The Power of Song - Part 2

An excerpt from a sermon delivered at the Roseville Church of Christ

December 22, 2019

Part 2

Music that grew my faith through the years

The church songs that have meant the most to me have varied some through the years. When we lived in Memphis, as a teenager, I was in a youth chorus. We called it a chorus because we didn’t want it to be confused with the choirs some other churches had. We never sang during the worship service; that was when everybody sang. But our chorus went Christmas caroling as we walked the long halls at the huge veterans’ home in town and we sang for a lot of funerals and weddings. The chorus was our very active youth group.

During that period of time, I came to love some of the more complicated 4-part songs in the book, like “Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth… We’ll praise thy name for ever, ever more.” That’s one I like to think of us all singing together in heaven.

And at Christmas my favorite was “Joy to the world, the Lord has come! Let earth receive her king!” Especially the line that goes,
“He rules the world with truth and grace.” Til this day, when our grandson Alex puts the angel on top of the Christmas tree, I have him wait until I can cue up Manheim Steamroller’s version of that song. It is powerful.

But after I left Memphis, a new set of church songs captured my heart. I associate them with our 14 years in Tallahassee, Florida. We were worshipping with a church that had a building surrounded by the Florida State University campus. They are songs of victory, songs about triumph. One of them goes like this:

I heard an old, old story
How a Savior came from glory
How He gave His life on Calvary
To save a wretch like me
I heard about His groaning
Of His precious blood's atoning
Then I repented of my sins
And won the victory

O victory in Jesus
My Savior, forever
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him
He plunged me to victory
Beneath the cleansing flood

I heard about His healing
Of His cleansing pow'r revealing
How He made the lame to walk again
And caused the blind to see

[And I really love that story in Luke about the blind man and his parents and the Pharasees.]
And then I cried, "Dear Jesus
Come and heal my broken spirit”

I then obeyed His blest command and gained the victory

I heard about a mansion
He has built for me in glory
And I heard about the streets of gold
Beyond the crystal sea
About the angels singing
And the old redemption story
And some sweet day I'll sing up there
The song of victory

O victory in Jesus
My Savior, forever
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him
He plunged me to victory
Beneath the cleansing flood.

And there is “This world is not my home.”  That one has really shaped my view of the world in which we live, with all its different peoples fighting to try to control it. And I am reminded that I don’t have to worry about who wins those wars, because of the meaning of this song and the one that seems to contradict it but doesn’t: “This is my father’s world.” I especially like the line “Oh let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong. God is the ruler yet.”

And there are everybody’s favorites: “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Amazing Grace.”

And the songs about being close to the Lord like “Jesus Hold My Hand.” The first verse starts off: “As I travel through this pilgrim land, there is a friend who walks with me.” We should try to remember, whatever happens, that we always have a friend with us. The second verse has these words: “I will be a soldier brave and true and ever firmly take a stand. As I onward go and daily meet the foe Blessed Jesus hold my hand.”

Another one of the songs of that era that I still tear up over is “It is well with my soul,” especially the second and third verses where it says, “My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought, My sin, not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Oh my soul.” I have to drop out a lot of the time when we get to the part about “not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross.” And the third verse moves into another of my favorite themes of church music: “And Lord haste the day when the faith shall be sight. [And I love this part]: The clouds be rolled back as a scroll. [And here comes the trumpet]: The trump shall resound and the lord shall descend, Even so, it is well with my soul.

I dearly love the notion of a trumpet announcing the second coming of Jesus. That has been true since I first heard 1 Thessalonians 4:16: “¹⁶ For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” You know the song that starts off “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more.” It goes on to give us the assurance that “When the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.” These songs are based on the scripture and they are full of assurances.

I also came to love the spirituals, especially those with a double meaning that were used during the movement to abolish slavery and during the civil rights movement.

