Download Discussion (revised 5/10/2018)
Mothers’ Encouragement Group
May 10, 2018
Plant Them and Let Them Grow #11
You Shall Not Steal
The Word of God, the Ten Commandments, the contract/covenant between us and our God by which we need to be living is the soil in which we plant our children—the guide by which we need to make every decision of our lives, from the time we get up in the morning until we retire again at night. The law of God ought so to permeate our thinking that even in our subconscious it has shaped and is shaping our thoughts, our words, our very dreams. It is our life-line that draws us inexorably towards Heaven, which, when you get to be my age you realize more and more is HOME, the place of perfect rest and happiness, the place of Life (with a capital ‘L’). Hard for young people to picture and hard to desire since for you there are still so many ties to life in this world, so many things left for you to experience, but try this: Heaven is that last perfectly delicious glass of wine enjoyed while watching a perfectly sanctified romantic movie with a perfectly sanctified husband next to your perfectly sanctified self, never coming to the end when the movie must be shut off and reality sets in again because the perfection itself is reality! Of course we know that this is a pathetic picture, that the Heaven we look forward to will be infinitely more wonderful than this and that the whole point of that place is that we will be in love with our God and will therefore love being in His presence forever and ever, never having to “wake up” or “turn the movie off” to return to reality because that will be our reality! Who would not want to be getting ready for that place? And who among us would not want to be getting our children ready for that place since these most precious little beings are “pieces of ourselves wrapped up in another skin?” Unthinkable to be ourselves in that beautiful, happy place without our children! So we teach them, draw them, cajole them, show them the rod as well as the carrot, throwing out the life-line to them, using any and all possible means to win them, making them obedient to the life they were born into and getting them ready to embrace it with all their hearts.
The eighth commandment is next: you shall not steal. But before we look at it, a word from Ann Voskamp about just what the commandments are which I think will sweeten them in your thinking; it certainly did in mine. I’ve told you before that the Ten Commandments are the expression of our Lord’s heart—who He is and what is in His mind—and how very lovely and gracious of Him it was to reveal that heart to us in such a purposeful way so that, because He loves us and wants us to love Him back, we can learn to live according to what will make Him most happy with us. This is such a good picture of what we do with our children: we love them so much and are so pleased when they make choices that make us happy! We don’t want to be angry with them, impatient with them, disgusted with them and so we need to teach them how not to make us angry, impatient and disgusted, else how would they ever know? (And, I might add, we need to have the courage to communicate strongly to them that the possibility of being angry and disgusted at things they may do—or not do—does exist!)
This is from Ann Voskamp’s book on advent The Greatest Gift. From the chapter entitled Love Comes Surely she writes:
“Like Advent and the Child, like night and the stars.
“Like the gift of the Ten Commandments written with His very finger, this covenant to love.
“They say that it came as a legal code, those Ten Commandments—but it is more. That it came as the inauguration of shalom, of the Kingdom—but it is more. Maybe this is the truest—that it comes as this whisper of His heart, your God entreating you to love.
“Jewish weddings required a chuppah, a canopy covering, and your God comes down on Mount Sinai and gives the mountain a canopy of cloud. Jewish weddings required a mikveh so the bride could purify herself before the wedding, and your God gives the people before Mount Sinai time to purify themselves. And Jewish weddings required a ketubah, a contract for the loving, and your God gives these Ten Commandments for the living out of love. [BTW we saw mikvehs on our trip to Israel: low, square places built outside with large cut stones, made to hold water where women were required to bathe after their monthly periods and men and women used them to clean themselves before entering the temple. You can see many of them built outside what used to be the temple in Jerusalem.]
“The Ten Commandments are more than God saying, ‘Here is My Law for you’—they are God saying, ‘Here is My Love for you.’
“Here, I take you to be Mine, to be My treasured possession—have no other gods, no other lovers that woo you, that take your attention or affection, but Me.
“Here, I give you My name, my very name to make you mine—do not use it in vain.
“Here, I long to spend time with you, holy time for you and Me—set apart the Sabbath day as holy time for you and Me.
“Here, I love you, bride—be united, not coveting or lying or stealing or murdering or cheating one another, but honoring and loving and living out of our love.
“And three times the Israelites say yes, this we will do—we do, we do, we do.” The Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp, pp. 89-90.
