****IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL

Horatio Spafford was a wealthy Chicago lawyer and businessman in the mid-1800s.  He and his wife, Anna, had five children.  In 1871 his youngest became ill and he died.  Shortly after that, the great Chicago fire wiped out his home.  His insurance company wouldn’t cover the loss because it was deemed an “Act of God.”

In 1873 he decided to take his family to help his friend, D. L. Moody with some evangelism services in England.   Just before their departure, a business emergency interrupted his trip so, he sent his wife and four daughters ahead and planned to meet up with them later.

After several days, his wife wired a message; their ship had collided with another and sank.  All four of his daughters had perished in the wreck.   Anna’s message was, “saved alone, what shall I do?”

In just two years, they had lost all five of their children.

Horatio left immediately to be with his grieving wife in England.

On the way, he wrote the lyrics to the hymn, “IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL.”

We usually think of this hymn in the context of comfort for those who are grieving.  In the first stanza, we get a glimpse of Horatio’s faith during a time of unbearable grief; “When sorrows, like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’”

Well, that is the short story, but beyond the sorrow, this hymn has another dimension; our sin natures.  The prophet, Isaiah, described our human condition like this: “But we are all like an unclean thing” (Isa. 64:6).

By using that phrase, he may have been alluding to the disease of leprosy.

Leprosy is a stinking, reeking mass of rotting, dead flesh.  It’s disgusting; it’s repulsive; it oozes with puss and blood.  Can you imagine someone trying to cover his leprosy with fine white silk garments?  That wouldn’t change the facts.  The diseased flesh would still stink, and the uncleanness would begin to bleed through the fabric until the fine silk becomes as corrupt as the man.

And that’s how God sees men who attempt to clean themselves up and cover the disease of their sin with religious good works.  The prophet continues; “All our righteousnesses (good works) have become as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6).

Several years ago my pastor preached a series through the Ten Commandments and those sermons exposed our true conditions; we are all sin-stained lawbreakers.  So, every Sunday, I left feeling rotten about my sin.  And if you feel that way, that’s evidence of the convicting work of the Spirit of God in you.

In his third verse, Spafford expressed an attitude of grateful praise.  In his desperate, sinful condition, he found joy in God’s mercy and grace.  “My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought; My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.  Praise the Lord; praise the Lord, O my soul.”

****ALAS! AND DID MY SAVIOR BLEED? (2)

“You can’t be saved if you don’t know you’re lost.”  We don’t hear that axiom much, anymore, because, in our modern culture, we practice too much self-worship and self-esteem. We tend to minimize our own sinful natures. We use non-offensive terms like “missing the mark,” “shortcomings,” or “mistakes.”

We do that with our children too. We avoid telling them about their sin or calling them out for their rebelliousness. We use phrases like “acting out” to describe their bad behavior. Instead of disciplining them or allowing them to suffer consequences for their willful disobedience, we give them “time out” and send them to their rooms to play with their video games. 

We are inclined to make excuses for our sins like, “I’m just human,” or “That’s the way God made me,” or, “I’m a good person, I’m not nearly as bad as a lot of other people.” But God doesn’t compare people on a sliding scale.

The Gospel is Good News but before we can begin to appreciate the goodness of God’s grace, we need to know how grievous our sins are.  We must first understand the Bad News of the Gospel. 

In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul, the apostle, quoting from the Psalms and Isaiah, made a startling, assessment of all men everywhere. “They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none who does good.  They are dead.  They are as unclean things and their good works are like filthy rags.”  “There is no faithfulness in their mouths; in their body is destruction; their throat is an open tomb. Their mouths are full of cursing and deceit and oppression; under their tongue is trouble and iniquity” (Is. 64 and Rom. 3).

That’s really Bad News.  It’s a blanket indictment against all people. There are NO EXCEPTIONS!  

Humility was a major theme in my former pastor’s sermons for a few weeks and I think this song, ALAS! AND DID MY SAVIOR BLEED? is a truly, humbling hymn. In the first stanza, Isaac Watts used an image that has been rejected by a generation that thinks too highly of itself. The phrase, “for such a worm as I,” has been replaced, in most modern hymnals, with “for sinners such and I” or “for such a one as I.” Those alterations are unfortunate because they minimize the horrible depth of our sin natures. But his allusion to a worm is scriptural and is an important setup to the hymn’s contrast between man’s sin and God’s grace.

