Devotion with Marty

Marty’s Devotion: Week 16

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

I had an interesting reminder about trust this week. I was sitting at our dining room table eating supper last night and leaned back ever so slightly in our dining room chair. These are chairs that we have sat in for 4 or 5 years. We bought them at an estate sale here in Enid. They are an older set of chairs but not quite antique. To make a long story longer, I snapped the top out of the chair. WOW! I was trusting in that chair to hold me and support me. As I read and reread this Scripture, I am reminded that me trusting in that chair is like me trusting in my own understanding. There are times that my own understanding will be adequate, there are times my own understanding will be supportive and will prosper me. However, there will be times that my own understanding will drop me or forsake me or fail me. My best course of action is to always trust in God, and not to lean on my own understanding. I should always be in the habit of acknowledging Him. His promise to all of us is that when we do trust Him in all our ways, He will make our paths straight. Now, I don’t know about you, but for me, in this world, at this time, I need all the straight paths I can possibly get. I can imagine that you feel the same way. Let us commit to trusting in the Lord and His ways even if they don’t make sense to us. This is one decision I’m confident you won’t regret.

Build Your Kingdom Here:
The overarching theme of this song is REVIVAL. Gareth Gilkeson of “the Rend Collective” shared the groups passion for revival in a YouTube interview recently. “Jesus is the Hope of the World and He has put His hope in us.” Says Gareth, “we the church are not just an organization or club, but we the church are the living and breathing body of Christ. . . . That makes us the hope of the world and what we do really matter.” We have the opportunity to build the Kingdom of God on earth here and now. Chris Llewellyn, also of the Rend Collective, goes on to say: “Our relationships then with our friends, families and co-workers’ matter. It is in us sharing the hope of Christ that the Holy Spirit can enter the lives of people all around us. The Holy Spirit then can bring about the revival and salvation that can literally change us and in turn change the world.”
As we sing this song on Sunday, let us ask God to change us so that through us He will build His kingdom here in Enid and in the world.

Lion and the Lamb:
I’m sharing a personal story about the song, “Lion and the Lamb” from the composer and author, Leeland.
About 2 ½ years ago I (Leeland) was at a writer's retreat at a cabin in Nashville, and we had an amazing three days. The third day, I was hanging out with Brenton Brown, and he's a good buddy of mine. Rewinding a bit, the chorus of this song first came about 3 years ago when we were leading worship at a church in California for three days. The people coming to church were very hungry for God and very expectant. Every night got more intense, and the expectations and hunger grew. It was amazing leading worship for them because none of them cared about us, they were just there for Jesus and pursuing Him. We sang like two full-length songs, and lots of spiritual songs, where we were singing words like "Holy" and "Worthy" over and over for an hour.

The Bible talks about spiritual songs, which come out of your heart and Spirit. They aren't necessarily a written song, but come out of your heart. That's what we were doing, and everyone was singing their own songs to God. We were just weeping, and there wasn't a dry eye in the room. My brother came over to me and asked me to play at the piano while he went down to pray for people. While I was there, God dropped the whole chorus of this song on me right there. I recorded the chorus on my phone.

For a year and a half, I played it for artists and nobody really connected with it. I played it for Brenton, and he just latched on to it. It spoke to him a lot, and he started working on verses with me. Then I met up with Brian Johnson, and we talked about writing songs together, and I reached out to him as well. He loved it as well. Together, the three of us finished the song in about a month. We sang it at a youth camp, and all the kids just sang along, and we knew the song was done. Writing this song with Brian reconnected me with Bethel Music, and that's how I ended up recording this song and album with them.

Which Bible verses connect to the message of the song?

Hosea 11:10 (NIV): "They will follow the LORD; He will roar like a lion. When He roars, His children will come trembling from the west."

John 1:29 (NKJV): "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

John 15:13 (NKJV): "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends."

Philippians 2:10-11 (NIV): "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Revelation 5:11-13 (NIV): "Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying: 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!' Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: 'To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!'"

Revelation 12:11 (NKJV): "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death."

What is the takeaway message?

My brother and I were talking about this song and God's attributes, about the power and tenderness of God at the same time. You see it with John in Heaven in Revelation. On earth, he laid his head on Jesus's chest, and in Heaven he sees Jesus in all of His glory. He falls down like a dead man. God is so mighty and powerful, and Jesus puts His hand on his shoulder and tells him to not be afraid. It's an amazing picture of how we tremble at His power and might and glory, and at the same time He is tender like a Lamb. It is amazing that He is both to us, for us and with us. I'm excited to see how the song has connected with people. I really didn't have much to do with the song, as the Lord just gave me the chorus.

This Is My Father’s World:
One of the leading Presbyterian ministers of his generation, Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1858-1901) penned a hymn with such concrete language that even children can understand its message at a basic level. He followed Dr. Henry Van Dyke, author of the hymn “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” (The UM Hymnal, no. 89), as the minister of Brick Presbyterian Church.

