O Come to the Altar -- Steven Furtick, Chris Brown, Wade Joye, Mack Brock

 

He and others in Elevation Worship felt like throwing in the towel around 2015. This song wasn’t going anywhere…that’s what the four of these composers – most notably, Steven Furtick – thought when the song “O Come to the Altar” failed to even nudge his fellow musicians Chris Brown, Wade Joye, and Mack Brock across his creation’s musical finish line. That might discourage anyone, but Steven didn’t give up. Perhaps he felt this was his personal altar, where something like a sin needed to be exposed and rendered powerless, even if it took a long season to accomplish. When someone comes to an altar in most cases, they certainly don’t expect to experience long-term imprisonment or even meet their own death (unlike what someone at the Altar of Burnt Offerings might have seen or experienced during Jerusalem’s destruction, imagined here in this 1867 artwork by Francesco Hayez -- Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem); that’s the job of a sacrifice on the altar, correct? It takes the punishment. It was a very basic ancient Judaic worship exercise, but what it did to purge sin is still something we, who are several millennia past the age when it was first practiced, need to remember.   

 

Steven remembered that this song stayed ‘on his phone’ as a cue to himself for a pretty long time that it was unfinished. Eventually, he told the others that perhaps they should just leave it alone, and what ultimately occurred to finish it is left out of their story. Maybe they don’t even recall how it concluded, and yet the example of laying down one’s burdens upon an altar abounds in the bible. Some 384 times is the word ‘altar’ used in the bible’s pages (New International Version), from Genesis to Revelation, showing how common was this concept, this method of redemption. Someone (? one of the Elevation Worship group’s songwriters), in commenting on this 21^st Century song, has indicated that what God said through Isaiah (chapter 1, verse 18) motivated the song’s words. “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” And so, the altar in even today’s language communicates that we humans can practice repentance and find forgiveness at an altar-like place, that we can be as clean as wool is white. However, unlike the ancient Jews, who used countless numbers of animals upon the altar to shed the blood necessary for redemption, Jesus today is the sacrifice – the perfect one – that settles the matter, once and for all time. It is fully accomplished because ‘Christ is risen’, but it begins with that altar. ‘Regrets and mistakes’ (v.2) can be unloaded there, so admit that you’re ‘hurting and broken’ (v.1), as these fellows named Elevation Worship call out to us. Jesus’ blood’ connected Him to Judaism’s altar and the method for humanity’s complete and utter liberation.

 

I don’t need a priest, another sacrifice, or some other method for getting face-to-face with God. But, also don’t forget what that altar tells you. That’s what Steven and his friends – Chris, Wade, and Mack – have said with ‘O Come…Altar’. It might be gruesome to even think about killing a living creature, of getting blood everywhere on a platform where worship is supposed to be happening. That just tells me how deep and ugly sin is, though. The only way to get right before the holy and perfect Creator-God is through killing the sin-bearer. Without all of those animals to take their place, the Jews and any of us who are human mistake-makers would have no hope for saving ourselves for all of those centuries up to this current moment in time. The Jewish people for ages knew implicitly what God had told them, something they still accepted when a writer in the 1^st Century said it again  ‘…the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness’ and ‘In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 9:22 and 12:4) So, can you accept that the altar is still necessary? The blood necessary for cleansing has already been spilled there, so why not lay that burden there with it?

 

See/hear the song’s story by one of the composers here: Bing Videos

 

Read comments about the song’s meaning here: O Come To The Altar - Elevation Worship

 

Read some brief information about the song here: O Come to the Altar - Wikipedia

 

See here for information on the image of the Altar of Burnt Offerings:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:(Venice)_La_distruzione_del_tempio_di_Gerusalemme_-Francesco_Hayez_-_gallerie_Accademia_Venice.jpg …Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, by Francesco Hayez. This imaginative depiction centers on the Altar of Burnt Offerings. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.  {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States. (regarding the photograph of the artwork: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1930.)