VIII. You shall not steal.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism says the eighth commandment “requires the lawful procuring and furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others” and “forbids whatsoever does or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbor’s wealth or outward estate.” Interesting that this commandment requires us to look after our own possessions in order honestly to multiply them as well as promoting the wealth and well-being of others! And let us remember as we begin that everything we have comes from the Lord, including our material possessions.
The very first gift the Lord gave you is you; He gave you your life; He gave you your personality; He gave you your body; He gave you your gifts and talents; He gave you your loves; He gave you your parents; and He gave you all the things needed to sustain your life and to keep you growing. When someone gives you a gift—even if you don’t like it—would it be a right thing for you to smash it to the floor and say, “Yuck; I don’t want this—keep it yourself”? Of course not! We all know very well that when we give someone else a gift we have spent some time thinking about what would be pleasing to them or helpful to them or would bless them in some way and we know that if our gift were to be treated like that by them it would be hurtful and offensive. At the very least, we would be inclined never to give that person a gift again; it is as though he or she stomped on a piece of your heart, being thoughtlessly unloving and uncaring about the effort you put into the giving of that gift. This actually happened to me once; my gift was returned unopened, a rejection of my friendship—not a fun thing to experience. So when I receive a gift from someone else I say, ‘thank you’ and keep my thoughts to myself about the thing at least until the giver is no longer within hearing distance! However, when God gives us gifts, there is no time when He is out of hearing distance; the Lord knows whether or not you are treating His gifts with gratitude and care and when He says, “you shall not steal” He is saying, “treat my gifts to you with gratitude and care.” At the very least we know His gifts are perfect for each of us because God is perfectly thoughtful about who each of us is, what each of us needs and what would please each of us best! He gave each of us different amounts and kinds of gifts and because they are different we must refrain from thinking that somehow our gifts are more or less valuable than someone else’s. I Corinthians 12 teaches us that all the gifts of the Body (capital ‘B’) are necessary in order for the happy blessing of everyone. There is no room for jealousy in God’s economy but only for the enjoyment of differences that serve to make life interesting and pleasurable, whether we are talking about personal gifts or material ones.
The eighth commandment, though, is primarily talking about material things and about their use and care in our lives and in the lives of others. The Bible makes it clear that it is not wrong to have material things and to enjoy them as long as we understand that they are from the Lord and to be used with humility, generosity and gratitude. The first important principle we are to understand, of course, is that we are not to take for ourselves things that belong to someone else. Leviticus 6:1-5: “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby—if he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely, he shall restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt.’” We are not to take for ourselves, by force or by deception, anything that belongs to someone else.
Then, we are to be careful to take care of our own things so that we may support our lives and the lives of those the Lord has given to us. Proverbs 27:23-27: “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds, for riches do not last forever…. When the grass is gone and the new growth appears and the vegetation of the mountains is gathered, the lambs will provide your clothing, and the goats the price of a field. There will be enough goats’ milk for your food, for the food of your household and maintenance for your girls.” (Presumably, young men would be earning their own living while girls would be dependent on their father until they married.) Even as a mother must look after her own health—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually—in order to have what it takes to nurture and care for her children; and as husbands and wives need to look after themselves in order mutually to care for one another as well as their children; so Christians are to increase their wealth as they can in order to provide for their own families. I Timothy 5:8: “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” The Lord even expects us to increase our wealth if we can. Read the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 and see how angry the man was whose servant, instead of using his one talent buried it and so ruined any possibility of increasing it. His master called him lazy—slothful. This servant not only made nothing more of that talent to provide for himself but did not show any gratitude to his master for the gift or demonstrate any enjoyment of it.
