Hymns of the Faith
“How Sweet and Awesome Is the
Place”
A Presentation of
First Presbyterian Church
Jackson,
Mississippi
With
Dr. Ligon Duncan, Dr. Derek Thomas, and Dr. Bill
Wymond
Dr. Wymond: Good morning! This is “Hymns of the
Faith,” brought to you by Jackson’s
First Presbyterian Church. The minister of the First Presbyterian Church is Dr.
Ligon Duncan. Stay tuned for “Hymns
of the Faith.” And now here with
“Hymns of the Faith” is Dr. Ligon Duncan.
Dr. Duncan:
Thank you, Bill Wymond. This is
Ligon Duncan and I’m delighted to be with you and with Derek for “Hymns of the
Faith” as well as speaking with all of you who have joined us in our listening
audience. Good morning, Derek.
How are you?
Dr. Thomas:
Good morning, Ligon. I’m
well, thank you.
Dr. Duncan:
Delighted to be looking at a wonderful hymn with you this morning.
This hymn is, I think, one of the favorites of our congregation.
And it’s not one that we’ve sung for a long, long time, but it’s a hymn
that I think I first came into contact with in Britain.
A number of my friends in
various reformed and evangelical churches in Britain sang
this text and I think that’s where I first sang it.
I sang it there with its old title,
How Sweet and Awful Is the Place, using the term awful in its proper sense:
awe-inspiring; awe-invoking; full of awe.
We, in our hymnal, have it as
How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place.
Now awesome, you will often point out to us, is an overused American
term.
Dr. Thomas:
For ice cream.
Dr. Duncan:
For ice cream and other trivial aspects of life!
But if it’s taken in a deeper and profounder sense, perhaps it conveys
the original sense of awful. I
remember Sam Hensley telling the story of Queen Anne being taken into
St. Paul’s Cathedral in
London immediately after it had been completed and the
great architect, Sir Christopher Wren, gave her a personal tour.
And she said to him, when it was asked by someone in the party of
attendance, “Well, Majesty, what do you think?” and she turned to him and said,
“It is awful and artificial.” And
Sam was saying now today that would be taken as a horrible criticism and a very
disappointment, but Sir Christopher Wren was deeply moved and appreciative by
the kind words of the Queen which meant it was awe-invoking, awe-inspiring, full
of awe, and that it manifested tremendous skills and artifice — not artificial
in the sense of looking fake. And so
words change in their meaning.
But before we discuss
this great hymn,
How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place,
just in case there are those of you in the listening audience that don’t know
the wonderful tune, ST. COLUMBA, Bill, would you play it for us?
[Dr. Wymond plays tune.]
Now Bill, I like that tune. Why do I
like that tune?
Dr. Wymond:
I think you like that tune because it’s an Irish folksong.
It’s just — folksongs have a way of getting right into our hearts.
There’s something about the beautiful melody and generally they’re sort
of gentle. And this is a gentle
tune.
[Dr. Wymond plays tune.]
And it’s in three-four time and I’ve hardly ever seen an unhappy tune in
three-four time. And that’s partly
because it is a dance beat. We’ve
talked about that many times before.
It’s the waltz beat, so you always get the sweeping feel of the waltz.
[Dr. Wymond plays tune.]
It’s that wonderful dance. And so
this gentle tune, which is not hard, just goes up and down the scale.
People have no trouble learning it.
And so I just think it’s really, in some ways, fitting, because this hymn
is a comforting hymn even though there are challenging aspects of it.
Nevertheless, it’s a comforting prayer I think; it ends up anyway that
way. And so I love this tune too.
Dr. Duncan:
And I notice in our hymnal it was, this particular arrangement, was done
around 1990. Do you happen to know
from what historical era this Irish tune comes?
I mean is this something that’s been around for several hundreds of
years? I’m just not familiar with
the age or anything about the tune at all.
Dr. Wymond:
It’s sort of hard to date these tunes because this tune could be three
hundred or more years old or it could be fairly recent, as we see in the Getty
tunes, of the Getty and Townend hymns.
Their tunes are modeled after the Irish folk tunes and that’s not too
hard to do for a creative person. But I would suspect it’s at least two hundred
fifty years old; something like that.
Dr. Duncan:
Okay. Derek, the author of
the text is Isaac Watts, and we’ve had how many occasions now in the last couple
of years to comment on Isaac Watts and his amazing production of texts.
