Two CWM Hymns on new Grand View CD

Two hymns from ChurchWorksMedia.com have been included on a new recording from Grand View Ministries, a camp ministry in Alpine, AZ and Alberta, CAN. The CD, their third, includes orchestrations recorded by The Prague Symphony. It’s huge! The CD has SATB vocals and a few solos, but the CWM hymns were both recorded with men’s quartets. For the Sake of His Name was arranged and orchestrated just for this recording by David Rasbach. His Robes for Mine was arranged and orchestrated by Dan Forrest. (Octavos of both his SATB version and TTBB version are available.) You can order the CD here, or here, or here (where you can hear a few other tracks).

Here are 1-minute demos of the two CWM songs on the CD:

• For the Sake of His Name (Grand View Singers)
• His Robes for Mine (Grand View Singers)

Jesus, Mud, and Joel Osteen

Few of Jesus’ miracles are given as much face time as His healing of the man born blind in John 9. It’s a beautiful and tragic passage—beautiful for what it reveals about Christ, tragic for what it reveals about His opponents. It’s been captured quite faithfully in this video (HT: Dan Winnberg). Here are some meditations on this great work of Jesus:

1. Jesus corrected a common misconception about hardships. The chapter begins with the disciples questioning Jesus about the cause of the poor beggar’s blindness (John 9:2). They assumed that it was due to some great sin, either on his part or his parents’. It was a common assumption (John 9:34; Luke 13:1-5), but an inaccurate one, denying both common grace and universal sin. And it’s a cruel assumption, assigning blame where there should be compassion. 

His Robes for Mine at Stonebriar: MP3, Orchestration, Swindoll Comments

His Robes for Mine has been used a number of times at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, TX. My friend Paul Thompson arranged the piece for their orchestra, choir, and congregation. He has kindly provided several files for download:

• Here is an MP3 of His Robes for Mine from a recent service. (I posted a previous recording, but they were missing some key musicians during that service.) The whole thing is beautifully done, but the organ and brass transition into the last stanza is amazing. It just about moves me to tears every time I hear it. (Horns!)
• Here is a PDF (zip) of Paul’s orchestration for congregational accompaniment. We’re providing it for free, but a suggested donation of $25 can be made here.
• Here is an MP3 of Chuck Swindoll making extemporaneous comments on the hymn, its doctrine, and the gospel.

As always, the PDF of the hymn version can be downloaded here and an explanation of the text found here. Other hymns can be found at ChurchWorksMedia.com. May the Lord use His Word in song to point both sinners and saints to the Savior.

(Note: While posting this I received word that the hymn has been translated into Chinese. Grace!)

Thank God for “mundane, anonymous, non-descript people.”

Carl Trueman commends mundane ministry in this typically insightful post. Here’s a taste:

“In the real world, many, perhaps most,  of us worship and work in churches of 100 people or less; life is not loud and exciting; big things do not happen every Sunday;  budgets are incredibly tight and barely provide enough for a pastor’s modest salary; each Lord’s Day we go through the same routines of worship services, of hearing the gospel proclaimed, of taking the Lord’s Supper, of teaching Sunday School; perhaps several times a year we do leaflet drops in the neighbourhood with very few results; at Christmas time we carol sing in the high street and hand out invitations to church and maybe two or three people actually come along as a result; but no matter — we keep going, giving, and praying as we can; we try to be faithful in the little entrusted to us.  It’s boring, it’s routine, and it’s the same, year in, year out.   Therefore, in a world where excitement, celebrity, and cultural power are the ideal, it is tempting amidst the circumstances of ordinary church life to forget that this, the routine of the ordinary, the boring, the plodding, is actually the norm for church life and has been so throughout most places for most of the history of the church; that mega-whatevers are the exception, not the rule; and that the church has survived throughout the ages not just—or even primarily—because of the high profile firework displays of the great and the good, but because of the day to day faithfulness of the mundane, anonymous, non-descript  people who constitute most of the church, and who do the grunt work and the tedious jobs that need to be done.   History does not generally record their names; but the likelihood is that you worship in a church which owes everything, humanly speaking, to such people.”

