The Lord’s Day Evening
Hymns of the Faith - (3)
(Based on I Chronicles 29:13 and I Thessalonians 5:18)
“Now Thank We All Our God”
Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III
Amen. Please be seated. If you haven’t had a chance yet to obtain one of the outlines, perhaps the ushers…yes, the ushers are already ready, so if you need one of the outlines and you didn’t get one, raise your hand and they’ll make sure that you have one. It will help you to follow along. I’ve just tried to provide again the three stanzas of the hymn and an amplified prose rendering/translation of each of those stanzas just to make it crystal clear what’s being said in the hymn.
Tonight we continue through our new and a little unusual Sunday evening sermon series that runs sporadically throughout the fall while Derek is away, and the idea, as I’ve told you before, comes from our “Hymns of the Faith” radio program. We are going to look at some of the Bible texts on which some of the great hymns of the church are based, and then we’re going to study the way the hymn itself illumines and helps us to apply vital truth in our public worship. Along the way we get to sing some of the best hymns ever written in the history of the church and learn more about what we’re singing when we sing them.
Well, the hymn tonight recalls to us, as you see in your hymnal, I Chronicles 29:13, and so let me go ahead and ask you to either look on your outline or look in your Bibles at I Chronicles 29:13, and you’ll see the language there and the echo that it finds in the lyrics that Martin Rinkart wrote in the 1630’s: “And now we thank You, our God, and praise Your glorious name.”
We could multiply similar passages in the Psalms and elsewhere in the New Testament as well, but it’s especially I Thessalonians 5:18 that I want to direct your attention to because it seems to me that Paul’s words there capture the great theme that we are taught in this hymn of thanksgiving.
This hymn of thanksgiving teaches us that our thanksgiving is non-circumstantial. It hints at that in the very lyrics of the hymn. The last bits that we just sang in the second stanza were a request to God that He would keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed, and free us from all evils in this world and the next. And so you can see the hints of trouble in those petitions for aid to the living God.
But as you know from perhaps scanning the words of introduction that I’ve given to you from the Cyberhymnal, this hymn was written in the context of the Thirty Years War, a war that ran from the 16-teens to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Tens of thousands of Europeans died in that war, and in Martin Rinkart’s city alone, the walled city of Eilenburg, 8,800 people died, half of whom he personally buried – at certain times conducting as many as 40-50 funerals a day – and yet in the context of all that national trauma he could write this hymn, Now Thank We All Our God. Surely that is a living illustration that the thanksgiving that God calls on us to have in the Christian life is not circumstantial.
Well, let’s pray before we read I Thessalonians 5:18.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your word. We pray that You would open our eyes to behold wonderful things in it, and that You would teach us to give You thanks in all circumstances, even as we hear this Your word and sing this beautiful song which is based on the truth of Your word. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hear God’s word from I Thessalonians 5:18:
“…Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Amen. And thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant word. May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.
As we prepare to study the hymn together, Now Thank We All Our God, I want you to concentrate for a few moments on this passage, I Thessalonians 5:18, because our hymn I believe is a perfect illustration of the proper Christian response to Paul’s instruction here. When Paul says this – “Give thanks in everything” – it sounds good and right and spiritual and Christian, and it is. But it’s extremely hard to obey this command, especially when we find ourselves in hard circumstances. And so I want to give consideration to this verse for just a few moments, and I want you to see three things.
First, I want you to see what we’re to do, then I want you to see why we’re to do it, and then I want you to see how we’re to do it…what we are to do, why we are to do it, and how we’re to do it.
I. What we are to do: In everything we are to give thanks.
First, Paul says in I Thessalonians 5:18, that in everything we are to give thanks. “Give thanks in all circumstances.” Notice Paul does not say “Give thanks for everything.” There are some things which it would not be proper to give thanks for. But he does say that in everything we are to give thanks.
The point that Paul wants to make is that we are to give thanks to the Lord in every circumstance, not necessarily because of that circumstance or for the circumstance, but in the circumstance. Indeed, there may be circumstances for which it would be improper to be thankful, but even in those circumstances Paul wants us to be thankful and to express our thanks to the Lord. Now that goes against the grain of our natural inclination, but thankfulness is an important expression and evidence that we have experienced the grace and mercy of God. A proper thankfulness enables us, because we’re so aware of the overwhelming grace of God to us, to be thankful in every circumstance.
You remember Helen Keller, who was afflicted with a deep darkness of sight. She said this:
“For three things I thank God every day of my life: that He has given me knowledge of His works; deep thanks that He has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; and deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to – a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.”
Now there’s a woman who could have been bitter, and yet thankfulness emanated from the depths of her being. That’s an expression of God’s work of grace in us. So that’s what we are to do. We are to give thanks in every circumstance of life.
II. Why do we give thanks: It is God's intention to create a joyful, thankful people.
Why? Well, Paul tells you. This is God’s will for you. “This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In other words, it is God’s intention to create a joyful, thankful people.
