****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. 
       

THERE IS A REDEEMER

If you’re 55 years or older, you will probably remember the Jesus movement that was spawned in the Southern California hippie drug culture of the 1970s.  And if you remember that, you will probably remember the controversial Christian singer and songwriter who rose to prominence from out of that culture.

Keith Green was born in 1953.   At a very young age, it seemed that he would become a musician.   Music was his passion; he wanted to be a pop-star and he was exceptionally talented.  At age eight, he began to perform in stage musicals.  At age 12, he published his first song and became the youngest member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. That same year he signed a five-year recording contract with Decca Records.

He had a secular Jewish background but, as a child, he was fascinated with reading the New Testament.  The first time Keith ran away from home, he was 15 years old. Even though he was on a fast track to becoming a teenage idol, he never quite achieved that success and by the late 1960s, he began experimenting with drugs and dabbling in various Eastern religions.

He met the woman he would marry, Melody Steiner, another songwriter, in the early 1970s.  That is when his life began to turn around.  She was also of Jewish heritage and had been exploring the teachings of mysticism and Eastern religions.   After they met, they began to explore the Christian faith together.  

At the age of 21, Keith and Melody heard the Truth of the Gospel at a church in the San Fernando Valley, and the Lord saved them.

They never turned back from the Christian faith.  Not only did his life take a radical turn, so did his music.  He was no longer interested in stardom. His songs began to reflect the Joy of knowing Jesus and experiencing His love.   From that time, Keith focused his work, on a series of Christian music projects, including working with the band, Good News.

Keith developed some strong convictions that left him feeling inadequate and undeserving of God’s grace.  And his convictions affected and irritated many of his friends and separated him from most of the others in his industry.  He started holding concerts for free and he questioned how other Christian musicians could, in good conscience, charge for their concerts or make profits from their record sales.

But in the final years of his life, Keith Green, the Firebrand, was tempered by the grace of a loving God.  He met John Dawson, of YWAM, and through that relationship, he began to re-discover the love of Christ.  After striving for years to measure up to God's holiness, and sometimes questioning his own salvation, Keith came to a deeper understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross―both to forgive his sins and to clothe him in His own righteousness.

Keith grew in grace without compromising his beliefs; he reconciled and restored all his relationships, and began to experience real peace.   He wrote personal letters of apology to those he had offended with this admission:

“I hope you can understand that I am a man of principle, and yet, like a pendulum, I have a tendency to go too far to make a point.  I fear that in the past I have done just that.”  

In 1982 he released his final, and most worship-oriented album, Songs for the Shepherd.

One of the songs on that album is THERE IS A REDEEMER.  It was written by his wife, Melody, in the late 1970s during the time she and Keith were starting Last Days Ministry (LDM), an outreach to the drug culture and to unwed teenage mothers; a ministry that is still continuing today.  The song had been set aside, unpublished until she presented it during the production of this last album.

Keith loved the song but wanted to make it longer so, within a few minutes, he had penned this prophetic third and final verse:

When I stand in Glory, 

I will see His face,

And there, I’ll serve my King forever, 

In that holy place.

Just a few months later, at the young age of only 28 years, Keith Green was killed in a small plane crash.  He was standing in Glory, seeing his Father face-to-face.

  

There is a Redeemer,

Jesus, God's own Son,

Precious Lamb of God, Messiah,

Holy One,

Jesus my Redeemer,

Name above all names,

Precious Lamb of God, Messiah,

Oh, for sinners slain.

When I stand in Glory,

I will see His face,

And there I'll serve my King forever,

In that Holy Place.

(chorus)

Thank you oh my Father,

For giving us Your Son,

And leaving Your Spirit,

'Til the work on Earth is done.

6-11-2016

****HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION (2)

If you were to Google Search for lists of the greatest Hymns of the Christian faith, HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION, would be on almost all of them.  The title of this song is also its theme- We have a Rock Solid Faith that is built on a Firm Foundation which is God’s Word.  

Some other hymns with similar themes, come to mind like Christ Is Made The Sure Foundation, or how about, “On Christ The Solid Rock I Stand; all other ground is sinking sand.”  

This is the kind of stuff that builds confidence.  Authentic Biblical Faith isn’t fuzzy; it’s not iffy; it’s not uncertain.   When someone asks, “Are you sure you’re going to be with the Lord when you die?” we don’t have to offer meek, squishy-sounding, answers like, “I think so," or "I hope so.”   We can respond with absolute assurance, “I Know That My Redeemer Lives, and because He lives, I too shall live.”   Those of us whom God has redeemed can rest assured that our salvation is solid and unshakeable. 

