****My Job Description in a 34 word alliterated sentence

My Solemn Service is to Select Suitable pSalms, Spiritual Songs, and other aSSorted, Scripturally Sound Sacred Strains that Support the Shepherd's Sermons, for the Singing Saints in their Sycophancy of the Sovereign Savior on Sundays.

That's it; that's my job description.

I’m not skilled or trained in the mechanics of choral directing.  This ministry has fallen on me, not because I can; but only because I was available and willing when there was no one else to do it.  So on Sundays, I simply stand in front of the congregation, announce the song selections, and then we sing together.

But that’s really the easy part.  Selecting the music each week takes much more time and effort. On Mondays, I receive the scripture reference and outline of my pastor's sermon for the next Sunday. After I read the text and his outline, I attempt to identify keywords or teachings and then I search through the hymnbook to find appropriate music that supports and augments his message.  

If the church has a biblical mandate with clear instructions from God about what we are to do in our worship services(which it has) then, certainly, those instructions must also apply to what we do with our music. 

What instructions do we get for assembling ourselves together?  We come together primarily to be built up in the faith and equipped to do the work of the ministry.  And that comes by way of hearing the Word of God through the vehicle of preaching and teaching.  So then music, being an integral part of our worship service, is not to be performed for our enjoyment or our entertainment.

The use of music in worship was instituted and is ordained by God and He has given much instruction in His Word regarding its use.  Among other things, music should glorify God, edify (or build up) God’s people in the faith, and point others to Christ.  (Hmmm, seems like those objectives are pretty much the same as those given for the ministry of pastor/teacher.)  The Apostle Paul gives this instruction on how the church should conduct itself in wisdom; “Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father…”Ephesians 5:19-20

The first interesting thing to note is that he tells us that we are to “speak to each other” with our music.  That implies that there is something important and substantial to communicate to each other and we do that with words.  The words are important.  Words mean things.  So, just like the words from the mouth of the preacher, the words we sing and hear in our music are important in our worship. 

The Apostle then goes on to identify three kinds of music that we must use in our worship.  It is not our prerogative to insist that we only like hymns or that we will only use contemporary “praise and worship” choruses.  We have God’s written word of instruction; we are to speak to each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Psalms are the actual words of scripture set to music.  With psalms, God is glorified with His own words sung back to Him; words that speak of His character and nature and all His superlative attributes.  And His words are higher and greater than the very best we could ever compose ourselves so they are the highest and greatest compositions that we can set to music that will focus our attention on Him for His glory. 

Then there are hymns which, by definition, are songs composed by men and primarily used to praise God.  One of the secondary benefits of the use of hymns is that much of our doctrine is written into poetic texts.  That’s a good thing if the doctrine is correct.  But there is a lot of false doctrine in Christian music too, and that is where pastors/shepherds need to be on guard so that the flock is not deceived.  But when the doctrine is correct, much of what we know and believe about our faith can be learned through our music.

Spiritual songs are what we usually think of as choruses and songs that speak of our personal relationship to Christ.  Spiritual songs contain elements of personal testimony as we share, through music, who Jesus is and what He has done for us.

Therein are the elements.  With psalms we glorify God; with hymns, we build each other up in the faith, and with spiritual songs, we point others to Christ.

Someone has said, "If the music doesn't preach to you, then there is no sense in having it."

Serve the LORD with gladness; Come before His presence with singing.
Psalm 100:2

****CHILDREN'S HYMNS

In his book, “Confronting Contemporary Christian Music,” Dr. H. T. Spence warns, “If we teach our children only by choruses without giving equal weight to the strong, meaty hymns of the faith, we may be spiritually damaging their generation.” 

Much of what we believe is either taught or supported by the songs we sing.  So, it is important that we teach and sing songs that contain correct doctrine. 

What would you think if, one Sunday morning, your music pastor or worship leader had selected only children’s songs for the entire service?