(HT: Ryan Shanahan)

New Hymn Text: “Christ Has Won!”

Here’s a text that’s been in my file for a couple years. I’ve dusted it off and reworked it. I hope it will be an encouraging, triumphant anthem for Christ’s church. What a Savior we have!

Christ Has Won!

Born in sin, so sin I craved—
Born, and from that birth depraved.
Till I turned to Christ from sin
And by faith was born again.

Refrain:
Christ has won! My soul is free—
Loosed from Satan’s tyranny;
Loosed from sin’s enslaving cord;
Free, and bound to Christ my Lord!

Dead in sin, my hopeless state—
Dead, with death my timeless fate.
Till by dying, Christ won life;
Raised with Him, I shall not die.

Lost in sin, I groped for help;
Lost, and slinking down to hell.
Till Christ, piercing moral night,
Rescued me and gave me Light.

Bound by sin, I was a slave;
Bound to self from birth to grave.
Till Christ broke my dungeon grim,
Loosing me from me, to Him.

Leon Morris on Reconciliation

I mentioned a few weeks back that Leon Morris’ book The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance was on my reading list to start 2012. It’s been a profitable read. Yesterday I was encouraged by Morris’ thoughts regarding the biblical doctrine of reconciliation—that God has provided for the end of enmity between Himself and sinners (and for the establishment of a peaceful relationship) by the sacrifice of His Son, the Lord Jesus. After addressing passages like 2 Cor 5:18-20; Rom 5:10-11; Col 1:21-22; and Eph 2:11-18, Morris summarizes the Bible’s teaching on reconciliation with 6 points:

New Hymn Text: “Come, Lonely Heart”

I feel like the woman at the well in John 4 is a dear friend. I’ve meditated and preached on her story often.  I like her. I pity her. I relate to her. “I am a Samaritan woman,” I like to say. Above all, I rejoice in the salvation and satisfaction she finds in Christ. I find in her story a synopsis of the gospel this is both complete and compelling. For some time I’ve wanted to condense John 4 into a hymn text (consistent with this challenge regarding specificity), and I’ve finally done so. I hope the allusions to the biblical record will be obvious.

The text below will almost certainly go through some tweaking after I’ve lived with it awhile and before it’s joined to music. But I’m excited about it. I believe it faithfully progresses through her solitude (v. 1), her spiritual thirst (v. 2), her forgiveness (v. 3), her transformation into a worshiper (v. 4), and her joyful evangelism (v. 5).

Stylistically, I decided to write in a format that would make the piece both an expression of praise to God and an invitation to fellow Samaritans. “Come! Drink! Rest! Joy! Go!” Also, the story (and, I suppose, the meter) brought to mind a lot of hyphenated compound modifiers, which developed into a motif throughout the piece. That’s not typical for a hymn text, I realize. There’s probably a good reason for that. But she’s not typical. Her Savior certainly isn’t! At any rate, I hope the text will help people wonder at the immense mercy of Christ. If nothing else, it’s been good for me to go through the exercise, as with the other texts published at CWM. Grace!

Come, Lonely Heart

Come, lonely heart, to the outsider’s Friend—
To Jesus, who seeks out the lost.
Your soul-wrenching solitude will fin’lly end;
Find welcome—find home—at the Cross.

Drink, thirsty heart, of the water of life—
Of bountiful, thirst-quenching grace.
The world’s broken cisterns cannot satisfy;
A Savior is what your heart craves.

Rest, guilty heart, in forgiveness of sin—
In pardon from shame-stirring vice.
Though Satan and sinners and conscience condemn,
Your soul may be spotless as Christ’s.

Joy, grateful heart, in the Father above—
In God who is seeking your praise.
The sinner becomes through His life-changing love
A trophy and trumpet of grace.