If you haven’t seen the movie “Harriet,” you should. It is about Harriet Tubman. Early on when her family is about to be split up and sold off, she escapes from the plantation in Virginia and makes it all the way to a safe place in Philadelphia by herself. But not satisfied with that, she goes back to rescue her family and others. And she goes back again and again. One of my favorite scenes is of a living room in Philadelphia with a group of well-dressed people, Black and White, who were instrumental in setting up and operating what became known as the Underground Railroad. And the door bursts open and in comes Harriet followed by 6, 10 or 12 escaped slaves. They show scenes like that several times in the movie.

But my favorite scene is of a group of slaves chopping cotton in a field. There is a tree line beside the field. The slave owners know that someone is freeing slaves, but they don’t know whether it is a man or a woman. They call her Moses.

As the slaves are working, you hear this one woman singing just beyond the tree line: “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharaoh, ‘Let my people go’.” You see the moment of confusion on the slaves faces, then an instant of recognition. Then several of them drop their hoes and sprint for the tree line.

I still get choked up over “We shall not be moved,” and “We shall overcome” and one that is not really a church song but could be: “Blowing in the Wind.” Immediately after and for days to follow the riots associated with the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi the local, Oxford, Mississippi, radio station repeatedly played Peter, Paul and Mary’s rendition of our own Minnesota’s Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” with such lyrics as:

“How many roads must a man walk down before we call him a man?” and

“How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?” and

“How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn’t see?”

“How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?”

“The answer my friend is blowing in the wind; the answer is blowing in the wind.”

I still cry over those songs and I would really like to know the story of the Mississippi DJ and his managers who let him play that song over and over and over.

These are the songs that deepened my faith.

The Power of Song - Part 1

The Power of Song

Part 1 – Music That Brought Me to Jesus

[This is an adaptation of a sermon delivered to the Roseville Church of Christ on December 22, 2019. The original title was “My Story.”]

For years people (mostly preachers) have been telling me I need to practice telling “my story.” By that they mean the story of how I was converted to Christianity and how my faith grew. Have you ever been told that?

A lot of people have fascinating stories. There’s one very faithful man in the Eagan church who had been searching, who had a lot of questions when someone knocked on his door. It was a preacher trying to find the right address for his appointment for a Bible study. He was on the wrong street. His appointment was for one street over, the same house number. But they got to talking and the preacher called his appointment and postponed it so he could talk with Dan.

But I didn’t have a story. The point is that, in order to convince anyone, I needed to be able to tell people what led me to believe. The problem has been that I haven’t known the answer to the question.

You see, I have always believed. I learned that God loved me almost before I could sit up by myself. I have always understood that “Jesus Loves Me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.” And that “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.” And that I should try to hold up my little light “all around the neighborhood.” But I didn’t really know why or how I knew those things.

Then a couple of weeks ago someone called the question on me. I was in a weekly Bible study with a group of guys and the announcement was made the we were going to pause our study of Joshua mid-way and during the month of December we would take turns telling our stories. 

What would you do if you were put in that situation? I kinda panicked for awhile. I didn’t know the answer. Started trying to figure out how I could get by without telling my story and without embarrassing myself too badly. But then somehow the discussion led me to an epiphany. I suddenly realized what had confirmed my belief and had grown my faith. It was the music!

This lesson comes in three Parts: 1) Music that brought me to Jesus; 2) Music that grew my faith through the years; and 3) Music that, as I get older, deepens my longing for heaven. 

Music that brought me to Jesus

It probably really started with “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” but I don’t really remember that part. The song that I remember kicking off my faith in God was the one I sang that day at home. My mother was in the kitchen and I was in our bedroom. I was probably too old to still be in a crib (baby bed), but kids stayed in cribs longer then when their parents couldn’t afford the price or the space for a real bed. I was at the foot of the crib, kicking it in time and singing at the top of my lungs, “Up from the grave He arose.” It seems like yesterday, though it must have been at least 74 years back.

That was the song that I brought home from church.  It was the song that told the tale of Jesus getting up and walking out of the grave on a Sunday morning, proving once and for all that there is nothing in this world that we need to be afraid of. 

