Not far from the Tower of
London, in a room owned by another man, a 32-year-old pastor –
short, pale, and thin – prayed, his large head bobbing slightly,
over the manuscript pages of his essay. Pastor Isaac led one of the
several non-conformist churches that met at Pinners' Hall, rented for
them by the man in whose house he'd been living, Thomas Hollis. But
Pastor Isaac's attention was on his explosive manuscript and the
daring case it made.
All Isaac's life,
churches in his country had been embroiled in what we'd call 'worship
wars' for the past century. And Isaac, for his part, was sick of it. We think we have it bad today, but Isaac was born into a country
where some churches refused to sing in worship at all – a country
where some groups of Christians had actually burned the Psalms in
protest of singing. Other churches would allow singing, but only
songs improvised on the spot – they felt that nothing else could be
truly spiritual, certainly nothing read out of a book and shaped by
someone other than the singer. Some authors denounced singing any
“pre-composed songs,” even biblical ones, as “a corrupting of
the pure worship of Jesus Christ” that “will lead us to
apostasy.” But, of course, you can imagine how that sounded, when
they devised impromptu songs. One critic, hearing it, called it
“nothing but a sacrifice of fools and the confusion of Babel.”
Yet there were other
pastors in the country who wrote passionately in defense of the right
to sing in church – either for a choir to sing, or for the whole
congregation to get to sing, like we do. Yet of those pastors and
their churches, nearly all of them had a very particular type of
singing in mind. They were accepting of only one group of songs: the
Psalms themselves. After all, they reasoned, God had himself given
us these for singing, so why should we desire any others? Surely God
had withdrawn the extraordinary spiritual gift of composing songs
worthy of God – these authors condemned “the presumption of a hot
brain that he has a gift of composing psalms and songs and hymns for
the edification of the church.” So why should we give place to
anything else when we could be singing divinely inspired songs? And
so, in most churches in the land that did sing, the rule was that
only songs taken from the Bible itself were allowed. Some sang them
exactly as written, chanting them. Still others conceded that they
could be paraphrased to rhyme, but with as little change as possible.
And that, for the most part, had been the range of musical worship
in the churches of seventeenth-century England.
Isaac didn't like that.
He didn't like the narrow-mindedness. He didn't like the
restrictiveness. He didn't like the bickering. In the decade when
he was born, plenty of churches were being ripped in half by these
'worship wars.' Isaac was born into a family that didn't belong to
the Church of England – they were independent, kept their distance
from the religious establishment. In fact, at the time of his birth,
his dad was in jail for it, and baby Isaac was himself nursed by his mother
on the prison steps. When Isaac was sixteen, a year after being born
again, he turned down a full college scholarship to go instead to a
dissenting academy where he could study under the tutelage of Thomas
Rowe. And right then was when the controversy exploded all over
again, bitter books flying to and fro on the nation's presses,
vigorously debating whether to sing in church, and what.
As a young man of twenty
coming home to his parents during the thick of the controversy, Isaac
quickly grew bored with the stale music in their old family church.
He thought it was dull, boring, ugly. He thought it was lazy,
dysfunctional, passionless, and that no one seemed to understand what
they were singing. And, as
many young men would, he complained to his family (because that's what we do when we're annoyed at our church: we complain in the car on the ride home, right?) – specifically,
his father, a deacon of the church. And his dad told him what many dads
have told their sons over the generations: 'If you don't like it,
then quit whining about it and fix it, kid.' Now, Isaac had long
loved language and rhyme. After starting to learn foreign languages at age 4, he'd been a
poet since age 7. So Isaac, having formed a conviction that this
stale music couldn't be all God wanted from us, set to work writing a
song of his own. The church rather took to this new hymn, and they
asked him to write another, and before you knew it, he was writing
them all the time.
But years later, he'd
become pastor in a church of his own – though his chronic poor
health led them to appoint an assistant pastor to help him just a
year later. That was four years ago. Now it was 1707. And with a
century of 'worship wars' firm in his mind, Pastor Isaac prepared to
share his hymns with the whole Christian church, not just his own
congregation. But he knew he was taking a big risk in publishing
this book of Hymns and Spiritual Songs
he'd written. It would be controversial. Many would think him
arrogant for writing new songs for God's people to sing – as if he
were saying he were better than David and all the other psalmists.
