Now let us go on to the last passage in this book regarding Christian meetings—chapter thirteen, verse 15. This is the last instruction in this book. “Through him (note the change from ‘by him’ to ‘through him,’ which is the proper translation) therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips confessing His name.” (Note, the proper translation should be “confessing his name,” not “giving thanks to his name.”) After thirteen chapters full of instructions, here is the final instruction. “Through him.” Do not miss these two words, “through him.” Through whom? You may say through Jesus Christ. Yes, but who is Jesus Christ? You must read the book of Hebrews several times before you can answer this question. The answer is not so simple. All thirteen chapters of this book simply tell us who Jesus is. Let us consider briefly in the light of this book who Jesus is.
Chapter one tells us that Jesus is one with divinity: He is called the Son of God, and He is even God Himself. Chapter two tells us that Jesus is a real man, yet a man who is now crowned with glory and honor. Such a man who has been tested by so many sufferings is today our great High Priest. In chapter three we have more items of what this Jesus is. He is the Apostle sent to us by God, and the High Priest going to God for us. He came as the Apostle, and He went as the High Priest. We could go on to look at many more items in chapters four, five, six, seven, and eight, etc. There is something in every chapter. Oh, this Jesus, this wonderful Jesus! So this word, “through him,” in chapter thirteen has immense significance. It means that you have experienced Him, that you have passed through Him, through the Jesus of all thirteen chapters of this superlative book. Without being “through him” your praises to God can never be acceptable and are meaningless. We must give our praises “through him.” In other words, your praise must be composed through Him, must be composed with Him, and must be constituted with the experiences of Him. You enjoy Him as the One mentioned in chapter one, you enjoy Him as the One in chapter two, you experience and pass through Him as the One revealed in chapter three, and so forth. Then you have many letters and words of Christ; you have a vocabulary, not just in your mentality, but in your experience, from which you may compose praise to the Father. This is the right meaning of “through him.” Through Him you offer your praises to the Father. This is the fruit of your lips, confessing His name. We confess His name not by preaching or teaching, but by praising.
Put these three passages together: 1) Christ is in the midst of the church, singing hymns of praise to the Father; 2) we must not neglect to come together, we must have a meeting habit; and 3) through Him we must offer praises to God. When we conjoin these three passages, we get the proper concept of Christian meetings.
I am expecting and looking to the Lord that one day in our meetings three-fourths of the time will be for praising and one-fourth left for prophesying. You may say that that is too much time for praise, but I hope that it will be so much. Whenever we come together we must be full of praise and most of the time praising. You may ask, what about encouraging one another, what about exhorting? Should we just praise without exhorting or encouraging? I tell you, the proper praising is the best exhortation, the best encouragement. If someone stands up to exhort me, I am not so deeply impressed. But if they sing praises from the spirit, if the Lord Jesus sings in their singing, that is a real exhortation, a real encouragement to me. Do you not agree? The real edifying, the real building up of the church is in the praising. If we would and if we could praise adequately and properly so that the Lord Jesus could continually sing hymns in our singing, the church would be wonderfully encouraged and built up. This is why the Apostle Paul lists psalms as the first item mentioned in 1 Corinthians 14:26. Singing and praising must be on the top. We must consider praising the first item we need in the meetings of the church.
In the beginning of this book it says that the Lord Jesus sings praises to the Father in the midst of the church. Then at the end we are told that we must offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually through Him. Between these two passages we have the verse in chapter ten telling us that we must build up a meeting habit. By these three passages we are abundantly clear that whenever we meet there must be the possibility of the Lord Jesus singing praises to the Father, and whenever we come together we must be praising, not talking, witnessing or prophesying so much, but praising—praising through Him.