O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing

Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion. It's a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ. Billy Graham. This is The Bright Forever. Hello and welcome to The Bright Forever, where each week we explore the power and the richness of some of the greatest hymns of the faith. I am Andy Peavyhouse, your host and your guide on this adventure through hymnody. Another week and we are back at it again. Last week, we explored the idea of friendship with God as we dove into Joseph Scriven and his hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. We learned that even in the hardest of adversities, we have a God who remains closer than a friend. He doesn't just want a bunch of servants to do his bidding. He wants us to know him as friends. And he laid down his life for us so we could have that relationship with him eternally. Today, we're going to talk about conversion, specifically the conversion of one man to and his anniversary poem to commemorate what God had done in his life. His name was Charles Wesley. And our hymn for this week is O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing. O for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise. You may have heard of John Wesley, his brother. Though John Wesley is called the father of Methodism, where we get the Methodist church, his brother, Charles Wesley, may be called the father of Methodist congregational singing. Charles Wesley was the composer of more than 6,000 hymns. But those which bore special significance to him have been among the most endearing and the most enduring. One of these was a hymn called And Can It Be, which we're going to talk about probably next season. This was written days after his conversion. Another 04 A Thousand Tongues to Sing was written in 1739 to mark the first anniversary of that conversion. And although I don't celebrate all of Charles Wesley's theology, today's hymn is one of his many that I believe we can benefit from. Charles Wesley was the greatest hymn writer of the Wesley family. If you take quantity and quality into consideration, he would be considered one of the greatest hymn writers of the ages. Charles Wesley was the youngest son and the 18th child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. He was born at Epworth Rectory, December 18th, 1707. In 1716, he went to Westminster School, being provided with a home, with, you know, room and board, by his elder brother, Samuel, who was an usher at the school. Until 1721, when he was elected King's Scholar. And as such, he received his room and board and his education for free. In 1726, Charles Wesley was elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1729 and became a college tutor. When Wesley was converted, he had been ill and in bed for some time, and the fear of death had often come into his mind. On Sunday, May 21st, 1738, his brother and some friends came in and sang a hymn. After they went out, he sat alone and prayed for some time. In his journal, we read this. I was composing myself to sleep in quietness and peace when I heard one come in and say, In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise and believe, and thou shalt be healed of all thine infirmities. The words struck me to the heart. I lay musing and trembling. With a strange palpitation of heart, I said, yet feared to say, I believe. I believe. These memories that he had were woven into what we know as the third verse of this hymn. Jesus, the name that calms our fears. Charles disliked the prevalence of psalms in worship during his time. Not unlike Isaac Watts, who we've talked about before, who was an early contemporary of the Wesley brothers. Watts introduced hymn singing as a common experience. Watts connected the era between strict psalm singing, which we've talked about, and this freer expression of hymns. And he's often called the father of English hymnody. However, the Wesleys emphasized the nature of human experience within hymn. rather than the more objective perspective of Isaac Watts. In this, Charles Wesley reached much further into the emotional side, into the emotional realm of human experience. Wesley's poetic response to his conversion is brimming with literary style and a Just gorgeous handling of language. He uses hyperbole right from the start with O4, a thousand tongues to sing to heighten the emotional impact of the poem. Well, not right from the start. What we know as the first verse or the first stanza was actually the seventh stanza. The text for this hymn originally contained 18 stanzas. Today, it is usually reduced to about four to seven, which would not really sit very well with Wesley, considering the following words, which his brother John wrote in the preface to the 1779 poem. Methodist hymnal. I beg leave to mention a thought which has been long upon my mind and which I should long ago have inserted in the public papers. Had I not been unwilling to stir up a nest of hornets. Many gentlemen have done my brother and me, though without naming us, the honor to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire they would not attempt to mend them, for they are really not able. None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse. Therefore, I must beg them these two favors. Either let them stand just as they are, to take things for better or worse, or to add the true reading in the margin or at the bottom of the page, that we may no longer be accountable either for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men. The Wesleys didn't want you messing with their songs. or borrowing from others. Yet even in this hymn, Wesley was borrowing ideas from others. The stanza that gives us our title, beginning, oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, is based off of a German hymn by Johann Menzer from 1704, who wrote, oh, that I had a thousand voices to praise my God with a thousand tongues. With that in mind, Charles may not have enjoyed one of my favorite versions of this hymn by Matthew Berryman Jones from Indelible Grace.

