Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
Another but also to the Lord. As alcohol influences, so too does the Spirit of God as a person influence us to sing the praises and greatness of our King. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 5, picking it up a little bit before, just so we get the context.
Therefore, Ephesians 5 .15, Be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And do not get drunk with wine for that is excess or waste or dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. And if you notice at the end of the verse there in verse 18, it's a comma, letting us know that spirit filled life is going to be manifest.
In what way? Verse 19 tells us, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, not just speaking, but also singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. Not just speaking, not just singing, but also thanking.
Always verse 20, giving thanks for all the things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father. And not just speaking, not just singing, not just thanking, but also spirit filled people submit to one another.
It says in verse 21, and submitting to literally, it's an ING word, to one another in the fear of the Lord. And so here we have Paul saying that when you're controlled by the Spirit, influenced by the Word of God, as the Word of God richly dwells in you, it just comes out of you in singing.
It comes out of you in thankfulness. It comes out of you in submission. And so tonight we want to put this in to practice. We want to exalt Christ Jesus through our musical instruments, the best ones ever invented, our voices, and then we'll sing about His greatness, a variety of hymns.
By the way, when you see the text there in verse 19, psalms and hymns, psalms just means an Old Testament psalm, something that would be played on by an instrument that would be plucked. A hymn is anything written by Ira Sankey, D .L. Moody.
No, that wouldn't be the case. That would be an example of a hymn or a story, some song written in honor of God. That's what a hymn is. And then spiritual songs, literally the word in Greek is an ode, O-D-E.
It's an ode. And what's an ode? An ode is something that's a little shorter, it's a little more lyrical, and it is something that is adapted. Christians have adapted secular ode styles so they can sing about God in a theocentric, Christ-centric manner.
And so when the Word of God dwells in us richly, the Spirit of God works through His Word, and then it affects us in outcome, speaking, singing, thanking, and submitting. So tonight we're going to put into practice that singing part, and we'll start with a great hymn called O for a Thousand Tongues.
It's number one in your handout, the first page, and it was written by Charles Wesley a couple hundred years ago. It was interesting, by the way, as you pull your sheets out that Wesley was on a boat with a bunch of mystical, kind of charismatic Moravians is what they were called.
And there was a huge storm, and here's what Wesley said in his journal about this particular storm. In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the main sail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks.
A terrible screaming began among the English. The Moravians looked up and without intermission calmly sang on. I asked one of them afterwards, were you not afraid? He answered, thank God, no. Wesley was so impressed with this that he began to translate Moravian hymns for services in the Anglican church before he was a Christian.
Later he runs into some more Moravians, and one of the Moravians asked him if he'd ever believed in Jesus Christ as his own personal Savior, and that is when Wesley said he was saved. Sixty-five hundred hymns later, but I like this one, maybe not as much as Ann can it be, but I specifically like this one because it was written on his eleventh anniversary, not of his marriage, but his anniversary of being a Christian.
So he'd been a Christian for eleven years and he sat down and he wrote this song to celebrate God's work in his life. It originally had nineteen stanzas. Can you imagine that? Many of them were very personal, and it was said to be inspired by a Moravian, Peter Bowler, who said this, quote, had I a thousand tongues, I would praise Christ Jesus with all of them.
So why don't we stand, Mark and the ladies, let's sing For a Thousand Tongues. Do you want to sing a cappella, the last stanza? You can make that call. So we'll sing, I'll give the background, we'll sing and we'll see how long we go.
Okay?
My great Redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumphs of His, my gracious master and my God, assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth abroad, the honors of Thy name. Jesus, the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease.
Jesus, the name that gives us peace, His music in the sinner's ears, His life and health. He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the bone availed for the dead.
Christ, your head you then shall know, shall feel your sins forgiven. Anticipate your heaven below and own that love is heaven. Very good. You may.
Be seated. Don't go too far. We should probably put one of those Baptist chairs up here so you can sit on the platform. All right, the second song we're going to sing is All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name.
This was actually called the National Anthem of Christendom. Can you imagine? The National Anthem of Christendom. First appeared in 1779 in November. One man so exaggeratedly but so caught up with the tune said, so long as there are Christians on earth, it will continue to be sung.
And after that, in heaven. He loved this song so much that he said, I'm sure we're going to sing this song in heaven. The writer, Edward Peronet, I guess that's how you pronounce it, was from the French Huguenots.
