The Love of God

Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope. And that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news is of all glad things in this world, the gladdest thing of all. Frederick Buechner. This is The Bright Forever. Welcome to The Bright Forever. We had a great week last week as I got to sit down with my amazing wife and daughters and talk through Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus. And these next few weeks will be just as awesome and exciting. Today, I will be speaking to the man I probably know better than anyone. Maybe not his wife, but I know him pretty well. It's my brother, Matt Peavyhouse. And he has the rare gift of not only being my brother, but he also gets to be my employer because I am a teacher where he is the headmaster at Tampa Bay Christian Academy. And we get to work together every day. It's his favorite thing in the whole world, just to get to see my smiling face. Every single day. Actually, I don't get to see him much. He is always doing something, always going somewhere, always having meetings. So I don't get to see him a whole lot, but he is doing a tremendous job at the school, and I love teaching at the school. And he's actually not a bad boss, so I give him props for that. Today we are going to be looking at a hymn, and this is a hymn actually that he kind of picked, because I was wanting to know What were some of his favorite hymns? And this is one that he specifically loved, and it's called The Love of God. And it's a hymn that my girls also love this hymn as well, and we've been singing it all week. And so this is a song that means a lot to him. It means a lot to me. I love this hymn. I love the words to this hymn. And we're going to get down and start talking about it right now. Frederick M. Lehman is the author of this much-loved hymn, The Love of God. He was born in 1868 in Germany, and at the age of four, his family immigrated to the United States. They settled in Iowa, where Frederick spent most of his life. Later, he moved out to California, where he became a businessman. As it so happens with many beloved hymns, This hymn came after a challenging time in Lehman's life. In 1917, suffering the loss of his business after some deals he had made went horribly wrong, we find Lehman on a farm trying to get back on his feet. He was working long days of manual labor at a Pasadena packing house. He packed oranges and lemons into wooden crates. One Sunday, He was so moved by the preacher's sermon on the love of God that he had trouble going to sleep that night. When he returned to the packhouse the following day, he decided, as a musician normally would, to write a song based on this sermon that he had heard. He wrote the lyrics on anything he could get his hands on, scraps of paper, even the broken pieces of the crates that he was packing. He used anything he could to write the lyrics of this beautiful hymn. It was that important to him. He felt like he had to write this song by any means necessary. When he got home that evening, he produced the melody, and soon he had two verses and a refrain. And while today we wouldn't think anything less of a song that had two verses and a chorus, in those days, a song was considered incomplete until it had three verses, at least three verses. So Laman had to come up with at least one more verse to complete his song. As he struggled to find a third verse, he remembered a poem that Someone had given him years ago. He'd kept the poem on a card and used it as a bookmark. At the bottom of the card, Lehman found this written. These words were found written on a cell wall in a prison some 200 years ago. It is not known why the prisoner was incarcerated. Neither is it known if the words were original or Or if he had heard them somewhere and had decided to put them in a place where he could be reminded of the greatness of God's love. Whatever the circumstances, he wrote them on the wall of his prison cell. In due time, he died. And the men who had the job of repainting his cell were impressed by the words. Before their paintbrushes obliterated them forever, one of the men jotted them down, and thus they were preserved. No one can really say for certain if this prisoner was the one who actually composed the poem. He could have heard it or seen this poem somewhere else and decided to write it on prison wall. But whatever the circumstance that led to this poem being scribbled on prison walls... We thank God for a powerful message. Amazingly, the poem Laman found fit the melody. And he had found his third verse. The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. The wondering child is reconciled by God's beloved son. The aching soul again made whole and priceless pardon won. O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong. It shall forevermore endure, the saints' and angels' song. When ancient time shall pass away and human thrones and kingdoms fall, when those who hear refuse to pray, on rocks and hills and mountains call. God's love so sure shall still endure, all measureless and strong. Grace will resound the whole earth round, the saints' and angels' song. O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong. It shall forevermore endure, the saints' and angels' song. Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every one a scribe by trade? to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. Oh, love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong. It shall forevermore endure. The Saints and Angels song. Lyrically, this is one of the most powerful hymns I have ever heard. For my brother as well. So he sat down with me and we talked about our love for this hymn. What it means to us. And the power of these words. Enjoy.

Enjoy.

