Welcome to 2023! After taking a break for a few months, I’m back to recording and creating videos. This week I’m presenting another popular hymn by Fanny Crosby, “Tell Me the Story of Jesus.” Fanny Crosby and John Sweney collaborated together to write and compose this hymn in 1880. It was first published that same year in The Quiver of Sacred Song by John Hood of Philadelphia. Both Crosby and Sweney had a desire to create music for Christian education, and the lyrics of today’s hymn accomplish that. The verses tell a brief story of Christ’s birth, His life, and eventually His death and resurrection, when He paid the ransom for our sin.
Tell me the story of Jesus,
write on my heart every word;
Tell me the story most precious,
sweetest that ever was heard.
Tell how the angels, in chorus,
sang as they welcomed His birth,
“Glory to God in the highest!
Peace and good tidings to earth.”
Fasting alone in the desert,
tell of the days that are past,
How for our sins He was tempted,
yet was triumphant at last.
Tell of the years of His labor,
tell of the sorrow He bore,
He was despised and afflicted,
homeless, rejected, and poor.
Tell of the cross where they nailed Him,
writhing in anguish and pain;
Tell of the grave where they laid Him,
tell how He liveth again.
Love in that story so tender,
clearer than ever I see:
Stay, let me weep while you whisper,
love paid the ransom for me.
Refrain:
Tell me the story of Jesus,
write on my heart every word;
Tell me the story most precious,
sweetest that ever was heard.
3 He is despised and rejected by men,
Isaiah 53:3-6
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8
Thank you for listening!
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