But
Isaac's convictions burned hot. If it isn't arrogant for churches to
pray prayers other than the ones the Bible records Daniel and Ezra
praying, and if it isn't arrogant for churches to hear sermons other
than the ones Moses and Isaiah preached, then why – Isaac always
asked – just why would it be arrogant or scandalous for churches to
compose and sing songs other than the ones David and Asaph composed
and sang? Besides, Isaac saw the gospel as so big, so expansive,
that no
definite and limited repertoire of songs could ever be enough to
express all its beauty for everyone. Any set of songs would always
fall short of everything we need to celebrate about God and offer up
to God from all the details of each and every one of our lives.
“There is an almost infinite number of different occasions for
praise and thanksgivings, as well as prayer, in the life of a
Christian; and there is not a set of psalms already prepared that can
answer all the varieties of the providence and the grace of God,”
he believed. And Isaac thought that was especially true when it came
to the Psalms of David, Old Testament songs where the victory of
Jesus and the good news of salvation could only be hinted at in
advance, instead of being flung open wide in public majesty. So,
Isaac thought, what churches need is gospel-worship,
centered on Jesus Christ, made for the time and place where we really
live.
Knowing
that he needed to make his case to defend the legitimacy of the songs
he'd written, his hands scrawled the manuscript pages of a preface to
raise at the front of the book and a longer essay to tack onto the
back, both showing “how lawful and necessary it is to compose
spiritual songs of a more evangelic frame for the use of divine
worship under the gospel.” As Isaac read the Bible, “new favors
received from God were continually the subject of new songs, and the
very minute circumstances of the present providence are described in
the verse.” It can only be God-honoring if we “make [our]
present mercies under the gospel the subject of fresh praises.”
And
so Isaac had finished the essay. And now, having read back over it,
he sent it and the rest of the book over to John Humphreys' print
shop. I'm sure none of you have ever seen a copy of that
controversial book of hymns that some called not “hymns” but
“whims” – the songbook over which churches did still split,
over which pastors were still fired – a book many people loathed
and many others loved. You haven't seen the book itself. But the
song we heard at the start of this morning's service was taken from
pages 69 and 70. And many of you know the words of page 189 pretty
well. They begin with the line, “When I survey the wondrous
cross.”
They
asked him what to put on the title page beneath his name. And Isaac
thought of one Bible verse above all else. So Humphreys the printer
put there, at Isaac Watts' instruction, the words: “And
they sung a new Song, saying, Thou art worthy,
&c., for
thou wast slain and hast redeemed us, &c.
Rev. 5.9.” For that was the passage that had inspired Isaac's very
first hymn as a younger man dissatisfied with his dad's church:
“Behold the glories of the Lamb / amidst his Father's throne: /
Prepare new honours for his name, / and songs before unknown.”
This
is our fourth Sunday exploring the heavenly worship scenes in
Revelation 4-5, and we've found more than I could sum up. Three
weeks ago, we caught a glimpse of God's throne, surrounded by the
four living creatures who've seen it all and still worship God simply
for his holiness. We also caught sight of twenty-four elders who
worshipped God by throwing their crowns at his feet because he's the
Creator of all things. But then, two weeks ago, we caught sight of
the scroll of God's plan for history, and we watched the fruitless
search for someone in heaven or on earth or under the earth who'd be
worthy to open it up and set it into motion. But that fruitless
search became fruitful when we heard about the Lion of Judah, who
turns out to be the Lamb who was slain: Jesus Christ. And he changes
everything in how heaven worships, and so he changes everything in
our worship. Last week, we saw that the elders held up “golden
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints”
(Revelation 5:8) – our prayers, if we belong to Jesus. And we
learned that heaven worships God by using our prayers, and that our
prayers, pleasing to God, will be God's tool for breaking down all
that's wrong in this world so that something new and whole can be
built.
