****WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, OUR REDEEMER

  

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, OUR REDEEMER, was written by Julia Cory. Her father was a Sunday school superintendent who encouraged her, while she was still young, to write hymns. 

One day the music director, at her church, asked her to compose some new lyrics to be sung to the tune of the popular Thanksgiving hymn, "We Gather Together." 

About two weeks later, Julia had produced this new hymn.

In the new testament, the apostle Paul instructed the churches to speak to themselves with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. 

Paul’s instructions are beneficial to most Christians because there is so much doctrine that is learned and retained in the songs we sing.

But, on the other hand, Psalm 30:4 commands us, "Sing to the Lord, you saints of His; praise His holy Name." 

We have many songs that remind us or encourage us to praise our God, but we often forget that He also wants us to sing praises directly to Him. This hymn is one of a few that does exactly that.

This simple hymn identifies eight activities that God desires from His people: 

• Our praises
• Our thanksgiving
• Our tributes 
• Our submission 
• Our love 
• Our worship 
• Our unity with other believers 
• And Our singing 

The hymn also identifies eight activities, of our God, that are worthy of our praises:

• He is our Redeemer 
• He is our Creator 
• He is the God of our fathers 
• He is our Guide 
• He is our Deliverer 
• He is our Defender 
• He is our Lord 
• And He is ever-present with us 

The third stanza concludes with a direct proclamation of praise; “To Thee, our great Redeemer, forever be praise."

Julia’s hymn was first used in her church’s Thanksgiving Day service just a few weeks after she wrote it. One month later, her father wanted to use it for a Christmas service at their church, so he asked her to add a stanza about the incarnation.

The new (fourth) stanza, which alludes to the message of John 3:16, is a song of thanksgiving to God for sending His Son to die for the salvation of those whom He loved.

The Christmas stanza says:

Thy love Thou didst show us, 

Thine only Son sending,

Who came as a babe and whose bed was a stall,

His blest life He gave us 

And then died to save us;

We praise Thee, O Lord, for Thy gift to us all.

****FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH

I read, this week, that The Church of Sweden has urged its clergy to use more gender-neutral language when referring to God and to avoid referring to the deity as “Lord” or “he.”

The move is one of many made by the national Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is in the process of updating a 31-year-old handbook, which will outline how services should be conducted in terms of language, and that will include necessary revisions to the hymns they sing.

It is not unusual that many of our older hymns have gone through some revisions.  Sometimes those changes have been improvements but there are some that were made for the wrong reasons.

In 1864, Folliot Pierpoint published an eight-stanza poem, “The Sacrifice of Praise.”  It was originally meant to be used as a communion hymn.

In the original refrain, “Christ, our God, to Thee we raise, This, our sacrifice of praise,” reflected the author’s intent for a communion hymn.  But it was changed to “Lord of all, to Thee we raise This our hymn of grateful praise.”

As it turns out, that was a good change, but it was forced by political correctness.  There were heresies then, like now, that denied the deity of Christ and there were spineless publishers who were uncomfortable with the way the text equated Christ with God.

 

Pierpoint stood firm in his defense of the original text.  He argued that there had been a long tradition of Christians singing hymns to Christ as God; and, besides, the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), referencing 1 Cor. 2:8, affirmed that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified in the flesh, is true God, and the “Lord of glory”.

Nevertheless, the hymn was changed and, I think, for the better.  Two stanzas, that weren’t very good, have been omitted and two have been combined. 

So, now, FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH, is a five-stanza hymn with a new refrain.  And the focus of the original hymn has been broadened from a communion hymn to a song of praise and thanksgiving to the “Lord of all.”

The progression in the imagery of this hymn makes it a good teaching aid for children.  The thanksgiving starts with the natural creation; the world around us and then progresses to thanks for human relationships, then the Church, and finally, to the incarnation; the Gift of God’s own Son in human flesh.

****COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

Early every Mother’s Day, my friend, Mike, always called his mother to sing “The Mother’s Song.”  But it wasn’t the original version most of us have heard; he kinda changed it up little – well, he sorta changed it a lot.  Actually, he butchered the song.

Here are his words to this Mother’s Day Serenade:

M- is for the MILLION things you gave me,

O- is for the OTHER things you gave me,

T- is for the THOUSAND things you gave me,

H- is for the HUNDRED things you gave,

E- is for EVERYTHING you gave me,

R- is for the REST of all you gave me.

Put them all together they spell MOTHER, 

The one who gave so much to me.

I’m sure his mother really appreciated his attention. And, even though the song was funny, it did acknowledge his mother’s generous, giving nature.

“A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, suddenly announces that she never did care for pie.”

I didn’t realize it when I was young but my mother’s life was all about hard work and sacrifice for her seven children.  It wasn’t until I became a parent and saw my wife doing the same things, that I understood just how much mothers sacrifice for their kids.  That’s what mothers do.

And just about the time a mother thinks her work is done, she becomes a grandmother.  My wife’s giving never stops.  Just as my mother continued to give to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, my wife continues to give to our children and grandchildren.

  

I think God created mothers to demonstrate something of His sacrificial love for us.  Speaking through the prophet, He asked this rhetorical question, “Can a woman forget her nursing child or lack compassion for the child of her womb?”  

