Editor’s Note: This is a lightly edited transcription of the audio message. Thanks goes to Marilyn Fine for the transcription work.
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I never understood people complaining about having a birthday. I am so thankful to be alive and I am thankful to have every year and every day. Aren’t you? I am so grateful. I found a song not too long ago. I can never remember the title, but it said, “Lord, do not take me away in the midst of my days.” That is a prayer I pray, “Lord, I do not want to get sick and do not take me before my time. I want to enjoy every day, every month, every week, every year that You give me.” Time is a gift from God. I am so glad to be here today.
I have really looked forward to getting back together with you. I have loved coming to Focus and listening to Paula and just getting to sit back and put my feet up and have a good time. That has been fun, but I am very happy to be here today and begin our series on Great Hymns of the Faith. I know that some of you are not all that familiar with hymns so I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about why this is a study that will be beneficial to everyone.
Who does not like to sing? Everybody likes to sing—or at least you like music. I guess people who have really beautiful voices like Rebecca, who is going to sing for us today, love singing. I do not have a good voice, but I love to sing anyway. I can sing with Brooklyn Tabernacle like you cannot believe in my car. In fact, one time I scrapped the whole side of my car on the garage because I got a little carried away with Brooklyn Tab. So, enthusiasm has a lot to do with it.
I have learned from my study this week that there are so many verses that talk about singing. I was amazed, and I knew this was a strong theme in scripture. But there are just page after page of people in the Bible talking about singing and exhorting us to sing—especially in the Book of Psalms. It is an integral part of worship.
I do not know about you but the first thing I look for on Sunday morning when I get into church is the music. I open the bulletin and the first thing I want to see is what we are singing. Do you do that? Other people are not that interested in the sermon. I am very interested in the sermon, but I want to know what we are going to sing. I have to get my mind ready for it. Singing is so important. Paul tells us in the Book of Ephesians, “Be filled with the spirit and speak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” There are psalms that we sing and have been sung in the past. There are hymns which we are talking about today, and then there are spiritual songs – praise songs and choruses. All of these things give praise to God.
Now you know the funny thing is music is very subjective, is it not? There often are some disagreements about music. Some people just like hymns, and some people just like praise songs. I have learned that I have my own particular preference of music. But just because something speaks to my heart in a unique way does not mean it will to everyone. I found that some, especially the younger generation, like the praise songs and the choruses. That to them speaks to their heart in a way that hymns speak to mine. So, music is very subjective.
I remember quite a few years ago hearing Dr. Dobson on Focus on the Family had done a series on Christian music. I happened to tune in the last day when he said he was going to take a vow right now to his audience. “I will never again do a series on this because it is so subjective and people’s emotions are so strong when it comes to music.” It is very individual, but there are some things we can definitely all agree on.
First of all, singing is a theme in scripture. You go back to the Book of Exodus when the Jews, the Israelites left the land of Egypt. Remember they crossed over the Red Sea. Remember what they did? They sang the song of Moses led by Miriam, “The horse and rider thrown into the sea…” There are so many references to music in the Old Testament. When the armies would go into battle they would sing praises. David talked frequently about singing in the Psalms. In the Book of Revelation, it ends with what? Singing around the throne. We will someday stand and sing around the throne. That tells us that there is singing in Heaven. That tells us that music is a gift from God, is it not? It is a gift from God and it does something for our spirit.
Now, in Church history all through time the Church has sung. Even before the Church, the Jews in the Old Testament used a psalter which is the Book of Psalms. Most of the Book of Psalms is written in poetry when it was written in Hebrew. Now that it is in English we do not see that part of it. But, this was also used by the early Church. The psalms were also used by the early Church and spiritual songs and hymns were also used. Even as far back as the very first century themes of songs were beginning to develop.
Some people believe in Philippians 2 when Paul quoted that “every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess” that that was the line of a well-known hymn at that time. But, singing began to die out and it was Gregory the First, Pope Gregory the First, in the seventh century who brought back singing. That is his place in history. He brought back congregational singing and choral singing. He made popular, which has had a comeback recently, Gregorian chants. Have any of you ever heard Gregorian chants? Let’s listen to a Gregorian chant. (playing chant)
Okay, you are not jumping up and clapping with Gregorian chants. But, you know what it brought back? Harmony, beauty, a time in the service that was given for people to be quiet and listen to the harmony and the music. Of course, they understood the Latin at that point.
So, it was during the Reformation, though, that singing became popular as we know it today. Martin Luther, without a doubt was one of the most important men in history. He brought the Reformation to its height. He brought back congregational singing. He was a musician and he wrote songs. He would take words, scriptural words, and take popular tunes of the day. He even took some of the songs from the bars. If you remember he got criticized for that, but his comeback was, why should the devil have all the good music? Is there a good tune? Let’s use it. It is just a tune. It is just a tune until you put it with the words. So, he said “with all my heart I would extol the precious gift of God and the noble art of music for music is to be praised as second only to the Word of God because by her all emotions are swayed.”
Now, let us talk about what makes a hymn a hymn. A hymn is a structure that has usually three or four verses and a chorus and it has an ordered thought. Most hymns we will see tell a story. I started here, then I came here, then I went here, and now I am here. That is usually how hymns are structured.
It is amazing how hymn writers will put tunes that match the words. For example, if you hear “Alas, and did my Savior bleed,” it will be a quiet, almost mournful tune because it is about the death of Christ. If you are hearing a song “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation,” it is soaring and loud and majestic and it is a song of praise. So, many of the hymn tunes reflects the feeling of the words. But, you know, here is the thing that I want you to know about hymns. Hymns are timeless. The same hymns, the words that you are going to hear sung in a few minutes, are words that have been sung for years and years and years by churches in foreign lands, by mission points, by people in downtown churches, and by people in mission churches. These words reflect the feeling of people throughout the years. That is called “transcendence.”
Now, very quickly, if you grew up in a church, then hymns were a part of your life. I grew up in a church that had, I guess they would call it “good church music,” but it was very boring. Every Sunday morning, EVERY Sunday morning we sang “Come Thou, Almighty King,” which is one of my favorite hymns now. But here is how people sing it….(singing in monotone). Nobody sang. They just mumbled it like that. It was years later when I was somewhere else and I read those words and I thought, “these words are unbelievable.” “Come Thou, Almighty King, help us Thy praise to sing” with unbelievably soaring words. Let me tell you something. The Bible does not talk about singing and mumbling. The Bible says “make a joyful shout to the Lord, all the earth. Sing out the honor of His name.” Is that mumbling? “Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Break forth in song. Rejoice and sing praises. Praise the Lord for His goodness. Sing praises to our God for it is pleasant and praise is beautiful.” Listen, singing is an important part of expressing our love and devotion to God. Your voice may not be beautiful. It does not matter. You are to sing with joy and aggressively and with your spirit. So if somebody complains about your singing on Sunday. You just say I am supposed to sing this way. It pleases God.
Now, let me tell you about our song today. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” It was hard to pick these hymns. There are so many, but this is such a classic song.
I want to tell you the story about Robert Robinson who wrote this song before Rebecca comes and sings it for us. You know, when you know something about the author of a song or a book it enhances the meaning, does it not?
Robert Robinson was a young man in the early 1700s when he was sent away to a trade school by his mother. His father had died young. She had too many children that she did not know what to do. She sent him to trade school and as happened to most young men in that day what he learned to do was steal and rob and to drink. He went with some of his friends one night after a drinking binge. They went to see a fortune teller. It really rattled him because she talked about the spirit life, the spirit world. It really shook him.
He found himself just a few weeks later standing in an evangelistic meeting on a street corner in London which was being preached by the most famous preacher of his day, George Whitfield. Whitfield was one of the leaders of the first great awakening here in the United States. He was a great, great preacher. Robert stood there. He and his friends had gone to make fun of this man, but as so often happens he was moved by the message of the Gospel.
