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At the Heart of the Hymn
Robert Wolgemuth
* * *
Let's say you're on a guided tour of the French countryside. You are riding in a bus, and the tour director is describing the landscape from a microphone in the front. The driver turns your bus down a long, tree-lined road that leads to a castle ... one more castle. Frankly, you'd rather be back in the hotel. It's been a long day of sightseeing and, with all due respect to the ingenious castle-builders of the seventeenth century, the last thing you need is one more sight to see. As you stare blankly out the window, you don't actually see anything. In fact, as the guide describes the details of the scene, including each intricate peculiarity of this citadel, you don't hear anything either. You close your eyes and try to sleep.
Now let's roll the calendar back a few decades-time travel. It's the early forties. You find yourself on that very same wooded lane, headed toward the identical castle. But this time you're not on a bus. Even though lots of other folks are crammed into this vehicle, it's actually a military personnel carrier. The voice coming from the front is your commanding officer. What he's describing to you is the location you and your fellow soldiers are going to be using the next day as a battleground. The castle has been secured as your stronghold, and your company will be returning to this same place on foot tonight.
You're completely exhausted from the rigorous activities of the day. But you're not sleepy In fact, you've never been so awake in your life. You study the trees, looking for potential hiding places for enemy soldiers. You scan the castle, considering which locations would be suitable for you to use as you watch the movements of the opposition. Your very life could depend on your careful attention to this moment, and you know it.
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:12
When our two daughters were old enough to carry a tune, Bobble asked them to join her on the piano bench. She opened a hymnal to this Martin Luther classic and taught the girls every verse. Of course, it took more than one sitting, but soon they had mastered every word of every verse-including the word "bulwark."
One day Missy stopped singing. "What's a bulwark?" she asked.
"A fortress," Bobble responded. "It's a place where people can go to protect themselves from their enemies. A bulwark is a strong, safe place-like a castle." Missy seemed satisfied and continued to sing.
For the next few years Bobble and I talked about the idea of a bulwark. Sometimes we found ourselves blankly staring out our parenting "window," glassy-eyed from the rigors of the day-to-day But then we'd remind each other that life was not a prepackaged bus tour but a daily-and extremely unpredictable and dangerous-confrontation with the very forces of darkness. Life was spiritual warfare.
Until Missy and Julie left our home to establish their own, we sat together in church every Sunday. When the hymn selection was number 92, we'd look at each other with a knowing smile. And without so much as even touching the hymnal in the pew rack in front of us, we'd stand and sing every verse from memory.
A mighty fortress is our God, bulwark never failing.
There is a war going on. But our Castle never fails.
In the Light of the Word
John MacArthur
* * *
This best-known and most enduring hymn from the early Protestant Reformation celebrates the utter invincibility of almighty God-and in particular the safety He affords those who take refuge in Him. It begins with a powerful statement echoing Psalm 46:1, "God is our refuge and strength."
By the end of the first stanza, however, the focus of the hymn is on "our ancient foe," the devil. No doubt many careless singers have belted out the closing phrase of the first stanza ("... on earth is not his equal") as if it were a line of praise about God. But Satan, not God, is the subject here. He is, after all, the believer's arch-adversary. It is fitting that a hymn about God as our stronghold should consider what kind of a threat Satan poses to the security of that stronghold.
Some have suggested that Luther had an obsession with the devil. A well-known legend has Luther heaving an ink-pot across the room at Satan. Supposedly, the ink-stain is still visible on a wall in Wartburg Castle today (though most researchers believe the ink-stain was deliberately applied to the wall long after Luther's time in order to substantiate the popular legend). In figurative terms, Luther certainly did throw a printer's ink-pot at the devil, with his translation of Scripture into the language of the people and with his own voluminous writings, including this favorite hymn.
It is an undeniable fact that Luther was constantly haunted with a vivid awareness of Satan's opposition. Luther spoke often of how the devil would awaken him at night to accuse him, argue with him, or tempt him. To Luther, the devil posed a far more present danger than the flesh-and-blood adversaries he contended with.
But Luther never wrote of Satan's fierce power and opposition without also stressing the still greater power of God and the certainty of the devil's destruction. The third stanza of this hymn is a classic example. Here Luther also highlights the absolute ease with which God's power will overthrow both Satan and a world full of his evil minions. "One little word" from the Lord's lips will be their undoing.
Modern song leaders sometimes shorten hymns by leaving out a verse or singing only the first and last stanzas. That approach doesn't work at all with "A Mighty Fortress," because one stanza builds upon another with a continuity that runs from the first verse through the last. For example, the phrase "one little word shall fell him" comes at the end of the third stanza; and the opening words of the fourth speak of "That Word." The reference makes no sense if the third stanza is omitted. A similar progression of thought ties all the stanzas together, so that the hymn must be sung in full to make sense.