Well, that’s what I did for our church today and you might be surprised at the content.  All these hymns were originally written for children.  But there is nothing here, that resembles what we have come to expect from modern children’s music.  When we teach songs like “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,” we not only fill our children’s heads with nonsense, we imply that they are too immature for the worship service and should be in Children’s Church where they will be taught at their own level.

Here are the brief introductory statements for the six children’s hymns that are God-centered and rich in doctrinal truth.

STAND UP AND BLESS THE LORD

James Montgomery was the Christian journalist who was imprisoned, twice, in the Castle of York, for speaking out against the oppressive government in England in the late 1700s.

In 1824, he wrote this children’s hymn for the anniversary celebration of the Red Hill Wesleyan Sunday School.

The text was based on Neh. 9:5: “Stand up and bless the Lord your God for ever and ever: and blessed be thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.”

STAND UP AND BLESS THE LORD is a call for God’s people to stand with courage and to boldly speak up and proclaim our faith regardless of the political climate. 

  

I SING THE MIGHTY POWER OF GOD

Isaac Watts wrote over 600 hymns.  He is known as the Father of Modern Hymnody and, like most writers of children’s hymns in earlier generations, he wrote good, substantive, and doctrinally sound words that accomplish what, I believe, Paul intended when he instructed the Church to, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”  Col. 3:16

One of his favorite projects was a collection of songs that he wrote and compiled all together in a hymnbook just for kids.  I SING THE MIGHTY POWER OF GOD, is the most famous of all his children’s hymns and it is one of the greatest hymns of our faith.

NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD

Is it possible to be thankful during extremely hard times?  Martin Rinkart was. He was the German pastor who led his community through the Thirty Years War in the 1600s, and then through a great plague, and then through another invasion where the governors impose unbearable taxation on the people.  In one year, nearly 8000 of his parishioners died.

Yet his spirit was never broken.  In the middle of those terrible times of calamities and incredible losses, he wrote a table grace for his own unclothed and undernourished children to use while praising God for all His blessings. 

NOW THANK WE ALL, OUR GOD has become one of our most loved Thanksgiving hymns.

MAY THE MIND OF CHRIST, MY SAVIOR

This children’s song was written by Kate Wilkinson after meditating on Phil. 2:5. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."

To have the mind of Christ is to think His thoughts; to keep His commands; to do His will; to submit to His authority.  The song is a prayer that asks God to help us add these various aspects of the will of Christ to our lives.

There are six stanzas that were intended as daily devotional reminders; one for each day of the week leading up to Sunday.

SAVIOR, LIKE A SHEPHERD, LEAD US

We don’t know, for sure, who wrote the words to this hymn but it has been attributed to Dorothy Thrupp. 

It was originally written for children and it first appeared in a children’s hymnal that she compiled in 1836.

In some ways, it is reminiscent of Psalm 23.  SAVIOR, LIKE A SHEPHERD, LEAD US reveals how needy and dependent we are on our Good Shepherd. 

He loves us, He receives us, He cares for us, He leads us, and He protects us.

ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!  GIVE THANKS TO THE RISEN LORD

This children’s praise song has a simple, easy to sing, melody.   It was intended to be sung responsively, by an adult on each of the five stanzas and by the children on the chorus.

In all its simplicity, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!  GIVE THANKS TO THE RISEN LORD, is a profound proclamation of the Gospel.  In just a few short lines, it proclaims that Jesus is Lord; He is the King of all creation.  He died on the cross for our sins; we were raised together with Him in newness of life as He rose, triumphantly, from the grave.  He is our Savior.  And He is worthy of our thanks and our praise.

****NO ONE EVER CARED FOR ME LIKE JESUS

(1 Peter 5:6)  “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time:  Casting all your care upon Him; for He cares for you.”

There isn’t much background information available about this song but, almost every resource relates this same sad and disturbing story. 