A few days later he invited Christ to come into his heart and he went into the ministry. He went to seminary and was trained and began pastoring in London. At 23, he entered the ministry and he wrote this song. At the young age of 23, he wrote “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” He was preaching that Pentecost Sunday and he asked the Holy Spirit to help him write a hymn that would ask God to flood into our hearts with His strings of mercy and keep us faithful to Him and enable us to sing praises to Him.
Years later, Robert Robinson began to suffer bouts of depression. He began to doubt his faith. He began to question the reality of God and he left his church and abandoned his call. As he was working and traveling around trying to make a living, he fell into a deeper, deeper depression.
Well, one day he was on a stagecoach and a young woman got on the stagecoach and sat next to him. She had just become a Christian and she started trying to share her faith with him and tell him about how her life was changed by the Lord Jesus. He said, “I do not want to hear it. I do not want to hear it.” She said, “Let me read something to you that helped me so much. Maybe it will help you.” She opened the song book she had in her lap and she began to read to Robert Robinson the words, “Come thou fount of every blessing. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise.”
Robert Robinson sitting next to her began to weep. Then, his weeping turned to sobs. He said, “Oh, madam, I would give 1,000 worlds, if I had them, to mean those words as you were saying them. Because, you see, I am the person who wrote them. I cannot get back to God.” He began to tell her about his depression and this brand new Christian woman said to this man, “Oh, no, sir, no, no. Look, here it is right here: streams of mercy never ceasing.” It was at that point that he began to pray and ask God to forgive him and he began a journey back to the Lord.
He eventually returned to London, and was preaching in churches around the area. He was scheduled to preach at a church in London on Sunday and that Saturday night before, at age 54, he died in his sleep.
What a story, though! That this man, it is almost eerie, that he lived his song. The last verse of the words that you will hear, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” He knew himself. He knew his heart. “Here is my heart, oh take and seal it.” He did wander. He did wander from God, but God restored him through the words of a woman who had no idea what she was sharing. Isn’t that the way God works?
On your table are the words to this song. Rebecca Hoagland is going to come and sing for us. Rebecca works for Hunt Petroleum. She is a faithful member of Focus and she and her backup group are coming to sing for us. We are delighted to have them.
Thank you. Susie, that is an incredible story. I have been preparing the song and had no idea the story behind it. Let me introduce to you quickly the band. This is Mark Frye who is the music minister at Meadows Baptist in East Plano and Patrick Berg is our student minister at Meadows. Our words are a little different in the second verse, but I think that is just translation. (music playing - singing hymn -- applause)
There is something about adding music to words, is there not? Thank you, Rebecca. That was wonderful. Thank you so much.
Now, you may have noticed in the song, as some of you were reading the words, that this song is a prayer. Is it not? “Come, thou fount of every blessing.” Right away the writer, Robert Robinson, says to us that God is the source of every blessing. Is He not? James said for “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of light.” Every good thing is from God. I just want to kind of walk quickly through these verses as we see what they mean.
The first one: “God’s streams of mercy.” I love that picture that there are streams of mercy. If I could put a picture with this, in my mind I have a picture of those posters you see from Colorado with the mountain streams tumbling, and the water spraying everywhere over the rocks. Streams of mercy. God’s mercy is available to us and he says God’s streams of mercy, implying that there are always available to us.
Do you know what Paul said in the Book of Ephesians, chapter 2? He said, “but God who is rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our sin, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up to sit in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.” Rich in mercy! God’s mercy is rich.
I want to say this to some of you who may be here and think you probably push God to the end. You do not have to worry about that. God is longsuffering. He is patient. There is no such thing of Him running out of mercy. He is rich in mercy. I used to think years ago when I was first married I used to think the definition of a rich person was somebody who could go to the grocery store and buy whatever they wanted. Well, yes, I still think that. I want to tell you. I went Saturday and think the definition stands. Yes, a rich person has what? Unlimited resources, unlimited resources. They do not have to worry about balancing their checkbook, I guess, to the penny. They do not have to worry about making a deposit before they go to the store. They do not have to worry about those things. They are rich. Unlimited resources. God is rich in mercy. Not only does He never run out of mercy and say “I am sorry your account is up.” He never says that, but He says to you also they are new every morning.
We will talk about this more next week with “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” In Lamentations 2, the writer says this in the midst of this really sad book. Lamentations is a book of lament. It is a sad, sad book by the prophet, Jeremiah, who is called a weeping prophet. The word in Hebrews literally means aching, but there is one good verse in there. Amidst all the sadness and sorrow and depression of that book, Jeremiah is saying that as bad as things are, God’s mercies are new every morning.
Now, you know what that means? Today can be a new start. Every day is a fresh start. When the sun comes up, it is a fresh start for you. If you have blown it the day before and you have tried to do things in your own strength, you can start over tomorrow morning when you get up. Every day His mercies are new.
“Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise.” Does that not tell us then when we hear that part of the verse that these songs call for a response? It calls for a response. So much of music and so much of praise is putting out something and asking us to respond to it.
He says, “come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise.” You know that is a line I use when I am having my quiet time or I am in church. Do you ever do this? You sit down and you just kind of feel dead inside. You are just not with it. Do you ever feel, “yeah, it is probably just me. Spiritual giant that everyone else is here. I just feel blah.” This is the line that comes to my mind. “Come thou fount of every blessing tune my heart.” Get me in tune. Let me start thinking. Bring some music, some psalms and words to my mind. Get me tuned up. Get me all tuned up like an orchestra does. You know when it is getting ready to play and they tune up a few minutes before. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. “Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise.”
Now, verse 2. Rebecca sang the words in a little more modern translation or modern interpretation, which is good. You may know it as the old verse which no one ever understands which says, “here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home.”
Rebecca sang the words and basically what it means is, I have come this far. You brought me this far and now help me to realize that and to continue on from this point. The story, the “Ebenezer” that no one ever understands, is from I Samuel 7, a story with the Israelites and Samuel. The Philistines, if you know much about Old Testament history, they were the tormentors of the Israelites. They were tormenting the Israelites and the Israelites came to Samuel and they said something like “please pray for us that God would give us victory over these people that we would live in this land of blessing and not be tormented by the Philistines.” So, Samuel prayed for them. He was the prophet at the time. They went into battle and they overcame the Philistines and they did not bother them for something like 40 more years.
In honor of their victory, in memorial of their victory, Samuel did what Old Testament prophets and kings often did. He set up a stone, a memorial stone. The memorial was to remember that God has brought us this far by faith and this far safely. He named it Eben-ezer. Eben is stone in Hebrew. That is what the word stone means in Hebrew. Ezer means help. Stone of help. So, an Ebenezer is a memorial you set up as a stone showing, reminding yourself. You know, the Israelites were big on this on visual aids. They were always building memorials and stone altars to remind them, to show them as a visual sign of God’s protection and God’s guidance. That is the “here I raise mine Ebenezer.” It stood for God’s help on behalf of helpless men. That is what Robert Robinson was saying. Here I am saying I am helpless, but God can help me. We see in his life’s story how he was helpless; how he fell away, but God brought him back and restored him.
Now, the second part of that verse it says “Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.” Just this line in itself has so much rich, rich theology in it. Jesus sought me. Did you seek God and say “Hey, can I become a Christian?” No, He sought you. We love him, why, because He first loved us. I know you all are familiar with that verse. God seeks us.
I remember this summer telling you about a book I read about the orthodox Jewish woman who became a Christian and she said it is like God was stalking her. Jesus was stalking everywhere she turned around she heard somebody talking about Him. The next time she turned around she heard a song. The next thing she would be in a store and she would see that picture of Him, the kind of brown picture where He just had that long hair and it would enthrall her and she would be drawn to this picture. She said it is like Jesus was stalking her. I know that sounds weird, but I love that because that is what He has been called, a Hound of Heaven. When God goes after somebody He brings them to Him. Jesus sought me. He came after me. He came after Robert Robinson even when he had fallen away. How? Through the words of a young, brand-new Christian woman.
