Hymn Stories and Hymn Sing

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another but also to the Lord. As alcohol influences, so too does the
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Spirit of God as a person influence us to sing the praises and greatness of our
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King. Ephesians 5, verse 5, picking it up a little bit before just so we get the context, therefore,
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Ephesians 5, verse 15, Be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil.
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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
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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.
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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
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Lord. Not just speaking, not just singing, but also thanking. Always, verse 20, giving thanks for all the things in the name of our
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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.
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It says in verse 21, and submitting to, literally, it's an ING word, to one another in the fear of the
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Lord. And so here we have Paul saying that when you're controlled by the Spirit, influenced by the
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Word of God, as the Word of God richly dwells in you, it just comes out of you in singing.
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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.
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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.
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By the way, when you see the text there in verse 19, psalms and hymns, psalms just means an
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Old Testament psalm, something that would be played on by an instrument that would be plucked.
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A hymn is anything written by Ira Sankey, D .L. Moody. No, that wouldn't be the case.
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That would be an example of a hymn or a story, some song written in honor of God.
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That's what a hymn is. And then spiritual songs, literally the word in Greek is an ode,
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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.
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Christians have adapted secular ode styles so they can sing about God in a theocentric,
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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.
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And so tonight we're going to put into practice that singing part, and we'll start with a great hymn called,
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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.
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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
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Moravians, is what they were called. And there was a huge storm, and here's what
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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 mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks.
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A terrible screaming began among the English. The Moravians looked up, and without intermission, calmly sang on.
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I asked one of them afterwards, were you not afraid? He answered, thank God, no.
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Wesley was so impressed with this that he began to translate Moravian hymns for services in the
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Anglican church before he was a Christian. Later, he runs into some more
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Moravians, and one of the Moravians asked him if he'd ever believed in Jesus Christ as his own personal
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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 Cannon did, but I specifically like this one because it was written on his eleventh anniversary, not of his marriage, but his anniversary of being a
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Christian. So he'd been a Christian for eleven years, and he sat down and he wrote this song to celebrate
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God's work in his life. It originally had nineteen stanzas. Can you imagine that?
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Many of them were very personal, and it was said to be inspired by a Moravian Peter Bowler who said this, quote, had
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I a thousand tongues, I would praise Christ Jesus with all of them.
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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?
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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.
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Okay? Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great
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Redeemer's praise. The glory of Jesus, the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease.
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Tis music in the sinner's ears, tis life at peace.
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He breaks the power of cancelled sin, he sets the free, his blood can make them bow.
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He speaks in listening to his voice, to light the deadly sea.
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The mournful broken hearts rejoice, the humble close.
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His praise ye doubt, your lucent tongues employ, your
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Savior come. In Christ your head you then shall know, shall feel your sins forgiven.
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Heaven below is heaven. Very good, you may be seated.
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Don't go too far, and we should probably put one of those Baptist chairs up here so you can sit on the platform.
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All right, the second song we're going to sing is All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name. This was actually called the
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National Anthem of Christendom. Can you imagine? The National Anthem of Christendom.
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First appeared in 1779 in November. One man, so exaggeratedly but so caught up with the tune, said,
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So long as there are Christians on earth, it will continue to be sung. And after that, in heaven.
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He loved this song so much that he said, I'm sure we're going to sing this song in heaven.
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The writer, Edward Peronet, I guess that's how you pronounce it, was from the
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French Huguenots, and the Huguenots were the French reformers who fled out of France because they were being killed for their
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Protestant faith. Basically, what happened is this man,
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Edward, loved Whitefield, loved Wesley, associated with them, and so much associated that Wesley said in his diary,
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From Rockdale we went to Bolton, and soon found that the Rockdale lions were lambs in comparison with those of Bolton.
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Edward Peronet was thrown down and rolled in mud and mire. Stones were hurled and windows broken.
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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.
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And I thought, Wow. Interestingly, this man on his deathbed said these words, his last words,
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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What would you do? Run. The godly said, Run. Someone else said,
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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,
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All 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.
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Spent the rest of his life ministering to those people. Let's stand and sing, All hail the power.
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Alright, there's six verses, we'll sing. Alright, we'll seat, stay seated on this next song.
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When you thought, Let every kindred, what did you think of? Thought of that story, didn't you? When you said,
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From altar call, what did you think of? It wasn't an altar call, it was from the altar call.