Some people would say (and there are whole denominations that say), that kind of attitude is proud, or arrogant, or boastful; that we can’t possibly know for sure.  And they would be right if our confidence was in ourselves.  

But our confidence is not in anything we do; it’s not in our self-righteousness, our works, or our religious devices.  In fact, this might come as a surprise to you, –-  If you’re saved, it’s not because your walked down an aisle or repeated a prayer.   Salvation is of the Lord. You are saved if you are trusting, totally, in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone.   

Every line, of these lyrics, has a sense of power and authority as though God, Himself, is actually speaking.  And that's because almost all of these lyrics are paraphrases of, allusions to, or quote from some text from God’s immutable Word. 

 

And so, in verse one, we see that the foundation for our faith is laid in the excellence of His unchanging Word.  The Apostle Paul tells us that we are “members of the household of God, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets;” that foundation being the very Words of God.  And then he anchors that figurative building on the Living Word, Jesus Christ, Himself, being the chief cornerstone.   What more can He say?  We don’t need any new revelation from God.  He has spoken!

The second verse, then, assures us that we have no need to fear anything.  It’s almost an exact quote from Isaiah 41:10: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Aren’t you glad that your salvation is not dependent on your own works of righteousness?    The God who saves us is always with us.  The Spirit of God indwells us.  He helps us; He strengthens us, and He hold us up with His own all-powerful hand.

The third verse contains God’s promise that His grace is completely sufficient for every need.  Even when He takes us through extreme trials and persecutions, He does it to refine us and to purify us for our good and His glory.    

We are weak but God is Strong.  Sometimes we might wonder and question, but we can be confident that the foundation of our faith is Sure.  It cannot fail because Jesus never fails.  And God’s Word is on the record.  “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread…, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you.   He will not leave you or forsake you.”

 

So the song ends with one of the most powerful promises of assurance ever put to music;  

          The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,

                    I will not, I will not desert to its foes;

          That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,

                   I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

5/29/2016

****AT CALVARY

The story behind this hymn was told by Dr. Torrey, who was the President of Moody Bible Institute in the mid-1800s.  He told how he had received a letter from a pastor with a troublesome and rebellious son.  The father hoped that attendance at Moody would help. 

Dr. Torrey advised him that, even though he sympathized with him, his responsibility was to run a Bible school and not a reform school, and so he had to deny the father’s request. 

After many letters of relentless pleading, Dr. Torrey finally gave in with the stipulations that the son must meet with him every day and must abide by the rules and requirements of the Institute.

After months of private counseling, the father’s prayers were answered.  The boy, William Newell, was saved.  He eventually became a minister and later returned to Moody Bible Institute as a teacher.

It was a fascinating story but I want to focus on the text of the hymn.  It makes an excellent presentation of the gospel of grace which he originally wrote as a chronological account of his personal testimony in the form of a poem.

Verse 1 starts with his wasted past.  Note the first phrase, “Years I spent in vanity and pride.”  He was self-absorbed, self-sufficient, arrogant, and, even though he was a preacher’s kid, he was unconcerned about God and unreceptive to the message of the Gospel.

 

And that is the sinful condition of every man.  We are all born with depraved natures, incapable of doing good and bound for judgment and the eternal wrath of a holy God.  BUT GOD sent His Son to die for our sins AT CALVARY.

In verse 2, are the words, “At last, Then, and Until.”  They follow all those “years in the author’s “past.”

  

Then there came a turning point in William’s life and it wasn’t of his own efforts or good works.  In the words of his poem, it happened when, “By God’s Word, at last, my sin I learned.” That’s when the Spirit of God opened his ears to hear, and the Word of God penetrated his heart.

It’s through the preaching of the Gospel that men are saved.  We aren’t saved simply by warm fuzzy messages about how much God loves us.  A true Gospel message must bring us to a clear understanding that the law, God’s moral standard, has been broken and we are guilty and deserve judgment.

“Then, he said, I trembled at the Law I’d spurned.” Once William Newell realized his guilt, the Spirit of God convicted him and made him aware of his need for a Savior.  And the result of that was his turning to the Only remedy; the Only way to salvation; the Cross of Jesus Christ AT CALVARY

In verse three William describes the result of his new faith in Jesus Christ.   He expressed it this way, “Now I’ve given to Jesus, everything, Now I gladly own Him as my King.”

When God saves a man, there will be evidence of a changed life that surrenders to His Lordship and a heart that is naturally filled with His praises.

  

William Newell finished his poem with a great song of praise:

“Oh, the love that drew salvation’s plan!

Oh, the grace that brought it down to man!

Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span AT CALVARY!”