The Bible supplies us with lots of reasons to be thankful. The Lord is good, the Lord watches over us, the Lord saves us, the Lord establishes justice and shows mercy and redeems us, and more. But here we’re told that the reason that we’re to give thanks is because that’s God’s will for you to do. This is a gospel command.
Now, sometimes in life we’re faced with circumstances in which we really wonder what the Lord wants us to do, and sometimes we just wish He would put a giant billboard up for us and tell us exactly what He wants us to do. Well, in this circumstance the Lord has done precisely that. In every circumstance, here’s what He wants you to do: be thankful and give thanks. You can know that no matter where you are in life, God wants you to be thankful. This is a command that is universal in scope and continuous in time, and we need this motivation because we are so often encountering circumstances that make it hard to be thankful. So it’s God’s will, it’s God’s plan to create a people who are thankful in every situation and filled with joy.
III. How do we give thanks: It is only possible to express Gospel thankfulness in a faith-relationship with Christ.
How are we to do it? Paul tells you again. Give thanks, he says, in Christ Jesus. Only in and through Jesus Christ is a person enabled to give thanks in every circumstance. Union with Christ connects us to the source and reservoir of spiritual strength necessary to be thankful in every circumstance, and so it is the gospel itself that enables us to give thanks in every circumstance. This is a colossally demanding directive – give thanks in every circumstance – and it requires nothing less than the sovereign grace of God for us to do it.
Now that’s Paul’s instruction, and this song that we’re about to study is a beautiful illustration of a Christian responding to it. Let me just tell you a little bit about the writer of this song. He was a chorister at the Thomaskirke in Leipzig, and Dr. Wymond will tell you that later on a young man named Johann Sebastian Bach would become the choirmaster at that church a number of years after Rinkart was there.
Eventually he became a pastor and then a lead pastor in the city of Eilenburg, and he was there during the whole course of the Thirty Years War. As I mentioned to you, when the city was besieged by both the Swedish army and the Austrian army, not only were people in the city starving to death or dying in the conflict, but a plague came to the city. Disease came to the city and killed many thousands. Towards the end of the period of the siege and the war there were so many people dying that they had to bury them in mass graves, and Rinkart was there to continue to minister. When the Swedes came to the town and demanded a ransom, Rinkart went out to meet with the Swedish army and to beg them to not charge as much ransom as they were charging, and the Swedes were so impressed with him that they apparently agreed.
Now the song that we have from Rinkart, Now Thank We All Our God, was actually written originally before that war was over. The war was over in 1648…at least the Peace of Westphalia was signed at that time. The song was written in 1636, and do you know what it started as? It started as a prayer of grace to say at mealtime. He wrote the two first stanzas initially – and when you look at it, it makes perfect sense. This would be a great table prayer to pray with a family around the dinner table. Notice the three parts of the song in each of the stanzas. There’s a thanks (that’s the first stanza); there’s a request (that’s the second stanza); and, there’s a praise (that’s the third stanza). The thanks, the request…this was the original part of the song. Sometime later he added the praise.
This song may well have been used to celebrate at the time that the war ended, and it certainly has been used in grand celebrations ever since by Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians and others in special occasions of church and national life. For instance, this song was used at the dedication of the Cologne Cathedral in 1880. It was used at the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria in 1897. It was sung at the end of the World War in South Africa in 1902. It’s a song that is as significant for the German people as, say, a song like Our God, Our Help in Ages Past would be for the English people. It played that big a role in national celebrations, and it’s of course been taken over into most English and American hymnals and used. It’s one of the very best hymns in our hymnal. Let’s study it line by line.
The first stanza really reminds you of Romans 12:1, to present your body as a living sacrifice. In other words, you’re to give everything that you are and have to God in praise. Listen to the language:
“Now thank we all our God,
With heart and hands and voices.”
Let me give my heart, let me give my hands, let me give my voice to God – everything that I have, everything that I am, I’m going to give it to God in praise.
Notice also that this stanza is a stanza of direct thanks to God, even while it exhorts one another to give thanks to God. When he begins, “Now thank we all our God,” it’s as if he’s saying, ‘Let us now, all of us, thank our God.’ It’s not only a praise to God, but exhorting one another to praise God. We’ve seen this over and over in hymns. Though there’s always this vertical dimension where we’re addressing God and giving Him praise, or offering up prayers, we’re also addressing one another horizontally to encourage us to come before the Lord with thanksgiving and praise.
And you’ll have noticed that this hymn gives us reason to praise God. We’ve seen this in every one of the hymns that we’ve studied. They never ask us to praise God without telling us why, and you’ll see just in the first stanza five reasons why we’re supposed to praise God: He’s done wondrous things; the world rejoices in Him; He has blessed us from the time we were first in our mothers’ arms; He has given us unnumbered gifts of love; and, He is still our God today.
So five reasons are given just in the first stanza for us to worship Him. Let’s walk through each of the lines.
