Give to Our God Immortal Praise -- Isaac Watts

 

Isaac Watts was most likely doing what he was known for most as he composed the words for “Give to Our God Immortal Praise”. It was a talent he’d had since childhood, and when fused to his knowledge of scripture as an adult, Isaac was doing something that perhaps was about as natural for him as breathing is for the rest of us. It was 1719 (or perhaps earlier) when this 45-year-old minister in England (see its flag here) penned some rhyming phrases that expressed what he coaxed his hearers to remember and appreciate about the God that earlier generations had first lauded in a different form that Isaac felt compelled to reconstruct. It was a method based on a philosophy that he’d learned from his own father, and it could be summed up this way: Don’t worship by rote, nor conform to a practice of one’s Christian faith that is compelled by a state authority. One’s faith must by freely practiced to be genuine. God does not want your worship to be mechanical…make it personal, with words that say what you really feel in your own vernacular.

 

Isaac Watts’ Nonconformism – objection to the exclusivity of state-authorized methods of Christian worship in 17^th Century England – included his practice of rewriting traditional songs used in the Anglican Church, including the Psalms. Watts evidently felt that merely mouthing the exact words of a psalm was not conducive to sincere worship, and so he sought to take the ideas that a psalmist had verbalized centuries earlier and recraft and update them so that they would resonate with Christianity in his own experience. One that he took on as a challenge was apparently Psalm 136, which contains a very familiar song of its own for the Jewish people. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Indeed, those first words of Psalm 136 are the words that Isaac felt compelled to repeat in verse one his own version in ‘Give to Our God…’. The latter phrase ‘his love endures forever’, is voiced 26 times in the psalm, so you can imagine that Isaac might have wondered whether this expression had become rote in the singing of the psalm in the Anglican Church. And, would the Christians of Watts’ era have had more reason to praise God than what the Hebrews acknowledged when they sang Psalm 136? Watts did not want to excise the thought of repetition, so instead he had the churchgoers of his own era sing ‘Repeat His mercies in your song’ to conclude alternating verses (verses 1, 3, 5, and 7) as well as the phrase 'his mercies ever shall endure' (verses 2,4,6,8) of his hymn’s eight stanzas, as a way of reminding worshippers what their spiritual ancestors had done. The Jewish generations sang of God’s creative power, and of his mercy in rescuing them from Egypt, to bring them to their inheritance in Canaan. Watts added to the psalmist’s message by recognizing the Gentiles’ predicament -- dead in sin (in Watts’ original verse 6) -- and what the Father has done through Christ for everyone -- He sent His Son with pow­er to save (in Watts’ original verse 7) – with the latter being something that none of the Psalms could fully capture for those of us freed by Jesus. Thank God that Isaac and others of his time had the courage to challenge their era’s conventions and prompt Christians to exalt the Son for what he’s done!

 

Psalm 136 says much of value to praise God, but what would it be like if Christ had been forced out of the picture by a state that said you could not change the words of the ancient text to give it more meaning in the A.D. era? Isaac saw a big gap there, and indeed his life was spent making the old texts for singing mean more. We learn new words for saying the same message, but by doing so we can make them more personal. That’s what Isaac was after. This father/godfather of English hymnody (he reportedly wrote some 750 hymns) was part of a movement that has continued for centuries beyond his own time. It is about making the themes and expressions of Christianity more meaningful for each generation, by using new words to say the ancient thoughts one more time in one more new way. It’s rather ironic that sometimes you might hear some people say ‘why aren’t the old hymns good enough…why can’t we just sing an old Isaac Watts hymn’? Hmmm…if we could see Isaac’s face today, would he be wearing a wry smile, or rolling his eyes? Giving Him praise isn’t suspended just because we’re using new words.              

