Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Today's Friday Classic Hymn is "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". A lovely song written by an earnest Christian man named Robert Robinson, who ended up losing his way. Hear the story, the song, and the meaning of the lyrics on today's episode here.
Welcome to Friday Classic Hymns, where we take some of our old favourite hymns and look at the story behind them, the lyrics, and then I'll sing it, hopefully with you, at the end.
I grew up in a church that was very contemporary. We did contemporary Christian music rather than hymns, and these songs that I learned in those days were very powerful, very good songs. I loved the songs that we sang in church, and they were very formational for me. They really drew me closer to God and taught me about Him. I love contemporary Christian music, but I've been going back and learning the hymns, and I've found it such an amazing exercise because the hymns are amazing. There are some beautiful hymns that have been written over the years, and it's been such a joy to learn them.
This is one that I didn't actually know, even though I've heard of it. A bunch of you have requested it on the channel, looking at my other Classics. I had to go and learn the song, and what a deep, powerful song.
Do you have any memories attached to this song? Do you remember singing this in a particular church, or does the song hold any particular meaning to you? I'd love for you to share it in the comments below so that we can share in your joy.
By the way, if you enjoy old hymns or just any music that draws you nearer to God, please consider subscribing to the channel. I do a hymn like this every Friday. On Sunday, I do Encounter, which is 20 minutes of singing, praying, and reflecting. I hope you'll join and be part of what I do here. But let me tell you the story of Come Thou Fount.
The Story Behind "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing"
In 1735, Robert Robinson, the author of this hymn, was born in Norfolk, England. His father died when he was still very young, and his mother, who wanted him to become a priest in the Church of England, had to send him off to London to learn a trade at the age of 14. He ended up becoming a barber. But whilst he was in London, he fell into a bad crowd and really got involved in some godless ways of living.
There's a story of him and his friends actually torturing a gypsy woman who claimed she could tell the future. She apparently looked at him, Robinson, and said, "You will live to see your children and grandchildren." This shook him because he wasn't even thinking about that sort of thing. He started to consider, "Maybe I need to change my ways if that is to be true."
Shortly after this, he and his bad friends decided to go and disrupt a little Methodist meeting. They wanted to make fun of the Methodists because they were religious nuts in their eyes. They went along, and it happened to be George Whitefield preaching. Whitefield is famous, probably one of the greatest preachers of all time, and he was preaching on Matthew 3:7, which speaks of the wrath to come. Robinson heard this message, and he was cut to the heart. He was so touched by this message that he became a Christian, and it turned his life around completely.
It was six years after he was converted that he wrote these precious words, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." He ended up becoming a Methodist preacher himself, although he left the Methodists and then was a pastor in the Baptist Church for a long time. He was known as a thoughtful and good theologian and a good pastor.
But sadly, his story takes a bad turn because this godless man ended up getting back involved in godless ways. Despite his conversion and despite coming to faith, he turned away from God and got involved in awful things again. He really lived a godless life again. He even became involved with a group who taught some very bizarre, false theology. This great man of God fell. I suppose his legacy is tainted because he backslid the way that he did.
It stands as a warning to us, doesn't it? In fact, there's a story of him in a stagecoach. Across from him was a lady reading a hymn book, and a conversation started between them. She started to talk about "Come Thou Fount," this beautiful hymn that had had such a deep impact on her life. Robinson kept trying to change the conversation away from that, but she kept pressing on about how this was such a good hymn. Eventually, he cried out and said these words: "Madam, I am the poor, unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds if I had them to enjoy the feelings I had then."
How sad that a person committed to God, writing of His blessings, could fall so far. A warning to you and I today that if we consider ourselves strong in Christ, we must be careful because the devil is a wily one. If he can tempt a man like this away, we best be on guard.
Robinson died in 1790, but we still sing these words of his today because they are so powerful. Let's take a look at why these words endure.
What Do the Lyrics of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" Mean?
There's some confusion about these verses because most hymnals I find have got three verses. But looking back at various sources that I use for my research in these hymns, there are differences. I found five verses in fact. The three verses that the hymnals normally have copy and paste a bit—there's two lines from this one and two lines from the previous one. I'm not entirely sure what the original five verses looked like. To complicate it even further, somebody seems to think the last verse was not written by him. To complicate even further, there's another verse that I found in one hymnal only, and it was an early one, 1790s. I wonder if he wrote it or not. Nonetheless, we all know the first verse, and this is one that he definitely wrote.
Verse 1: The Fountain of Blessings
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace.
I love this line. Come, Lord—He starts by saying, "Come near." Then He calls Him the Fountain of every blessing. I wonder if you've discovered God as the Fountain of every blessing in your life. Do you look at all your wonderful things you enjoy and say, "God has blessed me. He's like a fountain just overflowing in blessings"? That's who He is to me. I'm so grateful for the way He's blessed me. Yes, He's a Fountain of every blessing.