But
now we get to the song the four living creatures and the twenty-four
elders sing, celebrating who the Lamb is and what he's done. “Worthy
are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain,
and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and
language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and
priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth”
(Revelation 5:9-10). What a vision! Jesus is worthy because he gave
up his life. He didn't give up his life just to die. He gave up his
life for us – for our redemption, for our ransom. He gave up his
life so that in his blood, a new universe could be born, a world
where self-sacrifice is victory and where love outweighs every
strength. And that's the world we're living for. Jesus wasn't
content to just save Jews, or to just save Greeks, or to just save
Romans, or to just save Americans (or Englishmen or Chinese or Germans or...). He ransomed people from
every nation. He ransomed people of every skin color. He ransomed
people who speak all kinds of different languages – English and
Hebrew and Spanish and Russian and bunches you've never even heard
of. And he brought us together into one kingdom and appointed us all
as royal priests, so that we can serve God and rule the world in his
name. All that, Jesus did when he surrendered his life and shed his
blood. For being slaughtered, for pouring out his life to rebuild
the universe and to make us something glorious, all heaven sings the
praises of his worthiness. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ
will come again!
But
there's that word: 'sings.' Whereas heavenly worship in chapter 4
was spoken, heavenly worship in chapter 5 starts to be sung, now that
Jesus is on the scene. And not only that, but John describes it by
saying that “they
sang a new song”
(Revelation 5:9). With Jesus in the picture, the worshippers in
heaven cannot be content with what they'd known before. No song is
ever a stopping place. What this tells us is that heavenly worship
is creative worship. Heavenly worship is innovative worship. Over
the heads of our souls hang brightest heavens of invention. And in
this brightest heaven of invention, worshippers sing a new song.
This
is the fountainhead of what Watts called “songs before unknown.”
In this scene, Watts sees that “all the assembling saints around /
fall worshipping before the Lamb, / and in new songs of gospel-sound
/ address their honours to his name.” Isaac Watts finds here
“mention of a New
Song,
and that is pure evangelical language suited to the New Testament,
the New Covenant, the New and Living Way of access to God, and to the
new commandment of him who sits upon the throne, and behold, he makes
all things new.” Watts insisted that these verse really is an
instruction to “the gospel-church on earth.” By imitating this
example, he wrote, “churches should be furnished with matter for
psalmody by those who are capable of composing spiritual songs
according to the various or special occasions of saints or churches.”
Composing new “spiritual songs,” finding “spiritual songs”
that are new to us, lets us “sing
a new song”
like these heavenly worshippers. And we know, from Revelation 14,
that the redeemed followers of the Lamb do
learn new songs, for they're seen “singing
a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and
before the elders”
(Revelation 14:3). What accompanies them is a sound “like
the sound of harpists playing on their harps”
(Revelation 14:2).
What
Isaac Watts saw, what we should see, is that godly creativity in
worship is forever fueled by the refreshing newness of Jesus. Jesus
is never old hat. Jesus is never dull. Jesus is always as fresh as
the first Easter morn. The good news is
always news
because the gospel is always new.
If we start taking it for granted as something we've heard before
and think we know, it's because we're not keeping up. Jesus is too
worthy, Jesus is too wonderful, Jesus is too new and fresh and
exciting to be nailed down to our past record of achievements in the
art of praise and song. The Father chose Jesus, upholds Jesus, put
his Spirit on Jesus, sent and commissioned Jesus “as
a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes
that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the
prison those who sit in darkness”
(Isaiah 42:6-7). Jesus gives a new covenant, a new light, new sight,
new freedom. The Father celebrates over Jesus, “Behold,
the former things have come to pass, and new things
I now declare!”
(Isaiah 42:9). And how does the Bible tell us we should respond?
“Sing to the
LORD
a new song, his praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to
the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that
Kedar inhabits; let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy, let them
shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory to the LORD
and declare his praise in the coastlands”
(Isaiah 42:10-12). Isaiah would ask us: If you aren't singing a new
song, then are you sure you know the new things that God's declared?
And
the sweet singers of Israel tell us, “Oh
sing to the LORD
a new song; sing to the LORD,
all the earth! Sing to the LORD,
bless his name, tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his
glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!”