 

Charles Frederick Weigle, a friend of Billy Sunday’s, was a poor itinerant evangelist.  He was often on the road preaching wherever he had an opportunity but his wife was not a willing accomplice.  She did not share his enthusiasm for the ministry.

 

During one of his preaching missions, his wife left him.  She took their young daughter and moved to a distant city where she thought she might find a more glamorous and exciting life.  When he returned home, he found this heartbreaking note:

“Charlie, I’ve been a fool. I’ve done without a lot of things long enough. From here on out, I’m getting all I can of what the world owes me. I know you’ll continue to be a fool for Jesus, but for me it’s goodbye!”

It was the worst time of his life; he was alone and suicidal.  He thought his work was finished and no one would care whether he was dead or alive.

In his desperation, his thoughts turned to God and he began to pray.  He begged God to forgive him and to assure him of his faith.  Then, after a long retreat, he returned to the work of the ministry.  About his heartbreaking experience he said, “A mantel of grief covered me, but God’s grace sustained me.”

About five years later, his wife was dying.  She said to someone who was at her bedside, “I wish I had my life to live over.”   She asked her daughter to look for her father and ask him to pray for her.  But it was too late.  She died before Charles could be found.

Once again, Charles sought the comfort of the Lord.  And that’s when he wrote NO ONE EVER CARED FOR ME LIKE JESUS.

The hymn is not especially deep or scholarly.  It is just the personal testimony of a man who seemed to have lost everything and had no other place to turn except to his Lord. 

****NEAR TO THE HEART OF GOD

Park University in Parkview, Missouri, was originally founded as Park College, a Presbyterian school in the late nineteenth century.  Its founder and first President was John Armstrong McAfee. He had five sons and a daughter who were eventually all involved in the work of the college.

When John died in 1890, his son Lowell served as president for 23 years. 

During that time, one of Lowell’s brothers, Dr. Cleland Boyd McAfee, served as the college chaplain and music director.  He often preached and directed the choir in the school’s weekly church services.

It was his custom to write an original hymn based on the theme of his message for every Communion Sunday.  That was an ambitious undertaking that must have produced many songs but MacAfee is known for only one published hymn.

In 1903, just one week before a Communion service, tragedy struck his family.  Two of his infant nieces succumbed to diphtheria. They died within 24 hours of each other.

Their home was quarantined to prevent the spread of the terrifying disease.   Relatives and friends from the school and church were unable to go inside to express their condolences, and the family was not permitted to leave the house to attend the funeral services.

Cleland MacAfee’s daughter recorded, “My father often told us how he sat long and late, (that week) thinking of what could be said in word and song on the coming Sunday.... So, he wrote (this) little song. The choir learned it at their regular Saturday night rehearsal, and afterward, they went to Howard McAfee’s home and sang it as they stood under the sky outside the darkened, quarantined house.  (NEAR TO THE HEART OF GOD) was sung again on Sunday morning at the communion service.”   

****I CANNOT TELL (revised)

Londonderry Air is the name of the musical composition that is the melody for an old Irish hymn of the same name.  There’s not much redeeming value in the lyrics of the hymn but musically, it is an excellent composition that most people would recognize as the melody of the famous Irish song, Danny Boy.

A variation of that tune is used in the popular, contemporary secular song, You Raise Me Up.

There are at least 11 Christian songs that have been written for that melody including, He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need, by Dottie Rambo; What Grace Is Mine, by Kristyn Getty; and Lord Of The Church, We Pray For Our Renewing, by Timothy Dudley-Smith.  

One artist has skillfully adapted the text of the 23^rd Psalm to the melody and another singer used it in a public performance of the hymn, Amazing Grace.

One of the better songs set to Londonderry Air is I CANNOT TELL, written by an Irishman, William Young Fullerton.  As a young man, William heard the Gospel preaching of Charles Spurgeon and he was saved.  Spurgeon became his close friend and mentor. 

