Psalm 34:19
July 5th, 2009
"It is Well With My Soul"
The hymns and songs we sing at church they hold and express our hopes and dreams, they give voice to our praise and thanksgiving.
They contain and give voice to our beliefs. They are our theology. They encourage us and give us strength and comfort in time of trial and sorrow.
One of the things the worship staff noted as we reviewed the 120+ hymn and song requests for this Sunday was how many of them gave voice to the desire for “Assurance”; assurance of God’s love, assurance of God’s presence and assurance of our eternal destination in the Kingdom of Heaven.
At times these hymns and songs, we sing them with great faith and hope, at other times we sing them holding desperately to the promises they hold. They meet our needs in times of great joy and great sorrow.
Such a hymn is the one I am going to speak to today. It is based on the knowledge that the righteous suffer too. It is also based on the words of the Shunammite woman from 2 Kings 4:26 who when asked how she was replied to Elisha’s servant, “It is well” even though her heart was breaking over the death of her son.
This hymn was written by a rich Chicago lawyer Horatio Spafford in 1873. You might think, “Yeah, a rich Chicago lawyer can easily say, ‘It is well with my soul’ for what would they have to worry about?
But my friends you can own the world and still be unhappy and no life is untouched by sorrow. Job 5:7 says, “Humans are born to trouble as surely as sparks fly up from a fire.”
In 1870 the Spafford’s only son died of Scarlet Fever. The following year Horatio lost most of his fortune that had been invested in real estate in the great Chicago fire.
Now Horatio and his wife Bertha were strong believers in Jesus Christ. They were friends and supporters of the great evangelist D.L. Moody. They were heavily involved in their church and Christian social movements of their day.
Following the fire Horatio poured himself into the rebuilding of Chicago as a way of drowning his grief over the death of his son and helping the 100,000 people who had been left homeless by the fire.
With this in mind let us sing the first verse of this song.
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Things got worse for Horatio and his family. In 1873 he decided to go to England to help out D. L Moody and Ira Sankey in their evangelistic crusade followed by a vacation in Europe. So he booked his family, his wife and his four daughters, on the luxurious French liner “Ville du Havre”.
At the last minute he was detained by urgent business so he sent his family on ahead. He was going to join them shortly, but on the night of November 22, 1873 the “Ville du Havre” struck another ship and sank within 2 hours.
Mrs. Spafford was one of only 47 to survive. She remembered having her one daughter torn from her arms as she plunged into the icy waters. She was only saved because she landed unconscious on top of a floating piece of debris and was there later found alive.
She despaired of life until a voice reminded her “She was saved for a reason.” " And she immediately recalled the words of a friend, "It's easy to be grateful and good when you have so much, but take care that you are not a fair-weather friend to God." And thus the words of verse one, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrow like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.”
In Wednesday’s Upper Room was a story of a woman who found she had a rare type of ovarian cancer. She too despaired of life until God sent into her life others, other cancer patients much sicker than she who witnessed to their faith in God through joyful living.
She wrote, “My treatment is finished, and today I feel wonderfully alive. I prayed for my deepest desire: a sure physical cure. Instead, Christ healed my spirit, replacing doubt and fear with trust and peace.”
Now I believe songs such as these take on new meaning and deepen their ability to help heal our souls when we know the stories behind them. These songs of assurance come not from the optimism of youth or the untried faith of problem less lives. They come from the fiery furnace of trial and each word holds promise for our lives now and into the future.
Let us sing verse two and chorus
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
The Spafford’s had now lost all 5 of their children. Horatio Spafford followed his wife to England after She had earlier cabled her husband “Saved alone.”
On the passage over to England one evening the captain called Horatio aside and told him, “I believe we are now passing over the place where the “Ville du Havre” went down.” Spafford went to his cabin and couldn’t sleep. He said to himself, “It is well; the will of God be done.” He then later wrote the words to this hymn.”
Horatio and his with Bertha were faithful Christians, faithful in the sense that they were completely loyal to God. Whatever the test, or trial or sorrow that came into their lives they turned to God, not away from God.
They reminded me of Job. He lost his children, his fortune, his health. He sat in an ash heap scraping his oozing sores with a potshard and his wife told him he ought to just curse God and die! His reply though was “Shall we not indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
Life is tough, full of trials and troubles. The church is at times tough to belong to, and some of the people and It’s decisions can drive you wild.
And if we put our trust in others and not in God we will be disappointed.
The Spaffords put their full trust in God. They knew their salvation and their future reuniting with their children were not based on what they could or could not do and the circumstances of their lives, but in God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
This is spoken of very clearly in verse 3. They knew their sins were nailed to the cross and nothing they could do, could add or subtract from that gift. They knew their salvation was assured.
Let us sing verse 3
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
And our hope is not only in this life. Our hope is also in the world to come. We here hold the hope that one day we will be reunited with all our loved ones who have died in the Lord, who had faith and loyalty to God and lived that out in the good and the bad times.
I pray that this hymn soaks into your hearts and minds and is lived out in your lives. I pray you turn to God in the good times and realize in the bad times, the times of trial and sorrow and sickness that those are the most important times to turn to the Lord and not away.
Yes, we have trials as the hymn “And Are We Yet Alive” says. We have “mighty conflicts past, fightings without and fears within,” but are we not alive to do God’s work here and now?
Are we not alive? Is not our salvation assured and our eternal home prepared? Let us live like it is. Let us love one another as if it is!
Let us sing verse 4
For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Let us now remember and celebrate our salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. Let us prepare our hearts and minds to fellowship with God through the sacrament of Holy Communion.
The Bible is a book of salvation. In communion we remember the mighty acts of God to save us.
We remember how God saved all humankind through the Ark.
We remember how God saved the Israelite people from Egypt.
We remember how God saved King David who as a boy faced a giant.
We remember how God saved an unnamed Shunammite woman’s son.
We remember how God wants to save each and every one of us.
We remember on the night that he was betrayed he took bread, gave thanks and broke it and said take and eat this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
Likewise after supper he took the cup of thanksgiving and blessed it and said, “Drink from this all of you for this is my blood poured out for you for your salvation and the salvation of the world. Do this as often as you drink of it in remembrance of me.”
So in remembrance of these mighty acts of Salvation we come to the Lord’s table today to be forgiven and reborn in His image.