But this is an excellent text and it tackles a doctrine that you don’t
hear tackled that often in hymnody, which is God’s effectual calling of sinners
to Himself and His choosing of those sinners in His love to be the recipients of
His saving benefits. And that’s not
something that many hymn writers are brave enough to tackle in a text.
Talk to us a little bit about this text.
Dr. Thomas:
Well, that’s true. I noticed
that in our hymn book it actually comes in the section on election, and actually
reading the text you might not have thought of this as a hymn on election.
It’s certainly a hymn on the sovereignty of God in salvation and that we
owe our salvation to a prior work of God in us and in calling us.
The only reference to election in the entire hymn, in as far as I can
see, is right at the very end when it speaks of the “chosen race.”
So I think you could sing this and not realizing that you’re singing a
hymn ultimately about God’s predetermining choice and predetermining
sovereignty.
Actually, we sang it in Belfast at communion.
We always sang the hundred and eighth, hundred and sixteenth — oh my
goodness — one of those Passover Psalms, the Hallel Psalms.
Dr. Wymond:
One hundred eighteen.
Dr. Thomas:
One hundred eighteen — we sang that a lot, either to begin or to close.
But we often sang this one because of the reference to a feast that we
are being invited to attend a feast.
And that, for us, made this a very appropriate hymn to sing at the time of the
Lord’s Supper.
Dr. Duncan:
I think the middle stanzas, especially the end of stanza two and then the
full content of stanzas three and four, focus us most directly not on the issue
of election but the issue of what we would call effectual calling, not just the
general Gospel call to come to the Lord Jesus and to embrace Him by faith, but
the drawing of the Father of sinners to the Son.
And the song does meditate on that for a couple of stanzas and the
significance of why we came and why others didn’t and what the origins of that
was. And so it focuses on that
effectual call and then the source of that effectual call and the Father’s love.
And as you say, I
think rightly, if you were going to look at a topical place to place the hymn it
would be better under effectual calling than it would be under the subject of
election because it doesn’t say as much about that as it says about this
effectual calling. That’d be the
place to put it in the hymnal. But
really, every stanza has something important to say.
Why don’t we just walk through a few of those together?
The first acknowledges how awe-invoking and filled with delight it is to
be able to have communion with Christ.
And is says this — and by the way, that’s I think the first stanza as
much as the stanza about the feast, makes it a great communion hymn.
I mean, I can see how that, the very idea of “how sweet and awesome is
the place with Christ within the doors,” already you’re thinking of a place in
which there is fellowship in a home, in a house, in a place with Christ.
What better way of describing what’s happening at the Lord’s Table?
Dr. Thomas:
Although I suspect that some will sing these opening lines and think of
church, and perhaps even think of a church building.
“How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors” — and I
suspect folk are thinking how sweet it is to go to church, which isn’t quite
what it’s saying. It’s not
disassociated from the assembling of ourselves together in a particular locality
and so on, but it is, as you say, it’s communion with Christ and what it means
to be a Christian in fellowship with other Christians that is at the heart of
what it’s saying.
But isn’t it
important how the opening line of a hymn can set the tone for the rest of the
hymn? Even if the poetry is sort of
substandard in the rest of the hymn, just those opening words will rivet your
attention — “How sweet and awesome is the place.”
Dr. Duncan:
True. The end of the first
line uses terminology that would have been very common to the marketplace in the
time that Watts was writing this hymn, and perhaps would have continued to be
very common for the next couple of hundred years, especially in
Britain, but maybe a little bit strange to
American ears. And maybe you could
explain when it says, “While everlasting love displays the choicest of her
stores”? What’s the image and what’s
the meaning there, Derek?
Dr. Thomas:
Well, of course we only use the word choicest in our vernacular speech, I
suppose, but I think of an open-air market when I see that or I think of one of
these wonderful stores where everything is out for display, a fruit stand, for
example, with just beautiful, luscious, ripe fruit of every description and
color. And I love to walk around a
market where everything is set out so beautifully.
And I think that’s what’s being conveyed here, that we’re being invited
to dinner, a feast, in a great, great banquet, in a great 17th, 18th
century hall out in the country. And
you walk in and there’s a thirty-eight foot dining table that’s just laden, for
Bill Wymond’s eyes with pastries.
Dr. Duncan:
Desserts of every
kind!