The hymn is filled with rich theology and biblical references. For example, the second stanza speaks in these terms of the One who assures our ultimate victory:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he, Lord & Sabaoth, his Name, From age to age the same, And he must win the battle.
"Lord Sabaoth" is an expression used in Romans 9:29 and James 5:4 ("Lord Almighty"). "Sabaoth" is a transliteration of the Hebrew word meaning "hosts" or "armies." Literally, then, this applies a familiar Old Testament title for God, "Lord of Hosts," to Jesus Christ. Both the use of this name and the phrase "from age to age the same" (cf. Isaiah 51:8) are powerful affirmations of the deity of Christ.
The triumphant final verse of the hymn distills the message of the whole: The worst that the enemies of truth can do is really nothing. They are all perishing. But the Lord, His kingdom, and all those who belong to Him will endure forever. And so the hymn closes as it began, with an echo of Psalm 46: "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.... The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress" (vv. 2, 11).
From Out of the Past
Bobbie Wolgemuth
* * *
Instead of entering the practice of civil law, this well-educated son of a magistrate entered a convent of Augustinian monks when he was twenty-two years old. Because a close friend had been killed and Luther himself had been struck by lightning, Luther withdrew from the world of business to find some answers. Those answers came from the pages of a Latin Bible, which he eventually distilled into the doctrine of justification by faith. At twenty-four he became a priest and acquired such a great reputation for wisdom that he was asked to be a professor at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. His desire to increase his knowledge of the truth and to prepare the minds of others to receive it was insatiable.
At the age of thirty-four, Martin encountered a Dominican friar who proclaimed that anyone who would pay a certain sum of money would be granted special favors for his soul and the souls of his friends. When the cleric promised, "The moment the money tinkles in the chest, your father's soul mounts up out of purgatory," Martin was shocked at the blasphemy. On October 31, 1517, he posted 95 theses or complaints against the practices of the Roman Catholic Church on the doors of the Cathedral of Wittenberg. He wrote and preached that Christ alone provides redemption and salvation, that the knowledge of the Scriptures should be reestablished, and that congregational singing should be a part of the worship and instruction of the people. Crowds rallied around him in agreement until his friends began to warn him of the severe dangers of contending against the Pope.
His answer to them was, "I protest that property, reputation, and honors shall all be of no estimation with me, compared with the defense of the truth. I have only a frail body to lose. If, in obedience to God, I lose it through violence or fraud, what is the loss of a few hours of life? Sufficient for me is the lovely Redeemer and Advocate, My Lord Jesus Christ, to whose praise I will sing as long as I live."
The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still: His kingdom is forever
Two years later the Pope issued a warrant for his arrest and the burning of all his writings. Luther, however, continued to write, declaring that the Word of God was the most legitimate weapon to combat error.
Though the Bible had for centuries been locked away from the majority, now all of Germany was being illumined. When Luther stepped out of a carriage in Worms, Germany, to meet his accusers, he exclaimed, "God will be on my side. Christ lives, and I will enter Worms though all the gates of Hell and all the powers of darkness oppose."
Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing; Were not the right man on our side, The Man of God's own choosing Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, is it he.
Lovers of truth were inspired, and his writings were translated all over Europe. Disciples were so enlightened and determined to fight for the truth that the rage of persecutions became more violent. If a man uttered a word against the Roman Church, he was seized. If in the privacy of their own cottage parents read the Bible or taught their children the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, or the Apostles' Creed, it was considered a criminal act sufficient to bring the offenders to the stake. It was reported from Brussels that two disciples were burned at the stake and were heard singing in alternate response, "Te Deum laudamus" ("We praise Thee, O God").
Declaring music to be second only to the Word of God, Luther composed sacred hymns so that "the Word of God may dwell among the people also by means of song." He exclaimed that music "is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the Devil and makes people cheerful." As a means of warfare, Luther proclaimed that "the Devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God."
"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" became the battle cry for the Reformers as they endured suffering for their radical belief in a personal and biblical faith in Jesus Christ alone. Based on Psalm 46, the hymn has been translated into languages all over the world and continues to be a source of strength and encouragement to believers everywhere.
Excerpted from O Worship the King by Joni Eareckson Tada John MacArthur Robert & Bobbie Wolgemuth Copyright © 2000 by John MacArthur, Joni Eareckson Tada, and Robert and Bobbie Wolgemuth
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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