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 through all the earth abroad beyond of your name For a thousand tongues For a thousand tongues For a thousand tongues He speaks and listening to his voice New life the dead receive The mournful broken hearts rejoice The humble poor believe Hear him, you deaf, his praise you dumb Your loosened tongues employ Come on A thousand tongues to sing.

That was Oh For A Thousand Tongues performed by Matthew Perryman Jones from the 2008 album Indelible Grace Side B by Indelible Grace Music. You can find a link to this song and the whole Indelible Grace hymn book and other amazing resources in the episode notes and on our website at www.thebrightforever.com. I just want to briefly... talk about the hymn itself. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing. Our great Redeemers praise the glory of my God and King, the triumphs of his grace. That is the picture of conversion. Charles Wesley loved conversion. celebrating his conversion. He wrote a hymn every year on his birthday. So it really didn't surprise me that he would also write a hymn on his spiritual birthday, on the day of his conversion. And man, what a song to write. The glories of my God and King, the triumphs of his grace. I don't know about you, but man, when I look at my own life, all you can say is that it is a triumph of grace that God loves me at all. My gracious master and my God assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth abroad, the honors of thy name. I've been saved. Now I want to share it. Help me share it. Why do I want to share it? Because Jesus is the name that charms fears. He bids our sorrows cease. He's music in the sinner's ears to his life and health and peace. He breaks the power of canceled sin. Ah, sin doesn't have a hold on us anymore. He has set us free. His blood can make the foulest clean. And his blood availed for me. I don't know about you, but that makes me happy. Because there's some foulness in my sin. And God's blood has availed for me. He speaks and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive, the mournful broken hearts rejoice, the humble poor believe. This hymn is such an amazing picture of a life transformed by what Christ has done for us on the cross. I will say this. If you don't know what this is talking about, if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're going, man, I don't get it. I'd love to talk to you about it. Send us an email at podcast at the bright forever.com. Go onto our website, send us a message, ask questions because there is a God who loves you and who wants more than anything. for you to know him and to be in a relationship with him. We talked about it last week. He wants to be our friend. He wants us to be friends, not just servants, not just people who do his bidding. He calls us friend and he loves you more than you could possibly know. So we'll end here with a picture of the song that you probably know better in its original tune. Lowell Mason's arrangement of the Carl Glazier tune, Asmon, is what you're probably used to hearing with Oh Four Thousand Tongues to Sing. Glazier was a German composer and a contemporary of Beethoven. Though Charles Wesley's text has been sung to a number of tunes throughout the years, Asmon is the predominant choice throughout the hymnody of most denominations.

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That was Oh For A Thousand Tongues To Sing, performed by Nathan Drake from the album Hymns of the Father, Volume 1 of The Trinity Project, from reawakenhymns.com. You can find a link to this song and all of the amazing resources Reawaken Hymns has to offer in the episode notes and on our website at www.thebrightforever.com. Thank you as always for listening to this podcast. Please take a minute to subscribe to or to follow this podcast either through Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Google, Amazon, whatever you listen to us on, any of the other major podcast platforms where you can find us. Also, give us a like, a follow on our Facebook page, Twitter, or Instagram. Facebook is the one we're really keeping up with really well right now. Again, I will tell you, I am terrible at social media, and so I'm trying to get so much better at it, but it's a slow process. So if you will like us and follow us on Facebook, that would be awesome. Also, you can always find us at www.thebrightforever.com. And of course, we want to hear from you. So let us know what you think of the show. Give us the hymn suggestions that you want, comments, stories, prayer requests, whatever you want to tell us about. You can send us those comments either through our website, through the contact us, or by emailing us at podcastatthebrightforever.com. That is podcastatthebrightforever.com. Again, thank you for listening. I hope you have a great week and let me close us out in prayer. Lord, I thank you. That God, we can stand here and say, oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise. The glories of our God and King and the triumphs of your grace. God, your grace triumphs over everything because of what your son, Jesus Christ, has done for us on the cross. And God, we hold firm to to what you have done for us. We praise you for that. Let that be what gives us the boldness to go out and proclaim it to a lost and dying world. And for those who may be listening to this, who have no idea who you are, God, let this be a seed that plants inside their hearts and God that grows in and grows until they see you for who you are. A God who loves them more than they can possibly know. Change us, Lord, from the inside out and make us more like you. In Jesus name. Amen. God bless you all. Have a great week and I'll see you back here next week. We're out.