalms have I, me, my. So the problem isn’t personal pronouns. The problem isn’t giving personal voice in our songs. The problem is if we never get around to saying what God is worthy of praise.
There’s that old praise, “I just want to praise the Lord, I just want to praise the Lord.” I always felt like, just do it then, go for it. We’re all ready.
This song of the Lamb teaches us something and we’ll come to that in a bit, what it says, but it teaches us something about God. Every bit of this service, and Nathan and I agree on this 1000%, every bit of this service is an element of worship and an element of discipleship. It’s not like, well, you get the feel-good stuff and then you’ve got to learn something. The songs are helping you learn something, too. It’s a good thought experiment. Now we have the preaching of the word, thankfully, but it’s a good thought experiment. What would you know about God and His Word just from the songs we sing together at church? If you all you had are the songs we sing for 20 years, what would you know about God and His Word?
A whole lot of places they would not know very much. Be very thin. They would know a lot about what they’re feeling about things, but they wouldn’t know about creation, redemption, providence, the trinity. They wouldn’t know the great doctrines of the faith.
So we’re not trying to sing songs here that just meet the bare minimum threshold of heresy-free. You know, at a factory, 100 days since an accident, so we’re not just keeping track, heresy-free at Christ Covenant for I think probably all the years. We got a higher bar than that. We want the songs to be teaching you something.
Now what we teach can be both very simple or very profound. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, is an absolutely precious truth. That’s a simple truth we want to understand. As well as deeper truths, like of the Father’s love begotten, ‘ere the worlds began to be, He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He.
How much of the whole counsel of God would you learn from a lifetime of singing in church? If we aren’t learning good theology and biblical truth from our songs, then either we don’t care very much about our songs or we don’t care very much about biblical truth or maybe it’s both. We want songs that will help you die well. That sounds morbid but that’s the reality we’re all facing, should Jesus tarry. What are the songs you’re going to sing around the hospital bed? What are the songs that are going to encourage you at the funeral? What are the songs that you’re going to hold hands with your Christian brothers and sisters as you bow and pray? What will sustain you in those days?
This singing here is about God and the singing is from the people of God. The saints, they have harps, so musical instruments are good. The singing is from the people of God.
You’ve probably heard me say this before, it’s one of the most important aspects of a good theology of corporate worship and it is this – the main sound, the main musical sound to be heard in corporate worship is the sound of the congregation singing. The main musical sound to be heard in corporate worship is the sound of the congregation singing. You say, well, that should be obvious. I hope it is. But think of how other churches might fill in the blank. The main musical sound is the sound of the organ and the pipes, or it’s the sound of a really dynamite praise band. Or the main sound is just soloists. Now we have soloists, we have choirs, believe that that’s appropriate, but the main thing all of that is to encourage and lift up and all of this instrumentation is to help us sing.
Now this is going to have implications for how we play music, how we think about music. I’ve nothing against, well, maybe sometimes I’ve something against, but I was going to say Christian songs on the radio, some of them are quite good. I like many of them. One of the hard things, however, is songs that are written to be sung in a performance are often very difficult for 1400 people to sing together. If the main sound is the congregation singing, you have to think about range and rhythm and syncopation and the melody has to be fairly simple. You have to think about instrumentation. Do the instruments inhibit the congregation from singing? Or do they fill in the cracks so that people are encouraged to sing out louder? Are we trying to facilitate a corporate experience or are we trying to facilitate a large gathering of many private experiences?
We’ve all had probably the occasion to be in churches where the music is either so slow it doesn’t encourage anybody to sing. You say, well, Pastor wanted me to die well and I’m about ready. Or the music is so loud the band may be ready to cut an album, but nobody can hear themselves sing. Or the lights are turned down so low, oh, boy, I knew you were getting old, Pastor. But listen, there’s a reason for this. We admonish one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs – you want to see each other. It’s not that you can’t ever have the lights low. A Maundy Thursday service or you know the lights go low and everything blows up, but I’m talking about how we think week after week about what we’re doing here.
The other thing, you turn all the lights down, what does that culturally signal to most of us? I’m about to be entertained. The movie’s going to start, the concert’s going to start. When you can’t see each other, what it encourages is a roomful of private worship experiences. Thank you, I can’t see anyone, I will have a private worship experience here to myself. Rather than a roomful of people together edifying each other, admonishing one another, lifting up this praise to God.
So it doesn’t matter how polished the band is if no one is singing. Let me tell you as a pastor one of the absolute best things someone can say to me as a pastor, and by God’s grace people have said it many times, here’s what they can say – You know what? Those people at your church, boy, do they love to sing.
We’ve all been to churches and it’s just dynamite up here and it’s amazing. You can just hit record and put it online and it’s ready to go. You look around and no one is singing because it’s dark and no one can see each other or they don’t know the song or this is so good or it’s three new songs every week or it’s just not singable. One of the best things anybody can say is to walk in and say, “Wow, these people love to sing songs to Jesus. They love to sing songs to the Lamb.”