  

See all the hymn’s original verses here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/g/i/v/e/t/givetour.htm

 

Also see the following website for information about Isaac Watts.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Watts

 

See also here for the author’s biography: https://hymnary.org/person/Watts_Isaac

 

Read about the religious philosophy to which Watts adhered here : Nonconformist (Protestantism) - Wikipedia

 

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Blessed Be Your Name -- Ken Young

 

They had succeeded in their task, and God had blessed them mightily. So, all was good, right? If Nehemiah and the people he governed, who had returned to the land God had given them centuries earlier, had felt satisfied and merely celebrated after completing the wall around Jerusalem (see a depiction of that effort here), we might have thought that was actually pretty reasonable. And yet, these people of Nehemiah’s day felt convicted, and offered a prayer of confession and devotion. Ken Young and his Hallal music ministry turned their attention to how this group of Israelites was led by Levites who began this prayer with the stirring words “Blessed Be Your Name” that over 2,000 years later roused Ken’s spirit. The message of this episode evokes an attitude that should resonate for any generation – don’t forget Him and get complacent about the source of mercy and grace upon which you stand.

 

The people of Nehemiah’s era had been in exile in Persia for years, and were blessed with an opportunity to return to their homeland and rebuild a wall and make the city of David secure, a task they completed despite foreign opposition. The taunts and plots of Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem (see Neh. 2:19; 4:1-7; 6:1-16) were persistent, and yet God protected his people through Nehemiah’s wise leadership. It must have been a reminder of how this faithful Yahweh had been present through all of their history, not just in this latest episode. And so, they prayed with this in mind as they marked the successful conclusion of their mission. The Levites who prayed ardently to God basically recited Israel’s history of rescue by Him, but also their ancestors’ subsequent and repeated departures from His covenant with them. It was time to own up to what had brought them to this post-exilic point (sometime in the 5^th Century BC), and to recommit to His way. The first verse of Ken Young’s echo of this prayer is a virtual word-for-word praise to Him that the Levites raised that day (see Neh. 9:5-6), as they stood on the shoulders of what God had done from them. Ken’s second verse reads like a summation of what the Levites said in the rest of their prayer – remembrance, confession, and a pledge of obedience (see Neh. 9:7-10:39); this 1993 version of this prayer wrapped up what the Israelites said in portions of two chapters (Nehemiah 9 and 10, comprising some 44 verses), with three brief sentences that said roughly the following: Lord, You are ‘awesome’, ‘endur(ing)’ – in other words, patient --, and all-‘see(ing)’; and You have ‘warn(ed)’ us repeatedly (four times in Neh. 9:26-34), and this time we will ‘obey’. The Hebrews certainly had experienced punishment, and also His forbearance.

 

Can any of us identify with what the Jewish race had endured up to Nehemiah’s day? What about history since that time? We’ve probably all seen horrific pictures of the Holocaust’s effect – concentration death camps, showing some survivors with little more than skin and bones, staring at the cameras with sunken eyes, or other gruesome images showing emaciated bodies piled up like cordwood. Perhaps those pictures in the last century make Jewish suffering more fathomable for those of us who’ve suffered little comparatively. But we all need rescue, whether we admit it or not. Was there some recognition by Ken and Hallal Music that this was true for themselves, perhaps in some episode that made this Levite 5^th Century BC prayer reverberate 24 centuries later? Look at you own mortality honestly for a moment. Is any one of us immune from trouble if He’s absent from our corner? Don’t get to the endline and look back wishing you had uttered a prayer like Ken and some Levites have spoken. There’s still time to do that today.        

 

Read about the 20^th/21^st Century songwriter’s music ministry here: https://hallalmusic.com/about/

 

Read the background of this song-prayer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nehemiah

 

See information about the image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Building_the_Wall_of_Jerusalem.jpg …This media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1931, and if not then due to lack of notice or renewal. See this page for further explanation. …found inside this document -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nehemiah

Like a River Glorious -- Frances Ridley Havergal

 

You cannot read anything about this English hymnist without encountering the word peace for which she was known by all who met her. Frances Ridley Havergal did not live a long life, and yet she apparently welcomed her own death with a serenity that may have been best reflected in one of her hymns, “Like a River Glorious”, which she wrote a few years before her eternal inheritance and the tranquility she cherished came to fruition. Frances’ deep and abiding familiarity with the ancient biblical texts undoubtedly provided much of the foundation for what would flow from her pen, but could she have also been moved by the creation she observed, like any number of rivers that she might have observed and which could have provided further inspiration for what she wrote (perhaps not unlike the River Wey in southern England, shown here)? Frances did not really need to explain what motivated this hymn, for she lived it.