The obvious answer is NO!  But then He goes on with this promise of assurance; “Even if these forget, Yet I will not forget you.” 

My mom died about two years ago and, as I was sorting through some of her old stuff, I came across an interesting item that was tucked away in a page of her Bible.  It asked, “If you had a chance to tell your children something just before you died, what would you say?”

Her short answer was; “I would tell them to never stop going to church.”

She was a little awkward in expressing her faith but, I know what she wanted most.  If she could, she would have given each of us the gift of salvation; but she couldn’t.   All she could do was pray for us.  And I know that she didn’t really believe that church attendance would guarantee our salvation.  But she did know that regular church attendance would expose us to hearing God’s Word which has the power to convict us of sin and to save our souls.

Did you know that Motherhood is a blessing from God?  “Behold, children are a gift from the Lord.  The fruit of the womb is a reward.” (Psa. 127:3)

The song, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, is probably one of the most appropriate songs we could sing for Mother’s Day.  Every mother should praise God for the gift of her children.  Fathers, too, can be thankful for the mothers of their children.  And children should thank God for their mothers.

Now, I realize that this day is not pleasant for everyone.  In fact, it can be very painful.  Life is hard, there are many disappointments, and some of us may be called to bear unpleasant or terrible burdens or losses.  Like many of you, my mother experienced the pain and sorrow of seeing her own children suffering through cancer, divorce, sinful living, and even premature death.

Nevertheless, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS is a song for all Christians to sing.  In fact, it is more about our thankfulness in and through times of difficulties and sorrows than it is about our ease or comfort.  As Christians, we have so much to be thankful for.  

Paul, the Apostle reminds us that, “God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.  In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” (Isa. 49:15)

****MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE (America)

Tomorrow is Independence Day so there will be a patriotic theme in some of our music this morning. 

I am somewhat concerned about all that; I know the inherent dangers and how easily our worship can become misguided and profane so I want to preface our service with a few thoughts.

First, I am a patriot of the United States republic as our founders established it and codified it in our constitution.  And I believe most of you are too.  So tomorrow, I will reflect on the greatness of this country.  I will give thanks for those who have sacrificed their lives to secure our liberties.  I will praise God for His providential guidance in its formation and I will enjoy the celebrations of our national heritage.  I may even eat a chili cheese dog or two, scarf down some watermelon, and fire off a couple dozen rounds of blanks from my .22 revolver.  That will be appropriate for the national holiday that we will celebrate tomorrow.

As for today, it is incumbent on us to remember that the purpose of our gathering together as the church of God is to honor and celebrate and worship Jesus Christ.   So I want to put our love for our country in a proper context.

 

There are many revisionist historians today, who would argue that our founding fathers were not all Christians and even if they were, it was never their intention to recognize God’s sovereignty and providence in our nation’s formation, much less establish it on biblical principles.  But they would be wrong.  Listen to the words of some of our founders:

Benjamin Franklin, “I have lived, my friends, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing the proofs I see of the truth…that God governs in the affairs of men.  And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”

Patrick Henry, “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionist, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ!  For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

James Madison, “We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Less than 100 years later, this country was torn apart by a terrible civil war. Abraham Lincoln wrote, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven.  We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God.  We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too proud to pray to the God that made us.  It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray to the God that made us!  All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope, authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less the pardon of our national sins, and restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”

In the infancy of our nation, a foreigner, a Frenchman by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville, observed and wrote about the greatness of this country.  He wrote, “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and ample rivers, and it was not there; in the fertile fields, and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there.  Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power.  America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

I hope you don’t miss that.  De Tocqueville’s words remain today as a promise or a warning depending on the direction this generation takes it.

There are two verses of Scripture that come to mind; Prov. 14:34 says, “Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a disgrace to any people.”  And another one is Psalm 33:12, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

 

Now I don’t know if de Tocqueville was a Christian.  But I do know that he recognized that America’s greatness was a result of her goodness, and her goodness was rooted in her reverence for God and her respect for His laws and His Gospel.  America was great because her God was Great.

And so as we sing the words to, “MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE,” I want you to notice in the very first line, that Samuel Smith, the writer of this patriotic song, recognized that our country is a gift from God.  You might not see that because most modern editors have not capitalized the word, "Thee."  In some earlier hymnbooks, it was capitalized.  In my research, I found several explanations for the sentence as it might read without a recognition of God.  But I just can’t see that the sentence makes sense when you try to make the phrase, “'tis of Thee,” to mean “it’s for all of you, the people.”  And furthermore, the author, being a Baptist minister and a theologian, certainly would have been familiar with the difference between the singular pronoun, “thee,” and the plural pronoun, “ye.”

But regardless how modern secularists try to parse it, there is no question that in the final verse, Samuel Smith, appeals to the God of our fathers for His continuing grace, and goodness, and protection for the freedom He has granted us in this land.

Psalm 22:4 says, “In You our fathers put their trust; they trusted and You delivered them.”  So in our worship services, it is always appropriate for us to thank God for giving us this bountiful land and to praise Him for our freedom.