"All Praise to God, Who Reigns Above" (Trinity Hymnal 4)

Hymn of the Month, March 2017
Researched and written by Rev. Nicholas Davelaar
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Many of the hymns we sing are gems of wisdom, guidance, and admonition, drawn from God’s Word and set to music so that the word of Christ might dwell in us richly. Let’s take some time to dig into another of these this month, “All Praise to God, Who Reigns Above.”
 
History
The storyline behind this month’s hymn is a familiar one: a German Lutheran man wrote a hymn, which was later introduced to English-speaking Christians through the translation produced by a British woman. Indeed, that’s the story of the hymns “O God, My Faithful God,” “If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee,” and “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,” all of which were translated by the prolific Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878). We know little about the translator of this month’s hymn, Frances Elizabeth Cox (1812-1897), but she and Winkworth are widely regarded as the two greatest translators of German hymns in the 19th century. Cox was a friend of the Prussian ambassador to England, who routinely offered her suggestions of German hymns worthy of translation. In her lifetime she translated some 80 of them, most of which were published together in a volume titled Hymns from the German.

The hymn was written nearly two centuries earlier by a lawyer named Johann Jacob Schütz (1640-1690). Most accounts of his life focus on his early religious activity in pietistic Lutheran circles, including the hymns he wrote during that time. What is often forgotten or purposefully overlooked is his later involvement with mysticism and radical separatism. His views and the publication thereof resulted not only in separation between him and many of his closest friends, but also a lasting division among pietists in Frankfurt.
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The tune used in our Trinity Hymnal comes from a Bohemian Brethren songbook that predated Schütz’s lyrics by over a century. It is commonly attributed to a former priest named Georg Vetter (1536-1599), who joined the Bohemian Brethren in 1575. The Brethren are one of the oldest Protestant denominations, with their roots in the work of the early Czech Reformer Jan Huss (c. 1369-1415).
 
Sources: Umcdiscipleship.org, Hymnary.org, Wikipedia.org, Hymnsandcarolofchristmas.com, and The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology.
 
Overview
Given its content, “All Praise to God, Who Reigns Above” could easily be mistaken for one of the Psalms set to music. Like many of the Psalms, this hymn is a reverent expression of praise of God for his majesty and mercy, remembrance of his past deliverance, and pleas to others to praise and trust in him. That noted, Johann Schütz did not merely write a hymn that resembles a Psalm, but also plainly relied on the Psalms to do that. The majority of this hymn is drawn from the Psalter, sometimes even word-for-word, as we shall see.
 
Verse 1
All praise to God, who reigns above,
the God of all creation,
the God of wonders, pow'r, and love,
the God of our salvation!
With healing balm my soul he fills,
the God who every sorrow stills.
To God all praise and glory!
 
Our hymn begins with declaration of praise to God, which is immediately followed by a series of descriptions concerning who he is and why he is worthy of praise. To begin with, he is the God who reigns above, over all creation, as we hear, for instance, in Psalm 47:2: “For the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth.” Not surprisingly, he is also the God of wonders (Ex 15:11), power (Ps 68:34), and love (Ps 103:8). Most wondrous of all, he is furthermore the God of our salvation (Ps 65:5: “By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas….”). Indeed, with joy we profess that with healing balm my soul he fills (Ps 103:2-4), that he is the God who every sorrow stills (2 Cor 1:3-4: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction….”). In that light, we conclude this verse with another declaration of praise: To God all praise and glory! Such a declaration is not only fitting, but truly natural to those who have been born again to a living hope; what was true of the psalmist is true for each believer today: “My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all the day” (Ps 71:8).
 
Verse 2
What God's almighty pow'r hath made
his gracious mercy keepeth;
by morning dawn or evening shade
his watchful eye ne'er sleepeth;
within the kingdom of his might,
lo, all is just and all is right.
To God all praise and glory!

 
In this second verse we continue our praise, acknowledging God’s powerful, on-going care for us and all his creatures. What he has made, his gracious mercy keeps. As Ps 104:27-28 testifies: “These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.” Indeed, he keeps his creation, watching over it with an eye that never sleeps (Ps 121:3-4). The end result is our confidence that within the kingdom of his might, all is just and all is right. We say that not because our lives are perfect or this world is peaceful, but because of Scripture’s testimony that God reigns, combined with its declaration that God’s “work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he” (Deut 32:4). In that light, even today, even given what is going on in our lives and world, we rejoice that all is just and all is right, and conclude again with our simple declaration of praise: to God all praise and glory!

Verse 3
I cried to him in time of need:
Lord God, O hear my calling!
For death he gave me life indeed
and kept my feet from falling.
For this my thanks shall endless be;
O thank him, thank our God, with me.
To God all praise and glory!
 
We continue our song by singing a summary of Psalm 116 in this verse. This verse captures well the joyful message of Psalm 116, a testimony of God’s past deliverance, which we have also received, most notably through the person and work of Jesus Christ. To God all praise and glory!
 
Verse 4
The Lord forsaketh not his flock,
his chosen generation;
he is their refuge and their rock,
their peace and their salvation.
As with a mother's tender hand
he leads his own, his chosen band.
To God all praise and glory!
 
As with the third verse, the fourth also summarizes a psalm, specifically the latter part of Psalm 37, beginning with verse 28: “For the LORD loves justice; he will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off.” With King David, we thank God for his tender leading: To God all praise and glory!
 
Verse 5
Ye who confess Christ's holy name,
to God give praise and glory!
Ye who the Father's pow'r proclaim,
to God give praise and glory!
All idols underfoot be trod,
the Lord is God! The Lord is God!
To God all praise and glory!
 

We begin to bring our song to a close by calling upon others to praise this God who is great and has done glorious and merciful deeds. Specifically, we plead with all who confess Christ’s holy name and all who proclaim the Father’s power to give God praise and glory (Phil 2:11; Ps 21:13; 147:5). Not only that, but we plead with them to trod all idols underfoot (1 John 5:21) because the Lord is God (1 Kings 18:39). To God (and God alone!) be all praise and glory!
 
Verse 6
Then come before his presence now
and banish fear and sadness;
to your Redeemer pay your vow
and sing with joy and gladness:
Though great distress my soul befell,
the Lord, my God, did all things well,
To God all praise and glory!
 
In this final verse we finish the call begun in verse 5, calling upon others—including one another—to come before the presence of his God now, without fear and sadness, but instead with joy and gladness (Ps 100:1-2). Because of the person and work of Jesus Christ, we most certainly may do so (Heb 4:14-16)! Indeed, because of God’s grace in Jesus, it is our privilege to make this our resolve: “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD, I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people” (Ps 116:13-14). We have much to be thankful for: though great distress my soul befell (an echo not only of Psalm 107, but also of Genesis 3 and its account of the Fall), the Lord, my God, did all things well. That’s what the crowd said of Jesus in Mark 7:37, after seeing him make the deaf and mute man speak. The crowd was “astonished beyond measure” and said, “He has done all things well.” How much more can we say that of not only Jesus in the wake of his death and resurrection, but also God the Father and God the Son in the wake of all their mighty works in us, for us, and even through us? To God all praise and glory!
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