Babcock was born in Syracuse, N.Y., and was a graduate of Syracuse University. He continued his education at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. After serving two congregations at Lockport near Lake Ontario and Baltimore, he assumed the pastorate at Brick Church. He died just a few months short of his 42nd birthday in a hospital in Naples, Italy, following a trip to the Holy Land.

Babcock was known both as a skilled amateur musician, playing the organ, piano and violin, and recognized as a university sportsman with achievements in swimming and baseball. He was an outdoorsman with broad shoulders and a muscular build. One of his poems gives insight into his approach to life:

We are not here to play, to dream, to drift,
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift,
Shun not the struggle; face it;
’Tis God’s gift.

Our hymn was published posthumously in Babcock’s Thoughts for Every-Day Living (1901) though it had probably been written much earlier. While a pastor in Lockport, N.Y., near Lake Ontario, hymnologist Kenneth Osbeck noted Babcock’s practice of “taking morning walks to the top of a hill north of town where he had a full view of Lake Ontario and the surrounding country.” It was said that he had a frequent expression before leaving for these walks, “I’m going out to see my Father’s world.”

The original poem was composed in 16 four-line stanzas, each beginning with “This is my Father’s world.” One of Babcock’s friends, Franklin Shepherd (1852-1930) adapted an English folk song inserting portions of Babcock’s text into three, eight-line stanzas. The hymn in this form first appeared in the composer’s hymnal Alleluia, a Presbyterian Sunday school book published in 1915. The tune name, TERRA BEATA, means “blessed earth” in Latin.

The first two stanzas are unusually concrete in their references to nature—“rocks and trees, of skies and seas”; “birds..., the morning light, the lily white... rustling grass.” For Babcock, nature was not only a visual spectacle, but an aural experience. Perhaps the author’s skill as a musician contributed to the many auditory images: “listening ears” and “nature sings” and “birds their carols raise” and “rustling grass.”

The “music of the spheres” mentioned in the first stanza is a concept borrowed from Greek philosophy. This is the idea that the most perfect sounds cannot be heard by human ears. They take place in the orderly movements of planets and stars. The actual sounds that we hear on earth are but a weak imitation.

The author shifts his focus in the final stanza from describing the visual and aural beauty of nature to the reality that all is not right with the world. With a strong sense of Presbyterian providence, Babcock observes “that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” The closing couplet, posing and answering a question, offers hope: “The battle is not done!... And Earth and Heaven be one.”

Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery: Matt Pappa, Matt Boswell

Here is a story from the hymn author, Matt Pappa
When Matt Boswell sent me some of the early lyrics for Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery it caught my attention, because the idea was in perfect stride with the book I was working on at that very time called “Look & Live”.

Look & Live is actually a meditation on word “Behold” and how that relates to worship, so I was pretty exhilarated to work on a song whose main idea or “north star” was "come behold”.

I would say the book and the song really have 2 Corinthians 3:18 as their wellspring….”And we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” The verse essentially says that to “behold” is to “become”….to see glory, or beauty, is to change. And later in that chapter he says what the “glory” is….specifically…it is the glory of God in the "face of Christ”.

So the song rather simply and poetically unpacks the glory that we were made to “behold”….the glory of the person of Christ.

Verse 1 is The birth of Christ and I have been delighted to hear that many churches love doing this song around Christmas time because of this.
Verse 2 is the life of Christ….”see the true and better Adam”….the one who lived the life we should have lived.
Verse 3 is the death of Christ
Verse 4 is the resurrection of Christ.
I REMEMBER WORKING ON EACH VERSE TRYING OUR BEST TO FIGHT TO COMMUNICATE THE “MYSTERY” OF THE GLORY….THE PARADOX OF IT.
“Come Behold the wondrous mystery, Christ the Lord upon the tree”. “Come Behold the wondrous mystery, slain by death the God of life”. The gospel is a “mystery” (Colossians 1:26, Ephesians 3:6, 1 Peter 1:12), and “mystery” and transcendence is a thing that the modern church has been lacking in for some time.

The power of “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery" is in it’s simple folk-like melody, paired with it’s ancient/poetic and gospel-rich lyric. Because of this, it lends itself to so many settings and interpretations.

I read once in a book on art, that one mark of a great song or a great work of art is that the song or work becomes “the people’s”. As time passes it begins to belong to the community, more than it does the writers/artists….to be associated with the community more than the writers. I feel that way about this song. “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery” is not mine or Matt Boswell’s or Michael Bleecker’s song. It’s the Church’s song. And I praise God for that.

Jesus: Chris Tomlin

In an interview posted on YouTube Chris relates that he struggled with the title. He looked in vain for any other title other than the one he ended up with. He thought of using other powerful lines from the song, i.e. “Who Walks on the Water?” or maybe perhaps, “Who stand in the fire with Me?” but it always came back to one word, “Jesus”. Yet what if the song flopped or wasn’t received, how could any song live up to the name, “Jesus”? It seemed to Chris that for a song to have this title, it would have to be the greatest song in the world. Yet, the title remains and the song testifies to the only one whose name is given among men for salvation. Jesus.

See you Sunday,

Marty