I love this—He tunes my heart to sing. He gets me in tune. My voice might not be in tune, but at least my heart can sing His praises sincerely, and that's what He's looking for.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
The next two lines also talk about singing. He sees how God's mercies never cease, and he wants to sing loudly. I know a lot of people don't like loud music, but even such a beautiful hymn like this says we should be singing loudly. We should be praising Him loudly because that is what His unceasing mercy deserves. In fact, the Psalms talk about praising God with crashing cymbals—I mean, that's going to be quite loud and unpleasant, but we do it out of love for God. I think there's a time for loud praise, and I think there's a time for gentle worship as well.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.
The third line also talks about singing. "I want to sing, I want to sing melodious songs." This reference to flaming tongues makes me think of Pentecost, you know, the tongues of fire that settled over the apostles as they spoke in different tongues. Yes, we are to be singing because of His blessings and His mercies.
Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love.
Then the fourth line says this. The mount—is he picturing God to be like a mountain of love? Huge, firm, solid, unflinching. Maybe he was also thinking of Calvary, the mount where Jesus died and showed His redeeming love. He's praising God for these things. What a wonderful verse to sing.
Verse 2: Raising My Ebenezer
Then verse two comes along, and you'll probably recognise the second two lines because a lot of us sing the second two lines as the first two lines of the second verse. But it seems as if the original went like this:
Sorrowing I shall be in spirit, till released from flesh and sin.
Suddenly there's a change of tone here from the rapturous praise. "I'll always be sorrowing in spirit because there's flesh and sin in this world, and only when I'm free of these things will the sorrow end." There's the sadness that comes in, and you'll see the rest of the song has the sorrowful feel to it.
Yet from what I do inherit, here Thy praises I'll begin.
He says, "I know that things are not great on earth. I'll be sorrowing, and there'll be worldliness, but where I am, from the things I have inherited, I'm going to praise anyway." I like that line. Makes me remember to praise even if things aren't great.
Here I raise my Ebenezer.
Here it comes—the line that is famous. Well, I suppose "Ebenezer" if you think of the rhyme of the next line.
Here I raise my Ebenezer, here by Thy great help I've come, and I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
What on earth does this mean? It's baffled many people over the years. Maybe, like me, when you see the word Ebenezer, you think of Scrooge—A Christmas Carol. But it turns out that this is actually a Bible reference. In 1 Samuel 7, the Israelites are miraculously delivered by God from the hands of the Philistines. Samuel, we read in verse 12, takes a stone, sets it up between Mizpah and Shen, and then the Bible says he named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far the Lord has helped us."
Ebenezer means "stone of help." When the writer of the song, when Mr Robinson, said, "Here I raise my Ebenezer," he was saying, "I'm raising the stone of help, the stone that proves that God helped us." It was like he was saying, "I want to declare that God has helped me." Isn't that what that line said? Here I raise my Ebenezer, here by Thy great help I've come. He realised it was God who's gotten me this far, and so I'm raising up a monument to say He is the one who deserves the praise.
Perhaps for us, singing a song is like raising up an Ebenezer. It's like declaring that God has helped us and has delivered us, and so we praise Him in that way. It's an interesting line, and it's not a word that anybody ever really uses today, but I think it's a great one to sing.
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
The last line of that verse—"I've gotten this far by the help of God, and I hope that by God's great grace and pleasure on me, I'll arrive home one day."
Verse 3: Jesus Sought Me
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.
He tells the gospel story here. "I was a stranger, I was wandering from God." This calls to mind Jesus's parable of the lost sheep, the one sheep that wanders off from the flock. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go off to the one. That's how he saw himself. He saw himself a stranger to God, but God came for him anyway.
Isn't this the good news? Do you realise that if you're a stranger to God, He is coming to try and rescue you because you're in danger without Him?
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.
That second line says this. Without God, we're in danger of perishing eternally. Jesus came and shed His blood and saved us and said, "Because My blood has been shed, if they place their faith in Me, they can be saved." Oh, what a Saviour! He came for us and rescued even lost sheep like us. Amen to that.
How His kindness yet pursues me, mortal tongue can never tell.
I love how the verse goes on. He says, "His kindness yet pursues me. He's still coming after me." "Mortal tongue can never tell"—in other words, I can hardly understand why He would do this, but He does.
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me, I cannot proclaim it well.
Whilst I'm stuck in this body, I can hardly explain the love of God. It is so great and so mighty. He's still pursuing me even when I wander, and that is just too much for him to get his head around. He said, "I can't even say it properly. It's so great."