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Very important. Okay, Be Thou My Vision, I'll just make a quick introduction here.
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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.
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Lots of things about God is mentioned. But I particularly like this song because the tune has an intriguing background.
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First of all, the tune was originally, sorry, the song was originally sung to the tune of an old secular song.
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The secular song was named, With My Love on the Road. Just didn't really quite make it.
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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
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Slane, S -L -A -N -E. The tune is named for a hill ten miles from Tara in County Maith, where St.
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Patrick is said to have challenged king, I don't know how to pronounce any of these
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Irish, Gaelic, Celtic things, L -O -E, Celtic, Celtic, Celtic, who's winning the game?
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I don't know. Are you looking at your Blackberry while we're worshiping?
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St. Patrick is said to have challenged this king and the Druid priest by lighting the Paschal fire on Easter Eve.
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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,
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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.
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Thank you. All right, five verses this time. We'll sing the last verse a cappella.
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All right, we're going to go to number eight, He Leadeth Me, number eight. I've never done some kind of hymn sing like this.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You know Psalm 23, actually it's interesting because it's a psalm written from the perspective of a sheep.
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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.
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Without her husband's knowledge, Mrs. Gilmore sent the quickly written text to the Watchman and Reflector magazine.
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That's not Jehovah's Witness. Where it first appeared the following year,
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William Bradbury, the composer of the music, discovered this text and wrote the fitting melody to match the words.
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You say, well that's kind of interesting I guess. Three years later, in 1865,
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Joseph Gilmore went to Rochester, New York as a candidate for pastoring the Second Baptist Church.
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Here's what he said, upon entering the chapel, I took the hymnal thinking, I wonder what they sing here.
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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.
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Let's stay seated and sing He Leadeth Me. Okay, four verses this time.
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Maybe I should get the seat up there on the platform. Alright, number four, Blessed Assurance.
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One person called this lady Fanny Crosby, the queen of gospel music.
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I thought that's an interesting title. Fanny Crosby, she lived 95 years and she was blind at age six weeks.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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One day Mrs. Joseph Phoebe Knapp who was an amateur musician the daughter of a noted
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Methodist evangelist a close personal friend, visited me.
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Oh Fanny, I have a new melody racing through my mind for some time now and I just can't think of anything else.
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Let me play it for you and perhaps you can help me with the words. After kneeling in prayer and clutching her little
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Bible the blind poetess stood to her feet with face aglow. Why that music says
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Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh what a foretaste of glory divine. Let's stay seated and sing that please.
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Number four. I think it was
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Fanny Crosby who said if you could have your blindness cured would you do it? And she said, No the first thing
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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 ten
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I will sing of my Redeemer. Christians sing because of the greatness of God and what he's done
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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.
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You can see the songs of praises found in Revelation and Psalms all over and this one sings of our great
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Redeemer. This is the one I talked about this morning written by Philip Paul Bliss.
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He was 38 years old and he was really at the height of his music ministry writing all kinds of songs.
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He would be kind of like a modern day Michael Card or someone that you would know in a very famous way who was
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Stevis, you know what I'm talking about. Why say two names when you know what I mean with one?
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Stephen Curtis Chapman. It would be like his stature. During the
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Christmas season of 1876, the hymn story says Bliss and his wife had visited his mother at his childhood home in Rome, Pennsylvania.
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As they were returning by train to Chicago to assist in an evangelistic crusade, a railroad bridge near Ashtabula, Ohio collapsed.
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Their train plunged into a ravine 60 feet below and caught on fire. 100 passengers perished miserably.
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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.
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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.
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The 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.
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So two of his personal friends composer James McGranahan and evangelist
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Major Daniel Whittle left to go to the wreckage site separately.
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They didn't know they were going to each be there. They wanted to find some trace of the body and of their friend.
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They moved around a large crowd and they recognized each other although they had never met. The Major challenged
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McGranahan to continue the work that our dear friend Philip has begun. So he took the manuscript of Bliss's new hymn took
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Major Whittle's music and promised prayerfully to put the songs together.
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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.
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So why don't we sing number 10 on your handouts. I will sing My Redeemer. Alright, there are four verses to this song.
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Can we make it a couple more?
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How many? Oh, I thought you said, I just thought you said one more. Excuse me.
