There Is No Sin That I Have Done

A Christian is one who has been set free from the power and penalty of sin, both in this life and in the next, through the only means that God has given for such redemption, the substitutionary death of Jesus who took the awful punishment for sin that we deserved. (1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 2:2) This central message of the Christian faith is our deepest delight and surest anchor and deserves to be on our hearts and lips every day. We should never tire of singing praise to Jesus who has redeemed us from our sin and guilt. Nothing can fill our hearts with gratitude like remembering how wicked we really are, the severity of punishment that our sins deserve before a holy God, and the love that God has shown us in giving His Son to endure our punishment for us. (Romans 5:8) Jesus has taken the “wormwood and the gall” (severe bitterness associated with judgment - see Jeremiah 9:15 for an example) for us and has completed the work of reconciliation; there is no way we can add to or subtract from its saving value. Let this closing thought be the theme song of our lives: “my Beloved, He is mine, for He has made me His.”

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Praise God Who Gave this Day to Me

This is a hymn intended to be sung in private or family worship at the start of each day. It reminds us of the great truths of Romans 5:1 "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" and Romans 8:1 "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" which we are so prone to forget. It is easy to begin our day living as if the gospel were not true; as if we needed to earn favor or acceptance from God by our performance. We demonstrate this attitude when we feel dejected by God, far from God, or are oblivious to God's presence with us. We must start our day preaching the truth to ourselves that we are accepted and free before God only because of what Jesus has done for us.

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A Sermon on “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”

As part of Northbrook's on-going hymn memory project, I taught through Joachim Neander's hymn "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty" this past Sunday, as I exposited Psalm 103.

In this sermon, I made five observations about what David's psalm tells us about the worship of the Lord and how Neander's hymn illustrates those points.

You can find the sermon, along with the others in the series, through the link below:
Praise to the Lord -- Exhorting Ourselves to Adore the Lord

Hymns for Private and Family Worship

Back in the fall of 2008, our church self-published a little hymnal for our own use. I'd like to share the contents of that hymnal to kick off a series of articles on the importance of family worship. Here is the preface to our little hymnal titled "Hymns for Private and Family Worship" with the general contents (not the lyrics to each song) at the end.

Preface

About Hymns
What is a hymn? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a religious song of praise, especially a Christian song in praise of God. In the proper sense of the term, all songs that we sing to or about God should be called hymns. In modern parlance, however, we often use the term hymn to refer to a strophic song (every verse uses the same tune) with a common rhyming scheme (called meter) normally set to traditional (non-syncopated) tunes. Hymn texts and tunes can either be historic or modern. They typically contain numerous verses (each of which contains several lines) therefore develop theological concepts and devotional thoughts more deeply than other forms of modern praise songs.

Apart from Scripture itself, hymns should be among our most treasured possessions....

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He Lives

The prophet Job, speaking of his hope in a future Redeemer who would save his body and soul from death, said “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth.” (Job 19:25). The bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead is absolutely vital to the Christian faith. Paul addresses this when he says “if Christ has not been raised ... your faith is vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:14) It is vital not only because we look to Jesus’ resurrection as the guarantee that He has the power to raise us from the dead, but also because of His present ministry to us. This song reminds us of many facets of Jesus’ ministry, that is, what He is doing now with His resurrected life for us. Jesus lives to comfort, bless, and love us, plead for us, be our companion and friend, to prepare a place for us to be with Him, and ultimately to one day save us from our own death. How can we respond to such a gracious and glorious ministry towards us? “He lives, and while He lives I'll sing, ‘Jesus, my Prophet, Priest, and King!’”

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Evaluating Songs for Congregational Singing

I'm going to be listening to and evaluating (whether formally or casually) a lot of songs written for congregational singing soon. To prepare for that I've been keeping some notes about various ways to evaluate songs. It's always a good idea to solicit feedback and think critically about our work and the work of others if it is done in a spirit of love and humility. We want our songs to be the best that they can be, both lyrically and musically. This involves a life-long pursuit of growing in the craft of songwriting.

So here's my list of categories so far with minimal description. These reflect some of my values for congregational singing like the participation of all, theological depth, application to all, etc. I don't believe that every song that we use must excel in all of these areas (except in having Biblical lyrics!), but my hope is that the song diet of my local church as a whole would rate well in all of these categories.

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The Solid Rock (Gospel Feel)

This is a harmonization of Bradbury's popular tune
(SOLID ROCK) with a gospel ("black" gospel) feel.

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Songs for the 2009 Redeemer Pastor’s Conference

On Monday I'll be attending and leading singing at the 2009 Redeemer Conference for Pastors. The theme of the conference is The Minister's Fainting Fits: Depression and Discouragement in Pastoral Ministry and we are honored to have Ed Welch along with our pastor, R. W. Glenn share with us from God's Word.

So far it looks like we will have a fairly diverse group of pastors or other leaders (like small group leaders), a large percentage who have never attended one of our conferences before. Choosing music for a conference can be tricky. Since the men attending will be from disparate churches I wanted to ensure that they would know a large portion of songs. To do that I chose 40% traditional hymns (texts and tunes). Another 40% are songs that will probably be new to many and have a more classical (less syncopated) tune, either old or new hymn texts. The remaining 20% are more contemporary songs or arrangements of hymns.

My friend and fellow songwriter Eric Schumacher will be joining us. We finished a song titled When Sorrow Comes especially for this conference. The abundance of songs...

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When Sorrow Comes

All of us will experience some degree of sorrow as we navigate through this fallen world, a world filled with sickness and death and the repercussions of relational sin when those most close to us hurt us by their words and deeds. How should Christians think about sorrow and the trials that are often its delivery mechanism? This song attempts to bring Biblical truth to bear on our bouts with pain and depression. If God had left us to what feel or think - to figure out His purpose in our trials by ourselves - we would surely be hopeless. But He has not left us alone; we can rest on what He has told us in His word. God tells us in Isaiah 45:6-8 that He is "the LORD, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity." God is the wise author of all of our circumstances, even our pain. That is a very difficult truth to accept, but through the gospel of God's grace we have these additional promises: "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28) and "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39) This song is a cry for the Lord to help us believe this truth for when trials and sorrows come we would be hopeless without it.

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Go and Send and Pray

The Lord Jesus Christ has called his people on earth to be involved in taking the Gospel to all the nations. Every believer is to be involved, whether through going, sending, or praying—and probably some of each. Yet we know that this task will be difficult. It calls us to leave behind our family, the comforts of home and enter into suffering. It requires that we sacrifice our money, our time and our reputations to point others to Christ. Unless we value Christ more than these things, we will not go or send or pray. Therefore, this song is a prayer that the Lord would move us, his people, to go and keep going until every people group on earth display the worth of Jesus Christ. It is a prayer that the Lord would free us from the shackles of our idols so that men might be set free by the truth. It is a prayer that Lord would empower us to go to every land. It is a prayer that the Lord would encourage his missionaries in difficult situations through the promise of the triumph of his Kingdom through the preaching of the Word. May the Lord be pleased to answer this prayer as it is sung from the hearts of his people!

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