He Alone Is God

The Hebrew word hallelujah (or alleluia) which means literally "praise the Lord," has been used as an exclamation of praise not only by the ancient Hebrews, but in the early Church, throughout the history of the Church, and even today. Following the pattern of the Psalms, it has become integrally wed to music throughout all the cultures of the world. This song uses the word "alleluia" as a triumphant exclamation of praise for who God is and what He has done. The verses direct us to God's eternal character - dwelling in holy splendor as a spirit ("beyond our gaze"), the God of love, and reigning over all creation. We are reminded of the Son's worthiness to receive our "alleluias" as well - we will forever marvel at the grace He showed in giving Himself up to death to save undeserving sinners. In this song we also look forward to the day when our feeble alleluias will join with a vast number of believers and angelic creatures in the new world, praising God with what are sure to be earth-shattering roars.

This song is loosely based on the hymn "The God of Abraham Praise" by Thomas Olivers (1725-1799)

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The Love of Calvary

One of the most difficult attributes about God to understand and accept is His amazing love towards humanity. In a Christian culture that has been saturated with verses like John 3:16 ("for God so loved the world...") this may seem ridiculous; you may ask something like "what's so hard about believing God loves me - after all, I've heard it all my life!" When we consider the holy and righteous character of God juxtaposed against our unclean and rebellious character, His love shouldn't make sense. There's no reason why our heavenly Father should love creatures who He made to know and worship Him, yet worship anything but Him in their pride and rebellion. Yet He has proved the depths of this perplexing love in sending His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue us from our sins. In love, God sent Jesus to cleanse sinful people from their sins by His atoning blood, and progressively transform them to be like him in holiness and righteousness. Based upon the prayer "Love Lustres at Calvary," from The Valley of Vision, this song continues the apostolic tradition of expressing endless wonder in the boundless and perplexing love revealed in the Cross of Christ (Gal. 6:14). The cry of every true believer's heart is to not only apprehend the love of God more clearly, but to rest in it and be conformed to it in his or her personal character and daily life more fully.

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Praise the Lord Who Reigns Above

This hymn exhorts us to obey the countless commands in Scripture, especially in the Psalms, to praise the Lord. After reminding us of the reasons we have to praise Him - His holiness, love, greatness, noble deeds, and matchless power, it joins with Psalm 150 in calling for praise from instruments and all the creatures of the world. May God's praise continue to rise from His people as they join the witness of all creation in proclaiming God's honor and worth.

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I Know

Jessie Pounds wrote this hymn for Easter following the pattern of Job 19:25 where Job asserts the promise that though he will die, he knows that he will see his Redeemer with his own eyes. "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another." (Job 19:25-27). What a wonderful promise! The Lord will resurrect our bodies, reconstitute and repair them, and we will live for all eternity seeing our Redeemer with our own eyes. May the Lord give us faith to know that Jesus lives and will stand on the earth once again.

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I Have a Dad

In his classic book Knowing God, theologian J.I. Packer makes the following assertion about the fatherhood of God.

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God… Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.

In one of the Jesus' most moving parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32; this could also be called the Parable of the Lost Sons), we see salvation portrayed as the restoration of a family, the reuniting of a wayward son with his loving Father. This song draws its inspiration from this parable and attempts to help us remember what kind of father we have in the Lord - a Father who patiently endured our waywardness, even though it cost Him the life of His own precious Son. The word "Dad" is used instead of Father intentionally. When Jesus prayed, He used the Aramaic word "Abba" which translated literally would mean either Papa or Daddy, and His use of this term to address God would have been controversial at the time. The word is meant to show us the intimacy that we can have with our creator - He need no longer be simply the God of the universe, He can become our Daddy through the redeeming work of His Son.

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Because of One the World Was Cursed

The doctrine of imputation is one of the most precious truths in all of Scripture yet it is often neglected or misunderstood. One pastor who understood the doctrine and wrote about it in poems and hymns is Augustus Toplady, one of the greatest English hymn writers. Scattered lines from throughout some of his poems have been edited and assembled, and new lines have been added to form one complete hymn which teaches what imputation is and demonstrates how it should move us to worship. The gospel has sometimes been called the "Great Exchange" because through faith in Jesus, God the Father takes our sin and its punishment and gives it to Jesus, and takes Jesus' perfect record of obedience (His righteousness) and gives it to us. Not only do we stand before God forgiven, but also clean and acceptable before Him because we have the very righteousness of Jesus. This truth gives us confidence, boldness, and joy as we approach God in worship now and in eternity.

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You Make Me Beautiful

This song was born out of the author's own experience of the love of God. The Bible portrays the love God has for people using just about every human relationship as an analogy. This is because God's love is so far above man's love that every earthly experience of love shows us just a sliver of the way God loves us. One of the most powerful experiences of love we can have in this world is romantic love - the love a husband and wife share for each other. God uses this analogy for the way in which He loves us throughout the Bible, but perhaps nowhere as pointedly (and explicitly) as the book of Song of Solomon. In 6:3 the wife proclaims to her husband "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine," a picture of the intimacy Christians can experience with Jesus. This song tells the love story of God with His people - how He sought them out when they had rebelled and were filthy (Ezekiel 16), washed them and made them beautiful with His own beauty, and then grants that they might treasure Him and anticipate His return.

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See the Lord of Glory Dying

This passion hymn invites us to behold Jesus on the cross, both to remember how deeply our sins have stung him, and to remember that freedom from death and sin - true life - is found by looking to Him. The song not only tells the story of Jesus' suffering and death, but also of His triumphant resurrection and the eternal proclamation that peace and pardon were won through His death and resurrection. This text represented somewhat of a musical challenge in that the first two stanzas focused on Jesus' suffering and the last two stanzas on His resurrection, making it difficult to write a tune or find a mood that would do justice to the feeling of both halves of the song. The solution was to write one melody (so that congregations could easily learn the song) and set it to minor chords for the first two stanzas and major chords for the second two stanzas. The result provides a sharp musical contrast between the suffering of Jesus and the triumph of His resurrection which helps us to feel the contrast of the lyrics.

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My Sins, My Sins, My Savior

This song is a cry for help in the struggle that every Christian faces against their remaining sin. What should we do when sin seems to "take such hold" on us that we feel powerless against it? The song reminds us that there is only one place to look - to Jesus, the source of forgiveness and grace. Remembering the sufferings of Jesus, as a result of our sin (the very sin we are struggling with) will remind us of the grief, anguish, sadness, and guilt that our sins deserve. But the very suffering that reminds us of our sin's penalty also reminds us of the incredible, gracious, love that God has demonstrated for us at the cross. Because Jesus suffered in our place, we need not face eternal suffering for our sin. Because Jesus rose again and conquered sin and death, we can experience His resurrection power in putting our remaining sin to death. We do this not by our own effort, but by starting at the foot of the cross where we are reminded of God's grace and the source of power in the struggle against sin.

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Behold, Where, in a Mortal Form

It is assumed that William Enfield, a British presbyterian minister, wrote the original text of this updated hymn (he was the editor of a 1772 volume in which it appeared without source). The words, an echo of Philippians 2:1-11, give us well-crafted language depicting the angst of Christ in the garden leading to the cross and describing the perfect virtues He displays in the midst of this most intense hour of His life. The final stanza focuses on the importance of following Christ to the cross in order to share in the joy and glory of denying ourselves and living out our salvation.

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