PBC Music Ministry Retreat
September 14, 1996
One of the most beloved hymns of Christianity must surely be that old favorite that goes:
Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God my Father!
There is no shadow of turning with Thee,
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not:
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy Faithfulness!
Great is Thy Faithfulness!
Morning by morning, new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided,
Great is Thy Faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
This is a great hymn that speaks of the unchanging nature of God--what theologians call the "immutability" of God. The author, Thomas Chisholm, said that it sprung not out of some dramatic example of God's unchanging faithfulness, but out of His consistent, day-to-day provision. Shortly before his death in 1960, at the ripe old age of 94, Chisholm wrote:
"My income has never been large at any time due to impaired health in earlier years which has followed me on until now. But I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant keeping God and that He has given me many wonderful displays of His providing care which have filled me with astonishing gratefulness." [1]
As inspirational as words to Thomas Chisholm's hymn are, they are not completely original. I want to introduce you to the real author of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." I would like to ask you to join me in going back in time, in your mind's eye. If you can, imagine yourself in the city of Jerusalem. For some of you this will be easy, because you've been there. For some of you, this will be easy in a month or two, because I know there are some here who are going on the trip to Israel coming up in October. But I want to take you back to a time long before the Israel of today. For concreteness, try to imagine yourself standing in the precincts of the temple--the center of Jewish religious and social life. I want to go back long before the modern establishment of the state of Israel, long before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Army in 70 A.D., long before Jesus walked the precincts of the temple and taught and worshipped there. I want to go back about 900 years earlier, when the great temple of Solomon still stood in Jerusalem and was the focal point for the worship of the people of God.
You will remember that Israel longed for a King--and God gave them Saul, then David, then Solomon--who built the temple in Jerusalem. The ancient writer Josephus said that:
"...the whole temple shined, and dazzled the eyes of such as entered, by the splendor of the gold that was on every side of them. Now the whole structure of the temple was made, with great skill, of polished stones, and those laid together so very harmoniously and smoothly, that there appeared to the spectators no sign of any hammer, or other instrument of architecture, but as if, without any use of them, the entire materials had naturally united themselves together, that the agreement of one part with another seemed rather to have been natural than to have arisen from the force of tools upon them." [2]
Now, for a long time, things had not been well in Israel. There were longstanding resentments and rivalries between different tribes. After Solomon died and his son Rehoboam took the throne, his policies of heavy taxation and forced labor finally caused the ten northern tribes to secede and form their own kingdom. About 200 years later, the mighty Assyrian army rumbled down out of the North and captured the Northern kingdom of Israel. They took the 10 tribes into captivity, where they utterly disappear from history. Two weeks ago today, Kathy and I spent the day at the British Museum in London, where you can see wonderful panels of carved relief, depicting the subjugation of various enemies by the Assyrian Army. The remaining two tribes formed the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Judah managed to fend off the Assyrians, but less than 200 years later, they found themselves staring into the jaws of an even more dangerous enemy--Babylon. The Babylonian Empire had gained ascendency over the Assyrians, and little Judah was caught between an Egypt that was growing stronger again and the mighty Babylonian Army. In 586 BC, the axe finally fell. After a 2-1/2 year siege, Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. We read in 2 Kings 25:8-15:
"Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire. So all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Then the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to Babylon and the rest of the multitudes, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away into exile. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen....Now the bronze pillars which were in the house of the Lord, and the stands and the bronze sea which were in the house of the Lord, the Chaldeans broke into pieces and carried the bronze to Babylon. And they took away the pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the spoons, and all the bronze vessels which were used in the temple service. The captain of the guard took away the firepans and the basins, what was fine gold and what was silver."
It's hard for me to imagine what Jerusalem must have looked like after this destruction. The only images I can conjure up are pictures I've seen of cities in Germany that were fire-bombed in World War II, or perhaps pictures of Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb. For the people who had lived in Jerusalem, it must have seemed like their world had come to an end. In only 400 years, their once-mighty kingdom had split in two, one part to be swallowed up by the Assyrians, the rest to the Babylonians. By and large, they had been exported from the land in which God had promised them they would dwell forever. The city that was their pride and joy was devasted--burned to the ground. The walls protecting their city were levelled. Their temple--the center of their worship and social life--was profaned and plundered. Their people were led off in captivity to a foreign land to become subject to foreign Gods, perhaps never to return to the land of their fathers.
Some were left behind in what was left of Jerusalem. One of these was the prophet Jeremiah. Given the choice of going into exile in Babylon or remaining in what was left of Jerusalem, he chose to remain in the city about which he wrote:
How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
She has become like a widow who was once great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces has become a forced laborer!
She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks;
She has none to comfort her among all her lovers.
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
They have become her enemies.
(Lamentations 1:1-2)
Of his own personal feelings, he writes:
My eyes fail because of tears,
My spirit is greatly troubled;
My heart is poured out on the earth,
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
When little ones and infants faint in the streets of the city.
(Lamentations 2:11)
Here he weeps because of the destruction of the city, but he goes on to lament his own hardship:
I am the man who has seen affliction
Because of the rod of His wrath.
He has driven me and made me walk in darkness and not in light.
Surely against me He has turned His hand repeatedly all day.
He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away.
He has broken my bones.
