Hymns4Him

Every year, many churches celebrate the Protestant Reformation with special services focusing on the central doctrines that were brought into sharper focus as they were re-discovered in the 16^th century.  While we remember especially Martin Luther and his 95 Theses posted on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, we recognize that many additional evangelical doctrines were brought to the forefront, and remain so today. Among those are “The Five Solas:” Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, and Soli Deo Gloria.  In addition to Martin Luther, we are indebted to men like William Tyndale, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox, Heinrich Bullinger, and many others whose names we ought to remember.

Christianity has always been a faith based on history and understood through doctrines.  The 20^th century Presbyterian theologian and author R. C. Sproul is remembered not only for his dozens of books, DVD courses, and conference lectures (and frequent expressions in Latin!).  He is also remembered for reminding people that great doctrinal knowledge about Jesus is not enough, unless it is joined with a sincere and genuine love and affection for Jesus.  In other words (as R. C. expressed it), the question is not just “Do you know Jesus?” but “Do you love Jesus?”  After all, didn’t Jesus say that the first and greatest commandment is that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind (Matthew 22:37)?

Continue Reading…

The nineteenth century has been called “the century of foreign missions,” since there was such an impressive surge of men and women going into all the world with the message of the gospel.  Missions has been at the heart of Christianity since Jesus gave the church His departing assignment in “The Great Commission” in Matthew 28:18-20.  While the movement into distant fields has not always been as prominent as it should have been, it did begin afresh with the Moravian missions of the mid-18^th century, at the same time as the Great Awakening produced evangelists like John Wesley and George Whitefield.  A missions-consciousness grew in English-speaking Christendom from the time of William Carey, “the father of modern missions,” when he went to India in 1793.  His 41 year ministry there was phenomenal, especially as he used his ability as an extraordinarily gifted linguist who translated the Bible into multiple dialects.

Continue Reading…

How often do you think about heaven?  Jesus said that He’s gone there to prepare a place for us, and that He’s coming back to take us to be with Him (John 14).  The thought of that should absolutely thrill us, especially as we grow older and our health deteriorates, and as we hear more and more about the increasing uncertainty and wickedness in the world around us. What a glorious future lies before us, and which draws nearer every day.   Shouldn’t we think of it often, and shouldn’t we be frequently considering it in sermons and Bible studies?

But how often do we think about heaven?  We hear that sometimes Christians are ridiculed for being “so heavenly minded, they’re no earthly good.”  Of course, that’s never been true, but have we overreacted against that to the point that we feel guilty if we find ourselves deliberately thinking about heaven?  Our future is guaranteed by Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, as well as His promise to take us there.  And since His Word tells us quite a bit about heaven, surely He wants us to keep that in view to encourage and comfort us as we go through this “veil of tears” before arriving home.

Continue Reading…

The Protestant Reformation has been recognized, even by secular historians, as one of the most influential events in “modern” history in the west. When Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, he lit a fuse that soon led to a glorious “explosion” of gospel truth that spread fruits of freedom widely throughout western civilization (please pardon the mixed metaphors here!).  Few took note of it on that evening of All Saints’ Day, but within a few weeks, local printers had made copies of it, which were quickly and widely distributed so that these matters spread all across Germany.

The lasting impact was much broader than the theological issues Luther addressed.  Under the second-generation Reformation influence of John Calvin (1509-1564) in Geneva, Reformation principles led directly to such things as quality university education (beyond literacy to liberal arts, beginning with the Geneva Academy), modern democracy (government by elected representatives), care for the needy (through diaconal mercy ministry to widows, orphans, the elderly, and inform), as well as evangelistic missions (with many young men trained and sent out from Geneva into France – most of whom were martyred – and across the Atlantic to Brazil).

Continue Reading…

The word “great” is a simple, and often over-used and under-appreciated word.  But how fitting an adjective to describe everything about God!  His name is great.  His salvation is great.  His love is great.  His mercy is great.  His justice is great.  His glory is great. His patience is great.   His power is great.  His knowledge is great.  His creation is great.  His majesty is great.  On and on we could go with every one of His attributes.  Think of applying that descriptive word to the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s classic definition of God in question number 4.  “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”   Great wisdom, great power, great holiness, great justice, etc.

Our world and our everyday lives are filled with so many things that are ordinary, mundane, and anything but great.   These range from having the same thing for breakfast each morning to having mail delivered to our front yard each day. And not only that, we too often look at truly great things without recognizing just how great they actually are.  What about how great it is that there are a dozen different kinds of ice cream at the supermarket.  Or that we can drive just a few minutes to get gasoline for our car (even if it has grown much more expensive in the last few years!).  Or that we have access to the finest health care in the world, and insurance to pay for it.  All of this is because of the greatness of God’s mercy toward us.

Continue Reading…

We live in a world that is worrisomely agitated, causing significant emotional unrest in the hearts of great portions of this globe’s population.  It is caused by widespread racial unrest, universal economic hardships, transnational tensions, open warfare, the threat of invasion across established borders, and the fear of escalation to the use of nuclear weapons. While most people are not heading to a shelter in the mountains to try to get away from it all, many are seeking some mode of escape from the fears deep in their hearts that seem to be rising exponentially each month.

Add to all that the current (2024) volatility in the political landscape of the American presidential race.  The depth of divisions between people because of the policies promoted by each candidate have greatly intensified fears of what could happen in our land if the opposing candidate were to win the White House, further dividing regions, communities, and even families.  And we can be sure that there will be even greater fear and anxiety the morning after the voting, regardless of which candidate wins.

