Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 679
Delivered on Sunday Morning, March 4, 1866, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“The Amen.” Revelation 3:14.
THE word “Amen” is much more full of meaning than may be supposed, and as a title of our Lord Jesus Christ it is eminently suggestive. As you know the word is a Hebrew one which has been very properly conveyed not only into our language, but into most, if not all the languages of Christendom. It is a happy circumstance that some of these words should have had vitality enough in them to be transplanted into other tongues and still flourish. It gives some faint foreshadowing of the united worship of celestial spirits, and it indicates the Lord’s will that the Hebrew race shall not be forgotten by His Church—and that the language of His well-beloved Israel stills sounds sweetly in His ear.
AMEN signifies, true, faithful, certain—but its sense will be better seen by carefully noting its uses. It had at least three forms of practical meaning. First, it was used in the sense of asserting—when a person would give peculiar authority to his words he either commenced or concluded with the word, “Amen.” And thus he declared as with the solemn “yes, yes,” of an honest, truth-loving man—certainly, assuredly, so it is. Our Savior uses the term frequently. The word which we translate, “Verily, verily,” is this word “Amen.”
You must have observed that John, who has a quick eye for the Divine moods of the Lord Jesus, notes with unerring fidelity the repetition of the asserting word. Whenever our blessed Lord was about to say something peculiarly solemn into which He would throw the full weight of His authority, He asserted it by the doubling of the word “Amen, amen,” or “Verily, verily,” at the commencement of it.
The second sense of the word, Amen, slightly varies from asserting, and may be more properly described as consenting. There is a memorable instance of this in the case of the woman who drank the water of jealousy (Num. 5:22). When she drank the water of jealousy it was enacted that if she had been guilty of the crime laid to her door, certain terrible results should follow as the effect of this water. She, at the time she drank it, said, “Amen, amen,” that is, she gave her consent that such-and-such pangs should fall upon her if she had been really guilty of adultery.
A more memorable instance, still, is that of the people assembled upon Mount Ebal and Gerizim. When the threats and the blessings were both read in their hearing, the people said “Amen, amen.” So let it be. Of the like character is the case in the book of Nehemiah. When Ezra blessed Jehovah, the great God, all the people answered, Amen, with lifting up of their hands. A third meaning of the word Amen is what we may call petitionary. In this sense we use it at the close of our prayers. “Our Father who are in Heaven” is not a complete model of public prayer till it concludes with, “Amen.”
In the ancient Church it was customary for the entire congregation to say Amen. Paul alludes to this custom in that expression in the Corinthians where he speaks of persons praying in an unknown tongue—he says, “How should he that occupies the room of the unlearned say Amen at your giving of thanks, seeing he understands not what you say?” We have it put on record by Jerome that at Rome the people were accustomed to say Amen in the gatherings of the early Christians so heartily—I might add, so lustily—that it was like the dash of a cataract, or a clap of thunder!
I could wish that we more uniformly and universally said Amen at the close of public prayer. I am sure it would be Scriptural and Apostolic, and I believe it would be useful to you all. Perhaps the custom was dropped on account of the irregular way in which the brethren said Amen. I have heard the same regularity in certain rustic Methodist congregations when I have thought that the Amen was put in the wrong place, and could have wished the custom to be discontinued altogether, because certain illiterate, rash, but zealous Brethren said Amen when there was nothing to say Amen to! They rather created ridicule than reverence, and showed as much folly as fervor. However, a judicious revival of the custom would, I doubt not, be useful in the Church of God.
It also signifies, “So be it, so let it be,” and is virtually the consent of the entire congregation to the prayer which has been put up. Observe the devout Amen of Benaiah, at the close of David’s dying prayer, with the remarkable addition, “The Lord God of my lord the king say so too” (1 Kings 1:36). Notice also how the Psalmist closes several of the Psalms, such as the forty-first and the seventy-second with the emphatic conclusion, “Amen and Amen.”—
“Let every creature rise and bring Peculiar honors to our King; Angels, descend with songs again, And earth, repeat the long AMEN.”