  

Bildad asked Job, “How can a man be righteous before God?  If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in God’s sight, how much less is man, who is a maggot, and a son of man, who is a worm?”

Abraham referred to himself as mere "… dust and ashes." (Gen. 18:27).  And Isaiah said, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6)

David wrote, “I am a worm and not a man.” (Psalm 22:6).  That was a prophetic statement about the Son of God who would humble Himself to become the One who would be despised and scorned by men, and even forsaken by His Father when He was hung, in our stead, on the cross.

So, the allusion is both fitting and humbling. Isaac Watts laid out the Gospel in a way that leaves us no room to gloat with pride or self-esteem. Instead, we are humbled and struck with great grief when we realize our wretched, helpless condition. That’s the meaning of the word, “Alas.”  There is no place to turn; there is no hope in our own goodness or worth. 

In the second stanza, Watts asks a disturbing, rhetorical question, "Was it for crimes that I had done, He suffered on the tree?”  And the only answer is YES!  We can’t just blend in or hide, unnoticed, with the masses of humanity; this is personal. This is where our humility suddenly turns to grief and shame as we face the awful truth; Alas!  My sin caused His pain; I am responsible for His suffering and death. 

It’s at that point, we can begin to appreciate and understand the magnitude of the GOOD NEWS.  The Lord laid my sin on Jesus who willingly took my punishment on the cross. The second verse ends with an expression of humble praise to God for His amazing mercy, grace, and love.

ALAS! AND DID MY SAVIOR BLEED?

Alas! and did my Savior bleed,

and did my Sovereign die;

Would He devote that sacred head,

for such a worm as I?

Was it for crimes that I have done,

He groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity! Grace unknown!

And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide,

and shut its glories in,

when God, the mighty maker, died,

for His own creature's sin.

Thus, might I hide my blushing face

while His dear cross appears;

dissolve my heart in thankfulness,

and melt mine eyes to tears.

But drops of tears can ne'er repay

the debt of love I owe.

Here, Lord, I give myself away;

'tis all that I can do.

****ALAS! AND DID MY SAVIOR BLEED?

Is our sin nature something to sing about?

Thirty-some years ago when my friend, Phil, got saved, he began reading through his Bible starting with Genesis.  One day while we were discussing his thoughts about his reading, he observed that – “all those guys (meaning the patriarchs) were dirty rotten lowlifes just like me.”

I thought that was pretty insightful.  It was revelatory for him; if God could save those guys, He certainly could save Phil.

People, then, were no different than we are today.  We all have the same problem.  It is our sin nature. It is universal.  We are all dirty. We are all disgusting. The reformers called it Depravity.

So for our song service in church one Sunday, I was looking for hymns that addressed that problem.  In the past, there were plenty of hymn writers who were explicit about our sinfulness and its consequences.  But songs on those themes are rare today.

Our contemporary culture, with its fixation on positive self-esteem, likes to obscure the reality of sin with more palatable terms like “missing the mark,” “shortcomings,” “failures,” or “errors.”   But sin is not an error.  An error is like when you forget to carry a digit while adding a column of numbers.

Do we really want to sing about the darkness of our sinfulness?   I know that it seems strange but, when contrasted with the sinless perfection of our Savior, our redemption, then, shines even brighter and those songs become much more meaningful.  We can never fully appreciate all that God has done to save us until we get a clear picture of what we really are without Christ.

Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed? was written by Isaac Watts.  In spite of the fact that many modern editors have changed the last line of the first verse of This hymn to “For sinners such as I” (or even worse, “for such a one as I”) Isaac Watts was purposefully deliberate in crafting the phrase, “for such a worm as I.”

And he was certainly biblical in that description.  In the book of Job, Bildad raised the question: “How then can man be righteous before God?”  “Man…is a maggot, and…a worm.” 

And in Psalm 22, David (speaking prophetically, the words of Christ) cried out to God saying, “I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people.” 

In Isa. is a strange Word of encouragement from God to Israel, “Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I will help you,’ says the LORD and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel”

Isaac Watts drew his inspiration from Psalm 51 when he wrote these words in another hymn:

         

“Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin,

                  And born unholy and unclean;

         Sprung from the man whose guilty fall

                  Corrupts the race, and taints us all.”

That is sound, biblical theology.  Apart from the intervention of God’s sovereign grace, we are utterly helpless and hopeless.  And it’s in that context that we should sing with great joy and thanksgiving, words like these from the hymn, “It Is Well” by Horatio Spafford:

    

“My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!