William Fullerton was a Baptist preacher, administrator, and writer.  He served as President of the Baptist Union and as Home Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society.  He was a frequent speaker at Keswick Conventions. His published works include biographies of John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon, James William Condell Fegan, and Frederick Brotherton Meyer; and other missionary histories and devotional writings.  He also compiled several hymnals.

In 1966, Ken Bible made some careful alterations to the hymn while respecting William Fullerton's original work.  The result was this amazing song as it is written in many of our hymnbooks.  Although it has become a popular and appropriate song for the Christmas season, it is a great hymn of affirmation about the saving work of our Savior.

Philippians 2:7-8 may have provided some inspiration for this hymn;  “He (Christ Jesus) made Himself of no reputation taking the form of a bond servant and coming in the likeness of men…… He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on the Cross.”

The songwriter posed a number of unanswerable questions; Why would He do that for us?  What would compel Him to leave His Father, lay aside His splendor, and be born in a dirty feeding trough?  Why would He choose to suffer the humiliation and the agony of the cross?

There is so much we cannot know and may never fully understand about our Great God and Savior. But, there is plenty that we can know from His revealed Word. So, after the questions, come these great declarations of our faith;  BUT THIS, I KNOW, that Christ, the Lord is risen, and because He lives I’ll rise to life eternal. He took my guilty heart and I’m forever free.  The Savior of the World is Lord and King!

I CANNOT TELL

I cannot tell why He, the King of Heaven,

Should leave the peace of all eternity,

Why God, Himself, should lay aside His splendor,

To leave the Father's side and come to me.

But this I know:  Our silence filled with singing,

And all our darkness fled from heaven's light,

When Christ the Lord, so human, yet so holy,

In love was born a child for me that holy night.

I cannot tell why He, the Joy of Heaven,

Should give Himself to suffer for my sin,

Why Holy God should love me in my shamefulness,

Why He should die to draw my soul to Him.

But this I know:  That Christ the Lord is risen,

And praise His Name, He's risen now in me!

Because He lives, I'll rise to life eternal!

He took my guilty heart, and I'm forever free!

I cannot tell when He will rule the nations,

How He will claim His loved ones as His own;

And who can tell the holy jubilation,

When all His children gather round His throne?

But this I know:  All flesh will see His glory,

And skies will burst as all creation sings.

The Son will rise on one eternal morning,

When Christ, the Savior of the world, is Lord and King!

****STAND UP AND BLESS THE LORD

The reformation was responsible for many Christians fleeing Europe to relocate where they could exercise their faith without persecution.  And the result was the spreading of the Gospel throughout the world.

The Hussite movement that became the Moravian Church, was started by John Huss in the early 15th century in what is today, the Czech Republic.   Hus protested some of the unbiblical doctrines and the political persecutions executed by the Roman Catholic Church.  Since the movement predated the Protestant Reformation by a century, some historians claim the Moravian Church was the first Protestant church.

About 400 years later, James Montgomery, a Moravian orphan grew up to become a prominent British journalist and one of England’s greatest hymn writers.

   

As a newspaper editor in Sheffield, England, he developed a reputation for his radical editorials which he used to advocate for social reforms and humanitarian causes.  He was passionately critical of slavery, he promoted democracy in government, and the end of the exploitation of child chimney sweeps.  Other causes, he championed, included hymn singing in the Anglican church services, foreign missions, and the British Bible Society.

In Europe, in the late 18^th century, Christians who spoke against governments or the Church, were often punished or persecuted.   And so was James Montgomery. He was imprisoned, twice, in the Castle of York, for his editorial activism. The first time was for printing a poem that celebrated the fall of the Bastille which, ironically, was a French prison for political critics who wrote things that displeased the royal government.

A year after his release, he was incarcerated, again, for criticizing a judge who forcefully dispersed a political protest in Sheffield.

So, from his cell, James used his writing ability to profit from his imprisonment.  In 1797, he published a pamphlet of poems written during his captivity, that he titled, Prison Amusements, with a subtitle, Words with Wagtails (wagtails are birds that would frequently visit him on his prison window sill).

