CCC Gainesville | Blog
“The cross of Christ is a revelation of the love of God, for it reveals what that love is prepared to suffer for the one loved. I believe that the presentation of the death of Christ as substitution exhibits the love of the cross more richly, fully, gloriously and glowingly than does any other presentation. It gets nearer to the heart of that love than any of the other pictures that the New Testament contains.”
J I Packer
The 2nd Grade Group
Despite what you may or may not have read in our bulletin for this week (error mine), Chris Tomlin did not co-author Amazing Grace. He did reimagine the song with the help of Louie Giglio to create My Chains Are Gone. We won’t be singing that version this week. Instead, we will rediscover the original version to its original tune together. We have discussed the story of John Newton in the past. He authored this song in the mid 18th century, writing it to herald his moment of “great deliverance” – a time at sea where all seemed lost.
What strikes me most about John Newton is his story. It’s human. It’s flawed and full of the need for God’s grace, just like mine. To sing these old songs and to preserve their original melodies at times can be a valuable excercise in worship. We remember that these song writers were men and women with problems. We sing the same words and these familiar tunes (in this case, most people agree that the melody stemmed from old slave spirituals, likely to have been sung on the slave ship that Newton captained), and we apply our own lives to them. As you offer your voice with the bride of Christ this week, put yourself in the hymn writer’s shoes. Have you ever had a moment of “great deliverance”? Would you have written it differently?
4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.
7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
Sunday we shall see from Exodus 17:8-16 that being a follower of Christ involves engaging in a battle. Charles Spurgeon helps orient us:
“The children of Israel were not under the power of Amalek — they were
free men; and so we are not under the power of sin any longer. The yoke
of sin has been broken by God’s grace from off our necks, and now we have
to fight not as slaves against a master, but as freemen against a foe. Moses
never said to the children of Israel while they were in Egypt, “Go, fight with
Pharaoh.” Not at all; it is God’s work to bring us out of Egypt and make
us his people, but when we are delivered from bondage, although it is God’s
work to help us, we must be active in our cause. Now that we are alive from
the dead we must wrestle with principalities and powers and spiritual
wickedness if we are to overcome.”
