How Great Thou Art
Two men caught in storms 50 years apart made this amazing hymn what it is today. Thank God for Carl Boberg and Stuart Hine, through whom we have this song. May your soul sing and your heart sing "how great Thou art!"
This classic hymn is one of the world's favourites: How Great Thou Art. Do you have any memories of singing this wonderful song? I remember I was probably just out of school when my friends and I started singing this – Gavin, Ryan, and me. We figured out a nice three-part harmony and we would sing this everywhere. Any time we were singing, we would love to sing this song. When I started my band Crossroad, we also used to sing this all over the place, and without fail this is one of those songs that just brings the people of God into a place of praise and worship. I don't know if a more powerful song of praise has ever been written – I don't actually think so. I hope it's going to endure for a long time, and I'm sure it will. I hope that going into the history and the lyrics today is going to be meaningful to us. Where did it come from? Let's have a look.
The Story Behind "How Great Thou Art"
The song was written by a man named Carl Boberg. He was a Swedish minister in the 1800s and early 1900s who had been converted to the faith as a young man of 19 years old. He ended up serving as a minister and as the editor of a very influential evangelistic magazine. He himself was a very good poet, a talented writer, and a very good preacher who was well respected.
One day, Boberg was walking home with a bunch of friends after church, listening to the church bells ringing, when suddenly a fierce storm hit. They all had to duck for cover, but then as quickly as it arrived, it died down. The wind stopped, the clouds were gone, and the sun came out. Beautiful! We South Africans know all about that sort of thing.
Boberg walked on home and opened up his windows that faced the sea. As he stood gazing out, he heard the church bell still ringing and heard the birds singing in the fresh air after the storm. The words of a beautiful poem began to form in his mind. He wrote this nine-verse poem called "O Great God." He published the words in his magazine in 1886, and a few years later he walked into a little church and heard the people singing his words to a popular Swedish tune. It seems the song had already started to spread.
In 1925, the first English translation of this hymn was written. A professor named E. Gustav Johnson translated it, and early hymnals still have his version. But you and I who know the normal version are going to be confused by these words – they're lovely words, but they're not the words we know. He wrote: "Almighty God, when I behold the wonder of nature's beauty wrought by words of Thine, and how Thou leadest all from realms afar beyond, sustaining earthly life with love benign. With rapture filled, my soul Thy name would laud, O Mighty God, O Mighty God." That sounds kind of strange to those who know the more traditional, more well-known hymn.
The more famous words were written by a man named Stuart Hine. He was a British missionary who grew up in the Salvation Army and ended up becoming a missionary in Russia. In the early 1930s, Hine and his wife got to know the Russian version of this song. Then came a time a couple of years later where Hine was walking the Carpathian Mountains with some friends of his. Guess what happened as he was walking the mountains? A storm broke – a mighty storm broke. Picture them for a moment walking the mountains with big clouds everywhere and rain starting to fall.
What Do the Lyrics of "How Great Thou Art" Mean?
Let's start looking at the words and see what inspired them.
Verse 1: O Lord My God
There they were with the rain falling, the thunder rolling, and here came the words:
O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Isn't that an amazing thing to have written in a thunderstorm?
When last did you experience a big thunderstorm? There was one here in Boksburg just the other day. It caused chaos – trees falling over and all sorts. I had to marvel as well at the power that God displays in moments like that. Do you get a sense that God is great and big and awesome? Sometimes we forget this. Sometimes we shrink God so that we can try and understand Him. Of course, Jesus was a man, He was a human being, but that should never make us forget the great might and power of God. When we think about God's works, when we think about the stars and the thunder and the rain, when we see all the amazing things in creation, we should be marvelling at who God is and how great and powerful He is. His power is displayed all throughout the universe, as that last line said.
All throughout the universe. As we know, scientists just keep discovering more and more and more out there. It's as if God's greatness cannot be measured. Do you have a sense today that God is great, and that the more we find out about the universe, the more we find out just how little we know and how great God is?
The chorus goes like this:
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
That word "then" shows us that this is in response to what we've just sung. We see God in this awesome wonder, in the rolling thunder and the power of the universe, and because of that our souls sing and they soar in joy as we think about how great He is. I can just picture churches that I've sung at – many of them – as we get into this chorus, everybody's hands kind of just go up because there's something powerful about singing these words: my soul sings, Lord, how great Thou art!