We are here today with my brother, Matt Peavyhouse. Hello. Glad to be here. We are talking about the hymn, The Love of God, by Frederick Lehman. It was written in 1917, and I don't really have a lot of questions. I think we're just going to kind of talk about it. So I'll start with a question, and then you can just... Answer however you want to, and that'll start a conversation. I can do that. Okay. What's so great about this hymn? Well, it's about the love of God.

That's a great thing. No, so you asked me originally about different hymns that are my favorites, and it's interesting. Some hymns that are my favorites, you know, as a worship leader, I've never really played out in front of other people because they're kind of the personal one. This is the exact opposite. If I'm ever asked to share a song, I think this song so beautifully portrays kind of my mission and what it's been to be a... A Christian and a churchman and kind of my goal clergy-wise has been to really be an embodiment of this song and what it's saying. And on top of that, I just think it's one of my beautiful songs. I mean, when we get to the third verse, I don't know if there's a better verse or more poetic verse written outside of Scripture than the third verse of this song.

I would agree with you completely. It's probably my favorite verse of any song. It's just beautifully... What's really interesting about it, though... It's the only verse of the song that's not written by the author, actually.

Yeah, that's what makes it pretty interesting is that Lehman writes based on something he had experienced for the first two verses, and then everything you read talks about how he felt that you couldn't have just two verses to a song, and you had to have three. And so he went and found what appears to be a third verse, and later it's been seen on– was seen on a prison wall. And it's something that came out of a historical kind of a story, a myth of where it comes from. But it really is just a profound picture. But especially for musicians and songwriters, it's such a good, I mean, it's literally saying, here's why I do the music I do as a Christian songwriter. And it's never going to measure up because it can't compare to what I'm talking about, which is the love of God.

For me, one of my– so last week we talked about It Is So Sweet to Trust in Jesus, and I interviewed my wife and my girls. And you had to have me write it on afterwards

because I'm like right up there in importance

with your wife. Yes, exactly. I was like, I've got to have somebody as amazing– Yeah. And, and, and honestly cute too. Well, that's just cause we look alike. Well, that, well, I mean, yes, I'm a little cuter, but okay. So last week, last week when I interviewed them, one of the things that we talked about, because Lily's favorite part of tis so sweet is the word plunge. Cause it talks about plunging into, uh, That he plunges us neath his cleansing flood. And she's like, the only concept of plunge that she's ever heard is to use an actual plunger. And so she has this image in her head of God plunging us. That's awesome. It's fantastic. And we just talked about, just briefly, about... how I love hymns because some of the words, we hear some of these words and we don't usually hear them in the context we normally hear them in now, like plunge. Well, one of my favorite words in this song is the fact that we say, how measureless, measureless. I love the word measureless because we measure our time. We measure our finances. We measure everything we do every day. We measure and measure and measure. And so our mind And just instinctively, when we see something, we're measuring it by, do I want to spend my time on this? Do I want to spend my money? Do I want to spend my resources? Can I do this? Can I do that? And to stop and think about God's love being measureless.

Yeah, and he actually says in the second verse, he says, all measureless. Like, if it's measureless and you can't imagine what that is, then... What about the fact that it's all measured? Like it's, it's measureless and then it goes to 11. Like just that picture. Like, Oh, this is, this is measureless. And now it's all measureless. Like, uh, he can't, he can't, a measureless is not a big enough word for him. And so he, he, uh, goes a little further. So yeah, I mean, throughout it though, the twists he uses at different times, and there are a couple different versions, and the version I like most is a friend's version, but there are some that that last phrase, I love the phrase that he uses, the redeeming grace to Adam's race, which isn't in the original, I mean, whether it was used in one of the other versions, another hymnal, but redeeming grace to Adam's race, the saints and angels song like this that picture of like this is a song the the the love of god is so measureless and strong that it's a song that's sharing the grace to to us to adam's race but it's um but it's the saint it's actually the saints and the angels song it's it's it's uh it's something otherworldly and greater and yeah

Well, but at the same time, it's not just the angel song. It's the saint song. It's our song. It's the song of those who have been redeemed, those of Adam's race who have been born again. Yeah,

the erring child he reconciled. Yeah. So that's a huge, huge part. But I mean, I think he begins at the very beginning, say, my tongue, my pen cannot tell you how big this is and how great it is. and he just goes on to try and you know say it and again it's measureless but no it's not just measureless it's all measureless and and like it's he his his words fall short um and and i think that's that's a huge a huge thing that is what he's saying is that that the love of god is so great that the The best ways for us to describe it are not going to be grand enough, great enough, large enough to make sense in the long run.