Dr. Thomas:
Every description!
And in cartoon language, you know, your eyes are dropped down to the
floor on springs. Just what is this?
And it’s a sense of overwhelming generosity and provision.
Dr. Duncan:
Well that image is indeed the image that continues for the next four
lines because –
Dr. Thomas:
Isn’t it important though, because I think it is a prevailing tendency of
the devil, to make us think that God’s love is, well I can’t use that word now,
but it’s miserly, stingy, that God loves reluctantly, and that when He loves His
arm is twisted behind His back and that love is given not in its fullest extent.
Dr. Duncan:
And I think the very image of, as you say, that English manor house or
that castle with a thirty-eight foot table spread with indescribable delicacies
is designed to depict the generosity and the lavishness of Christ’s love.
Dr. Thomas:
Because in the Garden, that’s what Satan said.
You know, make your eyes look on the one thing that God said “no” and
ignore everything else that is yours and focus your eyes on the one thing that
God says “no” to. And I think we
live our Christian lives like that and we forget His bounty and provision that
He’s made.
Dr. Duncan:
Well, having walked into this hall and having seen this scene, Watts,
who’s speaking for us all, it’s like he’s the, not so much the narrator of an
event from a third-hand perspective, but he’s the spokesman for all of us as
we’re looking on this scene, he says in the second stanza, “While all our hearts
and all our songs join to admire the feast, each of us cries, with thankful
tongue, ‘Lord, why was I a guest?’”
Why was I invited to this feast? Why
was I allowed to come to this particular party?
So he speaks that particular question for us.
What’s the nature of the question, Derek?
Dr. Thomas:
Well, I often think about it.
In December of 1971, “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto Me and rest.’”
And I heard it through Matthew 11:28 — “Come unto Me all ye that are
weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
And I often wonder, why me and why not my members of my family?
Why not some of my school friends, some of whom I’ve been reacquainted
with in recent weeks as it happens, but are not Christians?
Why me? Was it my intuition?
Was it my cleverness? Was it
deep down something in me? And what
this hymn is going to drive you to is that it was all of God and all of grace
from beginning to end. Why was I
invited to this great banquet?
Dr. Duncan:
And then the question is extended and elaborated on in the third stanza.
“Why was I made to hear Your voice, and enter while there’s room, when
thousands make a wretched choice, and rather starve than come?”
Now that’s a reflection on why I come when the Gospel calls, goes out to
the whole world, and so many thousands do not respond to it.
Dr. Thomas:
And I suspect, Ligon, and comment on this verse, I suspect that Isaac
Watts is thinking of that verse that is not easy to understand initially — “Many
are called, but few are chosen.”
What does that verse mean? “Many are
called, but few are chosen.”
Dr. Duncan:
Well, obviously in the context Jesus is indicating that there is a Gospel
call that goes out universally and sincerely to which thousands upon thousands
upon thousands, it falls upon their deaf ears, and they do not respond.
And only some, I mean he uses different images, doesn’t he?
Sometimes he talks about a narrow gate.
Sometimes he talks about His sheep who hear His voice and enter in
through the door. He uses all sorts
of different images to indicate that there are many people who are confronted
with the claims of the Gospel, they hear the Gospel presented to them, and it
just means nothing to them. They’re
indifferent to it. They’re not
necessarily angry about it or mad at the preacher or at the church, but they’re
just not interested. And there are
few that respond to that Gospel call.
And those are the ones who are chosen.
They’ve been given eyes to see and ears to hear.
Jesus talks about that in John 3 where some are born again by the Holy
Spirit so that they see spiritual things that they wouldn’t be able to see
otherwise.
Dr. Thomas:
And the fourth stanza, then, elaborates on that, that it is the Lord who
“sweetly drew us in; else we had still refused to taste, and perished in our
sin.”
Dr. Duncan:
Yeah, and he roots the invitation and our response to the invitation in
the love of God, to get back to your point of how this song celebrates the fact
that contrary to the way, I think especially that the natural heart thinks about
the love of God -that it’s stingy, it divides between the people, it’s not
given, it’s not fair, it’s not generous – that in contrast to that, the heart
that has tasted of God’s goodness and grace knows that both the reason why we’ve
been invited and the reason why we’ve accepted the invitation has to be rooted
in the love of God working in us. To
use the language of John, “We love because He first loved us.”
