Tuesday 25th
Psalm 9:1
NIV – ‘I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.’
ESV – ‘I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.’
‘Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.’
Charles Wesley – Redemption Hymnal 8
I have just opened my music copy of the Redemption Hymnal and noticed that I have marked inside the date when I first had it, Spring Bank Holiday Convention, Hereford, 29th May 1976. The day after I left school! It is very worn, the cover is falling off, some of the index pages are missing, and the long edges of the pages are wearing away from the use that it has had, but, the book may be old, most of the hymns are old, some would say that they are old fashioned and out of date, but I will never agree, as they are full of timeless truth that have been a source of strength, help and blessing to countless millions over the years since the various authors composed the various hymns, hymns that have led people to worship, hymns that along with the preaching of the gospel have brought many to the foot of the Cross and hymns that have encouraged many, myself included to come to the place of surrendering wholly to the claims of the gospel.
The hymn I have turned to first, is the great hymn by Charles Wesley, ‘Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise’, it is a hymn that expresses the desire that should be deep within the heart of every blood washed believer to come before God in adoration and praise. It is a hymn that expresses that God has been so good to us that one tongue is almost insufficient to bring the praise and worship that he deserves, we need a thousand tongues because of the outpouring of his manifold blessings to those who love him.
It is Paul who reminds us in Ephesians 1:3 ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places . . .’ Every spiritual blessing deserves our thanks, beside all the blessings of daily provision, material and physical, in the words of another hymn, ‘Count your many blessings, name them one by one’ if we were to do this, we would need the thousand tongues to sing our great Redeemer’s praise!
Charles Wesley expresses some wonderful truth in this hymn, in verse one it is to express the triumphs of God’s grace, verse 2 is a prayer that God will help us to proclaim the honours of his name, verse 3 a verse of praise to the Saviour’s name and verse 5 a call to celebration, but I quote from verse 4 ‘He breaks the power of cancelled sin, he sets the pris’ner free; his blood can make the foulest clean, his blood availed for me.’ This is the wonderful, good news of the gospel, it doesn’t matter how steeped we were in sin, how far into the gutter we had crawled, the precious shed blood of Jesus was and still is sufficient to cleanse and to save and what is more it not only cleanses us from sin, but it also cancels the sin, it blots it out, it is completely erased away! Surely this is worth singing about with the one tongue we do have let alone if we were to have a thousand tongues! May we forever be grateful and willing to express from our hearts and with our tongues, our great Redeemer’s praise.
O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise
The glories of my God and King
The triumphs of his grace!
My gracious Master and my God
Assist me to proclaim
To spread thro’ all the earth abroad
The honours of your name
Jesus! the name that charms our fears
That bids our sorrows cease
’tis music in the sinner’s ears
’tis life and health and peace
He breaks the power of cancelled sin
He sets the pris’ner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean;
His blood availed for me
Hear him, ye deaf; his praise. Ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come;
And leap, ye lame, for joy!