And the Huguenots were the French reformers who fled out of France because they were being killed for their Protestant faith. Basically what happened is this man, Edward, loved Whitefield, loved Wesley, associated with them.
And so much associated that Wesley said in his diary, from Rockdale we went to Bolton and soon found that the Rockdale lions were lambs in comparison with those of Bolton. Edward Peronet was thrown down and rolled in mud and mire.
Stones were hurled and windows broken. And he said, well you know what, we used to be in the bad places and now we went to an easier place to minister and they only threw stones and rolled them around the preacher in the mud.
And I thought, wow. Interestingly, this man on his death bed said these words, his last words. Glory to God in the height of his divinity. Glory to God in the depth of his humanity. Glory to God in his all sufficiency.
Into his hands I commend my spirit. That's all fine and dandy and interesting, but the most interesting story of all is one that's surrounding this hymn, but not surrounding the author, E .P. Scott, a missionary to India.
One day he was waylaid, the writer says, by a murderous band of tribesmen who were closing in on him with spears. On impulse, what would you do? Here comes everybody, they're going to attack you with the spears and daggers and they're going to kill you.
What would you do? Run. The godly said run. Someone else said hide behind my wife so she could go to heaven first. He took out his violin out of his baggage and began to play and sing, I'll hail the power of Jesus' name.
When he reached the stanza, let every kindred, let every tribe, he saw to his surprise every spear lowered and many of the tribesmen moved to tears. Spent the rest of his life ministering to those people.
Let's stand and sing, I'll hail the power. All right, there's six verses,.
We'll sing. All right, we'll seat, stay seated on this next song. When you thought every.
Kindred, let every kindred, what did you think of? Thought of that story, didn't you? When you said from altar call, what did you think of? It wasn't an altar call, it was from the altar call. It's very important.
Okay, be thou my vision. I'll just make a quick introduction here. I love this song for lots of reasons. I like it because it talks about God as our wisdom, our great father, our high king, son, ruler, best thought, Lord.
Lots of things about God is mentioned. But I particularly like this song because the tune has an intriguing background. First of all, the song was originally sung to the tune of an old secular song. The secular song was named With My Love on the Road.
Just didn't really quite make it. But when it made itself into the Irish church hymnal, it had a different tune and the tune name we'll sing tonight is called Slane, S-L-A-N-E. The tune is named for a hill 10 miles from Tara in County Maith where St. Patrick is said to have challenged King, I don't know how to pronounce any of these Irish, Gaelic, Celtic things.
L-O-E, Celtic. Celtic, Celtic. Who's winning the game? I don't know. Are you looking at your Blackberry while we're worshipping? St. Patrick is said to have challenged this king and the Druid priest by lighting the Paschal fire on Easter Eve.
I don't know if that happened or not, but I love this song because it reminds me of how we are to look to the author and finish of our faith, Jesus Christ. So we can just stay seated. We put in the extra stanza and I think you'll be encouraged by that stanza so much so I don't really ever want to sing the song without that stanza, but that's just me.
Thank you.
Alright, five verses this time. We'll sing the last verse a cappella.
Number eight, he leadeth me. Number eight, I've never done some kind of hymn sing like.
This. I usually preach on Sunday nights and so I'm probably a better preacher than a hymn sing storyteller, but for the sake of tonight we'll just continue on until seven o 'clock. He leadeth me, number eight.
The author of this was Joseph Henry Gilmore and this is the one song that he was the most remembered for and I think you'll find it quite interesting and I think you'll identify with this especially if you're a husband.
I'd been speaking, he said, at the Wednesday evening service of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia about the truths of Psalm 23 and had been especially impressed with the blessedness of being led by God himself.
You know Psalm 23, actually it's interesting because it's a psalm written from the perspective of a sheep. That's what Psalm 23 is. Later that evening the author said, the wonder and blessedness of God's leading so grew upon me that I took my pencil, wrote the text just as it stands today, handed it to my wife and thought no more of it.
Without her husband's knowledge, Mrs. Gilmore sent the quickly written text to the Watchman and Reflector magazine. That's not Jehovah's Witness. Where it first appeared the following year, William Bradbury, the composer of the music, discovered this text and wrote the fitting melody to match the words.
You say, well that's kind of interesting I guess. Three years later, in 1865, Joseph Gilmore went to Rochester, New York as a candidate for pastoring the Second Baptist Church. And here's what he said, upon entering the chapel I took the hymnal thinking, I wonder what they sing here.
