The Incarnation and A Song

The incarnation of Christ and His work on the cross is the center of human history. Period. All of history and revelation prior to this miraculous condescension of God pointed to this event. All of the subsequent moments and seconds look back to that time, in groaning anticipation of the second coming and final consummation in time of the realities of that work. Christ, through the incarnation, death on the cross, Resurrection, and Ascension have purchased finally and completely all the promises of God (2 Corinthians 1:20) and the final victory that we await as pilgrims in these "last days."

This is the theological framework and backdrop that we often think about when we talk about the incarnation. It is the factual and real culmination of God's work. In heaven, we will be around the throne singing glory and honor to the lamb, who was slain and has bought for himself a people to praise Him forever and ever (Revelation 5:9-10). All true! All gloriously true. But no one could possibly read through the Gospels (much less the OT law and prophets) and miss the fact that the coming of the King of Kings would have social ramifications as well as theological ones. Jesus came feeding the hungry. Jesus came healing the sick. Jesus came and touched leapers - unclean, unholy, unfit. Jesus arrived and said that he came not to be served, but to serve AND give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

I have a tendency to glory in the last half of that statement. I sing with vigor and my heart wrenches in pain as I contemplate the agony of the sinless dying to ransom many, but I rarely wrench in agony and distress when I think of the multitudes of desperate, sick, and hungry around me. I have little affection for the emerging church or for the liberal protestantism in our country today, but I do see that they have one critique of the modern evangelical church that is apropos. It is our reluctance to get dirty to serve the poor. We have megachurches building massive buildings with bookstores and coffee shoppes, all in the name of Christ. Christ tells us to lay up treasures in heaven and not here on earth, but we have a decadent and misguided streak in the American evangelical church that believes that as Christians, our communities are to be established to care for ourselves and promote an ease in our lives that is found nowhere in scripture. We are commanded to remember that we are pilgrims and strangers in this land and we are awaiting, just like Abraham a far greater city that God has prepared for us (Hebrews 11:16). We are "just passing through" as the song says. Hebrews tells us that this is the reason that Abraham lived in tents all his life. He, different than other tribes at the time, never built homes and walls and fortifications because He was waiting for the heavenly city.
It is time that we make our ministries look more like Christ's own and less like Six Flags, or the local mall.

The hymn text below draws these two great truths together. Beginning with his life and ministry in the first verse, we contemplate the compassion and physical ministry of Christ. In the second, we are directed toward the great truth of Christ's accomplished work on the Cross. And in the second, with resolve, the hymnist proclaims submission to Christ by imitating his life and praying for the power and Spirit to not shrink back from carrying our cross, even if it ends in death just as Christ's did. It is a serious hymn. The refrain is a prayer for Christ, incarnate and eternal to captivate our hearts that are so prone to wander and prone to complacency toward the other half of Christ's mission.

WITH A PRAYER
Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2002 Thankyou Music


With a prayer You fed the hungry,
With a cry You stilled the storm;
With a look You had compassion
On the desperate and forlorn.
With a touch You healed the leper,
With a shout You raised the dead;
With a word expelled the demons,
With a blessing broke the bread.

refrain
Love incarnate, love divine,
Captivate this heart of mine
Till all I do speaks of You.

As a sheep before the shearer
You were silent in Your pain;
You endured humiliation
At the hands of those You’d made.
And as hell unleashed its fury
You were lifted on a tree,
Crying ‘Father God, forgive them,
Place their punishment on Me.’

I will feed the poor and hungry,
I will stand up for the truth;
I will take my cross and follow
To the corners of the earth.
And I ask that You so fill me
With Your peace, Your power, Your breath,
That I never love my life so much
To shrink from facing death.

This hymn is written by Stuart Townend of How Deep the Father's Love For Us and In Christ Alone fame. He lives in Brighton, England and works in the music publishing industry. He has 3 children and is involved in worship leadership at Church of Christ the King in Brighton.

To hear Stuart Townend speak about the challenges of writing Modern Hymns and Worship Music, see October 5, 2005 HERE.

For purchase a recording of this song see HERE.

NEW BAPTIST HYMNAL

In 1991, the Southern Baptist Convention press, now Lifeway, gave us the Baptist Hymnal. This hymnal is the one my church uses today. Lifeway is currently working on the New Baptist Hymnal, scheduled to be released July 1, 2008. This new offering will contain around 650 songs, only a few less than the prior version. Lifeway is also supplementing the pew version with an online resource and database of 1000 songs that will be available to churches in various formats: a multimedia database of texts, a recorded database for churches without musicians and, orchestrated accompaniments for larger churches. Lifeway is hoping to add 100 songs per year to this online database, giving churches access to new songs as well as all the old standards that many baptist churches love to sing.