He has besieged and encompassed me with bitterness and hardship.
In dark places He has made me dwell,
Like those who have long been dead.
He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;
He has made my chain heavy.
Even when I cry out and call for help,
He shuts out my prayer.
He has blocked my ways with hewn stone;
He has made my paths crooked.
He is to me like a bear lying in wait,
Like a lion in secret places.
He has turned aside my ways and torn me to pieces;
He has made me desolate.
(Lamentations 3:1-11)
This is pretty heavy stuff! I've been depressed and felt desolate at times in my life, but nothing to compare to that. I can't imagine the degree of despair that a person must feel when it seems that their entire world is collapsing. But what amazes me is that the same man who wrote these words only a few lines later could write:
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease.
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Thy faithfulness.
'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I have hope in Him.'
(Lamentations 3:21-24)
Does that sound familiar? That is the origin of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." Now you know who the true author of that hymn is.
Now, either Jeremiah was schizophrenic, to be able to write so powerfully with such despair and then with such hope, or he knew something. I choose to think he knew something, and that what he knew is what Thomas Chisholm added when he turned these words into a hymn:
"There is no shadow of turning in Thee.
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not.
As Thou has been Thou forever wilt be."
Jeremiah was a man who understood the unchanging nature of the God he served. Jeremiah understood the immutability of God.
The immutability of God is a solid scriptural principle. In Malachi 3:6 God says: "For I, the Lord, do not change..." In Psalm 102 we read:
Of old Thou didst found the earth;
And the heavens are the work of Thy hands.
Even they will perish, but Thou dost endure;
And all of them will wear out like a garment;
Like clothing Thou wilt change them, and they will be changed.
But Thou art the same,
And Thy years will not come to an end.
In the New Testament, we can read in James:
"Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."
But I think that perhaps the most succinct, pithy statement of God's changelessness, and the most relevant one to us as followers of Jesus, is the one made by the writer of Hebrews in Chapter 13, Verse 8. Why don't you turn there with me if you have your bibles, since I want to spend a little time there. He says simply:
"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever."
I don't know about you, but to me, it is a wonderfully comforting thing to know that the one you have put your faith in, the one you have surrendered your life to, the one whom you trust for salvation, is one who never changes--one who has been the same in nature, in essence, in character from eternity past to eternity future. That should be a powerful encouragement to us in changing times.
But there is something else I want to point out there, and that is the context. This wonderfully comforting verse is the second sentence in the paragraph. Look at the first one:
"Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith."
He goes on to say in verse 17:
"Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. "
I think that everyone here, unless you're new to PBC, knows that there have been a lot of changes taking place in the last year. They have been difficult changes, unpopular changes. Those of us who sit out in the pews are hard-pressed to understand them and why they occured. We see the outcome, but don't always know all the events that led up to that outcome. We hear one side of the story, but don't always hear the other--especially when the other side is that of the elders. I know that some people have decided that the leadership at PBC is on the wrong track, that they have failed, and that conviction has led some members of our body to leave PBC entirely. I am not here to commend or condemn the decisions of any particular individuals. There may or may not be substance to their objections. I think that tonight you are going to hear about some new changes taking place at PBC that represents a recognition on the part of the elders that there are some things that they need to do better, or differently, in response to the changing needs of our body. But what I am here to do is to share my conviction, as I've mulled over the events of the past year and searched through the Word, is that before we declare that our leadership has failed, before we decide that it is so hopeless that we need to leave the church altogether, we ought to think about what this passage says.
Do we "remember our leaders, who speak the word of God" to us? Do we observe the Godly lives they lead and aspire to the same kind of deep faith and devotion to the Lord that they have? Do we obey them and submit to their authority? I know that I sometimes forget that leaders operate under the tremendous responsibility of having to account for God for the quality of their shepherding, for the example they set and the decisions they make. We can rest assured that our leaders will give an account of whatever attitudes and actions of theirs were pertinent to the events of this last year. That is a tremendous burden! The writer of Hebrews cautions us not add to that burden through are disobedience and lack of submission to their God-given authority, and he points out that we are the ultimate beneficiaries of an eldership whose leadership is accepted and followed, so that they can focus their energies on the task of leading.
It's true that our leaders are not perfect, and that in their humanity they will make mistakes, sometimes big ones. They will change their minds and they will set into motion changes that effect the rest of us, and sometimes thoses changes will be uncomfortable. But I think what we have to fall back on is the statement that's made here, and I don't think it's an accident that it is in such close proximity to this teaching about leaders:
"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
I also want to point out that although we are called to remember our leaders, to consider the outcome of their way of life, to imitate their faith, to obey them, and to submit to their authority, we do that not because of who they are, but because of who they serve. He is the same Jesus that He was before there was a PBC. He is the same Jesus He was be 50 years ago when PBC got started. He is the same Jesus that He was when PBC South split off. He is the same Jesus that He was before Dorman and Glenn came to PBC, and He is the same Jesus now that they are gone.
In a world where so much changes so fast, the unchanging nature of our Lord is an anchor for us. He loves us now, He always has and always will. He is in control now, always has been and always will be. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
References:
[1] Kenneth W. Osbeck, Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Devotions (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1990), 348.
[2] Josephus, Antiquities 8.3.2