So, “Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God.” That phrase reminds me of the famous story in the gospels where Jesus told the story of the 99 sheep. Do you remember that? There was a man having 100 sheep. He has 99 in the fold, but he is missing that one. Here is the difference between man and God. I know myself, I would say “99, oh, well, what is one? You know, I am doing pretty good with 99.” But what does God do? No, He wants that one, that little lost sheep.
Remember, we have always said in here, too, if you want to know what God is like all you do is look at Jesus. That is where you go. The first place you go. If you wonder about anything about God, look at Jesus’ life and how He lived.
SO what did He do? He gave the picture of a man who was out seeking the lost sheep, the lonely, little lost sheep, and brought it back. The Bible says he was carrying him on his shoulders. That is such a picture of God seeking us, coming after us. Maybe some of you have had this experience. Maybe you are having it currently in your life when you feel God speaking to your heart and He is drawing you and He is saying “I want to walk with you. I want to know you. We need to get rid of some things in your life and we need to move on here.” Listen to His voice. He is seeking you.
Listen, the time to respond to Jesus is now. Many times, even though He is always merciful, long suffering and patient, He will not call. His voice will not be heard as loudly as it is now. So, I exhort any of you who are in here. If you feel God drawing you to Him, just that conviction in your heart, then I beg you to respond to Him. He is seeking you. He is coming after you. The Bible tells you He knows your name. He knows the hairs on your head as we prayed a few minutes ago in the prayer room. He loves you. He wants you. He desires you. He is seeking you. That is what this man is saying. Jesus sought me when I was a stranger. I was out there wandering and I did not even know what I was doing and He came after me. He came after me.
When He did this—another old word you may not be familiar with—He “interposed” his precious blood. That just means He intervened for us. He intervened between us and our eternal demise, which was going to be separation from God forever in eternity. He intervened for us with his precious blood.
All right, then in verse 3 we have a prayer where you can see how the author has come to be sought. It is almost as if he is realizing the richness of God’s mercy, the streams of grace, and the seeking that God has performed to go after him so that he ends it with a prayer to God where he says he is “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.”
Anybody in here not sometimes “feel prone to leave the God you love?” Yes, we are all prone to do that without the keeping power of the Holy Spirit. I love, and you should know this about me, I love honest people who will say what they feel. I love the prayer in the New Testament when the man was asking Jesus to heal his daughter. Jesus asked “do you believe?” He said, “Lord, I believe but help my unbelief.” I love that prayer. It is so honest and it is so real. I pray it all the time myself. I believe, but I have so much unbelief. Help my unbelief. This is in the same vein where he is saying “I am prone to wander. I feel it.” I know myself. I know what I am going to do. I can tell. I can tell.
“Lord, I pray that You would take my heart. Seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.” An honest prayer. I did not realize until I began studying these how many writers of hymns became so vulnerable in their words. Bernard of Clairvaux, who lived in about the 11th century, a monk, wrote the unbelievable words to the hymn, “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee.”
“Oh, Sacred Head Now Wounded,” is another song I heard my whole life and it was not until maybe a few years ago when I listened to it recorded differently by someone else that I really heard this last line. It is a lament over the death of Christ on the cross. The last line he says, “Oh, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love for Thee.” That is a pretty serious prayer. Kill me if I back off. Kill me if I leave. Take my life if I ever ruin my testimony. Pretty strong words.
It is in the same vein of Robert Robinson’s prayer. “Lord, I am prone to wander, I feel it. I am prone to leave even the God I love.” So, what do I do about it? Well, here is my heart. I give my heart to You. I give my life to you. You take it and You seal it. Seal it for what? For Your courts above.
Listen, salvation is all by God. He has done it all. All we do is say yes. All we say is “Yes, Lord. Now what? That is the old thing that I fought for so long and it always comes back to that “Yes, Lord, now what? is the question. What do you want me to do? The attitude of “Yes, Lord, I will do what you want me to do.”
I think this song expresses the feelings of so many Christians through the years. God’s grace pursues us. He is rich in mercy. We respond to that and even when we have responded we can sometimes wander. So, what do we do? Say, “Lord, I am prone to wander, but here is my heart. Take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.”
Now, I want you to take this card with you this week and I want you to read it in your quiet time and in your prayer time. Keep it at your desk and read these words over. Let these words become a prayer in your heart to the Lord.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for Your goodness to us. Thank you for Your mercies. Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise. Teach us the melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above. Oh, we praise Your name, Lord. We are fixed upon it. The name of your redeeming love. Now Lord we pray we are prone to wander, but we pray, Lord, here is our heart. Take it, seal my heart, seal it for Your courts above. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
God’s very character is faithfulness and is revealed to His children in countless ways. Almost every phrase of this great hymn echoes a Scripture verse and emphasizes God’s faithfulness to His creation, from nature to mankind.
This is one of the best loved hymns of all times, written by two sisters. The simplicity of this song expresses a great truth: Jesus loves us, and we can know this for certain.
This song is filled with the metaphorical language of a loving Shepherd and His sheep. How God leads us and where God leads us is discussed in this study.
Editor's Note: This is an edited transcript of Susie Hawkin's preached message (available in the related media). Appreciation for the transcription work goes to Marilyn Fine.
We are continuing in our series on great hymns of the faith. How many of you were here at Criswell College Friday night to hear Elisabeth Elliot? I saw many of you there and it was a wonderful night. Hopefully, we will have time to talk about that a little bit because it was quite a story of God’s grace which is what we are going to be talking about today. We have been studying great hymns of the faith and picking a different hymn every week. We talk about the author, how it was written, what it means, and then go through and understand some of the scriptural references and message of the hymn.
Today, we come to one of the greatest hymns of all time. If it is not the greatest, it is probably the most favorite hymn. It is the hymn, Amazing Grace. I think the reason that this is so beloved by Christians of every culture and across the years and across denominations is because there is something about grace that we all need.
The story of amazing grace is very well known. The author is a man named, John Newton. The story of his conversion is very famous but just in case some of you are not familiar with it, let me tell you a little bit about John Newton.
John Newton was born in 1725 in London. His mother was a Christian and taught him the Bible at her knee while he was a little boy. However, she died when he was very young. He ended up going to sea with his father at age 11. You can imagine what a rough life this was with the seamen and sailors. So, he was eventually pressed into service. He deserted the navy. He was brought back as a servant of a captain of a ship and he ended up working in the slave trade. Eventually he worked his way up in that business to owning a ship and being a part of the slave trade. These ships would sail to western Africa, Sierra Leone, and capture these slaves, Africans, and take them back for payment. There was a lot of rum. There was a lot of liquor. There was a lot of bribery. It was a dirty, dirty, dirty business.
One night as he was sailing through a very violent story, he really believed he was going to die. He cried out, “Lord, have mercy on me.” In his own account of his conversion, he would go back to that time and realize that there was something truly genuine in his cry. He felt that God had come to him and that the presence of God had protected him in that storm. We have had other stories about people that had seemingly miraculous conversions such that when they cried out to the Lord they were instantly changed. John Newton was different. Sometimes people’s stories are like that, aren’t they? He became aware of the presence of God. His conversion was very quiet and it took him a while to work through everything. Slowly, he began to change. As you can imagine, his business, his career, his companions, all of these things began to change. At first he continued in the slave trade, but he began to treat these slaves differently as God worked in his heart. It was not that long though and he gave it up and renounced that trade completely.
It is interesting that this man who really had the lowest of the low jobs, the most looked down upon “career” or “trade,” eventually became a peer of some of the most powerful Christians in England at that time. There were quite a few powerful Christians around then because this was during the Enlightenment Period and the second great awakening—when there was a great revival in England.
John got married and gave up seafaring. He became active at a Methodist Church and became a good friend of John Wesley. All you Methodist girls know who that is. John and Charles Wesley were founders of the Methodist Church and Charles was another prolific hymn writer. Newton also became a very close contemporary of George Whitfield who was one of the most famous preachers in England. Do you remember our first hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing? The author, Robert Robinson, was converted under the preaching of George Whitfield.