            My sin, not in part but the whole,

    Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

            Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”

But it’s also in that context of God’s grace in our salvation, that we can sing, reverently and soberly:

       

 “Was it for crimes that I had done

                  He groaned upon the tree?

         Amazing pity! Grace unknown!

                  And love beyond degree!”

ALAS!  AND DID MY SAVIOR BLEED?

Alas! and did my Savior bleed?

And did my Sov'reign die?

Would He devote that sacred head

For such a worm as I?

Was it for sins that I had done

He groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity! grace unknown!

And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide

And shut his glories in,

When Christ, the mighty Maker, died

For man the creature's sin.

Thus, might I hide my blushing face

While His dear cross appears,

Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,

And melt my eyes to tears.

But drops of grief can ne'er repay

The debt of love I owe:

Here, Lord, I give my-self away

Tis all that I can do.

****IN CHRIST ALONE

Is God's wrath something to sing about?

The doctrines of sin, judgment, and the cross have become unpopular and rejected in much of our contemporary theology.  There is nothing that irritates liberal Christians more than the idea of divine wrath.

In 1934, Richard Niebuhr wrote a book titled, The Kingdom of God in America.  In it, he described liberal Protestant theology, which was called “modernism,” in one famous, concise sentence; “A God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

One Sunday morning, the text for my pastor’s sermon, was Romans 1:24-32.  The subject was “Understanding Our Sin-Sick Culture."  As was my custom, I attempted to select songs for our worship, that supported the sermon.  And I found that there were very few Christian songs on the subject of God’s judgment or wrath.

One of them, IN CHRIST ALONE, is probably the best-loved and most often used contemporary song among Christian churches in the past several years, and most of you are familiar with it.  But it is despised by liberal Christianity.  

Recently, that song became a major point of controversy among Presbyterians.  A PCUSA denominational committee voted to exclude the contemporary worship song from their new hymnal.

Although most Presbyterians wanted to include it because of its popularity, they just couldn’t allow it because of one short line in the second stanza.  The committee wanted to make a change in the song's lyrics.  They wanted to cut the phrase, "Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied," and replace it with, "the love of God was magnified." 

Well, Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, the authors of the hymn, insisted on the original wording so the committee vote to discard the song.

Interestingly, though, Presbyterians were not the only, nor the first, denomination to find the line problematic; It seems that some of us Baptists balk at the subject too. Unbeknownst to the songwriters, the alternate lyric had already been inserted and published by the American Baptists in a 2010 hymnal.

So what about it?  Were the authors right?  Is God angry?   Well, consider these verses:

Psalm 7:11 - "God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day."

Nahum 1:6 - "Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger?  His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him."

Romans 1:18 - "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness."

Revelation 14:18-20 - "And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, 'Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.' So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.  And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs."

There is a popular little meme that says, "God hates the sin but loves the sinner," but that is a false and unbiblical statement that is found nowhere in Scripture.  In fact, the Bible makes it very clear that God is not only angry at sin but also sinners.

And He has revealed His anger at the sin of mankind many times; He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He wiped out the entire world, except for Noah, his family, and a few animals, in a universal flood.  But those were nothing compared to His ultimate act of vengeance when He poured out His wrath on His Only Son who bore our sins on the cross of Calvary.   The book of the Revelation foretells a time when God will bring terrible judgments during the Tribulation.   And finally, at the end of the age, God will display His wrath against all the unrighteous at the great white throne judgment.

One of the main points of my pastor's sermon suggested that we may be observing God’s judgment and wrath on our nation as He abandons us to the consequences of our own reprobate minds.  

Words mean things and the words of our Christian music are especially important. Debating over doctrinal issues in the lines of hymns is not a new thing and it is not always a bad thing.  But, in this case, if we fail to recognize God’s capacity for wrath, we, in effect, trivialize His sovereign power.  It is true that God is Love.  That’s one of His attributes.  Wrath is not one of His attributes, but wrath is a function of His holiness and justice; without His wrath, there is no need or appreciation for His mercy.

It is good to sing songs about the judgment and wrath of God.  They are direct reminders of His mercy toward us.  And this contemporary song is one of the great ones and this controversial line is even greater.  We will only know and fully appreciate God's grace when we understand the magnitude of our sin that required His great sacrifice.

“…'Til on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.  For every sin on Him was laid, here in the death of Christ, I live.”