The Power of Song - Part 3

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

December 22, 2019

Music that, as I get older, deepens my longing for heaven.

As I get older, I have come to appreciate even more some of the funeral songs. Though I have loved “I’ll fly Away” since long before I qualified as a senior citizen. “When I die, Hallelujah, Bye and Bye, I’ll Fly Away.” When we get to the point in our understanding of God and His promises that we can throw a “Hallelujah” into a line about dying, then we know that we don’t have to be afraid of anything.

Not being afraid is a sermon all by itself, but I will summarize it like this: Psalms 56:3 says “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” And Psalm 56:11 says “In God I trust and am not afraid. What can man do to me?”  

Jesus said this in Luke 12: “For this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life, as to what you will eat; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. ²³ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. ²⁴ Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds! ²⁵ And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span? ²⁶ If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters? ²⁷ Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. ²⁸ But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith! ²⁹ And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying. ³⁰ For all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things. ³¹ But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you. ³² Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom." 

“When I die, Hallelujah, bye and bye.” Death is our passport to heaven! There is no reason to be afraid.

“Jesus is coming soon” is one of my favorites in this regard. The second verse talks about trumpets, then the third verse goes like this. “Troubles will soon be o’er; happy for evermore; when we meet on that shore; free from all care. Rising up in the Sky; telling this world goodbye; homeward we then will fly; glory to share. Jesus is coming soon; morning or night or noon: many will meet their doom; trumpets will sound! All of the dead shall rise; righteous meet in the skies; going where no one dies; Heavenward bound.” Amen!

When I delivered a shorter version of this to the little men’s group about a week ago, one of the guys asked me if I distinguished between old songs and new songs. I knew what he was asking. There is something of an age war, a culture war going on. Some of the young people are not impressed with the older songs. And some older people really dislike the newer songs.

But I had to say that I love some of both sets. You know the name Fanny Crosby. She died in 1915. She wrote 19 of the songs in one of our current song books. Powerful songs like “To God be the Glory,” “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross,” and “Tis the Blessed Hour of Prayer.” I pointed out to him that when she wrote it, those were new songs. I wonder if she was put down for her songs because they were new. But we have come to love them and to depend upon them for our worship of God.

At the same time, Charlene has a play list of songs by the group “A Capella” that she plays regularly. Some of them are a little older now, but I believe they are still putting out some new stuff. One of her favorites is “Everybody Said (But Nobody Did).” You may have heard it. It is done with a Jamaican accent and talks about the work of the church. What the song is saying is: 
“Well I'm too busy so I tell everybody
The work's got to get done by somebody
It can be done by anybody
But nobody (nobody), nobody (nobody), nobody did”

“Everybody said that anybody could do
The important things somebody should do
Everybody knows that anybody could do
All the good things that nobody did.”

That’s important new music. 

One of my favorite You Tube videos is of an auditorium full of U.S. Marines singing “Days of Elijah.” And Charlene loves one we learned in Haiti: “Ain’t no rock gonna cry in my place.” It goes on with the theme, “Aint no bird gonna sing in my place. And ends with: “As long as I'm alive I'll glorify his holy name.”

These songs have become a strong part of who we are. They are in our souls. You can’t separate us from them. If someone kidnaps us and holds us captive, they can’t take these songs from us. The songs have brought us to Jesus and have kept us with Him through the years. They are causing us to be excited about Jesus' second coming – to look forward to it. To listen for the trumpet call of God and the Shout of the Archangel.

If you are not there yet, listen to the song we are about to sing. If you are ready to be baptized or want us to pray with you, Come on down front while we stand and sing this song.

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.