Trouble may break with the dawn

Authors:
Themes:
Scriptures:
  • Psalms 33:3
  • Psalms 40:3
  • Psalms 96:1
  • Psalms 98:1
  • Isaiah 37:1-4
  • Habakkuk 3:17-18
  • Luke 24:31
  • John 3:16
  • Acts 2:32
  • Acts 3:15
  • Romans 2:15
  • Romans 3:21
  • Romans 8:31-39
  • 2 Corinthians 5:17
  • Ephesians 1:17-20
  • Ephesians 1:20
  • Ephesians 2:4
  • Ephesians 4:13
  • Philippians 3:1
  • Philippians 4:4
  • 1 Timothy 1:15
  • Titus 3:4-5
  • 1 Peter 3:21-22
  • 1 Peter 5:10
  • 1 John 4:14
  • Revelation 12:10
Book Number:
  • 879

Trouble may break with the dawn
and evil may come and darkness will fall;
clouds will appear in the sky
and tears in our eyes and pain in the soul.
But God stands at his people’s side,
gives them a place to hide,
rescues and saves them, takes them to heaven
and in his own dear Son he brings them home.

2. Sin may take hold in our lives
and Satan draw near to fill us with fear;
conscience accuse and condemn
for things we’ve done wrong and silence our song.
But God sending his Son to save,
raising him from the grave,
pardons our sin, renews us within
and gives us a cause to sing, to sing again.

3. So join in this new song today,
rejoice in the Lord and come and adore
this glorious God of all grace.
Look into his face and worship him more.
For God sets all his people free,
opens their eyes to see
wonders of love in Jesus above.
He’s sitting enthroned on high for you and me.

© Author
Malcolm Macgregor

The Christian Life - Suffering and Trial

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Tune

The story behind the hymn

‘We now come to look at two wonderful words—“But God��?’; so Dr D Martyn Lloyd-Jones began a Sunday morning sermon on Ephesians 2:4 at London’s Westminster Chapel. This was 6 Nov 1955, as he preached steadily through the Letter to the Ephesians from 1954 to 1962; he was not the first nor the last to make much of this NT signal that the writer is about to describe a decisive divine intervention. (Sometimes it is ‘But now …’ as in Romans 3:21.) Other Epistles also have it; Dr Lloyd-Jones expounded it more than once, to large congregations, and the Ephesians and Romans sermons (at least) were published in the 1970s. Some 35 years on from the original preaching, Ian Parker was listening in Accrington, Lancs, to the tape-recording of it and, he says ‘I thought it would be a good idea for a song. The tune was written first and Malcolm [MacGregor] put the words to it’. This was one of 20 or 30 such joint compositions, primarily for use in their local church; other friends then asked to use them, and this one was published in the monthly Evangelicals Now, in a regular slot for new music. The song appears here for the first time in a hymn-book, with the tune TROUBLE MAY BREAK slightly adapted. The words clearly make ‘But God …’ the theme, by its key position in each 5th line; its first line also provides a hidden zeugma; if dawn breaks, so does trouble. ‘But God’: ‘These two words … in a sense contain the whole of the Gospel … There is the world!— “But God …��?’ (DML-J).

A look at the author

MacGregor, Malcolm

Birmingham Coll of Art and Design, where he was converted 1971. After working as an Art teacher in special hospitals for handicapped and mentally ill patients in Devon and C Durham, from 1977 to 1993 he was pastor of the Grace Baptist Ch at Accrington, Lancs. Then from 1993 he ministered at Cauldwell Hall Rd Baptist Ch, Ipswich, Suffolk; he is married to Jean and they have 4 adult children. He continues to paint and produce pottery at the local college, and sub-edit and contribute to the monthly Grace Magazine. Several of his hymn/song texts have appeared in Evangelicals Now, often set to tunes by Ian Parker. Nos.601, 640, 879.