Newton became a pastor in the Church of England. He also became a friend of William Cooper who wrote a lot of hymns. Together he and Cooper held weekly services. These were like mid-week services, and their goal was to write a hymn for every service. That is a pretty industrious goal, wouldn’t you say? They did it and so wrote quite a few hymns.
Now, some people say that the melody for Amazing Grace, which true origin is unknown, was the tune of the slaves. A song that they sang that he would have heard over and over when he came across the Atlantic. Other people say it was an old drinking song. Who knows what it was. We know what it is today. We may not know what the words originally were, but we know what they are today.
One fact which is interesting is that Newton was always a very meticulous record keeper. During his days of slave trading, he kept very detailed journals. So, today historians go back to John Newton’s journals as containing some of the most detailed accounts historically of the slave trade and exactly what happened. An interesting feature is that his writings show how slowly but surely God changed his heart.
Another wonderful thing about his story is that toward the end of his life he became close friends with William Wilberforce. Do you know who he was? He was a man in England who really aggressively pursued the abolition of slavery. John Newton, who at one time in his life had taken advantage of people in the cruelest, most inhumane, way, toward the end of his life became very active in the anti-slavery abolition movement in England. In that he was a dear prayer partner of William Wilberforce.
Now, the thing about this story is that the song is just an expression of his life. It is amazing. The story of his life is really illustrated through the words of the song. I have a friend who is here and she is going to play this song on the piano for us. You will have to follow along on your handout, because I am not going to stand here and sing it to you—especially after Sherry Bell was here last week. You should be familiar with these words so I want you to just follow along as you hear this beautiful rendition of Amazing Grace. I invited Jo Ellen Burch, come on, you come to the piano. Jo is employed at Criswell College. She has been there about 25 years. She was Leroy Till’s secretary here for those of you that are First Baptist people. She is a pianist at Northway Baptist Church. I love to hear her play the piano. When I was first thinking about this series and who would sing and what I would do this is the first thing I thought I want her to play the piano. It is just something about the way you play the piano. I love it. I do not know how people can express a gift even through an instrument, but she does. So, she is going to play Amazing Grace. Follow along with the words and then we will talk about it in a minute.
(piano playing Amazing Grace)
When we finish our talk, I want you to go back to the piano and play that again. I have to hear that again. Thank you so much. Play it several times! We will all stay around and listen to it. That was wonderful. See, I love that people with musical ability can make the music speak to you. That was really beautiful. Thank you.
Okay, Amazing Grace. I am just so tempted to have her just play it over about 10 times and sit down. You would probably prefer that if the truth were known. Well, let us talk about Grace for a minute. To attempt to talk about the grace of God in about 17 minutes is almost ridiculous, but I am going to try it anyway. That has never stopped me before, as you know. I want us to hit the high spots as we just think about the grace of God.
Years ago, C.S. Lewis was interacting with a group talking about the different aspects of religions. Their topic for the morning was what makes Christianity different than other religions. Well, of course, they were very knowledgeable of the scripture and they talked about the incarnation. Well, there were fables and stories about God becoming man or inhabiting men in other religions. Then there were stories about miracles. However, there were stories from other religions about possibly resurrections or life after death. C.S. Lewis had been out of the room, and he came back in. One of the theologians said to him, “What do you think makes Christianity unique?” He said something like, “That is the easiest question I have ever been asked. It is that Christianity shows the grace of God. It is God’s grace. No other religion shows grace. With the Hindus you have karma, with the Buddhist you have the Eight-Fold Path, with the Jews you have the Covenant, and with the Muslims you have the Law of Allah. In all these other religions there is something that must be attained, but when it comes to Christianity it is the grace of God. “
You know what grace is. Grace is an undeserved gift. That is simply what it means. It is a very, very simple meaning. It is God’s love coming to us, free of charge, no strings attached. It is an underserved gift. Now, we know that, but the flip side of that is that as Christians so often we do not show grace. Have you noticed that? Yes, I know, we do not want to talk about that part, but we have to talk about some of these hard issues if we are really going to investigate the subject a little bit. Well, yes, we know God is gracious. We know we are to be gracious, but sometimes people, Christians in particular, can be legalistic and judgmental. Now, I doubt if any people in here have had the experience, but some have. I have read about them. So, we have to be fair and talk about that, too. When I was studying for this, I read this fictional little story about a sinner who had been kicked out of his church. He went to the Lord and he said, “Lord, what am I going to do? They will not let me back in the church.? God said, “What are you complaining about, they won’t let me in either. At least you have been there once.” Well, sometimes we can be that way.
Now, let us think back just as we always do in looking at the scripture. From the very beginning in the book of Genesis, God shows grace, did He not? When He came to Adam and Eve, He provided them a covering for their sin. Starting with the first few chapters of Genesis through to the Book of Revelation we have the story of God’s grace. It is all over the pages. As I always say, take your concordance and look up the word, “grace,” “gracious,” any of those derivatives, you will see page after page after page of verses talking about God’s grace.
In John 1:17, when the apostle John was writing his first chapter of his gospel giving an eternal overview of the coming of Christ into the world, he said,
“For the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
This gives us a very simple way of looking at this. The Law of God, the 10 Commandments, the Law, came through Moses. Right? We know that. That is the Old Testament, the old Covenant. But, grace came through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, God showed grace in the Old Testament. There is no question, but grace reached its culmination. It overran everything in the person of Christ. He was the ultimate revelation of God’s grace. If you want to just read a story of grace, you just read the story of Jesus’ life – all of His reactions, all of His actions, all of His teaching, all of His preaching, all of His interactions were always characterized by grace.
However, there is always tension on this subject and it goes back to this verse. “The Law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Christ Jesus.” All right, what do you have there? You have the law and you have grace, right? Now, that is where sometimes the rubber meets the road, as we say. That is where sometimes you have tension because we want to give grace. We want to experience grace, yet we do not do away with the Law, do you? We do not ignore the Law. So, we often find a tension between those two. I know I have used the story in here many times as an illustration of Les Miserables. The Victor Hugo story contains some of the tension between Law and grace. If you remember the story, Jean Valjean, the protagonist, stole a loaf of bread. He went to prison because he stole a loaf of bread. Now, that is the law. If you steal, you go to prison, right? There is no grace with the Law. It does not matter that he stole the bread because his young nephew was dying of hunger. That did not matter to the law. So, you have that whole story. One of the subthemes is the tension between law and grace. Jean Valjean is being pursued by the law and yet he experiences grace himself and then ends up giving it to others. It is just a phenomenal story on this very topic of the Law and grace. We do not have time to really go into it today. You know, though, that it is reality. Let’s get down to reality here. We all say hate the sin but love the sinner. Is that very easy to do, though? Isn’t that difficult to do sometimes? Yes, it is difficult to do.
I have a good friend who is going through a divorce. It is very painful for her. It is a terrible thing to have to go through. I have not been good friends with someone who has had to do that for a long time. I have not seen that up close in quite a while. I am reminded sometimes of the ungraciousness of people in relating to her. I have heard people who are divorced say that it is the scarlet letter of the Church. I used to think, “oh, they are just overreacting. No, it is not.” Well, you know what, it is. It is. There are many places where it is. To listen to her experiences and watch how some show her legalism and judgmentalism because of circumstances beyond her control has been eye-opening. Thankfully there are also other experiences where she is shown grace. It is very interesting to me, just as an observer, to say, what would I do in this situation? How do you uphold the sanctity and honor and the Covenant of marriage, yet show grace to someone that has not been shown it? I am just saying to you that these are not easy questions. Would you agree with that? To walk it and to live it is something that is very important to know how to do.
Well, let’s talk very quickly on what is grace. Think of the derivatives of the word “grace.” We say “grace” before a meal. We are “grateful” for kindnesses shown to us. We are “gratified” by good news. We are “congratulated” when we have a success. We leave a “gratuity” when we are pleased with service in a restaurant. We love it when somebody is “gracious” to us in hospitality. All of these words convey the sense of grace, a gift, something is given out of appreciation.