 

Thirty-eight-year-old Frances was reportedly in Leamington, in central England, in 1874 when she wrote ‘Like a River Glorious’, and though her poetry is all we possess of her thoughts at that time, it offers several clues of her mindset at the time. We could reasonably presume that Frances was reading from Isaiah and perhaps also Psalms and many New Testament scriptures to find inspiration for what she would create. As she began, it could have been the prodigious prophet Isaiah whose words moved Frances initially, with the promises of the Lord on his lips to the people. ‘Peace…like a river’ could have been and could still be theirs, Isaiah said (48:18; 66:12), a metaphor that would have appealed to this 19^th Century hymnist as she thought about herself and the relationship with God that she valued so highly. At least two rivers are also in the Leamington area where Frances was at the time – the Rivers Leam and Avon – and could also have underscored for her His creative work in her midst. It wasn’t just a peace she felt, but a perfect one, which she saw as a glorious moving body of water, something that flowed more ‘fully’ and ‘deep(ly)’ as time went on. Could Frances have also found a kindred spirit in Isaiah through his song in chapter 26 about this perfect peace (26:3)? Is anything more secure than being in the ‘hollow of His hand’, in the protection of the one who had waters there in the same way when He made them (Isaiah 40:12)? That’s a very comforting reminder, one that could have spurred Frances’ second verse to tell herself and her readers that no ‘traitor’, ‘worry’, ‘care’, nor ‘hurry’ can overwhelm His shield for the believer. Frances could also have found such reassurance among David’s Psalms, including Psalm 37 (see verses 23-24, among many others there). Frances could have found the promise of peace throughout the New Testament also, including Jesus’ own words (John 14:27; 16:33), and from any of His apostles (like Paul – see Romans 5:1). That’s why Frances could stress the ‘trust’ she had for Him in her third verse, even during ‘trial(s)’ as well as ‘joy(s)’.

 

It is said that Frances actually welcomed death when it was ready to take her at the early age of just 42. Her health had apparently not always been optimum in the years just prior to her death, and perhaps that made her life in eternity one that she longed to inherit, one without pain. Frances had been a precocious child, reportedly reading by the time she was four years old, and then writing her first poems at age seven. She was a brilliant woman who learned to read La­tin, Greek, and He­brew, and who knew the Psalms and Isaiah (as suggested above, by what she wrote in ‘Like a River…’) and much of the New Testament by heart. So, someone might say how tragic it was that her earthly life was cut so short. Could that be why God gifted her so well at an early age, because her life would be a short one? Hers was what someone has said was a life well-lived, though short. And, look what she left for us to remember, especially how she handled not only life, but death, too. Bravery was one of her character traits, but it wasn’t something she could claim as her own. And, though she was talented, she didn’t feel her brief life had somehow cheated her. After all, what are four decades compared to the forever she began by 1879?            

 

Find all the original verses of the hymn here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/l/i/k/r/likriver.htm

 

A brief biography of the author/poetess is here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/h/a/v/e/havergal_fr.htm

 

See here also for the hymnist’s bio, and information on the song and its original date of authorship (1874): https://hymnary.org/text/like_a_river_glorious

 

A more complete bio on the author-hymnist is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Ridley_Havergal

 

Information on the location where the hymnist reportedly wrote this hymn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leamington_Spa

 

Read some reflections on the author-hymnist’s life in the following: Amazing Grace – 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, 1990, Kregel Publications; The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; and Then Sings My Soul, by Robert J. Morgan, 2003, Thomas Nelson, Inc.

 

See information on the image here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wey_source_farringdon.jpg …This work has been released into the public domain by its author, SuzanneKn at English Wikipedia. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so: SuzanneKn grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law….found inside this document -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River