Holy Is the Lord -- Anonymous Seraphim

 

Isaiah saw and heard them saying this, and it must have been an awesome experience. How many seraphim Isaiah saw is not shared by the ancient prophet (Two seraphim [Petites Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry] surround God in the 14th-century illuminated manuscript shown here, courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.), but what they said was so powerful that is shook the foundations and terrified the one who was witness to this vision. “Holy Is the Lord” is only a partial rendering of this thunderous exclamation. It makes those of us who’ve yet to see Him close up, or indeed any of his servants in His holy throne room, pause and reconsider how we are to live and best approach His seat of perfection, the standard by which His judgement will rest on each of us. How could anyone face such purity, being aware of one’s grimy condition?

 

That question was undoubtedly what so troubled Isaiah (Isaiah 6:3-5), as he cowered in the presence of the Almighty God and His seraphim. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”(v.5) Isaiah knew that it was dangerous to actually lay eyes upon the Lord God, for Moses had once asked God about this and had been warned that such a sight would be fatal (Exodus 33:20-23). So, that must have told the prophet what a grave risk it was to even be in His presence. If seeing was perilous, might not hearing also be just as hazardous? And it wasn’t just that God was being described as holy, but rather as holy multiplied three times, and therefore an emphasis on the infinite nature of His being. This was further underscored with what the Seraphim added -- the whole earth is full of his glory. He’s not just in one place but everywhere, making any effort to hide from this Divine One a futile exercise. All you can do is bow and beg for mercy. At least, that’s probably what Isaiah reckoned was his only recourse. What does one do, after all, during an earthquake when the doorposts and thresholds shake and a room is filled with smoke (v. 4)? I try to find cover or get out of the way of heavy objects that might crush my body. And, that was just a consequence of the sound of the words from the beings who proclaimed Him, the object of their announcement. Declaring Him is therefore a formidable assignment, as these heavenly beings must have understood intrinsically. Do we as humans, made in His image, always grasp that when we use His name or call out to Him?

 

Thank God for the next few verses of Isaiah chapter 6, for without them we’d have no hope. Instead, a seraph touched Isaiah with the God-provided medicine to atone for his mistakes (vv.6-7), prompting Isaiah to respond positively to the Lord’s call for a messenger. He responded in his era (7^th and 8^th Centuries BC), and I am one who can also respond some 28 centuries later. Though the seraphim did not mention them, there’s two other members of the Godhead that are so very important, Ones He has provided. Indeed, One is the embodiment of the metaphorical coal that touched Isaiah’s lips – Jesus Messiah – who compensates for my wrongs before the Holy Father; and the other is the Spirit, my guide, advocate, and counselor (John 14:15-31) who gives me daily what I need to stay in touch with God. I am thus released from danger when I echo the words of the seraphim. I can sing of the holiness of Him three times over, and honor the Son and the Spirit in the same breath, all without fear, even as I stand in awe of Him. Just picture His seraph-servant touching you with a piece of coal with Jesus’ imprint on it, while the Spirit translates God’s embrace.    

 

There have been many songs containing the words ‘Holy Is the Lord’, but see the Songs of Faith and Praise hymnal (hymn #32), by Howard Publishing, 1994, for the version discussed in this blog entry. This version of this song-hymn is also found here: https://hymnary.org/text/holy_holy_holy_holy_is_the_lord_holy_hol

 

Read here about the creatures that uttered the words of this song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seraph

 

See information on the image here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seraphim_-_Petites_Heures_de_Jean_de_Berry.jpg …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….image is found inside this document -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seraph

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