The aim of such an online database is to provide a centralized resource for worship planning and to confront some of the problems of hymnal publishing that are unique to our digital age and to put better tools into the hands of worship planners, giving more options than the standard pew publication provides. It also shows foreword thinking for those on the mission field and small churches who may be worshiping where musicians are not available. Granted, the idea of playing an MP3 recording for my congregation to sing to is not exciting to me, but considering that most of our convention's churches have less than 100 members, with limited budgets for paying accompanists, it appears that Lifeway is truly seeking to help churches where they are.

The printed hymnal will be dually titled The Baptist Hymnal and The Worship Hymnal. Both editions will be available hardbound in order to market the hymnal to non SBC churches who may share our hymn tradition and theological perspectives but may be of another denomination and aren't interested in many of the "changes" to texts that many other published hymnals of the past few decades have indulged, such as gender neutrality and theological tweaking to take away "unhelpful" themes like "sin" and "judgment" and "eschatological triumph." Many denominations today find these as unnecessarily provocative and harmful to the christian message and have changed traditional hymn texts accordingly.

The publishers say that they have found that most Southern Baptist churches use around 300 of the hymns in the 1991 hymnal. They have retained these baptist standards and are supplementing these with over 200 new songs that have been published in other hymnals but have been absent from the Baptist Hymnal. They also will debut over 100 hymns that have never been published in any hymnal to date. Maybe this will include modern hymns like "In Christ Alone." I'm crossing my fingers.

Oh, in one article, they explain that "I'll fly away" will make it back into this edition. That will make my church family glad!

For more information, check out Lifewayworship.com for news and updates on the new hymnal project.

What Held Christ on the Cross?

HOW DEEP THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR US

Stuart Townend

Copyright © 1995 Thankyou Music

.

How deep, the father's love for us,

How vast beyond all measure,

That He should give His only Son

To make a wretch His treasure.

How great the pain of searing loss –

The Father turns His face away,

As wounds which mar the Chosen One

Bring many sons to glory.

.

Behold the man upon a cross,

My sin upon His shoulders;

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice

Call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held Him there

Until it was accomplished;

His dying breath has brought me life –

I know that it is finished.

.

I will not boast in anything,

No gifts, no power, no wisdom;

But I will boast in Jesus Christ,

His death and resurrection.

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer;

But this I know with all my heart –

His wounds have paid my ransom.

.

This hymn by the British hymnist Stewart Townend has been a blessing to me since the first time I sang it. It opened up the richness of the cross to my heart in a fresh new way. Tim Challies, perhaps the most widely read evangelical blogger, recently posted his reflections on just one line of this beautiful hymn that caught his mind while singing this song during a communion service. It was a blessing to me and I wanted to bring it to you. You can read the article HERE.

---

If you would like to read the author's words on writing this hymn, click HERE.

---

If you would like to hear the author speak to the importance of modern hymnody for the church today and the importance of Hymns in the Worship and thoughtlife of christians from October 5, 2005, download files from HERE.

--

I love this hymn, maybe I'll have a post forthcoming on the intricacies and precision of the propositions in this hymn. That would be fun!

May God continue to bless you all.

Communion and the Art of Preaching to Yourself

My church observes communion on the first Sunday morning of every month. Prior to this, we observed the Lord's Supper every quarter, but not on a set Sunday, so at times it seemed sporadic. I have been so thankful and happy about this change to our service planning. I love communion. I love proclaiming the Lord's death till he comes. I love glorying in the cross and in my savior Jesus Christ. I love my brothers and sisters at my church and I love seeing a visible representation of our unity in Christ as we take the elements together. I am also encouraged and strengthened as I see foreshadowed before our church, the great final supper where the bride will meet the bridegroom and feast in the comfort and peace of the Lord, God Almighty.

The Lord's supper could be preached every Sunday and the immeasurable riches of God, the unparalleled sacrifice of our Savior, the glory of being accepted into God's family, the hope that it gives as a sign that he is coming again, the beauty of the atonement, the pervasive reality of the forgiveness of our sins, the importance of eating it in a worthy manner, the importance of the proclamation and remembering, all these could never be mined to their depths in any way. Nonetheless, we try. We remind ourselves of its significance. We seek the wisdom and encouragement of its promise. We seek the communion with our risen Lord.

This past Sunday, my pastor preached a wonderful sermon on the importance of proclaiming the Lord's death till he comes. It was a beautiful service although it had a few glitches that bother the worship leader side of me (caused by yours truly!!!). But as a worshiper, I was reacquainted with my hope that is expressed in a multitude of ways through participating in communion with my brothers and sisters. And it is this hope and our assurance of it that sustains us. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1, ESV) Proclaiming the value and the nature of Christ's death till he comes is one of the most tangible ways that we can preach the cross to ourselves as well as preach our hope for his return to own mind and heart.