I don’t remember ever really being afraid of anything. I was once with an infantry platoon that was pinned down in a rice patty in Viet Nam and the Captain directed me to get up and go help load the wounded on the helicopter while we were still being shot at. But I don’t remember being afraid. I’ll say more about fear in a few minutes.

What my three or four year old self brought home from church was “Up from the grave He arose, with a mighty triumph o’re his foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain and He lives forever with His saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Hallelujah, Christ arose!”

There are other parts of that song that still excite me: “Death cannot keep its prey. He tore the bars away!” I have often said that the four most important words in the Bible are “He is not here.” They were spoken by the angel at the grave that Sunday morning to the women who went there looking for Jesus.

If Jesus had stayed in the grave that morning, we would be living in a whole different story. This life would be all there is. This life with all its disappointments, sicknesses, setbacks. hard times. That would be it. We would come to the end of the road and there would be a big drop off. Nothing more.

Some of the other songs that meant a lot to me from that time period were invitation songs. They were powerful! One that haunted me was called “Oh why not tonight.”  We sang that song over and over and over. It goes on like this: 

1.   Oh, do not let the Word depart,
And close thine eyes against the light;
Poor sinner, harden not your heart,
Be saved, oh, tonight.

o   Refrain:
Oh, why not tonight?
Oh, why not tonight?
Wilt thou be saved?
Then why not tonight?

2.  Tomorrow’s sun may never rise
To bless thy long-deluded sight;
This is the time, oh, then be wise,
Be saved, oh, tonight

3.   Our Lord in pity lingers still,
And wilt thou thus His love requite?
Renounce at once thy stubborn will,
Be saved, oh, tonight.

4.   Our blessed Lord refuses none
Who would to Him their souls unite;
Believe on Him, the work is done,
Be saved, oh, tonight.

Oh, why not tonight?
Oh, why not tonight?
Wilt thou be saved?
Then why not tonight?

And there was of course “Just as I am” with all 46 verses that went something like this:

Verse #1
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Verse #2
Just as I am, and waiting not,
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Verse #3
Just as I am, tho' tossed about,
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings within and fears without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Verse #4
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind,
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Verse #5
Just as I am, Thou wilt recieve,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve,
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Verse #6
Just as I am, Thy love unknown,
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

The conventional wisdom of the time was that there was something called the “age of accountability” at which a young person would be held to account for his or her sins. Little children were thought to be free from sin, but after the “age of accountability,” he or she would have to answer for them. There is no Bible for that, it was just understood.

At the time, 12 was the acceptable age. Charlene and I were in a church with 1000 members and there was a constant stream of 12 year olds going forward when the invitation hymn was sung after the sermon.

But as I was approaching my tenth birthday that car accident on the way home from church that the preacher said we were all going to die from became more and more real. And the song’s assurance that “tomorrow’s sun may never rise” weighed heavily on me.

I was a private person and I didn’t talk with anyone about it, but I didn’t want to “die in my sins” as the preacher put it. So on one Sunday morning when they started singing the invitation song, I jumped up out of my seat, without conferring with anyone, and went down in front of those 1000 Christians and told the preacher I wanted to be baptized. To their credit, no one questioned my age or my understanding. They just put me under the water and my sins were forgiven – just like the 3000 people on Pentecost 2000 years before! And I knew that if tomorrow’s sun didn’t rise, like it said in “Why not tonight” I was okay.

Some people have second thoughts about the effectiveness of their baptism and are baptized again, but I never looked back. I believed the part of the song that said,

“Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve,
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!”

Music has always been important to me. My family says that nothing happens that I don’t tie it to a tune. Every time Charlene and I start off on another over-the-road adventure, I’m thinking, if not humming, whistling or singing Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”

The oldest song I remember was a Tex Ritter piece called “Blood on the Saddle” and I remember it from the original, not from the Country Bear Jamboree.

Next entry: Music that grew my faith through the years.