Hymn of the month
September 2010
#230: Thou Who Was Rich beyond All Splendor
Christ’s descent from heaven to earth, his willful humiliation, cannot too often be the subject of our thoughts. The glories he surrendered, the sins he witnessed, the shame he endured, and the death he suffered are to be sung about and meditated upon. But not merely for their own sake. Their value to the Christian is that by enduring them Christ secured for his people an eternal salvation. Meditating upon Christ’s humiliation produces in the Christian overwhelming thankfulness for what Christ has accomplished. But it does not only produce thankfulness; it produces humility. Humility, because the Christian realizes that Christ’s humiliation was not motivated by his own worth, but by an undeserved, mercifully bestowed love: It was out of love for his people that Christ suffered total humiliation. And it does not only produce humility; it produces worship – the humble outpouring of thankfulness and praise to our God. Our new hymn of the month, clearly the result of sustained meditation upon Christ’s love and humiliation, is an outbreak of worship to our God. As a consequence, we would do well to use this hymn not only in worship, but as a means to meditate upon Christ’s loving humiliation for us.
August 2010
(There is no link to words and music avaliable for this tune as the tune has been modified to fit the words.)
#45: Now unto Jehovah, Ye Sons of the Mighty
Our hymn of the month is Psalm 29:1-5, 9-11 (hymn # 45). Psalm 29 is a call to worship provoked by description of God’s sovereign power. Our hymn version of Psalm 29 follows the inspired order of topics, beginning with the call to worship, which has two aspects: The first aspect is the command to worship God by confessing God’s attributes of glory and strength. We don’t often think that confessing–the act of publicly announcing what is true about God–is one of the main things to be done in worship. Yet Psalm 29, excepting the last verse, is exclusively a call to the church to confess the greatness and gloriousness of God. The second aspect of the call to worship is the holiness God commands from those who would worship Him. We know from the rest of Scripture that this means that the worshipper is called first and foremost to come clothed in the righteousness of Christ, which is the state of the Christian at the moment of their justification. We also know that this means that the Christian is only to worship God with a heart set to magnify and to worship Him alone and only as He has proscribed in His Word. The second aspect to the Psalm, as well as to our hymn, is a description of God’s power. We are reminded that our confession is honest because God’s voice shatters trees, turns oceans into tsunamis, and is full of majesty such that, upon hearing it, one is utterly unable to resist falling upon one’s knees in worship. The psalm is our prayer and confession that our sovereign, powerful, and glorious God is alone worthy of worship.
July 2010
#186: One There Is Above All Others
The spirit that ought to characterize the Christian when he enters upon the worship of God on the Lord’s Day is well expressed in the last stanza of the hymn selected for this month. John Newton, the slave trader who had been saved in such a remarkable way, ‘loved much’. Yet, burdened by a realization of the remaining hardness of heart and the lack of spontaneous, reciprocating love, cries out for grace to be delivered from this evil now, and at last when he may enter the presence of his Friend. Each Lord’s Day, we too long for a little foretaste of that as we assemble for worship and contemplate what a Friend we have in Jesus--this month singing together Newton’s hymn. As is the case with so many words, there is a wide nuance of meaning in this word ‘friend’. It is easy to seriously undervalue the biblical sense in which this word is applied to our Savior. In fact it should be said that the true meaning of the word is expressed here, and that all our friendships should be patterned on his. The Lord Jesus is a faithful, utterly reliable, longsuffering and demanding Friend, who has given his life’s blood to make us his friends forever. He now requires us to imitate him, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants…but I have called you friends.” Jn. 15:13-15. His enemies called him, “Friend of Sinners”. What was a term of derision to them, is music to our ears, for so he truly is. So when we sing this, let us also pray with John Newton that we may have the grace to truly reciprocate his love from hearts softened by a renewed realization of the depth of our sin from which we have been delivered at such tremendous cost.
June 2010
Link to words and music (note that this version has a different title and an extra verse)
#10, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Each book of the Bible is a piece of literature: Each has a beginning, middle, and end; each also has its own structure and form. As a consequence, like other books, if a reader desires to understand how a book ends he must first understand how it begins. Hallelujah, Hallelujah is taken from Psalm 150. Psalm 150 ends the book of Psalms. The Psalms begin with a call to devote one’s self to the Word and worship of God. In other words it begins where the Christian life begins, a desire to always walk and talk with God. The middle of the Psalter is the story of the Christian’s walking and talking with God: it expresses the joys and comforts, the lamentations and fears–and the hopes of the Christian as he makes his pilgrimage to Zion. Like other pieces of literature, there is a progression to the plot that finally arrives at a climax. In the Psalter that progression is often described as “doxological”, moving in the direction of praise to God. Thus the climax of the story is praise. And that is what Psalm 150 is. Psalm 150 contains only praise and thanksgiving. There is no sorrow, no lamentation, no weeping. All is joy. It is the climax. It is also the end. And as the beginning and middle of the Psalter in many ways chronicles the beginning and middle of the Christian’s life, so the end chronicles his end: Pure, undiluted joy.
