Hymns: Our God Reigns

I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the in-between hymns.

Today’s song is Our God Reigns, from the 1970s.

This one brings me all the way back to the end of September 1979, about a year before I committed my life to Christ. I was 17. Two big events loomed. Pope John Paul II was visiting Ireland, and my favourite new wave group, The Stranglers were coming to the Arcadia in Cork 😀. I had just purchased their Raven album.

I was more interested in the Stranglers than in the Pope. Yet it was a very significant event. Interest in Roman Catholicism was already diminishing in 1979, but not as much as during the next papal visit in 2018. In 1979, the whole nation was excited at someone so famous visiting. I don’t know how much of this excitement related to religious devotion. I travelled up to Limerick racecourse with my family overnight to see the Pope. During the Mass, a helicopter approached and everyone started looking up and cheering. The priest, who was leading the Mass, seemed quite annoyed at everyone getting distracted from the Mass. As it turned out, it wasn’t even the Pope’s helicopter, though the Pope did arrive sometime later. The whole thing felt like a lot of hype to me. I wasn’t going to bother going, but in the end, I got slightly caught up in it all.

I liked it more than another song that they sang – He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands. That’s a song about God, but my impression is that they were singing it about the Pope. I was still a nominal Catholic, but I was uneasy about many elements of Catholicism. I was pleased to see someone as famous as the Pope, but I don’t like people giving undue adulation to religious figures. It just feels a little cultish. I think of what Peter said, when Cornelius bowed down to him:

Acts 10:25
As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. 26 But Peter made him get up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself.”

I don’t imagine that modern Popes are at ease with people putting them on a pedestal, but I can also understand why they mightn’t be too keen to break with tradition and go against people’s expectations.

Anyway, about a year later, after I committed my life to Christ, I was sitting in the Upper Room, a Pentecostal fellowship in Cork, and they started singing Our God Reigns. There was a bit of a revival in the charismatic and Pentecostal scenes in Ireland in the 1970s, and Our God Reigns and many other new songs were part of the “soundtrack”. This particular song is based on a prophetic passage in the Old Testament book of Isaiah:

Isaiah 52:7
How beautiful on the mountains
    are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
    who bring good tidings,
    who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
    “Your God reigns!”
⁸ Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
    together they shout for joy.
When the Lord returns to Zion,
    they will see it with their own eyes.
⁹ Burst into songs of joy together,
    you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people,
    he has redeemed Jerusalem.
¹⁰ The Lord will lay bare his holy arm
    in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
    the salvation of our God.

So, it’s probably the first of the “modern” songs that I heard. And I always enjoyed singing it. People have different views on whether passages like this apply to Israel or the church. In my circles, the outlook is that when Jesus came, God’s chosen people expanded to include gentiles in addition to Jews, and all those who believe, whether Jews or gentiles are one in Christ.

So, the optimistic prophecies of the Old Testament related to the first and second coming of Christ and to some extent, the period in between, when the message of Christ would go out to all the world. It wasn’t about the Jews rejecting Jesus and being replaced. Some did reject him, but the New Testament church was largely comprised of Jews. So, it was more of an expansion of God’s chosen people to include us gentiles.

Most of these modern charismatic hymns see Zion as the church. Just as God manifested himself in the temple in the Old Testament, nowadays, He manifests himself in the church, which includes both Jews and Gentiles. Some Christians do see significance in the nation of Israel and its future, but ultimately, God’s people include people from every tribe, tongue and nation.

Ephesians 2:14-16
¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵ by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

Galatians 3:18-19
²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Here are some other versions of the hymn: