Aches and Praise Six Hundred & Five

April 14, 2023
 
Dear friends,  
 

In recent weeks, I have been reading “The Book of Signs” by Dr. David Jeremiah. If you have read previous editions of this blog, you know that I have been blessed by his insightful writing and extensive quotations from the Word of God. This week I learned some very interesting things about Isaac Watts and one of the hymns that he wrote more than 300 years ago.

In a chapter entitled “Millennium” Dr. Jeremiah shares the following: “Isaac Watts began writing poems when he was seven, and, after his college years, he began writing hymns. Isaac lived in a time when hymns were frowned upon, for many British believers only sang the psalms in church. But Isaac wrote hymns anyway, and he is remembered today as the father of English hymnody. He also served as a pastor in London and wrote textbooks on logic used by the major universities of his day. He was small in size, eccentric in habit, and great of heart.

But Watts would be chagrined to know “Joy to the World” is sung today as a Christmas carol, because he wasn’t thinking of the birth of Christ when he wrote it, but of our Lord’s return and the golden age that would follow the second coming.

This hymn first appeared in a 1719 hymnbook, in which Watts took many of the biblical psalms and paraphrased them through the eyes of the New Testament. “Joy to the World” is based on his interpretation of Psalm 98, and the words don’t refer to the birth of Christ at all. Let’s put it to a test. Review the words below and see if you can determine what they are really about:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!                                                        
Let earth receive her King;                                                                       
Let every heart prepare Him room,                                                                   
And heaven and nature sing,                                                                   
And heaven and nature sing,                                                                       
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.
Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!                                                        
Let men their songs employ;                                                              
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains                                  
Repeat the sounding joy,                                                                   
Repeat the sounding joy,                                                                  
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.
He rules the world with truth and grace,                                                       
And makes the nations prove                                                                   
The glories of His righteousness,                                                       
And wonders of His love,                                                                      
And wonders of His love,                                                                      
And wonders, wonders, of His love.
 

Did those things happen when Jesus came the first time to be wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger? Did earth receive her King? Was nature transformed …? Did thorns stop infesting the ground? Was the curse lifted? Did sin and sorrow cease, and does Christ currently rule the world with grace and truth? Do the nations of the world acknowledge His righteousness and the wonders of His love?

Those statements do reflect biblical promises, but they’re not about the first coming of Christ. They reference His Second Coming and the glorious Millennium that will occur when He returns. Now, I don’t intend to stop singing “Joy to the World” at Christmas, but as I sing the words I’ll be looking forward to His return and to the era of peace He will establish on earth.”

May we rejoice in the many blessings of knowing Christ the King of kings and Lord of lords!

Scripture for the weekend: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” Luke 24:45-47 (ESV)

Thought for the weekend: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” – John Piper (from his book “When I Don’t Desire God”)

 

By His grace,                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Steve


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