Mid-Week Music #9 - Lift Up the Suff'ring Symbol

This time, I'll be giving you a song I had in my head after tonight's Bible study at our church. We're going through the Ten Commandments at the moment, and what Martin Luther wrote about them in his Large Catechism. I think that's what it is, the Large Catechism. I will correct it if I am wrong.

Today, we talked about the First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." In the Lutheran Church, however, that First Commandment also includes the Second Commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, neither of anything in heaven nor in the earth nor in the waters beneath the earth, neither shalt thou worship them."

Obviously, this doesn't mean we should never make pictures or paintings or any kind of artwork. The First and Second Commandments together mean we shall worship the Lord our God and Him alone, and we shall worship Him in the way He tells us. For example, those people in Exodus who made the golden calf--they didn't say it was a new god. They thought they were worshipping the same God that brought them out of Egypt.

Worshipping God through images doesn't work. Sorry, but no. That was the main problem with relics among the Roman Catholics of Luther's day. We can only pray to God: nothing and nobody else will do. The only intercessor we have is Jesus Christ. So the 'images' we make--whether paintings or sculptures or even those talking pictures I've heard so much about--should be made to glorify God, just as we are meant to glorify God. And to teach and inspire others, as well.

Iconoclasm, oddly enough, has been somewhat rampant in the South recently. To be sure, it's of a different nature, but it is the eradication of images in any case. I will be putting up a more detailed post about it. Perhaps in a day or two? For the moment, though, here is the Michael Card song I had in my head: Lift Up the Suff'ring Symbol.

They grew tired of bread from heaven
And of Moses and of God
And longed to live the life of slavery once again
So they muttered and they grumbled
And they whimpered and they whined
With each faithless word sank deeper into sin

He took the pen of pain once more
To write upon their hearts
The lesson they had been so slow to learn
And writhing in the sand, the fiery serpents came to call
With a holy message and a bite that burned

(chorus)
Lift up the suff'ring symbol
And place it high upon a pole
Tell the children to look up and be made whole

So Moses made a metal snake
And nailed it to a pole
Sent out the saving word so they would know
That the symbol of their suffering was now
The focus of their faith
And with a faithful glance, the healing power would flow

In time the brazen serpent became
An idol in the land
And they left the living God to worship clay
When they forgot their suffering soon true faith had disappeared
And so some idolize a brazen cross today

(chorus 2x)

***

(chorus 2x)
Tell the children to look up and be made whole