This leads us straight on into the next reason for increasing our wealth and that is so that we can share with those in need and be generous to those who have less than ourselves. Deuteronomy 24:19-22: “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterward. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; therefore I command you to do this.” Over and over again God’s people are told to be thoughtful of others less fortunate, merciful, kind and generous in providing for those in need and if they forgot, which we know they did, we see the Lord’s hot displeasure: “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.” Malachi 3:5
We are meant to grow our money to provide for ourselves and our loved ones; to share with and help those less fortunate than we; and also to support the Lord’s own, very specific, work, that is to provide for those who supervise His worship and the spiritual nourishment of His people. The Israelites had to give the tithe of their income to the Levites in order to provide for them since they had no other way to provide for themselves. Their job as caretakers of the worship of Yahweh was a full-time job. “The Levitical priests, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the Lord’s food offerings as their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as He promised them….The firstfruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep, you shall give him (that is, to Levi). For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time.” Deuteronomy 18:1, 2, 4, 5 We see the Lord providing pleasure for Himself in providing men to supervise His worship and to work on behalf of the spiritual blessing of His people. We also see the tithe—the money and the physical gifts given to the Lord—doing double duty: Deuteronomy 26:12-13: “When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled, then you shall say before the Lord…I have given it…according to all…that you have commanded me.” The Lord Himself shares what He has commanded to be given for the support of his ministers with those who are in particular need. The Lord’s heart is merciful—soft and compassionate towards those who suffer because of poverty and He is angry when His people are not. His is the anger that clearly says, “that is not right!” We need faithfully to give our tithe to those to whom the Lord has given the responsibility of caring for the poor and when we don’t, and when what is given is not used as He intended, God takes it very personally; it is a form of actually robbing God! Malachi 3:8-10: “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.” We are to give our tithe to God and see that the tithe is used rightly, for the use God intended. But even in the expression of the anger that Malachi tells us about God holds out the promise of blessing, of prosperity, of well-being—both the rod and the carrot are present in this text. See how the Lord parents us, giving us as much motivation to obey as He can, showing us that it is a happy thing to obey and hard when we do not.
It is easy to think that the Lord does not see and does not care what we do with our money, whether or not we give Him our tithe, whether or not we use it properly for providing for ourselves and others or whether we are simply hoarding it to make us feel as though we have security—this is short-sighted and a lack of really knowing the One who owns everything, knows everything and has power over everything. I say, it is easy to think the Lord doesn’t see what we do in secret but Malachi swiftly dispels that foolish thought: “Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.” Malachi 3:16-18 Do you worry, as I do sometimes, about some of those things God is listening to? Yikes! It is, however, meant to be this wonderful thing of His hearing and taking so much pleasure in our speech to one another that He had it written down! Pondering this idea makes me feel as though our God has given me a compliment that I want to grow up into deserving. We ought to realize, then, that if God is listening to our speech with one another He certainly knows what we are deciding to do with our money!
Edith Schaeffer says this in her book that I have been quoting to you from time to time: “Stealing or robbing in our own day can take various forms: not giving a full day’s work for a full day’s pay, not fulfilling our responsibilities in our daily work, not paying sufficient salaries, or not caring for those who work for us in a human way. We can also be robbing God by not giving generously as we have been urged to do. But notice, no one else is to be the one to tell us what to do. It is according to how God has prospered, and it is to be what we have ‘decided in the heart to give.’ It is God who reads our hearts and knows whether we have kept our promises to Him.” Ten Things Parents Must Teach Their Children by Edith Schaeffer, chapter 8, p.181 God does notice; He knows all the decisions we make for our lives and He knows the thoughts that led to those decisions. He pays attention when we obey and even writes it down so that He will not forget! What a lovely thought, that we might please our God so much.
We are not meant to abhor the idea of becoming rich ourselves or look down on others for being rich. Rich men can do wonderful things for the Kingdom of God on earth and in fact are very much needed for benefitting that work. You may feel that you are so far from the world of wealth that it is laughable but this is something that still needs to be said, that we all need to remind ourselves of from time to time. It is easy to think carelessly about those who don’t need to struggle with finding and having money—either to envy them or to think less of them. Trust me, wealthy people have struggles of their own that are different than ours (not that I know this from experience!). This is what the Lord says to those of economic prosperity: “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” I Timothy 6:17-19 It can be difficult to be rich and still know that every blessing comes from God and it is perhaps because so few in this world can handle it gracefully that the Lord withholds riches from most of His own children. (But don’t you think it would be fun, one day, to be able to give someone an anonymous, extravagant gift that would be completely unexpected and feel completely wonderful to them? Or to bless the church with a beautiful building? Or to provide a poor man with something he desperately needs and could not possibly afford? I would love to be able to have that ability and that joy someday.)
