Canter Bridge

We rightly grow weary of the dismissive verbal wave of the hand that claims, ‘These modern worship songs can’t compare to the old hymns. They just repeat the same words over and over again’.

Our generation’s artists, who dare the challenge of providing us with words and song for worship, need our encouragement rather than our blanket condemnation. The established hymnody of the church, after all, tosses at us some sickly-sweet laughers that would make the apostle Paul wince. And this is to say nothing of the richness that is to be found in corners of the contemporary worship repertoire.

Still, the men and women who put pen to score in service of Christian worshippers today could do worse than sit for a while—and without a watch—at the feet of an old hymn like O Worship the King.

Shortly after the folk of Indianapolis’ Church at the Crossing this past Sunday joined their voices to a hauntingly fresh encounter with this hymn, I looked up the lyrics:

O worship the King
All glorious above;
O gratefully sing
His power and his love:
Our Shield and Defender,
The Ancient of days,
Pavilioned in splendour,
And girded with praise.

O tell of his might,
O sing of his grace,
Whose robe is the light,
Whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath
The deep thunder-clouds form,
And dark is his path
On the wings of the storm.

This earth, with its store
Of wonders untold,
Almighty, thy power
Hath founded of old:
Hath stablished it fast
By a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast,
Like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care
What tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air,
It shines in the light;
It streams from the hills,
It descends to the plain,
And sweetly distils
In the dew and the rain.

Frail children of dust,
And feeble as frail,
In thee do we trust,
Nor find thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender!
How firm to the end!
Our Maker, Defender,
Redeemer, and Friend.

O measureless Might,
Ineffable Love,
While angels delight
To hymn thee above,
Thy humbler creation,
Though feeble their lays,
With true adoration
Shall sing to thy praise.

Each stanza leads the singer through one of Christian theology’s great themes, without the worshipper even knowing that he is being instructed in this way. Our worship becomes our schoolroom, praise becomes instruction, our mouths sing out truth that shapes our hearts and lives.

O Worship the King is the antechamber that, in the hands of a gifted worship designer, seamlessly leads one to the cross of Christ. New Testament instruction is not explicit here. But so much that aligns with the Old Testament’s preparation for the gospel is present and accounted for: creation, divine kingship, God’s beauty, providence, divine tender-love, human frailty in the presence of a strong Sustainer, heaven’s own worship of its Lord and ours.

Only the address of God as ‘Redeemer’ necessarily points forward to the gospels and beyond.

Here is magnificent worship, not principally because it leads the worshipper towards the ‘right kind of emotion’, but because it makes it effortless and almost natural for us to exalt God. The emotion we encounter as we do so will be rich, diverse, and God-directed. We will not have sought it, but perhaps it is a symptom—when it comes to us—of God delighting in those who delight in Him.

O worship the King!