Preaching to ourselves is something I'll pick up on later, but more and more I see that singing is exactly this. I think that when Paul tells the Ephesians to "speak to one another with Psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms" he's giving them the greatest tool they have to preach to one another and to themselves. Singing songs in worship, for me, is a chance to meditate on great spiritual truths and to preach them to my own heart.

"My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and Righteousness"

"Let goods and kindred go, the mortal life also. The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still"

"No guilt in life, no fear in death: this is the power of Christ in me. From life's first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny"

"What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus."

"Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face."

"There is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not; As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be."

"He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of His rightousness and wonders of his love."

"All glory and praise to the Lamb that was slain, Who hath borne all our sins, and hath cleans'd every stain."


I could go on and on, but I won't. My point is that when we sing these lines, we preach to one another the truth of scripture in these songs. So, we preach to ourselves as we sing as well as when we take communion. Below is a new hymn for communion written by Keith and Krystyn Getty. Read and preach its truths to your own heart.

Behold The Lamb (Communion Hymn)

Words and Music by Stuart Townend & Keith Getty & Kristyn Getty
© 2006 Thankyou Music

.

Behold the Lamb who bears our sins away,

Slain for us - and we remember

The promise made that all who come in faith

Find forgiveness at the cross.

So we share in this bread of life,

And we drink of His sacrifice

As a sign of our bonds of peace

Around the table of the King.

.

The body of our Saviour Jesus Christ,

Torn for you - eat and remember

The wounds that heal, the death that brings us life

Paid the price to make us one.

So we share in this bread of life,

And we drink of His sacrifice

As a sign of our bonds of love

Around the table of the King.

.

The blood that cleanses every stain of sin,

Shed for you - drink and remember

He drained death's cup that all may enter in

To receive the life of God.

So we share in this bread of life,

And we drink of His sacrifice

As a sign of our bonds of grace

Around the table of the King.

.

And so with thankfulness and faith we rise

To respond, and to remember

Our call to follow in the steps of Christ

As His body here on earth.

As we share in His suffering

We proclaim Christ will come again!

And we’ll join in the feast of heaven

Around the table of the King

A Look at a New Hymn

Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God

Words and Music by Keith Getty & Kristyn Getty

© 2006 Thankyou Music

.

Holy Spirit, living Breath of God,

Breathe new life into my willing soul.

Bring the presence of the risen Lord

To renew my heart and make me whole.

Cause Your Word to come alive in me;

Give me faith for what I cannot see;

Give me passion for Your purity.

Holy Spirit, breathe new life in me.

.

Holy Spirit, come abide within;

May Your joy be seen in all I do—

Love enough to cover ev'ry sin

In each thought and deed and attitude,

Kindness to the greatest and the least,

Gentleness that sows the path of peace.

Turn my striving into works of grace.

Breath of God, show Christ in all I do.

.

Holy Spirit, from creation's birth,

Giving life to all that God has made,

Show your power once again on earth;

Cause Your church to hunger for Your ways.

Let the fragrance of our prayers arise.

Lead us on the road of sacrifice

That in unity the face of Christ

Will be clear for all the world to see.

As Christ's followers stared into his beautiful new face, I can only imagine their heartache and fear coupled with with a renewed strength and hope in Christ, this one who arose from the dead. They witnessed him die and they saw the size of the stone, yet there he was speaking with them. He had spent 40 days with them and he smiled down as he told him that he would send another, the helper that they remembered he had spoke of earlier. They asked him their last questions and watched him enter into the heavens...These men and women believed that Jesus was telling them the truth. They were waiting and praying on the day of Pentecost, when the promised Holy Spirit came down.

Today, all those who worship the God of the Bible have been called to be FILLED with the Spirit. Paul tells us what the fruit of that Spirit in us will look like in Galatians 5. He tells us that the we must live by the Spirit to keep from fulfilling the desires of our sinful flesh. This is so important for every Christian. The depths of what this means would fill one thousand blog posts. The intricacies of this truth and the myriad of ways the redeemed have sought to be filled with the spirit would fill one thousand blogs! My point is that I am not going to write much about this. I am presuming you all know of the Holy Spirit's work in your salvation as well as his work in your Sanctification.

Today I want us to think about the way we think about the Holy Spirit's work in our public worship. The hymn above is another wonderful offering from Keith and Kristyn Getty. It zeros in on the Holy Spirit's work in all of our life, but also has great indications and reflections on what the Spirit is doing in every worship service we attend. Like most songs we sing in church, this hymn is a Prayer. In lines 5-6 of the first stanza the congregation is asking that God's Holy Spirit make his word have a new life in us, so that, in turn, we will have greater faith.
Do we pray this before we read scripture? Do we, as worshipers pray this for our Pastor before he is about to deliver the sermon from God's word? Do we ask God for greater faith when we don't understand? I recall a conversation with a college classmate who shared that she was (although she didn't put it this way) losing her faith in the God of the Bible. All the objections of her religious education were mounting and she was doubting more and more. She was carefully lamenting the inevitability that she would probably soon stop believing completely. I remember asking her (remember she said that she still did believe!) if she had prayed for more faith. When we are in the depths of theological despair, or in the depths of personal despair, do we pray that God will give us more confidence in his promises and in his work? Do we ask (line 4) to renew our hearts and to mend those that are broken?