Now, the opposite is true, too. You have “ungrace” when you say someone is a “disgrace.” That is a shameful term, isn’t it? We would say that William Bennett has fallen from “grace.” We could go on and on about all the people who have fallen from grace. That simply means that they have embarrassed us or they have shamed themselves. So, this word is used in many different ways, but it all goes back to the root of “appreciation” “of giving something out of appreciation” or “giving something from an overflowing heart or spirit to someone who did not necessarily deserve it.” That is the root of the word.
Now, grace is, as we talk about what it is, the opposite of legalism. You know what legalism is. Legalism means living by the law – no exceptions. No exceptions is living by the law. Now, in John 8 there is the story that some of you may be familiar with of the woman who was caught in adultery. Jesus had constant run-ins with the Pharisees. That was because they were so upset. You want to talk about obsessive/compulsive. They were all about the law and every detail of the law. Let me remind you that they had added many things to God’s law. They had taken the Ten Commandments and the Laws out of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but they had also added many other little tiny insignificant things that they considered to be just as important as the moral law. Jesus was constantly in tension with them about grace and law over what God really wanted from His people versus what the Pharisees thought God wanted from His people. As you know, things got pretty heated between the Pharisees and Jesus. They were always trying to trap him because if they could prove Him wrong, that he was disloyal to Moses or disloyal to Rome or He said something that was wrong, then they could get Him out of the way. That was their goal. Very ungracious.
One of the traps they set for Him, we are told about in John 8. It says, “Early in the morning, Jesus came into the temple and all the people came to Him. He sat down and taught them.” This would be in one of the courts where there would be informal gatherings of people.
Now, the Pharisees obviously knew that Jesus would be there because they brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. There is a strong implication here that she had been caught in the act of adultery. Where was the man? We would like to know, but he is not here. Surprise, surprise! Uh, huh. Anyway, we can’t go off on that.
When they sent her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery in the very act.” Now, Moses, here it comes. “Now the law says that if she is caught in the act of adultery, she should be stoned. What do You say?” They were testing Him that they might have something of which to accuse Him because if He said “let her go,” ah, He would not be obeying the Law of Moses. If He said “stone her,” then He would be going against Roman law which said that was an unlawful execution. Remember how the Jews had to go to Pilate and find grounds to crucify Jesus. Well, He could not just kill somebody on religious grounds in the Roman Empire.
But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger as though He did not hear. When they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” Then, He stopped down again and wrote on the ground. Then, “those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last.” Jesus was left alone.
Now picture this. Jesus was left alone. The woman only was standing there. Then Jesus raised Himself up. He was down; she was standing up. He raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman. He said, “Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one would.” He said to her, “Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
What a story of grace this is. I love these details in this story. Jesus not only forgave her, but He restored her. That is part of grace. Restoration. Did He shame her? Did He condemn her? Did He call her names like they were doing? No, He simply said, “I do not condemn you either. Go and sin no more.” Now, you know what is brilliant here? How Jesus just changed the focus here. Before the category was “sinner” and “not sinner.” “Not sinners” – these are the Pharisees, the righteous. The “sinner” was the woman. But Jesus changed it. He changed those categories here to “those who are willing to admit their empty hands.” —willing to admit their sin— and “those who are not willing to admit their need.” We are all sinners, right? There is none righteous. Ah, the difference here we see was between those who say “I have no sin” and those who say “I have sinned and I need all the grace I can get.” That is really the category that we are talking about in these scriptures.
You know what? If you are going to receive the gift of God, here is how you receive it. You have to come like this woman. Humble and trembling with empty hands. Augustine said, “God will give where He finds empty hands.” Isn’t that true? If you are righteous and you think you have kept the Law and you are “just fine, thank you,” you do not need God’s grace. It is those who come to Him and say, “Lord, I’m empty. I’m needy. I’m pathetic,” that is what I say, “I am pitiful. I need it.” Those are the ones that God pours out His grace upon.
Now, grace involves forgiveness. Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.” Did He condone adultery? Of course not, of course not, but He said, “I will not condemn you then.” You know, it is interesting that Cecil DeMille and different movie script writers have tried to pursue this whole idea of what was Jesus writing there? What were the words He was writing? It says here that they were convicted by their conscience. It just makes you wonder if He was writing names or things or places. People, places or things that they might say, “hmm, yes, I do remember that.” They were convicted by their own conscience. Whatever He wrote pricked their own heart. What was Jesus saying? “None of you are righteous. You better remember that.” That is what He was saying and He said then, “I forgive you. Neither do I condemn you.” You know, there is nothing like condemnation and unforgiveness to destroy relationships. There is nothing that is more destructive. It is “ungrace.” It is “ungrace”.
Ernest Hemingway has a story that he wrote years ago about a Spanish family and a young boy, kind of like the prodigal son. He ran off to Madrid, the big city. His father had gotten old and wanted to restore the relationship. So, he put an ad in the Madrid newspaper which said, ‘Paco, the boy’s name was Paco, meet me at the Hotel Montana Tuesday at noon. All is forgiven.” Now, Paco is a very common name in Spain. When he arrived at the hotel at noon, he found 800 young men crowded around the hotel waiting to meet their father. I know! It just grabs at your heart. But, you know what is interesting, that is just a story by Ernest Hemingway. You know what? I did not realize until I read the postscript to that story is that Ernest Hemingway’s grandparents went to Wheaton. His parents were Christians, but they were very condemning of him. They never would read anything he wrote because he would not live the life that they had chosen for him. They rejected him. They sent him notes and letters condemning him saying he was going to hell and you better not neglect your views to Christ and all this. You know what. It said that man died hating his mother and his father, but I believe he hated their God even more. It is so sad. It is a story of “ungrace”. You know what that tells us? Even Christians can be guilty of that. Yes, we can. We can be guilty of it and it is so incredibly destructive. Now, God not only forgives, but He restores.
I love the little details. It says she was standing and Jesus was kneeling. Something about the body language there affects me. She was not kneeling cowering here. At some point, she stood up. I am sure covering herself. Jesus was kneeling down. He stood up and He said, “I do not condemn you. Now, go and do not sin any more.” Part of grace is restoration. You can see that in every story in the Bible where we have Jesus’ grace shown toward someone. Not just forgiveness, but restoring them to dignity, restoring their worth, making them feel like their life is not over. They can start again and that is what He did with this woman.
Now, there are a couple of questions that are raised by grace. There are always two major things that come up when you talk about grace. If you talk about it long enough you get around to these questions. Number one – does grace have a limit? Well, we might say, now that we are reading about it, of course not. Grace does not have a limit. Well, there is Moses – he was a murderer. There was David – He was a murderer himself. So, we see that, no, grace does not have a limit. But, then we get to slave traders. Anybody see Roots? Or La Amistad? I could not even watch that. I had to cover my eyes. I am sure many of you did, too, in parts of that movie. The cruelty and depravity of mankind. Can slave traders know the grace of God? Well, we just heard a song written by one who did. Can Jeffrey Dahmer? Can people like that be shown the grace of God? You know what? For those who have tried to be righteous their whole life there is something in us that says I do not think that is right. I look at my little grandson who is perfect in every way. I look at that little face asleep on my husband’s chest and I think, “is there a hell hot enough for people who hurt a baby?” I do think that, but you know what? We read last week in Romans 8 there is nothing that separates us from the love of God. That is how great it is. That just shows us how ungracious we are and how phenomenally gracious He is.
The second question it brings up is, “what can I get away with?” You are familiar with the term, “cheap grace,” right? Have you ever had anybody say this to you: “I can do this or that because I know God will forgive me”?
Philip Yancey—I think you should have every book he wrote— tells a story of a friend of his named, Daniel, in the book Amazing Grace. Over a cup of coffee Daniel says to Philip, “I have been married 15 years, but I have met another woman. Do you think if I leave my wife, divorce her, and marry this other woman, will God forgive me?”