We are free to surround ourselves, in so far as we are able, with lovely things—beautiful things. The passage we just read says that God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy!” This can be a point of contention among Christians; early on in our years here in Tacoma I felt sharp criticism from a dear sister in Christ for owning expensive silver and china (that were, BTW, given to us in celebration of our wedding). I felt uneasy for a long time about that and not only because of her criticism but because I loved having them and using them! It was a long while before my understanding of our God and His own love of beauty helped me to realize that He Himself planted that love of beautiful things in my heart. Truly it is a fine line; the trick is not to love the beautiful things for themselves but to love them in so far as they are used to bless, that is, to make happy and give pleasure to the ones who are using them. “People are more important than things” was a mantra I often repeated to my children when something of mine—or theirs—got broken or ruined but that does not make the things unimportant. We are to care for our things so that they may be a blessing to others and to ourselves.
This from Mrs. Schaeffer again: “How special that God made it known to us that we are to have enjoyment in the provisions He makes for us, enjoyment with the things He gives us. We are to enjoy the trees and grass, if He has surrounded us with these, to enjoy the waves of the sea, if that is our view, to enjoy the stars we can see from our tent, or the sunrise we can see from our rowboat. We do not need to feel guilty that everyone cannot have the same thing. But we should recognize and thank God for what He has given us, and then be sure we are carefully giving to Him and sharing what we have to share. To share with others does not cancel out the enjoyment we are meant to have in the midst of our own immediate situation, be it little or much.” Ibid. p. 182 The Shorter Catechism reminds us that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” including all the things He made.
The principle we are talking about in the eighth commandment is generosity. One does not have to be rich to be generous as we know from the admiration Jesus gave of the widow who threw two little coins, worth less than a penny, into the temple offering. “He called his disciples to him and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Mark 12:43-44 After all, it is a matter of trusting God, isn’t it? Trusting Him to provide for you what you need to live. Paul reminds us that “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver….He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way….” II Corinthians 9:6-11 And Jesus says: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not your life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” Matthew 6:25-30 Do you believe him? The more we trust that what our Lord says is true the more generous we can be; conversely, when we are worried about having what we need, not trusting Him to care for us, it is much more difficult to be generous with others. The widow who gave all that she had at the temple was trusting—with her actions—that God would provide for her. My husband does this much better than I; he is often giving gifts to others when I’m saying either out loud or to myself, “we had plans for that money!” I need to stop, think, and remind myself that we are children of The King who owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” Psalm 50:10 and has our provision already in His mind and under His control. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21
Mrs. Schaeffer says: “The manner in which Jesus multiplied the gift of the little boy, who gave his whole lunch, and made it into enough lunch for all the thousands of people on that hillside gives us a hint, just a hint, of what is being told us.
“The same thing is true of love, trust, worship, and adoration of the Lord in the area of winning battles in the war that is going on in the heavenlies. No one is shut out from expressing trust in the most adverse of situations, in depths of despair, in utter exhaustion, in deep sorrow, in great pain, in terrible disappointment, in a wreck by the side of the road, or in a hospital bed. It is sufficient to whisper, ‘I can’t understand, but I still love you, Lord, and I trust you.’ What has taken place is a victory in the battle between Satan and God as Satan tries to rob God of our love, to rob God of our trust, to steal our attention and fix it on our trouble rather than on God’s faithfulness to His promises.” Ibid. p. 184
James 5:1-6, Mrs. Schaeffer says, “… is the picture of condemnation to those who rob others of their time, energy, talents, and very lives in order to become rich, rather than treating people as human beings with value like their own.” (See Vs 4: “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.”) “However, that is a different thing from saying that prosperity in itself is wrong. From all the history we are given in the Bible we have both the poor and those who have been blessed with good crops and good success described to us as living among the people of God. There is a definite possibility of sharing what we do have, no matter what our circumstances are. God’s infinite wisdom in His marvelous way of enabling us all to do what we can in our own situation, be it hospital bed or the athletic training camp, a street sweeper’s job or Wall Street’s high finance, is astounding in its fairness. Yet how he is able to ‘bank’ all that is given is beyond our understanding. It is all hinted at, but is beyond us to understand perfectly until we are shown someday what the richness He has stored up for us is all about, and just what it consists of.