“Now thank we all our God
With hearts and hands and voices…”
[As we said, this is a call to praise God with everything that we are.]
“Who wondrous things has done,
In whom this world rejoices;”
[This is an acknowledgement that God has done wondrous things and the whole world rejoices in Him…and if we don’t, the stones will cry out.]
“Who from our mothers’ arms
Has blessed us on our way…”
[That is, He has shown us favor from the first time we were held by our mothers, and all along the way ever since.]
“With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.”
[That is, He has blessed us with innumerable gifts that flow from His love, and He is still our God today.]
So the first stanza is thanks to God. It’s a song of thanksgiving to God.
Then the second stanza is a request or petition. This is a supplication, a prayer. We’re now going to lift up a prayer request. You might miss it by the way that the song begins:
“O may this bounteous God
Through all our life be hear us…”
[Don’t miss the may. The may is indicating that a request is being lifted up, and when that may is not repeated in the next line…]
“With ever joyful hearts
And blessed peace to cheer us;”
[…you may miss the fact that that’s actually another petition.]
So let’s look through this stanza line by line. The second stanza is a request or a petition, or a supplication, and it’s a glorious one.
The first thing that it asks for is that God would be near us. In other words this is a prayer for God’s constant nearness and presence. Now you might be thinking, ‘Well, isn’t God everywhere? Why do we need to pray for God to be near us? He’s already near us.’
Well, as you know, in the Bible the Bible speaks of two ways that God can be near. There is the nearness of the fact that God is everywhere, but there is the special presence that He has with His people wherein He never leaves them alone. He is always close to them, especially in their time of need. So we go back, for instance, to the Twenty-third Psalm: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” And when you get to the middle of that Psalm you’re told, ‘Yea, though I must walk in the shadow of death, You are with me.’ And so the emphasis is even in the valley of the shadow of death the Lord is near – and in fact, especially in the valley of the shadow of death the Lord is near. Well, this stanza begins with a petition that the Lord would be near:
“O may this bounteous God
Through all our life be near us…”
…may He be near us all life long.
Then another petition. This is a petition for joyful hearts and for God’s peace:
“With ever joyful hearts
And blessed peace to cheer us.”
In other words, may we always have joyful hearts. Isn’t that an interesting admission, that the joy that we express in our hearts and lives originates from God’s work of grace in us? And so we ask God to give us joyful hearts, and His peace…total well-being.
The third prayer that we see in this stanza is a prayer for persevering in grace, and for guidance in perplexity:
“Keep us in His grace,
And guide us when perplexed;”
[When we face baffling and vexing things, Lord, give us guidance; and Lord, help us to endure through whatever…cause us to persevere in grace. Keep us in your grace.]
And then the final line is virtually a prayer that Jesus taught when He said, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Listen to it:
“And free us from all ills…”
[Deliver us from evil.]
“In this world and the next.”
[Both in this world and the world to come.]
And so the second stanza is a request.
And the third stanza is a praise, and many of you will have already caught the fact that this third stanza not only looks like The Doxology, it looks like The Gloria Patri – a Trinitarian praise of the one true God. Let’s look at it.
Stanza three goes back to praise again. In it adoration is given to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is acknowledged to be both three and one, and just like The Gloria Patri, the Trinity is referred to as it. When you sing The Gloria Patri, you sing
“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning,
Is now and ever shall be,
World without end.
Amen. Amen.”
I remember in worship class in seminary, one of our final exam questions was, “What does the it refer to in The Gloria Patri?” and if you didn’t say “Trinity” you were flunking the class! So we were studied up on that before we got to the final exam! Well, it refers in The Gloria Patri to the blessed Trinity, and the same thing here in the third stanza:
“All praise and thanks to God
The Father now be given;
The Son and…”
[Here’s the beautiful way the Holy Spirit is denominated…]
“…Him who reigns
with Them in highest Heaven:
The one eternal God,
Whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.”
[For thus it (the Triune God, three in one) is now, and was, and shall be evermore.]
And so the song is a song of thanks and of request and of praise.
One of the things that I love about knowing the circumstance of the hymn writer is knowing that when he calls you and me to follow Paul’s injunction in I Thessalonians 5:18 and to praise God in every circumstance, he’s done the same thing himself. He’s not calling us to do something that he’s not done. In the midst of the difficult circumstances of the Thirty Years War, he was ready to give thanks to God and he calls on us to do the same.
So let’s prepare to do that together now. Let’s take our hymnals out and let’s sing the whole song together. Let’s not just sing the last stanza. I’ll let you sing the last stanza of the hymn at the end after the benediction, but right now let’s sing the whole song together with what we’ve learned in mind.
[Congregation sings.]
Receive God’s benediction.
Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith through Jesus Christ our Lord, until the day break and the shadows flee away.
© First Presbyterian Church, 1390 North State St, Jackson, MS (601) 924-0575 www.fpcjackson.org
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