1/29/08

How Sweet and Awful

Here are some remarkable lyrics that we'll sing together in corporate worship this Sunday. They were written by the great Puritan hymn-writer, Isaac Watts. Let these words soak into your soul today and in the days to come.

How Sweet and Awful 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.

Amen, and grace.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Where does this come from? Are you writing it or are you pulling it off a list somewhere?

David said...

Hi Brad-

It is an old, very old, hymn by Isaac Watts written in 1707. It is such a great hymn, so much great theology, especially as it reminds us of God's sovereign grace in redeeming us.

In His grip,

David in SC

Anonymous said...

Hey Kyle,

Wow what a great hymn. I just ran across this on the SovGrace site for their Together for the Gospel Live CD. It seems very powerful. What version of it would you recommend for a fellow worship leader?

Thanks
In Christ,
Jonathan Chambers