I love what you said at the beginning. As songwriters, as worship leaders, our whole goal is to put into song– These concepts of God's love, of who He is, of His measureless love for us, the all-measureless love for us, and even the word measureless, it falls short of His actual... Even the words we use, and that's one of the reasons why I love this hymn, and especially that third verse, is, yes, that's what... that's our whole goal is to put into words what God's love means to us. And even that, even with the greatest words that we can possibly think of, and I think the third verse is probably one of the hands-down greatest verses in all of hymnody, and yet even that falls short of us really understanding God's love.

Yeah. Yeah, I listened to it. It reminds me of one of my other favorite hymns here is love you know that idea here is love vast as the ocean like you're again you're talking about something that you can't even you can't put words to to understand the greatness of it and that's why I think you get to the third verse and that's I mean we've talked about it over and over but are we allowed to actually say what it says because I think that's important oh okay yeah because I mean he gets into it and he says you know could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made Like, that's just... He's saying, if everything could write down, if everything was in production to give us... the love of God, because his next verse is, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll, which is all the skies of the world, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. He's just giving just a beautiful picture there that there's nothing that's going to be great enough and nothing that's going to be enough to contain the love of God. And I think we so often, and I'll jump on a hobby horse, but we often want to find things that separate us as Christians and divide us, and we kind of focus on those things. When this idea that the God of the universe loves us and that we, in turn, are responding to Him in love, puts us in such a unique position as His creatures and His creation that as Christians, if we're all on the same page there, then we're all on the same,

I mean,

we've got a large percentage of what we need in that.

And recognizing, because I think the love of God contains the fullness of the gospel and what's going on there, but there's a lot to that.

Who? Who? And then he says, And then he says, And just that idea of that is the power

of God's love. Right. And just, again, going back to the vastness, the measurelessness, that he's definitely trying– I mean, Paul in probably one of his most famous passages is trying to make clear that that love is– uncontainable. Yeah. And, and that's where, I mean, you get into a lot of theology out of that, like this idea that is there a, is there a way to lose that love? And so personally, my, my theological sense says no, like, no, he's making it very clear that love one, there's, there's a gift nature to it, but it's also, it's not given by somebody who's going to take it back. Yeah. And, and it's, it's given, it's, it's the, you know, the, I see these verses in the song having a clear chorus and that idea of the love of God, the richness, the pureness, the measureless, the strength, the strife, and the everlasting nature of it is all listed there.

Well, and in that second verse, he actually kind of goes into it and says, God's love so sure shall still endure all measureless and strong. grace will resound the whole earth round. Right. The saints and angels song.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's all right there. I mean, and he, he really, right before that, he quotes from Isaiah where he says that, you know, uh, when men refuse to, to pray, when, when men refuse, uh, to, to write these words down, uh, rocks and hills and mountains are going to cry out because of that. And so, um, Yeah, I mean, I think there's just a depth to the song. It's a very simple song, but there's a depth to it that isn't contained in most other things, most other hymns. And I think specifically, and again, my own hobby horse, but just specifically in the songs that are written today, I really don't... Yeah. I don't think today's songs measure up in that same way. I don't know

what you mean because like, my goodness, if he had only written this like 80 years later, all he would have needed was the chorus.

Yeah, exactly. If you just repeat the chorus a lot, it's almost the exact same thing. I mean, just sing the chorus, you know.

Sing the chorus 15 or 20 times and that's your song. What's your problem with that? Well, the chorus is

16 words long, and so it really makes it a little long for today's... For today's... Yeah, you really gotta stick with that, you know, 7 to 10 words.

Actually, that's one of the things I love about this story, is the fact that we may never have known this writing on a wall... Right. A prisoner just wrote this on a wall. We may never have known this if Lehman did not think his song needed a third verse. Yeah, and

I really wonder, you know, because of the time period, because he's writing it in 1917, like, is this a prisoner of war song? Like, is this coming out of World War I? Is there something related to that? Like, especially just the utter and complete lack of the love of God that's present in a, if you understand what's going on with World War I especially, and just the depravity is that it's being unleashed on those soldiers, and then to have this as a counterpoint to that. And I'm not saying it is. I mean, we don't know.