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Alright, number nine an Elizabeth Prentiss song, More Love to Thee. How many people have read
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Stepping Heavenwardly? Sold hundreds of thousands of copies. She was married to George Prentiss, a
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Presbyterian minister and professor of homiletics. She was born in Maine, taught actually school in Massachusetts.
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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.
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She once wrote these words about her pain -wracked life. I see now that to live for God, whether one has allowed ability to be actively useful or not is a great thing.
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And that it is a wonderful mercy to be allowed even to suffer, if thereby one can glorify
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Him. And so she realized that the suffering servant Jesus Christ has servants who suffer.
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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.
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The writer of the hymn story says, More Love to Thee was written by Mrs. Prentiss during a time of great personal sorrow.
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While ministering to a church in New York City during the 1850s, the Prentisses lost a child, and then a short time later their youngest child also died.
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For weeks Elizabeth was inconsolable and in her diary she wrote, empty hands, a worn out, exhausted body, and unutterable longings to flee from a world that has so many sharp experiences.
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And out of that heartbreak she wrote this song and she wrote partly this poem as well.
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I thought that prattling boys and girls would fill this empty room. That my rich heart would gather flowers from childhood's opening bloom.
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One child and two green graves are mine. This is God's gift to me.
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A bleeding, fainting broken heart. This is my gift to Thee.
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Let's sing number 9. This is my earliest to me.
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Love's early joy I crave. This honor shall be best to me.
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Let sorrow to its birth come. Sweet are thy messengers.
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Sweet merry friends sing with me.
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Best to me. Then shall my latest breath whisper thy praise.
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This be the parting cry my heart shall raise.
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This still its prayer shall be more love
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O Christ to Thee. More love to Thee.
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More love to Thee. That's an amazing song.
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Alright. Let's sing number 11, The Solid Rock. I think you'll be encouraged by the extra stanzas.
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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.
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He had ungodly, poor parents in London, England. It said his parents were keepers of an inn or a public house.
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And so basically a bar is what his parents were working at, or a pub of course.
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He said, I was so ignorant that I did not know there was a God. He then became apprentice to a cabinet maker and at 16 was taken by his master to hear the preacher
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John Hyatt at Tottenham Court Chapel and was converted to Christ.
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How about that? You say, well I'm the apprentice and to hear this man, oh sorry, number 11? Talk about having people at work with you able to preach the gospel.
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That's a good thing to do preaching the gospel in a situation like that, especially when you own the shop.
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At age 55, Edward Mote realized a lifelong dream. Largely through his personal efforts, a building for a
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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.
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And 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.
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And then he refused their offer. And here's what he said.
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I just love this sentence. I do not want the chapel,
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I only want the pulpit. Comma. And when I cease to preach
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Christ, then turn me out of that. Just before he died he said, the truths
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I have been preaching I am now living upon. And they do very well to die upon. They buried him in the church yard of that church.
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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.
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For 26 years the beloved pastor of this church preaching Christ and Him crucified as all the sinner can need and all the saint desire.
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Originally there were six stanzas and we'll sing all six. I think there are six in here. Yes? Six. Let's stand for this one and then we'll be dismissed.
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404 in the book if you need it. We were encouraged tonight and what we'll do right after I pray is
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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.
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We'd love to have some fellowship around some ice cream and Christian fellowship. That would be wonderful.
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If you ever want to do this again just let me know. Maybe we'll arrange it again. I just feel strange walking back up and sitting back down.
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Walking up, sitting down. But I appreciate learning about the songs because then they mean more.
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More love to thee and solid rock. Just encouraging. Beloved, remember we see some of these people and they are frail and fragile and weak sinners that God can use.
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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.
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And so it should spur us on to say, God if you can use them you can use me. And I tell everybody, listen, if God can use me for gospel ministry he can use you.
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He can use you. Let's pray. Thank you Lord for tonight. How rich it is to sing of your greatness.
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This morning learning about how you are our Father. Corporately we come together and praise you and beseech your holy name.
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We're thankful that you're just not a God who is far away but close and we can call you
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Father. Yet we are glad that you're a God who is overall sovereign and transcendent who art in heaven.
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And so tonight we just ask that you would accept this offering of thanksgiving and praise to you.
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We would extol you the Father for election, the Son for redemption and the
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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
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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.