(Psalm 96:1-3). They call on us, “Oh
sing to the LORD
a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his
holy arm have worked salvation for him. The LORD
has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in
the sight of the nations. … Make a joyful noise to the LORD,
all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!”
(Psalm 98:1-4). And so they might ask: If you aren't moved to sing a
new song, then could it be your view of salvation is too little? If
you aren't learning new songs 'from
day to day,'
could it be you think God has stopped doing marvelous things?
What
does all this mean for us? Well, we know that the 'worship wars' –
those tensions in the church that Isaac Watts knew all too well, over
the style and nature of church music – haven't left us. The
goalposts have merely shifted. I've seen people abandon their home
church simply because the music was getting too contemporary. Just
like people who left their churches when Isaac Watts' “Joy to the
World” was first brought in, they couldn't abide by a new song.
They got frustrated, they got resentful, they sneered at a new song,
and they quit that church. I've seen other people abandon that exact
same church because too many of the old classics – Isaac Watts'
hymns, played on that old church organ – were still being sung.
And so, unwilling to breathe freshness into the words and tunes and
find them new after all, those people also quit that church. Both
are tragic. As Isaac Watts said three centuries ago, “Let us have
a care, lest we rob our souls and the churches of those divine
comforts of evangelical psalmody by a fondness of our old and
preconceived opinions!”
See,
we all carry these “old and preconceived opinions” about worship
music should sound like and where we should rest content on our
laurels. But apparently, heavenly worshippers don't share those “old and
preconceived opinions.” Because, after thousands of
years of worshipping God one way, they're always ready to take up a
new song and get to singin' it. It's not the same style as what they
used before – and that's okay. It's not the same sound as what
they used before – and that's okay. It's not the same tempo as
what they used before – and that's okay. Because 'worship music'
is not a style. Worship is about Jesus. And if Jesus always has new
things to show us, we always have new songs to learn and sing.
Isaac
Watts had a conviction that songs of
Christian worship should call out to Jesus Christ, knowing him and
making him known. Isaac had a conviction that songs of Christian
worship should shine with Jesus' unveiled light, not obscure it in
shadows. Isaac had a conviction that songs of Christian worship
should announce the good news of what Jesus has already done for us.
Isaac had a conviction that songs of Christian worship should meet us
where we are – that's why he wrote plenty of songs for children and
put so much stress on singing songs that “reach my
case” and so can “assist the exercise of my
graces or raise my
devotion” – a song that “expresses my
wants, my
duties, or my
mercies,” all by focusing on who Christ is to us.
And
Isaac had a conviction that songs of Christian worship should bring
us to new places in the endless halls of the heart of God – that
God was so big, Christ was so big, that no exploration of him was
ever done, and that our songs of Christian worship should be
celebrating everything we keep finding on that journey, and not
stopping short. So out of those convictions, Isaac wrote his “When
I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” And out of those convictions, Isaac
wrote his “I Sing th' Mighty Power of God.” And out of those
convictions, Isaac wrote his “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” And
out of those convictions, Isaac wrote his “Joy to the World.”
And he wrote many more – but he never would have said that those
words or their first musical settings or styles were enough for every
generation in every location.
No,
the church's worship should emerge “from
every tribe and language and people and nation”
(Revelation 5:10), from every musical style and every musical
subculture. The same tunes on the same instruments, written by
people from the same country and era are not enough. Heavenly
worship celebrates a wide redemption by the blood of the Lamb, and
the Lamb's wide redemption is meant to unleash a tsunami of wide
innovation by all those appointed a kingdom and priests to our God,
to reign and make music on the earth! A wide redemption calls for
wide innovation. This doesn't mean scrapping all the good old hymns
and good old choruses you've grown up with, the ones we all know and
love. Dumping those hymns and choruses, if they're good hymns and
good choruses, would be every bit as limiting as sticking to a
handful of them and rejecting everything else. (You all know that, if Paul was a 'Hebrew of Hebrews,' then I'm a hymn-lover of hymn-lovers!) But those songs are
only a tiny slice of the grand universe of song God's waiting to hear
from us. God poured out his Spirit on all
flesh (Acts 2:17, cf. Joel 2:28) so that we can “sing
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in [our]
hearts to God”
(Colossians 3:16). The whole church – our church – is called to
be part of the wide innovation launched by our wide redemption.