“Because, you see, God does not rob anyone. God is perfectly holy, and His character is perfection. He takes what we give directly to Him, what we give to people needing food or shoes or a vacation or a place to live, or to a young person needing an education, or to someone needing to go to a dentist or a doctor—He takes all that and, at the same time, invests it for us. He takes what we give in other ways to our church or to a mission work, to care for the physically hungry or spiritually hungry, and even as it is used to accomplish that task, He invests it for us. He takes our tithe, and all we give above our tithe, and He uses it in three ways at once. He uses it for the immediate thing we gave it for, He accepts it as unto Himself (‘when I was hungry you fed me’), and He puts it in that mysterious fund which He has called ‘treasures in heaven’ which we will one day find.” Ibid. p. 183
So how can we apply these principles in our children’s lives? There is the obvious one: don’t grab a toy from someone else in order to play with it yourself or sneak something from the kitchen behind mother’s back. As maybe a six year old girl in Cedar Falls, Iowa, I remember sneaking into the backyard of a playmate’s neighbor and stealing a stalk of their rhubarb; it was not my idea but I knew I should not have gone along. We ate the rhubarb while we were sneaking back into his yard, destroying the evidence of our crime. My conscience was so stricken that I had tremblingly to confess to my mother what we had done—after a long, silent and inwardly tearful ride home. Pretty sure I was more concerned with how she would punish me than that I had offended God by breaking the eighth commandment and I also knew, somehow, that the stealing would have been compounded by concealing the deed, and therefore lying about it. My parents had done a good job of instilling God’s Law into my mind, whatever their own weaknesses as Christians, or as parents, might have been. My mother, though she treated my confession with utmost seriousness, was kind to me in that instance. Here is an illustration of how even very young children can be taught the principles of the Word of God—I was only six, maybe seven, and I already knew that what I had done was wrong. Knowing that there is always right and wrong, with a choice to be made, is a principle children can easily accept as true when parents begin correcting the wrong choices and demonstrating the right ones as soon as may be—when they are still very little. Even a nursing infant can learn that biting his mother is not a right choice when he gets flicked on the cheek!
Taking care of their own things, not destroying them, but learning to treat them with respect and care is the positive side to this negative command not to steal. This increases their own enjoyment of those things as well as making it much more possible to share those things with other children. That, of course is the next big hurdle and it is a big one because it teaches them to love those other children—who may very well destroy their beloved toy—more than they love their things; not even adults do this all the time or with anything like the generosity and kindness our Lord would wish to see in us.
Even as we know that everything we have and are as people and as Christians has come from the Lord and should be received with gratitude and humility so we need to communicate to our children that everything they have and are has also come from Him, through you. They receive from you as you have received from God; they obey you and you obey God; they love you as you love God. You show them your reliance on the Lord, your careful heart towards obeying Him in all things even as you demand from them their obedience to you and, gradually—bit by bit, little by little, one idea upon another—they learn to obey God for themselves, directly receiving from Him, with gratitude and humility, the gifts He has given to them to use and to enjoy, with which to bless others.
We have heard from our pulpit that punishment is absolutely necessary in the life of a Christian, else we would fear nothing and our wickedness would grow to be uncontrollable. So it is in the lives of our children; we must punish them for their sin else they would never learn what sin is but even as Malachi told us about the book of remembrance that our God is writing—a book full of the things He hears when we speak to each other about things that please Him—so we must “pay attention”—like the Lord pays attention to us—and tell our children that we have seen how they are trying to obey, how they were kind to that one or generous with their toys that time or respectful to mommy that other time. To notice their efforts to be good is to give them compliments they will desire to grow up into—and you have thrown them a wonderful life-line that will draw them up to Heaven and to Life.
Around the Throne of God in Heaven
Anne H. Shepherd, 1836/Henry E. Matthews, 1853
#543 in Trinity Hymnal
Around the throne of God in heaven thousands of children stand,
Children whose sins are all forgiven, a holy, happy band,
Singing, “Glory, glory, glory be to God on high.”
In flowing robes of spotless white see every one arrayed;
Dwelling in everlasting light and joys that never fade,
Singing, “Glory, glory, glory be to God on high.”
What brought them to that world above, that heaven so bright and fair,
Where all is peace, and joy, and love; how came those children there,
Singing, “Glory, glory, glory be to God on high.”
Because the Savior shed his blood to wash away their sin;
Bathed in that pure and precious flood, behold them white and clean,
Singing, “Glory, glory, glory be to God on high.”
On earth they sought the Savior’s grace, on earth they loved his name;
So now they see his blessed face, and stand before the Lamb,
Singing, “Glory, glory, glory be to God on high.”