Philip Yancey explores things thoroughly, and that is one of the reasons I like him. He takes you through the issue. He does not just give quick little pat answers. He really ponders this and he thinks about it.
Daniel, his friend, went ahead and did this. He eventually divorced his wife for another woman, left his children, and destroyed his home. Yancey comes up with this conclusion and I think this is a brilliant conclusion to this question. The thing is, that if you were considering willful sin and taking advantage of the grace of God, you might have put a little distance between yourself and God. Wouldn’t you say that is true? All right. If you then go on and commit the sin, you are even putting more distance, and how do you know you will ever even care again about the grace of God? Isn’t that true? If you continually distance yourself from God, will you really care? Will you want to repent? You are that much further from repentance. He says by his own testimony that this man to his knowledge has never even wanted to repent or even thought once again about the grace of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about this in World War II. That great theologian from Germany who termed it, “grace abuser” or “cheap grace.” The only thing you can conclude is once you understand what grace is, if you ever really get it, you never want to abuse it. Right?
Okay, John Newton said, and we will be finished, “amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.” Spiritual eyes. He gained spiritual sight, for he could now see the truth of God’s grace. He says it is “grace that taught my heart to fear. Grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.” God’s grace will never be as real to you as it is at the time of salvation when Jesus comes into your heart. In Ephesians 2:8-9, “For my grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourself.” God’s grace is made its most powerful in your own life at the time when He comes into your heart and your life and begins to change it. Just like He did with John Newton. Maybe it is a slow change, maybe it is a fast change, but it is a change and it is God’s grace that does that.
I love that verse, everyone does, where he says “through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come.” The verse there says that God will keep us in His grace. Have you ever heard that little saying, “the will of God will never take you where the grace of God cannot keep you”? It is a great concept. God will take you through the dangers. God’s grace will see you through the toils and the snares and the difficult times. Paul talks about that in II Corinthians when he said, “Please, God, remove this thorn, this thing that is bothering me so much.” Remember what the Lord said to him? “No, my grace is sufficient.” I want you to learn about my grace. My grace is sufficient for your need. That is what He is talking about there. Then he says in James 4:6, “God gives more grace.”
“When we have been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise then when we just begun.” As eternity enfolds, can we ever pray and thank Him enough for His grace that is shown to us? No. In James 4:6, I love this verse, it says, “For He gives more grace. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Remember those empty hands? Remember the woman caught in the act of adultery? Those whose hands are empty God will give the gift of grace to.
You need more grace? I do. I need grace. You need grace with your marriage relationship? He will give you more grace. With your child who is pushing you to the limits? God will give you more grace. Your neighbor or your coworker is pushing you right past the limit? You know what, God will give you grace. He gives more grace. However much you need, He will give you that much more. He will because He has unending stores of grace.
I just want to remind us that when we experience grace ourselves, it is then our responsibility to give it. Dwight Moody said that out of a hundred men, one will read the Bible. The other 99 will read the Christian. How important it is that our lives are characterized by grace given to others on behalf of what God has given to us.
Let’s pray. Father, thank You for this time that we have had. Thank You for Your grace. We cannot even begin to grasp how great and phenomenal it is, but we know we have it and we are thankful for it. We pray that You would help us show it to those around us today. How we praise You for Your gracious love to us, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Editor’s Note: This is a lightly edited transcription of the audio message. Thanks goes to Marilyn Fine for the transcription work.
We just have two more weeks of this series, and I hope that this series has been as much a blessing to you as it has to me. I have been so blessed in studying these songs, the stories of the writers, and all of the circumstances around each song. Today, we come to one of the all-time favorite great hymns of the faith. Today, we will be talking about the song, “It is Well With My Soul.”
Now, we know that this song is about peace. There is probably no other song that has been sung as frequently as this song at funerals, at times of bereavement, or at other times of grief. This is an all-time favorite. I think the reason why so many people choose to sing this song or have it sung, in times of turmoil, is that it so eloquently expresses the feelings and the faith of a Christian. That is one of the things about poetry, about hymns, about the Book of Psalms–they so eloquently express how the writer feels and we take those words and we say, you know, “that is exactly how I feel. I just did not know how to say it that way.” Have you ever read anything like that? “That is how I feel. They just put into words exactly what I have been feeling.” I think that is why this song is so loved.
Now, the song begins “when peace like a river.” Even though peace is not mentioned that much more in the song, it is really a song about having peace within your soul. I want to talk about that for a minute before we get into this in a little more detail. I am sure most of you are familiar with the biblical meaning of the word, the Hebrew word for peace. It is “shalom.”
I am taking Hebrew this semester. It is about to kill me. I had this as a vocabulary word last week and I know this word. It is the only one I know of about 5,000 words that we have to learn. Of course, I was especially interested in looking up the definition and looking at all the various meanings. You may be familiar with the word, shalom. It is not just peace. It also brings a strong, strong connection with wholeness or wellness. It can also mean help. You probably know that to those who speak Hebrew, “shalom,” is their greeting. It is what they say when they see each other. It is what they say when they say goodbye to each other. It is shalom. It means I wish for you or I pray for you peace. Not only peace such as a quiet spirit or happiness or things going well in your life, but a sense of wholeness that everything is in order in your life, that everything is as God intended it to be. So, there is really a much deeper meaning to the word “peace” as it is used in the scripture.
Now, we know that in the Fruit of the Spirit peace appears. Dr. Brunson just preached recently a series on the Fruit of the Spirit. His message on peace was one of the best things I ever heard. I say that about all his sermons. It was so good. It is a great series if you are studying this. The Fruit of the Spirit is peace. In Romans 5:1, Paul tells us what we used to be in the past. We were at enmity with God because of our sin. But, when Christ came, then we had peace with God. So, there is peace with God in that sense.
Then there is peace with one another. The Bible talks a lot about relationships. Paul in his letter to the Philippians urged two women to get along with one another. I guess in biblical times sometimes women did not get along. He urged them…how would you like that to be your heritage, your name, in Paul’s letter for the rest of the world to know that you were in an argument with another woman! But, this carries the idea of peace with one another, a peaceful relationship.
I think more than that as we talk about this word today we are looking at it in relation to inner peace, a spirit that is not restless or troubled, but our spirits being at peace with our situations, with our circumstances. That does not necessarily mean that our circumstances have changed to give us peace. It means that we have become at peace with our circumstances and this is a much deeper meaning than we might ordinarily associate peace of mind with.
Now, you are probably very familiar with the fact that in this day and age, at this very time, the highest selling medication in this country is Prozac or Zoloft or medications that alleviate stress and emotional depression. I have a friend who is a nurse and she was the nurse at a youth camp last summer at a large church in the Metroplex. I saw her afterward and asked how did she make out. She said, well, let me tell you, I was prepared to deal with skinned knees and maybe a broken arm or two and sprained ankles, and that kind of stuff. She said all I did was to dispense medication. These kids are medicated. I literally could not even stop for a coffee break in the morning putting out everybody’s medicine. Much of it was this type medication. That tells us something about our culture, doesn’t it? Even though we have a great deal of affluence and things, we seem to live in a time where stress, emotional turmoil, unhappiness, and especially depression is really prevalent in our culture.
I think I told this story in here before about the time we were in North Carolina in the mountains. We went into a little health food store when I was in my health food stage (which I got out of pretty quickly. Stay in that for very long and you will want to get out of it, too!) So, at this counter they had these little stones and on these flat little stones were painted words like love and joy and peace and things like that. There was a little sign which said $3.95 apiece. I said, “What are these?” She said, “Oh, those, they are like crystals and if you take them and you buy one and you keep it with you all the time, whatever the word you have, that will happen to you.” I said, “Really, I want to talk about this. So, if I buy the stone that says, joy, I am just going to automatically have joy?” She started to get a little antagonistic as she could tell I was kind of making fun of her. I did not mean to, but it just burst out of me. She said, “Yes, that is true.” I said, “Well, is there a money-back guarantee? That is what I want to know.” She said, “No.” Of course, I just let it go, but I did say to her, “Do you sell these?” She said she couldn’t keep them in stock. That, people, is sad. That is sad. Somebody is making a lot of money painting on little rocks.