5/8/16

*ROCK OF AGES (2)

“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.”  Psalm 18:2

It was a terrible and unusual lightning storm followed by deafening thunder and merciless, torrential rain.  Augustus Toplady had been traveling on foot, where steep, high cliffs rose up along the roadside.  When the storm came, rushing streams of mud and rainwater were pouring down the craggy slopes and rolling across the road.  He was fortunate enough to find protection in a small cave in the rocks where he waited out the storm.  That’s where he began to muse over the concept of the “rock of faith” as a shelter from the “storms of life.”

That’s the popular legend about the inspiration for the hymn, ROCK OF AGES.  And the legend may have some elements of truth.  But beyond just the first lines, there is a backstory that, I think, is far more important and revealing about the great faith of a man who was humbled by God’s grace and mercy.

Toplady’s father died when he was very young and he was raised by an indulgent and permissive mother who pretty much spoiled him.   But by God’s grace, he had a good but strict, uncle who guided and disciplined him. 

He was exceptionally intelligent; some would call him precocious.  He was saved at a very young age and began to strive for a deeper relationship with God.  By the age of 12, he was preaching sermons, and at age 14 he began writing hymns.  He was ordained to the ministry in 1762 at the age of 22.   He died at the age of 38.

He wasn't well liked while he was alive and there are plenty of critics even today.  He was a very outspoken opponent of questionable and errant doctrines.   In fact, he once published an article to rebut some statements made by John Wesley.  That article concluded with the words of his original poem, ROCK OF AGES. 

One critic has described that hymn as "strange, unlike any other, and one that is certainly a muddle of images and excessively egocentric in its self-flagellation and abnegation – perhaps because it was the product of a slightly deranged mind.”

But, even though some people thought him to be arrogant and unlikeable, excerpts from his writings, including his personal journal, reveal that he was deeply devoted to His Savior.

In this hymn, he wrote some of the greatest declarations about the doctrine of salvation and our helpless condition that have ever been set to music.

In verse two, he could not be more clear; salvation is not achieved by our works, our goodness, our zeal, our remorse or our tears.  We can bring nothing to God that will ever merit His grace.  We can only come to Him empty-handed, naked, helpless, and dirty. 

And then verse three affirms our ONLY hope; that salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone and it is all for HIS glory alone.  If God doesn’t save us, we can’t be saved.

Rock of Ages cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee;

Let the water and the blood,

From Thy wounded side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure,

Save from wrath and make me pure.

Not the labor of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Savior, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,

When my eyes shall close in death,

When I rise to worlds unknown,

And behold Thee on Thy throne,

Rock of Ages cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.

****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.

****MY HOPE IS IN THE LORD

"Hope,” is a word we tend to use as a synonym for a wish or a desire.  But in Scripture, the word is better defined as the joyful certainty of a future reality.  It is a “know so” confidence in the faithfulness of a reliable and never-changing God and His never-changing Word.

MY HOPE IS IN THE LORD, a hymn written by Norman Clayton, gives us, in four short verses, a clear, biblical declaration of the Gospel of grace.  As a general rule, I try to avoid most Christian songs that have an abundance of, first person, personal pronouns when selecting music for our Sunday worship services.  This one is different.

It is significant to note that this song is personal; and although it is full of the personal pronouns MY, and ME, there is not one single occurrence of the word, I.  This song is really NOT about ME.  The subject of the song is my hope, who is my Lord and my Savior.  

The first verse properly affirms that MY hope rests in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  He willingly gave His life on the cross to pay MY debt of sin.  And then, because He rose from the dead, MY hope is a “living hope” in a “living Savior.”

The second verse makes it very clear that the saving work of Christ is not just any hope in the modern, wishful thinking sense; it’s MY ONLY hope.  I can never be good enough to earn my salvation and there is nothing I can do to secure it.  It is ONLY by God’s grace that MY sin has been laid on Him and the righteousness of Jesus Christ is credited to my account.

The third verse describes the present, intercessory work of Christ.  He is MY great High Priest in heaven.  He is seated there at the right hand of the Father, eternally proclaiming that MY debt has been paid.

Verse four declares that all this is a work of God’s amazing grace.  He planned it all and He did it freely.  His grace in saving me renders any of my effort worthless and completely irrelevant.  It is only for me to believe and receive His unearned and unmerited favor.

1.    My hope is in the Lord

Who gave Himself for me,

And paid the price of all my sin at Calvary.

2.    No merit of my own

His anger to suppress.

My only hope is found in Jesus’ righteousness.

3.    And now, for me, He stands

Before the Father’s throne.

He shows His wounded hands and names me as His own.

4.    His grace has planned it all,

’Tis mine but to believe,

And recognize His work of love and Christ receive.

(Chorus)

For me, He died,

For me, He lives,

And everlasting life and light He freely gives.