To my amazement the book opened up at He Leadeth Me and that was the first time I knew that my hurriedly written lines had found a place among the songs of the church. Let's stay seated and sing He Leadeth Me.
Okay, four verses this time. Maybe I should get the seat up there on the platform. Alright,.
Number four, Blessed Assurance. One person called this lady, Fanny Crosby, the Queen of Gospel Music. I thought that's an interesting title. Fanny Crosby. She lived 95 years and she was blind at age of six weeks.
She wrote 8 ,000 gospel songs in her life and what would happen is someone would write music, take it over to her house and then she'd write lyrics. And so they would play the music in the background, she of course could hear it and then she would write the lyrics.
And here's the background to this particular song. Fanny Crosby said, our home is a beehive of activity with so many friends dropping in and requesting a new hymn for some special occasion. One day, Mrs. Joseph Phoebe Knapp, who was an amateur musician, the daughter of a noted Methodist evangelist, a close personal friend, visited me.
Oh Fanny, I have a new melody racing through my mind for some time now and I just can't think of anything else. Let me play it for you and perhaps you can help me with the words. After kneeling in prayer and clutching her little Bible, the blind poetess stood to her feet with face aglow.
Why that music says, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Let's stay seated and sing that please. Number.
Four. I think it was Fanny Crosby who said, if you could have your blindness cured, would.
You do it? And she said, no, the first thing I want to see is Jesus Christ face to face. Well, the next one, I'm sorry to change up the numbers, ladies, but it's number 10. I will sing in my Redeemer.
Christians sing because of the greatness of God and what he's done. Jesus Christ has died in our place. He has been our representative substitute. He has been raised from the cross and he will return quickly.
And we like to sing praises. You can see the songs of praises found in Revelation and Psalms all over. And this one sings of our great Redeemer. This is the one I talked about this morning, written by Philip Paul Bliss.
He was 38 years old and he was really at the height of his music ministry, writing all kinds of songs. He would be kind of like a modern day Michael Card or someone that you would know in a very famous way, uh, who was Stevis.
You know what I'm talking about? Why say two names when you know what I mean with one Steven Curtis Chapman, it would be like, uh, his stature during the Christmas season of 1876. The hymn story says Bliss and his wife had visited his mother at his childhood home in Rome, Pennsylvania.
As they were returning by train to Chicago to assist in an evangelistic crusade, a railroad bridge near Ashtabula, Ohio collapsed. Their train plunged into a ravine 60 feet below and caught on fire. 100 passengers perished miserably.
Somehow though, Bliss survived the fall and escaped through a window. However, as he frantically searched through the wreckage in an attempt to rescue his wife, he too perished with her in the fire. Neither body was ever recovered.
Quite miraculously, however, among Bliss's belongings in the train wreckage was a manuscript on which he had evidently been working. The text, hymn text just finished was My Redeemer. And basically he was so popular and so famous, if you will, the news spread quickly all throughout evangelicalism.
So two of his personal friends, composer James McGranahan and evangelist Major Daniel Whittle, left to go to the wreckage site separately. They didn't know they were going to each be there. They wanted to find some trace of the body and of their friend.
They moved around a large crowd and they recognized each other although they had never met. The Major challenged McGranahan to continue the work that our dear friend Philip has begun. So he took the manuscript of Bliss's new hymn, took Major Whittle's music and promised prayerfully to put the songs together.
And that's exactly what happened. Philip Bliss's last words were, he from death to life hath brought me son of God with him to be. So why don't we sing number 10 on your handouts. I will sing My Redeemer.
All right,.
There are four verses to this song. Get a couple more. You guys. How many? Oh, I thought you said.
I just thought you said one more. So excuse me. All right. Number nine, an Elizabeth Prentiss song, More Love to Thee. How many people have read Stepping Heavenwardly? Sold hundreds of thousands of copy copies.
She was married to George Prentiss, a Presbyterian minister and professor of homiletics. She was born in Maine, taught actually school in Massachusetts. And she was a very energetic young lady, except she was very, very sick.
So much so that they said that she was almost an invalid. She once wrote these words about her pain racked life. I see now that to live for God, whether one is allowed ability to be actively useful or not, is a great thing, and that it is a wonderful mercy to be allowed even to suffer if thereby one can glorify him.
And so she realized that the suffering servant, Jesus Christ, has servants who suffer. And the reason why she wrote More Love to Thee was because of a child who died of hers, followed by another child who died.
