Sovereign Grace Music

7 songs checked against the passages they lean on. Each one was graded on its own, against what that song does with the text.

How the 7 checks landed

~ FAITHFUL 2
NOT A QUOTE 5

This is a count, not a verdict. We grade songs, one at a time, against what each one does with the text. A tally of those checks describes a catalogue. It is not a judgment of the people who wrote or sang it, and no number here puts anyone on or off The List. Most drift is craft pressure, not deception. Read the proofs, not the arithmetic.

The songs

NOT A QUOTE “All Creatures of Our God and King” Sovereign Grace Music Psalm 148:7-10 Sing it. Nothing here is presented as scripture. Its resemblance to Psalm 148 comes from Draper's English, which turned Francis's praise of God for creation into a call addressed to creation.

✓ Says it is nothing but a song. No verse is cited on the recording, no translation is named, and the credit line points at the poem it came from rather than at a chapter of the Bible

⚠ The Psalm 148 resemblance belongs to the English. Francis's Italian praises God for the sun and moon and calls them brother and sister rather than ordering them to praise. A singer told this is Francis's Psalm 148 is being told two things, and only one of them is checkable

NOT A QUOTE “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” Sovereign Grace Music Isaiah 7:14 Sing it. Nothing in it is offered as a quotation. It is a chain of Bible titles turned into prayers, and Isaiah 7:14 lends it a single word: the name.

✓ Never says it is quoting at any point: no reference, no verse framing, nothing presented as scripture, and nothing that could be mistaken for a quoted sentence

⚠ The song gives no addresses. Every title in it comes from a specific verse, and you have to find all of them somewhere other than the song

NOT A QUOTE “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” Sovereign Grace Music Psalm 103:1-6 Sing it. It quotes nothing, and every reason it hands your soul is one scripture supports. It is a sermon preached to the singer in the psalm's own shape. Read verse 6 for the turn outward the hymn does not take.

✓ Every reason it gives the soul is a checkable statement about God that scripture supports: He reigns, sustains, provides, defends

⚠ Hymnal indexes file it under Psalm 103, but the hymn cites nothing. The link is a resemblance editors catalogued, not something the hymn's words say

~ FAITHFUL “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” Sovereign Grace Music Psalm 46:1-3 Sing it. It is an honest free paraphrase five centuries old: Psalm 46's opening confidence rebuilt in Luther's own images. Just know the label names the psalm's theme, not its words, and most of the psalm is not in it.

✓ The opening line does verse 1's own work, God as stronghold and present help, stated before the threat, which is the psalm's order

⚠ Most of Psalm 46 is not here. The river and the city, the raging nations, the earth melting at God's voice, the ended wars, and the be-still command all drop away. Julian's dictionary says the psalm "is used only as a motto"

NOT A QUOTE “Turn Your Eyes” Sovereign Grace Music Hebrews 12:1-2 Sing it. Nothing in it is offered as scripture and nothing in it misstates the passage. Just know that Hebrews harnesses this gaze to a race run with endurance, and the song keeps the gaze while the race stays in the text.

✓ The 2019 verses point the eyes at the cross endured and the King enthroned and returning, which is what Hebrews 12:2 itself says of Jesus after the clause about looking

⚠ The lyric cites nothing. The Hebrews connection lives on the publisher's page and in hymnal indexes, not in anything a singer hears

~ FAITHFUL “How Firm a Foundation” Sovereign Grace Music Isaiah 41:10 Sing it. When this hymn speaks as God, it repeats what he has said: the fear-not stanza is Isaiah 41:10 in close King James wording, and the first stanza announces that plan out loud.

✓ The first stanza announces the method: everything sung in God's voice afterward is presented as what he has already said in his word

⚠ No translation is named, so the King James wording has to be recognised rather than checked. In 1787 that went without saying; in 2026 it does not

NOT A QUOTE “Behold Our God” Sovereign Grace Music Isaiah 40:12-14 Sing it. Nothing here is offered as a quotation. It borrows Isaiah 40's way of arguing rather than its words, and the verse about the nails is the song's own addition, not Isaiah's.

✓ Borrows Isaiah 40's rhetorical method, unanswerable questions answered by God alone, rather than only its imagery

⚠ Isaiah 40's greatness argument exists to comfort exiles who think God has forgotten them. Sung as majesty alone, the consolation the chapter is arguing for can go missing