O Church, Arise – Keith Getty and Stuart Townend

 

What we might imagine in the form of armor, like that once worn by mounted troops in the French army (see the picture here), is what Keith Getty and Stuart Townend want Christians to think about as a metaphor for life in a spiritual struggle – one for which God has provided tools for the battle. Once you have this armor in place, you and your compatriots can say “O Church, Arise”, because then you are fully equipped for whatever comes your way. It was 2005, and Keith and Stuart had been at contemporary songwriting for some time, especially along themes meant to lift the church and remember what scripture says about its history and mission. There’s no better place to start than with what an apostle, a one-time staunch opponent of Christianity, had to say on the subject of spiritual battle.

 

Keith and Stuart needed no other circumstance or reason to write a new song in 2005, except that there was a sense that Christians needed a new injection of courage to wage the ongoing struggle with the forces of evil. And that was why they read what Paul had to say to some believers in a place called Ephesus a long time ago. What they read in Paul’s 11 verses (6:10-20) is packed with punch about how to defend oneself, and so these two songwriters took the words composed some 20 centuries earlier to construct their own musical version of this apostle’s directives. The ‘shield of faith’, ‘belt of truth’, and ‘sword’ (of truth) are part of the lyrical ‘armor’ that Keith and Stuart sing to stir others to exploit.  It’s clear that that the enemy is a ‘captor’, armed with ‘devil’s lies’, and that this is ‘war’ with ‘battle(s)’ to be fought against the forces of ‘darkness’. But lest those on the side of God misunderstand and engage in the battles the same way that the enemy does, Getty and Townend make it clear that the Christian’s mode of attack is with the unconventional. Love is our ‘battle cry’. Love is used multiple times in conjunction with ‘grace’ and ‘mercy’, for they are synonymous with the approach of our ‘captain’ – Christ. He modeled for His disciples in the few short years of His mission on earth how to behave, even unto death. It’s His ‘cross where love and mercy meet’, which initially gives Satan and his accomplices pride, but then he lies ‘crushed beneath His feet’ when the ‘Conqueror’ arises and ‘emerges’ from the sepulcher, giving all of us a reason to join in a ‘vic’try march’. Keith and Stuart conclude their four-verse hymn with a callout to the Spirit to strengthen those of us who are still here, with the help of aged believers and memories of those who’ve already gone on before us – the ‘saints of old’. We are not alone. Keith and Stuart also say that the following inspired much of their lyrics: 2 Corinthians 12:9, Isaiah 61:1-3, and Revelation 5:9-10.

 

And, as long as we stay connected to Him through a church of strong believers, we shall never be alone. No one aims to go be with God alone in the Afterlife. Read some more of Paul’s letters, and see if you discover some regular theme in how he concludes them. Paul must have thought that church was really crucial in the life and steadfastness of others whom he called brothers and sisters. A ‘holy kiss’ was one way that Paul often told his contemporaries to regard one another (Romans, 1 + 2 Corinthians, and 1 Thessalonians), and that’s one way to look at what Keith and Stuart have written in ‘O Church, Arise’. You sing what their poetry coaxes from deep inside your mind and spirit – the truths of where our faith is rooted, and the direction in which we are all headed. They have us sing ‘we’ no less than six times, and so we’re all aimed in the direction of His eternal embrace, and we’re already walking arm-in-arm with each other and in His Spirit. That’s church.

 

Read about the song’s meaning according to one of the composers/authors here: O Church Arise Lyrics - Stuart Townend

Read about the composers/authors here: O Church, Arise | Hymnary.org

Read about one of the composers here: Stuart Townend (musician) - Wikipedia

Read about one of the composers here: Keith Getty - Wikipedia

See here for how the song’s lyrics compare to scripture: Is 'O Church Arise' Biblical? | The Berean Test

 

See here for information about the image: Géricault - Portrait de carabinier - Louvre - Cuirass - Wikipedia. Artist Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)… The author died in 1824, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1930.

