A cartoon has been circulating in recent years on social media. A fellow is anxious about all the problems in the world and the issues he’s facing in his own life, wondering what to do about it all and how to think about it. In frustration, knowing he needs advice from above, he calls out to the heavens saying, “O God, please speak to me.” In the next frame we see a hand extended downward from the clouds in silence. In that hand is a Bible!
There’s no mistaking the point; there’s the answer. God has spoken to us. In fact, we read in 2 Peter 1:3 that He has already given us all we need for life and godliness. And that’s to be found in the Bible. Sinclair Ferguson has suggested that the church today is suffering from spiritual anemia. Our lives are deficient in a vitamin that is essential for health … vitamin W. By that, of course, Ferguson means the Word of God. It was Charles Spurgeon who said of the famous puritan, John Bunyan, author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” that if you were to prick him, you would discover that his blood ran bibline!
How blessed we are to know the true God, and to know Him and His will aright since He has spoken to us in His Word. As Frances Schaeffer wrote in his 1972 book, “He Is Here, and He Is Not Silent.” This is one of the things that makes Christianity unique among the religions of the world. All others are based on what they want God to have said, and build on the collected ideas of their human teachers who elaborate on what they claim to have discovered about their god(s). But Christianity is based on what God Himself has said. Our is a revealed religion.
And this is a once-for-all revelation. That is the point in Hebrews 1 where the divinely-inspired author informs us that after having spoken “long ago, at many times and in many ways,” God has now spoken to us by His Son in these last days, and has preserved that revelation for us in His Word. Unlike the cults, we do not have additional revelation in other books. It’s all there in the Bible, everything we need to know for life and godliness. And so it’s to that book that tool we look, and it’s with the truths in that book that we build our lives.
One of the first songs that propelled Keith and Kristyn Getty, along with Stuart Townend, into such widespread popularity in 20th century worship is the song “Speak, O Lord.” It was published in 2005 and is often included in newer hymnals and songbooks, and ranks high among the CCLI compositions printed in bulletins and projected on screens. Here is what Keith Getty wrote about it in the 2007 collection, “Keith & Kristyn Getty; In Christ Alone Songbook.”
One of Christianity’s distinctives is that we worship a God who has spoken, who is not silent. From God the Father, speaking the world into creation, to speaking through His Living Word in Christ, to speaking by His Spirit through the written Word. Throughout history the Word of God has transformed the proudest leaders and the most hopeless victims, the greatest civilizations and the remotest of villages; in every age to every corner of the world, so incredible is its power. Today, however, often the preaching of the Word has been diminished in value from its prominence in a service, and also in our own expectation each time we sit down and ask God to speak to us. In Isaiah the people were performing many acts in the name of God, and the Lord said, “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at My word” (Isaiah 66:2). It is our prayer that through the power of the Spirit, this hymn will prepare people to humbly listen to the Bible being taught and respond to the huge consequences it has on their lives.
Keith Getty and his wife, Kristyn, are the primary writers of 21st century hymns for the Christian church in the English speaking world. Their concerts and recordings have made them well-known for the past two decades. More recently, their annual church music conference, “Sing Global,” has drawn tens of thousands of participants in person and on-line. “Speak, O Lord,” along with their “signature song,” “In Christ Alone,” was written by Keith along with Stuart Townend. Townend is a composer / performer in his own right.
The hymn is wonderfully suited to be a congregational song just before the preaching of the Word, asking the Lord to bless the exposition and application of His inspired Scripture. It expresses not only a commitment to the inerrant truthfulness of the Bible, but also to the divine power inherent in it. That is what we find in Isaiah 55, where we’re assured that God’s Word will not return to Him empty, but will accomplish all that He has sent it to do.
So as we sing, and as we listen to what comes to us from the pulpit, we do so with a settled confidence that God will be speaking to us. As one reformed confession says, when we know that the man in the pulpit has prayerfully studied the passage, believing that it is indeed God’s Word, it is not too much to say that the preaching of God’s Word is God’s Word. Therefore, we come with our hearts and minds already predisposed to follow through in obedience to what we hear Him speaking to us from the mouth of the preacher.
All three stanzas of the hymn are addressed to the Lord.
Stanza 1 asks that God will make His Word powerfully effective in our lives. It views the Bible as food for our souls, as truth to settle deep within us, as a tool that will “shape and fashion us.” The song is wonderfully God-centered, as we ask Him to do amazing, life-changing things in our lives. Our heart’s desire should be that the light of Christ, who is the light of the world, is what people would see in us, reflecting Him. And our goal in all of this is that He would fulfill His purposes in us, for His glory. Is this the attitude and desire of our hearts every time we turn our attention to the sermon? It certainly should be!
Speak, O Lord, as we come to You To receive the food of Your holy word.
Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; Shape and fashion us in Your likeness,
That the light of Christ might be seen today In our acts of love and our deeds of faith.
Speak, O Lord, and fulfil in us All Your purposes, for Your glory.
Stanza 2 asks that God would teach us, and that He would do so in several specific ways that are spelled out here. The first line identifies three things, each of which could be an entire sermon series in themselves! “Full obedience,” “holy reverence,” “true humility.” Imagine what our lives would look like if each of these was growing in us every time we listened to God’s Word! In the next phrase the list grows to include conformity to God’s purity in our inner thoughts and attitudes. And there is yet more! Stronger faith to view God’s “majestic love and authority.” Such are the “words of power” we’re privileged to hear where the Scripture is proclaimed, with God’s truth prevailing over the remnants of unbelief that still linger in our hearts.
Teach us Lord full obedience, Holy reverence, true humility.
Test our thoughts and our attitudes In the radiance of Your purity.
Cause our faith to rise, Cause our eyes to see, Your majestic love and authority.
Words of power that can never fail; Let their truth prevail over unbelief.
Stanza 3 asks God once again to speak, but to a slightly different end. Here it is that He “renew our minds” so that we would have the ability to “grasp” larger truths that are higher than our minds could otherwise comprehend. These are “truths unchanged from the dawn of time.” What an eloquent description of the mind of God to which we long to have access. And what will we do with this higher insight? We’ll stand on His promises in the face of opposition that would seek to block us from advancing, and we’ll walk as He has called us to walk, secure in the knowledge that He will “walk with us.”
Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds; Help us grasp the heights of Your plans for us.
Truths unchanged from the dawn of time, That will echo down through eternity.
And by grace we’ll stand on Your promises; And by faith we’ll walk as You walk with us.
Speak, O Lord, ’til Your church is built, And the earth is filled with Your glory.
Stuart Townend & Keith Getty Copyright © 2005 Thankyou Music (Adm. by CapitolCMGPublishing.com excl. UK & Europe, adm. by Integrity Music, part of the David C Cook family, songs@integritymusic.com)
Here are the Gettys performing the song.