So, the song, “It Is Well With My Soul,” talks about this kind of peace, a peace of wholeness and wellness that does not come from an outside source, but it comes from faith in Christ. It comes from God’s gift.
Now, I want to tell you the story briefly. I am sure many of you are very familiar with the story of Horatio Spafford who wrote the lyrics to this song. It is a classic story. He was a successful attorney in Chicago in the middle 1800s. He and his wife had four daughters and a four-year-old son who about the time that all of this started taking place was lost to scarlet fever. The little boy died of scarlet fever at age four. Very soon after that, literally just weeks after that, the Great Chicago Fire occurred which consumed virtually the whole city. He lost most of his fortune. Everything was gone. So, he put his efforts into trying to rebuild the city and helping the thousands of homeless people who had nothing.
Well, later on in 1873, he decided his family needed a vacation because of all the stress and all of that. So, they were going to see some friends in Europe. He was detained by business and Spafford’s wife and his daughters went ahead. They were on this luxury liner, the Ville Du Havre, and you may know the story that during the night, off the coast of Ireland, the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel and the ship was sunk. You can only imagine as you read those words in the hymn’s stories. If you saw Titanic, that is what instantly came to my mind of the fear and the panic and the screaming. We can only imagine how it must be to know that your children, in this instance, or other loved ones died in that way. Well, his wife was rescued floating unconscious on a piece of wreckage. All the survivors were taken to Wales. She cabled home to her husband and her cable simply said “saved alone.” Of course, he immediately booked passage to Wales to be with his wife. When he got on the ship, he told the captain that when you come to the place where the Ville Du Havre went down, will you come get me? I need to see that. So, it was on a dark, cold December night, early in the morning, the wee hours of the morning, that the captain knocked on his door and said that he believed they were passing by the place where the ship sank. He walked out to the deck and stood there in the freezing wind, in the darkness with the black inkiness of the sky and the water. He wept in grief over his lost children that went down in that spot. When he went back to his cabin, he could not sleep, of course. But, as he sat, these words began to come to his mind and they began to overflow. He took a pencil and he began to write these words , “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll.” He had just been out there looking at the ocean, the giant waves. “When sorrows.” He saw those sea billows as metaphorical and the sorrows that just washed over his soul. Huge immense billows which came and washed over him. “When sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say it is well with my soul.” That is usually the end of the story, but the story goes that when he and his wife were reunited, they took stock of their lives and decided what they were going to do with the rest of their life. They decided to go to Jerusalem. They went to Jerusalem and they began a ministry there to orphans. They bought outside of the city walls a home of a sheik that had sold his home. It is now The American Colony Hotel. If you ever go to Jerusalem, you must go there because it is a lovely, lovely home. It is a little hotel now. There are pictures all through it. Pictures taken in Jerusalem in the early 1900s and around Israel. He and his wife gave their lives to ministering to orphans and the homeless and the helpless and the needy in the place where Jesus had lived. That is where they ended up dying. To this day, some of their descendants, the Spafford descendants, continue that ministry and it is located right within the Damascus Gate of the Old City.
So, he left quite a heritage not only in this song, but I think also of proving in the way he lived out the rest of his life after an unspeakable tragedy. The fact that his life could go on and he could still minister and he could still give and he could still have a degree of satisfaction and joy in this life.
[Bible.org Editor’s Note: Unfortunately the picture is not as rosy as it might seem. Before moving to Jerusalem the Spafford’s left their church and created their own sect which resulted in a number of deviant beliefs and practices over the years. Thus Horatio’s life can serve as both an encouragement and a warning.]
Now, we are going to watch this today on video. You cannot have a series on him without the Gaither Homecoming video. I know. So, you are going to sing…this is kind of the all-stars…and you will see famous people like Michael W. Smith and people like that. It opens up Bill Gaither’s interviewing Ruth Graham, Billy Graham’s wife. This is her favorite hymn so she talks about it and then they go into the song so I want you to listen to it.
Bill: Oh, the bliss
Ruth: Of that glorious thought
Bill: My sin, not in part
Ruth: But in whole
Bill: Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord
Ruth: Absolutely
Song playing….
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
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!
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
So much goodness! I want you to note the train of thought in the verses of this song. The first verse he talks about when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, God has taught me to say it is well with my soul. When there is personal grief and sorrow so great that I cannot even express it, nevertheless, it is well with my soul. I know that God is in control of my life. I know that God is with me. I know He will give me the grace to go through what I have to do. That is what He talks about in verse 1. I hear people often say, “oh, I could never go through what somebody has had to go through.” You know what. You do not have to. God gives you the grace to go through what you go through and you do not have to have the grace to go through what everybody else does. He gives you the grace to go through what you are going through at that time.
The second verse talks about my sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part but the whole was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. What is that? The peace of God. My sin. I do not have to bear the punishment and the judgment of my sin. Remember, we talked about that in here before. When you invite Christ to come into your heart and you give your life to Him, He took your judgment and your punishment in His very body on the cross. That is what we are talking about when we talk about giving your heart and life to Him. You are no longer under that curse of sin. So, what is he talking about here? Horatio Spafford is talking about his being at peace with God. I do not have to bear the guilt. Romans 8:1, “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” I do not have to bear the condemnation. I do not have to feel guilty. I do not have to bear the punishment because Jesus has taken all of my sin on the cross.
Then, the last verse which is just such…can you sing those words or even read them without getting a lump in your throat? I cannot because I think of how many of God’s children in times of sorrow and grief have clung to these words with everything that is in them. There is a CD that has this that I listen to when I walk. I look up at the sky and I think, “God how many of your children who have had to walk through such horrible, difficult things have looked up at that sky and thought, ‘one of these days the clouds will roll back and the Lord shall descend.’” You know what will happen? He will come and it will be well. See, the contrast in this song is that he is saying my personal grief and sorrow are unbearable, but it is well. I will get through it. God will give me the grace to do it. My eternal security – it is well. The end of time when all of life…when it is all over, it is well. Either way, you see, no matter what, it is well with me. It is well with my soul because he had made peace with God and knew who and what He was doing. You know what? This goes back to the meaning of the word, “peace,” a wholeness. Not just a lack of conflict. When Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you.” He said I do not give you peace like the world gives you. Peace like the world gives is the removal of the bad circumstances, but I give you My peace. “My peace I give to you.”
Now, very quickly, let us talk about a couple of these things. There are many things that disturb our peace – losses, the grief, the sorrow like Horatio Spafford went through and Job went through. I want to say this quickly because I want you to identify with people in the Bible who have had losses and who were in turmoil and disturbed worry. In Matthew 6, Jesus spoke about worry. There is a proverb that says, “Anxiety in the heart of man weighs it down.” I love the way it says that. Is it not just like a weight? Is it not when you are worried it is just a heavy weight on you.
Jesus said, before He was going to the cross, He said, “My spirit is troubled. I am troubled in My spirit and you can sense in Jesus Himself anxiety. These are normal things that trouble us and make us restless.
Disappointments. I was reading the other day the last chapter in Luke where the two people were walking after Jesus had been crucified were walking on the road to Emmaus and Jesus walked with them and they did not know it was Jesus. He said to tell Him what was going on and He tells them about Christ. They said we were so hoping He had been the one. We know the end of that story that He reveals Himself to them, but they did not. I think about that when I read that. “We were so hoping He had been the one.” That is something we had been so hoping in. We just knew it was going to happen and it did not. It did not happen. Your prayers were not answered the way you thought. Disappointment. These are things that rob us and destroy our peace.