Dr. Thomas:
Now some people will say that if you really believe that your salvation,
from beginning to end, is of the Lord — that you don’t have free will; it’s not
ultimately your choice but God’s choice — that that is the death of evangelism
and it’s the death of missions. So
explain how he segues from verse four to stanza five which is about missions.
Dr. Duncan:
Yeah, well I mean
read the verse first because it’s a beautiful juxtaposition of something that
we’ll find juxtaposed in the Bible in just a minute.
But go ahead and read stanza five.
Dr. Thomas:
“Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come; send Your victorious
Word abroad, and bring the strangers home.”
Dr. Duncan:
So immediately there is a prayer for world missions!
You know, the only reason we’re here is because of the love of God, so
Lord, bring the nations in. I mean,
it’s the exact flow of logic that goes in the song, which to some people is
contradictory.
Dr. Thomas:
At the Ligonier Conference last Saturday, somebody asked a question in a
Q & A session that Thabiti Anyabwile answered just marvelously and without a
second’s hesitation. The question
was, “If we really believe in election and effectual calling, what is the
motivation for missions?” And you
know I’m trying to think of something really clever and Thabiti Anyabwile said,
“Guaranteed success,” just like that, “guaranteed success.”
So this is the segue that if missions at the end of the day is about
God’s sovereignty, then why not pray that God would use that means?
Dr. Duncan:
And our friend Elias Medeiros loves to say that as well, that the
sovereignty of God in election is his great motivation for missions work.
I think the place where people get hung up is on the issue of means.
They assume that if God has chosen something that the means don’t matter,
and of course that’s never biblical logic.
The logic is always – because God has chosen, the means do matter.
Dr. Thomas:
And that’s what I think is being said here — “Send Your victorious Word
abroad.” Now how does God do that?
Through preachers, missionaries, evangelists.
Dr. Duncan:
Yeah. How shall they hear if
there is not a preacher? Yeah, and
so there’s the logic — because it’s the love of God that has sent the invitation
and enabled us to respond to the invitation, therefore we must approach boldly
the throne of grace and ask God to go to the nations with that invitation of
love and to draw from the nations a multitude that no man can number of every
tribe, tongue, and people who will come to the feast and who will respond to the
invitation. Because if that’s how we
came, that’s how they’re going to come.
And does that mean that we don’t have to go?
Heavens no; we have
the joy of being His emissaries, but it also means, as you say, guaranteed
success, because He’s not going to lose one of those who His love has set His
heart upon.
And then the prayer continues in stanza six.
How does it go, Derek?
Dr. Thomas:
“We long to see Your churches full, that all the chosen race may, with
one voice and heart and soul, sing Your redeeming grace.”
Dr. Duncan:
Now that’s almost a John Piper line, don’t you think?
I mean, it gets to John’s statement about the – missions is not the chief
end of the church, worship is; missions exists because worship doesn’t.
When the end of the age comes and the multitude from every tribe, tongue,
people, and nation is gathered around the throne, missions will be no more but
worship will go on forever. Missions
exist to bring in a multitude that no man can number into the enjoyment of the
white-hot worship and glory of God.
So it’s almost the picture, isn’t it, in stanza six?
Dr. Thomas:
And it’s Jesus’ last prayer in John 17, that all those whom the Father
has given to Him may be with Him and that we may be one.
And to pray that prayer in that final stanza of the hymn is to be most
Jesus like in our worship. It’s a
beautiful hymn.
Dr. Duncan:
Watts was from what sort of a church
background, Derek?
Dr. Thomas:
Independence Congregationalist in a distinctively 17th, 18th
century understanding of Congregationalism that that very Calvinistic – what is
the Congregational Confession of Faith?
The
Savoy
Declaration.
Dr. Duncan:
The John Owen version of The Westminster Confession. Now
that means he would have been self-educated?
He wouldn’t have been able to go to the major universities because he was
not an Anglican, so —
Dr. Thomas:
That’s right. And author of thousands of hymns that we sing, many of
which we sing in our hymnbook of course.
Dr. Duncan:
Well Bill, let’s listen to this wonderful hymn,
How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place.
How
sweet and awful is the place
With
Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of
her stores.
While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the
feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?
“Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When
thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”
‘Twas
the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had
still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.
Pity the nations, O
our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious Word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.
We long to see thy churches full,
That
all the chosen race
May, with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing thy
redeeming grace.