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 Therefore the Redeemed of the Lord from 1972.
This is a nice jolly song that we used to sing back in the early 1980s. It actually goes back to 1972, the year that I started getting into pop music. But I didn’t become aware of the music from the new charismatic movement until around 1980. I might have been somewhat aware of it before then, but whatever I heard sounded a little twee.
But I grew to like it in the early 1980s. And around 2017 I started digging around Spotify and YouTube to discover all the songs I’d missed. But I didn’t miss this one. I do remember singing it. Many modern choruses are based on the optimistic sections of Isaiah. Isaiah predicted the Jews’ exile in Babylon, but also laid out great hope for the future. At the time, perhaps some saw it as the period between the return to Judea and the coming of the Messiah. But that wasn’t great. Maybe the prophecies were conditional. If the Jews had truly repented and engaged with God, things would have been wonderful. There was some level of repentance, particularly in relation to idolatry, but when you read the post-exilic prophets, it’s plain that they still had a long way to go.
And though things feel wonderful when you look at the New Testament church, which was largely Jewish, the churches were by no means perfect. And over the centuries, if prophets such as Isaiah had been around, they’d have much to criticize. And what might they say to us today?
So, we too, look to the future. Ultimately, we look to the return of Jesus and the coming of the heavenly Jerusalem. The key thing is the presence of the Lord. Jerusalem just pointed to that, but a time will come when we’ll have the real thing.
People debate about our physical destination in the future. Some like to think in terms of completely escaping from the earth. Others focus on a New Heaven and New Earth. This is pure speculation, but if I had any say, I’d like God to transform all the planets into wonderful livable places and give us the power to teleport ourselves around the universe for eternity. But I might still prefer to live on a perfect transformed earth, which would be heaven if God’s presence is manifested among us. Yet, I suspect that whatever God has in mind, I’ll be happy with everlasting joy. Here’s the passage on which the hymn is based:
Isaiah 51:11 (King James Version)
11 Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
I find it interesting that even though the charismatic movement was so modern in many ways, when you’d hear someone giving a prophecy or writing a hymn, it was almost always based on the older King James version of the Bible. People still saw it as somewhat holier than modern versions, perhaps because it was so embedded in your culture.
I like using the NIV myself, but nowadays, there are so many versions that it’s harder to memorize Scripture. I can understand why some would have preferred to stick with the King James version. And you don’t need to worry about copyright issues 😀. One of my Bibles has both versions side by side. So, I could read the King James and use the NIV for any verse that I don’t understand. But you can do all that on the web nowadays anyway.
Here are some other versions of today’s song.
Hibernia Gospel 