The writer of the hymn story says, More Love to Thee was written by Mrs. Prentiss during a time of great personal sorrow. While ministering to a church in New York City during the 1850s, the Prentiss' lost a child, and then a short time later their youngest child also died.
For weeks Elizabeth was inconsolable, and in her diary she wrote, quote, empty hands, a worn out, exhausted body, and unutterable longings to flee from a world that has so many sharp experiences. And out of that heartbreak she wrote this song, and she wrote partly this poem as well.
I thought that prattling boys and girls would fill this empty room, that my rich heart would gather flowers from childhood's opening bloom. One child and two green graves are mine. This is God's gift to me, a bleeding, fainting, broken heart.
This is my gift to thee. Let's sing number.
Nine. It's an amazing song. All right, let's sing number 11, The Solid Rock. I think you'll.
Be encouraged by the extra stanzas. The Solid Rock's author was Edward Mote, M-O-T-E, and the hymn stories would tell us that his background was very pagan. He had ungodly, poor parents in London, England.
It said his parents were keepers of an inn or a public house, and so basically a bar is what his parents were working at, or a pub, of course. He said, I was so ignorant that I did not know there was a God.
He then became a Prentiss to a cabinet maker, and at 16 was taken by his master to hear the preacher, John Hyatt, at Tottenham Court Chapel, and was converted to Christ. How about that? You say, well, I'm the Apprentice, and to hear this man, oh, sorry, number 11?
Okay. Talk about having people that work with you be able to preach the gospel. That's a good thing to do, preaching the gospel in a situation like that, especially when you own the shop. At age 55, Edward Mote realized a lifelong dream.
Largely through his personal efforts, a building for a Baptist congregation was built in the village of Sussex, England. The church members, out of gratitude to Mote, offered him the deed to the property.
Basically, he had made enough money as a master craftsman in cabinetry that he built the building himself, so the congregation said, you can have the deed to the building, and then he refused their offer, and here's what he said.
I just love this sentence. I do not want the chapel. I only want the pulpit, comma, and when I cease to preach Christ, then turn me out of that. Just before he died, he said, the truths I have been preaching, I am now living upon, and they do very well to die upon.
They buried him in the churchyard of that church. Near the pulpit in the church is a tablet with this inscription, in loving memory of Mr. Edward Mote, who fell asleep in Jesus, November 13, 1874, aged 77 years.
For 26 years, the beloved pastor of this church, preaching Christ in him crucified, as all the sinner can need, and all the saint desire. Originally, there were six stanzas, and we'll sing all six. I think there are six in here, yes?
Six, okay. Let's stand for this one, and then we'll be dismissed. 404 in the book, if you need it. We're encouraged tonight, and what we'll do right after I pray is, Rota Springs is right down the street.
You take a left out of the church parking lot, and then the first main left, not Campground Road, that kind of Y, but the first real left, the perpendicular left, and it's down the street about a mile from there.
We'd love to have some fellowship around some ice cream, and Christian fellowship. That would be wonderful. If you ever want to do this again, just let me know, and maybe we'll arrange it again. I just feel strange walking back up and sitting back down, walking up, sitting down, but I appreciate learning about the songs, because then they mean more.
More love to thee, and solid rock, just encouraging, and beloved, remember, we see some of these people, and they are frail, and fragile, and weak sinners that God can use, and the same God that can use them can use you.
For those people tomorrow at work, for evangelizing the neighbors, your friends, you have the ability to preach the gospel, and God can save through the powerful gospel, because we're not where the power resides, but it's within the gospel itself, and so it should spur us on to say, God, if you can use them, you could use me, and I tell everybody, listen, if God can use me for gospel ministry, he could use you.
He could use you. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for tonight, how rich it is to sing of your greatness. This morning, learning about how you are our Father. Corporately, we come together, and praise you, and beseech your holy name.
We're thankful that you're just not a God who is far away, but close, and we can call you Father. Yet, we are glad that you're a God who is overall, sovereign, and transcendent, who art in heaven. And so tonight, we just ask that you would accept this offering of thanksgiving and praise to you.
We would extol you, the Father, for election, the Son for redemption, and the Spirit for sealing, and we want to do that to the praise of the glory of your grace. Father, I pray that our week, this week, might be a week driven by your Spirit, so that the word of Christ might richly dwell within us, and that it would be manifest to all around us as we speak, sing, thank, and submit.
For Jesus' glory, amen. God bless you.