Go, brimming heart, to declare what you’ve found—
To share that Messiah has come.
Go, that the glory of God may redound
Through Jesus, the world-saving Son.

(Note: If you wonder what this all means, I encourage you to listen to this brief gospel presentation, which tells how sinners can be right with God through Jesus Christ.)

Gospel Adventure

I thank the Lord for friends who have spurned the pseudo-adventure of video games, ultimate fighting, and prolonged adolescents for the genuine adventure of gospel advance in difficult places. Steve Hafler is one such friend, and he offers a great challenge to young men in his recent post, “Are We Done Playing Games?” Good stuff.

The Passovers Accomplished Both Deliverance and Community

The parallels between the Old Testament Passover and the work of Christ are striking (as I’ve noted here). Christ timed His death to coincide with the death of the Passover lambs in Jerusalem (John 19:14-16). Jesus died once, in history, to deliver us from sin, just as lambs died at the original Passover to deliver Israel from Egypt. He died a propitiatory death, allowing God’s wrath to pass the believer, also like the original Passover (Ex 12:13; Heb 11:28). In both cases, deliverance was from God, not just from Egypt or sin. That’s remarkable. In yet another parallel, Christ established a new Passover feast, the Lord’s Table, to commemorate His delivering death, just as Israel observed the Passover feast to commemorate God’s initial deliverance (Mat 26:17-19, 26-29). Both the Passover event and the Passover remembrance have been fulfilled and replaced by Christ.

However, there are still more parallels between the Passovers of the two Testaments, and they are richly described by Leon Morris in The Atonement: It’s Meaning and Significance. In addition to the “deliverance” parallels, there are positive “assembly” parallels. God wasn’t just breaking Egyptian bonds; He was gathering a people for Himself (Ex 6:7; 19:6), collecting a nation to serve Him (Ex 8:20; 9:1; 10:3). Redemption has both doxological and corporate purposes. Morris explains:

Toward a Word-Centered Ministry

I recently finished teaching through Acts 20:17-38, one of the most influential passages in my life and ministry. In Paul’s lecture to the Ephesians elders he provides for us what I call “an inspired philosophy of ministry.” He explains what his ministry looked like, providing a pattern for the church throughout the ages. We need to know this passage well and apply it to our churches intentionally, especially in a day when there are so many competing voices regarding the nature of Christian ministry.

Paul speaks often in this “seminar” of the importance of character and affection (as I noted in this post). He roots spiritual influence both in the leader’s integrity (“you know me” type comments in v. 18-21 and v. 33-35) and relationships (“I wept over you” comments in v. 19 and 31; cp. v. 37-38). But example and engagement are far from sufficient. The genius—the essence—of Christian ministry is the teaching and preaching of Scripture. Paul emphasizes the centrality of the Word in a variety of ways:

1.  Paul describes the ministry ideal by using multiple NT words for preaching. Again and again he reminds us of the centrality of the Word to church life. What did he do for three years in Ephesus? Explain and apply the Bible, in every possible manner. As he recounts his ministry, it’s like he’s using a Greek Thesaurus:

• He declared what was profitable (anangelō, v. 20)
• He taught the Ephesians (didaskō, v. 20)
• He testified repentance and faith (diamartureō, v. 21)
• He testified of the gospel (diamartureō, v. 24)
• He proclaimed the kingdom (kērussō, v. 25)
• He declared the whole counsel of God (anangelō, v. 27)
• He admonished the Ephesians (noutheteō, v. 31)

2.  Paul describes the ministry ideal by equating “ministry” with preaching. In v. 24, he speaks of his desire to finish his course and fulfill the ministry which he received from the Lord Jesus. But then he defines that ministry in the final phrase of the verse: “to testify the gospel of the grace of God.” That’s huge. Paul wanted to finish the ministry entrusted to him—that is (or namely, or in other words) to bear witness of the Christian Gospel. I can’t conceive of a clearer statement of the pastor’s central responsibility. He is to point his hearers to the grace of God as manifest in the Son of God and revealed in the Word of God. That is the ministry.