Verse 2: When Through the Woods
It seems as if Boberg and his friends kept walking through the mountains as the rain began, and these next words also come out of that:
When through the woods and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze.
Can you picture them just walking through the mountains, looking down on the great sights before them?
Probably one of my favourite days ever was a hike that Shireen and I did in the Golden Gate Nature Reserve here in South Africa. It's in Clarens – some of the most beautiful mountains you can ever see. We did the longer hike, I think it was 12 kilometres or something like that. It was one of those where you went up and you thought, "There we are, we're going to reach the top." You got there and there was another mountain ahead of you. We went up that stretch, got to the top, and there was another one. It just never seemed to end – we never seemed to get to the top. It took us hours, but eventually we got to the top, and the view was astounding. It was absolutely astounding. We stood up there for a while just in silence and looked out. You could see what seemed like the whole world from on top of there.
In that moment, my soul was singing, "How great Thou art!" How great is this God of ours? How amazing, how powerful and mighty! How big must He be? That's what you think. You stand up there, you see so much of the earth, and yet it's only a little part, which is only a little part of the universe, and God holds it all. How big? How mighty? We sing His praise when we do such things.
When last did you get out into nature and just experience God in all His beauty? Do it – it's something special when we do that. How great Thou art!
Verse 3: When I Think That God
Let's go to verse three, and it seems as if these words were written in response to all the missionary work that he had done in Russia and in that part of the world. He saw many people come to Christ, have their lives changed by giving themselves to Jesus and receiving His love. They received His grace and felt their sins washed away. They came to know that they were loved and cherished and that God had a purpose for them in this life. He was amazed by this, and he wrote these words during the World War, it seems:
When I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in.
I love that line: I can hardly take it in. I can hardly understand what amazing things are going on here.
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Yes, great is the might and the wonder of creation. Greater still than the fact that God is so huge and holds the universe in His hands, greater still is the fact that He sent His Son to die on a cross and bear our burdens. Did you see that line? My burden gladly bearing. He took our burden of sin so that we don't have to carry it. We don't have to feel the guilt of our sins when we come to Christ and have them washed away. He bled and He died to take away our sins, to cleanse us of our guilt, and to empower us to lives of goodness so that we aren't dominated by sin anymore.
Can you take it in? Can you understand the depth of that? That is great. That is great news. That is the gospel. I hope that you've given yourself to Christ and received His love in this way. When you do, you can only sing, "How great Thou art! How great Thou art!"
Verse 4: When Christ Shall Come
Then comes that fourth verse, which is just so powerful. I love singing this verse:
When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art!
It seems that Hine wrote this verse after hearing the story of a man whom he had ministered to in Poland. This man hadn't seen his wife since the World War ended, and he was longing to see her so that he could tell her the good news of Jesus, which he'd heard through these missionaries. He longed to share with her what he learned about Christ and how He transforms lives. But he said that even if he never saw her on earth again – which he didn't think he would – his hope was that they would meet in heaven. They would meet in heaven and share in the eternal life there.
Hine, inspired by this, wrote these words about looking forward to Christ coming and taking us home so that we can bow at His feet, proclaim His greatness, and enjoy life in humble adoration with Him in eternity.
I've sung the song at a good many funerals too, and there's always something profound about singing those words at a funeral. We think of the one who's gone, and we think: Christ came and took them home, and they fell in humble adoration and proclaimed, "How great Thou art!" They found joy as they did it. There is joy for a Christian even in death, because this is what awaits: the loving embrace of our Father. What joy will fill our hearts when we see Him like this!
Conclusion
Do you know Him? Do you know the One who is great? Do you know the One whose greatness knows no bounds, who not only makes the rolling thunder and the birds sing and the sound of the streams, but who sent a Saviour so that you and I can one day enjoy eternal life? Give yourself to Him and sing the song with me.
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References
"How Great Thou Art" - Original Swedish text by Carl Boberg (1886)
English translation by Stuart K. Hine (1949)
Historical accounts of the hymn's composition and development