None of this is entirely new, though it may be taking different forms.  Conflict and danger has always been a part of human life, from the home to the nation, since the fall.  It began with the conflict in the Garden of Eden, and was tragically evident in the jealous hostility that broke out between Cain and Abel that resulted in the first recorded case of fratricide in the Bible.  Such has been the fallout from Adam’s first act of defiance of God, which has been passed on to every member of the human race, according to Romans 5:12-21.

Continue Reading…

What is it that gives Christians their greatest joy, their greatest confidence, their greatest amazement, their greatest hope?  It is the precious blood of Jesus, the blood shed at Calvary as a substitute for guilty sinners, the blood that secured their salvation, the blood that satisfied divine justice, the blood that covered all their sins, the blood that has washed them and made them clean. 

The precious blood of Jesus is the subject of many of our most beloved hymns…

Continue Reading…

When we sing (or read) Psalms, we usually think about how those are the words that the Lord has given us to be able to use as we pray those words back to Him, expressing in His own God-breathed words, whatever joys or sorrows, praises or confessions, hurts or delights we might be dealing with at the moment in our own personal experiences.  That’s why Calvin (and others) have called the Psalms “the anatomy of the soul.”  There is no human experience to which the Psalms fail to speak to counsel, comfort, guide, and strengthen.

We ought also to consider how those Psalms became the words of the human author who first wrote them.  We know the names of some of those authors, as they are named in the lines preceding the lyrics of the Psalm, occasionally even with the name of the original Hebrew tune or even the circumstances of their composition.  And we know that about half of the Psalms were written by David, the Shepherd/King.   The books of Samuel and Kings give us many of the stories that lay behind those Psalms of David, as with Psalm 3 written as he was fleeing from his son Absalom and the military coup that had driven him from his palace, or with Psalms 51 and 32 written after the terrible adultery and murder conspiracy over Uriah and Bathsheba.

But shouldn’t we also think about what the words of each Psalm would have meant to the Lord Jesus as He prayed and sang them so many times during His years of earthly ministry? When we do that, they take on an incredibly different, richer meaning.  It isn’t just remembering that as God Himself, the second person of the blessed trinity, He was actually and ultimately the author, through His Holy Spirit inspiring (“breathing out”) the words these human authors wrote.  Here are a few examples to contemplate.

Continue Reading…

How many hymns (or sermons, for that matter) have you heard about hell?  Probably not many!  Why is that?  It may be that our church culture has grown accustomed to wanting only themes that are happy and pleasant … and positive.  There are many who just don’t want to think about this, burying their head in the sands of blissful thinking.  The only thing happy and pleasant about the Bible’s teaching concerning hell is that those of us who belong to Christ can be positive that we will never go there!  Part of the reason for that scarcity of attention is almost certainly that in our time fewer and fewer people even believe that there will be a hell.  They have become so indoctrinated with the lie of universalism that has invented a non-existent god of peoples’ own imagination, one who loves everyone and would never send anyone to hell, even if it did exist.

But what about heaven?  We do have a number of good hymns about our eternal abode, but we don’t actually hear as many sermons about heaven as we should.  After all, it’s not only where God sits enthroned right now, with Jesus at His right hand.  It’s also where we who belong to Christ will spend eternity, not because of anything we have done for ourselves, but only because of what He has done for us.  In the midst of so much sadness and trouble and disappointment in this life, shouldn’t we think more often about the incredibly glorious future that awaits us just beyond the grave, or at the imminent return of the Lord Jesus?  What joy that could bring into our day if we started our thinking about that rather than the latest disaster broadcast in the morning news report!

Continue Reading…

It has sometimes been suggested that Christians are not called to life onboard a cruise ship sailing leisurely in the tropics, but rather on a battleship on full alert, positioned in a war zone.  The Bible is full of images of the spiritual battle in which we are engaged, warning us about the devil who goes about like a roaring lion seeking those whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8) as well as a list of the armor God has provided for us: swords, helmets, shields, and breastplates (Ephesians 6:10-20).  Part of the job of leaders – pastors, teachers, parents, counselors – is to awaken Christians to the strategies of the enemy and to help us all learn how to use that armor in the daily battles we must fight.  And this is a battle which we will wage all the way to glory.  The greatest exposition of that equipment is found in William Gurnall’s 1655 classic sermons on “The Christian in Full Armor.”

Ironically, the same Bible which assures believers that their salvation is complete and which forbids them to be anxious also commands them to wake, watch, beware, be ready, be alert, and be on guard some forty-four times in the New Testament alone. If God is victorious, why does He still call us to set a watch? If his enemies are vanquished, against what are we guarding? Sometimes one of the fruits of victory is a new capacity to set a proper watch, as did, for example, modern Israel on the Golan Heights after the 1967 Six-Day War. The permanent victory of the cross gives watchful believers far more confidence than any earthly guardsman may have over his post. For the spiritual watch that comes after Christ’s victory is not a watch against an invading army with power to conquer or mount a lengthy siege, but against the once-conquered rebel who is truculent enough not to concede his obvious losses. We watch, not because the enemy has power “to lead astray, if possible, the elect” (Mark 13:22). It isn’t possible (Romans 8:38-39). We watch because God is pleased to trounce, again and again, His defeated enemies, and to use the weakest of possible means to do so.

Continue Reading…