Psalm 106:48 Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, From everlasting even to everlasting. And let all the people say, "Amen." Praise the LORD!
All God's people are here commanded to give their verbal, heartfelt assent to the idea that God should be blessed throughout eternal ages. At the end of a discourse, this word "amen" means "so it is", "so be it", "may it be fulfilled". Concerning the use of "Amen", one commentator observes: "It was a custom, which passed over from the synagogues to the Christian assemblies, that when he who had read or discoursed, had offered up solemn prayer to God, the others responded "Amen", and thus made the substance of what was uttered their own." So we have Paul instructing the Corinthians concerning the saying of "the Amen" in their gatherings:
1 Corinthians 14:16 Otherwise if you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the “Amen” at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying?
The use of "the" in "the Amen" in this passage seems to point to a common practice in the early church. The early Christian churches followed the example of Israel in associating themselves audibly with the prayers and thanksgivings offered on their behalf .
What a privilege and a joy it is to praise God or to present petitions before Him as the Body of Christ and to join together in our agreement with what was said with an audible "Amen"! No longer is the praise or the request a matter of one person alone. Now it has the assent of the Body. Now all own it as their praise, as their request of their Father in heaven.
It is a sad thing when a believer lifts up a legitimate praise of God, or voices a valid request to Him in the presence of the church, and it is greeted at the conclusion with silence from his or her brothers and sisters. Did they not hear the prayer? Did they not agree with the substance of it? Why, then, were they unable to say "the Amen" to it? Why were they not able to make it their praise of God, or own it as their request also? The Body does not function as it should when one part is left to function on its own in this way.
But note, for our purposes in these meditations, that there can be no saying of "the Amen" at all if there is no gathering together for prayer. This is worse than a situation where the church gathers and "the Amen" is not vocalized but rather internalized. How are we behaving as a body if we are never joined together and giving expression to our common desire to see the Name of God glorified through the answers to our prayers?
So if you stay away from a gathering of your church this week at which prayer is offered up to God, realize that in doing so you have denied yourself the blessing of functioning as a part of the Body by voicing your "Amen" to the prayers that are offered, by owning them yourself. Realize, too, that you have robbed your brothers and sisters of the blessing of hearing your "Amen", given in heartfelt response to the prayers offered to your Father and theirs.