Verse 4: Prone to Wander
Verse four is where it starts to get a bit sad again because He says:
O to grace how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be!
Like us all, he feels in debt to God because of the grace that he's been given. "Daily I am in debt to You because of what You did for me."
Then he starts to talk about wandering from God. Remember his history, remember how he did wander from God and he ended up going back to his godless ways. Now, even when he wrote this, shortly after being converted, he felt that pull because here he says:
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.
"Oh, my heart wants to leave. It wants to wander, and so bind me, Lord." You know, a fetter is like a shackle around your feet. He's saying, "I need You to shackle me, otherwise I'm going to go."
Of course, God, whilst He does hold us, He lets us go if we're going to go. He doesn't force us to stay. He doesn't chain us to Himself—that's not freedom. He gives us freedom, and so with that freedom is the possibility of leaving. Sadly, he discovered that God isn't going to bind you to Him with a fetter so that you can't leave. But you can backslide if you so decide, and sadly, this man did.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.
As you can see in the next line—"I'm prone to this, Lord. I want to leave." In fact, some denominations have changed that line because they don't believe it. They believe that you don't have to be prone to sin the whole time, to leaving. They say once the Holy Spirit is in you, if you live in the Spirit, if you walk in the Spirit, you will not have this proneness to wander. They've changed it. What do you think? Should we change that line, or does this resonate with you, that you're just prone to wander from God, you're just prone to leave? I don't know. I suppose there are different ways of looking at it, but this poor man felt such a strong pull to leave. He wrote it here, and sadly, he ended up leaving.
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.
But he says here at the end of this verse, "Lord, seal it. Keep it. I don't want to drift, and so You keep it." But sadly, it seems as if he didn't take his own responsibility in staying close to God.
Verse 5: Oh That Day
So comes the last verse, which strangely enough, when I was looking up this song, somewhere in one of the resources they said this may have been added later by somebody else. I didn't see it anywhere else, and so maybe that's not true. Maybe these were his words, but one editor seemed to think, "No, these words were written by somebody else." You know, they're also quite sad words because the writer says:
O that day when freed from sinning, I shall see Thy lovely face.
That's not that happy. "Oh yes, one day when I'm gone from this world, I'll see His lovely face."
Clothèd then in blood-washed linen, how I'll sing Thy sovereign grace.
"How I'll sing His grace because I'll be clothed not in the flesh anymore"—remember he said that earlier—"but in the blood-washed linen, the pure white clothes of the purity of the saved ones."
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry, take my ransomed soul away.
Then here comes the sadness I was talking about. You know, this is a youngish man in his twenties saying, "Oh Lord, come and take my soul away. Come and let my life come to an end. Don't wait."
Send thine angels now to carry me to realms of endless day.
"Send Thine angels now to carry me to realms of endless day." There was that sadness—"I'd rather be gone now."
Additional Verse
But wait, there's more, because there's another verse that I found only in one hymnal on Hymnary.org, a website I use for research. There was a hymnal in 1791 or something that had this verse. I don't know if he wrote it. I don't know if someone else wrote it, but it's old, and there's that sadness to it as well because it says:
If thou ever didst discover to my Faith the promis'd Land, bid me now the Stream pass over, on the heav'nly Borders stand.
He's dreaming about crossing over to the final Promised Land, the heavenly land, where he doesn't have to be here anymore.
Now surmount whate'er opposes, and to thine Embrace I'll fly; speak the Word thou spake to Moses; bid me, "Get me up and die."
Then the last two lines say, "Get rid of anything standing in the way of me coming to You so I can embrace You. Speak the word Thou spoke to Moses: bid me, 'Get me up and die.'" Well, that's an ominous end. I wonder if it was written by him, but what do you think of these words? Do any of the words resonate with you?
I love how it started full of excitement and praise, but then it tapers down all the way through, and there's that sadness about prone to wander. I wonder how this song strikes you. Whatever you think, I believe it's good to sing. I believe it's powerful to sing these words about praising God for His mercy, raising our Ebenezer in praise for what He's done, recognising that He pursues us even if we do wander, and calling to Him to save our souls.
Conclusion
Will you sing it with me now? We're going to use a tune called Nettleton, which is the most commonly used tune for this song. It was written by a man named John Wyeth in the 1800s. I hope you'll recognise it. Do you sing it to another tune? Maybe you can also share that below. But sing it with me, and let your heart be stirred by these words. I pray that, unlike Robinson, you and I won't wander—that we won't wander, but that we'll stay held in His grace and do what we can with all the strength we have to hold on to His outstretched hand.
References
Kenneth W. Osbeck. 101 Hymn Stories. 1982. Kregal Publications: Grand Rapids
W.J. Limmer Shepherd. Great Hymns and their Stories. 1923. Lutterworth Press: London