The second stanza turns from issues of our own belief and inward worship, to the aspects of our outer worship. Romans 12 teaches us that worship is not about our personal feelings, it involves our public actions. The sacrifice we are to give is ourselves, and we are to make that sacrifice to God through the way we love other believers (vv 3-9). We need to be reminded as we worship, that we are supposed to treat those we worship with in the next pew over as more important than ourselves. We are to sow paths of peace among our brothers and sisters (St.2, line 6) and we should recognize that the bible teaches that our strivings, or controversy, or hard times are all means for God's grace to be displayed in our Christ-like attitudes and the Christ-like attitudes of others. We should ask that God's spirit help us to display the proper attitudes in bad circumstances but also to recognize the encouragement that other's attitudes should be for us. This goes along with the forgiveness that is spoken of in the third line of this stanza. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us love enough to cover every sin that we commit when we apologize to a brother or sister for a wrong we have done, and to cover the sins of others who have sinned against us.

I have been attending church, literally, from before my birth! It is sad to say that I have watched more arguments between brothers and sisters than reconciliations. Is that your experience? Do we allow hurt feelings and grudges to fester and grow, lurking under our skin...perhaps looking for another person we can “vent” to, and perhaps get them to see the importance of recovering the pews in this particular color, or show them how we can't support the pastor any longer since he's been preaching about?...We all know the way we act. Do we seek God's Spirit to help us purge these sinful attitudes that we harbor and tendencies that we know we have? We need to search our own hearts to see if there is any way that our attitude is producing sinful actions and stirring evil thoughts. The Holy Spirit will bring sin to light. It will be obvious. Do we pray that, when the conviction comes and our sin is obvious that we will be given the strength and grace to seek God and forsake the flesh, the grace to crucify our flesh? We need to do all of this corporately as a body of like-minded believers who have been washed in the blood.

The final stanza is the corporate expression of the first two stanzas. As a church we need humility to realize that the work God does on Earth comes by his power, not ours. I know many pastors who have forgotten that along the way. We need to hunger for God's ways. That will be shown by the way we handle and seek to understand the word of God. Hunger is a wonderful metaphor. It is something we will never satisfy completely. Hunger lasts as long as we have breath. O would that we all would think on the precepts of our God as much as we think on our next meal. In lines 7 and 8, we are praying for the end to which God created Church is to live out for the World's sake. Jesus told his followers that the ultimate witness to the world isn't people knocking on doors, or religious leaders on CNN or on their own radio shows. The witness God has chosen, purchased, prepared for and planted on this earth is his bride, the catholic Church (little “c”) that is represented in our communities by us. We may be feeble and broken hearted and persecuted, but we are God's witness to the world. The way we love each others is a witness to the World.

We need to prepare our hearts and ask for the Holy Spirit when we worship so that the face of Christ, shining through our transforming faces, will be visible and clear to each other and to every unregenerate person we have contact with.

Pray for our churches and our Denominations that we will humbly submit ourselves to these scriptural truths and that as we worship, we will be seeking to be changed by giving glory to our Tri-une God who seeks to help us be conformed to his image.

A final note I want to make is that the humility displayed in asking and seeking the Holy Spirit in these things show the tremendous amount of faith and trust we have in our Great God of highest Heaven, which is also the title of the Sovereign Grace song that I will look at in my next post.

A Good Friday

What a good Friday! Christ bore our sins on the cross. Ephesians 1:7b says that in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. I'm so thankful to be free from the guilt of my sin and reconciled to my God through Jesus Christ but I can never get through this day without being completely humbled. I pray that we all will realize that our freedom was bought with a price: nails in perfect hands.

I'll leave you with a new-ish (2005)hymn by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. They are the wonderful writers of many wonderful new hymns for the church. Their hymn In Christ Alone is now the #1 song in Britain according to CCLI. That is a blessing. It's great that British churches are singing these glorious truths about our wonderful savior. Maybe we will soon be singing God honoring and Christ exalting NEW songs that will help build our churches and ground them in the orthodoxy of scripture. You can see many of their other songs and learn about them HERE and HERE

"The Power of the Cross"
Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2005 Thankyou Music

Oh, to see the dawn
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.

CHORUS:
This, the pow'r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.

Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Ev'ry bitter thought,
Ev'ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

Now the daylight flees;
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
"Finished!" the vict'ry cry.

Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death;
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

FINAL CHORUS:
This, the pow'r of the cross:
Son of God—slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.