Actually, I think it was, I think he said, or I've read somewhere that, the prison it was like 200 years earlier

oh okay

so yeah so so yeah

even more so no so that's not at all then

but it's a great

story yeah but then you've got the 17 you know the early 1700s so you have you have that that time period that's you know just again a beginning of the enlightenment but a real darkness you know and coming out of that and then for these words to come out of that pretty cool.

Absolutely. Well, you're going to grace us with singing this song too so

yeah well I'm just gonna sing the last verse and the kind of chorus that's written and I'll say the version that I'm gonna do comes from a friend Buck Buchanan which we're not telling him about it and so we'll see if he listens or not that's the

only way he's gonna

know

he'll know and then I'm gonna get sued for like copyright or something I

don't think he can because although he did arrange it like that's it's pretty much I'm just doing the part that's layman's word. So, uh,

Buck, if you hear this, first of all, thank you for listening. And second, if you would like to come after me for copyright infringement, just know that I have no money.

Yeah, yeah.

And this podcast makes me no money. Yeah, exactly.

And listen, your employer has no way to help you. And so just the part that's not written is that Andy and I work together as well. And I get to be his boss during the day and He gets to tell me what to do during family stuff. And so it all works out in the end. And I think one of the things I did want to bring up, because people have asked, because I wrote a review for your podcast on iTunes, and a number of people have commented about, like, why would I say something so mean? I did not say anything mean. I think I actually said— Honestly, I haven't even seen it yet. If you put out—am I allowed to say the word— Because if you put out crap, I would tell you, hey, this podcast is crap. You should stop it.

You would. I don't know if you'd say it out like in public, but you would come to me. Yeah, I would be like, hey, you should stop this. That was

horrible. It sucks. Yeah, but I didn't. And not only did I not, I've listened to it and I'll continue to listen to it because I think it's a great mix of story, songs, the heart, and the gospel. Yeah. Those are the things that I really love to listen to and to hear about, so it's good.

Well, thank you. Thank you for coming.

Glad to be here. Glad to be a part of everything. I enjoyed this today. Yeah, so we're going to end with a little of the song. Yeah, cool. Let's hear it. We're just going to listen to that last verse. We will think the ocean filled And were the skies of parchment made Were every stalk on earth a quill And every man a scribe by trade To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry Could the scroll contain the whole, the stretch from sky to sky? The love of God, how rich and pure. How measureless and strong it shall forevermore endure. Awesome. Very cool. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for

letting us do this. Anytime. And I'm probably going to have you back sometime.

Yeah, I've got a lot of other songs.

Thank you as always for listening. Thank you for coming back each and every week. We've had listeners from across the globe, which is really amazing to me and remarkable. from the UK all the way to South Korea. And it is really just, I'm dumbfounded by it. It really is amazing to see where God is taking this podcast. And it's all because of you all. Because you're continuing to listen. So thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you for coming back every single week. We would love to hear from you, your stories, your favorite hymns, any suggestions. Please let us know by sending us a message either through the contact us section of the website at www.thebrightforever.com or by emailing us at podcast at thebrightforever.com. That's podcast at thebrightforever.com. Also, please share us with your friends on Facebook, those on Twitter, on Instagram. Let people know what they're missing out on because they're missing out on a bunch of amazing hymns. So send messages, tweet, gram, Facebook. I don't know all the terms you're supposed to say. Tweet it out. I'm terrible with social media, but I'm trying to do better. But share as much as you can. Draw people in. Let them know that there's something happening here. And let them know how they can join us each week as we continue this journey through these powerful hymns of the faith. I'm excited about next week as well. My pastor, Tim Armstrong will be joining me to talk a little Isaac Watts. And I just love getting to sit down and talk with him. He and I have a blast when we sit down and talk pretty much about any subject, but he really loves these great hymns of the faith. And so next week, you will not want to miss out on getting to hear that. Let me leave you with this prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your love. God, the love of Jesus that is so rich, so pure, so measureless and strong. Father, remind us that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Let us not just say it, but God help us believe it. God, give us an amazing week. Bring us back here next week safely to continue to hear these powerful words. God, we love you. We praise you. We pray for an amazing week. Thank you again for who you are and for your love in Jesus name. Amen. Have a great week, and we'll see you back here next week. We're out.

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