Man of Sorrows -- Matt Crocker and Brooke Ligertwood

One could say that this song was actually being written and conceived something like 2,700 years before Matt Crocker and Brooke Ligertwood decided to put some notes together with a set of preexisting words around 2012. Could the prophet Isaiah have realized that he’d put some of the words in play, when he wrote about a “Man of Sorrows” during the days of exile for the Jews from their homeland? He probably had not even heard of a place called Sydney, Australia (see the flag of the state of New South Wales here; Sydney is its capital), and that faith among a monotheistic people could actually take hold there. Who exactly was or is this ‘Man of Sorrows’ anyway? That is a subject that people of faith – Christians and Jews, at least, and probably Muslims, too, and any others who stumble across this name in the scriptures – are still discussing, though Christians are convinced that he’s someone that all of us on the planet should get to know very well. He’s the model for who we aim to be, and actually one could say that this God-Man we worship knew so well what Isaiah had said, and aimed to be the suffering servant – on purpose, not by accident.     

 

Matt and Brooke have some vivid memories of how ‘Man of Sorrows’ came together in a joint songwriting venture one day in Sydney. Matt had already written some of the main chorus for the song that refers to ‘the rugged cross’ which Jesus bore to Calvary and upon which He died, but it was not linked in the same day or even in a few weeks with the remainder of the song. Instead, it was a few months until Matt and Brooke met at her house and scoped out the song’s verses and bridge section. Brooke credits Matt with a gift for crafting melodies, including lots of words that allow stories to be told, like this one that really begins in a piece of ancient text that they both read as they opened their bibles. Isaiah 53:3 was what captured their attention -- He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows^, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Reading that was a moment of worship for both of them, which seemed to fit their emotions about what they were trying to saying spiritually, and from there many words flowed to write several verses (they say six or seven initially emerged, though they trimmed the song to four eventually), a testimony about the impact Isaiah still has today. Brooke was so moved that she spontaneously sang the song’s bridge section completely as they sat and pondered the prophet’s poetry. Matt remembers feeling as if God was telling them that the bridge was His unprompted gift to them that He dropped in their laps for their efforts that day. Although he and Brooke hadn’t been trying to write a modern hymn (a worship song with several verses, unlike some 20^th/21^st Century worship songs that have fewer verses and perhaps a chorus) that day, Matt relates that this was a rare occasion in which the song’s melody and the lyrics inspired by Isaiah just flowed naturally in that direction. Stories that become hymns just connect easily with worshippers, Matt says. Funny how what He has prompted others to say in the bible still means something today, huh?  

 

And, we in the 21^st Century are not the only ones who have been staring at scripture to gather its import. A podcast discussion I heard of what Isaiah and his ‘Man of Sorrows’ meant 700 years after he wrote suggests the following: Isaiah did not point forward to Jesus as the fulfillment of what he was saying; instead, Jesus pointed backward to emphasize that He lived His life to show people how to be the suffering servant, in a perfect reflection, of all that Isaiah wrote about. Reimagine that, if you will. How difficult would that have been for Jesus to live out his time on earth – including all the brutality of a death He would need to endure – in order to stamp His identity unmistakably as the Messiah? Matt and Brooke are not textual scholars, and neither are most of us. But, look at the body of evidence. Ask yourself ‘Has anyone else done even a fraction of what Jesus did?’ He was either the most insane and crafty madman in history, with lots of ways to convince others of His time about himself, or He was really who He said He was/is. Why would anyone go willingly to a death like He did for a lie? Matt and Brooke are telling the story in song about this Messiah, the one that seems more rational and accessible to everyone; versus a cynical, ugly hoax that has led and will lead so many of God’s creation to destruction. Which story seems to match up with the personality of Jesus that you see in scripture?    

 

See/hear the song story here (5:24-10:50 of video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHtEX1Eko_A

 

Hear a discussion of Isaiah 53 here, in a podcast called BEMA: https://www.bemadiscipleship.com/64

 

See here for information about the image of the New South Wales, Australia flag and its public domain status: File:Flag of New South Wales.svg - Wikimedia Commons -- This image or other work is of Australian origin and is now in the public domain because its term of copyright has expired. According to the Australian Copyright Council (ACC), ACC Information Sheet G023v19 (Duration of copyright) (January 2019). (5:24 start of song story thru end of video.)