May 2010
519: Fountain of Never-Ceasing Grace
Here is a song that ought to be memorized and sung often, both individually and in family worship, because it clearly expresses the doctrine of justification by faith alone and praises God for it. In the first verse we praise God that we are righteous in His sight because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. This is described as a fountain of never-ceasing grace–and that is how we should think of it–because we who have received Christ’s righteousness can never be cast off. Ever. That point is beautifully made at the end of the second verse, “the law you perfectly obeyed, that [Christians] might enter heaven.” This is a settled relationship: Christ’s obedience is imputed to us and therefore we enter heaven. That is precisely the note struck in Romans 5:1–and we should strike it loudly and clearly when we sing this verse. The final verse of this hymn exactly expresses the federal headship of Christ and of Adam (which is also articulated in Romans 5). This is so important. In Adam we all died. In Christ we live through Him by faith alone. We are welcomed into paradise–completely–because our Savior has earned (“merited”) it for us. All these parts reveal the great truth that we are perfectly and eternally saved by grace alone, not of our works but by the perfect works of our Federal Head, Jesus Christ. For we who trust in Christ, there is no more glorious truth than that.
April 2010
Link to music
278: That Easter Day with Joy Was Bright
(Please note that the words are somewhat different than those in the Trinity Hymnal.)
On April 4th the church around the world will celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. With His resurrection, Jesus completed His triumph over sin, over hell, and over death. His resurrection not only provided the proof that Jesus was who He said he was: The eternal Son of God; it also proves His claim that all who are united to Him by faith alone shall indeed live and reign with Him forever. And while death remains our enemy, an enemy that causes real pain and suffering, we are guaranteed that it can never conquer Christ or His people. In fact it has been so defeated that it has even become the Christian’s entrance into the presence of his Triune God. All these things are celebrated by this medieval Latin hymn. When singing it in our service, we ought to especially emphasize the final phrase in the last stanza, “from every weapon death can wield thine own redeemed forever shield.” That indeed is the hope–and the promise–which Christ’s resurrection has given to His people.
March 2010
Link to words and music
100: Holy, Holy, Holy!
This hymn is a wonderful song of praise to our Triune God. It blesses our God for His attributes of holiness and purity which will not allow sinful eyes to behold Him. It praises our God for being almighty and merciful, for being perfect in love, and for His eternal existence. It extols our God for His good and excellent works which bring praise to His glorious name. It also sings of our desire to join in singing praise to our great God with the heavenly company of the angels and of the saints who have gone on to glory before us. This is an excellent song to sing daily in family worship or in private devotions, or to sing as you drive to and from the office, because it not only praises God but it also teaches us and reminds us who God is. He is one God in three Persons, the blessed Trinity.
February 2010
#608: To God My Earnest Voice I Raise
Our hymn for this month comes from Psalm 142 and captures the essence of the Psalm quite well, namely, the Christian’s need for God’s aid as he faces the tumultuous travails of this life. It begins where all Christian cries begin: a prayer to God pouring forth from the heart, and ends where all Christian life ends: a desire to praise and glorify God. In the middle stands the certainty that God not only knows the reality and extent of the Christian’s struggles but that He is the Christian’s only real hope and shelter. That firm knowledge that God can be trusted to deliver the Christian safely to Himself is based on nothing less than God’s promise to do so, a promise He has sealed with an oath, with the blood of His Son, and with the pouring out of His Spirit upon all His people. This Psalm encourages us and teaches us to offer up our prayers to God in faith, upon the basis of His promised aid, and to know that His response will enable us to gratefully praise the One to whom all glory belongs.
January 2010
Link to words and music
#166: Wondrous King All-Glorious
An important element of the public worship of God is the raising of our voices in song. In so doing we must not lose sight of why we do so. Worship is to be God-directed—so is our singing. Not all hymns meet this criteria, some are man-directed and may tell about God, but do not address God. Our hymn does have God as the object of faith and rouses the created order and all that have being to join in boundless praise. The author of this hymn is filled with wonder, and in stanza one solicits God to accept his praise, acknowledging God’s kindness and his own sin in straying, while recognizing the need for divine assistance in rendering praise acceptable to him. In stanza two he calls on the heavens and the heavenly bodies to show forth their Maker’s praise as they fulfill their created callings. In stanza three the hymn writer rouses his own soul and all who have being to praise and prostrate themselves before the Lord Sabaoth, and in the last stanza he urges all worshipers of God to render to Him joyful hallelujahs and hearts that yield Him glad obedience, reminding them and us of their eternal blessedness in which we shall render praise forever, no longer plagued by sin. We are those that are blessed with this eternal hope and are called to joyful praise and adoration, rendering the fruit of our lips in reverend fear of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