We're asked to press forward, deeper into the heart of worship,
questing and adventuring in uncharted territory – or places we've
been but now see a new way.
If
we take a cue from heavenly worship, our worship should be fresh.
Sometimes that will mean singing the old hymns with renewed gusto and
appreciation. Sometimes that will mean taking the old words and
tunes and breathing freshness and innovation into them, maybe
changing the style, maybe recovering lost verses or bringing back entirely forgotten
hymns. Sometimes, yes, 'fresh' will mean singing
words we've never put together before. But the psalmist tells us to
“sing to the
LORD
a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly; let Israel be
glad in his Maker, let the children of Zion rejoice in their king;
let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with
tambourine and lyre...; let them sing for joy on their beds”
(Psalm 149:1-5). The psalmist tells us to “sing
to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts”
(Psalm 33:1-3). To me, that sounds like exciting worship: loud
shouts, skilled instruments, dancing or singing from bed, and “songs
before unknown.” That sounds like exciting worship, fresh and new.
Does ours look like that?
Our
worship should draw on all the creativity and innovation we can bring
to it, in the service of the glory of Jesus Christ. We need to
embrace the freedom to explore new angles, so that we can celebrate
the same 'old, old story' and tell it in new ways, the same
always-true gospel truths but in tones not so familiar. Our worship
in song should take us to places and themes from the Bible where
we've never camped out before. Our worship in song should show us
new things through the light of Christ. It should expand our
horizons with new songs so that we can keep praising God amid
tomorrow's unseen troubles and unexpected mercies. It should
confront newly uncovered things in our lives with newfound splendors of God.
For that, we need to sing a new song.
As
a church, if we want to worship God in heavenly ways, we cannot allow
ourselves to fall into a rut. We can't afford to let worship become
routine – and it will become routine, if we never stretch, if we
limit ourselves to a narrow set of songs we already know well, songs
that spoke to where we were in decades past but from which we've
stopped learning and through which we've stopped offering up the
complexities of our growing hearts and growing lives to God. We cannot become bound to musical
artifacts from one time and one place, so that we miss out on the
church's wide innovation unleashed by the Lamb's wide redemption.
This
week, I'd like to challenge you: Change your radio dial. Listen and
learn from God-exalting music that's not your cup of tea. Maybe that
means listening to the newest Christian rock, or maybe that means
going back to a good Gregorian chant! Find some Jesus-exalting songs
that are new to you, and hear with new ears, and sing back with new
lips. Leaf through the hymnal – read the lyrics to one you don't
recognize. Catch a fresh glimpse of the gospel story – that 'old,
old story,' always being sung in new songs. Open your heart, open
your ears, open your mouth, and let the worthiness of Jesus catch you
by surprise this week. I'd like to close by sharing with you Isaac
Watts' very first hymn, the one he wrote as a dissatisfied
20-year-old man in his dad's church in Southampton. This is the
clarion call he heard from the verses of God's word that reached us
today:
Behold the glories of the Lamb
Amidst his Father's throne:
Prepare new honors for his name,
And songs before unknown.
Let elders worship at his feet,
The church adore around,
With vials full of odors sweet
And harps of sweeter sound.
Those are the prayers of the saints,
And these the hymns they raise:
Jesus is kind to our complaints,
He loves to hear our praise.
Eternal Father, who shall look
Into thy secret will?
Who but the Son should take that book
And open ev'ry seal?
He shall fulfill thy great decrees,
The Son deserves it well;
Lo, in his hand the sovereign keys
Of heaven and death and hell.
Now to the Lamb that once was slain
Be endless blessings paid;
Salvation, glory, joy remain
Forever on thy head.
Thou hast redeemed our souls with blood,
Hast set the prisoners free,
Hast made us kings and priests to God,
And we shall reign with thee.
The worlds of nature and of grace
Are put beneath thy power;
Then shorten these delaying days,
And bring the promised hour.
In Jesus' name, Amen!
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