Let me tell you something. There is a way that we can have God’s peace very quickly. First of all to understand God’s promise. In John 14, and I mentioned this verse before, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid.” It is a gift from God. This peace that Jesus gives each one of His children is a gift. It is a gift that He gives us. Listen, how could Horatio Spafford bear this? God gave him peace. God gave him peace enough to write this song. God, I think, puts something on this song that makes it so that where it binds itself to your spirit. I mean I think so many people feel that way. I will say there are other hymns I am very much over that I will never need to hear again. This is not one of them. I could hear this 50 times a day and I start to cry every time I hear it. That is the way this kind of song is.
Jesus said, “I give my peace to you.” Well, let us think about Horatio Spafford. He gave him that peace. He wrote this song. He could express it. What else did He give him? He gave him a ministry. He gave him a ministry to people who had no parents, to people who had no children. He gave him a ministry of preaching the gospel and sharing the good news. He gives them still to this day even though he is in heaven he gives him a ministry of ministering to the down and out in Jerusalem. That is a gift from God, part of the peace, the wholeness. His life that was given to serve God.
Another way we can have God’s peace is to be spiritually minded, understanding and seeking to understand spiritual things and to make a choice to do that. In Romans 8:6, Paul said “to be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” As you fill your mind with songs and with the things of God it brings peace to your spirit and to your soul. Then, mostly importantly of all, to know God’s Word. Psalm 119 says, “Great peace have those who love thy law.” Great peace to those…have you ever been at worry or anxious or you are disturbed? What do you do? You go for your Bible, don’t you. Say, Lord, speak to me. Give me some comfort. Show me. Give me something to hang on to. Great peace have those who love thy law. God’s Word brings us comfort and brings us peace at a time when we need it. So, the peace of God is a gift and He gives it to us when we need it and He gives it to us. That does not mean necessarily that all of the bad things go away. It simply means that He gives us the ability to walk through those things and to continue to trust Him. I have looked at people who have gone through very difficult things. Even though they may be angry at God or upset or question or something, it is amazing to me how many people that are truly His still cling on to Him and say somehow I am not going to let go. They walk through that and God gives them an even greater ministry and even greater opportunity for their lives.
Now, a person such as that is Dawn Meade. Dawn is the Director of Women’s Ministry here. Many of you remember it was not that long ago when she was eight months pregnant with her little boy, Chandler. Her husband was on staff here with the prayer ministry. She came home from work one day and found him dead. You may remember how tragic that was and how we prayed for her. Chandler was born a healthy, good looking little energetic boy and if there is one word in watching Dawn walk through all of this, if there is one word I would use to describe her in watching from a distance it would be serenity. She does have the peace of God all over her. So, I want her to come and share for a few minutes about it. It is one thing to talk about it. It is something else to hear from someone who has walked it.
Thank you. Thank you, very much. You will have to forgive me because tears come very easy to me. “That’s OK, we can do that here.” I have her permission so…
I told Susie earlier that I felt like I needed to call her yesterday and say “you do not need me to come up here to talk about peace. Not if you would have seen me traveling on an airline this Thanksgiving with a 17-month-old who had a stomach virus and a head cold.” What is it about 17 months old that you have to teach them how to share their toys, but they share freely their germs! So, I spent Thanksgiving myself with a stomach virus. You walk through that and you just have to do some praying: “God, I am clinging on to you because right now I am angry. I am hurt and I just do not understand, but I know that I know that You are in control and I know.”
I have those verses just like many of you do where you hang your hat. “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to give you a hope and a future.” We hang our hat on that. I heard a definition, or read a definition in the dictionary one time about peace and it was the absence of conflict. I think Susie alluded to that. That is the world’s definition. That is not God’s definition of peace. If you look through the Word it says we will have trials. We will have tribulations. Being a Christian is not an absence of those things. As a matter of fact, it is almost an invitation for those things because as we walk through those things, we have an opportunity to decrease so that He can increase because there is an outside world watching on asking, “is there something else to this life? Is there something more than this?” Oh, yes, the answer is yes! There is. I think Susie even alluded to the scripture verse. This is Jesus talking in John 14:27. I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart and the peace I give you is not like the peace the world gives. So, do not be troubled or afraid. The peace that the world has is not what His peace is about. His peace has nothing to do what is going on around here. His peace has to do with what is going on in here.
Since Crawford died on June 10th of 2002, raising as a single parent our son by myself has many of its own challenges. I know many of you are single parents and have walked through that yourself. I remember one night, it was a 3 am feeding, and I was exhausted, just absolutely exhausted. I was still nursing at the time and Chandler had finished nursing and it was that calm in the middle of the night and he was satisfied. In the quiet and the stillness, out of the corner of his eye, he looked up at me and he smiled. Just the sense of that moment of God being near was precious. Then, I sat him up and then he projectile vomited all over me and himself! You know, you just gotta’ fasten your seatbelt sometimes and hold on, but God was there in that part of it. He did not leave just because the moment changed or the moment got a little more hard or difficult. His presence was still there.
One of the verses that God gave me to know my salvation was 1 John 5:13. “These things I have written so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Hang your hat on it, ladies, because you can know that He is in control. You can know that He is sovereign. Let me tell you about one of the things God has led us through. Chandler is 17-and-a-half months old now and a very beautiful, vivacious and very active and investigative little boy— as many of you who have some 17 month olds know. The thing for me that is difficult is at the same time that I say 17-and-a-half months I also know it has been 17-and-a-half months since I lost my husband. So there is a precious, bitter-sweetness when I say the age of my son because it is also a reminder.
Since we are talking about hymns, let me share the one that I want sung at my funeral. I would like to read some of the words to it. It is the hymn, “Because He Lives.”
God sent His son, they called him Jesus,
He came to love, heal and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon.
An empty grave is there to prove my savior lives.
The second verse:
How sweet to hold a newborn baby and feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still, the calm assurance this child can face uncertain days because He lives.
Then, one day, I will cross the river,
I will fight life’s final war with pain,
and then as death gives way to victory,
I will see the lights of glory and I will know He lives.”
Any of you who have lost dear, precious loved ones know. Heaven is a little sweeter place because of it. Earth has lost a little bit of its shine, if you will. Yet we go on. We have much to be grateful for. We have much to praise the Lord for, but there are precious family members that are on the other side cheering us on and will be there when we see them, as well. So, what do we do? We hang our hats on His promises. We walk—sometimes one minute at a time. Sometimes it does not look the way we want it to look, but we can know that we know He has our best interest at heart. Those of you who know Him personally know then that at one point this is all going to be over and we are going to see Him face to face. We are going to see our loved ones again. One of the things I want to hear is “well done, well done, good and faithful servant.” Thanks! (applause)
Let me just end today with a couple of scriptures. In Philippians 4, the classic verse on peace it says that we are to “Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made know to God.” When that happens, what will happen? “Then, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” That is a great promise about the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. We do not know why we feel that way, we do not know how we are doing it. I am sure Dawn looks back and thinks “I do not know how I made it through those months,” but God’s peace will do that. That is a promise. It is a gift from God. Let me remind you about Isaiah 26. That simple little verse says, “Thou will keep him in perfect peace”….what?!… “whose mind is stayed on Thee.” As we keep our hearts and minds fixed on Christ Jesus, He will give us that peace within ourselves.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for the gift of peace You have given us. We seek to understand what You mean when you say in Your Word, when You say that we have peace and we have these other gifts and, Lord, I thank you for the understanding that it is not just about things going right. It is much deeper than that. That we have peace with You. That we can have peace with one another in our relationships and most of all that we can have peace with our circumstances and peace with the fact that you are in control of our lives. So, Lord, I pray that today it would be well with the souls of every woman in this room. If there is anyone here today, Lord, that it is not well with them, they are troubled, they are not sure of their relationship with you, Lord, I pray that today would be the day that that is settled and it would be well with their soul.
Thank you for this gift that You have given us, Lord. I pray that we would be faithful to appreciate it, faithful to use it, and that we would also be found faithful, Lord, that despite what we go through that we would be experiencing the peace and the joy it is to walk with you. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
See you next week.
The Messiah is one of the greatest compositions ever written. The brilliant music, along with the inspired words from Isaiah 7, express the joy and expectation of all Christendom – unto us a Son is given!!