When they don’t, I’m not sure if they haven’t been taught well or they haven’t thought through the musicality well, or people just don’t feel like they have much to sing about, but one of the best signs and the healthiest signs in a church is that the overwhelming musical takeaway, yes, we’ve got amazing musicians and Nathan’s great and Joseph leading today, we’ve got amazing musicians, but I know for each one of them they want the big takeaway to be wasn’t it amazing to hear God’s people sing.
So we learn something about singing. This is from God’s people. They’re the choir that matters most.
Finally, those were my three points on the second point. Here’s the real final third point. We learn something about our Savior, something about salvation, something about singing, something about our Savior. Notice verse 3. It’s called the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. Not two songs, one song, because at its root, those two songs are about the same thing. It’s about God’s deliverance for God’s people. This little song here, it’s just two verses, verse 3 and verse 4, actually tell us a lot about God.
Did you notice? I count at least seven attributes mentioned of God. He is Almighty, that’s the Greek word pantocrator. He is just. He is true. He is sovereign, that’s where it says He is king of the nations at the end of verse 3. He is holy. He is righteous. And He is singular. That is, You alone are holy. God is God alone and there is no other.
Then I see three things that we do in response to this revelation. We fear, we glorify, and we come and worship.
Notice the end of verse 4, this language. Don’t let it pass you by. All nations will come and worship you. One of the keys to understanding Revelation, and this will be important as we come to Revelation 20 and understanding the millennium, is at the same time the nations are judged and the nations are redeemed. That on the one hand we have many times in Revelation the nations of the world are going to be judged.
In chapter 16 we will see a battle of Armageddon where the kings of the whole earth will be destroyed. In chapters 17 and 18 we will see Babylon cast down. In chapter 19 we will see the rider on a white horse make war against the peoples of the earth. So there is bad news coming for the rebellious peoples on the earth.
Yet there is good news if they have ears to hear. Already in chapter 5 verse 9 we read by His blood the Lamb has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. If you were here several weeks ago you may remember in chapter 14 verse 6, an angel swoops down with an eternal gospel and he announces with a loud voice, “Fear God and give Him glory.”
Well, it seems that some of the peoples of the earth did just that. They heard the gospel announcement. They heard the summons to fear God and give Him glory, and they did, and the nations here, the ones who have conquered, I don’t think this is just the nations coming cravenly to acknowledge begrudgingly that Jesus is Lord, I think these are nations that have turned.
Psalm 86 predicted this. All the nations You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, and shall glorify Your name for You are great and do wondrous things. You alone are God.
These are the nations coming not just to weep but to worship. Fear God and give Him glory and there will be some from every tribe and language and people and nation who will do just that. And they come and they worship.
Do you realize no matter how big or small a church may be, no matter how great a Sunday may seem or very ordinary, and let’s be honest, most of our days and most of our Sundays probably seem very ordinary. You have to understand that what we’re doing here is in anticipation of something absolutely extraordinary, world changing, never ending. The very story of the whole cosmos is this – to feast on Christ, to be joined with Christ, to sing together with the people of Christ, to give glory now and forever to the Lab.
The Bible, I said at the very beginning, has a lot of different songs, but in one sense it only has this one song because the song of Moses is the song of the Lamb. They’re one and the same. They both praise God for His great acts of judgment, for His fearful holiness, for His revealed righteousness, for the salvation He works on behalf of His redeemed.
They sang the song of Moses on the shores of the Red Sea and here in heaven they sing the song of the Lamb on the shores of the glass sea. They sang in Exodus the Lord is my strength and my song and He has become my salvation.
Friends, is that the song you’re singing? Is that our corporate anthem? Is that your personal anthem? Most of the songs you probably have on your playlist, just a normal popular playlist, is going to have a whole lot of other anthems. That old song, “I did it my way.” Is that your personal anthem? That old Whitney Houston song, “To love yourself is the greatest love of all.” Hmm. Err. Maybe that song, what was it, 10 years ago? “This girl’s on fire.” Maybe that’s your personal anthem. Did this song win a Grammy this year? “I can buy myself flowers, I can hold my own hand, I can love myself better than you can.” A lot of our songs are anthems of personal strength, resilience, self-empowerment, I’ll do it my way, I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone else.
The antithesis of a song of salvation. You have become my strength, my song, my deliverer.
What do you sing about when you are free to sing about whatever you want to sing about? Yeah, my playlist has lots of sings, Christian songs, non-Christian songs. But what do you get in your head? What are you reinforcing? What gets stuck in your soul and in your psyche? It does matter what you put in because that’s going to be what you put out.
What do you love to sing about? Is it about salvation? About the cross? About the empty tomb? We have the privilege to sing now, to sing next week, and to sing forever and never stop singing this song, “Great and amazing are Your deeds, O Lord God Almighty. Just and true are Your ways, O King of the nations.”
Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we given thanks for Your holy Word, for the songs that You have given us to sing and for the feast that You give us to eat. Nourish us by Your Word just spoken and now nourish us by the word that we will take from Your hand and eat and drink. May it be to us Your blessing. In Jesus we pray. Amen.