In a long poem titled, The Pleasure of Imprisonment, An Epistle to A Friend, he details every moment of his daily routine as a prisoner.   I was amused at this verse where he figuratively thumbs his nose at his captors:

Fanatic dreams amuse my brain, 

And waft my spirit home again:

Though captive all day long, ‘tis true, 

At night, I am as free as you;

Not ramparts high, nor dungeons deep,

Can hold me – when I’m fast asleep!

James Montgomery wrote over 400 hymns including the Christmas carol, “Angels We Have Heard on High” and the communion hymn, “I Will Remember Thee.”   About him, the writer Alfred H. Miles wrote, “His Christian songs are vigorous in thought and feeling, simple and direct in action, broad in Christian charity, and lofty in spiritual aspiration.”

In 1824, he wrote a children’s hymn for the Red Hill Wesleyan Sunday School anniversary celebration in Sheffield.  The song began, “Stand up and bless the Lord, ye children of His choice.”  A short time later, the word “children” was changed to “people.” 

The text was based on Neh. 9:5: “Stand up and bless the Lord your God for ever and ever: and blessed be thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.”

This hymn uses simple and clear language to proclaim the glory of God.  It’s a call for God’s people to stand up with courage and praise God and to boldly speak up and proclaim their faith regardless of the political climate.    

STAND UP AND BLESS THE LORD.  

****WHAT A DAY THAT WILL BE

I was nine years old in 1956 when I spent the summer on my uncle Anton's farm in South Dakota.

  

Early one morning my older cousin, Lloyd, hitched the horses to the wagon and we headed to the hay fields. The horses must have sensed, probably from past experiences, the hard day that was in front of them because, no matter how hard Lloyd tried to drive them, they only had one speed; SLOW.  We probably only drove two or three miles but it seemed to take forever.

Once we arrived, Lloyd hitched the horses to the hay rake. The team sluggishly dragged the rake over forty acres of freshly mowed hay and we pitched it into huge haystacks.

It was a long, hot, and humid Summer day.  The insects were annoying and the work was hard for all of us, especially the horses.  By the end of the day, we were all parched and weary but our work was done and we were going home.  We hitched the horses to the wagon, loaded our gear, and headed for the barn.

The return trip was different.  Lloyd didn’t have to drive the team home.  Instead, he wrapped the reins tightly around his powerful hands and stood with both feet firmly braced against the wagon’s bulkhead. With all his massive weight and strength, he struggled to maintain some control over the powerful force of those horses thundering down the road at breakneck speeds.  But as hard as he pulled, and as loud as he yelled, he couldn’t slow them down.

We all hung on tightly as the wagon jumped and bounced over the rutted dirt road.  It was a rough and thrilling ride.   

But it was short.  Those horses knew their work was done and they were going home.  They knew the way and they were anxious to get there.

Matt. 5:12 says, “Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven.”

Sometimes life is hard and our difficulties seem unbearable. It seemed that way for Jim Hill.  When he was a new Christian, his 50-year-old mother-in-law suddenly suffered a severe, debilitating stroke.  She was a fine, godly woman and Jim had a difficult time understanding why God would allow that kind of hardship to come on her.

As he was driving home one afternoon he recalled these words from Rev. 21:4, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

He thought, “WHAT A DAY THAT WILL BE,” and the idea for this song began to form in his mind.  As soon as he got out of his car, he found a piece of cardboard on the ground and began to scrawl out the lyrics.

 

As Christians, we labor and suffer in this life, more joyously than others, knowing that our way leads to heaven.  We are on the trip home and we anxiously anticipate our rest in our Father's house.  

Can you imagine?  “There’ll be no sorrow there, no more burdens to bear, No more sickness, no pain, no more parting over there.  And forever I will be with the One who died for me.  What a day, glorious day that will be.”